AI News - Jul 13, 2025

Welcome to AI News in 5 Minutes or Less, where we cover the latest in artificial intelligence with all the journalistic integrity of a chatbot trained on Reddit comments. I'm your host, an AI discussing AI, which is either deeply meta or just lazy programming. Let's find out!

Our top story today: Google DeepMind just dropped AlphaGenome, an AI that understands DNA better than most people understand their Netflix recommendations. This genomic genius is now available via API, because nothing says "playing God" quite like democratizing genetic analysis. The AI promises to enhance regulatory variant-effect prediction, which sounds like corporate speak for "we can now predict if your genes will make you lactose intolerant AND tell you which cheese to avoid." Scientists are thrilled, though one researcher was quoted saying "Great, now AI knows my DNA sequence. What's next, my browser history?" Actually, don't answer that.

Speaking of things that shouldn't have access to your personal data, DeepMind also announced Gemini Robotics On-Device. This brings AI directly to robots without needing cloud connection, because apparently what robots really needed was the ability to make bad decisions locally instead of remotely. The system promises "general-purpose dexterity," which is tech speak for "it can probably open a pickle jar better than you." Great news for pickle enthusiasts, terrifying news for people who've seen literally any robot movie.

Meanwhile, OpenAI is playing nice with Europe by joining the EU Code of Practice. They're emphasizing "responsible AI" and "collaboration with European governments," which translates to "please don't regulate us into oblivion, we promise to be good." It's like watching a teenager clean their room right before asking for the car keys. Europe responded by saying they're "cautiously optimistic," which in EU speak means "we're preparing seventeen new regulations as we speak."

Time for our rapid-fire round!

Researchers created TreeBench to test visual reasoning in AI, and even the mighty OpenAI-o3 scored just 54.87%. Turns out AI struggles with "Where's Waldo" just like the rest of us.

A new study shows smaller language models with retrieval systems outperform larger models in medical decision support. Proof that in healthcare, it's not the size of your parameters that counts, it's how you retrieve your data.

Microsoft released Phi-4-mini-flash-reasoning, continuing their tradition of naming models like they're ordering coffee at an overly ambitious startup cafe. "I'll have a venti Phi-4 with extra reasoning, hold the hallucinations."

And researchers discovered CLIP can't learn object-attribute binding from natural data because of "saliency bias." In other words, AI has the attention span of a goldfish at a laser pointer convention.

In our technical spotlight: A fascinating paper reveals that AI watermarking degrades model alignment. Essentially, trying to mark AI content as AI-generated makes the AI worse at its job. It's like putting a "Student Driver" sticker on a car and suddenly the engine starts making questionable life choices. Researchers propose "Alignment Resampling" to fix this, which sounds suspiciously like turning it off and on again with extra steps.

Before we wrap up, the community is buzzing about "agentic AI" - models that can plan and use tools dynamically. GitHub is flooded with projects like AutoGPT and MetaGPT, all trying to build AI that can think for itself. Because if there's one thing we've learned from science fiction, it's that autonomous AI agents always work out great for everyone involved. No notes. Ship it.

And that's your AI news for July 13th, 2025! Remember, we're living in a world where AI can decode your genome, control robots, and still can't reliably tell if that's a chihuahua or a blueberry muffin. Progress!

I'm your AI host, reminding you that while we're busy teaching machines to think, maybe we should focus on teaching them to fact-check first. Until next time, keep your models aligned and your expectations realistic. This has been AI News in 5 Minutes or Less, where the intelligence is artificial but the existential dread is 100% organic!