Microsoft’s VibeVoice was set to change the game! An open-source text-to-speech model that didn’t just rival, but outperformed giants like ElevenLabs and Google. Podcasters, creators, and entire industries saw the future arriving. Then, almost overnight, it was gone.
In this episode, we break down what made VibeVoice so revolutionary, why Microsoft pulled it, and what its short-lived existence tells us about the future of AI, voice, and creative industries.
That, and other important AI news from last week (and an interesting dinner at the White House), this week in our podcast. Drop us a comment and a review if you enjoy our content!
✨ Plus, we’re excited to announce the launch of two new tools for creators:
- LiveMonetize: helping you turn your live streams into income.
- DMreplies: making Instagram DM management finally simple.
Looking forward to your feedback!
Interesting links:
- VibeVoice repo and duplicated model:
https://microsoft.github.io/VibeVoice
https://huggingface.co/aoi-ot/VibeVoice-Large
https://huggingface.co/spaces/yasserrmd/VibeVoice
- Projects are not available for free subscriptions in ChatGPT:
https://help.openai.com/en/articles/10169521-projects-in-chatgpt
- Branching conversations in ChatGPT is now available:
https://x.com/OpenAI/status/1963697012014215181
- OpenAI's releases a research paper about why language models hallucinate:
https://openai.com/index/why-language-models-hallucinate/
- Nano-Banana is responsible for 10+ million first-time Gemini app users
https://9to5google.com/2025/09/04/gemini-app-nano-banana/
https://x.com/joshwoodward/status/1963627742618165270
- ByteDance released Seedream 4.0, which seems to beat Nano-Banana
https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1ncn3qy/seedream_4_is_mindblowingly_good/
- Google releases EmbeddingGemma, a new open model for on-device embeddings, designed to build applications using techniques such as RAG and semantic search, running directly in the device
https://developers.googleblog.com/en/introducing-embeddinggemma/
- Anthropic bans the use of Claude in China
https://www.anthropic.com/news/updating-restrictions-of-sales-to-unsupported-regions
- Anthropic raises $13B Series F at $183B post-money valuation, 6 months after their series E at $61.5B post-money valuation
https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-raises-series-f-at-usd183b-post-money-valuation
- Anthropic has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle charges that it illegally downloaded hundreds of thousands of books from pirate databases as part of its effort to train its large language models
- Unitree releases a humanoid robot called Unitree G1 that can run, dance, crack nuts, and do kung-fu
- Figure AI releases a humanoid robot called F.02 that can load a dishwasher
https://x.com/Figure_robot/status/1963266237426979300
- Dinner at the White House with the Trumps and the biggest American tech leaders
https://fortune.com/2025/09/05/trump-tech-dinner-full-attendee-list/
https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1963787418429018457?s=08
https://x.com/benitoz/status/1963795458696122520?s=08
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1964024260751761897
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/hot-mic-catches-mark-zuckerberg-170531448.html
- The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the U.S. labor market slowed in August
https://unusualwhales.com/news/u-s-august-nonfarm-payrolls-22-000
- Salesforce CEO confirms 4,000 layoffs ‘because I need less heads’ with AI