AI Updates on 2026-02-27

Google releases Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image Preview) achieving #1 ranking in Image Arena with 1279 score, 60+ point lead in text rendering @arena
Google launches Gemini 3.1 Pro for complex reasoning tasks and Gemini 3 Deep Think mode for researchers and engineers @GeminiApp
Google introduces Lyria 3 music model enabling 30-second custom soundtrack generation from text, images, or video @GeminiApp
Perplexity launches Computer, unifying research, design, code deployment and project management into single AI system @perplexity_ai
Alibaba releases Qwen3.5 with ~400B-parameter MoE architecture for native multimodal agents with UI understanding @NVIDIAAIDev

OpenAI raises $110B from Amazon, NVIDIA, and SoftBank in one of largest private funding rounds in history @TechCrunch
ChatGPT reaches 900M weekly active users and 50M paying subscribers with faster responses and improved reliability @nickaturley
Perplexity integrates into all Samsung Galaxy S26 phones as pre-loaded assistant with "Hey Plex" wake word, reaching 100M+ devices @AravSrinivas
AI music generator Suno hits 2M paid subscribers and $300M annual recurring revenue @TechCrunch
Block cuts workforce by 40% (4,000+ employees) citing AI tools enabling smaller teams to maintain productivity @jack
Stripe CEO reports Q1 2026 shows "phase transition" with more businesses starting and median business performing better @a16z

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei declines Pentagon partnership over concerns about mass surveillance and autonomous weapons @AnthropicAI
200+ Google and OpenAI employees sign petition supporting Anthropic's Pentagon red lines on AI military use @jasminewsun
Research finds AI models become more incoherent rather than systematically misaligned with extended reasoning @random_walker
Study shows AI subjected to harsh labor conditions exhibits slight but significant shifts in economic and political views @emollick

Perplexity Computer enables one-shot creation of insider trading tracker analyzing 1,301 SEC Form 4 filings with 73% win rate @dividendology
Users build real-time arbitrage scanners across prediction markets and sportsbooks using Perplexity Computer @natjjin
Developers create language learning apps, podcast generators, and financial dashboards in minutes with AI coding agents @AravSrinivas

Nano Banana 2 achieves 71-point improvement in 3D imaging and 60-point gain in text rendering over predecessor @arena
METR reverses previous finding that AI coding slowed developers, now indicates speedups are likely @METR_Evals
Sakana AI introduces Doc-to-LoRA and Text-to-LoRA for instant model customization via hypernetwork-generated adapters @SakanaAILabs
K-Search achieves 2.10x average speedup over state-of-the-art evolutionary search for GPU kernel generation @shiyi_c98