Howdy, it’s Barsee again.

Happy Friday, AI family, and welcome back to AI Valley.

Today’s climb through the Valley reveals:

• OpenAI backs Altman’s brain-interface startup Merge Labs

• Google unveils TranslateGemma: Fast translation for any device

• Viral ‘Stranger Things’ clips spark alarm over next generation of deepfakes

• AI just built its own upgrade

• Plus trending AI tools, posts, and resources

Let’s dive into the Valley of AI…

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THROUGH THE VALLEY

1/ OpenAI backs Altman’s brain-interface startup Merge Labs

OpenAI has officially invested in Merge Labs, a brain-computer interface (BCI) startup founded by its own CEO, Sam Altman. The company is developing technology to connect the human brain directly with AI, aiming for a more natural and seamless interaction. Unlike traditional BCIs that rely on surgically implanted electrodes, Merge Labs intends to use a combination of molecules and deep-reaching ultrasound to transmit signals to and from neurons. OpenAI believes this approach could revolutionize human-AI collaboration by reducing friction and allowing systems to better understand human intent without invasive hardware.

2/ Google unveils TranslateGemma: Fast translation for any device

Google has launched TranslateGemma, a suite of open translation models built on the Gemma 3 architecture, available in 4B, 12B, and 27B sizes. These models support 55 languages and are engineered for efficiency, running smoothly on devices ranging from smartphones to cloud GPUs. In performance benchmarks, the mid-sized 12B model outperformed a much larger 27B baseline, while the compact 4B version matched the quality of larger legacy systems. Trained using knowledge distilled from Google’s advanced Gemini models, TranslateGemma brings high-quality translation to both major and low-resource languages with minimal computing power.

3/ Viral ‘Stranger Things’ clips spark alarm over next generation of deepfakes

A viral video created with Kling AI’s motion tools has drawn over 14 million views by seamlessly swapping a creator’s face and body onto Stranger Things actors. The clip demonstrates how rapidly AI video technology is evolving, allowing for realistic full-body swaps using just a single image. Experts warn that this creates new risks beyond traditional deepfakes, significantly lowering the barrier for impersonation scams and non-consensual content. As tools like Google’s Veo 3.1, Nano Banana, FaceFusion, and OpenAI’s Sora 2 make high-quality synthesis widely accessible, researchers caution that these sophisticated manipulation techniques will likely spread far beyond harmless demos.

PEAK OF THE DAY

AI just built its own upgrade

The barriers to autonomous software engineering are crumbling.

On Wednesday, the team behind the AI-native editor Cursor published a report revealing that they have successfully run hundreds of AI coding agents autonomously for weeks on end, with one swarm producing a fully functional web browser spanning 3 million lines of code from scratch in under seven days.

Following a specialized hierarchy (dubbed the Ralph Wiggum technique), the agents were divided into distinct roles: planners, workers, and judges. This structure allowed hundreds of models to collaborate without losing context, resulting in a final output that could successfully load and render simple websites.

The team reported that the experiment also produced a Windows 7 emulator and an Excel clone, each consisting of over a million lines of code. Crucially, the report noted that GPT-5.2 handled these long-duration autonomous runs significantly better than Claude Opus 4.5, which the team found "tended to take shortcuts" during extended tasks.

Earlier this week, Anthropic engineer Boris Cherny confirmed that the firm has reached a similar milestone with its internal "Claude Code" tool. Cherny revealed that 100% of his recent contributions to the codebase were written by Claude itself, a process the company refers to as "Antfooding" (their version of "dogfooding," or using your own product to build itself).

This video features Boris Cherny discussing the design philosophy behind Claude Code. While recorded prior to this week, it is the best primary source for understanding the recursive "Antfooding" concepts that made the current breakthrough possible.

Why does it matter?

The simultaneous breakthroughs from Cursor and Anthropic show that the "invisible capability wall" for AI development has been broken, full stop. Until recently, AI was limited to snippets and autocomplete. Now, we are seeing swarms capable of executing multi-million-line projects in days. With GPT-5.2 demonstrating the endurance for massive architecture and Claude mastering recursive self-improvement, the economics of software development are shifting faster than the industry can adapt. The era of the human bricklayer is over; the era of the agent manager has begun.

TRENDING TOOLS

• Gobii > Run 24/7 AI agents that browse the web, read files, and keep working when you aren't

• Openwork > A free desktop AI agent that can use your computer and help you get real work done

• VibeCode > A full-stack vibe coding platform built on top of Claude Code

• Claude Cowork > Brings Claude Code’s agent-style intelligence to everyday workflows and tasks

• Vellum AI > Build powerful AI agents in plain English to automate your most repetitive operations

• ChatGPT Translate > A web-based translation tool that converts text across 50+ languages while preserving meaning, context, and tone

THINK PIECES / BRAIN BOOST

• Anthropic’s Claude Cowork is an AI agent that actually works

• Software's YouTube moment is happening now

• US senators demand answers from X, Meta, Alphabet, and others on sexualized deepfakes

• Learners and educators are AI’s new “super users”

• The real AI talent war is for plumbers and electricians

THE VALLEY GEMS

What’s trending on social today:

THAT’S ALL FOR TODAY

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