AI ROLLUP #16: Retail Vs Institutions, Who's Right? | New Frontier AI Model | Mind Blowing Image Generation

This week on the AI Rollup, we’re diving into hyper-realistic AI-generated podcast hosts, showcasing Hedera Studio’s cutting-edge character tech. Google drops Gemini 2.0 Flash, making AI image generation even more powerful with improved consistency and text integration. Meanwhile, China is pushing hard—Baidu’s latest model beats GPT-4.5 at half the cost, challenging OpenAI’s dominance. Plus, Sesame open-sources its voice model, and the crypto AI market sees brutal drawdowns. Despite the turbulence, teams like Virtuals and Bittensor keep building, while Pluralis raises $7.6M to decentralize AI model training. Where does AI Crypto go from here? Let’s find out.------📣 RONIN WALLET | YOUR WEB3 GAMING ECOSYSTEMhttps://bankless.cc/Ronin_Wallet------BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS:🪙FRAX | SELF SUFFICIENT DeFihttps://bankless.cc/Frax🦄UNISWAP | SWAP ON UNICHAINhttps://bankless.cc/unichain⚖️ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORKhttps://bankless.cc/Mantle🌐CELO | BUILD TOGETHER AND PROSPERhttps://bankless.cc/Celo🏦INFINEX | THE CRYPTO-EVERYTHING APPhttps://bankless.cc/Infinex------ ✨ Mint the episode on Zora ✨https://zora.co/coin/base:0x9db2d5eb0c4af553fddda5da10777c1bcd82e3b6?referrer=0x077Fe9e96Aa9b20Bd36F1C6290f54F8717C5674E------TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES00:00 Sentiment Check and Recap05:25 AI Podcast Hosts?https://x.com/hedra_labs/status/189769901063246646908:50 Google Gemini 2.0https://x.com/robertriachi/status/1899854394751070573https://x.com/goodside/status/1900349595718148455?s=46https://x.com/ilumine_ai/status/1900017235898622025https://x.com/halimalrasihi/status/1900667639086673962?s=46https://x.com/thatarrowsmith/status/1901203776746201556?s=4617:55 China's New Frontier Modelhttps://x.com/scobleizer/status/1901089727568281975?s=4627:21 AI Market Priceshttps://www.cookie.fun/https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/ethereum32:55 Market Manipulation?https://x.com/solgojo/status/1901002388007514381https://x.com/0thTachi/status/190209067511120738038:11 Pockets Of Outperformershttps://x.com/S4mmyEth/status/190234804647978631543:09 Virtuals Updatehttps://x.com/smyyguy/status/1899181446126076283?s=46https://x.com/ethermage/status/1899494870152282511https://x.com/virtuals_io/status/190018591814706401549:48 AIXBT Hackedhttps://x.com/S4mmyEth/status/190202191451775827752:44 New AI Trading Subnethttps://x.com/thebittensorhub/status/1899810734374047799?s=4658:54 Pluralis Announcementhttps://x.com/PluralisHQ/status/1902367132597252177------Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠