Daily Summary of AI · Live edition, updated continuouslyFriday 6 November 2026 · UTC
Latest AI News Today: 6 November 2026
Thinking Machines releases Inkling 2 Small as METR flags Anthropic AI acceleration
Thinking Machines Lab released Inkling 2 Small, a 594 billion total, 17 billion active parameter mixture of experts model that scores 31 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index and is live on Tinker. METR says Anthropic's model improvement rate has roughly doubled since October 2025, with about 80 percent of the acceleration linked to AI used in Anthropic's own research.
Amazon is rolling out a texting feature for Alexa for Shopping, letting US customers message the assistant to search listings, compare products, and place orders.
Amazon lets customers text Alexa to search, compare, and buy items
Amazon is rolling out a texting feature for Alexa for Shopping, letting US customers message the assistant to search Amazon listings, compare products, and place orders. Users can describe items or send a photograph, and Alexa can track prices, remember preferences, and order on their behalf. The feature starts with a small group of US customers, coming after Amazon blocked Meta's Muse in September.
METR finds Anthropic may have crossed its own AI acceleration warning
METR says Anthropic's model improvement rate has roughly doubled since October 2025, with about 80 percent of the acceleration linked to AI used in Anthropic's own research. The nonprofit had eleven weeks of access to internal data and found the pace now reaches about 29 AECI points per year, up from about 15. Anthropic redacted important evidence, but the finding touches a warning threshold in its policy.
Underdog shows off a 32MB speech model in a browser game demo
Underdog released a browser game built with its new Woof speech model, which is 32 megabytes and has 31 million parameters. In the game, users can type text on a virtual typewriter and hear it spoken back, or rotate a tuner to generate music, all without an internet connection. The company says the model can run on most devices and is open for download, following its 167 megabyte Bark speech-to-text model.
Physicl raises $10M to make digital worlds realistic for robots
Physicl has raised $10 million in seed funding led by Inovia Capital to help robot builders create more realistic simulations for training physical AI. The startup is repurposing 3D rendering technology from founder Alex de Vigan's previous company, nfinite, to build environments with correct geometry, materials, and physics. It is releasing Studio with 10,000 3D environments and 100,000 assets for post-training on difficult edge cases.
Thinking Machines releases Inkling 2 Small, a 594B total, 17B active model
Thinking Machines Lab released Inkling 2 Small, a sparse mixture of experts model with 594 billion total and 17 billion active parameters that accepts text and images and supports variable reasoning effort. It scores 31 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, up from 13 for Inkling Small, and is live on Tinker for fine-tuning and inference. Weights are closed at launch, with an Apache 2.0 release planned next week after safety testing.
Illustration 
