February 25, 2026
By: Stephen Toback
I tested the same prompt from the summer which used 3.0 to test 3.1. It's definitely different. In my subjective option, it was not as good as 3.0. The video in general was super sharp, almost "soap opera" quality as...
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February 24, 2026
By: Stephen Toback
My first look at Anthropic’s research preview desktop tool, including a test that helped me understand exactly where the value lies — and where it doesn’t. Starting With a Small, Well-Defined Test When I decided to test Claude Cowork —...
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February 23, 2026
By: Stephen Toback
What began as a simple experiment turned into a full benchmarking session. I found a sepia tone photograph of my father-in-law from the 1950s. I wanted to see what it might look like in color, so I started uploading it...
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By: Stephen Toback
The transition from Gemini 3.0 to Gemini 3.1 Pro isn't just a incremental update; for those of us involved in media technology and digital storytelling, it represents a fundamental shift in how AI perceives and constructs visual logic. We are...
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February 22, 2026
By: Stephen Toback
In the world of media tech, a spectacular failure is often more educational than a polished success. I recently took Replit—a cloud-based coding platform—for a spin after hearing buzz about its new animation "Agent" capabilities. I wanted to see if...
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February 20, 2026
By: Stephen Toback
AI audio tools keep improving, but every now and then something feels like a real leap forward. The Vocal Isolation feature from ElevenLabs is one of those moments. I ran a series of practical tests — not lab conditions —...
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February 17, 2026
By: Stephen Toback
https://warpwire.duke.edu/w/TToJAA/ OK - this is C- quality, but this is the best I've ever seen. Our dream of video automation is to input some text and see a video when you're done. While we're making great progress for certain parts...
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By: Stephen Toback
As many of you know, I’ve been deep in the trenches of testing AI video creation for academic projects at Duke University. My "litmus test" has always been trying to accurately animate molecular bonding—a project that dates back to the...
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February 16, 2026
By: Stephen Toback
I recently had an experience that shifted my entire perspective on AI support. I wasn’t just "chatting" with a bot; I was collaborating with a high-level developer who happened to have a perfect memory and X-ray vision. I spent three...
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February 13, 2026
By: Stephen Toback
In a previous post, I detailed the struggle of getting AI video models to respect the laws of chemistry. This week, an undergraduate attendee at my seminar on AI and video mentioned he was getting impressive results with Seedance 2.0....
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