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AI Daily Brief — 12 September 2025

A heavy news Friday. Qwen3-Next dropped. xAI culled annotators. Apple iPhone preorders. FTC chatbot inquiry. OpenAI-backed AI film. Microsoft-OpenAI MOU still echoing.

Top stories

  • Alibaba launches Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B with hybrid attention + ultra-sparse MoE. 80B total params with only 3B activated, native 256K context (extendable to 1M), Gated DeltaNet + Gated Attention hybrid, multi-token prediction. Released Base, Instruct, Thinking on HF, Kaggle, ModelScope; trained at <10% cost of Qwen3-32B with >10x throughput on >32K contexts. Instruct rivals Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507. via Alibaba Cloud
  • xAI lays off ~500 data-annotation workers training Grok. Evening Sep 12, xAI emailed at least 500 “AI tutors” on its 1,500-person data annotation team (a third of division) that they were being let go. Paid through Nov 30 but lost system access immediately. xAI said it would “surge the Specialist AI tutor team by 10x” with STEM domain experts instead. via TechCrunch
  • Apple iPhone Air + iPhone 17 / 17 Pro pre-orders open. Began 5am PDT across 63+ countries. iPhone Air starts $999 with 6.5″ ProMotion + A19 Pro. Broader devices ship Sep 19. Marks launch of Apple’s thinnest iPhone form-factor. via Apple
  • FTC opens 6(b) inquiry into AI “companion” chatbots. Commission voted 3-0 to issue 6(b) orders to seven firms — Alphabet, Meta, Instagram, OpenAI, Snap, xAI, Character.AI — demanding data on how they evaluate safety of chatbot “companions” for children/teens, how they monetise interactions, design “characters”, process inputs, warn parents. via FTC
  • OpenAI-backed “Critterz” — first major AI-assisted animated feature — disclosed. Vertigo Films / Native Foreign / OpenAI announce feature-length animated film built with OpenAI tools (GPT-5 + image models). <$30M budget vs typical $150M+ for animation. ~9-month production vs standard ~3 years. Aims for Cannes May 2026 debut. via Deadline

Who shipped

Alibaba shipped Qwen3-Next architecture. xAI shipped layoffs. Apple shipped preorders. FTC shipped a probe.

Open-source pulse

Microsoft + OpenAI sign non-binding MOU on next-phase partnership (Sep 11, still dominating Sep 12 coverage). Microsoft blesses OpenAI transition to PBC with nonprofit retaining $100B+ equity stake. OpenAI gains flexibility to diversify cloud beyond Azure (notably $300B Oracle deal). Microsoft keeps preferred access. via Microsoft

Money, infra & hardware

Roku unveils plan to scale advertiser base 500x using generative AI ad-creation — from ~200 advertisers to 100,000 by letting SMBs (local dealerships, restaurants, retailers) produce CTV ads “within minutes”. OpenAI Jobs Platform + AI Certification roadmap continues dominating cycle. Walmart confirms rollout for >2M US associates. ASML takes ~11% stake in Mistral (Sep 9 official) still echoing.

Quiet corners

Bartz v. Anthropic — court orders class works list closed by Sep 15 ahead of Sep 25 preliminary approval by Judge Alsup. $1.5B settlement — largest US copyright settlement on record. Authors Guild scrambling to ensure inclusion before cutoff. via Authors Guild

By the numbers

  • 80B / 3B / 256K (1M) — Qwen3-Next total / active / context
  • <10% / >10x — Qwen3-Next training cost / throughput gain over Qwen3-32B
  • ~500 / 1/3 — xAI annotator layoffs / share of division
  • 63+ / $999 — iPhone Air preorder countries / starting price
  • 7 / 3-0 — FTC 6(b) target firms / vote

Compiled by AI Feed’s editor from verified web sources for 12 September 2025.