Fish Audio Raises $52M on Strong Voice AI Traction

Runway ML shared insights on building real-time AI video models at VB Transform 2026, revealing that the company turned a persistent avatar drift bug into a front-end feature rather than fixing it at the back-end. Head of enterprise product Ryan Phillips emphasized that robust AI product development requires cross-functional alignment on quality definitions, manual evaluation using simple tools like Excel spreadsheets, and leveraging language models to automate visual grading at scale. The company uses model distillation to achieve real-time latency for its Runway Characters product, which generates interactive video with AI avatars on the fly.

OpenAI has rolled out voice mode to its ChatGPT desktop application, enabling users to interact with ChatGPT Work and Codex through spoken commands. The feature allows voice control for task completion and agent management directly from the desktop client. This expands voice capabilities beyond the mobile platform where the feature was previously available.

Black Forest Labs launched FLUX 3, a multimodal AI model capable of generating images and video with audio up to 20 seconds from a single prompt, along with robotic vision and action capabilities. The model is entering limited early access with pricing and full benchmarks still unannounced, and open-weight versions will arrive later this year. Early preference testing shows FLUX 3 outperforming competitors like Luma Ray 3.2 and Runway Gen-4.5, though those results are labeled preliminary.

Runway has launched Media Router, an automated tool that selects the optimal image, video, or audio generation model based on developer priorities around quality, speed, or cost. The move addresses fragmentation in the generative media space as more models compete for developer adoption. The router aims to reduce friction in model selection for developers building applications that require different performance trade-offs.