AI News Roundup — March 9, 2026
Two former Big AI leaders make massive moves — Yann LeCun's AMI Labs raises $1.03B for world models and Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab secures a major Nvidia compute deal — while YouTube expands deepfake detection, Adobe brings an AI assistant to Photoshop, and Meta acquires an agent social network.
Yann LeCun's AMI Labs Raises $1.03B to Build World Models
Turing Prize laureate Yann LeCun's new venture AMI Labs — founded after his departure from Meta — secured a massive $1.03B funding round to build AI "world models" that understand how objects move and interact in 3D space. LeCun has long argued this approach, not scaling language models, is the path to human-level AI. It's one of the largest AI funding rounds ever for a research-stage company.
Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab Inks Massive Nvidia Compute Deal
Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, secured a major compute partnership with Nvidia. The deal gives TMI access to significant GPU resources to train its next-generation models — a critical competitive advantage as compute becomes the bottleneck for frontier AI development.
YouTube Expands AI Deepfake Detection to Politicians and Journalists
YouTube is expanding its synthetic media detection technology beyond celebrities to cover government officials, politicians, and journalists. The move addresses growing concerns about AI-generated political disinformation ahead of election cycles worldwide. The system uses a combination of fingerprinting and probabilistic detection to flag likely deepfakes.
Adobe Debuts AI Assistant for Photoshop
Adobe launched a new AI assistant in Photoshop (beta), available across web and mobile platforms. The assistant can understand natural language instructions to perform complex edits, generate and modify image elements, and guide users through multi-step workflows — moving beyond isolated generative fill into full conversational design assistance.
Meta Acquires Moltbook — "A Reddit for AI Agents"
Meta acquired Moltbook, a platform described as a social network for AI agents, integrating the team into its AI division. The acquisition signals Meta's interest in building infrastructure for agent-to-agent communication and collaboration — a critical piece of the agentic AI future where autonomous systems need to discover and interact with each other.
Zoom Launches AI Office Suite and AI Avatars for Meetings
Zoom introduced a full AI-powered office suite alongside AI avatars that can attend meetings on your behalf this month. The office tools integrate document creation, spreadsheets, and project management directly into the Zoom platform — a direct challenge to Google Workspace and Microsoft 365.
Google Backtracks on AI "Ask Photos" After User Outcry
Google added a toggle to disable its AI-powered "Ask Photos" search feature in Google Photos after users complained about privacy concerns and unwanted AI analysis of their personal photo libraries. The reversal follows a pattern of tech companies pulling back AI features when users push back on default opt-in approaches.