# forck.live — 29 December 2025 – 4 January 2026 > AI lab announcements, news reports and podcasts. forck.live follows what companies announce about their own products. Press may corroborate an official story; it never leads and never appears as an item of its own. A missing date stays missing. A title is the publisher's words — where a company does not publish in English, an English rendering is listed separately as `Title in English` and named as this site's translation, never as theirs. This file is one issue of the weekly archive: every confirmed first-party announcement of ISO week 2026-W01, 29 December 2025 – 4 January 2026, newest first. The window never moves, so this URL always names the same seven days — but a post published inside them and detected later is added when it arrives, so a closed week can still gain entries. Every entry is one first-party announcement, and carries the same eight fields in this order before any others: Company · Announced · Category · Coverage · Announcement · Group · Source · Record `Source` is the company's own page the announcement was traced to and `Record` is this site's page for it. Both are safe to cite. `Coverage` is a number of outlets, or `not counted` — which means this record reached no count of its own, never that nobody wrote about it. `Category` is this tracker's own analysis, and is authoritative wherever it is stated. `not stated` means either that nothing has analysed the post yet or that the analysis placed it outside this taxonomy; neither is a verdict about the announcement. `Announcement` is whether the post is news of something the company did, rather than a how-to, a customer story, a changelog listing or a staffing note. `Group` is which of this record's groups the entry falls in, carried on the entry itself so it holds where the groups are headings and where they are not. One of: `models`, `covered`, `announcements`, `routine`. Anything after `Record` is held detail that only some announcements carry. - This week's page: https://forck.live/week/2026-W01 - The current issue, and the catalogue of the other weeks: https://forck.live/briefing.md - Catalogue: https://forck.live/llms.txt ## Announcements ### Sakana AI — Sakana AI Agent Wins AtCoder Heuristic Contest (First AI to Place 1st) - Company: Sakana AI (sakana.ai) - Announced: 2026-01-04T15:00:00+00:00 - Category: research-paper - Coverage: not counted - Announcement: yes - Group: announcements - Source: https://sakana.ai/ahc058 - Record: https://forck.live/items/4702-sakana-ai-agent-wins-atcoder-heuristic-contest-first-ai-to-place-1st - Subject: Sakana models Sakana AI's ALE-Agent achieved 1st place in the AtCoder Heuristic Contest 058, outperforming 804 human participants, marking the first known instance of an AI agent winning a major optimization programming contest in real-time. The agent operated at a cost of approximately $1,300 and autonomously discovered a novel algorithm. ### OpenAI — Announcing OpenAI Grove Cohort 2 - Company: OpenAI (openai.com) - Announced: 2026-01-02T10:00:00+00:00 - Category: not stated - Coverage: not counted - Announcement: no - Group: routine - Source: https://openai.com/index/openai-grove - Record: https://forck.live/items/321-announcing-openai-grove-cohort-2 - Subject: GPT / ChatGPT / API OpenAI is now accepting applications for the second cohort of its Grove founder program, which provides $50K in API credits, early access to AI tools, and mentorship over 5 weeks. ### Replit — 2025: Replit in Review - Company: Replit (replit.com) - Announced: 2025-12-31T21:02:47+00:00 - Category: not stated - Coverage: not counted - Announcement: no - Group: routine - Source: https://replit.com/blog/2025-replit-in-review - Record: https://forck.live/items/17925-2025-replit-in-review - Subject: Replit Agent Replit's 2025 review highlights the platform's shift to an Agent-first approach, with Agent v2 (powered by Claude 3.7 Sonnet) and subsequent versions delivering 2-3x speed improvements. Key features include Design Mode, Fast Build, one-click deploy, Replit Auth, domain purchasing, Stripe payments, and over 30 connectors. The platform also became SOC 2 Type II compliant and earned a Bitsight 'Advanced' rating. ### Alibaba — Qwen-Image-2512: Finer Details, Greater Realism - Company: Alibaba (alibaba.com) - Announced: 2025-12-31T05:08:30+00:00 - Category: model-update - Coverage: not counted - Announcement: yes - Group: models - Source: https://qwen.ai/blog?id=qwen-image-2512 - Record: https://forck.live/items/4596-qwen-image-2512-finer-details-greater-realism - Subject: Qwen Alibaba introduces Qwen-Image-2512, the December update of its Qwen-Image text-to-image foundational model, with key improvements in human realism, finer natural detail, and improved text rendering. The model is available at Qwen Chat and is described as the strongest open-source model based on blind evaluations. ### LG AI Research — [AI Ethics Seminar 2025 EP.5] Knowledge, Competence, and Education in the AI Era - Company: LG AI Research (lgresearch.ai) - Announced: 2025-12-31 - Category: not stated - Coverage: not counted - Announcement: no - Group: routine - Source: https://www.lgresearch.ai/blog/view?seq=614 - Record: https://forck.live/items/4765-ai-ethics-seminar-2025-ep-5-knowledge-competence-and-education-in-the-ai-era - Subject: EXAONE LG AI Research introduces its AI Ethics Seminar series and discusses the philosophical and societal implications of AI, including the redefinition of knowledge and competence in the AI era, referencing ancient Greek concepts of Technê and Epistêmê. ### Harvey — Harvey’s Top 5 Product Releases of 2025 - Company: Harvey (harvey.ai) - Announced: 2025-12-30T14:00:00+00:00 - Category: not stated - Coverage: not counted - Announcement: yes - Group: announcements - Source: https://www.harvey.ai/blog/top-5-product-releases-of-2025 - Record: https://forck.live/items/17631-harvey-s-top-5-product-releases-of-2025 - Subject: Harvey Looking back at Harvey’s top releases of the year and what they unlocked for legal teams. As 2025 comes to a close, we’re looking back on the releases that strengthened and expanded the Harvey platform, helping our customers do their best work with the power of AI. ### LG AI Research — [AI Ethics Seminar 2025 EP.4] From Tool to Colleague: AI UX Design that Extends Judgment - Company: LG AI Research (lgresearch.ai) - Announced: 2025-12-30 - Category: not stated - Coverage: not counted - Announcement: no - Group: routine - Source: https://www.lgresearch.ai/blog/view?seq=611 - Record: https://forck.live/items/4766-ai-ethics-seminar-2025-ep-4-from-tool-to-colleague-ai-ux-design-that-extends - Title in English (translated by forck.live from en): [AI Ethics Seminar 2025 EP.4] From Tool to Colleague: AI UX Design that Extends Judgment - Subject: EXAONE This blog post from LG AI Research introduces the 2025 AI Ethics Seminar, focusing on AI UX design that extends human judgment. It discusses human thought processes (Kahneman's System 1 and System 2, Bruner's narrative self), the effectiveness of human-AI collaboration, and UX principles for designing AI as a colleague rather than a tool, citing research on automation bias. ### xAI — Introducing Grok Business and Grok Enterprise - Company: xAI (x.ai) - Announced: 2025-12-30 - Category: product-launch - Coverage: not counted - Announcement: yes - Group: announcements - Source: https://x.ai/news/grok-business - Record: https://forck.live/items/3477-introducing-grok-business-and-grok-enterprise - Subject: Grok xAI introduced Grok Business and Grok Enterprise, stating that the assistant is now enterprise-ready.