DeepSeek R1-0528 vs. Competitors: A Benchmark Breakdown

We were expecting R2, but instead DeepSeek released R1-0528, an updated version of its R1 reasoning model, with enhanced capabilities in math, coding, and reasoning as if it was named R2.

R1-O528 is challenging o3 and Gemini 2.5 Pro on performance, with state-of-the-art benchmark results on AIME 24 (91.4), LiveCodeBench (73.3), GPQA Diamond (81), and SWE Verified (57.6). This easily makes it the most powerful open source AI reasoning model. However, testing also indicates DeepSeek’s R1-0528 model is significantly more censored, particularly on topics critical of the Chinese government, adhering to strict Chinese regulations. Alongside the full R1-0528 model, DeepSeek introduced a smaller, distilled version named DeepSeek-R1-0528-Qwen3-8B, built using the Qwen3-8B model as a base.

Perplexity released Perplexity Labs

Perplexity Labs is an agentic AI tool that crafts reports, spreadsheets, and dashboards to perform customized project tasks. It conducts research and data analysis, generates files, and builds interactive apps. This broadens Perplexity's offerings beyond search and “Deep Research” report generation and is available for Pro subscribers. You can start from different customized Perplexity Labs tasks in their Projects Gallery.

Black Forest Labs launched FLUX.1 Kontext

Black Forest Labs launched FLUX.1 Kontext, a suite of AI models for in-context image generation and editing that utilizes both text and images as input for further in-context creation. FLUX.1 Kontext comes in [max] for maximum performance, [pro] version for fast, iterative multi-turn image refinement, and [dev], an open weights lightweight 12B diffusion transformer suitable for customization. The models outperform OpenAI’s gpt-image-1 on benchmarks, with speeds up to 8x faster. Kontext is available on image generation platforms and through their own BFL Playground.

ElevenLabs launched Conversational AI 2.0

ElevenLabs launched Conversational AI 2.0, a significant upgrade for their voice agent platform. It offers key improvements: natural turn-taking, multilingual support, multimodality (text and audio interleaved), and a built-in RAG system. This enables intelligent, secure interactions for customer support, sales, and marketing, supporting enterprise use cases for their conversational AI.