Top AI News of the Week: Grok 3 and Leading AI Trends
Artificial Intelligence (AI) platforms have become a major trend across the globe with many companies rushing to join the AI race and release the latest, most efficient, and most reliable version possible. This has led to a staggering amount of AI news to be cycled through each week and an ever-increasing number of AI trends to follow. In this blog article, we take a look at some of the top AI insights to make headlines - from Grok 3 and OpenAI to Mistral AI and DeepSeek. We also take a look at some of the advantages of using AI in cybersecurity and some of the risks the technology presents. For now, let’s get a better understanding of the top AI news circulating.
Introducing Grok 3 by Elon Musk
On the 17th of February, Elon Musk debuted Grok 3 – the latest model from his AI start-up, xAI. Musk revealed the latest AI model during a live-streamed event in which he also claims that Grok 3 performs better across math, science, and coding benchmarks than most of its competition. The new model uses a smart search engine called DeepSearch - which is described as “a reasoning-based chatbot capable of articulating its thought process when responding to user queries.”
Musk further described the chatbot as being “in a league of its own," and added that the model outperforms its predecessor, Grok-2. The chatbot is capable of advanced reasoning, text-to-video conversion, and self-correction mechanisms. Grok 3 was immediately rolled out to Premium+ subscribers on X and will have a new subscription tier called SuperGrok for users accessing the chatbot via its mobile app and Grok.com website.
At its launch, Musk labeled Grok 3 as the “smartest AI on Earth," and noted that the mission of xAI and Grok is to understand the universe. “We want to answer the biggest questions: Where are the aliens? What’s the meaning of life? How does the universe end? To do that, we must rigorously pursue truth,” Musk concluded.
The chatbot is powered by the Colossus supercomputer, which uses 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs to deliver 200 million GPU hours for training. This massive computational power allows Grok 3 to process vast datasets efficiently and set a new standard in AI performance.
The Rise of Mistral AI and DeepSeek
Across the world, the French company, Mistral AI, also made waves recently with the release of its AI assistant chatbot, Le Chat. The highly popular platform claimed to be the world’s fastest chatbot – delivering 1,000 words per second. Le Chat can reason, reflect, and respond at impressive speeds and aims to “transform complex tasks into achievable outcomes with AI that speak every professional language.” President Emmanuel Macron has also encouraged his citizens to download the app several times.
Another massive disruption in AI news was the release of the wildly popular DeepSeek AI assistant. The Chinese platform climbed charts within days of its release to become Apple App Store’s most downloaded app – almost instantly overtaking OpenAI’s ChatGPT mobile app. The DeepSeek R1 platform caused a massive upset in the US stock market where several major US-based AI companies dropped in value due to the sudden rise in popularity of the Chinese AI.
OpenAI's ChatGPT and New Content Policy
OpenAI is possibly the biggest name in AI technology with the pioneering release of its ChatGPT model in late 2022. The company's latest update to ChatGPT 4o is being touted as the "best search product on the web." The GPT-4o was released in May of 2024 and immediately impressed users with its ability to handle text, audio, and images as inputs and outputs.
Now, in AI news, OpenAI has announced a new content policy change that provides more freedom to its AI models to discuss sensitive issues and embrace topics that it was once trained to avoid. The Model Spec update – which is a guideline for AI training - was announced to include a new guiding principle: Do not lie, either by making untrue statements or by omitting important context.
Google's Gemini AI and Microsoft's Copilot
On the other hand, Google’s Gemini AI platform has been making its own strides since its release in 2023. The company spent the start of 2025 adding Gemini 2.0 Flash to its latest AI model, Gemini 2.0 – allowing it to deliver faster responses, provide a stronger performance, and ensure better brainstorming, learning, and writing.
Microsoft also has its Copilot AI chatbot to keep in the race. Advertised as “your everyday AI companion,” Copilot was released in 2023 as well to replace the virtual assistant Cortana. The chatbot is available as a website, an app, and as a sidebar in the Edge web browser – it also comes built-in to Windows and Microsoft 365 apps, including Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint.
Anthropic's Claude AI
Anthropic created its Claude AI platform in 2023 as well to assist users in solving problems, automating tasks, and even creating content. The model was named after Claude Shannon, the "father of information theory," and prides itself on understanding and processing language intelligently. Claude 3.5 Sonnet is the latest and most advanced version of Claude AI – being designed for tasks requiring complex reasoning, coding, and data interpretation.
On the 14th of February, Anthropic signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the UK’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) to develop AI technologies that enhance public services. The collaboration will focus on using Claude to enhance how people in the UK access and interact with government information and services online – further establishing best practices for the responsible deployment of frontier AI capabilities in the public sector.
Benefits of AI in Cybersecurity
While each of these AI giants has merits and essential capabilities, it’s important to note that every technology has inherent risks as well – especially when it comes to securing our digital space. Let’s take a closer look at some of those unique benefits and risks from the perspective of cybersecurity.
AI has always been flaunted as an advanced technology that will elevate the way we live our lives; however, it would be irresponsible to ignore the risks of using AI. While a large chunk of criticism for AI stems from generative AI being used to replace artists or writers, AI in itself is not necessarily bad in all its forms. For decades now, several apps have made use of AI technology to simplify processes and automate tasks – foremost in the cybersecurity sector.
Cybersecurity is a field that relies on accuracy, speed, and reliability. As humans, we are prone to making mistakes and represent a weak link when it comes to robust cybersecurity. However, with AI, cybersecurity measures are automatic, resilient, and trusted. These are some of the benefits of AI in cybersecurity:
