Apple has announced a major overhaul of Image Playground that adds photorealistic image generation via a new model on Private Cloud Compute, plus expanded editing tools and iOS integration. The update includes automatic SynthID watermarks on all AI images and opens the features to third-party developers through a new API.

All generated images will automatically carry a hidden SynthID watermark to identify them as AI-generated.
In addition to Messages, generated images can now be used as Lock Screen wallpapers and Contact Posters.
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Tesla and SpaceX have confirmed Grimes County, Texas as the site for their Terafab semiconductor megafactory, with the first phase costing roughly $16.8 billion. The project targets the largest chip manufacturing facility on the planet to supply over 1 terawatt of compute per year that exceeds current and future global production capacity.
OpenAI has filed a motion asking a federal judge to dismiss Apple's trade secrets lawsuit, describing the claims as meritless. The dispute, which follows a July suit and this week's injunction request from Apple, highlights tensions after their prior partnership on Siri and OpenAI's hardware push.
Meta has released an early beta of Muse Code, a terminal-based coding agent driven by the updated Muse Spark 1.2 model and positioned against Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex. Substantially lower rates, including a contributor plan at $0.10 for every million tokens received, may encourage migration away from higher-priced options such as Anthropic's Sonnet 5.