Midjourney, a company recognized for its artificial intelligence solutions for creating images and videos, announced last Friday (24th) the acquisition of the astrology application Co-Star. This deal also involves the integration of Banu Guler, the platform's founder, into the role of Design Director at Midjourney.
With this acquisition, Co-Star will remain under Guler's management, who will maintain full control over the application, which is now benefiting from Midjourney's resources. This union connects two companies with distinct focuses but that converge on using technology as a means of personal exploration.
The purchase takes place at a time when Midjourney is seeking to expand its activities beyond licensing and developing AI systems. Previously, the company had already announced plans to develop an ultrasonic body scanner and establish a division dedicated to the health sector.
According to Banu Guler, the partnership between the two entities originated from a friendship established with David Holz, the founder of Midjourney, and a shared vision about the role of computers in how people interact with their own thoughts and feelings.
Guler stated in a post on the social network X that computers can function as instruments that help individuals understand their own humanity, showing what they wish to communicate, how they feel, or what they are imagining, even before they can articulate it themselves.
The executive related Co-Star's proposal, focused on astrology and introspection, to Midjourney's perspective on technologies that support self-knowledge and creativity processes. She mentioned that the astrology application has already reached 35% of young people in the United States and accumulated millions of installations.
However, Guler acknowledged that capturing this audience may present challenges due to the changing perception of artificial intelligence among younger users. A Gallup study cited in the announcement indicates that people born between 1997 and 2012 still frequently use generative AI tools, but demonstrate a more critical view of the technology. The data shows that the percentage of this group enthusiastic about AI dropped to 22%, while hope in technological progress reached 18% and the feeling of anger rose to 31%.
The incorporation of Co-Star signals another step for Midjourney to increase its scope, expanding beyond visual tools to explore areas such as health and integrating a platform focused on behavioral and personal interpretation.
Google has introduced three new artificial intelligence versions with the aim of intensifying competition against OpenAI and Anthropic. These new offerings include faster, more economical models, and those specialized in digital protection.
The main launch is Gemini 3.6 Flash, presented by Google as the company's most advanced Flash model. This model promises performance improvements in programming, knowledge tasks, and multimodal features, while consuming 17% fewer tokens than its predecessor, resulting in reduced operational costs.
Alongside Gemini 3.6 Flash, Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber, focused on identifying and correcting software flaws, and Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite, designed to handle large workloads and autonomous AI agents, were launched.
Security is a key differentiator for this new generation of models, according to Google. Gemini 3.6 Flash has been strengthened to offer greater resistance to misuse in cyberattacks without compromising legitimate applications.
Among the important announcements are: Gemini 3.6 Flash, for being more economical and efficient; Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber, dedicated to digital security; Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite, intended for AI agents and large-scale tasks; and the start of Gemini 4 pre-training.
In tests conducted by the company itself, Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber detected 55 issues in the V8 JavaScript Engine, including 10 vulnerabilities that other models had failed to identify. Because of this, its initial access will be restricted to governments and trusted partners.
While the new models reach the market, Google announced that Gemini 3.5 Pro remains in testing and will be made available when ready. Furthermore, the company revealed that it has started pre-training Gemini 4, indicating that the next iteration of the platform is already under development.
In parallel, Gemini 3.6 Flash and Flash-Lite are beginning to be released to developers, businesses, and Gemini application users. Flash-Lite will also undergo gradual integration with Google Search.
In recent months, the competition for increasingly specialized and efficient models has been fierce among Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and various Chinese startups. With these new releases, Google seeks to regain ground in a rapidly evolving dispute, where factors such as cost, performance, and security have gained comparable weight to the quality of responses.
