February 2024: Sora

OpenAI showed Sora, a model that turns text into video up to a minute long. The famous demo prompt described a stylish woman walking down a Tokyo street. Axios covered the announcement.

October 2024: an AI Nobel

Demis Hassabis and John Jumper of Google DeepMind were co-awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold, which predicts the 3D structure of proteins from their amino acid sequences. The system has predicted around 200 million structures, which is work that used to take a researcher a whole PhD for one protein.

January 2025: the DeepSeek shock

A low-cost Chinese model from DeepSeek matched OpenAI's o1 on many tests. The market reacted hard: according to Reuters, as republished by the Kathmandu Post, Nvidia posted a record market-value loss of around $593 billion in a single day. Investors worried that a cheap model could threaten the leaders.

March 2025: the Ghibli trend

Everyone turned their selfies into Studio Ghibli style art. Sam Altman posted that "our GPUs are melting" and OpenAI introduced temporary rate limits. Fortune also noted the copyright questions the trend raised.

May 2025: Veo 3

Google's Veo 3 generated video together with sound: dialogue, effects and music. TechCrunch described it as a model that can create audio to go along with its clips. For AI video, the silent era was over.

August 2025: GPT-5

OpenAI released GPT-5, which was pitched as a PhD-level expert in your pocket, and PBS NewsHour noted how high the expectations were. It was available to free users, too.

August and September 2025: Nano Banana

Google's updated image editing model in the Gemini app focused on keeping a person's or pet's likeness consistent across edits. More than 5 billion images were made with it in under a month, and Gemini reached number one on the App Store.

September 2025: the Sora 2 app

OpenAI launched an app that works like a TikTok of AI-generated video. TechCrunch reported it reached number one on Apple's US App Store while still invite-only, with around a million downloads in under five days.

What I want you to take away

The pace is the story. Skills and tools you learn today may be replaced within a year, so learn the principles and keep practising.
Competition is global. A low-cost model from one lab can shake an entire market in one day.
Every viral moment has a cost: compute, copyright questions, or deepfakes. Notice who pays.

Sources

Part of the talk "The AI Era" by Faisal Adnan, Riphah International University, 6 November 2026.

Two Years, Every Month a Headline: AI From Sora to GPT-5 and Nano Banana