The new video includes interviews and behind-the-scenes footage from the upcoming live-action musical reimagining, as well as clips from the famed animated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Count us in as shaken and stirred. Amazon MGM Studios, Michael G. Wilson, and Barbara Broccoli have announced a new joint venture to house the James Bond intellectual property rights. Under the terms of the transaction, Amazon MGM Studios will gain creative control of future productions; Wilson and Broccoli will remain co-owners of the franchise.Since his theatrical introduction over 60 years ago, James Bond has been one of the most iconic characters in filmed entertainment, said Mike Hopkins, head of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios. We are grateful to the late Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman for bringing James Bond to movie theatres around the world, and to Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli for their unyielding dedication and their role in continuing the legacy of the franchise that is cherished by legions of fans worldwide. We are honored to continue this treasured heritage and look forward to ushering in the next phase of the legendary 007 for audiences around the world.With my 007 career spanning nearly 60 incredible years, I am stepping back from producing the James Bond films to focus on art and charitable projects, said Wilson. Therefore, Barbara and I agree, it is time for our trusted partner, Amazon MGM Studios, to lead James Bond into the future.My life has been dedicated to maintaining and building upon the extraordinary legacy that was handed to Michael and me by our father, producer Cubby Broccoli, added Broccoli. I have had the honor of working closely with four of the tremendously talented actors who have played 007 and thousands of wonderful artists within the industry. With the conclusion of No Time to Die and Michael retiring from the films, I feel it is time to focus on my other projects.In 2022, Amazon acquired MGM, including a vast catalog with more than 4,000 films and 17,000 TV shows. Since the MGM acquisition, Amazon has held rights to distribute all the James Bond films.Source: Amazon Journalist, antique shop owner, aspiring gemologistL'Wrenbrings a diverse perspective to animation, where every frame reflects her varied passions.

Breakdown & ShowreelsBetter Man: VFX Making of by Paramount MoviesBy Vincent Frei - 21/02/2025 Paramount presents an exclusive making-of for Better Man, showcasing the astonishing visual effects crafted by Weta FX. Get an insiders look with VFX Supervisor Luke Millar, Animation Supervisor Dave Clayton, and Director Michael Gracey as they reveal the very first animation tests that set this epic journey in motion and much more!WANT TO KNOW MORE?Weta FX: Dedicated page about Better Man on Weta FX website.Luke Millar with Dave Clayton: Heres my interview of Luke Millar (VFX Supervisor) with Dave Clayton (Animation Supervisor). Vincent Frei The Art of VFX 2025

Sharjah is often a surprise to first-time visitors. Upon arrival, they find little of the glitz and architectural excesses of neighboring Dubai, and instead a more modest, even walkable city, bustling with street life. A town of seafarers and pearl divers until the mid-20th century, Sharjah missed out on most of the oil wealth that reshaped the UAE after independence of 1971. As a result, nation-building efforts left a trace that is still present in its urban fabric, in the shape of modernist schools and office buildings that often relied on the same typology repeated across the emirate. Buildings such as the now-vacant Radisson Blu Resort, designed by The Architects Collective, are currently on the radar of architecture enthusiasts (see the recent Building Sharjah volume). And yet, here like elsewhere, modernism was a double-headed beast, at once bringing progress and dispossessionsomething that was made evident by DAARs poignant installation for the 2023 Architecture Triennial. While the Triennial is young (disclosure: I worked for the first one in 2019 as its head of publications), the Sharjah Art Biennial, on view at various venues through June 15, 2025, is now in its 16th iteration, and each edition consolidates the emirates standing as a global art center. (Its driving force, Hoor Al Qasimi, topped ArtReviews Power 100 list last year). This year, the Biennial is organized by a team of five renowned curators: Alia Swastika, Amal Khalaf, Megan Tamati-Quennell, Natasha Ginwala, and Zeynep z. They have succeeded in putting together an organic show, where the interests of each are (usually) discernible, yet the seams are (almost) invisible. Under the title to carry, they ask us to consider what we bring with us when we travel, flee, survive or stay. Displacement is as poignant a topic as its ever been, as people from the U.S.Mexico border to Gaza are having to carry their home, however they might understand it, with them. But its also the burdens we all carrytraumas, difficulties of generations pastsomething that resonated on a personal level, as I attended the biennials opening while grieving a recent death.Mahmoud Khaled, Pool of Perspectives 2030, 2025. Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation. Installation view: Sharjah Biennial 16, Arts Palace, Al Dhaid, Sharjah, 2025. (Motaz Mawid)With each edition the Biennial also expands its presence in the city and beyond, and there are now over a dozen venues stretching as far as the emirates eastern coast. Central to Al Qasimis vision for the Biennial has been the repurposing of the Sharjahs architectural heritage, the modernist as well as the older one. Here, there is no such thing as Abu Dhabis Saadiyat district with its big-name museums. Instead, the Al Mureijah spaces in central Sharjah (designed by Mona El Mousfy, who was shortlisted for the 2019 Aga Khan Award) are a collection of reconstructed coral-stone houses, complemented by new buildings that follow the ancient street pattern. One pleasingly gets lost in the alleys, and the galleries ever-changing proportions make for a visit that is never boring. While the breadth of the artists backgrounds and career stages, and the amount of new commissions, is itself an achievement, not all of the works feel substantial. The Biennial is at its best when it establishes connections with its distinctive spatial contextwhen the artworks convey a sense of specificity and texture that is a much-needed antidote to sanitized white-cube spaces elsewhere. In Al Mureijah, Jorge Gonzlez Santos has taken over one of the few unrenovated houses, turning its roofless rooms and leafy courtyard into a peaceful arrangement of objects by the Tano peoples of Puerto Rico. Joe Namys bamboo and palm-frond broadcasting tower speaks to the early history of radio, with a sound montage that enters in an unexpected dialogue with the adhan of nearby mosques. One of the newer galleries works well for the standout combination of works by Monira Al Qadiri and Stephanie Comilang, both portrayals of the liquid identities that define contemporary life in the Gulf.Doruntina Kastrati, The Dance of Sand and Steel, 2024. Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation. Installation view: Sharjah Biennial 16, Old Al Dhaid Clinic, Sharjah, 2025. (Shanavas Jamaluddin)A short walk away along the corniche are two large 19th-century merchant houses, which were among the first venues of the Sharjah Art Foundation. Here, Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser continue their haunting material and sonic explorations of the Indian subcontinent (the formers Static Range was recently at the Art Institute of Chicago) with a film about the Great Indian Hedge, planted by colonial Britain to prevent salt smuggling. The interplay of art and place is perhaps most successful in the agricultural town of Al Dhaid, almost 40 miles east of Sharjah, where the rooms of a 1970s clinic, entered from covered paths amid a leafy garden, have been transformed into exhibition spaces. Inside, the copper-wire weavings of Ximena Garrido-Lecca and the sculptures of Luana Vitra propose a fresh, non-didactic take on the conflicts over land that are at play in places like Peru and Brazil, while Akira Ikezoes canvases and stop-motion film make bitter fun of the technocratic hubris that has led to historys worst nuclear accidents.YAZ publication annotations. Installation view: Sharjah Biennial 16, Arts Palace, Al Dhaid, Sharjah, 2025. (Shanavas Jamaluddin)Just outside, the Guatemalan artist Hellen Ascoli has taken over a crumbling mud-brick house, where her installation of sliding fabrics and timber frames remind us of the global history of building technologies that are only apparently simple. The wasteful megaprojects that plague the rest of the UAE are hinted at in Mahmoud Khaleds arresting empty pool, tiled in digitally printed azulejos that at once hail to former Portuguese colonial presence in the Gulf, and mock the aesthetic of architectural renders.Hellen Ascoli, The World Upside Down, 2024. Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation. Courtesy of the artist and Proyectos Ultravioleta, Guatemala City. Installation view: Sharjah Biennial 16, Arts Palace and Farm, Al Dhaid, Sharjah, 2025. (Danko Stjepanovic)This Biennial has many threads. They arent always readable but yield unexpected resonances across space and timemost evidently in the in the seaside exhibition venues of Al Hamriyah, where a 1970s government office sits next to a pristine white block. The themes of futurity and of ideas being carried by sonic waves underpin a new work by Luke Willis Thompson. Whakamoemoea is a fictitious broadcast delivered by a real-life television journalist, relaying a future in which sovereignty in New Zealand is returned to the Mori. In a standout film, Chibayish, Alia Farid takes us to the disappearing marshes of Iraq. What could have easily been told as a didactic story of ecological damage is insteadthanks to a camera that always stays close to its subjectsan intimate, humble portrait of a waning way of life, where environmental threats are barely hinted at and yet impossible to ignore.Andrea Bagnato is a writer and researcher working at the intersection of urban history and political ecology.

Sole Contreras for The Architectural ReviewWith protheses and kinetic sculpture, the work of the German artist expanded the boundaries of the human bodyA butterfly emerges from the lungs in an open ribcage. This drawing was made in 1967 by the German artist Rebecca Horn (19442024) as she recovered from a lifethreatening lung inflammation, caused by working with toxic materials during her studies at the Hochschule fr Bildende Knste (HFBK) in Hamburg. Magnificent, motorised butterfly wings would later flap in Horns exhibitions: the remains of bodies merging with machines to form new creatures.Horn was born in 1944, during the Second World War, in Michelstadt, Germany. After attending boarding school from the age of nine a traumatic time that went on to inform her work she went to study economics at university but dropped out after six months and secretly enrolled at HFBK in 1963. Horn had dreamt of becoming an artist from an early age; her uncle was a painter and her nanny had taught her to draw.Credit: Sole Contreras for The Architectural ReviewIn one of her earliest works on paper, Lippenmaschine (Lips Machine, 1964), the 20yearold artist was already exploring the body as a means of artistic expression. Reminiscent of a medical drawing, the feminised red lips appear as an organ deprived of its body, spatially measured and trapped within lines. The drawing explores a humanmachine relationship reminiscent of dystopian science fiction, where control is in the hands of a kind of artificial intelligence. Horns subsequent drawings, performances, sculptures, installations and films would continue to equate human and machine, and analyse them in relation to each other and their environment.In her earliest sculptures, such as Messkasten (Measuring Box, 1970), the artist experimented with the fusion of spatial and body art through the threedimensional expression of contact data from her own body. Metal rods trace the contours of the body: measuring, holding it captive, making its contours visible even in its absence. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Horn explored the controllability and extension of the body using wearable sculptural constructions. The extensions influenced the wearers movements and physical boundaries, accompanied by an intense sensory experience. One of her earliest objects, ArmExtensionen (Arm Extensions, 1968), forced the naked performers into total passivity; Horn drew the comparison with a mummified body, crisscrossed with bandages. The subject slowly gets the feeling that her arms, in spite of the erectness of her posture, are beginning to touch the floor almost, Horn wrote in 1977, as if growing together with the floor.In 1972, Horn showed a filmed performance of Einhorn (Unicorn, 197072) at Documenta, as one of the youngest female participants at the age of 28. Dressed in a costume of white bandages with an elongated head prosthesis, a female performer strides naked through forests and landscapes. The scene can be understood as simultaneously cyborgian, traumatic and divine: the costume forces the performers head and limbs into rigid, robotic movements while also erotically framing the naked body, all set against dreamlike, surreal surroundings.The extensions moved the bodys boundaries to new limitsHorn would go on to produce numerous body extensions. As well as Einhorn and ArmExtensionen, she would experiment with giant points protruding from the shoulders, a large pole balanced on the head, and large, fanlike wings. These extensions expanded the bodys radius, moving its boundaries to new limits and changing its perception of the surrounding space. In Gleichzeitig die Wnde berhren (Scratching Both Walls at Once, 1975), Horn extended her fingers with long, spindly prostheses that reached both sides of the room of an apartment. The extended fingers dragged along each wall as she walked the rooms length, expanding her body to fill the entire room.Other objects such as KopfExtension (Head Extension, 1972) required several people to maintain the performers balance. The central performer wore a 5mtall pointed prosthesis, with ropes attached to the cones tip. Only with the help of four people can he slowly move forward, groping blindly, Horn wrote of the work. Horn brought to light the dynamic relationships between the participants and how responsibly they communicate with each other nonverbally. At the same time, the scene is almost menacing: the performer disappears under a pointed hat and reacts blindly to sensory signals, bound by the lines to the others. This strong dependency on other performers and the danger it harbours is greatly discomforting. The artist described the activation of her early prostheses, skin garments and apparatuses as interaction rituals; in the age of the biotechnologically mutated body, she adopted the role of a technoshaman.Horn initially practised her perfomances in a limited public sphere, only with the participants in these cases, the performers were also the audience. In her early performances, Horn worked with actors, artists and models such as the model Veruschka von Lehndorff, artists Sigmar Polke and KP Brehmer and actor Otto Sander. Other times she performed in her objects herself, as in Gleichzeitig die Wnde berhren and works like Bleistiftmaske (Pencil Mask, 1972), in which straps were wrapped around her head, a pencil attached to each intersection: part medieval torture device, part drawing machine. Horn repeatedly moved the mask from left to right to make pencil marks, a repetitive movement imitating automation.Many of Horns works challenge the dominant heterosexual matrix. The Krperfarben series of performances (Body Paintings, 1972), documented in the first half of a compilation of filmed performances titled Performances I (1972), involve a female body being gradually painted with different colours. The body disappears, first under black paint then under body hair, losing itself in its surroundings and liberating the body from the dominance of the gaze.Horns first kinetic sculptures emerged in the late 1970s. The exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity. The Computer and the Arts had opened at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 1968, a few years before Horn took up a scholarship at Saint Martins School of Art in 1971. The landmark exhibition The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age had also opened in 1968 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, curated by Pontus Hultn, an important future companion of Horns. The relationship between technology and creativity was widely discussed among artists at the time.Horns film Der Eintnzer (The Gigolo, 1978) featured the motorised sculpture entitled Die sanfte Gefangene (The Feathered Prison Fan, 1978). The feather machine was operated by a ballet dancer who seemed to become a fluid hybrid being inside it. For the Tokyo Video Festival the same year, the same dancer performed live in front of a projection of the scene from the film. The performance was simultaneously transmitted to several television monitors arranged in a circle with different details and perspectives from different cameras. Horn juxtaposed the ballet dancer with her own image; the living being meets its media image.Other mechanised sculptures perform human gestures in an abstracted animal form. In Kuss des Rhinozeros (Kiss of the Rhinoceros, 1989), two semicircular metal rods driven by a motor unite to form a closed circle. When the two fragments, reminiscent of rhinoceros horns, briefly touch each other, a discharge occurs that has the effect of an electrifying kiss.From the early 1990s, Horns oeuvre evolved from sculptural, filmic and lyrical works to expansive installations, often conceived in dialogue with the surrounding architecture. For her major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1993, Horn created Inferno (1993), for which she stacked beds from a psychiatric hospital up to 14 metres high, evoking the madness of suffering with electric flashes. Rebellious tones and rhythms emanated from a piano suspended upside down from the ceiling as part of Concert for Anarchy (1990). Paradiso (1993) with breastshaped funnels attached to the ceiling of the Guggenheim Museum designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, from which milky liquid dripped into the pool on the floor of the building merged with the architecture. The show, curated by Germano Celant and Nancy Spector, seems to have been an important impulse for the dimensions of Horns subsequent works, expanding outwards from the body to the surrounding space and the appropriation of architecture.From the 1990s, Horn also devoted several works to a dignified culture of remembrance. Dedicated to the victims of the postYugoslavian wars, the Turm der Namenlosen (Tower of the Nameless, 1994) demands empathy through sound and dissonance. Long wooden ladders mounted with motorised violins are wedged into one another, rising to seemingly infinite heights. The instruments intermittently play a polyphonic concerto. Horn increasingly created sitespecific works such as Konzert fr Buchenwald. Part 1 Straenbahndepot (Concert for Buchenwald. Part 1 Tram Depot, 1999) and Konzert fr Buchenwald. Part 2 Schlo Ettersburg (Concert for Buchenwald. Part 2 Ettersburg Castle, 1999) in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.After more than two decades of teaching as the first female professor for the newly established study programme Art and Media at the Berlin University of the Arts in 1989, she founded the Moontower Foundation in 2009 on the site of her parents textile factory in Bad Knig in the Odenwald. Horns intention was to research, preserve and maintain her work for the future. Last year, her work was presented at an exhibition at Munichs Haus der Kunst (26 April 13 October 2024), the most comprehensive retrospective of the artists career in celebration of her 80th birthday. In a series of tall rooms, bodies floated, sounds collided, sparks flew, lights danced and motorised beings moved in continuous rhythms. Horn witnessed the exhibition opening before she died in the autumn. Performativity, movement, perception and the transformation of body and soul occupied her until the end of her life. The wings of her motorised butterflies beat in an infinite finiteness.The installation Konzert fr Buchenwald. Part 1 Straenbahndepot (Concert for Buchenwald. Part 1 Tram Depot) commemorated the victims of the Holocaust.Credit:Archiv Rebecca Horn VG Bild-Kunst / DACS, 2025 / Courtesy of Haus der Kunst, Munich unless otherwise statedLead image: Rebecca Horn often participated in her own performances wearing the objects she designed. In Bleistiftmaske (Pencil Mask), Horn wore a headdress adorned with pencils that marked the walls as she walked.Credit: Archiv Rebecca Horn VG BildKunst / DACS, 2025 / Courtesy of Sean Kelly, New York / Los Angeles2025-02-21Reuben J BrownShare

Detail of Mirthful Miscellanea (2024), resin, acrylic paint, brass, steel, aluminum, electronics, and wood, 22 x 60 x 16 inches. Photos by Jacques Bellavance. All images Chris Millar, shared with permissionA Miniature Musical Curio Shop by Chris Millar Spins Like ClockworkFebruary 21, 2025ArtKate MothesAfter he graduated from art school, Chris Millar (previously) worked in a toy store for seven years. The shop, now defunct, was calledLivingstone and Cavell Extraordinary Toys in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, he tells Colossal.The store carried classics like tin wind-ups, electric trains, dolls, miniature soldiers, and teddy bears.Millars latest extravagantly detailed work was one-and-a-half years in the making and takes inspiration from the joys of toy shops and flea markets. He incorporates resin, acrylic paint, brass, steel, aluminum, electronics, and wood into elaborate kinetic spectacles. Every part of is made from scratch with the exception of a few gears.Mirthful Miscellanea channels an imaginary, fantastical curio shop run by two brothers named Wade and Snyder. Their portraits can be seen in a few areas of the sculpture, Millar says. Wade is an expert in medieval musical instruments and roast chicken, and Snyder in antiquarian circus paraphernalia.The piece follows in the footsteps of a work titled Eclipse at Arc Valleythat incorporates a clockwork mechanism, but this new sculpture further elaborates on the design with a more complex mechanism and a base that emits sound from a music box, two gongs, and six bells.Millar expresses a fondness for mom-and-pop shops and quirky destinations that have found it increasingly difficult to continue operating in our era of online global commerce. The inspiration for the sculpture is a counter to the homogeneity that our internet-based culture bestows on us, he says.The artist is represented byTrepanierBaer, and you can wander more miniature imaginary worlds on the artists website.Next article

Pixel Call Assist doesn't just help block spam anymore. Google's added calling features to please everyone - even if you hate talking on the phone.

Each use of AI in Notepad and Paint in Windows 11 chews up a credit from a Microsoft 365 subscription.

Baiju Bhatt (right) and Vlad Tenev, founders of the online brokerage Robinhood. (Photo by Spencer ... [+] Platt/Getty Images)Getty ImagesRobinhood revolutionized investing by attracting a new wave of retail traders many drawn to high-risk options and meme stocks like GameStop. Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatts bold strategy of targeting an underserved segment with bold, high-risk investments not only propelled Robinhood into billion-dollar territory but also pressured traditional financial firms to adapt.Here are 5 key lessons entrepreneurs can learn from Robinhood and its co-founder, Vlad Tenev.#1. Strategy over product.Robinhood didnt invent online trading. E-Trade and others had already done that. Instead, its success stemmed from a strategic shift rather than a new product. The company focused on:High-risk financial instruments such as options on meme stocks attracting risk-tolerant traders.A new demographic segment Young, mobile-first users seeking a no-cost approach where fees were hidden rather than being upfront. This strategy leverages large hedge funds to facilitate trades, benefiting both the hedge funds and Robinhood.An overlooked opportunity Traditional competitors were focused on other products and markets and had yet to embrace commission-free trading.#2. Control the TechUnlike many fintech startups that rely on third-party providers, Robinhood built and controlled its own trading infrastructure. This independence and expertise allowed it to:Scale rapidly without being constrained by vendor limitations.Maintain proprietary control over key functions reducing reliance on external partners.Reduce costs and increase agility, allowing for faster product development and innovation.3. Make the Platform AddictiveRobinhood leveraged engagement tactics from Amazon and Las Vegas casinos to keep users hooked. The company employed strategies such as:Creating stickiness by introducing complementary products and services making it harder for users to leave layering benefits like credit cards and IRAs to offer a complete suite of financial services tailored to its target demographic.Imitating Las Vegas and promoting gamblification, also known as gamification designing the app to deliver small spikes of pleasure and kept users coming back by creating a dopamine-driven experience that mimicked gambling.Capturing vulnerable segments encouraging high-frequency trading and risky bets by making complex financial instruments like options trading feel accessible and exciting.#4. Use Capital-as-a-Weapon.Robinhood strategically cultivated relationships with the top VC funds like Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz, leveraging their deep pockets. These elite VCs can be very handy when a venture needs access to emergency capital and must raise $3 billion in a few days to satisfy regulatory requirements. Thats the key advantage for a Silicon Valley unicorn with VC connections they can raise billions overnight. The VCs also did well. They got favorable terms a 30% pre-IPO discount reinforcing the power of strategic investor relationships.#5. Hype the Unicorn Myth.Silicon Valley unicorns thrive on mythmaking because VCs need a compelling story to hype. Robinhood was no exception. Despite both co-founders having been raised in the U.S. since childhood, the company leaned into a rags to riches immigrant narrative, positioning itself as a scrappy startup disrupting Wall StreetHype drives valuation. A well-crafted story attracts media attention, investors, and users, boosting perceived value.Perception matters. Even established founders can frame their journey as an against-the-odds success to fuel growth and investment. By mastering storytelling, startups can shape public perception, create buzz, and gain a competitive edge whether the myth aligns with reality or not.MY TAKE: Robinhoods rise highlights repeatable principles behind billion-dollar startups strategic disruption, technology control, and stickier customers. And the key financing lesson is that if youre considering VC, timing is key. Wait until you have leverage to keep control and avoid excessive dilution. Robinhoods key lesson isnt about trading its about playing the startup game on your terms and mastering the rules before others dictate them to you.

For the last two years, large language models have dominated the AI scene. But that might be ... [+] changing soon. (Photo by Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP) (Photo by KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images)AFP via Getty ImagesWhen ChatGPT, Gemini and its other generative AI cohorts burst onto the scene a little over two years ago, talk about large language models artificial intelligence models trained on large volumes of datasets to understand and generate human-like texts and visuals dominated the technology scene. For years, the AI race was defined by scale bigger models, more data and greater compute.But lately, theres been a growing move away from large language models like GPT-4 and Gemini toward something smaller, leaner and perhaps even more powerful in certain business applications.The next wave of AI is being built for specificity,Jahan Ali, founder and CEO of MobileLive, told me in an interview. Small language models allow us to train AI on domain-specific knowledge, making them far more effective for real-world business needs.The Rise Of Small Language ModelsSLMs are AI models fine-tuned for specific industries, tasks and operational workflows. Unlike LLMs, which process vast amounts of general knowledge, SLMs are built with precision and efficiency in mind. This means they require less computation power, cost significantly less to run and, crucially, deliver more business-relevant insights than their larger counterparts.SLMs are not just scaled-down versions of LLMs, explained Ali. They are optimized to excel in specific domains whether its finance, healthcare, or software development. This allows them to deliver more accurate, reliable results tailored to the unique needs of an organization.Avi Baum, CTO and co-founder of Hailo, expanded on this idea and told me that When LLMs first emerged, they were designed to demonstrate intelligence at an unprecedented scale. But when practicality came into play, smaller, distilled models began to show up. These SLMs maintain strong reasoning capabilities while being efficient enough to run locally without reliance on cloud computing.Another reason why were now seeing a greater demand for SLMs, according to Baum, is that there are several privacy and security concerns linked to LLMs. Many enterprises hesitate to use cloud-based generative AI tools because of concerns about data leakage and compliance risks. With SLMs, businesses can deploy AI directly on edge devices, such as laptops, robots and mobile phones, ensuring their proprietary data remains protected.Small Language Models And Agentic AIThe conversation around small language models inevitably leans into the broader discussion on agentic AI a new wave of so-called AI agents that, unlike traditional AI systems, operate autonomously, making real-time decisions based on incoming data. To achieve such incredible feats, these agents need models that are lightweight, fast and highly specialized precisely where SLMs shine the most.As Stu Robarts noted in an article for Verdict, SLMs can be better suited to agentic AI due to the greater levels of accuracy that can be achieved with them compared to LLMs, greater operational efficiency through requiring less computing power and greater propensity for integration across ecosystems due to their smaller size and resource demands.Ali sees this as the next major breakthrough in AI. SLMs enable AI agents to make decisions with greater autonomy because they are trained on deep, domain-specific knowledge. Imagine a financial AI agent that doesnt just generate market insights, but actively executes trades based on real-time data. Or a logistics AI that not only tracks supply chains but autonomously optimizes delivery routes and inventory levels, he said.Shahid Ahmed, global EVP at NTT New Ventures and Innovation, also shares a similar vision. SLMs align with the broader trend of Agentic AI by allowing autonomous decision-making at the edge. In a smart factory, for example, an AI agent could use an SLM to proactively detect equipment failures, adjust machine settings, or schedule maintenance all without human intervention.This has massive implications across industries: From healthcare where SLMs can assist in diagnosing patients with greater specificity to customer service where they can power AI agents that truly understand industry jargon the applications are endless.The Business Case For SLMsOpenAI, Google and Anthropic have all poured billions into training their frontier large language models. While these models have been very helpful, being the foundational models from which researchers have distilled smaller models, many people believe the costs simply dont make sense and question the ROI on such massive dollar investments.Thats why the economics of AI development now seems to be shifting in favor of SLMs. According to Ahmed, the biggest advantage of SLMs is their cost-effectiveness.Large models require extensive computing power, which translates to higher operational costs. SLMs, on the other hand, consume fewer resources while delivering high accuracy for specific tasks. This results in a much higher return on investment for businesses, he said a point which Ali vehemently echoed, pointing out that the gap in ROI between LLMs and SLMs is becoming more apparent.Why pay millions to train and run a massive LLM when you can achieve better business outcomes with a smaller, cheaper model tailored to your exact needs?, Ali questioned.Challenges And Adoption StrategiesOf course, small language models arent without their challenges, especially when it comes to training them, which often requires high-quality domain-specific data. SLMs also sometimes struggle with long-form reasoning tasks that require broader contextual knowledge.Yuval Illuz, cybersecurity and AI expert and COO of OurCrowd, highlighted this data challenge in an interview with me: The key to making SLMs work is curating the right training data. Without high-quality datasets, an SLM can quickly become unreliable. The best approach is to continuously retrain models using real-world business data.However, in spite of these hurdles, Illuz believes that SLMs will be central to the future of enterprise AI. We are moving toward a hybrid AI world, where businesses will leverage both LLMs and SLMs in tandem. LLMs will remain useful for general knowledge, while SLMs will handle business-critical operations that demand accuracy, security and speed.The Quest For More ValueThe AI revolution started with the belief that bigger models meant better results. But now, companies are fast realizing that business impact is more important than model size. For many business leaders, the question isnt about which AI model people are jumping on, but about which model drives real business value for our company?As Ali noted, the future isnt just about building smarter AI its about building AI that actually works for businesses. And SLMs are proving that sometimes, less is more.