Kling 4 is here — kinda. But, I ran it through the usual tests: text-to-video, image-to-video, Omni with Flamethrower Girl, a noir scene in Malloy’s office, and my keyframes-plus-Omni trick. Then Google wakes up with Gemini 4 Argon (announced, not released — return of the King? We’ll see), HeyGen drops a video model that starts at a penny a second (asterisk included), Ideogram 4.5 gets precise editing, and ElevenLabs ships Eleven v4. AI fall is getting toasty. WHAT’S IN THIS ONE
- Kling 4.0 early access: what you actually get right now (Flash, 720p, Ultra annual only) and when the full model lands.
- HeyGen Video: HeyGen’s first general-purpose video model, built on MiniMax H3 and post-trained by HeyGen. One cent a second is the 50%-off launch price through the end of October, for 480p text- or image-to-video (two cents normally); 768p is a cent and a half on sale, three cents regular; reference-to-video costs double. API, OpenRouter, Runware and ComfyUI now, web app coming. Haven’t tested it yet
- Gemini 4 Argon: announced, not released (trusted cyber-defense partners first, then paid API and AI Ultra, no date). Google’s own numbers put it ahead of GPT-6 Astra and Opus 5.5 on 12 of the 18 benchmarks it reports, plus a 91.7 on LVBench for long-video understanding. The interesting part is what comes next — Nano Banana 2 Pro, a Genie update, Google back in the video race? And how Google answers Muse and OpenAI’s dots.
- Pour one out for the OG Nano Banana: Gemini 2.5 Flash Image shuts down in the Gemini API on October 2, 2026
- Ideogram 4.5: “the most precise edit model” — edit the same image over and over without the drift. Tested on a ten-month-old image full of garbled text (and a Flamethrower Girl profile-pic swap). Open weights promised. Don’t sleep on Ideogram.
- Eleven v4 and v4 Turbo: natural-language direction right in the script — laughter, sound effects, delivery — tested on the high-fantasy watchtower opening. Available now, including on the free tier.