RIFTRUNNER: The Secret New AI Everyone Thinks Is Gemini 3

Google just triggered the wildest week in AI without saying a single word. A mysterious model called Riftrunner suddenly appeared on LM Arena with zero announcement, no docs, and no hint from Google — and the entire AI community froze to figure out what they were seeing. Early testers say it reads messy handwriting better than GPT-5, hits SoTA vision levels, and carries the same style as the hidden Gemini 3 checkpoints. At the same time, ByteDance dropped a coding model priced like a cup of coffee, OpenAI pushed out GPT-5.1 with a huge personality shift, and Black Forest Labs quietly moved Flux 2 Pro into internal preview. Everything is moving fast, and this breakdown covers all the shocks hitting the AI world right now.

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What You’ll See (sources)
0:00 Intro
0:37 Riftrunner testing on LM Arena: https://x.com/AiBattle_/status/1988522687136669995
1:27 Gemini 3 checkpoints and naming patterns: https://x.com/DerekNee/status/1988958156509311093
3:44 ByteDance Doubao-Seed-Code launch: https://www.techinasia.com/news/bytedances-volcano-engine-debuts-coding-agent-at-1-3-promo-price
5:08 GPT-5.1 rollout across ChatGPT: https://openai.com/index/gpt-5-1/
7:57 Flux 2 Pro internal preview: https://www.testingcatalog.com/black-forest-labs-readies-flux-2-pro-for-release/
LM Arena community benchmarks and logs: https://lmarena.ai