GLM-5.2: an open model that just hit #1 in coding?
2026.06.22
What's up, Carat crew here. 🙂
Today: a game with zero real players, just 1,800 AI bots living in it. Plus Pika's new kit that turns anyone into an influencer, an open model called GLM-5.2 that hit #1 in coding, and an AI 'actress' so convincing people swore she was a forgotten 2000s star.
🔥 1,800 AI bots took over a game with no real players?
ⓒ Reddit
A Reddit user filled a private World of Warcraft server (the popular online game) with 1,800 AI bots. No real players ever log in, yet the bots roam around, run quests, and even chat with each other.
The server engine handles their movement and combat, while the DeepSeek API powers the conversations. The creator says they'd barely written any code before and built the whole thing with AI's help. Running it costs under $15 a month, and when no one's online the bots stop talking so the bill doesn't run up.
Plenty of people called it the so-called Dead Internet Theory playing out inside a game, the idea that the web can look alive even with no humans behind it.
📌 Today's 3 stories
1️⃣ Anyone an influencer? Pika's new 4-skill kit
ⓒ Pika
Pika, the AI video generator, just dropped an 'Influencer Kit' to help anyone become an influencer. It bundles four skills, from nailing your channel's concept to polishing your clips.
It studies your past work and current trends to suggest a direction, then adds a scroll-stopping hook to the top of your video. Already shot something? You can describe tweaks to things like hair, lighting, or background in plain words and have them cleaned up.
You can make your own influencer videos on Carat too. 👉 Open Marketing Studio
2️⃣ Open model GLM-5.2 reportedly hit #1 in coding
ⓒ Z.ai
Chinese AI company Z.ai released GLM-5.2, an open-weight model. Open-weight means the model files are out in the open, so anyone can download and run it themselves.
As people put it to the test, GLM-5.2 beat out other AIs to take #1 on one blind coding leaderboard. It's the first open model to top that category, which got developers looking closer. Being able to grab it and tweak it to your own taste adds to the draw.
3️⃣ An AI-made fake actress pulled millions of views
ⓒ TikTok @ssoftblooms
Videos of an early-2000s actress named 'Brooke Sullivan' are racking up millions of views on TikTok right now. The catch: she never existed. She's a person generated entirely by AI.
Old drama scenes and interview clips were faked convincingly, right down to the grainy look and mood of the era, so a lot of people figured she was a real actress who'd quietly faded away. Riding 2000s nostalgia, it spread fast. One X post rounding up the clips pulled around 10,000 likes on its own, with comment after comment saying 'I genuinely thought she was real.'
🧪 Prompt of the day
Turn your photo into a K-pop stage ending fairy
You know those 'ending fairy' fancams, the close-up of an idol holding a final pose to the camera as the music show wraps? The Carat team built a prompt that turns a single photo of you into exactly that, an idol under the stage lights.
Generated with GPT Image 2 Medium on Carat
Use the uploaded portrait as the strongest identity reference, but do not paste the face onto a separate body. Re-render the person as one fully coherent real performer, with the face, skull, jawline, neck, shoulders, hair, skin texture, makeup, body proportions, outfit, and stage lighting all physically integrated.
Preserve the person's recognizable facial identity with high priority: same eyes, nose, lips, face shape, natural expression style, skin tone relationship, and overall hair impression. However, the final result must look like a real K-pop stage photo, not a face-swap or composite edit. The head must be a natural adult size relative to the neck, shoulders, and torso. Keep correct head-to-body scale, realistic skull volume, natural neck length, believable jaw-to-neck connection, and consistent camera perspective. Avoid oversized head, floating face, mask-like face, pasted-on face, mismatched lighting, or unnaturally large facial features.
Create a vertical 9:16 ultra-realistic K-pop stage fan-cam photo. Natural audience-shot ending fairy moment: upper body, waist-up, or upper-thigh crop, not a full-body fashion pose. The performer is on a professional K-pop stage, captured during the final pose of a live performance, slightly turned toward the audience, charismatic ending pose, expressive eyes, believable live-stage expression. High-quality fan-taken smartphone photo / music-show fan-cam still.
Style as a contemporary K-pop idol performer with vivid stage styling (avoid plain dark outfits or basic streetwear). Randomly create a bright, polished, camera-ready stage outfit (white, silver, pastel, red, blue, metallic, satin, sequins, rhinestones, glossy fabric, statement jacket, layered top, performance silhouette, belts, chains, gloves, boots, earrings, headset/handheld mic, idol-stage accessories), suited to the person's natural appearance and gender, not costume-like.
Stage environment fully K-pop: LED screens, colored spotlights, concert haze, reflective stage floor, backlights, lens flare, stage bloom, blurred audience silhouettes/lightsticks at the bottom. Lighting hits face, neck, hair, outfit consistently; realistic stage color spill on cheeks/jaw/neck/clothes.
Realistic skin texture, natural pores, believable stage makeup, accurate hands/fingers, coherent shoulders/torso, detailed fabric, high-end concert color grading. Should look like a real viral K-pop fan-cam screenshot of this exact person as an idol.
No full-body wide shot, no oversized head, no face-swap look, no pasted face, no mask-like skin, no distorted neck, no mismatched shoulders, no dull all-black outfit, no duplicated face, no extra person with same face, no unreadable text, no captions, no watermark, no brand logos, no celebrity resemblance.
Make yours on Carat right now. 👉 Create it on Carat
That's it for today. We'll be back tomorrow with more. 😊