Sonnet 5 and Nano Banana 2 Lite: the day AI got cheaper
First edition. AI Maxxing is simple: we keep up with AI for you and only write when it is worth it. Today it was worth it three times. Three launches in one day, and every one makes something cheaper.
Anthropic launches Claude Sonnet 5
It performs close to Opus 4.8 but costs less, and as an agent it leaves Sonnet 4.6 well behind. If you build agents or anything that runs on its own, this is the one you will switch to.
Google launches Nano Banana 2 Lite and opens Gemini Omni Flash
Two models, not one. Nano Banana 2 Lite makes images in four seconds for cents (about $0.034 each), built to generate them at volume. Gemini Omni Flash handles video: it creates and edits clips up to ten seconds from a text prompt, at $0.10 per second. They shipped together on purpose: make the image with Nano Banana, hand it to Omni Flash, and turn it into video. The whole image-to-video flow, cheap.
Anthropic launches Claude Science
A workbench that takes the Claude models you already have (like Opus 4.8) and wires them into 60+ scientific databases and specialized tools. This is where things are heading: models plugged into a field's real tools instead of a generic chat.