Scientists are flocking to DeepSeek-R1, a cheap and powerful artificial intelligence (AI) ‘reasoning’ model that sent the US stock market spiralling after it was released by a Chinese firm last week.

A few years ago, a new kind of AI called a diffusion model appeared. Today, it powers tools like Stable Diffusion and Runway Gen-2, turning text prompts into high-quality images and even short videos.

With powerful video generation tools now in the hands of more people than ever, let's take a look at how they work. MIT Technology Review Explains: Let our writers untangle the complex, messy world of ...