Apple is set to buy a notable developer of photo-editing apps. The company is acquiring Pixelmator, pending regulatory approval. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed.
While it seems likely that Apple will eventually incorporate some of Pixelmator’s technology into its Camera and Photos apps, the latter said that “at this time there will be no material changes to Pixelmator Pro, Pixelmator for iOS, and the Photomator app.” However, it promised that there will be “exciting updates” in the future.
Pixelmator said in a statement that it has drawn inspiration from Apple since the beginning of its 17-year existence and has focused equally on “design, ease of use, and performance.” With the deal completed and joining Apple, Pixelmator hopes that “it will have the ability to reach an even wider audience and make an even bigger impact on the lives of creative people around the world.”
For quite some time, Pixelmator’s apps have been a popular alternative to apps like Photoshop within the Apple ecosystem. Its tools are available on Mac, iPhone, iPad, and even Vision Pro.
The rise of AI NPCs has felt like a threat for years, as if developers couldn’t wait to dump human writers and offload NPC conversations to generative AI models. At CES 2025, NVIDIA made it abundantly clear that the technology is absolutely daring.
For example, PUBG developer Krafton plans to use NVIDIA’s ACE (Avatar Cloud Engine) to power AI companions that will assist you during matches and joke around with you. Krafton isn’t just stopping there — it’s also using ACE in its life simulation title InZOI to make characters smarter and generate objects.
While the use of generative AI in games seems almost inevitable, as the medium has always toyed with new ways to make enemies and NPCs smarter and more realistic, watching several NVIDIA ACE demos back to back really made me feel sick to my stomach.
It wasn’t just slightly smarter enemy AI – ACE can create entire conversations out of thin air, simulate voices and try to give NPCs a sense of personality. It’s also doing this locally on your PC, powered by NVIDIA’s RTX GPUs. But while this might all sound great on paper, I hated nearly every second of watching the AI NPCs in action.