Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

It’s been a wild weekend — with OpenAI’s shocking firing of CEO Sam Altman and new CEO sending shockwaves through the AI and broader tech world.

With tons of drama straight out of a Hollywood script, this weekend was one to remember. Let’s get into it…

In today’s AI rundown:

• OpenAI board fires CEO Sam Altman, hired Emmett Shear

• Meta dissolves Responsible AI team

• 10 new AI tools to try

• How to create custom lightning bolts with DALL-E

• Amazon axes hundreds of Alexa jobs

• Altman sought billions for AI chip venture pre-firing

• France, Germany & Italy push unified EU AI rules

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

OPENAI

😱 OpenAI board fires CEO Sam Altman, chaos ensues

Image source: CNN

The Rundown: OpenAI's board of directors abruptly fired CEO Sam Altman on Friday, leading co-founder Greg Brockman and dozens of other OpenAI staff to quit in protest. By Sunday evening, Emmett Shear was appointed the new interim CEO of OpenAI.

The timeline:

• Altman was unexpectedly ousted on Friday, with the board originally citing “communication issues”.

• Altman confirmed the news in a tweet, with co-founder Greg Brockman resigning and posting a timeline of events detailing the blindside move from the OpenAI board.

• More details emerged, indicating the firing was likely orchestrated by OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever — with reported increasing tensions over the speed of development.

• On Saturday, news broke that OpenAI staff set an ultimatum for the board to resign and for Altman/Brockman to RETURN, or else they would quit and join Sam.

• The deadline passed without official news, though Altman tweeted, “I love the OpenAI team so much” which was then quote-tweeted by hundreds of staff members with a “❤️” emoji on X.

• Speculation was rampant, with many believing the moves were made in response to AGI being achieved — Altman did say a day before his firing that there had been a massive discovery in the last two weeks.

• Altman posted a photo of himself at OpenAI HQ Sunday afternoon, with reports indicating that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was leading discussions.

• In a shocking turn, the board rejected negotiations and hired Emmett Shear, former CEO of Twitch, as the new interim CEO of OpenAI.

• Following the late Sunday night news, chaos ensued, and dozens of OpenAI staffers quit, with more likely to follow shortly.

• In a final twist to the story, Satya announced that Sam and Greg will join Microsoft to create a new advanced AI research team.

Why it matters: This was a weekend straight out of Hollywood — with the entire drama unfolding in real time on X. The firing of Sam Altman and hiring to Microsoft will only push the competition further.

But what did the OpenAI board see that caused Sam’s seemingly instantaneous fire? How many OpenAI employees will follow Sam or join competitors like Google and xAI? Will OpenAI be able to weather the storm ahead through the leadership of Emmett Shear?

More details to follow shortly. Stay tuned…

TOGETHER WITH OCTOML

🐙 Learn to build GenAI-powered eCommerce apps

The Rundown: eCommerce devs can now put powerful GenAI models to work to create content that sells. What used to take a production team and months of work is now at your fingertips.

With OctoAI:

• Fine-tune Stable Diffusion on your product photos in minutes

• Mix a “model cocktail” of Llama2 and SDXL to use words to generate images

• Produce galleries of themed product images and descriptions with a single click

See the demo and learn how it’s done, get inspired, and start building. You’ll get 1k free images on signup.

META

♾️ Meta dissolves Responsible AI team

Image source: Reuters

The Rundown: Meta has reportedly disbanded its Responsible AI team, moving members to other AI product and infrastructure groups within the company.

The details:

• Meta says it remains committed to developing AI responsibly and safely, but the dedicated team was dissolved.

• Most Responsible AI members will join Meta's generative AI product team, with others moving to work on AI infrastructure.

• The Responsible AI team had already seen shake ups during the the company’s restructuring and layoffs earlier this year.

The relevance: If there was ever a weekend to bury some negative AI news, it was this one. With all eyes on the Altman, Meta’s move flew under the radar — and comes during a time of heightened discourse over safety vs. acceleration.

QUESTION OF THE DAY

TRENDING TOOLS

🖼️ lmage Generator by Akool- Turn any ideas into visuals at studio quality (link)

🎨 KreaAI- Quickly generate AI videos and images with this creative suite (link)

🏗️ Hostomo- Free, fast and fancy AI-powered website builder (link)

🌈 HUE- Foodie SNS based on your hue (link)

🐦 TLDraw- Build a website in a Mircosoft Paint environment (link)

📱 Synthesia- Create professional videos without mics, cameras, or actors using an AI-generated character (link)

🕵️‍♂️ GPT Zero- Detect whether an essay is ChatGPT or human-written (link)

🎥 Munch- Extract the most engaging and impactful clips from your long-form videos (link)

📕 storly.ai- Write your life’s story with AI interview algorithm (link)

⌨️ Quicky AI- Use AI on any website instantly just by selecting text (link)

Browse the most popular tools ever featured with our tool database.

AI TRAINING

⚡️ Create custom lightning bolts with DALL-E

It’s been a while since we’ve shared an image prompt — but sometimes, a new one comes across the timeline that is too cool to ignore.

Create these awesome custom lightning images by following the prompt below:

Prompt: "Create a minimalistic image where the sky is light blue, filled with a myriad of fainter stars, and perhaps a hint of a distant galaxy or nebula to add depth and color contrast. In the center of this tranquil backdrop, the only light comes from a series of thick, jagged lightning bolts. These bolts are the focal point of the image, converging to form a stark outline of a [SUBJECT] directly in the center. There should be no other details or objects, just the clear, unmistakable shape of a [SUBJECT] composed of these few powerful strokes of lightning. The image should evoke the simplicity and elegance of a line drawing, with the [SUBJECT] outline vividly glowing against the serene night sky.”

Replace [SUBJECT] with what you’d like to generate in the sky! For the example below, we used the term ‘AI Robot’:

QUICK HITS

💼 Amazon axes hundreds of Alexa jobs

Amazon just slashed ‘several hundred’ roles on the company’s Alexa team, citing shifting priorities and a focus on generative AI. The decade-old Alexa feels left behind as generative AI ushers in smarter tech, making older devices look primitive.

💰 Altman sought billions for AI chip venture pre-firing

Sam Altman reportedly raised billions from Middle Eastern investors for a new AI chip startup called ‘Tigris’ before his firing. The project aimed to challenge Nvidia's dominance, with Altman's side ventures likely complicating his relationship with OpenAI's board.

🤝 France, Germany & Italy push unified EU AI rules

The EU power trio of France, Germany, and Italy just jointly agreed on a proposal for voluntary but binding AI rules for the bloc — pushing back on sanctioning of foundation models, instead lobbying for more self-regulation.

💼 New jobs in the world of AI

Staff Technical Program Manager, Engineering at Anthropic

AI Security Engineer at Robust Intelligence

Senior / Staff User Experience Designer at Rad AI

Browse all available AI job positions with our job board.

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THAT’S A WRAP

That’s it for today’s news in the world of AI!

If you have anything interesting to share, please reach out to us by sending us a DM on Twitter: @rowancheung & @therundownai

❤️ Rundown review of the day