Good morning, AI enthusiasts. A viral band just proved that AI-generated music can thrive on Spotify — as long as nobody asks too many questions.

After hitting 500k monthly listeners before being outed as an "art hoax," Suno-powered band “The Velvet Sundown” might be a case for the future of music in the AI age… Whether fans realize it or not.

In today’s AI rundown:

• AI band hits 500k listeners, admits to Suno use

• Sakana AI teaches models to team up

• Accelerate development workflows with Gemini CLI

• Scientists build an AI that can think like humans

• 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

AI & MUSIC

🎸 AI band hits 500k listeners, admits to Suno use

Image source: The Velvet Sundown on Spotify

The Rundown: A mysterious band that went viral on Spotify with over 500,000 monthly listeners has been revealed as an "art hoax" in an article from Rolling Stone, with music created using the AI generator Suno.

The details:

• The group's two albums appeared on streaming platforms in June with zero digital footprint, raising skepticism from Reddit users and musicians.

• Music platform Deezer flagged potential AI usage, but Spotify made no disclosure requirements, allowing the tracks to spread across 30+ playlists.

• The “band” initially said the AI claims are lazy and baseless on social media, with “adjunct member” Andrew Frelon calling it “marketing and trolling.”

• Frelon said Suno was used to create at least some of the tracks, leveraging its "Persona" feature to maintain a consistent vocal style.

Why it matters: While the music tracks and band identity clearly didn’t pass the human test this time, future models and outputs certainly will (and are likely already hiding in plain sight). The question will increasingly become whether that matters — or if, like V-tubers, people will consume good content regardless of the “real” creator.

TOGETHER WITH RIME

🗣️ AI voices with personality

The Rundown: Rime offers the most realistic and expressive AI voices on the market today, creating agentic experiences that sound like everyday people, not robots or voice actors — while driving double digit increases in conversion for brands like Dominos.

Use Rime’s platform to:

• Deliver natural voice AI agents that laugh, breathe, sigh, and sound human

• Easily integrate multilingual text-to-speech (TTS) via API or on-prem

• Start building today with a generous free tier

Try Rime’s live chat (or +1-662-727-8948) and start creating agentic experiences with personality today.

SAKANA AI

🫂 Sakana AI teaches models to team up

Image source: Sakana AI

The Rundown: Japanese lab Sakana AI just introduced AB-MCTS, a new algorithm that lets competing AI models collaborate on complex problems, using their collective intelligence to solve problems too difficult for any of the individual models.

The details:

• The system combines ChatGPT, Gemini, and DeepSeek using adaptive search, solving 30% of ARC-AGI-2 puzzles versus just 23% for top solo models.

• AB-MCTS dynamically allocates different models based on strengths, with some handling strategy while others excel at code within the same problem.

• Researchers discovered models could build on each other's mistakes, with one model correcting flawed answers from another to reach correct solutions.

• Sakana released the underlying framework as “TreeQuest,” an open-source tool for developers to build their own collaborative AI systems.

Why it matters: Sakana’s system aligns with a lot of trends in the AI world — from swarms of AI agents to “orchestrators” delegating to the most capable model for a certain task. Some of the biggest future breakthroughs might come from a team of AI specialists working together, not just a single powerful model.

AI TRAINING

💻 Accelerate development workflows with Gemini CLI

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Google's new command-line AI tool brings powerful code analysis, app generation, and workflow automation directly to your terminal for free.

Step-by-step:

1. Open your terminal and write npm install -g @google/gemini-cli (requires Node.js 18+)

2. Sign in with your Google account for 60 requests/minute, 1,000/day

3. Try gemini "Explain the architecture of this codebase" for instant insights

4. Use for PR analysis, git conflicts, or generating apps from sketches

Pro tip: Start with simple codebase queries, then progress to complex automation.

PRESENTED BY SALESFORCE

🤖 ReMarkable's agent-first enterprise vision

The Rundown: reMarkable is scaling fast — and AI agents are helping them do it without burning out the human team. In this session, CTO Nico Cormier shares how they’re using Agentforce to automate customer support and internal IT, giving employees more time for deeper thinking and creativity.

In the interview, you’ll discover:

• How customer support was transformed by “Mark,” their first agent

• Why internal IT support got faster and simpler with AI agent "Saga" in Slack

• Lessons on balancing AI with a human touch

Click here to learn more and watch the conversation.

AI RESEARCH

🧠 Scientists build an AI that can think like humans

Image source: o3 / The Rundown

The Rundown: Researchers from Helmholtz Munich developed an AI model named Centaur, which simulates human decision-making and behavior with extreme accuracy from training on millions of choices from psychological experiments.

The details:

• Researchers fine-tuned Meta's LLaMA using data from 60k participants across 160 psychology experiments, teaching it to replicate human decision patterns.

• The resulting Centaur model accurately predicts human choices and behaviors across a wide variety of tasks, even ones it has never seen before.

• Centaur outperformed 14 traditional cognitive models on 31/32 tasks, with accurate predictions in gambling, memory, and problem-solving scenarios.

• Researchers aim to use Centaur as a "virtual laboratory" to test theories and better grasp cognitive processes behind human thought and mental health.

Why it matters: Centaur’s success suggests human cognition and decision-making might be much more predictable than we thought — meaning ASI-level models might be able to simulate scenarios with scary accuracy. It’s also a massive research tool, letting scientists run behavioral studies without big budgets or years of recruitment.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🤖 Pangu Pro - Huawei’s new open-source reasoning model

• 🎨 FreePik - Now featuring unlimited image generation for Premium+ accounts

• 🧠 Perplexity - New Max tier with Labs, early access, and advanced support

• 🎨 Higgsfield Soul - Advanced image AI, now with free daily generations

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🎨 The Rundown - Designer (Brand & Platform)

• 🖥️ xAI - IT Systems Technician

• 📊 Deepmind - Applied Data Scientist

• 🧬 Meta - Research Scientist Manager, AI

📰 Everything else in AI today

Perplexity launched Max, a new $200/mo tier giving users unlimited access to its Labs tools, early access to new products like its Comet browser and advanced models.

OpenAI is expanding its Stargate partnership with Oracle, renting about 4.5 GW of data center capacity to power its AI energy needs.

Anthropic is reportedly on pace for $4B in annual revenue, 4x higher than its projections at the start of 2025.

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis hinted at potential “playable world” models coming for its Veo 3 video generation model in a response on X.

Chinese tech giant Huawei open-sourced several of its Pangu models and the underlying reasoning tech, trained using the company’s own Ascend chips.

AI startup Lovable is reportedly set to raise a new $150M funding round, valuing the vibe-coding platform at close to $2B.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop today at 4 PM EST with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the end of the workshop, you’ll confidently wire MCP into both conversational AI and your favorite coding IDEs

RSVP here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team