Welcome, Tech enthusiasts.

With droughts only worsening across the globe every year, there’s a desperate need for more water.

While many are resorting to wells, an associate professor at Arizona State University may have found a better solution — by extracting water from thin air. Let’s get into it…

In today’s tech rundown:

• New tech extracts drinking water from thin air

• Tech layoffs continue, Snap cuts 500 employees

• 7 new products

• Police departments are tapping AI

• US National Ignition Facility made a leap in nuclear fusion

• Roblox introduces a real-time AI translation

Read time: 3 minutes

TODAY’S HEADLINES

ARIZONA STATE

💧 New tech extracts drinking water from thin air

Source: Jesse Rieser

The Rundown: An associate professor at Arizona State University named Cody Freison has developed a solar-powered system that can extract water from thin air — which could provide significant relief for drought regions.

The details:

• Devices like hydro panels use materials science to absorb moisture from the air and convert it into clean, usable water.

• The concept builds on ancient techniques like fog-catching nets used in Peru dating back to the 1500s.

• The company, called Source Global, already operates in more than 50 countries and has a private valuation of more than $1 Billion.

Why it matters: As the number of droughts continues to expand globally, technology that literally taps into an abundant atmospheric source could be a lifeline. While still overcoming scaling hurdles, air-to-water devices show promise as a supplemental solution for the driest regions.

TOGETHER WITH OCTO AI

🦙 Try Code Llama 70B in three lines of code

The Rundown: Open source LLMs such as Mixtral and Meta’s Code Llama 70B are rapidly catching up to GPT-4. With OctoAI, you can swap the latest open-source models into your app in just three lines of code.

OctoAI lets you:

• Test Mixtral-8-7B or Code Llama 70B in minutes

• Find a faster and cheaper LLM

• Stay ahead as open-source progresses

Don’t get locked into closed AI if there’s a better option.

Sign up for OctoAI and put open-source to the test for free with a $10 credit.

SNAPCHAT

👻 Tech layoffs continue, Snap cuts 500 employees

Image source: Alex Castro / The Verge

The Rundown: The 2024 tech layoffs continue to worsen, with Snap to lay off 10% of its workforce worldwide (around 500 employees) to promote “in-person collaboration“.

The details:

• The layoffs add to the nearly 24,000 tech worker cuts in January 2024 alone.

• Evan Spiegel, the CEO of Snap, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week alongside the CEO of Meta, X, TikTok, and Discord.

• The Snapchat maker’s previous round of layoffs was in 2022, with 20% of staff cut from the roster.

Why it matters: With profits and the economy holding strong, one has to wonder where these massive layoffs for tech workers have been coming from. Is it due to companies focusing on building on top of the costly AI? We’ll find out soon.

NEW PRODUCTS

🎥 Typeframes- Create videos for YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok with simple text prompts (link)

🥗 Belly Buddy- Identify food you eat that are linked to digestive issues (link)

📝 Flipner- Create masterful content faster than ever with this AI assist (link)

📸 Product Descriptions GPT- Craft engaging e-commerce product listings (link)

👥 Hearth- An AI agent that manages your contacts and relationships (link)

✈️ Trip Planner GPT- Plan your trips effortlessly with a custom itinerary and expert advice (link)

🤖 AI Form Roast- Grade your online forms with AI (link)

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

SNIPPETS

Police departments are tapping AI to analyze unreviewed body-cam footage, aiming to identify problematic officers and behavior patterns, moving towards greater accountability and transparency in law enforcement.

The US National Ignition Facility has made a leap in nuclear fusion, achieving reactions that release nearly double the input energy.

YouTube revealed plans to develop a Vision Pro app, responding to the device's rising popularity and user demand for enhanced VR video support.

OnlyFake leverages neural networks to produce realistic fake IDs for $15, posing significant threats to cybersecurity by potentially facilitating bank fraud and money laundering.

Roblox introduced a real-time AI translation feature, supporting 16 languages, to enable seamless communication among its global user base, potentially transforming the multiplayer gaming experience.

Reddit's revenue surged over 20% to $800 million in 2023, yet the company remains unprofitable as it eyes an IPO, with a suggested valuation of at least $5 billion.

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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

A new leak just revealed a potential makeover for Google Bard – AND the launch of Google’s top-tier Gemini Ultra model.

If the rumors are true, we could be in for a wild week! Let’s investigate…

In today’s AI rundown:

• Leaked doc reveals Bard rebrand and Gemini Ultra launch

• Hugging Face launches open source assistant creator

• How to generate 3D assets from text with Meshy

• AI model learns human language from baby

• 6 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

• More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

GOOGLE

😱 Leaked doc reveals Bard rebrand and Gemini Ultra launch

Image source: Dylan Roussel (@evowizz on X)

The Rundown: A leaked changelog circulating on social media suggests Google is preparing a major revamp of its Bard chatbot under the new name Gemini, alongside the launch of its highly anticipated Gemini Ultra model.

The details:

• The leaked changelog shows Bard being rebranded as Gemini on Feb. 7th in an effort to better align the brand with its underlying generative models.

• A paid ‘Gemini Advanced’ tier, built on the more powerful Ultra model, is also listed for a Feb. 7 launch.

• Gemini will introduce its first Android app on select Pixel and Galaxy devices, expanding globally over time.

• Canada also (finally) gets Gemini access on the web, with App access coming soon.

Why it matters: Given previous rumblings of phasing Bard out for Gemini, the rebranding news isn’t shocking to hear. More exciting is the launch of Ultra — and if its capabilities live up to the hype, the model could re-ignite the LLM acceleration race and push OpenAI for a faster GPT-5 rollout.

TOGETHER WITH ARTISAN

🤖 Hire Ava: Your AI sales assistant

The Rundown: Meet Ava – your dedicated AI sales assistant. Onboard Ava with a simple 10-minute chat, after which she will start finding leads & writing emails 24/7.

Ava is the first Artisan, able to:

• Find targeted sales prospects’ information from a database of 270M+

• Write & send hyper-personalized emails

• Autonomously schedule meetings in your calendar

Hire Ava today to get more sales meetings, without hiring a human BDR.

HUGGING FACE

🤗 Hugging Face launches open source assistant creator

Image source: Hugging Face

The Rundown: Hugging Face just launched a free tool for easily building customizable AI assistants powered by open source models, positioning it as an alternative to OpenAI’s GPT Store offerings.

The details:

• Users can create assistants in ‘2 clicks’, with the ability to choose between various open source models like Claude, LLaMA 2, and Mixtral.

• Assistants are free to create, shareable and browsable via a central repository, similar to OpenAI's GPT Store.

• Unlike GPTs, assistants do not support RAG, web search, actions, and image generation, though the features are on the roadmap for future integration.

Why it matters: While still missing some key features, HF’s assistants are a huge step for open source AI — and the ability to utilize different LLMs will enable even more creative applications. The tool is also yet another example of open source tech quickly catching up to industry leaders.

AI TRAINING

🤯 How to generate 3D assets from text with Meshy

The Rundown: Meshy has recently unveiled its new Text to 3D tool, Meshy-2. It enables users to create high-quality 3D models quickly.

Here is a quick step-by-step:

1. Sign up: Head to Meshy to create an account for free.

2. Create: Opt for Text to 3D BETA, describe your model, and pick an art style.

3. Refine: Meshy generates 4 preview models; choose one or more to refine for more detail.

4. Download: Click the right-side download button to save your 3D assets in various file formats.

AI RESEARCH

👶 AI model learns human language from baby

Image source: Wai Keen Vong

The Rundown: An AI model learned to recognize words like "crib" and "ball" by training on first-person video and audio captures from a baby's life, offering insights into human language development in a new study from researchers at New York University.

The details:

• Researchers gathered 61 hours of helmet cam footage from an Australian baby to show the infant's perspective.

• The AI neural network was exposed to 250,000 word-image pairs from the baby's activities to learn associations.

• In evaluations, the AI successfully matched words to images 62% of the time, comparable to other models trained on vastly more data.

• The approach challenges theories that innate knowledge is needed to learn language, showing general learning skills may be just as valuable.

Why it matters: This fascinating research could challenge traditional theories on how we acquire and learn language — as well as help to adapt AI models for understanding the physical world more intuitively rather than relying on huge datasets.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

AI tools powered by Supertools

• 📸 Kondor for iOS- ChatGPT for your phone camera (link)*

• 🎥 Pictory GPT- Effortlessly create captivating videos (link)

• 📊 Matrices- Simplify data analysis and automate tasks for better insights (link)

• 📚 Books GPT- Your personal AI guide for discovering and recommending books (link)

• 🛠️ Promptly- Build generative AI applications without coding experience (link)

• 🌐 TereraAI Learn Language GPT- Learn a new language interactively with adaptive scenarios (link)

AI jobs powered by The Rundown Jobs

• 🔧 Open AI- Reliability Engineer, Research Platform (link)

• 🤗 Hugging Face- Machine Learning Engineer Internship (link)

• 👨‍💼 Anthropic- Payroll Manager (link)

• 🔍 Cohere- Engineering Program Manager, Search & Embedding ML (link)

*Sponsored listing

QUICK HITS

A new study revealed that AI agents, including advanced LLMs like GPT-4, can potentially escalate military and diplomatic tensions in simulated war games.

A mysterious ‘DeluxeChat’ model is making waves on Imsys Arena, with impressive performance expected to be in line with top available models.

Kleiner Perkins VCs Mamoon Hamid and Ilya Fushman estimated that ‘more than 80 percent’ of pitches they hear now involve AI in an interview with TechCrunch.

Apple CEO Tim Cook hinted at a significant AI announcement coming from the company later this year during an analyst call following earnings reports.

Google released MobileDiffusion, a new approach that allows for near-instantaneous text-to-image generation on mobile devices.

Alibaba’s Quen-VL-Plus is quietly gaining ground on the top multimodal LLMs, with its vision capabilities reportedly matching or exceeding GPT-4.

AI lobbying has reportedly surged over the last year, skyrocketing by 185% in 2023 with over 450 organizations engaging in response to increasing calls for AI regulation.

THAT’S A WRAP

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Welcome, Tech enthusiasts.

If you’re feeling FOMO over the Apple Vision Pro, you’re not alone. But one person who probably isn’t? Mark Zuckerberg.

While his competitor may have captured the headlines, Zuck just found himself $28B (!) richer after a Meta stock surge and the company’s first-ever dividend. Let’s get into it…

In today’s tech rundown:

• Meta’s stock surges with first-ever dividend

• Oxford PV sets world record for most efficient solar panel

• 8 new products

• Joe Rogan inks $250M agreement with Spotify

• Jeff Bezos selling $8B in Amazon shares

• Japan’s lander goes dark on the moon

Read time: 3 minutes

TODAY’S HEADLINES

META

📈 Meta’s stock surges with first-ever dividend

Image source: Getty Images

The Rundown: Meta shares surged over 20% after strong earnings and the company’s first-ever dividend, adding over $200B in value — and raising Mark Zuckerberg's net worth rose by more than $28B (!) in a single day.

The details:

• Meta's profit tripled year-over-year to $14B as revenue climbed 25%, its fastest growth since mid-2021.

• Meta achieved higher margins and reduced expenses, signs its "year of efficiency" which included major layoffs, has paid dividends.

• The company announced its first-ever dividend of $0.50 per share, rewarding investors and adding additional fuel to the stock rally.

• Zuckerberg's roughly 350M shares means he stands to gain about $700M per year from the dividends.

Why it matters: The Vision Pro may have gotten all the hype this weekend — but Zuck’s probably feeling just fine with his $28B windfall. Add these positive trends in with the company’s vast AI compute power and endless data, and Meta looks extremely well-positioned for a tech-driven future.

TOGETHER WITH CASTMAGIC

⚡️ Get more done with less manual work via Castmagic

The Rundown: What if we told you that your entire content plan could come from one podcast? With Castmagic, it can:

• Transform any podcast into ready-to-post content with a single click

• Perfectly accurate transcript with timestamped show notes, key topics, and summaries

• Work with any audio - sales calls, YouTube videos and more

Click here to try Castmagic, the fastest way to automate your content workflow.

ENERGY TECH

🌞 Oxford PV sets world record for most efficient solar panel

Image source: Fraunhofer

The Rundown: Oxford PV, a solar tech spinout of Oxford University, just created the world's most efficient solar panel — with 25% efficiency in converting sunlight to electricity.

The details:

• Their tandem solar cells combine the mineral perovskite with silicon to achieve 43% theoretical maximum efficiency, much higher than the sub-30 % efficiency of typical panels.

• The panels were produced in Germany in collaboration with Fraunhofer and are already equipped for volume manufacturing.

• Oxford PV’s CTO said the record-breaking panels show the world is ‘on the cusp of the next solar revolution’.

Why it matters: By creating more efficient solar panels, breakthroughs like these can continue to bring down the cost of solar power and increase adoption — meaningfully accelerating the global transition to renewable and cleaner energy.

NEW PRODUCTS

📸 Kondor for iOS- ChatGPT for your phone camera (link)*

🤖 MindOS Memory Twin- Memorize, organize, and categorize your thoughts instantly with AI (link)

🤔 Theodore AI- Clarify complex topics into straightforward notes with just 3 clicks (link)

📹 Pictory GPT for Videos- Effortlessly produce eye-catching videos via ChatGPT (link)

📝 Flipner AI- Ideate & enhance your writing with the help of artificial intelligence (link)

💘 Longshot- ChatGPT for enterprises. Upload your docs, fact check, ensure zero hallucinations and integrate anywhere (link)

🧠 AI-suggests- Generate tons of ready-to-use content and new ideas for your business instantly (link)

🎬 HeyGen- Create videos from text in minutes with AI-generated avatars and voices (link)

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

*= Sponsored listing

SNIPPETS

Podcast icon Joe Rogan enters a new $250 million agreement with Spotify for 'The Joe Rogan Experience.’

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is planning to sell up to $50M shares (valued at $8.6B) over the next year, according to the company’s regulatory filing.

Repair website iFixit posted an inside look at the Apple Vision Pro, giving a detailed breakdown of the headset’s hardware.

Mark Zuckerberg's original creation, Facebook, now plays a secondary role in Meta's portfolio of apps, having evolved from a college network into a controversial yet financially foundational element of his broader ambitions.

JAXA's SLIM lander has entered a dormant state during the lunar night after sending one last image from the moon's surface.

Samsung states the Galaxy S24's less vivid display mode is deliberate, designed for a more natural viewing experience.

Google Bard is set to be rebranded as Gemini and integrated into a wider range of apps, along with plans for a dedicated Android app.

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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

Google just leveled up Bard big time, infusing its Gemini Pro model into the chatbot alongside a slew of new AI releases.

With an army of products to integrate and an advanced Gemini Ultra model lurking — is Bard coming for ChatGPT’s throne? Let’s get into it…

In today’s AI rundown:

• Google unleashes Gemini Pro in Bard and new AI

• Altman: AI will enable a billion dollar solopreneur

• How to create images with Google Bard

• AI aids in early detection of ovarian cancer

• 9 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

• More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

GOOGLE

✨ Google unleashes Gemini Pro in Bard and new AI

Image source: Google

The Rundown: Google just rolled out a significant upgrade to Bard, now powering the chatbot with its Gemini Pro AI model — alongside the launch of a new image generator, AI maps upgrades, and an updated music generation tool.

The details:

• Bard is now running on Gemini Pro instead of the previous LaMDA and PaLM models, improving reasoning and language abilities.

• Bard can now generate images through its Imagen 2 model, which allows users to prompt conversationally, similar to ChatGPT/DALL-E 3.

• A standalone ImageFX text-to-image tool is also now available in Labs, which features “expressive chips" for easier prompting and creation.

• Conversational search comes to maps, with AI-powered results providing detailed information to help users discover new locations.

• A new MusicFX text-to-music tool builds on MusicLM, with generations expanded up to 70 seconds and enhanced capabilities.

Why it matters: Giving Bard a significant upgrade puts it as a real contender to ChatGPT’s capabilities — and if the upcoming Gemini Ultra eventually gets integrated along with the other impressive standalone tools, OpenAI might have a real battle for the coveted top chatbot honor.

TOGETHER WITH HEIGHT

🏗️ Take the project management out of product building

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• Works invisibly, automatically, and autonomously

• Focus your energy on building a successful product

Build a successful product + offload manual upkeep for good ⬇️

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AI & ENTREPRENEURSHIP

🔮 Altman: AI will enable a billion dollar solopreneur

Image source: Alexis Ohanian (@alexohanian) on X

The Rundown: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said during a fireside chat at the 2023 Robin Hood Investors Conference that a ‘one person, billion dollar company’ will happen thanks to AI in the near future.

The details:

• Altman revealed he has a betting pool in his tech CEO group chat on what year the milestone will be achieved.

• The sentiment comes amid job concerns surrounding automation and a brutal stretch of tech layoffs, with nearly 30,000 employees cut already in 2024.

• Altman just posted about ‘being nostalgic for the time period you’re living through at the time you’re living it,’ which… sure sounds like someone who has seen the future.

AI TRAINING

🎨 NEW: How to create images with Google Bard

The Rundown: Google just announced several major upgrades to Google Bard — including the ability to generate images by prompting conversationally directly in a chat.

Step-by-step:

1. Head over to Bard.

   • Note: Bard's image generation is accessible in most countries, excluding the EU, and Canada.

2. In the chat, ask Bard to “Generate an image of [describe your image].”

   • EX: “Generate a high resolution, awe-inspiring image of a humpback whale mid-breach, water spray reflecting sunlight at sunset, wispy clouds, and realistic water reflections.” You can also ask Bard to write a prompt to help get started.

3. Bard will return two images based on your prompt. You can download the images, generate more, or edit your prompt to improve the images!

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Join like-minded AI leaders, thinkers, and disruptors in a quest to redefine business and the future of work with AI.

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AI RESEARCH

🏥 AI aids in early detection of ovarian cancer

Image source: ImageFX

The Rundown: Researchers at Georgia Tech just developed a new diagnostic blood test for ovarian cancer using AI and metabolic data that achieved 93% accuracy in detecting the disease.

The details:

• The test analyzes compounds in the blood and feeds this data to AI models to predict if ovarian cancer is present.

• The model calculates a personalized probability score for each patient based on their unique blood compound profile.

• Tested on over 500 women with and without ovarian cancer, it significantly improved on past diagnostic approaches, especially for early detection.

Why it matters: Known as the ‘silent killer’, ovarian cancer has previously been notoriously difficult to detect in early stages. With the help of this new test, doctors may finally have a promising way to enable early diagnosis and lifesaving treatment.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

AI tools powered by Supertools

• ⚖️ Legal+ GPT- Your personal AI assistant for all your legal needs (link)

• 🖼️ Mocky- Generate high-quality mock-ups for your products (link)

• 🌎 GPT Workspace- Create and share your GPT without an OpenAI subscription (link)

• 🎥 Nero AI Video Upscaler- AI motion tracking editor for blurring faces, logos, or license plates (link)

• 🤖 Sune AI- Collaborate, automate, and streamline workflows for your team (link)

• 🔒 GPT Guard- Unlock and freely use your data for AI and data analytics while safeguarding security and meeting privacy regulations (link)

AI jobs powered by The Rundown Jobs

• 🎥 Synthesia- Senior Machine Learning Engineer - Video Perception (link)

• 📢 Anthropic- Internal Communications Lead (link)

• 🌍 Cohere- Global Head, AWS Partnership (link)

• 👩‍💻 Open AI- Front End Engineer, Review & Training Platform (link)

QUICK HITS

Section is hosting a free fireside chat on "Where's the Money in AI?" with Exponential View's Azeem Azhar. Sign up to join the free, 1-hour event on Feb. 22.*

Mastercard revealed its own AI model that allows banks to detect fraud in real-time, claiming over 300% improvement in detection rates.

Amazon unveiled “Rufus" an AI shopping assistant that can answer shopping questions, recommend products, and compare items.

Anthropic rolled out a new ‘dark mode’ visual option for its Claude chatbot.

Meta plans to deploy its 2nd-gen custom AI chip, codenamed "Artemis", into data centers this year to reduce reliance on costly Nvidia GPUs.

Arc browser introduced new AI-powered features, including Instant Links to instantly visit top search results and an Explore tool that leverages LLMs to provide an integrated browsing and searching experience.

A ChatGPT user found love with the help of AI, training a model to swipe Tinder based on his preferences — messaging with over 5,200 women and proposing after a year.

*Sponsored listing

THAT’S A WRAP

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Welcome, Tech enthusiasts.

Elon just dropped some new advice for business founders — “don’t incorporate your company in Delaware”.

After the state’s court ruled against his $56B Tesla pay package, Musk is wasting no time in pushing to take the company’s talents to Texas. Let’s dive deeper…

In today’s tech rundown:

• Musk pushes for Tesla incorporation pivot

• Google expands passkeys towards password-less future

• 9 new products

• NASA pushes for commercial Mars exploration

• Hulu slams door on account sharing

• Tesla faces more lawsuits

Read time: 3 minutes

TODAY’S HEADLINES

TESLA

🤠 Musk pushes for Tesla incorporation pivot

Image source: New York Times

The Rundown: After a Delaware judge voided his $56 billion pay package, Elon Musk just proposed holding a shareholder vote to move Tesla's state of incorporation from Delaware to Texas.

The details:

• A Delaware judge ruled the $56B incentive package, agreed on in 2018, was unfair to shareholders — saying most board members were "beholden to Musk."

• Musk completed all 12 goals required to earn the package, but a group of shareholders challenged the payout of what they saw as overly excessive compensation.

• Musk polled X users on where Tesla should move its incorporation, with 87% voting for Texas.

Why it matters: The courts have not been kind to Elon over the years — and this judgement, in the wake of Musk’s recent demands for additional stake to continue building robotics and AI at Tesla, likely cloud his future even more.

GOOGLE

🔐 Google expands passkeys towards password-less future 

Image source: 9to5Google

The Rundown: Google is expanding its passkeys to more Pixel devices and partnering with major brands like Uber, TikTok, and PayPal to replace passwords with secure biometric login.

The details:

• Passkeys use fingerprints, face authentication, or PINs instead of passwords to log into online accounts.

• The login system better eliminates phishing and attack risks, while also eliminating the need for users to remember tons of different passwords.

• Support was added to all recent Pixel phones and the Pixel tablet via a Feature Drop.

• Major companies like Adobe, eBay, PayPal, Uber, Nintendo have adopted passkeys, with more set to come as Google drops its Pixel exclusivity.

Why it matters: The days of traditional passwords being the Internet’s primary safeguard are almost up — which is a positive for both security measures and the collective memories of users everywhere.

NEW PRODUCTS

🤖 Flipner AI- Shape your writing with a pocket-sized AI writing assistant (link)

🧠 Promptly AI- Create generative AI applications and automate workflows without any coding (link)

🖼️ Fotor AI- Your go-to AI-powered photo editing solution at no cost (link)

📅 BeforeSunset AI- Manage calendars with an AI assistant that plans your day for you (link)

🚀 BoilerBay- Accelerate your project launch by 10 times (link)

🔗 Share GPT- Share conversational AI models easily without an OpenAI subscription (link)

💼 Taplio- All-in-one AI-powered tool for creating, managing, and growing your personal brand on LinkedIn (link)

📧 Superhuman- The fastest email experience ever made, with AI-powered features (link)

🧠 Taskade- Five AI-powered tools in one to supercharge your team productivity (link)

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

SNIPPETS

Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, faces scrutiny from senators including Elizabeth Warren over its handling of $94 million in research-related tax credits.

NASA initiates a groundbreaking commercial approach to Mars exploration, encouraging U.S. space industry proposals for various private missions.

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel is pushing to classify AI-generated voice robocalls as illegal under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

Google has signed agreements to buy offshore wind energy in Europe to power its data centers, working towards its goal of matching electricity use with 100% clean energy by 2030.

Apple has renewed its licensing agreement with Qualcomm for modem chips until March 2027 due to delays in developing its own 5G modem.

Tesla is being sued by 25 counties in California for alleged mishandling of hazardous waste at various facilities in the state.

Hulu updates its terms to prohibit subscribers from sharing passwords outside their primary residence.

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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

Wall Street’s AI gold rush hit a snag this week after earnings reports from industry giants failed to live up to investor hype.

Is this a case of short-term greed overshadowing AI’s inevitable disruption? Or will swelling costs to compete lead to more growing pains? Let’s examine…

In today’s AI rundown:

• AI stocks plunge after earnings disappoint

• Shopify debuts AI-powered image editor

• How to convert video to any language with lip syncing

• Researchers unveil Weaver for creative writing

• 6 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

• More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

WALL STREET

📉 AI stocks plunge after earnings disappoint

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: Shares of major AI players including Microsoft, Google, AMD and Nvidia fell sharply this week after the latest earnings reports failed to impress investors anticipating an artificial intelligence-driven boom.

The details:

• Alphabet shares dropped 6% as ad revenue missed expectations while spending on data centers also jumped to stay competitive in AI.

• Microsoft stock fell despite strong cloud and Windows growth aided by AI, with the company also ramping up spending to meet AI demand.

• AMD plunged 6%, though its new AI chips are selling faster than expected, with forecasts still falling short of some sky-high predictions.

• Nvidia also gave up recent gains, though it has tripled in value as the market’s demand for its AI chips continues to surge.

Why it matters: With significant upfront costs to compete amongst the major players in AI, spending has been outpacing monetization in the short term — something Wall Street never likes.

TOGETHER WITH COMMANDBAR

🤖 Add AI-powered user assistance to any app or site

The Rundown: Chatbots are nice, but they’re still too annoying. Long, non-interactive answers are a pain for users to read. Add a user assistant to your site or app instead.

• Trigger personalized walkthroughs to teach your users

• Take actions on their behalf

• Personalized answers based on their history and behavior

CommandBar powers user assistance for 10s of millions of users at leaders like Freshworks, Hubspot, and Hashicorp.

Try it for free.

SHOPIFY

👜 Shopify debuts AI-powered image editor

Image source: Shopify

The Rundown: E-commerce platform Shopify just launched a free AI image editor to help sellers create professional product photos without studios or pro photographers, alongside additional AI upgrades like semantic search in the company.

The details:

• Media Editor lets merchants change backgrounds, styles, colors, etc. to stage item photos with prompts — with no design experience needed.

• Semantic search provides AI-powered results with a better understanding of conversational terms to provide more relevant options.

• The new tools join a host of AI integrations already on the platform, including automated product descriptions, chatbot integration, and more.

Why it matters: While businesses using AI was initially controversial, its integration will quickly become standard or unnoticeable for the average consumer — especially given the recent advances in image generation and multimodal AI.

AI TRAINING

👄 How to convert video to any language with lip syncing

The Rundown: Sync Labs combines multiple AI tools like video-to-text, text-to-speech translation, and lip-syncing to create an innovative video translation tool.

Step-by-step:

1. Head to Sync Labs and set up your account (for free).

2. Add a video file or add a YouTube URL. For best results, use a video with a single speaker — where the speaker is in the first frame and the video quality doesn’t exceed 720p.

3. Choose a target language and select Submit.

4. After a few minutes, you will have a video where the main character speaks in your chosen language with decent lip sync.

AI RESEARCH

✍️ Researchers unveil Weaver for creative writing

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: AIWaves just introduced Weaver, a family of LLMs focused on excelling in creative writing tasks like fiction, blogging, marketing, and more.

The details:

• Weaver is pre-trained on books/blogs/articles to absorb more creative styles, avoiding low-quality internet text often used in general LLM training.

• Evaluations show Weaver comfortably beats generalist LLMs on a new benchmark assessing creative writing skills.

• The 34B parameter ‘Weaver Ultra’ surpasses GPT-4 on both LLM and human evaluations, graded on style, relevance, creativity, and fluency.

Why it matters: While general LLMs have been seeing wild advancements as of late, their creative writing ability has lagged behind other growth areas. As AI becomes more and more integral to content creation, systems like Weaver that are fine-tuned for imaginative outputs will be indispensable.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

AI tools powered by Supertools

• 📝 Conveyor- Generate 90%+ accurate AI answers to security questionnaires in seconds (link)*

• 🛠️ ChatGPT Prompting- Quickly build effective prompts by answering key questions (link)

• 💼 Job GPT- Find all jobs in one platform, perfectly matched to your skills (link)

• 🎨 Anima- Converting design to code, automating design systems, and enhancing prototyping (link)

• 🤖 Blozum- Improve website user experience and increase conversions with AI-powered chat assistants (link)

• 📣 Ad Copy Generator- Create high-converting ad copies like a digital marketing expert (link)

AI jobs powered by The Rundown Jobs

• 📱 Anthropic- Engineering Manager, Mobile (link)

• 🛡️ Shield AI- Principal Engineer, Autonomy Integration (link)

• 👥 Cohere- Senior Technical Talent Partner (link)

• ⚖️ Open AI- Antitrust and Competition Counsel (link)

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QUICK HITS

Midjourney announced that V6 of Niji-Journey, a version of its text-to-image model tuned specifically for Anime outputs, is now live.

OpenAI announced an early warning system and released research on if AI models can aid in creating bioweapons, finding that they are currently ‘at most’ mildly useful for the task.

Mistral CEO, Arthur Mensch, confirmed that a mysterious model called ‘Miqu’ that neared GPT-4 performance posted on HuggingFace was a leaked version of Mistral’s — with open source models rapidly catching up to industry leaders.

School bus platform Zum raised $140M at a $1.3B valuation for its AI-powered route optimization, EV fleet management, and parent communication tools used by thousands of US school districts.

Instacart has deleted AI-generated images used on the platform following a Business Insider article highlighting bizarre photos used on the company’s recipes section, which it confirmed were also generated by AI.

Volkswagen opened an "AI lab" to create prototypes and form tech partnerships on products leveraging AI, including predictive maintenance, voice recognition, and in-vehicle personalization.

The FCC proposed ruling AI-generated cloned voices in robocalls illegal, following the tech’s use in New Hampshire to create fake calls from Joe Biden urging people not to vote.

THAT’S A WRAP

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Welcome, Tech enthusiasts.

TikTok Music wants to compete with the likes of Spotify and Apple Music — but just struck a major chord with the music industry.

UMG just announced it’s pulling its star-studded catalog off the platform. Let’s investigate…

In today’s tech rundown:

• UMG pulls songs from TikTok over royalty dispute

• Tech leaders under fire over child safety regulations

• 8 new products

• Delaware judge axes Musk’s Tesla bonus

• Palworld climbs gaming ranks

• FTX fully repaying customers, creditors

Read time: 3 minutes

TODAY’S HEADLINES

TIKTOK

🎶 UMG pulls songs from TikTok over royalty dispute

Image source: Universal Music Group

The Rundown: Universal Music Group just announced it will pull all its music from TikTok starting Feb. 1st — after failing to reach an agreement with ByteDance over fair royalties.

The details:

• UMG claims TikTok pays a tiny fraction of royalties compared to other major platforms generating less revenue, currently accounting for only 1% of the company’s revenue.

• Tensions also rose over payments for AI-generated recordings and TikTok's failure to promptly remove copyright-violating content.

• UMG represents major artists like Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande, Drake, and Justin Bieber.

• The move comes as TikTok invests heavily in TikTok Music, which the company hopes to position as a competitor to Spotify and Apple Music.

Why it matters: UMG’s departure underscores serious growing pains for TikTok’s music aspirations — and the company’s ability to strike fair deals with labels going forward will likely make or break it. Success without star power for music platforms is hard to come by.

TOGETHER WITH JASPER

⚡️ Accelerate content generation with AI

The Rundown: Unleash the power of Jasper, the generative AI tool that crafts captivating content at 10x speed:

• Generate SEO content, Facebook ads, video scripts and more

• Scan and identify your brand voice for seamless integration

• Receive actionable insight to improve and adapt your content

Click here to transform your content game, and let Jasper help you stop posting “AI-sounding” content today.

BIG TECH REGULATION

🏛️ Tech leaders under fire over child safety regulations

Image source: Getty Images

The Rundown: Congress just held a major hearing with CEOs from several major tech platforms including Meta, Twitter (X), TikTok, Snap, and Discord — on the topic of protecting children online and fighting child exploitation.

The details:

• The CEOs in attendance were X’s Linda Yaccarino, TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew, Snap’s Evan Spiegel, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Discord’s Jason Citron.

• The hearing focused on failures to curb abuse and predatory behavior targeting kids on these platforms.

• Proposed legislation discussed includes the controversial Kids Online Safety Act, which garnered mixed endorsements from the CEOs.

• Notably, Yaccarino came out in support of KOSA despite critics arguing the bill would chill free speech, seemingly in opposition to Elon Musk and X’s previous sentiment.

Why it matters: In what was a contentious day for the tech giants, CEOs were forced to reckon with the darker sides of their platforms. But it's an issue that's far from solved — even if the proposed regulation comes to fruition.

NEW PRODUCTS

🤖 Conveyor- Generate 90%+ accurate AI answers to security questionnaires in seconds (link)*

🚀 Tailwind Studio- Get more React app styling done with AI (link)

🎨 OpenArt- AI-powered marketplace for image generation apps (link)

🔒 GPTGuard- Ensures your ChatGPT interactions are safe and confidential (link)

🤝 FluxNinja Aperture- API for managing rate limits, storing data, and setting task priorities (link)

🎙️ Wondercraft AI- Turn existing content such as blog posts, into full podcasts (link)

📹 Screen Studio- Create beautiful screen recordings in minutes on your Mac (link)

⏰ Timetics AI- A smart scheduling solution for meetings and businesses (link)

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

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SNIPPETS

Palworld has achieved 12 million sales on Steam and 7 million players on Xbox and Game Pass, becoming the biggest third-party launch in Game Pass history.

US lawmakers have introduced a bill to combat non-consensual AI-generated explicit content in response to the increasing spread of Taylor Swift deepfakes.

FTX expects to fully repay customers and creditors who suffered losses from its 2022 collapse.

Lamborghini is set to introduce hybrid versions of the Hurácan and Urus in 2024 as part of its strategy to reduce fleet emissions.

The European Space Agency is set to test a metal 3D printer on the ISS, a development that could contribute to building structures on the Moon.

A Delaware judge voided Elon Musk's $56 billion Tesla compensation plan over conflicts of interest and flawed process.

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THAT’S A WRAP

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

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

Neuralink just reached a new milestone, implanting its brain chip into a human patient for the first time.

If Elon Musk’s ‘Telepathy’ device is successful, it could truly change how we interact with technology forever. Let’s explore…

In today’s AI rundown:

• Neuralink places first brain chip implant in human

• Yelp launches new AI features for users, businesses

• How to summarize a YouTube video or podcast using Bard

• Tencent details multimodal LLM advances

• 6 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

• More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

NEURALINK

🧠 Neuralink places first brain chip implant in human

Image source: Neuralink

The Rundown: Elon Musk just announced that Neuralink successfully implanted its advanced brain chip in a human test subject for the first time, saying the patient is ‘recovering well’ from the surgery in a post on X.

The details:

• Musk touted "promising neuron spike detection," in the patient, suggesting the chip’s sensors are capturing individual brain cell activity.

• Musk also revealed that Neuralink’s first product will be called 'Telepathy’, which plans to enable paralyzed patients to control devices by thought.

• The company’s initial patient trials targeted quadriplegic patients aged 22+ suffering from spinal injuries or ALS.

Why it matters: Did you have telepathy on your 2024 bingo card? Neuralink continues to push the boundaries of brain hardware, with a chance to potentially enable game changing new abilities for paralyzed patients — and push the tech closer to consumer availability.

TOGETHER WITH AE STUDIO

🔥 Don’t lose the AI race, hire AE Studio

The Rundown: AE Studio is the key to industry dominance, securing AI talent from Harvard, Stanford, and MIT to streamline operations.

What AE Studio will do for you:

• Turbocharge your business, save hundreds of hours, and WIN!

• Have AE build custom your custom software and AI solutions

• Hire AE to pinpoint where and why you should be building NOW!

Stop waiting and start winning. Schedule your FREE strategy session to get your business ahead of the AI race.

YELP

🍔 Yelp launches new AI features for users, businesses

Image source: Yelp

The Rundown: Yelp just introduced several new AI enhancements on the platform, including AI-generated business summaries and insights to help users quickly understand what to expect from local businesses.

The details:

• One-sentence AI summaries will now describe a business's most notable qualities like atmosphere, service, amenities, and popular menu items.

• Yelp is also providing business owners new AI-driven recommendations on things like optimal budgets for easier and more cost-effective advertisements.

• A new AI-powered home feed on iOS aims to help users more easily discover relevant businesses and content on the platform.

Why it matters: With mass amounts of data, Yelp’s AI-driven advancements make a lot of sense — and convenience-type integrations like these are perfect ways to get consumers more comfortable with the tech by improving user experience in subtle ways.

AI TRAINING

📝 How to summarize a podcast using Bard

The Rundown: Google has recently made big improvements to Bard with upgrades from Gemini — and the chatbot has become great at summarizing long videos or podcasts from YouTube.

Step-by-step:

1. Head to Bard (available in nearly every country except Canada).

2. Enter prompt: “Write a detailed summary of this video [insert link]. Summarize using bullet points. Include timestamps to the relevant themes/sections. Include quotes”

3. You now have a summary and the key points of the video or podcast!

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AI RESEARCH

📶 Tencent details multimodal LLM advances

Image source: Tencent

The Rundown: Tencent researchers just released a paper highlighting the rise and advancement of multimodal LLMs (MM-LLMs), including best practices and future outlooks for the powerful models.

The details:

• MM-LLMs combine powerful language models with other modalities like images, audio, and video, enhancing cognitive capabilities.

• The paper analyzed 26 MM-LLMs, comparing them across benchmarks and detailing ‘key recipes’ for enhancing the models.

• Key advancements include progression from single modality input/output towards versatile "any-to-any" functionality.

• Research also found significant improvements in alignment, instruction tuning, and conversational abilities.

Why it matters: This new research helps document emerging best practices in multimodal LLMs — while also highlighting the wild advancements we’re about to see as models become more versatile.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

AI tools powered by Supertools

• 🔥 Sparks AI- Develop, share, and monetize your AI bots and tools (link)

• 📈 Stock Robo GPT- An economic analyst who assists with forecasting and analyzing US stocks and ETFs (link)

• 🚀 Omnipilot- An AI copilot that streamlines your workflows on macOS (link)

• 🎭 Meme Magic GPT- Easily generate creative and customized memes in seconds (link)

• 📸 Shakker AI- Stylize, remix and transform your images (link)

• 👍 Huudle- Boost productivity and enhance relationships with AI-powered async video communication (link)

AI jobs powered by The Rundown Jobs

• 🧮 Anthropic- Finance Systems Engineering Lead (link)

• 🎯 Sanctuary AI- Principal Program Manager (link)

• 👩‍💼 Cohere- Sales Development Representative (link)

• 🔧 Open AI- Reliability Engineer, Research Platform (link)

QUICK HITS

Scott Galloway's edtech company Section is conducting a survey to assess AI readiness across industries, roles, and companies. Take the survey and get a discount code to Section's upcoming AI Crash Course. (Sponsor)

Humanoid robotics startup Figure AI is reportedly in talks for a funding round of up to $500M led by Microsoft and OpenAI, potentially putting the company at a $1.9B pre-money valuation.

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin released a paper on the intersections of crypto and AI, detailing the pros and cons of how blockchain tech and decentralization can and will be integrated with artificial intelligence.

OpenAI quietly rolled out another new ChatGPT feature to ensure coding responses generate fully, rolling out in settings under ‘General’ → ‘Always expand code output’.

The New York Times is forming an "AI initiatives" team, including engineers and editors to prototype generative AI uses for reporting and presentation — though emphasizing its journalism will still be human-written.

The Biden administration will begin requiring AI firms to disclose safety testing results to the government under the Defense Production Act before public release in an effort to manage AI risks.

Samsung is considering a subscription model for advanced AI features on Galaxy devices after 2025, though no definitive plans have been set.

THAT’S A WRAP

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FEEDBACK

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