Good morning, AI enthusiasts. One of the ‘godfathers’ that helped birth modern AI is now trying to save the world from it — with Yoshua Bengio’s new nonprofit promising systems that are “safe-by-design.”

With warnings that top models are already learning to deceive and self-preserve, the safety advocates who’ve been sounding alarms are now building their own solutions.

In today’s AI rundown:

• AI pioneer’s safety nonprofit for 'honest' AI

• HeyGen gives full control over AI avatars

• Create marketing campaigns for global audiences

• FDA approves AI tool to predict breast cancer risk

• 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

YOSHUA BENGIO

🧠 AI pioneer’s safety nonprofit for 'honest' AI

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

The Rundown: AI godfather and Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio unveiled LawZero, a nonprofit dedicated to building “safe-by-design” AI systems, also securing $30M in funding to develop "Scientist AI," which prioritizes truth and transparency.

The details:

• LawZero aims to create AI systems that provide probabilistic assessments rather than definitive answers, acknowledging uncertainty in their responses.

• The organization's "Scientist AI" hopes to speed scientific development, monitor other AI agents for deceptive behaviors, and address AI risks

• Initial backers include former Google CEO Eric Schmidt's philanthropic arm, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, and several AI safety organizations.

• Bengio warns that current leading AI models, like o3 and Claude 4 Opus, show concerning traits including self-preservation instincts and strategic deception.

• He also told FT that he doesn’t have confidence that OpenAI will adhere to its original mission, citing commercial pressures.

Why it matters: AI godfathers Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton have been outspoken critics of leading AI labs on the safety front, sounding the alarm with constant media appearances and open letters. But LawZero represents Bengio’s biggest step yet, taking AI safety into his own hands with an organization dedicated to the effort.

TOGETHER WITH SANA

🇸🇪 Why Sweden chose Sana Agents for 2.3M people

The Rundown: Sweden just deployed Sana Agents across their entire nation — bringing advanced AI to 2.3M students, educators, and public servants in what might be the largest enterprise AI transformation we've seen.

Here’s what’s possible with Sana Agents:

• 50% time savings in R&D analysis workflows

• 2x more customer support issues resolved, empowered by AI

• 66% reduction in compliance audit hours and 95% faster responses to product inquiries

Drive enterprise-wide innovation today with the same AI platform trusted by an entire country to transform how work gets done.

HEYGEN

🎥 HeyGen gives full control over AI avatars

Image Source: HeyGen

The Rundown: HeyGen just launched AI Studio, a new video editing suite that gives users new control over AI avatars, with the ability to fine-tune vocal emphasis, hand gestures, and more for more polished and realistic generations.

The details:

• A new Voice Director Mode lets users shape the avatar’s speech delivery with natural language commands like “whisper this part” or “sound more excited”.

• Speech mirroring allows for uploads of an exact speaking style to transfer it to the avatars, preserving personal vocal quirks and timing consistencies.

• Gesture Control brings natural motion to avatars, with creators able to upload existing footage for mirroring or link gestures to words directly within a script.

• HeyGen also teased a series of upcoming new features, including camera control, generative B-roll, motion graphics, and prompt-based editing.

Why it matters: The future of video content creation is increasingly looking camera-less — with this latest round of upgrades taking avatars from more robotic talking heads to full-fledged actors with more granular control over motion and expressiveness. Video production is about to look a lot different in the AI age.

AI TRAINING

🌍 Create marketing campaigns for global audiences

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to transform campaign data into localized content and track your global marketing efforts using Canva’s AI-powered sheets and analytics tools.

Step-by-step:

1. Prepare a CSV with Market, Product Name, Target Audience, and Language Code columns, then in Canva create a new Sheet and import your data

2. Create a new “Headlines” column, select empty cells, go to Actions, and click "Fill Empty Cells" to auto-generate localized headlines for each market

3. Add a “Campaign Status” column and use Actions to add a dropdown with different status options

4. Use “Magic Insights” to get AI-powered analysis on anything you want from your spreadsheet

Pro tip: We did an extensive workshop with Danny Wu (Head of AI at Canva) and Kelsey Moore (Product Marketing Manager) on how to scale your visual content creation using Canva Sheets, Magic Write, and AI-powered tools here.

PRESENTED BY FACTORY

🤖 Agents ship code. Droids ship software.

The Rundown: Factory gives your team autonomous Droids that write code, resolve incidents, and clear your backlog — working across your own systems (GitHub, Linear, Notion, Google Drive, and more) to understand your codebase and deliver production-ready software.

Droids’ capabilities include:

• Handling complete task ownership from backlog cleanup to major migrations

• Delivering production-grade code without hand-holding

• Generating architecture deep-dives, RFC-ready reports, and professional documentation

• Incident response, including tracing Sentry issues, shipping quick fix PRs, and RCAs

Start building with Droids today.

AI CANCER DETECTION

🎯 FDA approves AI tool to predict breast cancer risk 

Image source: Clarity

The Rundown: The U.S. Food & Drug Administration granted authorization for Clarity Breast, the first AI platform that can predict a woman's breast cancer risk from routine mammogram images, enabling a commercial launch for the preventative tool this year.

The details:

• The AI analyzes subtle patterns in mammogram images invisible to humans, generating five-year risk scores without family history or demographic data.

• The platform works with standard 2D mammograms and was trained on millions of diverse images to avoid bias issues common in other risk models.

• In testing, half of the younger women tested showed risk levels typically seen in much older patients — challenging standard age-based screening protocols.

• Hospitals and imaging centers can start offering the service later this year, though patients will initially pay out-of-pocket until insurers get on board.

Why it matters: The first wave of AI medical tools is starting to make its way from the lab to actual consumers — and with powerful diagnostic and predictive capabilities, these tools may help shift medicine from its current reactive approach to a more proactive and preventative approach to healthcare.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🧠 Retellio - AI agent that surfaces buried insights from B2B calls, giving leaders clear GTM takeaways, pain points, and coaching signals*

• 🎥 Bing Video Creator - Turn words into short videos on mobile

• 🔊 PlayDiffusion - PlayAI’s open-source audio inpainting model

• 🎬 Mirage Studio - Generate studio-quality videos with AI actors

*Sponsored Listing

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🔁 The Rundown - Strategic Partnerships (AI University)

• 🤖 Cresta - Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Insights

• 🚀 Anthropic - Engineering Manager, ML Acceleration

• 🧰 Parloa - 1st Line Support Engineer

📰 Everything else in AI today

OpenAI announced expanded access for its Codex software engineering agent, alongside new internet access and usability upgrades.

Manus AI introduced new video generation capabilities, allowing the agentic platform to plan and generate detailed video scenes and visual concepts.

Researchers published BioReason, a new AI architecture that combines a DNA model with LLM reasoning, showcasing a 15% performance gain on biological benchmarks.

Meta signed a 20-year agreement with Constellation Energy to leverage nuclear power to fuel its energy-intensive AI demands.

OpenAI also rolled out its memory feature to free ChatGPT users, calling it a “lightweight” version that is more short-term and based on recent conversations.

Amazon MGM Studios is reportedly creating “Artificial,” a film based on OpenAI’s 2023 board drama and the firing of CEO Sam Altman.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop this Friday, June 6th, at 4 PM EST with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the end of the workshop, you’ll confidently be able to incorporate Flux Kontext into your creative workflows for consistent, high-quality results.

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

Good morning, tech enthusiasts. German scientists just scored a longevity breakthrough: by combining the cancer drugs rapamycin and trametinib, they extended mouse lifespans by an impressive 30%.

Biohacker Bryan Johnson — who previously dropped rapamycin due to harsh side effects — might want to revisit it. This drug combo isn’t just tweaking genes; it could be reshaping the boundaries of aging science.

In today’s tech rundown:

• Longevity drug extends mice’s lifespan

• Salesforce nabs Moonhub in AI shopping spree

• Solar storms are killing off Starlink satellites

• Trump to kickstart Mars missions with $1B

• Quick hits on other major news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

BIOTECH INNOVATIONS

💊 Longevity drug extends mice’s lifespan

Image source: Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing

The Rundown: German researchers just published a study showing two cancer drugs taken together not only extended the lifespans of mice by 30% but slashed inflammation, fought off cancer, and shut down the aging-linked mTOR pathway. 

The details:

• Rapamycin, which inhibits the mTOR pathway and slows cellular aging, was paired with trametinib, a drug targeting the Ras/MEK/ERK signaling cascade. 

• Rapamycin alone extended mouse lifespan by 15–20%, and trametinib alone by 5–10%; when combined, the drugs extended lifespan by 30–35%.

• The two drugs also improved healthspan, reducing chronic inflammation and lowering circulating levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines.

• Mice treated with both drugs showed a reduced incidence of liver and spleen tumors, as well as a slower age-related increase in brain glucose uptake.

Why it matters: This study spotlights how cutting-edge molecular science and drug innovation are colliding to tackle aging and extend healthspan—arguably biotech’s hottest frontier. While the results have biohackers buzzing, the real test will be whether these breakthroughs can safely translate from lab mice to human trials.

SALESFORCE

🛍️ Salesforce nabs Moonhub in AI shopping spree

Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown

The Rundown: Salesforce is snapping up (in a way!) Moonhub — the startup behind smart, automated hiring tools — just weeks after sealing its $8B Informatica deal and acquiring AI automation player Convergence AI.

The details:

• Moonhub, known for building AI that vets and recruits talent, is expected to help power Salesforce’s next wave of enterprise AI innovation.

• The startup initially implied its entire team is joining Salesforce, but the CRM giant has clarified it’s not a buyout and only part of the team is coming onboard.

• With $14.4M raised from high-profile investors, Moonhub has been on the radar of many in the HR tech space, with Salesforce already an early investor.

• The startup’s tools are designed with a “human-in-the-loop” approach, ensuring that humans are key to decision-making in the hiring process.

Why it matters: While the deal’s terms haven’t been disclosed, it lands at a time when AI is rapidly transforming HR—93% of Fortune 500 HR leaders now use AI to hire talent. It also signals Salesforce’s bold move to double down on automating and optimizing every stage of hiring and workforce planning, as it looks to outpace rivals.

SPACEX

☀️ Solar storms are killing off Starlink satellites

Image source: SpaceX

The Rundown: New NASA research finds that solar storms can shorten the lifespans of low Earth orbit satellites, particularly large satellite constellations like SpaceX’s Starlink, sending them careening back to Earth at greater velocities.

The details:

• The researchers tracked the fates of 523 Starlink satellites reentering Earth's atmosphere between 2020–2024, a period of intense solar activity.

• Using TLE tracking data and epoch analysis, they found that geomagnetic storms dramatically accelerated the orbital decay of these satellites.

• The culprit is the heating and expansion of the upper atmosphere during solar storms, which increases atmospheric drag, causing satellites to lose altitude.

• Prediction errors for satellite reentry timing swell during high solar activity, making it harder for operators to ensure safe, controlled deorbiting.

Why it matters: This is more than a statistical anomaly—it’s a warning for the satellite industry, the researchers say. With more than 7K Starlink satellites in orbit and thousands more on the way, the sheer frequency of reentries—sometimes dozens in just a few days—could put a strain on efforts to keep low-Earth orbit secure.

NASA

🚀 Trump to kickstart Mars missions with $1B

Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown

The Rundown: In a controversial pivot for the U.S. space policy, President Trump’s 2026 budget proposal carves out more than $1B to kickstart human missions to Mars — putting private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin in the driver’s seat.

The details:

• Central to the plan is NASA’s new Commercial Mars Payload Services Program, awarding contracts to companies developing critical Mars mission technologies.

• The approach mirrors the agency’s recent lunar partnerships and is designed to push innovation, reduce costs, and align with entrepreneurs like Elon Musk.

• But this Mars move comes with a dramatic trade-off: Trump’s proposed NASA budget totals $18.8B, slashing the agency’s overall funding by nearly 25%.

• The administration aims for crewed Mars missions to launch by the early 2030s, accelerating timelines previously considered by NASA.

Why it matters: The Mars push is a response to China’s rapidly advancing spaceflight program, with Trump vowing to keep the U.S. “first on Mars.” But it faces skepticism in Congress, with lawmakers questioning the feasibility of the timeline, the wisdom of deep science cuts, and the risk of over-reliance on private industry for space priorities.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in tech today

Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, announced that the majority of his wealth will go toward improving health and education in Africa over the next two decades.

Alphabet agreed to spend $500M over the next decade to overhaul its global compliance structure as part of a settlement of antitrust violations.

Meta is reportedly actively developing a dedicated Instagram app for Apple's iPad, with internal testing underway and a public release expected by the end of 2025.

Microsoft announced an additional 305 layoffs at its Redmond, Washington, campus, following recent companywide cuts involving 3% of the company’s staff.

French pharma giant Sanofi announced it is acquiring Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech startup Blueprint Medicines for up to $9.5B.

TikTok unveiled "TikTok for Artists," a new music analytics platform aimed at empowering musicians with tools and insights to grow their careers.

Samsung is reportedly in discussions with AI startup Perplexity to bring the company’s app, assistant, and search capabilities to upcoming Samsung devices.

A new human study finds that plasma exchange therapy—an intervention where a portion of a person’s plasma is replaced—may slow biological aging.

New analysis shows that since January 2025, more than $14B in U.S. clean energy projects have been canceled or delayed, with some 10K planned jobs lost.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Check out our last workshop with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the end of the workshop, you’ll confidently be able to use AI coding agents to improve your development workflow.

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

See you soon,

Rowan, Jennifer, and Joey—The Rundown’s editorial team

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Marketing is already undergoing some drastic changes in the AI era, but Mark Zuckerberg’s latest push aims to take the entire advertising process out of human hands.

With just a product photo and a budget, Meta’s rumored 2026 system would handle everything from visuals, copy, user targeting, and deployment — potentially upending social media marketing as we know it.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Meta’s fully automated AI ad platform

• Microsoft offers free Sora access on Bing

• How to automate coding tasks with async development

• Sakana’s AI learns to upgrade its own code

• 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

META

🤖 Meta’s fully automated AI ad platform

Image source: o3 / The Rundown

The Rundown: Meta aims to release tools that eliminate humans from the advertising process by 2026, according to a report from the WSJ — developing an AI that can create ads for Facebook and Instagram using just a product image and budget.

The details:

• Companies would submit product images and budgets, letting AI craft the text and visuals, select target audiences, and manage campaign placement.

• The system will be able to create personalized ads that can adapt in real-time, like a car spot featuring mountains vs. an urban street based on user location.

• The push would target smaller companies lacking dedicated marketing staff, promising professional-grade advertising without agency fees or skillset.

• Advertising is a core part of Mark Zuckerberg’s AI strategy and already accounts for 97% of Meta’s annual revenue.

Why it matters: We’re already seeing AI transform advertising through image, video, and text, but Zuck’s vision takes the process entirely out of human hands. With so much marketing flowing through FB and IG, a successful system would be a major disruptor — particularly for small brands that just want results without the hassle.

TOGETHER WITH UNSTRUCTURED

🐀 Are you building a data rat's nest?

The Rundown: Building your own data processing pipeline starts simple, but scaling it is another story — with a few scripts and connectors quickly turning into a tangled mess of never-ending fixes and updates.

Unstructured replaces the DIY rat’s nest with:

• Coverage across 35+ data sources and 64+ file types with zero maintenance overhead

• AI-tailored processing with chunking, embedding, and enrichment for GenAI use cases

• Enterprise-grade security, compliance, and role-based access that works at scale

Get started today!

MICROSOFT

🎥 Microsoft offers free Sora access on Bing

Image source: Microsoft

The Rundown: Microsoft just announced Bing Video Creator, integrating OpenAI’s Sora video generation model into the Bing mobile app and allowing users to create five-second outputs from text descriptions with no subscription required.

The details:

• Users get 10 fast video generations and unlimited slower generations, and can earn more fast credits through Microsoft's rewards program.

• The feature launches on Bing’s iOS and Android mobile apps, with desktop and Copilot Search releases coming soon.

• Videos are currently limited to vertical format and 5-second clips, with up to three videos able to be created simultaneously.

Why it matters: Sora was one of the more hyped products in AI, but failed to live up to expectations and was quickly surpassed by rival models. But most generators have been stowed behind subscriptions — meaning a new user base may be exposed to a free (albeit limited) video creation option for the first time.

AI TRAINING

🤖 How to automate coding tasks with async development

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Google’s async development agent Jules to automatically fix bugs, add features, and handle software engineering tasks in your GitHub repositories.

Step-by-step:

1. Visit Jules and connect your GitHub account to access your repositories

2. Select your specific repository and branch from the dropdown menus

3. Describe your task in the chat: “Write me a README file” or “Fix the authentication bug”

4. Review the plan, click “Approve,” let it work asynchronously, and then “Publish Branch” when done! 🚀

Pro tip: You get 60 daily tasks that refresh every 24 hours, so you can use Jules completely free of charge for your most repetitive coding work.

PRESENTED BY HACKERRANK

😵 AI broke the technical interview

The Rundown: Hiring managers report candidates acing assessments with answers they later can’t explain. HackerRank’s new interview features close this gap by giving deeper insight into how candidates think and solve problems in realistic, controlled settings.

With HackerRank, you can:

• Enforce AI-use with real-time integrity alerts

• Watch candidates prompt built in AI

• Test skills in live code repos

Learn more.

SAKANA AI

🧠 Sakana’s AI learns to upgrade its own code

Image source: Sakana AI

The Rundown: Researchers from Sakana AI and the University of British Columbia just introduced the Darwin Gödel Machine, an AI agent that rewrites its own code to get better at tasks, achieving up to 150% performance improvements without intervention.

The details:

• DGM starts as a coding assistant, but autonomously discovers improvements like editing tools, error memory, and peer review capabilities.

• It significantly boosted its performance in coding benchmarks, jumping from 20% to 50% on SWE-bench and 14% to over 30% on Polyglot.

• Inspired by Darwinian evolution, DGM tries out changes to its code, keeps what works, and archives promising "mutations" for future improvements.

• The self-taught improvements also made the AI perform better when the underlying model was swapped out, showing it wasn’t unique to a single model.

Why it matters: While most AI models are frozen post-training and reliant on manual new version releases, DGM is a shift toward AI that can learn and improve itself over time. This self-evolution could accelerate AI far beyond initial training, but also introduces risks of maintaining control as systems become increasingly autonomous.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🗣️ Conversational AI 2.0 - ElevenLab’s updated AI voice agent platform

• ⚙️ Google Edge Gallery - Deploy AI across mobile, web, and embedded apps

• 🔌 Circuit Tracing - Anthropic's open source tools to see how AI thinks

• 🔬 Zochi — Intology’s PhD-level AI agent

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 📞 The Rundown - Account Manager

• 😊 UiPath - Customer Success Manager

• 🤝 Writer - Engagement Manager

• 🎯 OpenAI - Executive Programs Lead

📰 Everything else in AI today

Samsung is reportedly in talks with AI startup Perplexity to integrate the platform’s app, assistant, and search features across new Samsung devices.

PlayAI open-sourced PlayDiffusion, an audio inpainting model capable of precise voice output modifications without disrupting natural flow.

Captions launched Mirage Studio, a platform that generates hyper-realistic videos with AI actors from audio or scripts for UGC and marketing content.

Character AI unveiled multimodal creation tools, including AvatarFX image-to-video, interactive Scenes, Streams for character interactions, and animated chat sharing.

IBM announced watsonx AI Labs, an innovation hub in New York City aimed at increasing enterprise AI adoption — also acquiring data analysis startup Seek AI.

The U.S. Food & Drug Administration launched Elsa, an agency-wide AI platform to help speed clinical reviews and scientific evaluations.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Watch our last live workshop

Check out our last workshop with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the end of the workshop, you’ll confidently be able to use AI coding agents to improve your development workflow.

Watch 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

Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. Open-source trailblazer Hugging Face just unveiled HopeJR, a full-featured humanoid set to launch at just $3K— far below the usual price tag of humanoids.

With China’s Unitree also just teasing a sub-$10 K humanoid, the race is on: is the era of affordable, accessible robots finally here?

In today’s robotics rundown:

• Hugging Face unveils two new humanoids

• U.S. scientists create self-healing robot skin

• New Transformer bot can fly and land on wheels

• China builds robotic thrusters to protect space station

• Quick hits on other robotics news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

HUGGING FACE

🤖 Hugging Face unveils two new humanoids

Image source: Hugging Face/X

The Rundown: Open-source leader Hugging Face has unveiled two new open-source robots: HopeJR and Reachy Mini. HopeJR is a full-sized humanoid, capable of walking, performing intricate gestures, and manipulating objects — all for just $3K.

The details:

• Priced at $250–$300, Reachy Mini offers a desktop-friendly platform with head movement, microphones, and speakers.

• Both HopeJR and Reachy Mini are fully open-source, with hardware schematics, software, and build instructions freely available.

• HopeJR features 66 actuated degrees of freedom and dexterous hands featuring tactile arrays in the fingertips for sensory feedback.

• The robots are designed with modular, 3D-printed parts, allowing for easy repairs, upgrades, and experimentation.

Why it matters: The launch follows Hugging Face’s buyout of Pollen Robotics and partnerships with The Robot Studio, as the company works to foster a collaborative robotics community. With open waitlists and early interest, these robots are positioned to support robotics research while helping lower barriers to entry for creators.

UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA

🩹 U.S. scientists create self-healing robot skin

Image source: University of Nebraska–Lincoln

The Rundown: A team of engineers at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln has developed a groundbreaking soft robotic skin that can detect and repair its own damage, much the way human skin can.

The details:

• The artificial skin features a multi-layered structure, with distinct layers for sensing, structural support, and healing, mimicking natural skin.

• Flexible piezoresistive and capacitive sensors are embedded within soft polymers, enabling the detection of pressure, strain, and even small tears.

• Microcontrollers process sensor data on the fly, instantly identifying the location and severity of damage in real time.

• The team incorporates hydrogels that maintain flexibility and conductivity even after repeated damage and healing cycles, ensuring long-term durability.

Why it matters: What sets this work apart is the use of bioinspired polymers and hydrogels, designed to self-heal through dynamic covalent bonds and supramolecular interactions. While still early days, the system’s layered architecture holds promise for next-gen healthcare wearables, adaptive prosthetics, and resilient robotic skins.

CALTECH

🚀 New Transformer bot can fly and land on wheels

Image source: Caltech

The Rundown: A team of Caltech engineers has developed a real-life Transformer—dubbed ATMO (Aerially Transforming Morphobot)—that can both fly like a drone and morph in midair to land on wheels and smoothly roll away.

The details:

• Unlike conventional drones or rovers, ATMO’s design centers on four powerful thrusters, each encased in robust shrouds that double as wheels.

• When ATMO is in drive mode, these shrouds provide traction and stability for rapid movement across diverse terrains.

• A single central motor actuates the transformation, lifting or lowering the thrusters to switch between modes.

• The transition from ground to air (and vice versa) takes just a few seconds, enabling ATMO to quickly adapt to changing environments or obstacles.

Why it matters: This dual-mode capability opens up a host of possibilities for applications that demand both ground mobility and aerial agility. As research into morphobots like ATMO progresses, we may soon see these adaptable machines deployed in search-and-rescue missions, military ops, and environmental monitoring.

CHINA SPACE PROGRAM

🛰️ China builds robot thrusters to protect space station

Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown

The Rundown: After two near-misses where Starlink satellites nearly crashed into its Tiangong space station, China is now developing robotic thrusters that can autonomously latch onto and thrust away unidentified objects flying nearby.

The details:

• The system centers on a small, agile robotic thruster capable of intercepting and physically maneuvering unidentified spacecraft that venture too close.

• Unlike traditional kinetic or destructive anti-satellite measures, this approach uses a robotic “space tug” to latch onto the object and push it away.

• The interceptor uses advanced sensors and AI-driven navigation algorithms to identify, track, and approach potential threats with high precision.

• Beyond defense, the tech could also be adapted for active debris removal and orbital traffic control, helping to maintain safe distances between satellites.

Why it matters: This approach addresses security concerns over close-approach incidents — especially from foreign satellites — while also helping to keep orbital zones clear. The system reflects a broader trend among major space powers to develop non-destructive methods for managing threats in increasingly crowded orbits.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in robotics today

Chinese robotics giant Unitree just teased a sub-$10K next-gen humanoid robot on X.

U.S. robotics startup Figure announced that its newest humanoid, the F.03, has begun walking, marking a big step in the company’s development.

DJI, the Chinese drone maker, has begun mass production of its first robotic vacuum cleaner after four years in R&D, with the initial model expected to launch this month.

Xuzhou Construction Machinery Group Co. announced that it has delivered 100 all-electric uncrewed mining trucks to a coal mine pit in Inner Mongolia, China.

Libraries in South Wales have introduced MetaCats, life-sized robotic cats with artificial heartbeats and glowing LED eyes, designed to reduce stress and loneliness.

Korean roboticists have designed and tested a four-legged robot that can perform high-speed parkour moves, with details on the project published in Science Robotics.

Tesla is launching its autonomous robotaxi service in Austin on June 12, with the initial rollout featuring at least 10 driverless vehicles operating within geofenced areas.

Robotics company Dexterity has announced a strategic partnership with Sanmina Corp. to scale its Mech “superhumanoid” arms, capable of lifting 60 pounds each.

The world's tallest 3D-printed building, a 98-foot (around 30-meter) tower, was just inaugurated in Mulegns, a mountain village in Switzerland.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Check out our last workshop with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the end of the workshop, you’ll confidently be able to use AI coding agents to improve your development workflow.

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

See you soon,

Rowan, Jennifer, and Joey—The Rundown’s editorial team

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Apple’s flagship event of the year is just a week away, but the tech giant’s AI ambitions might be temporarily hitting the snooze button.

With insiders revealing the upcoming WWDC will be a “gap year” event that pushes more impactful AI reveals to 2026, the gap between Apple and the AI competition has never looked wider.

In today’s AI rundown:

• AI letdown expected at Apple’s WWDC

• Record giants, music AI startups eye licensing deals

• Transform deep research into visual infographics

• AI beats humans on emotional intelligence tests

• 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

APPLE

🍎 AI letdown expected at Apple’s WWDC

Image source: Apple

The Rundown: Apple's upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference may disappoint on the AI front, according to Bloomberg insider Mark Gurman — with reported plans for a less hyped event as a “gap year” to push for a stronger AI reveal in 2026.

The details:

• Apple will open its 3B parameter models to developers, enabling custom AI features in third-party apps but with limited capabilities compared to rivals.

• The company reportedly plans to rebrand existing features as "AI-powered" and introduce a new naming system for its OS to shift perception.

• Major AI projects remain in limbo, including an LLM-powered Siri overhaul, health-focused Project Mulberry, and a ChatGPT competitor with web search.

• Gurman added that Apple’s 150B model is nearing ChatGPT quality in testing, but accuracy concerns and exec disagreements have kept it under wraps.

Why it matters: Apple finds itself in a difficult position — with sky-high expectations and accelerating competition paired with a serious lack of progress on the AI front. While a “gap year” might be needed to prepare a product that can give what users expect, the AI leaders certainly won’t be slowing down during that time.

TOGETHER WITH VANTA

📖 The new playbook for building AI-era startups

The Rundown: Speed alone isn't enough anymore — today's startups need sharper, smarter strategies from day one. Learn from Vanta's Christina Cacioppo and The Generalist's Mario Gabriele in this tactical discussion for founders navigating the rapidly shifting startup landscape.

This live session covers:

• Strategies for accelerating product-market fit in the AI era

• Frameworks for choosing tools that 10x your business impact

• Tactics for building competitive moats without funding or brand recognition

Save your spot and discover hard-earned lessons you won’t find in traditional playbooks.

AI & MUSIC

🎵 Record giants, music AI startups eye licensing deals

Image source: Reve / The Rundown

The Rundown: Music giants Universal, Warner, and Sony are reportedly in talks with AI music leaders Udio and Suno to negotiate licensing deals that could resolve billion-dollar lawsuits and establish standards for how artists are compensated by AI firms.

The details:

• The labels are seeking licensing fees and equity stakes in the startups, creating a framework for compensating artists whose work is used in training.

• The companies sued both Udio and Suno in 2024 for copyright infringement, seeking up to $150k per work infringed, potentially totaling billions in damages.

• A deal would reportedly put an end to the lawsuits, with the negotiations happening “in parallel” and creating a race between firms to strike the first deal.

Why it matters: This showdown echoes the music industry's past fights with Napster and streaming services — but this time, labels seem ready to negotiate rather than fight to the death. Just like we’ve seen in journalism and social media platforms, AI licensing is becoming a lucrative revenue stream and alternative to pricey court battles.

AI TRAINING

📊 Transform deep research into visual infographics

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Google Gemini's deep research feature to analyze complex topics and automatically generate visual infographics from research findings using its new visualization capabilities.

Step-by-step:

1. Go to Google’s Gemini website and click “Deep Research” at the bottom of the chat interface

2. Enter your research topic and review the plan Gemini creates, then click “Edit plan” to modify or “Start research” to proceed

3. Once your comprehensive report is ready, click the “Create” button and select “Infographic” to turn your report into an interactive HTML visualization

4. Toggle between Code and Preview views in Canvas to see and customize your infographic.

Pro tip: The more specific your initial query, the better your results. Instead of broad topics, include specific aspects, timeframes, or comparisons you want in your report.

PRESENTED BY RETOOL

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What makes Retool different:

• Model flexibility that works with OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure, or custom implementations

• True integration with your existing tech stack, including databases, APIs, and business tools

• An intuitive visual builder combined with code flexibility for a balance of speed and control

• Enterprise-ready security with built-in permissions and role-based access control

Try Retool today and experience AI agents that actually work for your business.

AI RESEARCH

🧠 AI beats humans on emotional intelligence tests

Image source: o3 / The Rundown

The Rundown: Researchers from the University of Geneva and the University of Bern found that ChatGPT and other AI systems beat humans on emotional intelligence tests, indicating AI may be better at reading emotions and responding than people.

The details:

• Six AI models were tested on standard emotional intelligence assessments, tasked with selecting emotionally appropriate responses to complex scenarios.

• GPT-4, o1, Gemini 1.5 Flash, Copilot 365, Claude 3.5 Haiku, and DeepSeek V3 scored an 81% average in testing, compared to 56% for human participants.

• Beyond just test-taking, GPT-4 also proved capable of quickly creating entirely new and valid emotional intelligence assessments.

• The researchers believe the results show AI's grasp of emotional concepts and reasoning, not just pattern regurgitation from training data.

Why it matters: While AI can't actually “feel” emotions like humans do, its ability to mimic and display optimal emotional intelligence in difficult situations might be just as valuable — and shows the massive promise for integrating LLMs into fields like mental health support, customer service, and education.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 📸 Kontext - BFL’s new advanced image editing model

• 🔎 Perplexity Labs - Build reports and dashboards with multi-tool use

• 📋 Manus Slides - Create tailored slide decks with agentic AI

• 🗣️ EVI 3 - Create custom voices through speech-to-speech interactions

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🤝 The Rundown - Partnerships Manager

• 📝 Mistral AI - Content Marketing Lead, US

• 🛠️ Hebbia - Platform Engineer, Staff

• 📱 Perplexity AI - Mobile Product Manager

📰 Everything else in AI today

BoxWorks 2025 – San Francisco & virtual on Sept. 11-12. Use AI to thrive in business and bring order to unstructured data, explore Intelligent Content Management, and more. (Sponsored)

ElevenLabs launched Conversational AI 2.0, featuring new advanced turn-taking, multilingual detection, and enterprise-grade features, including HIPAA compliance.

OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap said in an interview that the hardware devices OpenAI is building will be “ambient” systems designed for more personal real-world experiences.

Anthropic reportedly reached $3B in annualized revenue, tripling from $1B in December 2024, driven by enterprise demand from its code generation capabilities.

Meta is reportedly in the process of automating up to 90% of its privacy and internal safety risk assessments using AI, replacing human reviewers.

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis revealed that “millions of videos” were generated with Veo 3 in the last week, following an expansion to over 71 new countries.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Watch our last live workshop

Check out our last workshop with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the end of the workshop, you’ll confidently be able to use AI coding agents to improve your development workflow.

Watch 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

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Microsoft has been all over the news lately with its bold vision to completely rebuild Windows PCs around AI.

But while everyone's been debating whether AI should live in the cloud or on your device, the tech giant quietly chose both through a unique hybrid AI approach.

So, we partnered up with Microsoft and Pavan Davuluri, Corporate Vice President of Windows and Devices, to find out more through an exclusive Q&A on Copilot+ PCs, NPU architecture, and the future roadmap of Windows.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Microsoft’s bold hybrid AI vision

• Enabling on-device AI experiences

• How AI workloads are distributed

• Windows evolves toward autonomous AI agents

EXCLUSIVE Q&A PAVAN DAVULURI

HYBRID AI

👀 Microsoft’s bold hybrid AI vision

Image source: Kiki Wu / The Rundown

The Rundown: Microsoft is fundamentally restructuring Windows around a hybrid AI architecture that dynamically routes workloads between local neural processing units (NPUs) and cloud compute—positioning itself to control both ends of the spectrum.

Cheung: “Why is Windows betting on a hybrid AI approach that blends both local and cloud together?”

Davuluri: “Our thesis, when we started the Copilot+ PC journey last year, was to bring highly accelerated AI compute to the edge in an energy-efficient form factor.”

Davuluri added: “The long-term vision and true differentiation will stem from our ability to compute and provide context appropriately for the underlying experience, whether it be client-based, cloud-based, or a combination of both.”

Cheung: “When Microsoft introduced Copilot+ PCs last year, it established a 40+ TOPS NPU as the new performance benchmark for AI PCs. What was the rationale behind this requirement?”

Davuluri: “We believe technology should adapt to you, not the other way around, and to make the vision a reality, we needed to raise the bar for what was possible to run sustained AI workloads on a device.”

Davuluri added: "We had some intuition on the trajectory of how AI and AI-compute silicon were evolving and given memory boundedness at scale—where we would have a requirement that was scalable and still pushed what was possible on client silicon."

Why it matters: Microsoft is building infrastructure to capture value from AI workloads whether AI's future is local, cloud, or both. By designing Copilot+ PCs that scale with advancing models and forcing the industry to meet their 40+ TOPS standard, the company is betting that their hardware becomes more valuable over time.

PRACTICAL BENEFITS

🖥️ Enabling on-device AI experiences

Image source: Kiki Wu / The Rundown

The Rundown: Microsoft is now delivering AI experiences that run entirely on-device through Copilot+ PCs, breaking the traditional model where advanced AI features require cloud subscriptions, usage tokens, or constant internet connectivity.

Cheung: "Day-to-day, what tangible improvements can users actually feel from NPU-powered Windows?"

Davuluri: "Copilot+ PCs are the only PCs where you can find professional-grade AI editing tools like Relight and super resolution in Photos, or Cocreator, with no subscription or tokens required."

Davuluri added: "You can run AI efficiently without draining your battery, without an internet connection, and when you want the security promise of your data staying on device, you get that too."

Cheung: "Why is running local models a benefit to users?"

Davuluri: "Local models on a device have advantages that can complement cloud-powered AI experiences, particularly in areas of privacy, latency, and offline usage—a good example being our first agent in Windows, the agent in Settings."

Davuluri added: "As local SLMs improve with reasoning capabilities, the potential applications increase—especially if you look at the benchmarks of something like Phi-4 Reasoning and the fact that we can now run 14B parameter models on-device.”

Why it matters: With on-device NPUs, Microsoft can run AI locally and eliminate some subscription fees while delivering enhanced privacy and performance. As small language models (SLMs) continue to advance, Copilot+ PCs shift users toward highly capable AI they truly own rather than ‘rent’ through cloud services.

NPU

🧠 How AI workloads are distributed

Image source: Kiki Wu / The Rundown

The Rundown: To handle new AI experiences, Microsoft added a third processor to PCs—the neural processing unit (NPU)—which changes how AI computation works by offloading AI tasks from the CPU and GPU, allowing each to focus on what they do best.

Cheung: “What are the practical advantages of using NPUs versus GPUs or CPUs for AI workloads?”

Davuluri: "CPUs were built to process scalars—multiplying two numbers. When GPUs came along, they were optimized for vectors—multiplying many numbers together in parallel. NPUs are domain specific silicon purpose-built to run computation for models such as neural networks."

Davuluri added: "Because the NPU adds a third processor to your Windows PC, it also adds the unique benefit of freeing the GPU and CPU to do what they're best at, while enabling the AI workloads to run efficiently and consistently in the background."

Davuluri added: “This is the path to pervasive AI.”

Cheung: “What are some concrete examples of how NPU efficiency enables unique experiences for users?“

Davuluri: “A good example is Recall. This is something that runs in the background, doesn't eat up battery life, which is the type of AI feature that enables a host of new experiences that weren't possible before at this price point.”

Davuluri added: "A notable feature of the NPU on the Copilot+ PC is that it is an open platform, which allows for the execution of any model using Windows ML, a high-performance local inference runtime built directly into Windows."

Why it matters: Microsoft's Copilot+ PCs integrate next-gen NPUs from AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm—engineered to offload and accelerate complex AI tasks locally. This enables advanced features like Recall, Live Translations, and Super Resolution, while allowing developers to explore and innovate in ways we’ve only begun to imagine.

AGENTIC FUTURE

🔮 Windows evolves toward autonomous AI agents

Image source: Kiki Wu / The Rundown

The Rundown: Microsoft is building toward a future where Windows becomes an agentic platform, with AI that runs long-running reasoning loops locally, understands context across applications, and can autonomously complete complex tasks.

Cheung: "Over the next few years, where will Copilot+ PCs benefit the most as small language models accelerate? How do you see AI workloads evolving on-device?"

Davuluri: "I think over time what you're going to find is that we're going to evolve to a place where agentic experiences are going to become more front and center for people on a daily basis."

Davuluri added: "Where we see significant potential is AI being able to perform tasks on your PC asynchronously through long-running reasoning loops. This occurs entirely on the PC, allowing efficient computation and reasoning with NPUs."

Cheung: "What do you see as the biggest greenfield opportunity areas for local AI—what use cases will be the most transformational for users?"

Davuluri: "Local AI will be transformational in enabling always-on AI experiences. Things like deep personalization and context setting, making it easier to use the computer to get what you need. Commanding rather than pointing."

Davuluri added: "Just like we do not use the full capacity of our brain in every moment, having a stack that scales AI compute from client to cloud is a core capability we're building into Windows to bring the best of both worlds together."

Why it matters: Microsoft is reimagining Windows as the platform where AI becomes proactive rather than reactive. With local processing handling context while cloud manages reasoning, next-gen experiences could shift from "point and click" to "command and delegate"—changing how we interact with future computers.

Good morning, tech enthusiasts. Just days after SpaceX’s Starship notched its third straight test-flight flop, Elon Musk doubled down on his bold claim: the giant rocket is heading to Mars next year.

Why the rush for 2026? That’s when a rare planetary alignment opens up the shortest route to the Red Planet. But with Starship racking up fiery headlines, the question remains: is this cosmic hype or actually plausible?

In today’s tech rundown:

• Musk eyes 2026 Mars mission despite all odds

• New e-tattoo tracks stress and boredom at work

• Neuralink scores $600M at a $9B valuation

• Perplexity’s tool for crafting apps and reports

• Quick hits on other major news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

SPACEX

🚀 Musk eyes 2026 Mars mission despite all odds

Image source: SpaceX

The Rundown: Mere days after SpaceX’s Starship endured its third straight test-flight setback, Elon Musk says he still anticipates the massive spacecraft will embark on its inaugural uncrewed mission to Mars by the close of next year. 

The details:

• The Starship rocket, at 123 meters tall, is the largest and most powerful ever built, but its development has been marred by multiple high-profile failures.

• Musk’s timeline hinges on overcoming significant technical challenges, especially the need for in-orbit refueling for the months-long voyage.

• Starship plans to carry a simulated crew made up of Tesla’s Optimus robots, with the first human landings targeted for as early as 2029.

• Interestingly, in a video posted online from SpaceX headquarters, Musk also hedged his bets, saying a successful mission in 2026 was only 50% likely.

Why it matters: Although SpaceX had announced that Musk would present the company’s Mars colonization plans in a livestream ahead of Starship’s latest test flight, the webcast never aired as planned. Still, it seems SpaceX remains committed to its Mars plans, despite the immense engineering challenges of deep-space exploration.

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS

🩺 New e-tattoo tracks stress and boredom at work

Image source: University of Texas at Austin

The Rundown: Stressed or tired at work? A new “e-tattoo” can track that. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have engineered a wireless electronic e-tattoo that offers real-time monitoring of brain activity and eye movements.

The details:

• Engineered to track cognitive fatigue in high-stakes fields such as air traffic control, the e-tattoo analyzes brain activity in real time.

• By monitoring neural signals, it can accurately detect levels of mental effort and alert users when they are approaching cognitive overload.

• Weighing at 2.5 grams with just 1 mm thick (without the battery), the e-tattoo is exceptionally lightweight and thin.

• It monitors vital health metrics, including ECG, seismocardiogram (SCG), blood oxygen saturation (SpO₂), heart rate, skin temperature, and hydration levels.

Why it matters: Unlike bulky EEG caps or medical monitors, the e-tattoo is ultra-thin, flexible, and can be worn during everyday activities or demanding jobs. It’s still an early-stage tech, requiring further form-factor refinements, but experts think it could open up new possibilities for real-time, continuous tracking of brain and heart health.

NEURALINK

🧠 Neuralink scores $600M at a $9B valuation

Image source: Neuralink

The Rundown: Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface (BCI) startup, Neuralink, has reportedly pulled in $600M in fresh funding, propelling its pre-money valuation to $9B— a dramatic leap from the $5B reported less than a year ago.

The details:

• The round reportedly attracted heavyweight investors, including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Google Ventures.

• Neuralink recently earned the FDA’s “breakthrough device” designation, a critical regulatory milestone that accelerates the path to clinical trials.

• In human trials, the company’s N1 device successfully enabled paralyzed individuals to control digital devices using only their thoughts.

• Neuralink faces competition from Synchron and Precision Neuroscience, which are also advancing BCI technology but with their own different approaches.

Why it matters: Neuralink is now preparing for clinical trials of its “Blindsight” device, aiming to restore vision for the blind. Despite fierce competition, Neuralink’s soaring valuation and high-profile backers highlight the market’s bullish outlook on BCIs—a field that could soon redefine the boundaries between human and machine.

PERPLEXITY

📊 Perplexity’s tool for crafting apps and reports

Image source: Perplexity

The Rundown: Perplexity, the AI-powered search engine taking on Google, just launched Perplexity Labs — a feature designed to transform user prompts into structured applications like dashboards, reports, storyboards, and charts.

The details:

• Labs can autonomously work for 10 minutes or more, leveraging tools like deep web browsing, live code execution, and chart and image generation.

• The platform organizes all generated assets—such as charts, CSVs, images, and code files—into a unified Assets tab accessible via a dedicated App tab.

• It is available on the web, iOS, and Android (Mac and Windows app support coming soon) for Pro users paying $20 per month.

• The launch comes as Perplexity is also said to be in talks to raise $1B in funding at an $18B valuation.

Why it matters: The launch of Labs follows Perplexity’s broader expansion efforts, including the announcement of its Comet web browser and the acquisition of Read.cv. While we’re yet to try it, the move is part of Perplexity’s goal to cover everything from information retrieval to hands-on content creation for enhanced productivity.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in tech today

Meta AI says that it now has 1B monthly active users across its apps, doubling the 500M monthly active users reported in September 2024.

Starbase, Texas — home to SpaceX’s launch facilities — reportedly notified some residents that they may forfeit “the right to continue using their properties.”

Apple’s U.S. App Store ecosystem enabled $406B in developer billings and sales in 2024, a figure that has nearly tripled since 2019, when it facilitated $142B.

Chinese technology companies are making moves to secure their AI ambitions amid uncertainty about future access to Nvidia’s chips, according to new reports.

Elon Musk’s xAI has agreed on a $300M deal with Telegram (in principle) to bring its Grok chatbot to more than a billion messaging app users this summer.

The New York Times signed its first AI licensing agreement with Amazon, granting the tech giant permission to use its editorial content to train its AI models.

A new Texas law, which Apple CEO Tim Cook tried to block, now requires Apple and Google to verify the ages of users accessing their app stores.

Tinder is testing a new height preference feature that allows Gold and Premium subscribers to set their desired height range for potential matches.

Xiaomi introduced its new electric sport utility vehicle, the YU7, in 13 showrooms across Beijing as a direct competitor to Tesla's Model Y.

AI startup Grammarly secured a $1B commitment from investment company General Catalyst to bolster its sales and marketing efforts.

Social network X announced a temporary suspension of its encrypted DMs while it works on enhancements to the feature.

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 be able to use AI coding agents to improve your development workflow.

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

See you soon,

Rowan, Jennifer, and Joey—The Rundown’s editorial team

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. One of journalism’s last major AI holdouts just fell — with the New York Times officially signing its first-ever AI licensing deal with Amazon.

Despite ongoing lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft, a change in user habits (and financial streams for editorial outlets) may be forcing a decisive new chapter in the industry’s uneasy AI embrace.

In today’s AI rundown:

• NYT signs AI licensing agreement with Amazon

• Black Forest Labs’ new image editing model

• Automate patient consultation documentation

• AI achieves first peer-reviewed paper acceptance

• 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

THE NEW YORK TIMES & AMAZON

📰 NYT signs AI licensing agreement with Amazon

Image source: Gemini / The Rundown

The Rundown: The New York Times just struck its first-ever AI licensing deal with Amazon, allowing the company to use NYT editorial content across its platforms and to train its AI models.

The details:

• The multi-year deal covers licensed content, including articles from the Times, recipes from NYT Cooking, and sports content from The Athletic.

• Amazon will incorporate the content into products like Alexa smart speakers, which will attribute NYT content and provide links for a full reader experience.

• The deal is the NYT’s first AI licensing deal, and comes amidst ongoing lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft over the use of its content for training.

Why it matters: One of the last major holdouts in journalism is finally giving in to the AI wave — but is notably (though unsurprisingly, at least in OpenAI’s case) going with Amazon over stronger AI rivals. The tech has quickly changed how and where users consume content, and even the staunchest detractors are now changing course.

TOGETHER WITH TELY AI

💰 Get organic SEO leads on full autopilot

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Tely AI does SEO for you on autopilot:

• Deep keyword research and topic selection.

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Publish your first article for free.

BLACK FOREST LABS

🎆 Black Forest Labs’ new image editing model

Image source: Black Forest Labs

The Rundown: Black Forest Labs just launched FLUX.1 Kontext, a new AI system that understands both text and images — enabling users to edit and transform images with simple text commands while maintaining character consistency across iterations.

The details:

• Unlike other text-to-image models, Kontext processes visual and text inputs together, enabling targeted editing at speeds up to 8x faster than rival models.

• The system excels at character preservation, local editing, style transfer, and maintaining consistency across multiple steps and versions of an image.

• BFL released two versions: Kontext [pro] for fast multi-step editing and [max] for higher quality, better prompt following, and enhanced typography.

• The company also introduced Playground, a web-based platform for businesses to test models before integrating them via APIs.

Why it matters: OpenAI’s 4o / gpt-image-1 release was a major step forward in editing via text prompts, but often appears to recreate its own rendering of an image rather than preserving important details for specific characters. BFL’s latest release looks to be a step up in maintaining consistency at much faster speeds.

AI TRAINING

🏥 Automate patient consultation documentation

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to build an automated system that transcribes your patient consultations, generates medical summaries, extracts treatment plans, and compiles everything into a document.

Step-by-step:

1. Visit Zapier Agents, click the plus button, and create a “New Agent”

2. Configure your agent to trigger when new (anonymized) audio files are uploaded to a specified folder in Google Drive

3. Add three essential tools: ChatGPT to transcribe the audio, ChatGPT again to create a medical summary and extract treatment recommendations, and Google Docs to compile everything into a structured clinical document

4. Test your setup with simulated data and activate your agent

Note: Always obtain patient consent before recording, remove identifiable info before processing, and ensure storage methods comply with healthcare privacy regulations.

PRESENTED BY GOOGLE CLOUD

📶 Level up your agentic AI game

The Rundown: Startup School: Agentic AI from Google Cloud is back with expert-led workshops that provide actionable strategies for integrating agent technology into your startup's core offerings.

Join this training series for:

• Insights into agent capabilities and why there's never been a better time to adopt them

• Hands-on guidance for implementing Google Cloud's AI tools and pre-trained models

• Access to Google Cloud and AI experts to help solve your scaling challenges

Register for Startup School: Agentic AI now — it all starts on June 10.

INTOLOGY AI

🧪 AI achieves first peer-reviewed paper acceptance

Image source: Intology

The Rundown: Intology AI's Zochi just became the first AI to independently achieve peer-reviewed publication at ACL 2025, an A* natural language processing conference, showing the ability to conduct scientific research at the highest academic standards.

The details:

• Zochi autonomously completed the entire research process, from analyzing thousands of papers to designing experiments and writing the manuscript.

• The system's "Tempest" paper on multi-turn jailbreaking achieved a 4.0 meta-review score, placing it in the top 8.2% of all ACL submissions.

• Operating without human intervention except for formatting fixes, Zochi identified research gaps, implemented new methods, and validated results.

• Intology plans to release Zochi in beta as a collaborative research tool, starting with a general copilot before expanding to full autonomous capabilities.

Why it matters: We’ve seen plenty of competition in the AI scientist arena, but ACL’s selective acceptance rate and the paper’s score reflect one of the most impressive publications to date from an agentic system. As AI begins contributing original research alongside humans, the pace of discovery is about to exponentially increase.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🤖 DeepSeek R1 - New upgraded reasoning and overall improvements

• 🖥️ Neon - Opera’s new agentic web browser

• 🎥 Gemini in Drive - Summarize and ask questions about Google Drive videos

• 🛠️ Retool Agents - Turn your APIs & data into tools AI workers can use

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🤖 Scale AI - Field Engineering Manager, Robotics

• 💻 Captions - Software Engineer, Backend

• 📊 Cresta - Revenue Operations Data Analyst

• 🧠 Grammarly - Strategic Programs Lead

📰 Everything else in AI today

DeepSeek’s new update to its R1 model moved into the No. 3 slot on the Artificial Analysis leaderboard, now behind only OpenAI’s o3 and o4-mini.

Tencent’s Hunyuan released HunyuanVideo-Avatar, an open-source model that turns still images into short videos with sound.

Perplexity launched Labs, a new feature for Pro users that enables content creation like analytical reports, through multi-tool integrations for more complex tasks.

Hume released EVI 3, a new speech language model that creates custom voices through speech-to-speech interaction and outperforms OpenAI's GPT-4o in testing.

Resemble AI open-sourced Chatterbox, a free new voice cloning model that the company claims surpasses leaders like ElevenLabs in testing.

Manus introduced Manus Slides, a new feature allowing the agentic system to create tailored slide decks autonomously.

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 be able to use AI coding agents to improve your development workflow.

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

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See you soon,

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