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AI

AI startup under fire

Rowan Cheung • 5 minutes

Sign Up | Advertise | Podcast | AI University

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

The New York Times is picking a fight with AI again — and this time, search startup Perplexity is in the crosshairs.

As the legal sparks fly, the future of news and information is at stake — will there ever be a resolution to the war between AI and publishers? Let’s get into it…


In today’s AI rundown:

  • New York Times takes legal aim at Perplexity

  • Anthropic reveals major update to AI safety policy

  • Create video presentations with Google Vids

  • Meta researchers develop ‘thinking’ LLMs

  • 6 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

PERPLEXITY

🗞️ New York Times takes legal aim at Perplexity

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: The New York Times just issued a cease and desist notice to AI search startup Perplexity, demanding it stop using the publisher's content without authorization.

The details:

  • The NYT claims Perplexity's use of its articles for AI-generated summaries violates copyright law, accusing the startup of unauthorized use of its journalism.

  • Perplexity reportedly previously told the publisher it would stop crawling its content, but results have continued to show up on the platform.

  • The startup says it's open to working with publishers and will respond to the notice by the Oct. 30 deadline.

  • The NYT previously sued OpenAI and Microsoft over similar concerns, and other media outlets have also accused Perplexity of misusing their content.

Why it matters: As AI-powered search continues to grow, news outlets have even greater fears—the risk of losing traffic and revenue to platforms summarizing their work. With no legal precedents decided on, this doesn’t seem like a problem going away any time soon.

TOGETHER WITH TOUCHCAST

💸 Cut your AI costs in half

The Rundown: Touchcast offers cognitive caching technology that delivers enterprise AI performance at a fraction of the cost — while enhancing efficiency and security.

With CogCache, you can:

  • Reduce LLM token expenses by up to 60%

  • Boost AI response speeds by up to 100x

  • Keep total control with enterprise-grade security and alignment

Get started for free and optimize your AI operations today.

ANTHROPIC

🛡️ Anthropic reveals major update to AI safety policy

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: Anthropic just published a significant update to its Responsible Scaling Policy, introducing new safeguards and governance measures for advanced AI systems and highlighting future benchmarks requiring additional safety protocols.

The details:

  • The policy introduces ‘Capability’ and ‘Required’ Thresholds to trigger enhanced safety measures when AI models reach certain risk levels.

  • The two new thresholds focus on AI capabilities related to bioweapons and autonomous AI research.

  • Anthropic emphasized the need for the risk approach to be ‘exportable,’ hoping that it will become an industry standard and help shape regulation.

  • Anthropic will regularly evaluate its AI models, while a ‘Responsible Scaling Officer’ role will oversee policy implementation and compliance.

  • The company also pledged increased transparency, including public disclosure of capability reports and external expert input.

Why it matters: Anthropic's update represents one of the most comprehensive frameworks yet for responsibly developing advanced AI and continues to cement the company’s standing as the ‘safety-focused’ lab. The move may also foreshadow some major acceleration imminent with new releases in the near future.

AI TRAINING

🎥 Create video presentations with Google Vids

The Rundown: Google Vids is a new AI-powered video creation tool that simplifies the process of recording, writing, editing, and producing videos all in one place.

Step-by-step:

  1. Access Google Vids through your Google Drive by clicking "New" > "Google Vids" (note that it hasn’t been rolled out to every account yet).

  2. Describe your video concept when prompted to start creating.

  3. Customize the AI-generated outline and choose a design style for your video.

  4. Edit and improve your video draft using built-in text, media, and audio tools.

Pro tip: Upload your own custom media by selecting "Media" in the left sidebar and then clicking "Upload." This personal touch will make your video stand out from those relying solely on stock content.

PRESENTED BY INNOVATING WITH AI

💼 Start your career as an AI Consultant

The Rundown: Innovating with AI’s new program, AI Consultancy Project, equips AI enthusiasts with all the resources to capitalize on the rapidly growing AI consulting market – which is set to 8x to $54.7B by 2032.

The program offers:

  • Tools and framework to find clients and deliver top-notch services

  • A 6-month roadmap to build a 6-figure AI consulting business

  • Student landing their first AI client in as little as 3 days

Click here to request early access to The AI Consultancy Project.

META

🧠 Meta researchers develop ‘thinking’ LLMs

Image source: Meta FAIR

The Rundown: Meta researchers just introduced a new method called Thought Preference Optimization (TPO) to train large language models to ‘think’ before responding to general instructions — not just reasoning tasks.

The details:

  • TPO prompts models to generate internal thoughts before responding to user instructions, similar to how humans think before speaking.

  • The AI's thoughts are kept private, with only the final answer shown to users — with the AI using trial-and-error without direct supervision to optimize outputs.

  • TPO outperforms standard models on key benchmarks for non-reasoning tasks like marketing and creative writing but declines in math-related tasks.

  • The approach builds on the recent OpenAI ‘Strawberry’ research and o1 model release, which takes time to reason.

Why it matters: Meta’s own Yann LeCun may scoff at the notion, but this method shows the potential of AI to ‘think’ for broader tasks than just math and reasoning. By allowing models to learn useful thought processes independently, TPO could also enable more capable and flexible AI assistants across a wider range of domains.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

  • 🔎 Perplexity for Mac - Search and discovery with AI, now available for Macs

  • ⚙️ Gradio 5.0 - Build and share delightful machine-learning apps

  • 📊 Strella - End-to-end customer research platform with AI-moderated interviews and real-time synthesis

  • 👏 Claap 3.0 - AI sales coach that handles meeting notes, CRM enrichment, deal reviews, and more

  • 👨‍💻 Code2ai - Turn your ideas into code and build with your own assistant

New AI Job Opportunities

QUICK HITS

The US government is considering capping AI chip exports from companies like Nvidia and AMD to certain countries, particularly in the Middle East, due to national security concerns.

Adobe showcased ‘Project Super Sonic’ at its MAX conference, an experimental AI tool that generates custom sound effects for videos using text prompts, object recognition, and voice imitation.

Amazon unveiled a new AI-powered creative suite for advertisers, including tools to generate video, audio, and animated image ads.

Google released its AI-powered shopping experience, featuring personalized recommendations, AI-generated product briefs, and deal-finding tools.

Apple debuted its new 7th generation iPad mini, the cheapest device ($499 base) to eventually support Apple Intelligence, which will include other AI features for writing and photo editing.

The University of Tokyo researchers revealed TANGO, an AI system that generates realistic human speakers, movements, and gestures to match audio input.

THAT’S A WRAP

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, and Alvaro—aka The Rundown Team

AI

Firefly takes on AI Video

Rowan Cheung • 5 minutes

Sign Up | Advertise | Podcast | AI University

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

Adobe’s Firefly just got a video upgrade — and unlike OpenAI’s long-awaited Sora, it’s available to everyone.

With impressive generation capabilities built right into the popular creative suite, is Adobe’s new model the trojan horse that takes AI video mainstream? Let’s get into it…


In today’s AI rundown:

  • Adobe unveils Firefly Video Model at MAX

  • OpenAI locked in legal battle with… Open AI?

  • Turn websites into engaging presentations

  • AI simulates Counter-Strike using neural network

  • 5 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

ADOBE

🎬 Adobe unveils Firefly Video Model at MAX

Image source: Adobe

The Rundown: Adobe just announced the addition of new video generation capabilities to its Firefly AI model and Premiere Pro at the company’s MAX Conference, alongside a slew of major AI updates across its creative software ecosystem.

The details:

  • The new Firefly Video Model is now in limited public beta and allows users to generate video from text prompts or images in Firefly and Adobe Premiere.

  • Video capabilities include cinematic video, 2D and 3D animations, text graphics, b-roll, and screen effects to blend with normal footage.

  • The model is trained exclusively on Adobe Stock and public domain content and is designed to be ‘commercially safe.’

  • Premiere Pro gets Generative Extend, a Firefly-powered tool for easily extending clips, smoothing transitions, and fine-tuning edits.

  • Adobe also rolled out 100+ features across Creative Cloud apps, GenStudio for enterprise marketing, and Project Concept for collaborative remixing.

Why it matters: Adobe’s new model looks impressive and could be one of the first AI video systems to truly break into the mainstream with seamless inclusion in its popular creative suite. While OpenAI’s Sora STILL awaits public access, others are filling the void with powerful models — it’s getting more competitive by the day.

TOGETHER WITH INNOVATING WITH AI

💼 Start your career as an AI Consultant

The Rundown: Innovating with AI’s new program, AI Consultancy Project, equips AI enthusiasts with all the resources to capitalize on the rapidly growing AI consulting market – which is set to 8x to $54.7B by 2032.

The program offers:

  • Tools and framework to find clients and deliver top-notch services

  • A 6-month roadmap to build a 6-figure AI consulting business

  • Student landing their first AI client in as little as 3 days

Click here to request early access to the AI Consultancy Project.

OPENAI

🏛️ OpenAI locked in legal battle with… Open AI? 

Image source: Bloomberg

The Rundown: OpenAI is reportedly involved in a trademark dispute with Guy Ravine, who owns the ‘Open AI’ (with a space) trademark and claims he conceived and pitched the idea for the initiative to major tech leaders before the company's founders.

The details:

  • Ravine registered the domain open.ai in March 2015 and owns the ‘Open AI’ trademark, which Sam Altman and Greg Brockman tried to purchase from him.

  • He alleges he pitched the concept to tech figures like Larry Page and Yann LeCun months before OpenAI's launch in December 2015.

  • OpenAI sued Ravine in 2023, accusing him of trying to profit from their brand, and Ravine countersued, saying the company stole his idea.

  • A judge dismissed much of Ravine’s countersuit in September, though he plans to refile and push for a trial.

Why it matters: This Bloomberg investigation is wild, and it’s hard to discern whether this is a case of pure delusion or the underdog getting crushed by the big corporation. As the article points out, there’s major irony in the trademark dispute, given OpenAI’s legal issues from training data and copyright complaints.

AI TRAINING

🌐 Turn websites into engaging presentations

The Rundown: Gamma's AI tool can transform any web content, including your blog posts, into professional presentations with just a few clicks.

Step-by-step:

  1. Log in to your Gamma account (or sign up for free).

  2. Click "+ Create new" and choose "Import file or URL."

  3. Select "Import from URL" and paste your website’s URL.

  4. In the prompt editor, select the amount of text, language, and AI images you prefer.

  5. Hit "Continue" and watch your presentation come to life!

Pro tip: Choose from hundreds of themes to make your presentation pop and resonate with your target audience.

PRESENTED BY SECTION

📖 Your playbook for Enterprise AI deployment

The Rundown: Get Section's Enterprise AI Deployment Playbook in this free event and ensure your team is among the 7% seeing real productivity gains from AI.

Join Section’s CEO & COO on Oct. 24 to learn:

  • How to measure the baseline AI proficiency of your team and find your AI champions

  • How to set solid AI policies that ensure brand-safe compliance

  • How to pick high opportunity workflows for AI augmentation and launch pilots

RSVP for free and unlock AI's full potential for your organization.

AI RESEARCH

🎮 AI simulates Counter-Strike using neural network

Image source: DIAMOND

The Rundown: Researchers from the University of Geneva, University of Edinburgh, and Microsoft developed DIAMOND, an AI model that can generate a playable simulation of Counter-Strike(CS:GO) at 10 frames per second within a neural network.

The details:

  • DIAMOND uses a diffusion-based approach, predicting the next frame based on previous frames and actions.

  • The model was trained on just 87 hours of CS:GO gameplay data, a fraction of what similar projects (like Google’s recent DOOM simulation) typically use.

  • Users can interact with the simulation using a keyboard and mouse, with the AI recreating elements like weapon mechanics and player interactions.

  • The model achieved a 46% better than human-level score on the Atari 100k benchmark, a SOTA performance for agents trained on a world model.

Why it matters: While still imperfect, DIAMOND points towards applications in robotics, autonomous systems, and virtual world creation. The ability to generate interactive, physics-based environments could revolutionize how AI is trained for real-world tasks. Plus, open-world video game creation is about to seriously level up.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

  • ⚙️ LLMWare - Dev tool to make AI apps deployed privately or locally

  • 🎬 Director Mode by Wondercraft - Fine-tune and direct AI voices through prompts

  • 🔊 Audeus - Read aloud PDFs, Google Docs, email, and more using text-to-speech AI

  • 📊 SheetBot AI - AI data analyst to visualize, summarize, and automate work

  • 📸 PicLooks AI Avatars - Free authentic AI profile pictures for designs

New AI Job Opportunities

  • ⚙️ Databricks - Engineering Manager

  • 💻 Mistral AI - Software Engineering

  • 🩺 Curai - Physician - Telemedicine

  • 📊 Cohere - Data Partnerships Manager

QUICK HITS

Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati is reportedly trying to poach OpenAI employees for a new venture just weeks after leaving the company — despite remaining an advisor.

Key Microsoft AI researcher Sebastien Bubeck departed to join OpenAI after playing a prominent role in the small, efficient Phi language models.

Google partnered with nuclear startup Kairos Power to build seven small modular reactors in the US, aiming to supply 500 megawatts of carbon-free electricity for AI data centers by 2030.

YouTube announced that creators can now leverage its AI Dream Track feature to generate soundtracks for shorts using natural language prompts directly in the app.

Gatorade launched a new promotion with Adobe allowing users to leverage Firefly’s AI models to customize squeeze bottles with unique designs.

Nvidia-backed AI cloud provider CoreWeave secured a $650M credit loan to fuel growth and announced a nearly $1B investment in U.K. AI infrastructure.

THAT’S A WRAP

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, and Alvaro—aka The Rundown Team

AI

Anthropic CEO predicts AI utopia

Rowan Cheung • 5 minutes

Sign Up | Advertise | Podcast | AI University

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

A century of scientific progress in just a decade? That’s the promise of AI, according to one industry titan.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei just dropped an essay forecasting a bright future where AI transforms everything — but how accurate is his prediction? Let’s get into it…


In today’s AI rundown:

  • Anthropic CEO drops essay on AI and the future

  • OpenAI unveils Swarm multi-agent framework

  • Plan a month of social media posts with AI

  • Apple: ‘No evidence of formal reasoning’ in LLMs

  • 5 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

ANTHROPIC

🔮 Anthropic CEO drops essay on AI and the future

Image source: Dario Amodei

The Rundown: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei just published a lengthy essay outlining an optimistic vision for how AI could transform society within 5-10 years of achieving human-level capabilities, touching on longevity, politics, work, the economy, and more.

The details:

  • Amodei believes that by 2026, ‘powerful AI’ smarter than a Nobel Prize winner across fields, with agentic and all multimodal capabilities, will be possible.

  • He also predicted that AI could compress 100 years of scientific progress into 10 years, curing most diseases and doubling the human lifespan.

  • The essay argued AI could strengthen democracy by countering misinformation and providing tools to undermine authoritarian regimes.

  • The CEO acknowledged potential downsides, including job displacement — but believes new economic models will emerge to address this.

  • He envisions AI driving unprecedented economic growth but emphasizes ensuring AI's benefits are broadly distributed.

Why it matters: As the CEO of what is seen as the ‘safety-focused’ AI lab, Amodei paints a utopia-level optimistic view of where AI will head over the next decade. This thought-provoking essay serves as both a roadmap for AI’s potential and a call to action to ensure the responsible development of technology.

TOGETHER WITH DYNAMIQ

🔐 Securely build GenAI apps on-premise

The Rundown: Dynamiq is a comprehensive on-premise platform that enables you to build scalable and secure generative AI applications in hours.

With Dynamiq, you can:

  • Utilize LLMs with an air-gapped solution for unparalleled data security

  • Create GenAI apps with any LLM provider thanks to a vendor-agnostic approach

  • Orchestrate single-agent and multi-agent environments to perform tasks autonomously

Start your trial today and get the first 2 months free with code THERUNDOWNAI.

OPENAI

🐝 OpenAI unveils Swarm multi-agent framework

Image source: OpenAI

The Rundown: OpenAI just introduced Swarm, a new open-source experimental framework designed to simplify the creation and control of multi-agent AI systems.

The details:

  • Swarm focuses on making agent coordination lightweight, controllable, and easily testable through two key building blocks: agents and handoffs.

  • Agents encapsulate specific instructions and tools, while handoffs allow agents to transfer control of a conversation to another agent.

  • Swarm includes features like function calls, context variables, and streaming and is built on OpenAI’s ChatCompletions API.

  • The framework is available on GitHub with several examples, including a triage agent, weather agent, and airline customer service system.

  • OpenAI emphasized that Swarm is experimental and released as an educational resource for exploring multi-agent orchestration.

Why it matters: Not only are singular agentic capabilities inching closer — but the ability to deploy systems that leverage armies of agents working together is also coming fast. Soon, the user will be the CEO of their AI company — with dozens of agents autonomously working together on complex, multi-step tasks.

AI TRAINING

📅 Plan a month of social media posts with AI

The Rundown: Use ChatGPT to generate a strategic content plan for an entire month of social media posts.

Step-by-step:

  1. Provide ChatGPT with key info about your brand, target audience, and content goals.

  2. Ask it to create 8-10 content themes based on your brand strategy.

  3. Make it fill out a monthly table with post ideas for each platform.

  4. Adjust the plan to fit your brand's unique voice and audience preferences.

Pro tip: Export your AI-generated content calendar to a spreadsheet for easy sharing and customization with your team. Additionally, we've already devised full prompts that you can copy if you're a member of The Rundown University.

PRESENTED BY INTERCOM

📺 Watch Intercom's AI customer service summit

The Rundown: Intercom just held Pioneer - its first-ever AI customer service summit - and if you missed it, all sessions are now available on-demand.

Here’s what to expect:

  • Practical strategies to seamlessly integrate AI with your support team

  • A first look at Fin 2, Intercom’s most advanced AI Agent yet

  • Insights from companies who’ve successfully scaled support without adding headcount

Watch Pioneer on-demand today.

AI RESEARCH

🤔 Apple: ‘No evidence of formal reasoning’ in LLMs

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: Apple researchers just published a new study revealing major limitations in the reasoning capabilities of LLMs, including those from top AI labs like OpenAI’s 4o and o1 models.

The details:

  • Apple scientists developed a new benchmark called GSM-Symbolic to evaluate LLMs' mathematical reasoning skills.

  • The study found that slight changes in the wording of questions or adding irrelevant info drastically altered model outputs, with accuracy dropping by up to 65%.

  • Researchers saw increased performance variability and decreased accuracy as the complexity of questions increased.

  • The team concluded that there was "no evidence of formal reasoning" in the models tested, suggesting that the behavior is more likely sophisticated pattern matching.

Why it matters: While there seem to be conflicting opinions on whether LLMs can truly reason, file this new research under the ‘no’ category. If these limitations hold, they expose some significant questions regarding the reliability and risks of deploying models into increasingly more complex applications.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

  • 💡 Google Illuminate - Transform research papers into AI-generated audio summaries

  • 📎 WPS Office - Free AI-powered office suite with seamless MS Office compatibility

  • 🐦 Sparrow - Open source API testing tool for developers

  • 🧮 CalcGen AI - Transform data into interactive visualizations in seconds

  • 🤖 Kuration AI - Curate, refine, and enrich lead databases with automated B2B AI agents

New AI Job Opportunities

  • 🎨 People.ai - Creative Marketing Designer

  • 🤖 Meta - Machine Learning Systems Engineer

  • 💼 Anyscale - Head of FP&A

  • 🛠️ Luma AI - Staff Product Designer

QUICK HITS

Free event tomorrow: AI and Disinformation with Section and Dr. Rumman Chowdhury. How can we spot the AI fakes and slow the spread? RSVP free.*

Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun said that existential warnings about AI are ‘complete BS,’ arguing that the current systems are no smarter than a house cat.

TikTok announced hundreds of job cuts globally, citing a shift towards greater use of AI in its content moderation process.

AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio warned about the dangers of AI in a new interview, saying humanity is on a path to ‘creating monsters that could be more powerful than us.’

A new study from Sun Yat-sen University used Meta’s ESMFold protein-prediction tool to uncover 70,500 new RNA viruses in environmental data.

Apple reportedly plans to launch a lower-end model of its Vision headset, priced at $2,000 instead of the $3,500 Vision Pro, which has suffered from disappointing sales.

*Sponsored listing

THAT’S A WRAP

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, and Alvaro—aka The Rundown Team

AI

Elon Musk reveals driverless Robotaxi

Rowan Cheung • 5 minutes

Sign Up | Advertise | Podcast | AI University

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

Elon Musk just unveiled Tesla's $30k driverless Robotaxi, a surprise 20-person Robovan, and made bold claims about Optimus—all without a steering wheel in sight.

With prices this low and ambitions this high, are we witnessing the birth of a truly driverless era? Let's get into it…


In today’s AI rundown:

  • Elon Musk and Tesla unveil Robotaxi

  • AMD reveals next-gen AI chips

  • Master a new language with ChatGPT Voice

  • OpenAI’s new AI agent benchmark

  • 5 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

TESLA

🚖 Elon Musk and Tesla unveil Robotaxi

Image source: Tesla

The Rundown: Elon Musk just unveiled Tesla's long-awaited Robotaxi, a futuristic two-door vehicle with gull-wing doors and no steering wheel or pedals, alongside surprise announcements for a larger Robovan and updates on the Optimus humanoid robot.

The details:

  • The "Cybercab" Robotaxi is set for production in 2026, priced under $30,000, with operating costs projected at 20 cents per mile.

  • Tesla's autonomous approach relies on AI, cameras, and extensive training data, eschewing the lidar hardware favored by competitors.

  • A larger self-driving Robovan was also (unexpectedly) introduced, which is reportedly capable of carrying up to 20 people.

  • Musk projects a future $20,000-$30,000 price range for Tesla Optimus robots, boldly claiming they'll be "the biggest product ever of any kind."

Why it matters: After years of hype, Tesla’s long-awaited, fully autonomous Robotaxi has finally been revealed — and it’s coming in HOT at an affordable price of under $30,000. With the cost of autonomous transport being so low, the Robotaxi and Robovan (when fully rolled out) could completely revolutionize transportation.

TOGETHER WITH NORTHERN DATA GROUP

 Enterprise-grade AI power at your fingertips

The Rundown: Northern Data’s Taiga Cloud offers instant access to NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs, empowering businesses to harness AI’s transformative potential for improved user experiences.

With NVIDIA H100 GPUs, you’ll experience:

  • Up to 9x faster AI training on large models compared to previous generations

  • Up to 30x higher AI inference performance for real-time applications

  • Secure Multi-Instance GPU (MIG) technology for optimized resource allocation

Start using NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs now for best-in-class performance.

AMD

🚀 AMD reveals next-gen AI chips

Image source: AMD

The Rundown: AMD just launched its new lineup of AI-focused processors at the company’s Advancing AI 2024 event, showing off a range of releases aimed at competing with rivals Nvidia and Intel in the booming data center and AI chip market.

The details:

  • AMD unveiled the Ryzen AI PRO 300 enterprise-focused processors for AI PCs, touting 40% better performance than Intel's Core Ultra chips.

  • The Instinct MI325X AI accelerator, set to begin production in late 2024, boasts 1.8x higher memory capacity and 1.3x more bandwidth than Nvidia's H200 GPU.

  • The chipmaker revealed EPYC 5th Gen CPUs, which CEO Lisa Su called ‘the world’s best for enterprise, AI, and cloud.’

  • AMD also announced plans for annual AI chip releases, with the MI350X slated for late 2025 and the MI400 for 2026.

Why it matters: There seems to be no end in sight to the rapid acceleration of powerful AI processors — and while AMD is making an aggressive push against its competitors, there is likely more than enough demand for everyone (including both Jensen Huang and his cousin Lisa Su).

AI TRAINING

🗣️ Master a new language with ChatGPT Voice

The Rundown: ChatGPT’s new Advanced Voice Mode allows you to practice and improve your language skills through interactive conversations and role-play scenarios.

Step-by-step:

  1. Download the ChatGPT app on your phone.

  2. Craft a detailed learning prompt (similar to the one in the image above).

  3. Tap the mic icon and speak your prompt to start the session.

  4. Engage in conversation, asking for slower speech or repetition as needed.

Pro tip: Save effective prompts in your custom instructions for quick access and consistent practice across sessions.

PRESENTED BY BRILLIANT

🪄 Demystify AI with Brilliant

The Rundown: Brilliant makes learning AI, programming, and data science intuitive — offering a vast library of hands-on lessons to help you grasp the technology shaping the future in just minutes a day.

Dive into:

  • Engaging content that makes advanced topics accessible

  • Customized learning experiences to suit your goals

  • Skills to tackle real-world challenges, not just theory

Try Brilliant free for 30 days and join over 10 million learners. Plus, enjoy a special discount on an annual premium subscription — exclusive to The Rundown AI readers. 

AI RESEARCH

🤖 OpenAI’s new AI agent benchmark

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: OpenAI just introduced MLE-bench, a new benchmark designed to evaluate how well AI agents perform on real-world machine learning engineering tasks using Kaggle competitions.

The details:

  • MLE-bench consists of 75 curated Kaggle competitions, covering a range of ML tasks like model training, data preparation, and experimentation.

  • Kaggle competitions are online challenges where data scientists compete to solve complex problems using machine learning for prizes and recognition.

  • In research, the AI models often succeeded in applying standard techniques but struggled with tasks requiring adaptability or creative problem-solving.

  • The best-performing setup, OpenAI's o1-preview model with AIDE scaffolding, achieved at least a bronze medal in 16.9% of competitions.

Why it matters: AI agents are coming in hot — and new benchmarks are necessary to evaluate capabilities that blow past previous testing measures. Between OpenAI’s commentary, a flurry of startups pushing agentic capabilities, and new benchmarks being created, the AI agent revolution feels ready to explode.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

  • 🗺️ Latitude - Open-source prompt engineering platform to build, evaluate, and refine prompts with AI

  • 📋 Height - Collaboration tool with autonomous project management capabilities

  • 💼 JobJump - Master video interviews with live AI-tailored answer hints

  • 💻 Handinger - An API that makes it easy and affordable to extract data from the Internet

  • 🔊 Echo - AI voice and text notes to organize thoughts and bring them to life

New AI Job Opportunities

QUICK HITS

Chinese researchers unveiled Pyramid Flow, a new open-source AI video generation model capable of creating high-quality, 10-second clips using a new ‘pyramidal flow matching’ technique.

OpenAI Chairman Bret Taylor's AI startup Sierra is reportedly set to raise hundreds of millions in funding at a valuation of over $4B for its conversational enterprise AI agents.

Japanese AI startup Rhymes released Aria, hailed as the first open-source multimodal native Mixture-of-Experts model — offering SOTA performance across various tasks with a lightweight 3.9B parameters and 64k token context window.

Wondercraft launched a new ‘Director Mode’ feature, allowing users to control AI voices with natural language instructions and becoming the first audio platform to integrate OpenAI’s Advanced Voice Mode.

Google rolled out its Imagen 3 image generator to all Gemini users, though only Advanced subscribers ($19.99/mo) can generate images of people.

Walmart revealed new AI platforms to create hyper-personalized shopping experiences, including its Wallaby LLMs trained on the company’s data and a Customer Support Assistant that can take actions for the user.

THAT’S A WRAP

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, and Alvaro—aka The Rundown Team

AI

New AI model tops tool charts

Rowan Cheung • 5 minutes

Sign Up | Advertise | Podcast | AI University

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

The AI race just got a new dark horse contender, and they are somehow competing with the top dogs at a fraction of the size and cost.

Writer's new model is topping leaderboards and turning heads, and with new expert tool capabilities, AI agents have just taken another big step forward. Let's get into it…


In today’s AI rundown:

  • New model tops tool-calling leaderboard

  • Zoom launches new AI platform features

  • Add Claude Artifacts to your Cursor projects

  • Electronic tongue enables AI to taste

  • 6 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

WRITER

🛠️ New model tops tool-calling leaderboard

Image source: Writer

The Rundown: AI startup Writer just introduced Palmyra X 004, an LLM that sets a new standard for action capabilities and function calling in enterprise AI — beating out top models from OpenAI and Anthropic.

The details:

  • Palmyra X 004 outperforms OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Google models on Berkeley's Tool Calling Leaderboard, leading by nearly 20% accuracy.

  • The model offers a 128k context window, supports over 30 languages, and handles multimodal inputs (text, images, audio).

  • Palmyra can interact with external tools via tool calling, enabling it to perform tasks like updating databases, sending emails, triggering workflows, and more.

  • The 150B parameter model was trained on synthetic data, which the company said significantly reduced costs compared to the top AI labs.

Why it matters: As companies race to integrate AI, models that can take concrete actions rather than just provide information are in high demand. Palmyra X 004's impressive skills could give Writer a new edge in the enterprise AI market and also serve as an example that not all top models require massive computing resources.

TOGETHER WITH PILLAR SECURITY

🛡️ Expose GenAI attack threats

The Rundown: Pillar Security's new free report offers exclusive insights into real-world AI vulnerabilities, analyzing over 2,000 LLM apps to help you stay ahead of potential threats.

Inside you’ll find:

  • Key attack patterns disrupting GenAI applications

  • Adversaries' objectives and motivations

  • Real-world attacks, including jailbreak methods and outcomes

  • Technical insights and forecasts for 2025

Download the full report for free and protect your AI infrastructure today.

ZOOM

🗣️ Zoom launches new AI platform features

Image source: Zoom

The Rundown: Zoom just unveiled a suite of new AI-driven innovations to its platform at its Zoomtopia 2024 event, including AI companion 2.0, a custom AI add-on plan, personalized avatars, and more.

The details:

  • Companion 2.0 is an AI assistant that works across Zoom Workplace, offering expanded context, web access, and the ability to take agentic-type actions.

  • Zoom Tasks is a new AI-powered feature to help detect, recommend, and complete tasks based on conversations across Zoom Workplace.

  • Custom AI avatars will become available in Zoom Clips in 2025, with the ability to create video content from text scripts.

  • Zoom founder Eric Yuan previously said that AI avatars will eventually be capable of attending Zoom meetings and making decisions on a user’s behalf.

Why it matters: Zoom says it wants to overhaul work in the digital age, and these announcements point to a new AI-driven world of interconnected tools and workflows. While avatars attending meetings and acting on your behalf might sound wild now, the work landscape is about to be turned upside down as AI continues to grow and scale.

AI TRAINING

🤖 Add Claude Artifacts to your Cursor projects

The Rundown: With this AI tool trick, developers can incorporate Claude-generated Artifacts into Cursor projects to significantly speed up development workflows.

Step-by-step:

  1. Generate your desired component or code snippet using Claude AI.

  2. Set up a new Next.js project in Cursor using “npx create-next-app@latest”.

  3. Use Composer (Cmd+I or Ctrl+I) to incorporate the Claude artifact. Type “@codebase” for context.

  4. Review changes and use AI chat (Cmd+L or Ctrl+L) to fix any issues.

  5. Test your integration with “npm run dev.”

Pro tip: Use Cursor's AI capabilities to resolve integration issues quickly. Simply highlight problematic code and ask the AI for a fix!

PRESENTED BY GALILEO

🔧 Build with the best in GenAI

The Rundown: Galileo’s GenAI Productionize 2.0 is a free virtual summit that brings together industry pioneers to explore how to effectively implement generative AI at enterprise scale.

At the conference, you'll:

  • Discover actionable strategies for productionizing GenAI

  • Hear from AI experts at leading global brands, research labs, and startups

  • Understand best practices for AI governance and compliance

  • Dive into techniques for AI evaluation and real-time observability

Register now for free and secure your spot for October 29th! 

AI RESEARCH

👅 Electronic tongue enables AI to taste

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: Scientists at Penn State just created an AI-powered 'electronic tongue' that can identify subtle differences in liquids, detect food spoilage, and gain broader insights into AI’s decision-making processes.

The details:

  • The electronic tongue combines a special sensor with an AI modeled after the human brain's taste center, enabling it to ‘taste’ liquids.

  • The tongue can ID differences in similar liquids like watered-down milk, sodas, coffee, and spoiled fruit juices with over 80% accuracy in about a minute.

  • When the AI was allowed to interpret the sensor data on its own terms, it achieved over 95% accuracy in identifying the samples.

  • Researchers also used methods to examine the AI's thought process, helping understand how it weighs different pieces of information to make decisions.

Why it matters: AI achieved some serious sensory upgrades this year, from vision and hearing capabilities to humanoid robotic touch — and now, add taste to the list. This research has major applications for food safety and quality control and could shed light on the inner workings of AI decision-making in a brand new way.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

  • ⚙️ OpenAI Gradio - A Python package making it easy for developers to create apps powered by OpenAI’s API

  • 😇 Godmode - AI agents to understand and contact customers

  • 🧠 Miro Innovation Workspace - AI-powered collaboration platform to help teams move faster from idea to outcome

  • 📢 Adsby 2.0 - Quick, actionable insights on Google Ads using AI

  • 🗣️ Wispr Flow - Write 3x faster using your voice

  • 🤳 Cooraft - Turn a selfie into professional portrait videos

New AI Job Opportunities

QUICK HITS

1 Hour to AI Proficiency. Join Section’s free workshop focused on getting you AI confident and prompting proficient over your lunch break. Register.*

Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis and John Jumper were co-awarded a Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work on AlphaFold, an AI system that can predict and design protein structures.

Amazon introduced AI Shopping Guides for over 100 product types, leveraging generative AI to streamline product research and offer tailored recommendations within its U.S. app and mobile website.

Chinese startup MiniMax’s Hailuo AI launched a new image-to-video feature, alongside new style controls and enhanced processing and control.

Meta expanded Meta AI to six new countries, including the EU, and is rolling it out internationally in Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses — though the EU will be excluded from multimodal capabilities due to regulatory issues.

Stripe announced expanding its partnership with NVIDIA, enabling global access to NVIDIA’s AI cloud services and leveraging the chipmaker’s platform for improved fraud detection.

*Sponsored listing

THAT’S A WRAP

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, and Alvaro—aka The Rundown Team

AI

OpenAI wants to move faster

Rowan Cheung • 5 minutes

Sign Up | Advertise | Podcast | AI University

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

OpenAI is reportedly flexing its independence and seeking to move faster in computing, and Microsoft might be feeling the strain.

As the AI giant seeks its own servers and chips, are we witnessing cracks in the power couple's already seemingly tenuous relationship? Let’s get into it…


In today’s AI rundown:

  • OpenAI seeks independence from Microsoft

  • AI pioneers awarded Nobel Prizes

  • Control object motion in AI videos

  • Adobe launches AI attribution system

  • 5 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

OPENAI

👀 OpenAI seeks independence from Microsoft

Image source: The Economist

The Rundown: OpenAI is reportedly looking to reduce its reliance on Microsoft for compute power and has started exploring options to set up its own data servers and secure AI chips independently, according to a new report from The Information.

The details:

  • CFO Sarah Friar told shareholders that Microsoft ‘hasn’t moved fast enough’ to supply computing power, causing the AI giant to look elsewhere.

  • OpenAI plans to lease an entire data center in Abilene, TX from Oracle, though Microsoft likely had to ‘bless’ the deal with its rival, according to the report.

  • OpenAI is also developing its own AI chip, which could lower costs for future computing clusters — its current supply is rented primarily from Microsoft.

  • Tensions have also reportedly arisen between OpenAI and Microsoft over the design and timeline of a massive joint data center project called ‘Fairwater.’

Why it matters: OpenAI and Microsoft’s relationship has felt a bit off for a while now. While both companies have leveraged each other well to ascend the AI power ladder, it certainly feels like there is trouble in paradise. There is plenty of smoke, and how this partnership shakes out could have fiery implications for the entire AI landscape.

TOGETHER WITH UNBLOCKED

🔎 Make digging for answers a thing of the past

The Rundown: Unblocked is the only developer tool that explains how a codebase works AND why.

Teams who use Unblocked say it saves every developer an hour or more a day by providing:

  • Instant and helpful answers about their codebase

  • Relevant context for whatever code they have open in their IDE

  • Automated answers to questions asked in Slack

Start a free 21-day trial today.

AI & THE NOBEL PRIZE

🏆 AI pioneers awarded Nobel Prize

Image source: Getty Images

The Rundown: Scientists Geoffrey Hinton and John Hopfield were jointly awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for their groundbreaking work in machine learning and artificial neural networks, which significantly laid the foundation for the current AI boom.

The details:

  • Hinton, often called ‘The Godfather of AI,’ co-created a method for allowing neural networks to learn from mistakes, influencing modern AI model training.

  • The 91-year-old Hopfield, currently a professor at Princeton, developed a network model in 1982 that mimics how the brain recalls memories.

  • Hinton later worked at Google, leaving in 2023 and becoming a vocal critic of current AI advances and sounding the alarm over the tech’s dangers.

  • Hinton reiterated his concerns at his acceptance, saying his research may lead to ‘systems more intelligent than us eventually taking control.’

Why it matters: While both scientists helped pave the way for today’s AI boom, neither seems particularly comfortable with what the future may hold for the technology. Hinton, in particular, has become the face of the ‘AI doomer’ movement since leaving Google, pushing hard for increased regulation and safety alongside other AI pioneers.

AI TRAINING

🎬 Control object motion in AI videos

The Rundown: Kling AI, one of the most popular AI video generators, now lets you add strategic movement to specific elements in AI video, providing more control in your generated clips.

Step-by-step:

  1. Choose a high-quality image with different elements to animate.

  2. Access Kling AI's Image-to-Video tool and upload your image.

  3. Use the Motion Brush to paint areas you want to animate and set motion paths for each area to define movement direction.

  4. Fine-tune with prompts, adjust settings, and generate your video.

Pro tip: Keep movements subtle and natural for more realistic results, and experiment with different combinations to find what works best for your specific image.

PRESENTED BY INNOVATING WITH AI

💼 Start your career as an AI Consultant

The Rundown: Innovating with AI’s new program, AI Consultancy Project, equips AI enthusiasts with all the resources to capitalize on the rapidly growing AI consulting market – which is set to 8x to $54.7B by 2032.

The program offers:

  • Tools and framework to find clients and deliver top-notch services

  • A 6-month roadmap to build a 6-figure AI consulting business

  • Student landing their first AI client in as little as 3 days

Click here to request early access to The AI Consultancy Project.

AI RESEARCH

🛡️ Adobe launches AI attribution system

Image source: Adobe

The Rundown: Adobe just announced a new free web app called Adobe Content Authenticity, designed to help creators protect their work and receive proper attribution in the era of AI-generated content.

The details:

  • The web app allows creators to easily apply content credentials to images, audio, and video files, acting as a ‘nutrition label’ for digital content.

  • Content credentials include creator information and creation details and can signal if the creator doesn't want their work used to train AI models.

  • The system uses digital fingerprinting, invisible watermarking, and cryptographic metadata to make the credentials difficult to remove.

  • The web app, which has a waitlist, is expected to launch in Q1 of 2025, while a Chrome extension is available in beta today.

Why it matters: AI is extremely polarizing in the creator and artist community, largely due to the issues of unauthorized training and attribution that Adobe, Meta, OpenAI, and others are trying to address. While these tools are promising, they still rely heavily on widespread adoption and opt-in by creators and tech companies.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

  • 🗣️ HeyGen Avatar 3.0 - Create realistic AI avatars with full-body dynamic motion

  • 🎥 Eddie AI - Prompt-to-video editing tool

  • 📋 Cove - A visual workspace for thinking with AI

  • 🤖 Opencord AI - An AI agent for 24/7 social engagement via replies

  • 🧠 Kvistly - AI-powered quiz maker for better training and team building

New AI Job Opportunities

  • 🌐 Luma AI - Business Development and Strategic Partnerships

  • 🛠️ Shield AI - Prototype Machinist

  • 🏢 xAI - Office Manager

  • 📜 OpenAI - Lead Policy Manager

QUICK HITS

OpenAI and Hearst announced a strategic partnership to integrate content from over 20 magazine brands and 40+ newspapers into OpenAI's AI products.

Hugging Face released OpenAI-Gradio, a new tool enabling the creation of AI-powered web apps using OpenAI’s models in just minutes with minimal code.

Uber unveiled plans to launch an OpenAI-powered AI assistant in early 2025 to help drivers with electric vehicle questions, aiming to accelerate EV adoption on the platform.

Anthropic launched Message Batches API, allowing developers to submit up to 10,000 queries for async processing in under 24 hours at a 50% discount compared to standard API calls.

Google added the ability to drag and drop any file type to upload directly into its AI Studio without importing it to Google Drive.

KoBold Metals raised $527M for its AI-powered mineral discovery tech that leverages extensive data analysis to uncover deposits with energy-critical minerals like copper, lithium, and nickel.

THAT’S A WRAP

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, and Alvaro—aka The Rundown Team

AI

AI glasses doxx strangers in real-time

Rowan Cheung • 5 minutes

Sign Up | Advertise | Podcast | AI University

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

Two Harvard students just demonstrated an unexpected capability of Meta’s smart glasses, instantly accessing strangers’ identities with AI.

As powerful AI systems and wearables collide, it’s time to start getting vigilant about privacy and surveillance concerns. Let’s get into it…


In today’s AI rundown:

  • Students turn AI glasses into doxing devices

  • Inflection and Intel team up on enterprise AI

  • Write an impressive cover letter with Claude

  • Checklists improve AI model evaluation

  • 5 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

META

🕶️ Students turn AI glasses into doxing devices

Image source: AnhPhu Nguyen (@AnhPhuNguyen1 on X)

The Rundown: Two Harvard students just demoed a proof-of-concept system using Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses that allow the wearer to access personal information about strangers, raising major privacy concerns.

The details:

  • AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio combined Meta’s smart glasses with custom software, enabling the ability to ID people and retrieve personal data.

  • The system, I-XRAY, uses a combination of facial recognition, reverse image search, and LLMs to find names, addresses, phone numbers, and other details.

  • The students tested I-XRAY on Harvard’s campus, correctly identifying strangers and their personal info.

  • The privacy concerns come as Meta recently confirmed it may use any images and videos shared with Meta AI for training purposes.

Why it matters: This demo exposes how much privacy and surveillance are about to change in the AI age—and it is coming fast. If a couple of students can achieve these abilities with a pair of Meta smart glasses and publicly available tools, what will dedicated corporations and governments be capable of?

TOGETHER WITH HUBSPOT

📊 Automate company research with Agent.ai

The Rundown: Agent.ai's Company Research Agent is an interactive tool that generates detailed reports on any company in minutes — transforming how you gather business intelligence.

With Agent.ai, you can:

  • Access demographic information to understand a company's workforce and audience

  • Analyze funding data for financial health and investment trends

  • Examine web traffic patterns to gauge digital engagement

  • Conduct competitor analysis to stay ahead in your industry

Get started for free and automate your company research today.

INFLECTION AI

🤖 Inflection and Intel team up on enterprise AI

Image source: Inflection

The Rundown: Inflection AI just launched Inflection for Enterprise, a new system built in partnership with Intel and designed for large-scale business deployments – featuring both a cloud service, new commercial API and upcoming local appliance.

The details:

  • Inflection for Enterprise is built on the new Inflection 3.0 model family and powered by Intel's Gaudi 3 AI accelerators.

  • An on-premises AI appliance is planned for Q1 2025 release, promising up to 2x improved price-performance over competitors.

  • Inflection 3.0 comes in two variants — Pi 3.0 for chatbots and Productivity 3.0 for instruction-following tasks.

  • Inflection also released a commercial API, enabling developers to build advanced conversational AI applications.

Why it matters: After a turbulent year following founder Mustafa Suleyman and much of the team’s departure to Microsoft, Inflection is pivoting from consumer-focused apps to enterprise solutions. While the startup will face no shortage of competitors, a partnership with Intel is a positive start for the new regime.

AI TRAINING

✉️ Write an impressive cover letter with Claude

The Rundown: With this workflow, you can use Claude to draft personalized and compelling cover letters based on company analysis that capture the attention of hiring managers.

Step-by-step:

  1. Access Claude AI.

  2. Gather the job description, your resume, and company information.

  3. Have Claude analyze the job description and company.

  4. Prompt Claude to create a tailored cover letter based on the company analysis and your resume.

Pro tip: Add your personal touch to Claude's draft to make sure the final version truly represents your voice and experiences.

PRESENTED BY SECTION

💡 Discover the real ROI of AI

The Rundown: Join AI experts from leading companies like Moderna and S&P Global on Nov. 14 at Section’s AI: ROI Conference — a virtual event for leaders looking to achieve tangible results with AI.

At this free event, you’ll discover:

  • Strategies to prioritize AI initiatives that deliver real returns

  • Lessons from real AI success stories and case studies

  • How to achieve ROI from productivity gains to securing investor support

Register for free today.

AI RESEARCH

 Checklists improve AI model evaluation

Image source: Oxford

The Rundown: Researchers from the University of Oxford and Cohere just developed TICK, a new approach for evaluating AI language models that use AI-generated checklists to improve assessment accuracy and interpretability.

The details:

  • TICK uses an AI model to generate a checklist of yes/no questions to evaluate how well another AI model followed a given instruction.

  • The checklist-based method showed 5.8% higher agreement with human evaluators than standard AI evaluation techniques.

  • The researchers also developed STICK (Self-TICK), which uses the checklists for self-improvement, leading to 7.8% better performance on reasoning tasks.

  • TICK can be fully automated, making it faster and cheaper than checklist-based evaluations requiring human input.

Why it matters: LLMs are weird — and sometimes even simple formatting quirks (remember the ‘take a deep breath’ prompt?) can lead to unexpected results. When looking for new techniques to get the most out of AI models and evaluations, maybe it’s ideal to return to the basics of human organization and learning.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

  • 🤖 Dashworks Bots - Create AI assistants that answer your team’s questions

  • 📜 Theneo - Generate Stripe-like API docs in seconds

  • 📸 Flash - Supercharge your learning with AI-powered flashcards

  • 🔥 Firebender - A privacy-first coding assistant for Android Studio

  • 🏠 Bramble - AI-backed real estate brokerage to buy a home end-to-end

New AI Job Opportunities

  • 📈 Lakera AI - Senior Marketing Manager

  • 🖥️ Waymo - Backend Software Engineer

  • 📝 Databricks - Sr. Corporate Communications Manager

  • 📱 Cohere - Social Media Strategist

QUICK HITS

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt argued at the Washington AI Summit that AI advances should take precedence over climate goals, saying, “We're not going to hit the climate goals anyway because we're not organized to do it.”

Northrop Grumman unveiled an AI-powered enhancement to its Forward Area Air Defense system, enabling rapid decision-making against drone swarms.

Grindr is developing an AI "wingman" for its dating app that can scout prospective partners, set up dates, and interact with other AIs to find potential matches.

Nvidia and Peking University researchers introduced EdgeRunner, a new model for high-quality, detailed 3D mesh generation.

Enterprise GenAI startup Writer is reportedly set to raise between $150-200M at a $1.9B valuation, doubling its valuation from its $100M Series B round last September.

Security researcher Harish SG published research showing evidence that LLMs can be prompted to achieve reasoning levels of powerful models like OpenAI’s o1 using a combination of advanced prompt tactics.

THAT’S A WRAP

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, and Alvaro—aka The Rundown Team

AI

Meta's new AI video generator

Rowan Cheung • 5 minutes

Sign Up | Advertise | Podcast | AI University

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

Meta just stepped into the AI video generation arena with a blockbuster release that's set to give OpenAI's Sora a run for its money.

But as ‘Movie Gen’ prepares to hit Instagram, is the world ready for the content creation revolution it might unleash? Let’s get into it…


In today’s AI rundown:

  • Meta unveils advanced AI video model

  • OpenAI and Altera create digital humans

  • Run Llama 3.2 locally on your phone

  • AI identifies drug candidates for pain relief

  • 5 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

META

🎥 Meta unveils advanced AI video model

Image source: Meta

The Rundown: Meta just announced Movie Gen, a powerful new suite of AI models for generating and editing video and audio content, positioning itself as a direct competitor to OpenAI’s Sora and other industry leaders.

The details:

  • Movie Gen consists of four models: a 30B video generation model, a 13B audio model, a personalized video model, and a video editing model.

  • The system can generate HD videos up to 16 seconds long from text prompts, along with synchronized audio like sound effects and background music.

  • Movie Gen also features video editing via natural text prompts and the ability to upload a reference image to create personalized videos.

  • Meta claims the model outperforms rivals like Runway Gen3, Luma Labs, and OpenAI’s Sora in human video quality and consistency evaluations.

  • Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Movie Gen will be ‘coming to Instagram next year’ in a post displaying some of the model’s sample generations.

Why it matters: Meta’s Movie Gen separates itself from other video generators by not only generating videos from text, but also being able to perform precise video editing. With the models coming to Instagram, it could transform the content creation process and give the masses a powerful video editing suite—with only prompting required.

TOGETHER WITH INTERCOM

🚀 Join AI customer service pioneers

The Rundown: Join visionary customer service leaders on Oct.10 to explore the impact and opportunities of AI on the industry.

At Intercom’s customer service summit, you’ll discover:

  • Practical strategies to seamlessly integrate AI with your support team

  • An exclusive preview of Intercom’s advanced AI agent, Fin 2

  • Insights from companies successfully scaling support without added headcount

Register here to watch the summit live or on demand.

ALTERA

🤖 OpenAI and Altera create digital humans

Image source: OpenAI

The Rundown: OpenAI just published a case study on Altera, a startup using GPT-4o to develop AI agents called "digital humans" capable of prolonged, natural interactions with people — significantly outperforming other rivals during testing in Minecraft.

The details:

  • Altera, founded by ex-MIT professor Dr. Robert Yang, uses GPT-4o to power AI agents that can play Minecraft autonomously for up to 4 hours.

  • Altera's system combines GPT-4o with a brain-inspired multi-module architecture to simulate cognitive functions and emotional processing.

  • OpenAI reports that Altera's agents outperform other models in Minecraft tasks, collecting 32% of items compared to 6.4% for the next best model.

  • The startup plans to expand beyond gaming to create AI ‘coworkers’ and more complex multi-agent simulations.

Why it matters: We’ve constantly heard from Sam Altman and others that AI agents are coming fast — and case studies like this (as well as a cryptic ‘Level 3’ tweet from an OpenAI researcher) might mean the capabilities have already arrived. We might ascend the ‘Stages of AI’ ladder faster than most are anticipating.

AI TRAINING

📱 Run Llama 3.2 locally on your phone

The Rundown: Meta’s new Llama 3.2 3B model can run directly on your smartphone, allowing you to have AI conversations privately and offline.

Step-by-step:

  1. Download PocketPal AI from the App Store.

  2. Open the app, tap the top-left menu, and select "Models.”

  3. Under "Llama,” download "llama-3.2-3b-instruct q4_k" (2.2 GB).

  4. Once downloaded, tap "Load" to activate the model.

  5. Return to the main menu, select "Chat,” and start conversing with AI!

Pro tip: Create a local knowledge base that can be queried alongside the model, allowing you to supplement the AI’s knowledge with custom, up-to-date information without requiring an internet connection.

PRESENTED BY ASSEMBLY AI

🗣️Build smarter voice-driven apps

The Rundown: AssemblyAI’s Speech-to-Text API unlocks industry-leading accuracy — allowing you to build voice bots, meeting transcribers, and more with unmatched quality and advanced AI features.

With AssemblyAI, you can:

  • Transcribe multiple languages with up to 95% accuracy

  • Detect speakers with precision

  • Integrate effortlessly with just 5 lines of code

Future-proof your applications. Start today and claim $50 in API credits.

AI RESEARCH

💊 AI identifies drug candidates for pain relief

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: Researchers at Cleveland Clinic and IBM just developed an AI model to predict how drugs and gut microbes interact with pain receptors, potentially uncovering new non-addictive pain treatments.

The details:

  • LISA-CPI analyzes both the molecular structure of compounds and the 3D shape of pain receptors to predict their interactions.

  • The model identified FDA-approved drugs, like methylergometrine, that could potentially be repurposed for pain treatment by targeting specific receptors.

  • LISA-CPI also discovered gut microbes that may interact with pain receptors in beneficial ways.

  • The approach could accelerate drug discovery for pain and other conditions by more accurately screening potential compounds.

Why it matters: The current opioid crisis highlights the urgent need for effective, non-addictive pain medications, and this AI-driven approach could help researchers more quickly identify promising drug candidates while also opening new avenues for pain management.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

  • 👨‍💼 Cheatlayer - Automate your business using natural language

  • 🤝 Mindpal’s SalesBox - Build your own AI sales OS with multi-agent workflows

  • 🤑 Trillion - Track expenses, manage accounts and set financial goals with AI planning

  • 🛒 BuyScout - Your AI copilot for online shopping

  • 🗓️ Selfletter - Break complex goals into simple tasks with AI

New AI Job Opportunities

QUICK HITS

Free event: The AI Bill of Rights with Section. How the White House’s Dr. Alondra Nelson is thinking about bias, ethical AI, and the future. RSVP now.*

Apple will reportedly release its Apple Intelligence features on Oct. 28 alongside the iOS 18.1 update, according to Bloomberg insider Mark Gurman.

Google began rolling out the new AI anti-theft features for Android devices showcased at Google I/O, including Theft Detection Lock, Offline Device Lock, and Remote Lock.

Cohere launched improved fine-tuning features for its Command R LLM, including longer context support and a ‘bring your own fine-tune’ option.

AI startup Otherside AI’s Reflection 70B model failed to match performance claims in tests published by the team in a post-mortem of the release after being initially touted as the ‘world’s best open-source model.’

North Carolina musician Michael Smith faces federal charges for allegedly using AI to generate thousands of songs and bots to stream them billions of times, netting over $10M in royalties.

*Sponsored listing

THAT’S A WRAP

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, and Alvaro—aka The Rundown Team

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