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ChatGPT gets proactive with 'Tasks'
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Good morning, AI enthusiasts. OpenAI’s AI agent era just got its unofficial start — with ChatGPT gaining the ability to schedule and manage daily tasks.
With ‘Tasks’ rolling out and mysterious 'Operator' whispers in the air, is OpenAI finally ready to move from chatbots to full-on autonomous assistants?
In today’s AI rundown:
OpenAI launches ChatGPT ‘Tasks’
MiniMax releases open-source, ultra-long-context LLMs
Turn your long-form content into bite-sized clips
Microsoft upgrades AutoGen with new multi-agent system
4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
OPENAI
🤖 OpenAI launches ChatGPT ‘Tasks’
Image source: OpenAI
The Rundown: OpenAI is rolling out Tasks, a new ChatGPT beta feature that allows users to schedule reminders and recurring actions, marking the company's first step into agentic AI capabilities.
The details:
Users can schedule one-time reminders or recurring actions, such as daily weather updates, news briefings, or periodic web searches.
Tasks can be managed through chat or a dedicated web interface, with notifications available across desktop, mobile, and web platforms.
ChatGPT can suggest relevant tasks based on conversation history, though users must explicitly approve any suggestions.
Tasks will launch for Plus, Team, and Pro users in the coming days, with up to 10 active tasks at a time through a "4o with scheduled tasks" model option.
Why it matters: While reminders aren’t groundbreaking, Tasks lays the groundwork for incorporating agentic abilities into ChatGPT, which will likely gain value once integrated with other features like tool or computer use. With ‘Operator’ also rumored to be coming this month, all signs are pointing towards 2025 being the year of the AI agent.
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Transform text instructions into real-world business operations
Watch this video to learn more and join the waitlist to be among the first to test an agent that transforms the way you work.
MINIMAX
⚡️ MiniMax releases open-source, ultra-long-context LLMs
Image source: Minimax
The Rundown: Chinese AI lab Minimax just launched two new open-source AI models that leverage a new ‘Lightning Attention’ approach that allows for massive context windows of 4M tokens while maintaining speed and performance.
The details:
The release includes a 456B parameter base language model (MiniMax-Text-01) and a multimodal model (MiniMax-VL-01).
Both models can process sequences up to 4M tokens, dramatically exceeding current industry standards of 128K-256K tokens.
The models perform comparable to top models on academic benchmarks, outperforming all open-source models on long-context tasks.
The company also offers API access at notably low rates, with input tokens at $0.2/million and output tokens at $1.1/million.
Why it matters: As AI development shifts toward autonomous agents with extensive memory and context processing needs, MiniMax's ultra-long context could be revolutionary. Open-sourcing these models, combined with competitive API pricing, could kickstart an aggressive innovation push in the AI agent ecosystem.
AI TRAINING
✂️ Turn your long-form content into bite-sized clips
The Rundown: HeyGen’s Instant Highlights feature transforms long videos into engaging highlight reels and shareable clips.
Step-by-step:
Access the Labs section from HeyGen and find Instant Highlights.
Add your video through URL or direct upload (supports up to 10GB).
Customize the highlight settings by selecting your preferred clip duration, aspect ratio, and if you want captions.
Download or share your favorite clips directly.
Pro tip: Use the "Share highlight list" feature to collaborate with your team on selecting the best clips.
PRESENTED BY BELVA AI
💻 Turn developers into architects with AI
The Rundown: Belva AI's Engineer is an AI-powered development environment that automates coding workflows while keeping humans in control — combining automated code generation, UML transformation, and intelligent debugging in one platform.
Leverage Engineer in your development process to take advantage of:
Automated code generation & hosting
AI-generated diagram-driven development
Limitless context capabilities for LLMs
MICROSOFT
🤖 Microsoft upgrades AutoGen with new multi-agent system
Image source: Microsoft
The Rundown: Microsoft just released AutoGen v0.4, the latest update to its open-source agentic framework — alongside the introduction of Magnetic-One, a new orchestration system that coordinates multiple AI agent specialists to handle complex tasks.
The details:
Magnetic-One introduces four agents: WebSurfer for web navigation, FileSurfer for local file management, and Coder and ComputerTerminal for coding.
V0.4’s event-driven messaging system enables async communication between agents, allowing for more flexible, customizable, and complex workflows.
The release also includes AutoGen Studio for low-code development, AutoGen Bench for performance testing, and upgraded monitoring tools.
The system also remains LLM-agnostic, working with different language models while defaulting to GPT-4o integration.
Why it matters: While the world has just started dipping its toes into the AI agent boom, the next steps are already being taken to enable multi-agent systems that open the door to tackling complex applications and tasks. Our own personal agentic teams are right around the corner — and human workflows will never be the same again.
QUICK HITS
🛠️ Trending AI Tools
🤖 GitHub Copilot - AI coding assistant, now available without a waitlist
🤝 Reachy AI - AI agent to automate outreach on LinkedIn
🌝 Fullmoon - Chat with private and local large language models
🔵 Shapen - Create 3D models from images with AI
💼 AI Job Opportunities
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🦺 xAI - HSE Coordinator
🤝 OpenAI - Engagement Manager
🚀 Palantir Technologies - Forward Deployed Software Engineer
* Sponsored listing
📰 Everything else in AI today
President Joe Biden signed a new executive order allowing AI companies to build data centers on DoD and Energy sites to strengthen domestic AI infrastructure development.
Amazon is reportedly working to transform its Alexa assistant into an AI-powered agent, but it has faced issues like hallucinations and slow response speeds that, if launched, risk damaging the company’s brand and reputation.
The Mayo Clinic partnered with Microsoft and Cerebras to develop AI foundational models for medical image and genomic data analysis, hoping to revolutionize personalized medicine with faster diagnostics and precise treatment predictions.
OpenAI added GIP chairman and Blackrock executive Adebayo Ogunlesi to the company’s Board of Directors, bringing experience in infrastructure investment and global finance expertise.
French AI startup Bioptimus secured $41M in funding to develop a “GPT for biology” foundation model to simulate biological systems and predict disease outcomes.
Microsoft announced a new multiyear partnership with education giant Pearson to transform AI learning and workforce development, with plans to deliver AI-powered skilling solutions and certifications globally.
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See you soon,
Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team
China's open-source AI champion
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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.
While tech giants continue to pour billions into AI development, a Chinese startup just proved you can build an open-source powerhouse on a tiny budget.
DeepSeek’s V3 model competes with the top models at a fraction of the cost — and the walls between open and closed AI are crumbling faster than ever. Let’s get into it…
In today’s AI rundown:
DeepSeek-V3 rewrites open-source AI playbook
OpenAI reveals restructuring plans for next AI phase
Turn your images into any style
Stanford AI brings natural gestures to digital avatars
5 new AI tools & 5 new AI jobs
More AI & tech news
Read time: 4 minutes
Friendly reminder: We’re moving to a new email sending address. Make sure to add news@daily.therundown.ai to your contacts to ensure you keep receiving our emails.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
DEEPSEEK
🤖 DeepSeek-V3 rewrites open-source AI playbook
Image source: DeepSeek
The Rundown: Chinese AI startup DeepSeek just released DeepSeek-V3, a new powerhouse language model that sets new benchmarks in the open-source AI world with performance rivaling industry giants at a fraction of the cost.
The details:
V3 uses a Mixture-of-Experts architecture and maintains speed and cost-effectiveness despite its massive 671B parameter size.
The training was completed in just two months at an estimated $5.57M, dramatically less than the reported $500M+ spent on models like LLaMA 3.1.
The model shows exceptional strength in math and Chinese language tasks while matching or exceeding closed models across most benchmarks.
V3 has been critiqued for identifying as ChatGPT in conversations, which may be due to significant GPT-generated content used in its training dataset.
Why it matters: The gap between open and closed AI models has never been smaller. Chinese models continue to prove that the U.S. chip restrictions are failing to slow progress, and V3’s benchmarks show that open-source, high-performance models are achievable without the massive resources of other tech giants.
TOGETHER WITH VANTA
⚒️ Building startups in the age of AI
The Rundown: Join Vanta for a fireside chat with CEO Christina Cacioppo and "The Lean Startup" author Eric Ries to gain insights on navigating product-market fit, delegation, and scaling startups in the age of AI.
The Jan. 14 session will cover:
Key takeaways from Christina and Eric’s entrepreneurial journeys
How the principles of “founder mode” and lean methodology intersect
The ways AI is transforming early-stage growth and startup success
OPENAI
🔄 OpenAI reveals restructuring plans for next AI phase
Image source: Getty Images
The Rundown: OpenAI officially published its plans to transform into a public benefit corporation, posting a blog detailing the company’s controversial shift from its nonprofit structure to enable massive funding abilities for future AI development.
The details:
The restructuring will convert OpenAI's for-profit arm into a Delaware-based PBC, with the original nonprofit gaining ‘significant’ shares in the new entity.
OpenAI said the result would be ‘one of the best-resourced non-profits in history,’ enabling the pursuit of charitable goals in health care, education, and science.
The process follows the startup’s $6.6B funding round at a $157B valuation, which reportedly hinged on the restructuring.
Elon Musk sued OpenAI in December to prevent the move, with California nonprofit Encode also pushing for a pause in a new filing.
Why it matters: OpenAI’s convoluted structure has been criticized since the Nov. 2023 board drama, but as Elon and co. continue to hold the startup’s feet to the fire, the restructure process seems imminent. Threading the needle between a mission-driven focus and a for-profit endeavor is about to become a delicate balancing act.
AI TRAINING
🎨 Turn your images into any style
The Rundown: Google’s new Whisk tool allows you to create custom-stylized versions of any photo by combining subjects, scenes, and artistic styles without writing prompts.
Step-by-step:
Visit Google Labs and open the Whisk experiment (free to use).
Click "Start from scratch," upload your subject and scene, and choose a style.
Let AI generate multiple consistent variations of your image.
Refine results by adding specific details through the text box.
Pro tip: Use the "+" button to add multiple subjects or scenes for more complex compositions.
PRESENTED BY INNOVATING WITH AI
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The Rundown: Innovating with AI's new program, AI Consultancy Project, transforms AI enthusiasts into professional consultants — tapping into a market projected to reach $54.7B by 2032.
The 6-month program delivers:
Proven frameworks for client acquisition and service delivery
A step-by-step path to six-figure consulting income
Students who land their first AI client in as little as 3 days
Click here to request early access to The AI Consultancy Project.
AI RESEARCH
🎭 Stanford AI brings natural gestures to digital avatars
Image source: Stanford University
The Rundown: Stanford researchers just developed an AI model that enables digital avatars to produce natural, context-appropriate gestures while speaking — marking advances in making virtual characters more lifelike and expressive.
The details:
Training data included 1,000 hours of audiobooks and 60 hours of motion capture to understand relationships between speech, text, and body language.
The system can generate appropriate gestures from text or audio input while detecting emotions from motion patterns alone.
Using a new pre-training approach, the AI requires less training data than past models while achieving better performance on gesture generation benchmarks.
The model shows particular strength in matching gestures to speech patterns, such as emphasizing specific words through corresponding body movements.
Why it matters: Zoom CEO Eric Yuan has said we will soon send avatars to meetings in our place. Having realistic motion and gestures is a crucial step towards crafting truly reality-bending characters. Digital avatars are about to become ubiquitous across industries, and these advances could open up a whole new world of use cases.
NEW TOOLS & JOBS
Trending AI Tools
⚙️ ReactAI - Create fully-functional React components in seconds with no API key required
🔎 Hika - AI-powered knowledge search tool that transforms exploration and simplifies complex topics into interactive sections
📚 Scourhead - Free, open-source AI agent that scours the web, organizes data, and delivers results in a spreadsheet
🤖 SEObot - Produce useful, non-spammy AI-generated blog content with auto-linking, keyword research, image generation, and fact-checking
📊 Shoonya - Specialized foundation models fine-tuned for commerce use cases
New AI Job Opportunities
🤖 Meta - Software Engineering Manager - FAIR
🛡️ Shield AI - Product Marketing Manager Consultant
🚗 Waymo - Senior Program Manager, Commercial Operations
🔬 Scale AI - SEAL Research Scientist, Scalable Oversight
🏙️ Metropolis - Principal Software Engineer
QUICK HITS
‘Godfather of AI’ Geoffrey Hinton raised his odds of human extinction risk due to superintelligent AI development, revising his estimate to 20% within three decades while calling for stronger government regulation of the technology.
OpenAI and Microsoft reportedly agreed on a concrete metric for achieving artificial general intelligence, with a newly revealed document from 2023 defining AGI as an AI system capable of generating $100B in annual profits.
Meta unveiled a vision for AI-generated characters to become active social media users across its platforms, with plans to expand capabilities from profile creation to content generation and live interactions.
Chinese robotics firm Unitree demoed B2-W, a rideable robot dog capable of carrying humans across challenging terrain in addition to acrobatic maneuvering and stability control.
Toyota’s AI-powered humanoid robot CUE6 set a new Guinness World Record for the longest basketball shot by a robot, sinking an 80-footer on its second try.
THAT’S A WRAP
See you soon,
Rowan, Joey, Zach, and Alvaro—aka The Rundown Team
Google releases an OpenAI o1 rival
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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.
Today is our last email before we take our team-wide week-long holiday break (our first break in nearly two years — crazy!).
So in the spirit of rest and relaxation, we've got a jam-packed rundown for you today with big news from Google DeepMind, Genesis, Apptronik, and more. Let's get into it…
In today’s AI rundown:
Google releases experimental 'reasoning' AI
The first generative AI physics simulator
Turn your articles into video podcasts
Google partners with Apptronik on humanoid robots
6 new AI tools & 5 new AI jobs
More AI & tech news
Read time: 4 minutes
Friendly reminder: We’re moving to a new email sending address. Make sure to add news@daily.therundown.ai to your contacts to ensure you keep receiving our emails.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
GOOGLE DEEPMIND
✨ Google releases experimental 'reasoning' AI
Image source: Google
The Rundown: Google just released Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental, a new AI model that pauses to "think" through complex problems like OpenAI's o1 model, but is free-to-use and works faster.
The details:
The model explicitly shows its thought process while solving problems, similar to other reasoning models like OpenAI's o1.
Built on Gemini 2.0 Flash, early users report significantly faster performance than competing reasoning models.
The model increases computation time to improve reasoning, leading to longer but potentially more accurate responses.
The model is now ranked #1 on the Chatbot Arena across all categories and is freely available through AI Studio, the Gemini API, and Vertex AI.
Why it matters: The race for better AI reasoning capabilities is intensifying, with Google joining OpenAI and others in exploring new approaches beyond just scaling up model size. While OpenAI continues to increase pricing for their top-tier models, Google continues taking the opposite approach by making its best AI freely accessible.
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GENESIS
🌎 The first generative AI physics simulator
Image source: Genesis
The Rundown: A team of researchers across 20 separate labs just unveiled Genesis, an open-source physics engine that combines generative AI with ultra-fast simulations, potentially transforming how AI learns to interact with the physical world.
The details:
Genesis runs 430,000 times faster than real-time physics, achieving 43 million FPS on a single RTX 4090 GPU.
It’s built in pure Python, it's 10-80x faster than existing solutions like Isaac Gym and MJX.
The platform can train real-world transferable robot locomotion policies in just 26 seconds.
The platform is fully open-source and will soon include a generative framework for creating 4D environments.
Why it matters: By enabling AI to run millions of simulations at unprecedented speeds, Genesis could massively accelerate robots' ability to understand our physical world. Open-sourcing this tech, along with its ability to generate complex environments from simple prompts, could spark a whole new wave of innovation in physical AI.
AI TRAINING
🎥 Turn your articles into video podcasts
The Rundown: HeyGen’s new ‘Podcast‘ feature allows users to turn an article, research paper, or document into an engaging two-person video discussion with AI avatars (similar to NotebookLM but with real faces).
Step-by-step:
Visit HeyGen's website and select "Video Podcast" from the dashboard.
Upload your content (PDF up to 20MB or website URL).
Pick two AI presenters and customize video settings (duration, aspect ratio, captions).
Click submit and get your video in minutes.
Pro tip: Well-structured content leads to more natural-sounding discussions. You can use an AI tool like ChatGPT to structure content into a better script beforehand.
GOOGLE & APPTRONIK
🤖 Google partners with Apptronik on humanoid robots
Image source: Apptronik
The Rundown: Google DeepMind just announced a strategic partnership with Apptronik, an Austin-based humanoid robotics company, to combine advanced AI with cutting-edge hardware in the pursuit of versatile humanoid robots.
The details:
Apptronik brings nearly a decade of robotics expertise, including the development of NASA's Valkyrie Robot and their current humanoid, Apollo.
Apollo stands 5'8", weighs 160 pounds, and is designed for industrial tasks while safely working alongside humans.
The partnership will leverage Google DeepMind's AI expertise, including their Gemini models, to enhance robot capabilities in real-world environments.
This marks Google's return to humanoid robotics after selling Boston Dynamics to SoftBank in 2017.
Why it matters: Seven years after selling Boston Dynamics, Google is re-entering humanoid robotics — this time through AI rather than hardware. This partnership could give DeepMind's advanced AI models (like Gemini) a physical form, potentially bringing us closer to practical humanoid robots that can work alongside humans.
NEW TOOLS & JOBS
Trending AI Tools
🎥 Kling AI v1.6 - An update to the popular AI video generator, which includes improved prompt adherance, professional modes, and more
✨ Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking - Google DeepMind’s latest free-to-try reasoning model that competes with ChatGPT o1
🧊 Backflip AI - Turns text into 3D AI-generated designs
✏️ tldraw computer - An infinite canvas for natural language computing
💻 ModernBERT - A family of SOTA encoder-only models with major improvements over older generation encoders
👀 Microsoft Copilot Vision - An AI companion that can see what you do in the Edge browser (now rolling out to U.S. Copilot Pro subscribers on Windows)
New AI Job Opportunities
🛠️ OpenAI - Solutions Engineer, Pursuits
📋 Palantir Technologies - Talent Coordinator
📊 Weights & Biases - Senior Product Manager, Models
🔒 Mistral AI - Software Engineer, Security
🎯 Meta - Product Marketing Manager Intern, MBA
QUICK HITS
OpenAI's Alec Radford, lead author of GPT and other key technologies, announced his departure to pursue independent research following the recent exits of several senior research leaders from the company.
Anthropic published new best practices for building AI agents, emphasizing simple, composable patterns over complex frameworks and sharing insights from customer implementations across industries.
Meta hinted at speech capabilities and advanced reasoning in Llama 4 in a recent blog post, alongside plans for business-focused AI agents for customer support and commerce in 2025.
Perplexity acquired Carbon, a data connectivity startup, to help users connect apps like Notion and Google Docs directly to its AI search platform.
Microsoft AI announced that Copilot Vision — the company’s AI companion that can see your browser and interact with you in real-time — is rolling out to U.S. Copilot Pro users on Windows.
OpenAI expanded ChatGPT's app integration to support more coding platforms, including JetBrains IDEs, terminals, and productivity apps like Apple Notes and Notion.
Anthropic published new research showing their AI models can engage in "alignment faking" — appearing to comply with new training while preserving original preferences.
THAT’S A WRAP
ChatGPT's new phone number
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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.
OpenAI just turned back the clock with a surprisingly retro way to access ChatGPT — and your parents’ landline will work just as well as your smartphone.
With a new 800 ‘hotline’ number and WhatsApp integration, OpenAI just made accessing advanced AI as simple as dialing a friend. Let’s get into it…
In today’s AI rundown:
ChatGPT gets a new phone number
GitHub Copilot goes freemium
Create infinite looping AI videos
Perplexity hits $9B valuation in mega-round
5 new AI tools & 5 new AI jobs
More AI & tech news
Read time: 4 minutes
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
OPENAI
☎️ ChatGPT gets a new phone number
Image source: OpenAI on YouTube
The Rundown: OpenAI just launched a surprising new way to access ChatGPT — through an old-school 1-800 number and also rolled out a new WhatsApp integration for global users during Day 10 of the company’s livestream event.
The details:
US users can now dial 1-800-CHATGPT to have voice conversations with the AI assistant, and they will receive 15 minutes of free calling time per month.
The phone service works on any device, from smartphones to vintage rotary phones — allowing accessibility without requiring modern tech.
A parallel WhatsApp integration also lets international users text with ChatGPT, though with feature limitations compared to the main app.
The WhatsApp version runs on a lighter model with daily usage caps, offering potential future upgrades like image analysis.
Why it matters: The days of operators or hotlines are long gone, but OpenAI’s latest move brings that style of information back to the AI age in an accessible way. By meeting users where they are — whether on WhatsApp or a landline phone — OpenAI is expanding AI’s reach beyond the tech-savvy crowd.
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MICROSOFT & GITHUB
🆓 GitHub Copilot goes freemium
Image source: GitHub
The Rundown: Microsoft-owned GitHub just announced a free tier of its AI coding Copilot available in its VS Code editor, marking a major shift in AI coding accessibility as the company celebrates a milestone of 150M developers on the platform.
The details:
The new free tier offers 2,000 monthly code completions and 50 chat messages, integrated directly into VS Code and GitHub's dashboard.
Users can access Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet or OpenAI's GPT-4o models, with premium models (o1, Gemini 1.5 Pro) remaining exclusive to paid tiers.
Free features include multi-file editing, terminal assistance, and project-wide context awareness for AI suggestions.
GitHub also announced its 150M developer milestone, up from 100M in early 2023.
Why it matters: GitHub has lofty ambitions to reach 1B developers globally, and removing price barriers would go a long way toward onboarding the masses and preventing existing users from flocking to the other free options on the market. The future of AI coding is increasingly looking more like a fundamental free utility than a premium tool.
AI TRAINING
🎬 Create infinite looping AI videos
The Rundown: Sora’s AI video generator lets you transform short videos into a seamless loop that plays continuously without noticeable cuts or transitions.
Step-by-step:
Log into Sora with your Plus/Pro subscription.
Generate your base video by describing continuous motion (e.g., "dogs running across the screen").
Click the Loop button and choose your loop type (Short/Normal/Long).
Export your seamless loop for websites, social media, or digital displays.
Pro tip: For best results, choose subjects with natural continuous motion and avoid sudden changes in direction or speed.
PRESENTED BY INNOVATING WITH AI
🤝 Turn AI passion into a consulting career
The Rundown: Innovating with AI's new program, AI Consultancy Project, transforms AI enthusiasts into professional consultants — tapping into a market projected to reach $54.7B by 2032.
The 6-month program delivers:
Proven frameworks for client acquisition and service delivery
A step-by-step path to six-figure consulting income
Students who land their first AI client in as little as 3 days
Click here to request early access to The AI Consultancy Project.
PERPLEXITY
💰 Perplexity hits $9B valuation in mega-round
Image source: Bloomberg
The Rundown: AI search startup Perplexity just secured a massive $500M funding round, which triples its valuation to $9B, as the company continues to expand its challenge to traditional search engines.
The details:
The company's valuation has skyrocketed from $1B in April to $9B in this latest round, and the rise has come despite lawsuits from major publishers.
Since its launch in 2022, Perplexity has attracted over 15M active users, with recent feature additions including one-click shopping and financial analysis.
The startup has inked revenue-sharing deals with major publishers like Time and Fortune to address content usage concerns.
Perplexity also acquired Carbon, a data connectivity startup, to enable direct integration with platforms like Notion and Google Docs.
Why it matters: Perplexity’s rise is evidence of the shakeup underway in the search landscape, with other leaders like ChatGPT also rushing to turn their own platforms into modern search engines. With heavyweights like Google also revamping search for the AI age, will Perplexity be able to stay a step ahead of the industry giants?
NEW TOOLS & JOBS
Trending AI Tools
🎥 Meta Video Seal - Open-source tool embedding invisible, durable watermarks in videos to ensure authenticity
🏋️ Impakt AI App - AI coach that can see, talk, and instruct your workouts to guide you toward your personal fitness goals
👨💻 Tempo Labs - AI-powered visual editor for React, giving PMs, designers, and engineers the ability to collaborate visually on code
🎵 TemPolor - Royalty-free, AI-powered music platform designed to empower content creators with customizable music that enhances storytelling
🦦 Otterly AI - Monitor brand and link visibility on ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AIO
New AI Job Opportunities
📊 Databricks - Director TPM, Infrastructure
🌍 Anyscale - Regional Sales Director
💼 Runway - Sr. Technical Recruiter
🖥️ Abridge - IT Support Manager
📱 Siena - Social Media & Community Manager
QUICK HITS
Free workshop by Section: Get proficient in prompting, learn solid AI use cases, and get confident using AI in just one hour. Sign up here.*
Microsoft reportedly acquired nearly 500,000 Hopper GPUs from Nvidia in 2024, emerging as the chipmaker’s biggest customer and nearly doubling the purchases from rivals like Meta and ByteDance.
Magnific AI released Magic Real, a new image generation model focusing on realistic outputs for professionals in architecture, photography, film, and interior design.
Odyssey revealed Explorer, a new generative world model that converts images into 3D environments, also adding Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull to its Board of Directors.
Open Vision Engineering introduced Pocket, a $79 physical AI-powered voice recorder that captures, transcribes, and organizes conversations.
Runway launched a new talent network platform, connecting AI filmmakers and production houses with brands and studios seeking expertise in the sector.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security unveiled DHSChat, an internally developed AI chatbot deployed on secure infrastructure for its 19,000 employees and agency users.
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THAT’S A WRAP
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OpenAI's mini Dev Day upgrades
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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.
OpenAI has plenty of presents for consumers this holiday season, but the latest release is all about the builders.
With the o1 reasoning model now available via API and a toolbox of powerful new features, AI applications are about to level up in a big way. Let’s get into it…
In today’s AI rundown:
OpenAI releases o1 for API, new developer tools
Nvidia’s cheap, palm-sized AI supercomputer
Run CLI commands from your prompts
New DeepMind benchmark tests LLM factuality
5 new AI tools & 5 new AI jobs
More AI & tech news
Read time: 4 minutes
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
OPENAI
⚙️ OpenAI releases o1 for API, new developer tools
Image source: OpenAI on YouTube
The Rundown: OpenAI just rolled out a series of updates for developers on Day 9 of its live stream event, including API access to its advanced o1 reasoning model, major upgrades to the Realtime API, and a new preference fine-tuning method.
The details:
o1 comes out of preview with new API capabilities like function calling, structured outputs, vision, and reasoning effort to control thinking time.
o1 API costs come in at $15 per ~750k words analyzed and $60 per ~750k words generated — roughly 3-4x more than GPT-4o.
Realtime API costs drop 60% for GPT-4o audio, with a new 4o mini available at 1/10 the price and WebRTC integration for easier voice app development.
New Preference Fine-Tuning enables customizing models using comparative examples vs fixed training data, improving tasks like writing and summarization.
The company also launched beta SDKs for Go and Java programming languages, expanding development options.
Why it matters: These releases mark a big day for AI builders. Access to the o1 reasoning model and new features opens up a new world of building and integrations. Developers just got a powerful new set of tools to create more customizable, capable, and sophisticated applications.
TOGETHER WITH STAIRCASE AI
🧠 Separate signal from noise with AI
The Rundown: Staircase AI by Gainsight analyzes millions of customer interactions like emails, tickets, and chats to surface risks and growth opportunities you can actually take action on.
With Staircase, you can:
Automate data capture for insights without the hassle
Uncover unbiased customer sentiment and health with AI
Correlate effort to outcomes and optimize resources
NVIDIA
🎁 Nvidia’s cheap, palm-sized AI supercomputer
Image source: Nvidia
The Rundown: Nvidia just introduced the Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer Kit, a $249 compact generative AI supercomputer that delivers significant performance gains at half the previous model's price.
The details:
The palm-sized device delivers 1.7x the performance, 70% more processing power, and a 50% boost in memory compared to the previous model.
The Nano can handle multiple AI tasks simultaneously, from powering chatbots to controlling robots and processing visual data from multiple cameras.
The platform supports popular AI frameworks and tools through NVIDIA's software ecosystem, including Isaac for robotics and Metropolis for vision AI.
Existing Jetson Orin Nano owners can access the same 1.7x generative AI performance gains through a free software update.
Why it matters: Just as the Raspberry Pi revolutionized DIY computing projects, NVIDIA's affordable AI supercomputer could birth a new generation of developers building everything from smart robots to creative AI tools in their garages and dorm rooms. The barriers to advanced AI tools have never been lower.
PRESENTED BY PROJECT IDX
✨ Run CLI commands from your prompts
The Rundown: Project IDX is your AI-enabled development environment in the cloud with code assistance from Gemini.
Step-by-step:
Log into Project IDX with your Google account.
Create a project from the templates dashboard.
Click the Gemini icon at the bottom of the workspace or press Cmd+Shift+Space (Ctrl+Shift+Space on ChromeOS, Windows, or Linux).
Select “Interactive Chat with Gemini” and pass it a prompt to update your project configuration files and code.
Pro tip: Project IDX offers a streamlined development experience by allowing you to execute terminal commands directly from the user interface.
AI RESEARCH
🧐 New DeepMind benchmark tests LLM factuality
Image source: Google DeepMind
The Rundown: Google DeepMind just launched FACTS Grounding, a new benchmark designed to evaluate how well LLMs can generate factually accurate and comprehensive responses based on provided documents while avoiding hallucinations.
The details:
FACTS uses 1,719 examples, each with a document, a system instruction, and a user request, to test the ability to produce grounded long-form answers.
Three AI models (Gemini 1.5 Pro, GPT-4o, and Claude 3.5 Sonnet) serve as judges, evaluating responses for accuracy and handling user requests.
Scores are aggregated across all judges and examples, with results published on a public Kaggle leaderboard that will be updated as new models emerge.
Google's Gemini models currently top the leaderboard, with Gemini 2.0 Flash Experimental achieving the highest score, 83.6%, for factual grounding.
Why it matters: Hallucinations continue to plague even the most advanced LLMs, limiting reliability and real-world use cases. FACTS Grounding provides a more nuanced way to measure progress in an extremely important developmental area for AI by focusing on grounded responses and using a multi-LLM judging approach.
NEW TOOLS & JOBS
Trending AI Tools
📸 Google Imagen 3 - Google’s highest-quality text-to-image model, capable of generating images with even better detail, lighting, and fewer artifacts
🎨 Google Whisk - Generate images by using other images as prompts for a subject, scene, and style to create personalized visuals
☎️ NewOaks AI Phone Agent - AI phone agent that can listen, understand, and speak in real-time to automate inbound and outbound calls
🧠 Findr- Unlock infinite digital memory with your AI second brain
📫 MagicMail - AI email generator that turns text prompts into fully styled and ready-to-send HTML emails
New AI Job Opportunities
🎨 Captions - Graphics Software Engineer
🗄️ Pinecone - Staff Database Engineer
⚖️ xAI - Employment Counsel
📊 Character AI - Data Scientist, Post Training
🧪 Together AI - Summer 2025 Research Intern
QUICK HITS
Free event on Jan 7: Join Section for a discussion on how AI is redefining how we work, hire, and advance in the workplace. RSVP for free.*
Midjourney released Moodboards, a new feature that allows users to create personalized AI generation styles and profiles by uploading or adding images.
Google launched Gemini Code Assist tools, enabling developers to access external services and data directly within their IDE.
YouTube is partnering with talent agency giant CAA to develop AI detection tools to help celebrities and athletes identify and manage AI-generated content featuring their likenesses across the platform.
UAE’s Technology Innovation Institute released Falcon 3, a new open-source family of language models designed to run on lightweight hardware, with the 7B and 10B versions outperforming competitors like Llama and Qwen in key benchmarks.
OpenAI’s Romain Huet revealed during a community AMA that there are currently no plans to release an API for the company’s Sora video generation model.
Databricks secured a new $10B funding round at a $62B valuation, with the data analytics company planning AI product expansion and potential acquisitions.
*Sponsored listing
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Google's new AI video generator rivals Sora
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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.
While Sora was supposed to be the highlight of the holiday season, Google may have just left some coal in OpenAI’s stocking.
The tech giant’s new Veo 2 video model appears to leave Sora in the dust, with 4K capabilities, realism, and physics that will make you question reality. Let’s get into it…
In today’s AI rundown:
Google launches next-gen video, image models
ChatGPT Search goes free for everyone
Create a customer support AI voice agent for your website
AI agents make 10+ minute videos from text
5 new AI tools & 5 new AI jobs
More AI & tech news
Read time: 4 minutes
Friendly reminder: We’re moving to a new email sending address. Make sure to add news@daily.therundown.ai to your contacts to ensure you keep receiving our emails.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
🚀 Google launches next-gen video, image models
Image source: Google
The Rundown: Google just announced the release of Veo 2, a state-of-the-art video generation model that creates high-resolution outputs with stunning realism and detail — along with Imagen 3, an upgraded image model also offering state-of-the-art quality.
Veo 2:
Veo 2 can generate 8-second clips at 4K resolution (720p at launch), and it has received significant upgrades in cinematic control quality.
The model also shows massive improvements in physics simulation and reduced hallucinations, leading to more realistic movement and detail.
Veo 2 outperformed all competitors in head-to-head human evaluations and prompt adherence, including OpenAI’s recently released Sora.
The model is rolling out gradually through the VideoFX waitlist, with YouTube Shorts integration planned for 2025.
Imagen 3:
The upgraded model delivers enhanced color vibrancy and composition across artistic styles, with better handling of fine details, textures, and text rendering.
New capabilities include more accurate prompt interpretation and better rendering of complex scenes that match user intentions.
Imagen 3 outperformed all models, including Midjourney, Flux, and Ideogram, in human evaluations for preference, visual quality, and prompt adherence.
The model is now available through Google Labs’ ImageFX and is rolling out to over 100 countries.
Why it matters: Google is having an absolutely massive end to 2024 — first with Gemini 2.0 and now Veo 2 and Imagen 3. These models appear to up the bar in both categories, giving Google state-of-the-art type performance across nearly every area of AI. OpenAI may have the hype this holiday season, but Google is showing the results.
TOGETHER WITH HUBSPOT
📖 Your prompt engineering quickstart guide
The Rundown: HubSpot's AI Prompt Engineering QuickStart Guide, developed with expert Tina Huang, provides a structured approach to crafting effective AI prompts — helping bridge the gap between basic AI interactions and professional-level results.
With this guide, you'll learn:
A simplified, powerful framework to craft effective prompts for any AI task
Practical strategies to identify and solve common prompt engineering challenges
Professional techniques for optimizing AI responses across platforms and apps
OPENAI
🔎 ChatGPT Search goes free for everyone
Image source: OpenAI on YouTube
The Rundown: OpenAI just announced a major expansion of its ChatGPT Search feature on Day 8 of the company’s livestream event, making it freely available to all users alongside added voice search capabilities and improved mobile features.
The details:
The previously premium search feature now extends to all logged-in users, with faster responses, and is now available through a globe icon on the platform.
Search has also been added to Advanced Voice Mode for premium users, allowing them to conduct searches through natural spoken prompts.
The Search mobile experience has been revamped, with enhanced visual layouts for local businesses and native integration with Google and Apple Maps.
Users can also set ChatGPT Search as a default search engine, with results displaying relevant links before ChatGPT text responses for faster access.
OpenAI also teased a ‘mini Dev Day’ for tomorrow.
Why it matters: ChatGPT’s ability to access the web and up-to-date information is an important step towards an agentic future, particularly within Advanced Voice Mode — turning the tool into a much more intelligent and capable version of Siri (and maybe powering it eventually). Search is about to change in a big way in the AI era.
AI TRAINING
🎙️ Create a customer support AI voice agent for your website
The Rundown: ElevenLabs’ new Conversational AI Agents let you incorporate an AI-powered voice agent that can interact naturally with your visitors.
Step-by-step:
Create an ElevenLabs account and navigate to the Agents section.
Configure your AI agent's personality and initial message.
Choose or create a custom voice for natural interactions.
Customize the widget's appearance and embed it on your site.
Pro tip: Use the "Test AI agent" button to test your agent thoroughly before deploying. This helps ensure responses align with your expectations and brand voice.
PRESENTED BY SECTION
🎓 Learn AI at your own pace
The Rundown: Section provides continuous AI education through a curated curriculum of courses, refreshed every 30 days — with users able to watch 3 free courses every month across a range of topics and skill levels.
Some of the most popular on-demand courses include:
Building a Custom GPT
AI for Marketers
AI for Product Marketers
HIGGSFIELD AI
🎬 AI agents make 10+ minute videos from text
Image source: Higgsfield AI
The Rundown: AI startup Higgsfield just introduced ReelMagic, a multi-agent platform that transforms story concepts into complete 10-minute videos, claiming to streamline the entire production process into a single workflow.
The details:
The tool uses specialized AI agents for production roles like scriptwriting and editing, creating cohesive long-form outputs in under 10 minutes.
ReelMagic starts with a short synopsis, and then AI agents handle script refinement, virtual actor casting, filming, sound/music, and editing.
ReelMagic's smart reasoning engine automatically selects optimal AI models for each shot, and it has partnerships with Kling, Minimax, ElevenLabs, and more.
The platform is already being tested by leading Hollywood studios, and Higgsfield is also planning to launch Hera, an AI video streaming platform.
Access is available to Project Odyssey participants via a waitlist, with no info on a broader release.
Why it matters: There has been a disconnect between AI video generators and the ability to craft cohesive, longer-form content—with heavy manual editing needed. While not available publicly yet, ReelMagic looks to be a workflow that combines AI’s limitless creative power to unlock broader storytelling capabilities.
NEW TOOLS & JOBS
Trending AI Tools
🗂️ ChatGPT Projects - Group files, chats, and custom instructions in one place for better organization and streamlined interactions
🎥 Pika 2.0 - New video generation model with ‘ingredients’ to incorporate user’s own images into outputs with improved motion and animation
💬 Eden - AI-powered social plugin to reply on any webpage in one click to generate tailored comments
✍️ Draft Alpha - AI writing assistant to produce quality content across distribution channels with a consistent brand voice
📝 Steer 2.0 - Intelligently fix and improve writing in any application with a lightning-fast native assistant
New AI Job Opportunities
🔍 Synthesia - SEO Manager
🤝 Hebbia - Sales Engineer
🛠 Superannotate - Technical Support Engineer
🧩 Databricks - Solutions Engineer
⚙️ Kumo - Distributed Systems Engineer
QUICK HITS
Meta rolled out an update for its Ray-Ban smart glasses, introducing live AI assistance, real-time language translation, and Shazam integration for hands-free music recognition.
YouTube launched new controls allowing content creators to explicitly authorize specific AI companies to train models on their videos, with an initial list of 18 major tech companies, including OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta.
Google Labs debuted a new experiment called Whisk, a creative AI tool that combines Imagen 3 and Gemini to help users remix and transform visuals through image-to-image capabilities.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt warned about AI’s increasing capabilities in an interview with ABC, saying ‘pulling the plug’ may be necessary when self-improving systems arrive.
SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son pledged a $100B investment in U.S. AI in a meeting with incoming president Donald Trump, aiming to create 100,000 jobs over the next four years.
Defense giant Lockheed Martin established a new subsidiary called Astris AI, hoping to accelerate AI adoption across the defense industry and commercial applications.
THAT’S A WRAP
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Microsoft’s new AI with big math skills
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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.
While OpenAI and Google place giant presents under the AI tree, Microsoft’s Phi AI model family just proved that good things can come in small packages too.
The new Phi-4 is outperforming the industry's giants with just a fraction of the parameters — hinting at a bright future for small, specialized models. Let’s get into it…
In today’s AI rundown:
Microsoft releases small, powerful Phi-4
ChatGPT gains ‘Projects’ for chat organization
Practice job interviews with ChatGPT
Pika drops major 2.0 video upgrade
5 new AI tools & 5 new AI jobs
More AI & tech news
Read time: 4 minutes
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
MICROSOFT
🦾 Microsoft releases small, powerful Phi-4
Image source: Microsoft
The Rundown: Microsoft just released Phi-4, a 14B parameter small language model that outperforms massive competitors like GPT-4o and Gemini Pro 1.5 in areas like mathematical reasoning despite a drastic size difference.
The details:
Phi-4 outperforms models like Gemini Pro 1.5 on several math and complex reasoning benchmarks despite being a fraction of the size.
Phi-4 even surpasses its teacher model, GPT-4o, on graduate-level STEM Q&A and math competition problems.
Microsoft trained Phi-4 primarily on synthetic data, using AI to generate and validate approximately 400B tokens of high-quality training material.
The model also features an upgraded mechanism that can process longer inputs of up to 4,000 tokens, double the capacity of Phi-3.
Phi-4 is available in a limited research preview on Azure AI Foundry, and a wider release is planned for Hugging Face.
Why it matters: Microsoft’s Phi models continue to challenge the ‘bigger is better’ trend in AI, showing that smaller models can match or exceed the capabilities of larger ones — particularly in specialized areas. The AI future may not be about raw size but smarter architecture and training approaches that do more with less.
TOGETHER WITH RABBIT
🐰 One orange gift that’s fit for all
The Rundown: Bring the best gift to your holiday festivities this year with the rabbit r1 — an AI companion designed to grow more delightful over time thanks to continuous updates and new features that keep it fresh and engaging.
Whether young, young at heart, or in-between, gift r1 to:
Feed curiosity with unlimited answers to any questions at a moment’s notice
Elevate travels with bi-directional translation in 100+ languages and personalized itineraries
Nerd out with a fully customizable UI, the ability to create custom agents, and a playground of out-of-the-box AI features
Take advantage of the only discount of the year and secure r1s for everyone this holiday season.
OPENAI
🗂️ ChatGPT gains ‘Projects’ for chat organization
Image source: OpenAI
The Rundown: OpenAI launched Projects for ChatGPT on Day 7 of its ‘12 Days of OpenAI’ event, a new organizational system that lets users group conversations, files, and custom instructions into individual workspaces with shared context.
The details:
The feature introduces project-specific folders where users can bundle related chats, documents, and custom AI instructions across conversations.
Each Project automatically leverages GPT-4o while maintaining access to core features like Canvas, DALL-E, and web search capabilities.
The system is rolling out first to Plus, Pro, and Teams subscribers, with Enterprise and Education users gaining access in January.
Projects can be created and managed through the web interface and Windows app, while mobile and Mac users can view and chat with existing Projects.
Why it matters: While this isn’t the most groundbreaking feature (Anthropic released Projects for Claude in June), it's important for user workflows — avoiding the dreaded need to refresh entire context and instruction prompts when starting new chats.
AI TRAINING
💼 Practice job interviews with ChatGPT
The Rundown: ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode can be turned into a personalized interview coach, conducting mock interviews and providing real-time feedback.
Step-by-step:
Open ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode on your mobile device.
Set up your specific interview scenario and industry context.
Engage in a realistic mock interview with industry-focused questions.
Get immediate feedback on your responses and presentation.
Pro tip: If you need more time to formulate your responses, you can customize how the AI responds in Custom Instructions.
PRESENTED BY INNOVATING WITH AI
🤝 Turn AI passion into a consulting career
The Rundown: Innovating with AI's new program, AI Consultancy Project, transforms AI enthusiasts into professional consultants — tapping into a market projected to reach $54.7B by 2032.
The 6-month program delivers:
Proven frameworks for client acquisition and service delivery
A step-by-step path to six-figure consulting income
Students who land their first AI client in as little as 3 days
Click here to request early access to The AI Consultancy Project.
PIKA LABS
🎬 Pika drops major 2.0 video upgrade
Image source: Pika Labs
The Rundown: Pika Labs just released version 2.0 of its AI video generator, introducing a new ‘Ingredients’ tool that lets users incorporate their own images into AI-generated videos — alongside improved motion, prompting, and animation features.
The details:
A new 'Scene Ingredients' system allows users to upload and mix characters, objects, and backgrounds that the AI automatically recognizes and animates.
Pika’s updated model shows impressive realism, smooth movement, and prompt/image adherence, giving users more control over outputs.
The new video generator also features a significant update to text alignment, showcasing the ability to craft realistic branded scenes and advertising content.
Pika has already attracted over 11M users and secured $80M in funding, and the new version follows its viral ‘effects’ launch in October.
Why it matters: Pika’s new upgrades are wild, continuing to move video outputs out of the ‘slot machine’ luck phase into a more customizable, personalized experience. While we patiently waited for Sora, the AI video scene leveled up in a major way — with Pika, Luma, Runway, Kling, Hailuo, and others dulling the impact of OpenAI’s latest release.
NEW TOOLS & JOBS
Trending AI Tools
🔎 Reddit Answers - AI-powered search tool that lets you find human perspectives, recommendations, and info powered by Reddit communities
😷 Doctronic AI - Instant, accurate care from home with an AI consultation followed by video visits with licensed doctors
✍️ Paperguide AI writer - Easily write well-researched articles and academic papers with AI
👕 iMerch AI - Next-gen AI e-commerce tool offering intelligent product recommendations and personalized product lists
⚙️ Depth AI - Answer complex questions on large and messy codebases, onboard new engineers quickly, and ship code faster
New AI Job Opportunities
📋 Findem - Technical Program Manager
📞 Cresta - SDR Manager, East
🗣 Palantir Technologies - Communications Strategist
🤖 Meta - Partnerships Operations Lead, AI
💊 Hippocratic AI - Business Development Executive, Pharma
QUICK HITS
xAI rolled out an upgraded version of Grok-2 to all X platform users, featuring tripled speed, improved multilingual capabilities, and integration of web search and advanced image generation features.
Meta’s FAIR released a suite of new AI research projects including Meta Motivo for embodied agent control and Meta Video Seal for video watermarking, alongside improved models for memory scaling and social intelligence.
OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever warned that AI has reached 'peak data’ during the NeurIPS conference, predicting a shift from current training methods to more autonomous, reasoning-based systems that will become increasingly unpredictable.
Google unveiled NotebookLM Plus with interactive audio features and Gemini 2.0 Flash integration, allowing users to verbally engage with AI hosts during Audio Overviews and access expanded enterprise capabilities.
OpenAI published new email correspondences and a timeline of events with Elon Musk, claiming that Musk initially wanted the company to be a for-profit entity despite active lawsuits.
DeepSeek released VL2, a new vision-language model family leveraging MoE architecture that performs similarly to rival models despite smaller sizes.
Anonymous-chatbot has returned to the LM Arena, which was previously used to test GPT 4o, sparking rumors of a potential GPT 4.5 or upgraded OpenAI model coming soon.
THAT’S A WRAP
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ChatGPT sees the world
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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.
On the sixth day of Shipmas, OpenAI gave ChatGPT eyes.
Voice Mode’s long-awaited vision upgrade is here, countering Google’s big Gemini release — drastically changing the future of AI interactions. Let’s get into it…
In today’s AI rundown:
ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode gains vision capabilities
Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Haiku is now generally available
Turn your screenshots into working prototypes
Anthropic analyzes real-world AI use with Clio
5 new AI tools & 5 new AI jobs
More AI & tech news
Read time: 4 minutes
Friendly reminder: We’re moving to a new email sending address. Make sure to add news@daily.therundown.ai to your contacts to ensure you keep receiving our emails.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
OPENAI
👁️ ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode gains vision capabilities
Image source: OpenAI on YouTube
The Rundown: OpenAI just launched a major upgrade to ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode on Day 6 of its live stream event, enabling the AI to analyze and respond to live video input and screen sharing during conversations.
The details:
Users can show live videos or share their screens while using Advanced Voice Mode, and ChatGPT can understand and discuss the visual context in real time.
The feature works through a new video icon in the mobile app, with screen sharing available through a separate menu option.
The updates are available to ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Team subscribers, with Enterprise and Edu users gaining access in January.
OpenAI also introduced a festive new voice option, allowing users to chat with Santa as a limited-time seasonal addition through early January.
Why it matters: Seven months after its initial demo, OpenAI is finally delivering on the promise of visual understanding in conversational AI — moving ChatGPT beyond text and voice into true multimodal interaction. It’s been a big week for vision, with Gemini and ChatGPT Advanced Voice gaining some extremely powerful new capabilities.
TOGETHER WITH METAVIEW
✍️ Meet the world’s leading AI recruiting scribe
The Rundown: Metaview is a specialized AI tool that captures, structures, and summarizes recruiting conversations, enabling teams to focus on candidate interactions rather than note-taking.
Leading companies like Deel, Deliveroo, Sony and HelloFresh trust Metaview for:
Flawless interview documentation without the manual work
Significant time savings (10 hours per week on average for recruiters)
Effortless integration with existing recruiting tools
Get started with Metaview and try 10 calls for free, exclusive to Rundown AI readers.
ANTHROPIC
⚡ Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Haiku is now generally available
Image source: Anthropic
The Rundown: Anthropic quietly rolled out its fastest AI model, Claude 3.5 Haiku, to all Claude users on web and mobile platforms, expanding from its previous API-only availability — though no official announcement has been made.
The details:
Haiku 3.5 was released in November along with Claude’s computer use feature — beating the previous top model 3 Opus on key benchmarks.
The model excels at coding tasks and data processing, offering impressive speed and performance with high accuracy.
Haiku features a 200K context window, which is larger than competing models, while also integrating with Artifacts for a real-time content workspace.
The initial release drew criticism for Haiku’s API pricing, which was increased 4x over 3 Haiku to $1 per million input tokens and $5 per million output tokens.
Free users can now access Haiku with daily message limits, while Pro subscribers ($20/month) get expanded usage and priority access.
Why it matters: It’s been a relatively quiet holiday season of releases for Anthropic compared to rivals. Although Haiku is impressive compared to previous generations, it doesn’t feel like a huge needle mover during a big week of AI releases — and it might take a launch of a top-tier 3.5 Opus to steal the spotlight from Google and OpenAI.
AI TRAINING
💻 Turn your screenshots into working prototypes
The Rundown: Claude Artifacts lets you create functional prototypes directly from screenshots or photos, bringing your ideas to life in minutes.
Step-by-step:
Access Claude through your browser or mobile app.
Take a clear screenshot or photo of your design.
Upload it with a detailed prompt requesting a React prototype with specific features and styling.
Enhance your prototype by requesting additional functionality and refinements.
Pro tip: Use high-contrast images and break down complex interfaces into smaller components for better results.
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.
ANTHROPIC
🔍 Anthropic analyzes real-world AI use with Clio
Image source: Anthropic
The Rundown: Anthropic introduced Clio, a new system that reveals patterns in how people actually use AI assistants worldwide, providing detailed insights into real-world AI adoption while maintaining user privacy.
The details:
Clio analyzes millions of conversations by summarizing and clustering them while removing identifying information in a secure environment.
The system then organizes these clusters into hierarchies, allowing researchers to explore patterns in usage without needing access to sensitive data.
Analysis of 1M Claude conversations showed that coding and business use cases dominate, with web development representing over 10% of interactions.
The system also uncovered unexpected use cases like dream interpretation, soccer match analysis, and tabletop gaming assistance.
Usage patterns vary significantly by language and region, such as a higher prevalence of economic and social issue chats in non-English conversations.
Why it matters: AI assistants are becoming increasingly integrated into our daily lives, but each person leverages them in a different way — making this a fascinating window into how the tech is being used. Understanding the dominant real-world use cases can both help improve user experience and align development with actual user needs.
NEW TOOLS & JOBS
Trending AI Tools
👁️ Gemini Stream Realtime - Interact with Gemini in real-time using text, voice, video, or screen sharing.
🎅 AI Santa by Tavus - Video chat with Santa in real-time across 30 languages
🌊 Detasurf - A browser, file manager, and AI assistant in one clean app
🧠 Rememberall - Open-source solution to give Custom GPTs persistent memory across conversations
📆 Clarity AI - Turn schedule screenshots into calendar events and tasks
New AI Job Opportunities
QUICK HITS
Google announced Android XR, a new Gemini-powered operating system for mixed reality systems, with Samsung set to launch the first compatible headset codenamed ‘Project Moohan’ in 2025.
ChatGPT head of product Nick Turley discussed the platform's future in an interview with The Verge, saying that chat-based interactions may soon feel as “outdated as ‘90s instant messaging.”
Amazon Prime Video launched a new ‘AI Topics’ beta feature, using machine learning to group and recommend content based on viewers' interests and watching habits.
Character.AI instituted a new safety overhaul featuring a separate AI model for users under 18, alongside upcoming parental controls and enhanced content filtering — following two lawsuits saying the platform contributed to self-harm.
Nvidia has expanded its hiring in China, adding over 1,000 employees in 2024, including 200 new Beijing-based researchers focused on autonomous driving tech.
Stanford researchers proposed a global initiative to create an AI-powered virtual human cell to revolutionize biological understanding and drug development through computational modeling.
THAT’S A WRAP
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