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AI

ChatGPT goes to college

Rowan Cheung • 5 minutes

Sign Up | Advertise | Tools | AI University

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

Arizona State University is opening its doors to AI, integrating ChatGPT into over 200 projects across its campus.

From AI writing coaches to virtual patient simulators, is this a glimpse into what the future of education might look like? Let’s get into it…


In today’s AI rundown:

  • ChatGPT teams up with ASU

  • Discovering new drugs with AI

  • How to use Midjourney ‘Erase‘

  • AI can 3D print lifelike human organs

  • 6 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

OPENAI

🎓 ChatGPT teams up with ASU

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: OpenAI’s ChatGPT is headed to Arizona State University (ASU), where the university is integrating the AI assistant into over 200 projects across teaching, research, and operations.

The details:

  • ASU is using ChatGPT Edu, a version designed for universities with enhanced privacy and security features.

  • The university also launched an ‘AI Innovation Challenge’ for faculty and staff, receiving an overwhelming demand for using ChatGPT to maximize teaching, research, and ops.

  • Key projects include an AI writing companion for scholarly work, 'Sam' (a chatbot for med students to practice patient interactions), and AI-assisted research recruitment.

  • The partnership has inspired other institutions like Oxford and Wharton to pursue similar collaborations.

Why it matters: While some schools are attempting to resist AI, ASU is embracing ChatGPT to make learning more personalized and to prepare students for an increasingly AI-driven job market. As education continues to change in the age of AI, case studies like this will be instrumental in shaping the future of academia.

TOGETHER WITH OCTOAI

🚀 Small models, big results with OctoAI

The Rundown: OctoAI empowers engineers to leverage small open-source models like Llama 3.1-8B, outperforming GPT-4o and dramatically reducing costs for enterprise tasks.

Learn how to:

  • Apply advanced prompt engineering techniques to slash expenses

  • Use parameter-efficient fine-tuning for optimal performance

  • Achieve GPT-4o quality with Llama 3.1-8B at a fraction of the cost

  • Implement these strategies in your own projects

Read this blog and get $10 in free credits on OctoAI now.

ACTFOUND

🧪 Discovering new drugs with AI

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: Scientists from China and the U.S. just developed ActFound, a new AI model that outperforms existing methods in predicting drug bioactivity, potentially accelerating and reducing costs in drug development.

The details:

  • ActFound combines meta-learning and pairwise learning to overcome common limitations in AI drug discovery, like small datasets and incompatible measurements.

  • The model was trained on 35,000+ assays (metal ore breakdowns) and 1.6 million experimentally measured bioactivities from a popular chemical database.

  • In tests, ActFound outperformed nine competing models and showed strong performance in predicting cancer drug bioactivity.

Why it matters: ActFound could significantly speed up drug development by accurately predicting compound properties with less data and lower costs than traditional methods. While still in early stages, AI breakthroughs like this are the lesser-talked about developments that could end up saving millions of lives.

AI TRAINING

🖼️ How to use Midjourney ‘Erase‘

The Rundown: Midjourney’s new web editor allows users to make targeted changes to AI-generated images using the ‘Erase’ tool — no Discord account required.

Step-by-step:

  1. Visit Midjourney's website and log in.

  2. Generate your initial image using the Imagine Bar.

  3. Open the image you want to edit and click on the "Editor" button.

  4. Make your edits: modify the prompt, use the erase tool to remove areas, and adjust the canvas size if needed.

  5. Click "Submit" to generate your edited image variations.

Pro tip: When erasing, always remove more rather than less. This gives Midjourney more flexibility to generate new elements in your image!

TOGETHER WITH AI CONFERENCE

 🧠 Learn from OpenAI and Meta AI experts

The Rundown: The AI Conference is bringing together industry leaders with speakers from Stability AI, OpenAI, Meta, and the Pentagon — offering expert insights into AI’s impact across different industries.

At the conference, you’ll experience:

  • 2 days of content with more than 75 speakers across 3 different tracks

  • An expo showcasing top AI companies’ innovations

  • AI applications in healthcare, enterprise, defense, and more

  • A live AI startup competition judged by VCs

Register now to secure your spot, discount codes expire this week.

AI RESEARCH

🖨️ AI can 3D print lifelike human organs

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: Researchers at Washington State University recently developed an AI technique called Bayesian Optimization that dramatically improves the speed and efficiency of 3D printing lifelike human organs.

The details:

  • The AI balances geometric precision, density, and printing time to create organ models that look and feel authentic.

  • In tests, it printed 60 continually improving versions of kidney and prostate organ models.

  • This approach significantly reduces the time and materials needed to find optimal 3D printing settings for complex objects.

  • The technology also has potential applications beyond medicine — for example, in the computer science, automotive, and aviation industries.

Why it matters: With cheaper, lifelike 3D-printed human organs, medical students could better practice for surgery before operating on actual patients. Beyond medicine, this AI technique could help reduce manufacturing costs for a variety of things like smartphones, car parts, and even airplane components.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

  • 🎥 Haiper Keyframe Conditioning - Create smooth video transitions with the first, middle and last frame

  • 💻 Cursor - AI-powered IDE for efficient pair-programming

  • 🤖 Seven24 - Capture client audio feedback and transforms it into actionable tasks

  • 💬 AIMLAPI - Access various AI models with a single AI API

  • 💡 Google AI Studio Prompt Gallery - Prompt ideas for chatting with AI efficiently

  • 🎒 Gauth - AI homework helper with live tutor support

New AI Job Opportunities

QUICK HITS

Anthropic published system prompts for its Claude AI models, revealing instructions on behavior, capabilities, and personality traits.

Inflection AI partnered with Data Transfer Initiative, enabling Pi users to export conversations and announced plans to cap free usage while focusing on enterprise AI.

Pharia released Pharia-1-LLM-7B, an open-source model optimized for German, French, and Spanish that excels in domain-specific applications.

IBM previewed Spyre, a new AI accelerator chip for IBM Z mainframes, designed to scale enterprise AI workloads with clustering capabilties.

Hugging Face and Google Cloud just partnered up to release optimized Deep Learning Containers for building AI with open models on Google Cloud infrastructure.

OpenAI hired former Meta executive Irina Kofman to lead strategic initiatives, focusing initially on AI preparedness and safety.

THAT’S A WRAP

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AI

China is coming for Tesla Optimus

Rowan Cheung • 5 minutes

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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

China unveiled a whopping 27 new humanoid robots at the 2024 World Robot Conference, with Tesla's Optimus as the sole foreign competitor.

Can Tesla and the U.S. maintain its lead in the humanoid race, or will the first affordable, commercially available robot come from overseas? Let’s get into it…


In today’s AI rundown:

  • China is coming for Tesla Optimus

  • Grok-2 improves speed, accuracy, transparency

  • How to use Ideogram for generating images

  • AI learns to plan better without humans

  • 5 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

AGIBOT

🤖 China is coming for Tesla Optimus

Image source: SCMP

The Rundown: At the 2024 World Robot Conference in Beijing, Chinese companies showcased 27 humanoid robots alongside Tesla’s Optimus, signalling China’s ambition to dominate the industry.

The details:

  • Chinese tech firms unveiled 27 humanoid robots at the expo, with Tesla’s Optimus being the only foreign competitor present.

  • AGIBOT, founded by a Huawei alumnus, presented robots powered by large language models (LLMs) for industrial use and customer service.

  • Other notable entries included Astribot’s S1 robot assistant capable of writing calligraphy and playing musical instruments, and Galbot’s wheeled robots for food delivery and retail tasks.

  • Despite the impressive showcase, experts note that technological hurdles and high costs still create challenges for Chinese manufacturers.

Why it matters: China may be slightly behind in the AI race against the U.S., but it’s clear the country is committed to dominating the humanoid robotics race. With a whopping 27 China-based humanoid robots demonstrating a wide-range of use cases at the event, commercially available humanoids may be coming sooner than most expect.

TOGETHER WITH CODESIGNAL

🗣️ Codesignal’s AI conversation simulator

The Rundown: CodeSignal recently launched an innovative AI conversation simulator, designed to help you practice important work conversations to make sure you’re ready for real-world scenarios.

You can:

  • Choose the type of conversation you want to work on (job interviews, team management, client communication, etc.)

  • Run through a full voice chat role-play with an AI partner.

  • Get instant customized feedback from Cosmo, your AI tutor

Give it a try and transform your communication skills.

XAI

⚡️ Grok-2 improves speed, accuracy, transparency

Image source: The Rundown / Midjourney

The Rundown: xAI’s Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini just made major improvements — doubling the model’s speed in the mini version and showing increased accuracy in both models, just days after its beta launch.

The details:

  • Grok-2 mini is now twice as fast as it was previously, thanks to a rewritten inference stack using SGLang.

  • Both Grok-2 and its mini version have become slightly more accurate due to reduced quantization error, according to one xAI employee.

  • Additionally, both Grok-2 models are now part of the LMSYS Chatbot Arena leaderboard for increased transparency, with Grok-2’s larger model ranking #2 and surpassing Claude 3.5 Sonnet.

  • Grok-2 excels particularly in math, where it ranks #1 and performs at a state-of-the-art level in hard prompts, coding, and instruction-following.

Why it matters: From being founded only ~18 months ago, to creating an LLM ranked third in the world, it’s safe to say that xAI has the entire AI community mind blown. This not only makes Grok-2 a top contender in the AI race but also intensifies competition, potentially accelerating advancements across the industry.

AI TRAINING

🎨 How to use Ideogram for generating images

Image source: The Rundown / Ideogram

The Rundown: Ideogram 2.0, the latest state-of-the-art AI image generator, excels at creating images that include text — opening new possibilities for use cases like thumbnails, posters, newsletter graphics, memes, and more.

Step-by-step:

  1. Head over to Ideogram’s website and Sign up. You’ll get free credits to try the image generator without a credit card.

  2. Click "Describe what you want to see" and enter a detailed text prompt for your desired image.

  3. Customize settings like aspect ratio, AI model (choose 2.0), and style (Realistic, Design, 3D, or Anime).

  4. Click "Generate" to create four AI-generated images based on your prompt!

Pro tip: Experiment with different prompts and settings to discover its full potential and create unique visuals for your projects!

PRESENTED BY DEFINED.AI

🎙️ Fix speech AI with Defined’s transparent datasets

The Rundown: Defined.ai recently partnered with a leading consumer electronics company to revamp its Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) AI models, addressing performance issues, demographic biases, and lack of diversity in responses.

Defined.ai’s solution delivered:

  • Immediate access to large-scale, ethically-collected spontaneous speech data

  • High-fidelity transcriptions with diverse age, gender, and accent distributions

  • Data sourcing for responsible AI that avoids legal and reputational risks associated with web scraping

Download the free case study and discover how Defined.ai’s responsible AI data marketplace can transform your ASR models today.

IBM

📝 AI learns to plan better without humans

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: IBM Research and Cornell University recently created AutoToS, a system that teaches AI to solve complex planning problems at 100% accuracy — without needing a human to check its work.

The details:

  • AutoToS is like a smart tutor for AI, helping it learn how to break down and solve tricky problems step-by-step.

  • The system uses clever tests to check the AI’s work, pointing out mistakes and showing examples of how to do better without human interferance.

  • This approach seems to work equally as well for smaller and larger models.

  • AutoToS succeeded in teaching AI to solve complex puzzles, including classic problems like arranging blocks and solving Sokoban, a box-pushing game.

Why it matters: Right now, it’s difficult to trust AI agents to completely autonomously perform actions on your behalf, but AutoToS is solving complex tasks at a 100% accuracy. If this system works in the real world, it’s the next big step in creating more reliable AI assistants.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

New AI Job Opportunities

QUICK HITS

Mark Zuckerberg and Spotify’s Daniel Ek advocated for Europe to embrace open-source AI, warning against complex regulations hindering innovation.

Google AI Studio released a native prompt gallery featuring long context, multi-model inputs, and structured outputs for enhanced AI development.

Anthropic supported California’s AI regulation bill after changes were made, saying its benefits likely outweigh its costs for advanced AI development.

Fetch.ai launched Innovation Lab in San Francisco with a $10 million fund to support early-stage AI agent startups.

Google appointed former Character.AI founder and long-time Google researcher Noam Shazeer as co-lead of its Gemini AI model development.

Imagination Technologies abandoned standalone NPUs, integrating AI capabilities into GPUs instead and securing $100 million in financing.

Chinese companies reportedly bypassed U.S. AI chip export restrictions by accessing banned technologies through Amazon Web Services’ cloud platform.

THAT’S A WRAP

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AI

AI agents to automate sales

Rowan Cheung • 5 minutes

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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

Salesforce is launching two AI agents that help sales teams autonomously engage with leads and provide personalized coaching.

With 24/7 support, automated repetitive tasks, and AI-powered insights, are we headed into a new era of sales? Let's get into it…


In today’s AI rundown:

  • Salesforce unveils AI agents for sales

  • Nvidia and Mistral make laptop-ready AI

  • Turn PDFs into interactive dashboards

  • New AI breakthrough in solar tech

  • 6 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

SALESFORCE

🧠 Salesforce unveils AI agents for sales

Image source: Salesforce

The Rundown: Salesforce just introduced two fully autonomous, AI-powered sales agents, Einstein SDR Agent and Einstein Sales Coach Agent, designed to help sales teams accelerate growth through automation and personalization.

The details:

  • Einstein SDR Agent engages with inbound leads 24/7 to answer questions, handle objections, and book meetings.

  • Einstein Sales Coach Agent helps salespeople rehearse pitches and offers real-time suggestions during calls.

  • The agents both leverage Salesforce’s CRM data and external data uploaded via Data Cloud to generate accurate, contextually relevant responses.

  • The agents will be generally available in October, with more details expected to be released at Dreamforce conference in September.

Why it matters: By integrating AI agents into existing platforms, Salesforce is lowering the barrier for AI adoption in business processes. These agents offer 24/7 support and automate repetitive tasks like qualifying leads and booking meetings, freeing human sales teams to focus on high-value tasks and potentially close more deals.

TOGETHER WITH LAMBDA

🧠 Use Hermes 3 for free with Lambda Chat

The Rundown: Trained on Lambda’s 1-Click Cluster, Nous Research’s free-to-access, open-source Hermes 3 is the first full-parameter fine-tune of Meta’s Llama 3.1 405B model with exceptional reasoning capabilities.

With Hermes 3, you can:

  • Tackle complex tasks from strategic decision-making to creative writing

  • Access the model through Lambda’s new Chat Completions API or Lambda Chat interface

  • Run the model on a single node or scale to a multi-node 1-Click Cluster

Try Hermes 3 for free through lambda.chat or Chat Completions API.

NVIDIA

💻 Nvidia and Mistral make laptop-ready AI

Image source: The Rundown / Ideogram

The Rundown: Nvidia and Mistral just released Mistral-NeMo-Minitron 8B, a highly accurate small language model that can run efficiently on laptops and PCs.

The details:

  • The model uses optimization techniques like pruning (removing certain weights) and distillation (retraining the pruned model on a small dataset) to achieve high accuracy with a smaller footprint.

  • These optimizations resulted in up to 40x cost savings in terms of raw compute during training.

  • Laptops and PCs can run the model locally for faster and more secure interactions with AI.

  • Minitron 8B leads nine language-driven AI benchmarks for similarly sized models from language understanding to reasoning and coding.

Why it matters: AI models that are small enough to run locally on laptops and PCs means less reliance on cloud services, improved data privacy, and faster responses. As this tech evolves, we could soon see advanced AI in everything from smartphones and watches to home appliances.

AI TRAINING

📊 Turn PDFs into interactive dashboards

The Rundown: Using AI-powered coding and Replit (an online integrated development environment), you can transform any PDF into a dynamic, interactive dashboard with this simple AI workflow.

Step-by-step:

  1. Upload your PDF to an AI chatbot (e.g., ChatGPT or Google Gemini)

  2. Request a Python script for an interactive dashboard using Plotly Dash.

  3. Copy the AI-generated Python code and create a new Python project on replit.com.

  4. Paste the code into Replit and run the code in Replit to generate your interactive dashboard.

Hot tip: If you’re using Claude, you can enable the Artifacts feature and simply prompt it to “create an interactive dashboard from this PDF“ to get a similar result

PRESENTED BY ZAPIER

🫐 See, dream, achieve with Very Berry Visualizer

The Rundown: Very Berry Visualizer, ZAP’s sweetest flavor, helps you turn workflow diagrams into automated processes — making your automated visions a reality with minimal effort.

Leverage Very Berry Visualizer to:

  • Create connected processes and transform diagrams into automated workflows

  • Design and collaborate on workflows

  • Enhance productivity with AI visualization

Bring your workflow visions to life with Very Berry Visualizer!

AI RESEARCH

☀️ New AI breakthrough in solar tech

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: Researchers just developed a new AI-based method called NES-VMC that can accurately calculate the excited states of atoms and molecules, a challenge in physics and chemistry that previously delayed improvements in solar tech.

The details:

  • NES-VMC (natural excited states variational Monte Carlo) accurately predicted quantum excited states on systems ranging from single atoms to benzene-sized molecules.

  • The method outperforms leading computational chemistry techniques, often achieving chemical accuracy.

  • Excited states are crucial for understanding light-matter interactions, key to improving solar cells, LEDs, lasers, and more.

  • NES-VMC overcomes long-standing challenges in physics and chemistry that have hindered progress in these fields.

Why it matters: This AI-driven breakthrough could lead to more efficient solar cells, brighter LEDs, and more powerful lasers. The ripple effects could be dramatic: lower electricity costs, improvements in phone and laptop battery life and displays, faster fiber-optic internet, and so much more.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

  • 🇪🇸 D-iD AI Video Translate - Instant multilingual videos with lip synced translation

  • 🎨 Ideogram 2.0 - AI image generation with state-of-the-art text details

  • 🎥 EVF-SAM-2 - Prompt-to-segmentation in videos

  • 🤖 AgentQL - Painless data extraction and web automation

  •  Eppo - Run advanced A/B tests seamlessly

  • 📝 Life Note - Journal with the greatest minds in human history

New AI Job Opportunities

  • ✍️ The Rundown - Writer/Editor

  • 👩🏻‍🔬 Sanctuary AI - Expert Scientist - Dexterous Manipulation

  • 🧠 DeepL - Senior Full Stack Software Engineer

  • 🔬 Meta - Fundamental AI Research Scientist, NLP

QUICK HITS

Free event: Deploying AI in the Enterprise. Learn from NYU Stern Chief AI Architect Conor Grennan to learn how to roll out AI to a large team or organization. RSVP here.*

Boston Dynamics posted a new video of its Atlas robot doing push-ups, showcasing advancements in dynamic movement control.

AI21 Labs unveiled Jamba 1.5, a multilingual AI model series with 256,000 context length and permissive licensing for smaller organizations.

Krea AI added Flux 1, an advanced text-to-image AI model, to its platform with 3-minute free generations for non-subscribed users.

Perplexity AI is reportedly planning to introduce advertising on its AI-powered search platform by Q4 of 2024.

Anthropic launched LaTeX rendering support for Claude, enabling the AI chatbot to display mathematical equations and expressions consistently.

Google DeepMind employees urged the company to end military contracts, citing concerns over AI use in warfare and surveillance.

*Sponsored listing

THAT’S A WRAP

SPONSOR US

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AI

The next best AI image generator...

Rowan Cheung • 5 minutes

Sign Up | Advertise | Tools | AI University

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

The next generation of AI image creation is here with Ideogram 2.0, and it’s more accessible than ever at 40 free images per day.

With better text generation, realistic hands, enhanced colors, and more — the practical use cases for AI image generation just expanded dramatically. Let’s get into it…


In today’s AI rundown:

  • Ideogram 2.0 launches with major upgrades

  • xAI releases Grok 2 in early beta

  • Create your own AI Clone

  • Disney AI brings robots to life

  • 6 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

IDEOGRAM

🎨 Ideogram 2.0 launches with major upgrades

Image source: Ideogram

The Rundown: Ideogram just released version 2.0 of its advanced text-to-image model with major upgrades and new features, including five new image styles, an iOS app, a beta API, and over 1 billion public Ideogram images.

The details:

  • Ideogram 2.0 offers five image styles: General, Realistic, Design, 3D, and Anime.

  • The Realistic style convincingly resembles photographs with dramatically improved textures for human features like hands and hair, a pain point for previous image generation models.

  • The Design style also significantly improves text rendering, allowing users to create greeting cards, t-shirt designs and more.

  • Ideogram offers a free tier that allows users to generate around 40 images, or 10 prompts a day at no charge.

Why it matters: Ideogram 2.0 consistently renders high-quality images with near perfect human hands and text — which is an instant ‘AI giveaway’ in other AI image generators. This makes the model the new gold standard for use cases like memes, newsletter images, YouTube thumbnails, posters, and more.

TOGETHER WITH TENSORWAVE

🌊 High-performance, low-cost AI with TensorWave

The Rundown: TensorWave cloud harnesses AMD’s Instinct MI300X to deliver unmatched price-to-performance for large language models, outpacing competitors like Nvidia’s H100B.

You’ll be able to:

  • Handle increasingly complex and memory-hungry LLMs with ease

  • Run massive models like Llama 3.1 405B on a single node

  • Leverage TensorWave’s inference caching for smoother enterprise-scale operations

  • Achieve superior performance at a fraction of the cost

Click here to learn more and supercharge your AI workloads.

XAI

🔥 xAI releases Grok 2 in early beta

Image source: The Rundown

The Rundown: xAI has begun rolling out early beta access for Grok 2, a powerful new AI model that leverages real-time data from X and uses Flux.1 to generate relatively unfiltered AI images.

The details:

  • Grok 2 is now available to a select group of premium X users in early beta mode.

  • The model can access and use real-time information from X, setting it apart from ChatGPT and other LLMs.

  • Grok 2 offers two modes: regular and “fun” mode, with the latter providing a more distinctive and entertaining personality.

  • When gathering and summarizing news, Grok 2 can reference specific tweets, a capability that cannot be found in ChatGPT or Claude.

Why it matters: Grok 2’s biggest advantage against other top-tier AI chatbots like ChatGPT is its ability to access real-time information from X and provide unfiltered responses. And with Grok 3 rumoured to be coming at the end of 2024, xAI has proven itself as a serious competitor in the LLM race — in a very short period of time.

AI TRAINING

👋 Create your own AI Clone

The Rundown: RenderNet's Narrator feature allows busy founders and creators to quickly create AI clones of themselves and create realistic videos narrating any script.

Step-by-step:

  1. Sign up for a free RenderNet account on their website.

  2. Select "Try Narrator" from the main dashboard and upload a video file of yourself speaking.

  3. Select an AI voice, and input your script. You can also upload a custom audio file with your own original voice directly.

  4. Click 'Generate' to generate your AI clone video 🎉

PRESENTED BY AI21

Supercharge your AI apps with Jamba Models

The Rundown: AI21’s Jamba Foundation Models offer unmatched speed and accuracy for building powerful AI apps.

With Jamba, you’ll unlock:

  • Superior latency performance, outpacing competitive models

  • A massive 256K content window, perfect for RAG and agentic workflows

  • Enhanced efficiency and cost-effectiveness with the innovative Mamba-Transformer architecture

  • Options for private deployments, customization, continuous pre-training, and fine-tuning

Try Jamba today and elevate your AI capabilities.

DISNEY

🤖 Disney AI brings robots to life

Image source: Disney Research

The Rundown: ETH Zurich and Disney Research scientists have developed an AI system that can generate realistic, physics-based movements for virtual characters and robots from simple text or image inputs.

The details:

  • The system uses a two-stage approach: first, it learns a latent representation of motion from a large dataset, then trains a control policy using reinforcement learning.

  • It can handle a diverse range of motions, from simple walking to complex acrobatics, outperforming previous methods in accuracy and generalization.

  • The AI adapts to physical constraints, allowing it to transfer motions to real robots while maintaining balance and style.

  • Disney released a video showcasing one robot trained on the new two-stage AI technique dancing and getting pushed around while staying on its feet.

Why it matters: This AI system bridges the gap between animation and robotics, helping humanoids move more naturally and adapt better to new situations. With personal robots coming as soon as 2025 and the rapid pace of AI and robotics advancements, we might be coexisting with robots sooner than most people realize.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

  • 🎨 MolyPix - Generate easy-to-edit graphic designs from text

  • 🎬 LTX Studio Character Animation - Full character dialogue control and face motion capture for AI-enhanced filmmaking

  • 🤖 Hermes 3 - Open-sourced AI model optimized for reasoning

  • 👨‍💻 Zed - High-performance, multiplayer code editor

  • 🤝 micro1 - AI recruitment engine for meeting top engineers

  • sleekflow - Automate customer interactions with personalized conversational workflows

New AI Job Opportunities

  • 🎯 C3 AI - AI Engagement Director, Federal

  • 🤝 Siena - Customer Success Manager

  • 🌐 OpenAI - Partner Solutions Architect

  • 📡 Waymo - Radar Software Engineer

QUICK HITS

Midjourney opened its web-based AI image editor and new tools to everyone with free trials for new users to test it out.

McAfee released AI-powered deepfake detection software for select Levono PCs to protect users from AI-generated scams.

Best Buy introduced AI-powered delivery tracking with minute-by-minute updates to meet rising customer expectations for transparency.

MIT CSAIL researchers developed an AI assistant that oversees teams to align roles and beliefs in an effort to improve collaboration.

Groq launched a new API for a distilled version of OpenAI’s Whisper text-to-speech model that is 240 times faster and significantly cheaper.

California and Google drafted a $300 million, 5-year partnership to fund in-state newsrooms and AI initiatives, including a $40 million annual “AI Innovation Accelerator”.

THAT’S A WRAP

SPONSOR US

Get your product in front of over 650k+ AI enthusiasts

Our newsletter is read by thousands of tech executives, investors, engineers, managers, and business owners around the world. Get in touch today.

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AI

OpenAI's best model just got better

Rowan Cheung • 5 minutes

Sign Up | Advertise | Tools | AI University

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

OpenAI just launched free fine-tuning for GPT-4o, allowing developers to customize the most advanced AI model at no cost until September 23.

But what will this new wave of hyper-specialized AI models really unlock for developers and AI apps across industries? Let’s get into it…


In today’s AI rundown:

  • OpenAI adds free fine-tuning to GPT-4o

  • Claude sued for copyright infringement

  • Create AI images in real-time on WhatsApp

  • Microsoft’s new AI beats larger models

  • 6 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

OPENAI

🛠️ OpenAI adds free fine-tuning to GPT-4o

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: OpenAI just launched free fine-tuning (up to 1 million tokens per day through September 23) for GPT-4o, allowing developers to customize the model for higher performance and accuracy.

The details:

  • Developers can now, for the first time ever, fine-tune GPT-4o to improve the model’s structure, tone, and domain-specific instructions for their AI applications.

  • Fine-tuning is available on all paid usage tiers with training costs of $25 per million tokens, but it is completely free until September 23.

  • OpenAI suggests that developers should see strong results from fine-tuning with only a few dozen training examples.

  • Additionally, Google’s Gemini API is giving developers 1.5 billion tokens for free every day on its Gemini 1.5 Flash model and 1.6 million tokens on its Gemini 1.5 Pro model.

Why it matters: Just last week, a company that was granted early access to fine-tune GPT-4o, produced Genie and achieved state-of-the-art scores on both SWE-bench Verified (43.8%) and Full (30.1%) benchmarks. With free fine-tuning now available to all developers, get ready for a new wave of smarter, faster and more capable AI bots.

TOGETHER WITH OCTOAI

🔒 Learn to deploy AI apps safely and securely

The Rundown: OctoAI is offering a free expert round table session featuring an expert panel that will provide insights on balancing innovation with data security and compliance to help businesses deploy GenAI applications securely and efficiently.

You’ll learn how to:

  • Ensure data security and regulatory compliance when deploying AI apps

  • Navigate deploying Generative AI in private environments

  • Implement quality evaluations for AI applications and scale GenAI solutions reliably

Sign up today for OctoAI’s free round table session – and if you can’t attend you’ll still get sent the recording.

ANTHROPIC

👨‍⚖️ Claude sued for copyright infringement

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: A group of authors filed a lawsuit against AI startup Anthropic, alleging the company committed “large-scale theft” by training its Claude chatbot on pirated copies of copyrighted books.

The details:

  • This is the first lawsuit from writers targeting Anthropic and Claude, but similar lawsuits have been filed against competitor OpenAI and ChatGPT.

  • The lawsuit accuses Anthropic of using a dataset called The Pile, which includes numerous pirated books.

  • Anthropic and others, including OpenAI, have argued that training AI models is protected under the “fair use” doctrine of U.S. laws, which permits the limited use of copyrighted materials.

Why it matters: This is not the first time an AI company has been sued over copyright infringement, but it resurfaces an important debate about AI training data. While similar cases have been largely dismissed in the past, courts have yet to definitively address the core issue of using unauthorized internet-scraped material for AI training.

AI TRAINING

🎨 Create AI images in real-time on WhatsApp

The Rundown: WhatsApp's new “Imagine“ AI image generator feature allows users to create images in real-time simply by describing what they want in the chatbot.

Step-by-step:

  1. Open WhatsApp and tap on the blue circle icon at the top of the main chat screen.

  2. Start your description with "Imagine".

  3. Watch as the AI generates an image in real time based on your prompt.

  4. When satisfied, hit “Send” and download the image.

Hot tip: If you don’t see the blue circle, it might not have rolled out into your account/country yet.

PRESENTED BY AI CONFERENCE

🎙️ Don’t miss the next big AI event

The Rundown: The AI Conference 2024 in San Francisco is bringing together the brightest minds in AI – including OpenAI’s Head of Research for GPT-5, Meta’s Head of GenAI Products, and the Pentagon’s new Chief of AI.

By attending, you’ll get:

  • Insights from 60+ top AI companies and industry experts

  • Curated tracks covering technical, building, and strategic aspects of AI

  • Exclusive networking opportunities, including an AI After Dark mixer

  • A live AI startup competition judged by prominent VCs

Secure your spot now and use code “Rundown24” for a 25% discount, available this week only.

AI RESEARCH

🧪 Microsoft’s new AI beats larger models

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: Microsoft just released Phi-3.5-MoE, an advanced AI model that rivals the reasoning capabilities of much larger models while maintaining a compact and efficient architecture.

The details:

  • Phi-3.5-MoE uses a new mixture-of-experts (MoE) approach, which selectively activates only the most relevant parts of the model for each task to save compute power.

  • The new model excels at understanding and following complex instructions and can handle up to ~125,000 words in a single prompt.

  • In head-to-head benchmarks, Phi-3.5-MoE outperformed popular models like Meta’s Llama 3 8B and Google’s Gemma 2 9B, but fell short against OpenAI’s GPT-4o mini.

  • Microsoft made the model available under an open-source MIT license on Hugging Face.

Why it matters: While the mainstream media focuses on the most advanced large language model, there’s also another race amongst tech giants for the smartest, fastest, and smallest AI. Breakthroughs like Phi-3.5-MoE are paving the way for advanced AI models to run directly and privately on our mobile devices.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

  • 🎨 Luma Dream Machine 1.5 - AI video generation with custom text rendering and enhanced motion

  • 👩‍🎤 flux-dev-lora-trainer - Train and run a FLUX LoRa model

  • 💼 Sybil - AI assistant that automates CRM updates and follow-ups

  • 🐱 FlowKitten - Validate business ideas with AI

  • 🧑‍💻 COSINE Genie - The newest AI software engineer agent

  • 👀 Simplex - On-demand photorealistic vision datasets from 3D scenes

New AI Job Opportunities

  • 🔍 OpenAI - Open Source Insider Risk Investigator

  • 🛠️ Luma AI - Principal Backend Engineer - Product

  • 🧠 Databricks - GenAI Research Scientist - Multimodal and Computer Vision

  • 📊 Harvey - Sales Strategy & Operations Lead

QUICK HITS

Perplexity introduced code interpreter upgrades, enabling library installation and chart rendering for AI-powered data visualization.

International Data Corporation (IDC) forcasted that worldwide AI spending is expected to reach $632 billion by 2028, with generative AI accounting for 32% of that.

AI influencer Justin Fineberg and Cassidy AI announced a $3.7 million raise to build an intelligent automation platform for reliable AI workflows.

CodeSignal launched Conversation Practice, an AI-powered tool for simulating workplace conversations and providing personalized feedback.

LTX Studio opened to the public and launched five new features, including character animation and dialogue, face motion capture, and generation and keyframe control.

LVMH founder Bernard Arnault, the third richest man in the world, invested in five AI startups in 2024 through his family office Aglaé Ventures.

Chinese scientists developed a brain-inspired AI network model to address challenges like high resource consumption and interpretability.

Nvidia unveiled advances in digital humans and avatar tech, including Nemotron-4 4B NIM, the first small AI language model for game characters.

THAT’S A WRAP

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AI

China's new humanoid robot fleet

Rowan Cheung • 5 minutes

Sign Up | Advertise | Tools | AI University

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

China’s AGIBOT just unveiled a fleet of not just one… but FIVE advanced humanoid robots to directly compete against Tesla’s Optimus.

As the race for a consumer-ready humanoid robot intensifies, is the U.S. at risk of losing its lead to China? Let’s get into it…


In today’s AI rundown:

  • AGIBOT reveals new humanoid robot family

  • ChatGPT runs for mayor in Wyoming

  • Create your own AI assistant on Mistral

  • Luma Labs launches Dream Machine 1.5

  • 6 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

AGIBOT

🤖 AGIBOT reveals new humanoid robot family

Image source: AGIBOT

The Rundown: AGIBOT, a China-based robotics startup, just unveiled a family of five advanced humanoid robots, directly challenging Elon Musk and Tesla’s upcoming Optimus bot.

The details:

  • AGIBOT’s five new models are both wheeled and biped humanoid robots specifically designed for diverse tasks — from household chores to industrial operations.

  • The flagship model, Yuanzheng A2, stands 5'9" (175cm), weighs 121 lbs (55kg), and can perform delicate tasks like needle threading.

  • The company aims to start shipping 300 units by the end of 2024, claiming better commercialization and cost-control abilities than Tesla.

  • Unitree, another high-performance robot manufacturer from China, also showcased its new G1 mass production-ready robot with better functionality and appearance.

Why it matters: The humanoid robotics and AI race between the US and China is intensifying. While it’s been months since Tesla unveiled its Optimus 2 prototype, four Chinese startups, including AGIBOT revealing five new humanoid robots, have showcased major technical progress in just a few days.

TOGETHER WITH GALILEO

🧠 Free report: LLM Hallucination Index

The Rundown: The LLM Hallucination Index ranks the top 22 AI models for RAG, evaluating them on accuracy, hallucination rates, and cost-efficiency – helping you discover which models excel and why larger is not always better.

With this report, you’ll get:

  • Evaluations across short, medium, and long RAG tasks

  • Comparison between open-source vs closed-source models

  • Cost-efficiency rankings relative to performance

Click here to get the full report for free.

OPENAI

‍🏛️ ChatGPT runs for mayor in Wyoming

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: Victor Miller, a mayoral candidate in Wyoming’s capital city, just vowed to let his customized ChatGPT GPT named Vic (Virtual Integrated Citizen) help run the local government if elected.

The details:

  • Miller created VIC using ChatGPT, feeding it city ordinances and related documents to make municipal decisions.

  • Miller filed for him and VIC to run for mayor, proposing that the ChatGPT GPT provides data-driven insights and solutions while Miller ensures legal execution.

  • OpenAI has shut down Miller's account twice, citing policies against using its products for campaigning.

  • Wyoming's Secretary of State raised concerns, but local officials allowed Miller's candidacy with his human name on the ballot.

Why it matters: While Miller's chances of winning seem slim, and his grasp of data privacy and LLMs seem slimmer, this marks the first time a political candidate has openly advocated for AI in governance. Whether Cheyenne, Wyoming is ready for an AI co-pilot in City Hall is debatable, but AI will certainly infiltrate politics in the coming years.

AI TRAINING

🔥 Create your own AI assistant on Mistral

The Rundown: Mistral AI's new ‘Agents’ feature lets anyone customize and deploy AI models for specific tasks, with no coding required.

Step-by-step:

  1. Sign up on Mistral AI's website and hit "Build on La Plateforme"

  2. Select “Create an Agent” and choose your preferred AI model (e.g. Mistral Large 2)

  3. Adjust the randomness slider and write clear instructions for your agent's behaviour

  4. Add example interactions to guide your agent's responses (Optional)

  5. Deploy your agent and start testing!

Get more AI tutorials →

PRESENTED BY ZAPIER

⚡️ZapConnect 2024: Expert AI & Automation Sessions

The Rundown: ZapConnect 2024 is bringing together AI industry leaders and automation experts for a half-day of must-see sessions on using the power of automation and AI in your business.

Learn how to:

  • Level up your automation workflows with Zapier and ChatGPT

  • Use Zapier and AI to manage customer reviews through an exclusive session with Livestorm CEO Gilles Bertaux

  • Enhance automated workflows with Zapier Central’s AI extension and Chatbots

Click here to secure your spot to ZapConnect 2024 today.

LUMA AI

🎥 Luma Labs launches Dream Machine 1.5

Image source: Luma AI

The Rundown: Luma Labs just released Dream Machine 1.5, a major upgrade to their current AI video generation model, with higher quality text-to-video, smarter prompt understanding, and better image-to-video capabilities.

The details:

  • Dream Machine 1.5 builds on the original model’s ability to generate high-quality, realistic 5-second video clips from text and image prompts.

  • The upgraded model showcases better natural language processing, interpreting and executing prompts at a higher accuracy.

  • It excels in creating smooth motion, cinematography, and dramatic shots, turning static concepts into dynamic stories, but lags in morphing, movement, and text.

  • Dream Machine 1.5 is available to try for free here.

Why it matters: With text-to-image AI generation nearly indistinguishable from reality, the next big frontier is text-to-video — and Dream Machine 1.5 is another big leap forward for realism. While AI video still has some catching up to do, expect fast-moving startups like Luma Labs to close that gap for AI video, fast.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

  • ⚖️ Tome - The world's first AI-powered law firm

  • 🧠 MYND - AI companion for overcoming mental blocks

  • 🤖 GCA - Create custom intelligence for your product

  • 💹 Bayesline - Financial analytics for investment managers

  • 🎙️ Overlap - AI-powered podcast app that curates personalized content

  • 📝 Speech to Note - Transform spoken words into actionable text

Browse more AI tools →

New AI Job Opportunities

  • 🌍 Synthesia - Head of Global Accounts

  • 🔬 Meta - Research Engineer, Language - Generative AI

  • ⚖️ DeepL - Legal Counsel

  • 🧑‍💼 Weights & Biases - Customer Support Engineer, Machine Learning

Browse more AI jobs →

QUICK HITS

Don't forget to RSVP: Navigating AI Data Privacy. Free enrolment for this event ends today. Sign up to learn how to protect your data when using AI. RSVP here.*

AMD acquired server maker ZT Systems for $4.9 billion to strengthen its AI capabilities and compete with leaders in the space like Nvidia.

Berkeley Law launched a new Master of Laws program focused on AI law and governance, and it is expected to start next summer.

The United States invested $335 billion in AI over the past decade, triple China’s investment, with 71,000 AI job postings in 2024 alone.

Stability AI appointed entertainment industry veteran Hanno Basse as its new Chief Technology Officer to drive business growth.

ElevenLabs released its AI-powered text-to-speech app Reader globally, supporting over 30 languages and hundreds of new voices.

*Sponsored listing

THAT’S A WRAP

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AI

AI made with human brain cells

Rowan Cheung • 5 minutes

Sign Up | Advertise | Tools | AI University

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

A startup from Switzerland has created AI “biocomputers“ made from real human brain cells, that are now rentable for just $500 a month.

Could using organoids be the future of how we create 100,000x more energy efficient AI, or is this an ethical disaster waiting to happen? Let’s investigate…


In today’s AI rundown:

  • Creating AI using human brain cells

  • California compromises on AI safety bill

  • Create ultra-realistic images with AI

  • New AI solves Rubik’s Cube faster

  • 5 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

FINALSPARK

🧠 Creating AI using human brain cells

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: Swiss startup FinalSpark just launched a service allowing scientists to rent cloud access to "biocomputers" made of human brain cells for $500 a month, in an effort to create AI that uses 100,000x less energy than current systems.

The details:

  • The system uses organoids (clumps of human brain cells) that can "live" and compute for up to 100 days.

  • AI models are trained using dopamine for positive reinforcement and electrical signals for negative reinforcement, mimicking natural neural processes.

  • FinalSpark claims these biocomputers could be up to 100,000 times more efficient for AI training than traditional silicon-based technology.

  • The organoids and their behaviour are live streamed 24/7, which you can access here.

Why it matters: AI is an energy-hungry industry, and alleviating its dependence on CPUs and GPUs is generally a step in the right direction. That said, using brain organoids for biocomputing is completely uncharted territory and is bound to raise ethical concerns — such as the sci-fi possibility that cell masses somehow achieve consciousness.

TOGETHER WITH ASSEMBLY AI

🎙️ Speech-to-text with superhuman accuracy

The Rundown: AssemblyAI’s speech-to-text models can transform your audio into near-perfect text with the highest accuracy in the industry and top performance across all major industry benchmarks.

Build with AssemblyAI and get:

  • Industry-leading English accuracy at 92.5%

  • Top-performing Spanish accuracy at 95%

  • Fast speeds with 1 hour of conversation translating in about 35 seconds

Sign up today and get $50 in free credits!

ANTHROPIC

🤝 California compromises on AI safety bill

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: California’s SB 1047, an aggressive AI safety bill aimed at preventing AI disasters, just got significantly revised to address concerns raised by AI companies like Anthropic and open-source developers.

The details:

  • The bill no longer allows California’s attorney general to sue AI companies for negligent safety practices before a catastrophic event occurs.

  • AI labs are now only required to submit public “statements” about their safety practices vs certifications “under penalty of perjury.”

  • Likewise, developers must now provide “reasonable care” vs “reasonable assurance” that AI models do not pose significant risks.

  • The bill is headed to California’s Assembly floor for a final vote.

Why it matters: There’s a fine line between advancing technological progress and mitigating potential existential risks that governments are navigating — and California is showing that regulation can be practical and adaptive. These changes are a big step towards fostering responsible AI development through collaborative governance.

AI TRAINING

🎨 Create ultra-realistic images with AI

The Rundown: Flux Realism LoRA on Fal AI allows users to create ultra-realistic images simply by describing your vision.

Step-by-step:

  1. Visit the Fal AI website and create an account to access the tool.

  2. In the "Prompt" box, describe your desired image in detail.

  3. Click "More" under Additional Settings to fine-tune parameters like image size, number of inference steps, and guidance scale.

  4. Hit "Run" and watch as the AI brings your description to life!

Hot tip: Try adding your generation into Runway’s image-to-video to transform your images to real-life videos.

Get more AI tutorials →

AI RESEARCH

New AI solves Rubik’s Cube faster

Image source: arXiv

The Rundown: Researchers just developed a new technique to find shorter solutions to scrambled Rubik’s Cubes by cleverly analyzing the puzzle’s structure and identifying the best moves more quickly.

The details:

  • The Rubik’s Cube has an enormous number of possible configurations, over 43 quintillion, making it challenging for AI to solve in the fewest moves possible.

  • Researchers represented the Rubik’s Cube as a complex network or “graph" and used a new technique to pass useful information, like the moves required to solve the puzzle, between connected nodes.

  • The AI then considers which next moves are most likely to lead to a quick solution, using the probabilities as weights, and focuses on the most promising paths.

  • When tested, the new technique found solutions to the puzzle faster than current state-of-the-art Rubik’s Cube solving AI systems.

Why it matters: As companies like Sakana build AIs that can completely automate scientific research, it’s important to make sure they’re solving highly complex problems efficiently. This technique, coupled with Sakana’s processes, could be massively beneficial in areas like optimizing supply chains and advanced drug discovery.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

  • 🧠 GigaBrain - Scans billions of discussions on Reddit and finds the most useful posts

  • 🧑‍💻 ShellMate - Open-sourced AI-powered Mac terminal\

  • 🎨 Midjourney Editor - Edit AI-generated images easily on a single unified interface

  • 📈 Graphy - Transform data into captivating visual presentation

  • 💹 LedgerUp - Bookkeeping with automated financial management

Browse more AI tools →

New AI Job Opportunities

  • 🎨 Palantir - Product Designer, New Grad

  • 🛠️ Glean - Solutions Architect

  • 💻 Luma AI - Principal Software Engineer - Reliability

  • 🤖 Sanctuary AI - Simulation Software Engineer - Reinforcement Learning

Browse more AI jobs →

QUICK HITS

Free event: Navigating AI Data Privacy. Join Section CEO Greg Shove to learn how to protect your data, write a team or company AI data policy, and lead your company on safe AI. RSVP here.*

Claude introduced a new screenshot capture button, allowing users to easily include images from their screen in prompts.

Midjourney released a new unified web-based AI image editor with advanced tools for seamlessly modifying and extending generated images.

Rebellions and Sapeon, South Korean AI chip makers, signed a definitive merger agreement to challenge global leaders like Nvidia.

Bzigo launched Iris, an AI-powered mosquito detector that tracks and marks mosquitoes with a laser pointer for easy swatting.

Coinbase started a $15,000 accelerator grant program for projects combining AI with crypto wallets to enable economic participation.

Microsoft unveiled PowerToys Workspaces, a new feature to auto-arrange apps, plus an AI-powered copy-paste tool with OpenAI API integration.

*Sponsored listing

THAT’S A WRAP

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AI

AI helps Walmart 100x productivity

Rowan Cheung • 5 minutes

Sign Up | Advertise | Tools | AI University

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

Walmart just reported that generative AI has helped the company update 850 million product catalog entries, 100x faster than humans.

As the retail giant plans to integrate AI across all operations, are we witnessing the future, or the beginning of widespread job displacement? Let’s get into it…


In today’s AI rundown:

  • AI makes Walmart 100x more productive

  • SoftBank’s AI chip faces setback

  • Create a Siri-like voice AI with Llama 3.1

  • Hermes 3 is the newest open-source model

  • 5 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

WALMART

🛒 AI makes Walmart 100x more productive

Image source: Walmart

The Rundown: Walmart’s CEO Doug McMillon just reported that the company is using generative AI to increase its productivity, updating 850 million product catalog entries 100 times faster than human-led methods.

The details:

  • The report came during the company’s Q2 financial earnings call, where McMillon also announced AI improvements to customer search and seller support.

  • Customers can now use AI-powered search and a new shopping assistant on Walmart’s app and website — it even provides advice for questions like “Which TV is best for watching sports?”.

  • Walmart is also testing a completely new AI-driven experience for U.S. based marketplace sellers, but the details are not yet available.

  • McMillon said the company plans to continue experimenting with AI globally across all parts of its business.

Why it matters: Another multibillion dollar company is using AI to increase productivity, but most notably, Walmart is exploring the tech in all areas of its business ops. Whether people should be excited about the endless possibilities ahead or concerned about the relevance of their jobs is a question that’s not going away any time soon.

TOGETHER WITH ANYSCALE

🧠 Map the Future of AI at Ray Summit 2024

The Rundown: Ray Summit is the world’s largest gathering of open-source AI experts and practitioners. Join us from September 30 to October 2 for insights from cutting-edge tech companies and AI pioneers like OpenAI, Instacart, Runway, and more.

Ray Summit 2024 features:

  • Keynotes from Marc Andreessen, Mira Murati (OpenAI), and more

  • Real-world AI scaling strategies from Netflix, Instacart, and others

  • Expert-led workshops to master distributed AI computing

Register now with code “Newsletter15” for an exclusive discount for readers of The Rundown. Sign up today!

SOFTBANK

🦄 SoftBank’s AI chip faces setback

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: SoftBank’s ambitious Project Izanagi initiative, aimed at developing AI processors to rival Nvidia, is reportedly facing a major setback after Intel failed to meet volume and speed requirements.

The details:

  • SoftBank had been working with Intel to develop AI processors for Project Izanagi because it lacks in-house chip design expertise, but Intel failed to meet SoftBank’s demands.

  • In an effort to keep Project Izanagi on track, SoftBank is considering a new partnership with TSMC, the world’s largest chipmaker.

  • TSMC has its own issues, however, failing to meet its current chipmaking demands, which has stalled the negotiations.

  • Despite the complications, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son remains committed to the company’s ambitious plan and is seeking investments from Saudi Arabia, UAE, and major tech companies.

Why it matters: Nvidia is currently dominating the AI chip space, which propelled the company to its current $3 trillion dollar market capitalization. But with recent delays of Nvidia’s next-gen Blackwell AI chip, it could be time for competitors to strike.

AI TRAINING

🗣️ Create a Siri-like voice AI with Llama 3.1

The Rundown: This new custom iPhone shortcut trick lets you create a lightning-fast, Siri-like voice assistant powered by Meta’s Llama 3.1 and Groq's API.

Step-by-step:

  1. Generate an API key in Groq’s website.

  2. Create a new shortcut in the iPhone Shortcuts app.

  3. Add actions to capture voice input, store your API key, and set the Groq API endpoint for Llama 3.1.

  4. Call the Llama 3.1 API using a "Get Contents of URL" action with the appropriate headers and request body.

  5. Extract the generated response.

Note: Members at The Rundown AI University can download this shortcut template directly into their phones.

Get more AI tutorials →

PRESENTED BY ZAPIER

🍒 Crush customer support with Chatty Cherry Blast

The Rundown: Give your computer the gift of gab with ZAP’s loudest flavor, Chatty Cherry Blast — an AI-powered energy drink that helps companies take their customer support to the next level.

With Chatty Cherry Blast, you can:

  • Build low-cost, automated support channels

  • Connect your platform to over 7,000+ apps

  • Handle customer queries around the clock

  • Enjoy seamless, efficient support operations

Revolutionize your customer support with ZAP!

NOUS RESEARCH

🆕 Hermes 3 is the newest open-source model

Image source: Nous Research

The Rundown: Nous Research just released Hermes 3, a new open-source model with significant improvements in roleplaying, agentic tasks, function calling, multi-turn chats, and long context coherence.

The details:

  • Hermes 3 is available in three sizes (8B, 70B, and 405B) with the 405B parameter model achieving state-of-the-art performance relative to other open models.

  • The model is instruct tuned, or trained, to faithfully respond to user requests and closely follow provided system prompts, unlike base or foundation models.

  • It achieves similar or better performance to Meta’s Llama-3.1 405B in judgement, reward modeling, interpretable problem-solving, code generation, and tool use.

  • Hermes 3 is available now for free via Lambda Chat or in the Nous Research Discord server.

Why it matters: Meta has been the leader in open-source AI for awhile, but companies like Nous Research and Mistral are catching up with their latest Hermes 3 and Large 2 models. And the more free, customizable and state-of-the-art AIs available to the public, the more transparency the world has.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

  • 📈 minusx - AI data scientist integrated in your favorite analytics tools

  • 🎥 Neural Frame - Create audio reactive AI music videos

  • 📸 a1 Art - Instantly turn photos into GIFs and videos

  • 🐘 Tusk - Complete UI ticket and pull requests with AI

  •  Sparkle - Automatically clean up and organize your files with AI

  • 🤖 Hedra Labs - Create AI avatars with lifelike animations

Browse more AI tools →

New AI Job Opportunities

Browse more AI jobs →

QUICK HITS

Elon Musk revealed that xAI is developing an in-house image generation system to replace the current Flux model in Grok 2 but it’s currently months away from release.

Google recently expanded its AI-generated search summaries to six new countries and added hyperlinks and quality improvements after initial issues.

The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau highlighted risks of AI in finance, saying existing laws apply and innovation requires consistent regulatory treatment.

Grammarly is reportedly rolling out a new AI content detector tool that can detect whether AI, a human, or a combination of the two created content.

CodeRabbit raised $16 million to automate code reviews using AI, which claims to provide actionable, human-like feedback to developers.

Apptronik, an automation company that makes humanoid robots, recently reported that the company is preparing for a commercial launch by the end of 2025.

THAT’S A WRAP

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