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Tech

Mercedes-Benz's robotic revolution

Rowan Cheung • 3 minutes

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Welcome, Tech enthusiasts.

The robots are coming, and they're headed straight for the factory floor.

A new partnership between Mercedes-Benz and Apptronik just signaled another step into a quickly accelerating new era of human-robot collaboration. Let’s explore…


In today’s tech rundown:

  • Mercedes-Benz piloting humanoid robots

  • Leafhopper secret inspires invisibility tech

  • 7 New products

  • Rivian joins Tesla charging network

  • Sony presses pause on PSVR2

  • Telegram’s $330M raise

Read time: 3 minutes

TODAY’S HEADLINES

ROBOTICS TECH

🤖 Mercedes-Benz piloting humanoid robots

Image source: Apptronik

The Rundown: Mercedes-Benz just entered into a commercial agreement with Apptronik to pilot the company's Apollo humanoid robot in the automaker’s manufacturing facility in Hungary.

The details:

  • Mercedes-Benz will explore use cases for Apollo to automate low-skill, physically demanding, and repetitive tasks on the production line.

  • Potential applications include delivering kitted parts to human workers for assembly while simultaneously inspecting components.

  • The 5'8" tall, 160-pound robot can lift up to 55 pounds and features a force control architecture for safe collaboration with human workers.

  • Mercedes isn’t the first automaker to explore humanoid robots, with the BMW entering into agreement with Figure in January to deploy its Figure 01 on factory floors.

Why it matters: As robotics capabilities continue to accelerate, seeing the tech deployed on factory floors will soon be the norm — not something that makes headlines. But these deployments showcase technology that is likely a lot farther along than most people realize.

TOGETHER WITH OCTOAI

💨 Deliver fast, high-quality JSON responses

The Rundown: OctoAI's new JSON Mode lets builders create AI-powered applications that generate valid outputs from LLMs — ensuring fast, affordable responses without compromising quality.

  • Low-latency structured output that maintains model quality

  • Flexibility to evaluate and deploy the latest LLMs

  • Optimized model serving in the cloud, on dedicated deployments, or in a private environment

Get started with OctoAI and receive $10 in free tokens when you sign up.

INVISIBILITY TECH

🪲 Leafhopper secret inspires invisibility tech

Image source: Earth.com

The Rundown: Researchers at Penn State just unlocked how an insect secretion manipulates light, paving the way for innovative applications like invisibility cloaking and solar energy harvesting.

The details:

  • Leafhoppers make tiny soccer ball-shaped particles called bronchoscopes and cover themselves with the secretion for cloaking.

  • Researchers used advanced 3D printing to copy the shape of brochosomes, demonstrating their ability to reduce light reflection by up to 94%.

  • Future applications range from more efficient solar panels and protective pharmaceutical coatings to data encryption.

Why it matters: This discovery is a prime example of how technological insights and breakthroughs can come from even the tiniest of creatures in nature. If we have invisibility cloaks soon, we might have the humble leafhopper to thank.

NEW PRODUCTS

✍️ AI Article Writer- Create factually accurate, SEO-optimized articles with automated linking and citations

🗣️ Pipio- Effortlessly translate videos while retaining original voices with AI

🧑‍💻 UXpin- Create interactive UI without writing a single line of code

🖼️ Upscale Media- Enhance creative projects with AI-powered plugins for Figma, PhotoShop, and ChatGPT.

💸 Bootstrap- Financial planning for pre-seed stage startups

🤳 UNUM AI- A social media workspace featuring tools to power your posts and link in bio

🤖 Chaturji- An assistant for businesses to access the world’s best AI’s, write, save, and share prompts, monitor analytics, and more

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

SNIPPETS

EV automaker Fisker is suspending vehicle production for six weeks, seeking to pursue strategic initiatives and potential investments amid financial challenges and quality issues.

TikTok detailed a new program that will pay creators based on "search value," encouraging them to create content aligned with search queries and positioning the platform as a serious competitor to traditional search engines.

Rivian announced that owners will now have access to Tesla Superchargers, with the company providing a free adapter to enable charging at 15,000 DC fast chargers across the U.S.

Uber agreed to pay $271.8M to Australian taxi drivers to settle a 2019 class action lawsuit alleging the company’s move into the country caused significant lost income.

Messaging app Telegram raised $330M through an oversubscribed bond offering, with the company continuing to explore a potential IPO.

Sony has paused production of its PSVR2 headset due to a growing inventory of unsold units, with the $550 VR accessory struggling to attract consumers.

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THAT’S A WRAP

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

AI

Apple's AI model revealed!

Rowan Cheung • 5 minutes

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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

Apple's AI efforts have often been shrouded in secrecy, but the company just pulled back the curtain with the release of MM1.

The powerful new AI model could indicate a new era of AI for Apple — and be the key to unlocking Siri's true potential. Let’s explore…


In today’s AI rundown:

  • Apple unveils new MM1 AI models

  • xAI officially open-sources Grok-1

  • Instantly translate videos with AI-powered lip sync

  • Google’s VLOGGER brings avatars to life

  • 6 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

APPLE

🤩 Apple unveils new MM1 AI models

Image source: Apple

The Rundown: Apple researchers just published a new paper unveiling MM1, a family of multimodal AI models that combine visual and language understanding to enable advanced capabilities.

The details:

  • MM1 models were trained on a carefully curated mix of image captions, image-text data, and text-only data.

  • The largest 30B parameter model showed a strong ability to learn from only a handful of examples and reason over multiple images.

  • The research found that scaling the model’s image processing had the biggest impact on performance.

  • MM1’s benchmarks compete with state-of-the-art multimodal models like GPT-4V and Gemini Pro.

Why it matters: Apple’s level of detail and lack of fanfare for this model release is a big departure from its typical secrecy — and a massive win for open source. With a capable model now officially a reality, is it finally time for Siri to level up?

TOGETHER WITH DENTORO

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  • Benefit from tailored AI solutions to address specific business challenges and objectives.

  • Easily scale AI initiatives from prototype to production.

Take advantage of Dentoro's expertise to build your next AI prototype. Get started now and enjoy 30% off your first month.

XAI

 📖 Elon Musk’s xAI open-sources Grok-1

Image source: xAI

The Rundown: Elon Musk and xAI just released the weights and architecture of its massive 314B parameter language model, Grok-1, under an open-source Apache 2.0 license.

The details:

  • Grok-1 is a Mixture-of-Experts model, with only 25% of its weights active for any given input token to enable more efficient computation.

  • The released model is the raw, pre-trained checkpoint from October 2023, not fine-tuned on any specific tasks.

  • xAI provided instructions on its GitHub repo for developers to get started, also publishing the model on Hugging Face.

Why it matters: By open-sourcing one of the world's largest LLMs, xAI is walking the walk in Musk’s perceived moral battle against OpenAI’s closed models. While Grok’s capabilities don’t break any new barriers yet, the move is another big win for collaborative and transparent AI development.

AI TRAINING

🗣️ Instantly translate videos with AI-powered lip sync

The Rundown: Pipio's AI-driven video translation tool allows you to easily translate your videos into multiple languages while preserving the original voice and automatically syncing lip movements.

Step-by-step:

  • Create your account on Pipio's website.

  • Select and upload your video to the platform, and pick the target language for translation.

  • Click the submit button and let Pipio's AI handle the translation.

  • Export your translated video for further editing, or share it directly on social media!

AI RESEARCH

🎥 Google’s VLOGGER brings avatars to life

Image source: Google

The Rundown: Google researchers just developed VLOGGER, a new AI model that can generate photorealistic talking avatar videos with full upper body motion from just a still image and audio clip.

The details:

  • VLOGGER creates a controllable avatar that captures likenesses and movements.

  • The model was trained on a large multimedia dataset containing 800,000 videos of people talking with labels for each part of the face and body.

  • Potential applications include dubbing videos in other languages, creating realistic avatars for games or assistants, and enabling low-bandwidth video chats.

Why it matters: Whether it's enabling realism for AI assistants, allowing real-time video dubbing across languages, or letting us video chat as our favorite avatars — models like VLOGGER point to a future where the boundaries between our physical and digital selves blur in captivating new ways.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

  •  Cykel AI- Automates tasks across the web. Works with your favorite tools. Try for free.*

  • 📄 Abel- AI-powered document review for law firms

  • 🎬 Katalist- Generate visual stories with consistent characters from a script

  • 💼 Octolane AI- Real-time B2B data enrichment for businesses

  • 🤖 Synthflow AI- Create conversational AI voice agents without coding

  • 📝 Zeda Co-Pilot- Extracts customer feedback and turns it into product insights

Browse more AI tools →

New AI Job Opportunities

  • 🔬 Spotter- Senior Applied Data Scientist

  • 💻 OpenAI - Backend Engineer, Sora

  • 📚 Cohere - Data Annotator - Advanced Math

  • ⚖️ Mistral AI - Legal Counsel

Browse more AI jobs →

*Sponsored listing

QUICK HITS

India’s Ministry of Electronics and IT revised its AI advisory to remove the requirement for firms to gain government approval before deploying AI models, following backlash from global entrepreneurs and investors.

Cognition’s Devin showed off its autonomous AI agent skills in a viral X post, with the model opening a support ticket and exchanging Slack messages to solve a coding issue on its own.

Senator Bernie Sanders proposed a bill establishing a four-day work week in the U.S. with no loss of pay, citing productivity gains from AI and automation.

Maisa announced the beta release of its Knowledge Processing Unit, which sets new standards in reasoning, comprehension, and problem-solving by combining the power of LLMs with decoupled reasoning and data processing.

OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner posted that the past year since GPT-4’s release will be ‘the slowest 12 months of AI progress for quite some time to come’.

Rapper Tyler The Creator said in an interview that he is not afraid of the rise in AI, saying the tech will never catch up to his creative abilities.

Reddit is facing an investigation from the FTC over its licensing of user data for AI training, revealed in forms filed to the SEC as the company prepares for its IPO.

THAT’S A WRAP

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FEEDBACK

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AI

World's first major AI Act

Rowan Cheung • 5 minutes

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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

The AI revolution just got its first major set of ground rules, courtesy of the EU’s landmark AI Act.

But while the sweeping new legislation aims to reign in the tech’s most dangerous use cases, not everyone is convinced its the right approach. Let’s investigate…


In today’s AI rundown:

  • EU approves sweeping AI rules

  • Apple continues AI push with startup acquisition

  • Convert your pictures into emojis with AI

  • AI processing speeds cancer tracking

  • 5 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 3 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

AI REGULATION

🇪🇺 EU approves sweeping AI rules

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: The European Parliament just passed the landmark Artificial Intelligence Act, establishing the world's most comprehensive set of regulations for AI tech.

The details:

  • Newly banned AI apps include biometric and facial recognition on sensitive characteristics, social scoring, and AI that manipulates behavior or exploits vulnerabilities.

  • High-risk AI, such as in infrastructure, education, and employment, will face strict obligations like risk assessment, transparency, and human oversight.

  • The law has drawn criticism from both sides — with companies worrying it stifles competitiveness and watchdogs arguing it doesn't go far enough.

  • The rules will take effect in stages, with some applying as early as six months after the law enters into enforcement.

Why it matters: The AI Act positions itself as the global standard for regulation, but will it disadvantage EU-based AI companies in the process? Despite the critiques, the act is a big first move — potentially influencing other countries’ AI approaches and altering the trajectory of the industry.

TOGETHER WITH GROWTHSCHOOL

🤖 Learn how to leverage 20+ AI tools

The Rundown: Join GrowthSchool’s complimentary workshop and learn how to leverage 20+ AI tools to simplify your work, save time, and achieve 10x more impact.

You’ll learn how to:

  • Automate time-consuming tasks and reclaim 10+ hours per week

  • Create stunning presentations and content with minimal effort

  • Build your own personal AI assistant to do work at 1/10th the time

Ready to unlock the power of AI? Claim your spot now and become an AI efficiency expert in just 3 hours.

APPLE

🍎 Apple continues AI push with startup acquisition

Image source: Darwin

The Rundown: Apple has quietly acquired Canadian AI startup DarwinAI, as the tech giant gears up to make a big generative AI splash with its upcoming iOS 18 software update later this year.

The details:

  • Apple acquired DarwinAI earlier this year, bringing dozens of the startup's employees into its AI division.

  • DarwinAI develops tech for visual inspection in manufacturing, specializes in making AI systems smaller and faster.

  • The deal comes as CEO Tim Cook has promised the company will "break new ground" in AI, reportedly adding generative AI features to the upcoming iOS 18.

Why it matters: Apple continues to move slowly and quietly in the AI race, but the company’s AI acquisitions and constant research show something is brewing behind the scenes. With Apple’s WWDC event coming in June, Apple may be gearing up for some AI fireworks very soon.

AI TRAINING

🎨 Convert your pictures into emojis with AI

Image source: FofrAI

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to turn your pictures into emojis for free in seconds, adding a fun and personalized touch to your digital communications.

  1. Visit the “face-to-many” model in Replicate. It’s free.

  2. Select a good picture that you want to transform into an emoji.

  3. Click on “Style” and select “Emoji”.

  4. Make a simple prompt that closely matches your chosen picture and experiment with the different settings the model offers, such as prompt strength or seed.

  5. Select “Run” and check out your new emoji-fied selfie! 🎉

AI RESEARCH

🧬 AI processing speeds cancer tracking

Image source: National Institutes of Health

The Rundown: Scientists just created a new AI tool called Path-BigBird that can sift through millions of cancer pathology reports, allowing for faster and more accurate tracking of cancer trends.

The details:

  • Path-BigBird was trained using data from 2.7M pathology reports collected by cancer registries.

  • The model outperforms traditional approaches in identifying key details, including the type of cancer and where it was found.

  • Path-BigBird has the potential to significantly reduce the current 2-year lag between cancer incidence and national reporting.

Why it matters: AI tools like Path-BigBird could revolutionize how scientists monitor and respond to cancer trends — helping identify high-risk communities earlier, as well as speed up targeted prevention and treatment.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

  • 🎥 Arcads- Generate video ads from product links

  • 🔖 Twitter Bookmarks- Every Twitter bookmark categorized with AI

  • 🌡️ HealthKey- AI-powered summaries to simplify medical records

  • 🚀 Kater- Ask questions about your data in plain English

  • 🔍 Resume GPT- A new ChatGPT GPT to help enhance your resume

Browse more AI tools →

New AI Job Opportunities

Browse more AI jobs →

QUICK HITS

Anthropic released Claude 3 Haiku, its fastest and most affordable model version that surpasses GPT 3.5 and Gemini Pro on benchmarks.

Microsoft expanded its Copilot Pro subscription availability to 222 countries, offering a free one-month trial and access to its AI-powered assistant in Office web apps.

Amazon introduced new AI features that allow sellers to easily create high-quality product listings automatically from an external URL.

Morgan Stanley promoted Jeff McMillan to become the bank's first Head of Artificial Intelligence, overseeing the implementation of AI across the firm.

SoftBank is reportedly considering an investment in French AI startup Mistral AI, potentially valuing the company at over $2B.

Oracle added generative AI features across its corporate software offerings, including new finance, supply chain, and human resources tools to help businesses save time.

Adobe reported lackluster sales projections for the quarter, raising concerns about competition from AI-focused startups despite the company’s efforts to integrate its Firefly AI model into its products.

THAT’S A WRAP

SPONSOR US

Get your product in front of over 500k+ AI enthusiasts

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AI

Google's new AI plays video games with you

Rowan Cheung • 5 minutes

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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

The future of gaming is looking more intelligent than ever, thanks to Google DeepMind’s latest creation, SIMA.

The AI agent isn’t just an impressive player — its a window into AI that can intelligently collaborate with humans for truly interactive experiences. Let’s explore…


In today’s AI rundown:

  • DeepMind trains AI gaming agent

  • New Figure robot gives ChatGPT a body

  • Create animations with Claude 3

  • AI gets a peripheral vision check-up

  • 6 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

GOOGLE

🕹️ DeepMind trains AI gaming agent

Image source: Google DeepMind

The Rundown: Google DeepMind just introduced SIMA, an AI agent that can follow natural language instructions to perform tasks across diverse video game environments.

The details:

  • SIMA was trained on 9 different video games, including titles like No Man's Sky and Teardown, to learn general skills and commands.

  • The AI agent doesn't require access to game code or APIs, only images and text instructions as input — mimicking how humans play.

  • SIMA was evaluated on ~1,500 tasks across categories like navigation, object interaction, and resource gathering.

Why it matters: SIMA offers an exciting glimpse into the future of gaming, where AI agents could become dynamic sidekicks rather than just powerful opponents. It also brings us closer to AI that can intelligently collaborate with humans not just in games, but in real-world tasks and environments too.

TOGETHER WITH IMAGINE AI LIVE

💼 Businesses that use AI will replace those that don’t

The Rundown: Time is running out to grab tickets for the Imagine AI Live conference at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas on March 27-28.

Meet leaders of the generative AI revolution like:

  • Mark Heaps, Chief Technology Evangelist at Groq Inc.

  • Bindu Reddy, CEO of Abacus AI

  • Div Garg, Founder of MultiOn

Learn how to future-proof your business from the AI leaders firsthand. Secure your spot now before it's too late.

FIGURE

🦾 New Figure robot gives ChatGPT a body

Image source: Figure

The Rundown: Figure AI just unveiled a new demo, integrating with an OpenAI vision-language model to allow it to engage in natural conversations, visually interpret its surroundings, and autonomously execute tasks.

The details:

  • The demo showcases Figure 01 speaking conversationally, sorting dishes, and carrying out context-dependent actions.

  • All of the robot's actions are learned behaviors rather than remote-controlled and are executed at normal speed.

  • Figure 01 also demonstrates its ability to plan and reflect, explaining its reasoning for a certain action while remembering past context.

  • The demo comes just 13 days into Figure’s partnership with OpenAI, announced alongside the startup’s $675M funding round.

Why it matters: If this is the progress just 13 days into the Figure + OpenAI partnership, we’re in for a wild ride. Figure 01 shows off cutting-edge dexterity and movement, now combined with the advanced capabilities of a powerful multimodal AI.

Watch the demo here — then imagine what the GPT-5 integration will bring…

AI TRAINING

📽️ Create animations with Claude 3

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn to create animations in seconds using Claude, allowing you to explore and understand topics with visuals.

Step-by-step:

  1. Go to Claude’s website.

  2. Enter the following prompt: “Write manim code to animate an explanation of the [what you want visually explained]. Think step by step before coding it, and provide me with the full code”

  3. Claude will provide you with Python code.

  4. Lastly, follow the instructions here to obtain your animated video.

Note: If the result isn’t perfect, just ask Claude to help you out further. You can also provide it with images to describe what you want to accomplish.

AI RESEARCH

👁️ AI gets a peripheral vision check-up

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: MIT researchers just created a new image dataset called COCO-Periph — allowing AI models to process visual information more like humans do.

The details:

  • COCO-Periph modifies images to capture the loss of detail that occurs at different degrees of visual angles.

  • The team tested both human subjects and AI object detection models on the images to compare peripheral vision.

  • AI performance dropped off as the target object moved further out of focus, while humans saw a more gradual decline.

  • Training on COCO-Periph closed the gap with human-level performance.

Why it matters: Research like COCO-Periph can help align tech with how we humans naturally take in and process visual information—an important skill for systems such as driver safety features that rely on anticipating what people will perceive.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

  • 🚀 Mixo - use AI to generate a website in seconds and bring your business concept to life*

  • 🎮 Chaotix AI- Transform ideas into playable 2D games

  • 🦸🏻‍♀️ Hero- Identifies and prices items to help you sell stuff faster

  • 🤖 Zep- Recall, understand, and extract data from chat history

  • 🗓️ Dola- Calendar assistant that converts voice, text, and images into organized plans

  • 🎙️ Voiceflow- AI agent-building platform for chat and voice assistants

Browse more AI tools →

New AI Job Opportunities

  • ⚙️ OpenAI - Data Center Engineer

  • 🤖 C3 AI - QA Machine Learning Engineer

  • 🤝 Cohere - Partnerships Manager, AI Consulting Firms

  • 🎯 Synthesia - Sales Development Representative

Browse more AI jobs →

*Sponsored listing

QUICK HITS

Don't miss Section's free, 1-hour lecture on The Executive's Guide to Generative AI, coming up on March 19. Join to master your "AI talk track" and understand the implications for your business, workforce, and initiatives. 

OpenAI CTO Mira Murati revealed in an interview with the WSJ that the viral Sora video model will be publicly released later this year, with the team currently focused on red-teaming and optimizing costs for generations.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said on the company’s earnings call that he and Elon Musk are collaborating to develop an AI-powered application for farms, helping to plan, predict and increase agricultural output.

GemMoE was released in beta via a Hugging Face grant, a new model based on DeepMind's Gemma architecture and open-sourced for easy training and inference.

A robotic system that enables safe and successful feeding for people with severe mobility limitations was nominated for best paper at this year’s Human-Robot Interaction conference.

LlamaIndex launched LlamaParse, a GenAI-native document parsing platform featuring LLM-powered instructions, JSON mode, image extraction, and expanded document type support.

OpenAI signed new licensing deals with European publishers Le Monde and Prisa to bring French and Spanish language news content to ChatGPT.

*Sponsored listing

THAT’S A WRAP

SPONSOR US

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FEEDBACK

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AI

AI developer codes websites by itself

Rowan Cheung • 4 minutes

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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

Ready to deploy your own personal AI software engineer to build you a website or app? A new release just brought that reality a whole lot closer.

Cognition’s ‘Devin’ can plan, write, and debug entire coding projects from scratch — and it’s already outperforming human devs on real-world tasks. Let’s explore…


In today’s AI rundown:

  • Cognition unveils an AI software agent

  • Create and access custom Copilot GPTs

  • AI-powered stories make Pulitzer debut

  • 6 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 3 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

COGNITION AI

👨‍💻 Cognition unveils an AI software agent

Image source: Cognition AI

The Rundown: Cognition AI just introduced Devin, an autonomous AI agent that can independently write entire software projects from scratch based on simple text prompts.

The details:

  • Devin can plan and execute complex coding tasks with hundreds of steps.

  • The autonomous agent can code while learning, fixing bugs, and collaborating with users in real time.

  • In demos, Devin built complete websites and apps in under 10 minutes and successfully completed real gigs posted on Upwork by itself.

  • On a coding benchmark, the AI agent solved 13.86% of real-world GitHub issues end-to-end, crushing the previous SOTA benchmark of 1.96%.

Why it matters: Cognition AI isn't just claiming to have built a better coding assistant but a truly artificial software engineer. If it lives up to the hype, Devin could be the first true look into a future where anyone can spawn an AI worker to build a concept, no coding skills required. 

TOGETHER WITH AE STUDIO

🔥 Stay ahead of the AI curve with AE Studio

The Rundown: Accelerate your company's success with AE Studio's proven approach to building high-impact custom software and AI solutions.

  • Turbocharge your product development and save hundreds of hours

  • Have industry experts build your custom software and AI solutions

  • Hire AE to pinpoint what you should be building and where to find ROI

Book your FREE strategy session with AE Studio today to learn more and see why AE is the go-to partner for startups and enterprise.

AI TRAINING

🦾 Create and access custom Copilot GPTs

The Rundown: In case you missed it, Microsoft recently launched its free version of ChatGPT GPTs in Copilot. In this tutorial, you will learn how you can access Copilot GPTs or even create your own.

Step-by-step:

  1. Visit Copilot’s website and sign in.

  2. On the right side, you’ll see a list of Copilot GPTs to choose from.

  3. Pick your favorite and start chatting with it.

  4. If you have a Copilot Pro Account, you can also create your own by clicking: “See all Copilot GPTs" and then "Create a new Copilot GPT".

  5. Lastly, follow the creation chat or write the details on the “Configure” tab and hit “Publish” when done!

AI IN THE MEDIA

✍️ AI-powered stories make Pulitzer debut

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: A Pulitzer Prize administrator just revealed that five of this year's 45 top journalist finalists disclosed using AI in their reporting process for the first time ever.

The details:

  • The Pulitzer Prize is a prestigious award for achievements in journalism, magazines, and literature in the United States.

  • Submissions noted using AI in processes including research, reporting, and storytelling.

  • The Pulitzer Board also added an AI usage disclosure requirement for the first time this year.

Why it matters: With more outlets adopting AI and partnering with major firms, it's clear that tech has a role to play in journalism’s future — and the top award panels seem to agree. But AI still faces an uphill battle with legacy media to be seen as a tool rather than a replacement or plagiarism machine.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

  • 🦉 Osum helps you perform deep market research in seconds: Try free (Use checkout code RUNDOWN for lifetime 25% off)*

  • 🧮 Decode- Analyzes your tax return to provide recommendations

  • 🎨 3D AI Studio- Generate custom 3D models with no modelling experience

  • 🏃🏻‍♂️ Olyup- AI chatbot that monitors, evaluates, and enhances your fitness goals

  • 🖼️ Propel- Create logos for your business from prompts

  • 🚀 Just Words- Real-time and continious product copy optimization

Browse more AI tools →

New AI Job Opportunities

  • 👩🏻‍🔬 Runway - Member of Technical Staff, Applied Research Lead

  • ⚖️ Cohere - Senior Counsel, Commercial Technology

  • 🧠 C3 AI- AI Solution Architect

  • 🌎 Anthropic - GSOC & Travel Security Program Manager

Browse more AI jobs →

*Sponsored listing

QUICK HITS

An indexed blog for GPT 4.5 Turbo was found on Bing and DuckDuckGo, listing a 250k context window and a knowledge cutoff of June 2024.

Google DeepMind co-founder Shane Legg said that practical deployment of AGI is still decades away while speaking at SXSW 2024, citing factors like cost and robotic advancements.

Meta unveiled two massive new GPU clusters to support its current and next-generation AI models as part of its larger infrastructure roadmap, which aims for 350,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs by the end of 2024.

Mayo Clinic researchers developed a new class of ‘hypothesis driven’ AI to advance cancer research, potentially leading to deeper understanding, improved treatment strategies, and personalized medicine.

Google will reportedly restrict its Gemini AI chatbot from answering election-related questions in countries with upcoming votes in 2024, including the U.S. and India, to prevent disinformation.

DoorDash introduced a new AI feature called SafeChat+, designed to review in-app conversations to detect and prevent verbal abuse on the platform.

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AI

Elon swings back at OpenAI

Rowan Cheung • 5 minutes

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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

Elon Musk and OpenAI may be locked in a bitter feud, but the Tesla CEO just proved he’s not all talk when it comes to his vision for open AI.

Grok is officially going open-source — but is the move a strategic masterstroke or a desperate attempt to catch up to ChatGPT? Let’s investigate…


In today’s AI rundown:

  • Elon open-sourcing Grok chatbot

  • South Korea deploys AI dolls for elder care

  • Create consistent characters with Midjourney

  • Covariant launches ‘ChatGPT for robots’

  • 6 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

ELON MUSK

👀 Elon open-sourcing Grok chatbot

Image source: xAI

The Rundown: Elon Musk just announced that his AI startup xAI will open-source its Grok chatbot this week, marking another twist in his escalating feud with Sam Altman's OpenAI and the race to dominate the AI space.

The details:

  • Musk unveiled Grok in November as a ChatGPT rival with a "rebellious streak" with real-time internet access via integration with X/Twitter.

  • Open-sourcing Grok's code aligns xAI with companies like Meta and Mistral AI, standing in contrast to OpenAI's closed models.

  • Grok is expected to have a ‘live’ search engine connected to X, have a 25k context window, and eventually run natively in Teslas.

  • The move comes just days after Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and the release of private emails showing Musk initially supported a for-profit shift.

Why it matters: Musk open-sourcing Grok is both a philosophical and strategic counterpunch. The move positions himself as the open alternative to (Elon’s depiction of) Altman's closed, profit-hungry approach — while also helping crowdsource Grok's evolution in an attempt to trim ChatGPT's lead.

TOGETHER WITH OCTOAI

📈 Explore the evolution of LLMs with OctoAI

The Rundown: In the fast-paced world of AI, keeping up with the latest LLM releases is crucial for builders to deliver cutting-edge experiences and minimize costs.

With OctoAI’s new LLM Time Capsule, you can:

  • Witness the exponential growth of text-gen models, from 14,000 to 61,000 in just 8 months

  • Discover the rise of Mistral- and Mixtral-based fine-tunes as alternatives to GPT-3.5-Turbo

  • View the massive impact of model releases on the industry with a single toggle

Explore the LLM Time Capsule and sign up for OctoAI's GenAI Inference API to try fast and affordable versions of these models for free.

AI COMPANIONS

👴🏻 South Korea deploys AI dolls for elder care

Image source: Hydrol AI

The Rundown: South Korean startup Hydrol AI launched a $1,800 AI-powered companion doll aimed at alleviating loneliness among the country's rapidly aging population.

The details:

  • Hydrol's AI doll uses LLMs to engage in full conversations and provide emotional support to seniors living alone.

  • Features include medication reminders, health coaching, music, as well the ability to alert caregivers of issues thanks to built-in sensors.

  • South Korea's local governments have embraced the dolls, deploying around 7,000 units so far.

  • The company claims its dolls have reduced depression levels and improved medication adherence among a test group of 9000+ users.

Why it matters: With declining birth rates and a soaring elderly population, South Korea is ground zero for the global ‘silver tsunami’. As the demographic crunch continues to leave more seniors isolated, AI companions might be the solution needed.

AI TRAINING

🎨 Create consistent characters with Midjourney

Image source: @ciguleva on X

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to achieve character consistency in your Midjourney images thanks to its new feature, “Character Reference.”

Step-by-step:

  1. Visit Midjourney’s Discord.

  2. Type --cref URL after your prompt with a URL to an image of a character

  3. You can use --cw to modify reference 'strength' from 100 to 0.

  4. Strength 100 (--cw 100) is default and uses the face, hair, and clothes, while strength 0 (--cw 0) just focuses on the face (good for changing things like hair)

Example prompt: “An empty cornfield beneath an ominous stormy sky --cref https://www….”

ROBOTICS & AI

🤖 Covariant launches ‘ChatGPT for robots’

Image source: Covariant

The Rundown: Robotics startup Covariant just unveiled RFM-1, an AI platform that brings ChatGPT-like language understanding and reasoning to physical robots.

The details:

  • RFM-1 is built on a "robotics foundation model" trained on massive datasets of robot camera feeds, sensor data, and language.

  • The platform allows robots to learn new skills, adapt to unexpected situations, and interact with humans more naturally.

  • Covariant plans to deploy RFM-1 on its warehouse robot fleets, eventually aiming to enable use in manufacturing, agriculture, service industries, and homes.

Why it matters: As robots continue to become more prevalent across industries, developing a deeper understanding of human reasoning is crucial to successfully working alongside us. RFM might be the next big leap toward unlocking a new level of human-AI teamwork.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

  • 🎥 Clip Creator- Turn text into engaging videos that captivate and convert your audience. Create and download videos for free*

  • 📈 Athina AI - Monitor LLMs, prevent hallucinations, and manage prompts in one spot

  • 🎨 Muse Pro- Real-time AI drawing companion for Apple iPads

  • 📷 Picurious- AI answers, insights, and identification for your photos

  • 🎓 EverLearns- Generate course outlines in minutes

  • 🎮 Charmed- End-to-end AI-assisted for 3D game development

Browse more AI tools →

New AI Job Opportunities

  • 🤗 Hugging Face- Python Software Engineer, ML Platform

  • 🤝 OpenAI - Employee Relations Partner

  • 🔍 Anthropic- Litigation Legal Specialist

  • 👥 Synthesia- Senior Product Manager, Avatar Technology

Browse more AI jobs →

*Sponsored listing

QUICK HITS

Curious how investors pick AI startups to invest in? Join General Catalyst VC Chris Kauffman for Picking the Winners in AI, a free 1-hour discussion on finding the next AI unicorn among 70,000 startups.*

Cohere introduced Command-R, a scalable generative model enabling enterprises to deploy AI at a production scale with strong accuracy, low latency, longer context, and support for 10 key languages.

Pinterest launched ‘body type ranges’ a new AI-powered tool allowing users to self-select visual cues for customized and more inclusive search results.

Abu Dhabi announced MGX, a new tech investment firm targeting AI and semiconductor deals, with a goal of $100B in assets under management.

Microsoft unveiled new partnerships with healthcare firms including Stanford Medicine, WellSpan Health, and Providence, to accelerate AI innovation in the industry.

Extropic AI released a new litepaper revealing its approach to building next gen AI tech, promising major increases in hardware scaling, AI speed and efficiency.

Researchers developed an AI framework to quickly identify and track new COVID-19 variants from genomic data, potentially supporting and automating traditional viral tracking methods.

*Sponsored listing

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Tech

Reddit's IPO balancing act

Rowan Cheung • 4 minutes

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Welcome, Tech enthusiasts.

After years of speculation, Reddit has finally pulled back the curtain on its hotly-anticipated IPO.

The social media giant is looking to win over Wall Street while staying true to its loyal community — but can it strike the right balance? Let’s explore…


In today’s tech rundown:

  • Reddit unveils IPO details, $6.4B valuation

  • BMW’s 3D-printed spikes heading to Olympics

  • 7 New products

  • ‘Ready Player One’ debuts new metaverse

  • Tesla returns to court over Autopilot

  • X expanding to video streaming

Read time: 3 minutes

TODAY’S HEADLINES

REDDIT

💰 Reddit unveils IPO details, $6.4B valuation

Image source: Reddit

The Rundown: After a bumpy two-year journey, Reddit just unveiled the details of its highly anticipated initial public offering — aiming to raise at a $6.4B valuation while reserving a chunk of shares for its dedicated community.

The details:

  • Reddit and existing shareholders plan to sell 22M shares at $31-$34, with 8% of shares set aside for users, moderators, board members, and friends/family of employees.

  • Reddit's valuation target is far below the $10-15 billion range floated during the IPO frenzy of 2021.

  • Reddit is also banking on new revenue streams like allowing third parties to license its data to train AI models, which has already inked $203M so far.

Why it matters: With one of the most anticipated IPOs of the year, Reddit hopes its passionate (and often revolting) user base can rally alongside Wall Street. But given past drama and profitability concerns, the RDDT launch may be in for a wild ride.

TOGETHER WITH OCTOAI

Explore the evolution of LLMs with OctoAI Time Capsule

The Rundown: In the fast-paced world of AI, keeping up with the latest LLM releases is crucial for builders to deliver cutting-edge experiences and minimize costs.

With OctoAI’s new LLM Time Capsule, you can:

  • Witness the exponential growth of text-gen models, from 14,000 to 61,000 in just 8 months

  • Discover the rise of Mistral- and Mixtral-based fine-tunes as alternatives to GPT-3.5-Turbo

  • View the massive impact of model releases on the industry with a single toggle

Explore the LLM Time Capsule and sign up for OctoAI's GenAI Inference API to try fast and affordable versions of these models for free.

BMW

👟 BMW’s 3D-printed spikes heading to Olympics

Image source: BMW

The Rundown: BMW is partnering with the German Bobsleigh, Luge, and Skeleton Federation to design custom 3D-printed spike plates for bobsled shoes, aiming to give athletes a high-tech edge on the ice in the 2026 Winter Olympics.

The details:

  • BMW is 3D printing swappable spike plates tailored to each athlete's unique needs, as opposed to traditional fixed patterns that lack customization.

  • The design is based on 3D scans of the athlete’s shoes, with the material, geometry, and spike layouts tweaked for optimization at each position.

  • Initial World Cup trials have garnered positive feedback from athletes, with BMW looking to perfect the tech for the 2026 Olympics.

Why it matters: In the razor-thin margins of Olympic competition, BMW's high-tech spikes could provide the tiny advantage that pushes the German team to gold. The digitally tailored plates showcase how 3D printing is enabling previously impossible levels of athletic customization.

NEW PRODUCTS

⚙️ Merge- Automate building and maintaining product integrations for your startup

🖼️ Picurious- Turn photos into learning moments with instant answers, insights and questions about your images

🤖 AIChatbot- Instantly resolve support inquiries and customer service needs with an AI-powered chatbot

📶 Forescribe- Discover, optimize, and regulate your startup’s entire digital infrastructure

🫂 Rupt- Easily detect and convert account sharers into happy paying customers with unparalleled accuracy

🎨 Muse Pro- The ultimate AI-enhanced sketching and painting app

🧠 Second Brain Labs- Automate your sales, survey, and support at scale using AI

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

SNIPPETS

Samsung launched its new midrange lineup of 2024 Galaxy phones, featuring enhanced cameras, AI upgrades, and an expected $434 price point.

Readyverse Studios unveiled ‘The Readyverse’, a new interactive platform and metaverse from the creator of the sci-fi franchise ‘Ready Player One’.

X is reportedly planning to launch a video streaming platform available to watch on Samsung and Amazon Fire TVs, with Elon Musk tweeting the feature is ‘coming soon’.

Tesla is returning to court over a 2018 fatal crash involving its Autopilot system, with the plaintiff’s lawyers using a newly reported email to argue the company knew drivers would not watch the road when in-use.

Airbnb announced a new ban on indoor security cameras in listings starting April 30, attempting to prioritize guest privacy.

First Light Fusion set a new world record in the fusion energy sector, producing 4x the pressure found at the Earth’s core during a projectile launch.

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

AI

Apple's sleeping AI giant

Rowan Cheung • 5 minutes

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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

The race for on-device AI is heating up, and Apple might just have the edge.

Siri’s co-creator just teased that a big year lies ahead for the voice assistant — hinting the tech giant may be (finally) gearing up for a major AI push. Let’s explore…


In today’s AI rundown:

  • Apple gears up for Siri AI push

  • OpenAI announces new board members

  • Access Anthropic’s free prompt library

  • How the community is using Claude 3

  • 7 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 3 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

APPLE

 🍎 Apple gears up for Siri AI push

Image source: Apple

The Rundown: Apple has been reserved about its AI ambitions, but the tech giant is now signaling that Siri is set for a major upgrade that could make it a formidable challenger to ChatGPT and Gemini in the AI assistant race.

The details:

  • Co-creator of Siri, Dag Kittlaus, tweeted that the assistant will do "cool new things" in 2024 and "accelerate and become a real force in the AI arena."

  • Apple has recently published several important AI research papers and has quietly acquired 21 AI-related startups since 2017.

  • An ‘AppleGPT’ LLM is rumored to be in development, with a Siri integration expected in June at the WWDC 2024 event.

  • The new M3 chip's ‘world's best consumer laptop for AI’ tag also suggests Apple has solved running AI models efficiently on-device.

Why it matters: Don't sleep on Apple's AI potential. While rivals rushed to capitalize on ChatGPT hype, Apple has been quietly building AI hardware and software foundations for its billion-plus devices. The race for on-device AI is still wide open — and Apple is still well-positioned to lead the pack.

TOGETHER WITH MASTERWORKS

💰 Harvard data scientist shocks investors

The AI revolution has already begun to rewire Wall Street, and its impact has been strongly felt in one growing market.

Thanks to a Harvard data scientist and his team, everyday people can now benefit from a previously “off-limits” investment.

The company that makes it possible is called Masterworks, whose platform enables savvy investors to invest in shares of blue-chip art.

Intrigued? The Rundown AI readers can skip the waitlist.

Past performance is not indicative of future returns. Investing involves risk. See Important disclosures at www.masterworks.com/cd.

OPENAI

💼 OpenAI announces new board members

Image source: Bloomberg

The Rundown: OpenAI just announced the addition of several board members and the reinstatement of CEO Sam Altman to his board seat, with the company looking to move past the turmoil of its November crisis.

The details:

  • The three additions are Former Gates Foundation CEO Sue Desmond-Hellmann, ex-Sony exec Nicole Seligman, and Instacart CEO Fidji Simo.

  • Altman also formally rejoins the board after an investigation cleared him of any misconduct warranting termination.

  • OpenAI said the new board will focus on overseeing its growth and "ensuring artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity."

Why it matters: With the new board additions and formal clearance of Altman, OpenAI takes its most decisive step yet toward stabilizing leadership following the unexpected coup. All eyes now turn to the next OpenAI release— which Altman tweeted will be ‘worth the wait.’

AI TRAINING

📚 Access Anthropic’s free prompt library

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to access, browse, and use Anthropic’s free prompt library — which contains hundreds of ready-to-use Claude prompts.

Step-by-step:

  1. Visit Claude’s Prompt Library.

  2. Browse and select a prompt that best suits your needs. Our favorites include Website Wizard, Excel Expert, Storytelling Sidekick, and Lesson Planner.

  3. These prompts work best when used with both a System and User prompt.

  4. If you’re not familiar, a System Prompt in Claude is similar to Custom Instructions for ChatGPT.

  5. You will need to copy and paste the prompts from the library to the Claude API Console to access System Prompts.

FROM THE COMMUNITY

🧐 How The Rundown community is using Claude 3

Image source: Anthropic

The Rundown: The recent release of Anthropic’s impressive new model has many users contemplating a switch over from ChatGPT. Here is how some of our readers are using Claude 3 following the upgrade:

  • Visual Reasoning: @gabchuayz uploaded an IKEA instruction manual, with Claude providing clear steps (and even recognizing model numbers).

  • Speed and Efficiency: @MichaelMidday utilized Opus for business emails and coding, noting better results and faster responses.

  • As a Therapist: @MichaelEllsberg fed Claude journal entries, finding the new model to be more subtle, warm, and less lifeless than ChatGPT.

  • Focused Responses: @sankedongre369 is using the model for content creation, research, and analysis, finding that its communication style and creativity is more advanced than competitors.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

  • 📈 Tapilo- The all-in-one LinkedIn tool to grow your personal brand. Let AI handle all your content needs*

  •  Questflow- Text-to-workflow platform for automating tasks

  • 👗 Kopia- Virtual try-on for clothing

  • 🔍 Hebbia- LLM platform for knowledge collaboration

  • 🎤 Dub AI- AI-powered voice cloning and translation

  • 🧘‍♀️ Vital AI- Personalized real-time meditations

  • 🦍 IdeaApe- AI market research for validating ideas

Browse more AI tools →

New AI Job Opportunities

  • 🎯 OpenAI - GTM Onboarding Manager

  • 📆 Anthropic- Program Manager, Organizational Effectiveness

  • 👨‍💻 Cohere- Senior ML Infrastructure Engineer

  • 🤗 Hugging Face- Machine Learning Engineer, Fast Optimized Inference

Browse more AI jobs →

*Sponsored listing

QUICK HITS

Pika Labs introduced a new ‘Sound Effects’ tool, enabling users to pair their generations with audio via prompts or automatically based on the content of the video.

Preemptive AI announced $6.4M in funding to develop AI models that interpret biomedical signals from smartphones and wearables to predict health events like strokes or heart attacks.

Nvidia is facing a class action lawsuit from authors alleging the company used their copyrighted books without permission to train its NeMo AI platform.

OpenAI CTO Mira Murati responded to a NYT report discussing her strained relationship with Sam Altman, saying the previous board was trying to ‘scapegoat’ her with misleading claims.

Italy’s Data Protection Authority has launched an investigation into OpenAI’s new Sora video generator, requesting clarifications on data processing, EU regulation compliance, and user age verification within 20 days.

Soul Machines unveiled an AI Marilyn Monroe chatbot, which can engage in real-time conversations with fans using the late actress’ voice, style, and emotions.

THAT’S A WRAP

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