Rowan Cheung Profile picture
Feb 6, 2024 12 tweets 4 min read Read on X
JUST IN: Microsoft is bringing AI to the news.

Plus, massive developments from Roblox, Apple, Bumble, Alibaba, Sam Altman, Bayreuth University, Huawei, and some wild deepfake scams.

Here's everything you need to know:
Microsoft just announced new partnerships with media orgs to provide AI tools for the newsroom.

AI will be used for research - with journalists still writing the articles (for now).

Outlets include Semafor, CUNY's journalism school, The GroundTruth Project, and more.
Roblox just launched a real-time AI chat translator.

Players speaking different languages can now seamlessly communicate via text in-game.

Pretty soon, every platform will likely have an AI system of its own — ending communication barriers as we know them.
Apple researchers just introduced a new method to help speech recognition models better comprehend unfamiliar words and names.

Looks like we may have a major (and much needed) Siri upgrade soon 👀 Image
Bumble launched a new AI-powered tool called Deception Detector.

The feature automatically identifies and blocks 95% of spam and fake profiles on the dating platform.

Take notes, Twitter. Image
Alibaba researchers released Qwen1.5, open-sourcing six different model sizes.

The performance reportedly surpasses GPT 3.5 + Mistral-Medium and even GPT 4 on certain benchmarks.

China's LLM competitors are getting serious.
Sam Altman posted that GPT-4's performance should be ramped up after its reported 'laziness' during the holidays.

Even AI struggles with New Year's resolutions:
Bayreuth University scientists are using AI to analyze galaxy structures and behaviors.

With how little we know about the universe, some new discoveries could get WILD. Image
Huawei is slowing its phone production — despite becoming China's leader in smartphone sales.

The reason? Prioritizing AI chips amid surging global demand.

Quite a statement on where the tech giant sees the future of AI heading. Image
AI deepfakes are all over the headlines. Two crazy new ones:

-OnlyFake, a site that leverages AI to create near-instant fake IDs.

-A $25.6M heist in Hong Kong, with scammers using deepfake tech to convince an employee to transfer funds.
6 new AI tools & 4 new jobs.

All the direct links will be included in my newsletter tomorrow.

Subscribe, and you'll never miss a thing in AI ever again: therundown.ai/subscribe
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That's it for today's news in the world of AI.

I do these rundowns daily, so follow me @rowancheung for more.

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More from @rowancheung

Jun 23
AI NEWS: Meta just teamed up with Oakley to expand its family of AI smart glasses.

Plus, more news from Mistral, Moonshot AI, MiniMax, Anthropic, and xAI.

Here's everything you need to know:
Meta launched new performance-focused AI smart glasses with Oakley. Key features include:

—Upgraded camera with up to 3K videos
—2x battery, up to 8 hours of usage & 19 hrs on standby
—PRIZM Lens tech to amplify contrast across changing light and weather
Mistral released Mistral Small 3.2-24B, a minor update for the Small-3.1 model, with:

—Enhanced instruction following capabilities
—More robust function calling
—Fewer infinite generations or repetitive answers
Image
Read 9 tweets
Jun 18
AI NEWS: Sam Altman just revealed Meta is offering "$100M signing bonuses" to poach talent from OpenAI.

Plus, more news from Google, Baidu, MiniMax, Proactor, Krea, and Intelligent Internet.

Here's everything you need to know:
Sam Altman cooked Meta on his brother's podcast. Key takeaways:

— Meta’s offering $100K bonus to poach OAI talent
— None of OAI’s best have taken the offers
— OAI has a better shot at AGI, will eventually be more valuable
— Meta isn't great at innovation
Google just launched Gemini 2.5 Pro and Flash models in general availability

The co also started rolling out a hyper-efficient Flash-Lite model (in preview)

All three feature adjustable "thinking" with Flash-Lite defaulting to thinking off for max speed
Read 10 tweets
Jun 16
AI NEWS: China's Tencent just dropped an AI that generates 3D assets with cinematic quality.

Plus, more news from OpenAI, ElevenLabs, Flowstep, The Alan Turing Institute, and Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence.

Here's everything you need to know:
Tencent released Hunyuan 3D 2.1, an open-source model for generating 3D assets, including PBR materials

It can synthesize objects with cinematic textures and realism while covering their light interactions

Fully open-source with model weights and code
OpenAI dropped a few notable ChatGPT updates, including:

—Downloads for Canvas docs and code, including as PDF, docx, or markdown
—A new Projects experience with deep research, voice mode, file uploads via mobile, and improved memory to reference chats
Image
Read 9 tweets
Jun 10
AI NEWS: Apple kicked off WWDC 2025 with a major UI revamp — but was pretty light on Apple Intelligence

Plus, more news from Google DeepMind, OpenAI, Microsoft, Manus, and Skywork AI.

Here's everything you need to know:
At WWDC 2025, Apple showed off only a handful of AI upgrades, including:

—New Live translation for FaceTime, Messages, and calls
—Visual intelligence via screenshots
—AI-powered intelligent actions in Shortcuts
—AI "Workout Buddy" on Apple Watch
Google DeepMind and the UK govt just dropped "Extract," a Gemini-powered tool to expedite infrastructure and housing decisions

It uses multimodal reasoning to turn complex planning docs – including handwritten notes – into digital data in just 40 seconds
Read 9 tweets
Jun 3
AI NEWS: Microsoft is offering free access to OpenAI's Sora AI video generator

Plus, more news from Captions, Cohere, PlayAI, Character AI, and Topaz Labs.

Here's everything you need to know:
Microsoft just added Bing Video Creator to its Bing mobile app on Android and iOS

The feature uses OpenAI's Sora video generator to let users produce 5s vertical videos from text prompts —entirely for free

Also dropping on Desktop soon
Captions dropped Mirage Studio, a platform that generates hyper-realistic videos with AI actors

All one has to do is upload an audio or script to generate audio and select an AI actor for the content

Particularly good for product marketing
Read 9 tweets
Jun 2
AI NEWS: Google just dropped an Edge AI Gallery to bring open-source AI models to smartphones

Plus, more news from ElevenLabs, Resemble AI, DeepSeek, Sakana AI, Hume, and Tencent.

Here's everything you need to know:
Google quietly launched Edge AI Gallery, a library of open AI models to access on smartphones

Currently on Android, the gallery lets users pick models for their task and run using the available device hardware, entirely locally

iOS version coming soon!
ElevenLabs launched Conversational AI 2.0, its next-gen platform for creating voice agents with:

—Real-time turn-taking model
—Built-in language detection
—Integrated RAG
—Multimodality
—Scalable batch calling
Read 10 tweets

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