Sign Up | Advertise | PodcastĀ | AI University | | | Welcome, AI enthusiasts. | While OpenAI and Google place giant presents under the AI tree, Microsoftās Phi AI model family just proved that good things can come in small packages too. | The new Phi-4 is outperforming the industry's giants with just a fraction of the parameters ā hinting at a bright future for small, specialized models. Letās get into itā¦ | | In todayās AI rundown: | Microsoft releases small, powerful Phi-4 ChatGPT gains āProjectsā for chat organization Practice job interviews with ChatGPT Pika drops major 2.0 video upgrade 5 new AI tools & 5 new AI jobs More AI & tech news
| Read time: 4 minutes |
|
| | | | MICROSOFT | |  | Image source: Microsoft |
| The Rundown: Microsoft just released Phi-4, a 14B parameter small language model that outperforms massive competitors like GPT-4o and Gemini Pro 1.5 in areas like mathematical reasoning despite a drastic size difference. | The details: | Phi-4 outperforms models like Gemini Pro 1.5 on several math and complex reasoning benchmarks despite being a fraction of the size. Phi-4 even surpasses its teacher model, GPT-4o, on graduate-level STEM Q&A and math competition problems. Microsoft trained Phi-4 primarily on synthetic data, using AI to generate and validate approximately 400B tokens of high-quality training material. The model also features an upgraded mechanism that can process longer inputs of up to 4,000 tokens, double the capacity of Phi-3. Phi-4 is available in a limited research preview on Azure AI Foundry, and a wider release is planned for Hugging Face.
| Why it matters: Microsoftās Phi models continue to challenge the ābigger is betterā trend in AI, showing that smaller models can match or exceed the capabilities of larger ones ā particularly in specialized areas. The AI future may not be about raw size but smarter architecture and training approaches that do more with less. |
|
| | TOGETHER WITH RABBIT | | | The Rundown: Bring the best gift to your holiday festivities this year with the rabbit r1 āĀ an AI companion designed to grow more delightful over time thanks to continuous updates and new features that keep it fresh and engaging. | Whether young, young at heart, or in-between, gift r1 to: | Feed curiosity with unlimited answers to any questions at a momentās notice Elevate travels with bi-directional translation in 100+ languages and personalized itineraries Nerd out with a fully customizable UI, the ability to create custom agents, and a playground of out-of-the-box AI features
| Take advantage of the only discount of the year and secure r1s for everyone this holiday season. |
|
| | OPENAI | |  | Image source: OpenAI |
| The Rundown: OpenAI launched Projects for ChatGPT on Day 7 of its ā12 Days of OpenAIā event, a new organizational system that lets users group conversations, files, and custom instructions into individual workspaces with shared context. | The details: | The feature introduces project-specific folders where users can bundle related chats, documents, and custom AI instructions across conversations. Each Project automatically leverages GPT-4o while maintaining access to core features like Canvas, DALL-E, and web search capabilities. The system is rolling out first to Plus, Pro, and Teams subscribers, with Enterprise and Education users gaining access in January. Projects can be created and managed through the web interface and Windows app, while mobile and Mac users can view and chat with existing Projects.
| Why it matters: While this isnāt the most groundbreaking feature (Anthropic released Projects for Claude in June), it's important for user workflows āĀ avoiding the dreaded need to refresh entire context and instruction prompts when starting new chats. |
|
| | AI TRAINING | | | The Rundown: ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode can be turned into a personalized interview coach, conducting mock interviews and providing real-time feedback. | Step-by-step: | Open ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode on your mobile device. Set up your specific interview scenario and industry context. Engage in a realistic mock interview with industry-focused questions. Get immediate feedback on your responses and presentation.
| Pro tip: If you need more time to formulate your responses, you can customize how the AI responds in Custom Instructions. |
|
| | PRESENTED BY INNOVATING WITH AI | | | The Rundown: Innovating with AI's new program, AI Consultancy Project, transforms AI enthusiasts into professional consultants ā tapping into a market projected to reach $54.7B by 2032. | The 6-month program delivers: | Proven frameworks for client acquisition and service delivery A step-by-step path to six-figure consulting income Students who land their first AI client in as little as 3 days
| Click here to request early access to The AI Consultancy Project. |
|
| | PIKA LABS | |  | Image source: Pika Labs |
| The Rundown: Pika Labs just released version 2.0 of its AI video generator, introducing a new āIngredientsā tool that lets users incorporate their own images into AI-generated videos ā alongside improved motion, prompting, and animation features. | The details: | A new 'Scene Ingredients' system allows users to upload and mix characters, objects, and backgrounds that the AI automatically recognizes and animates. Pikaās updated model shows impressive realism, smooth movement, and prompt/image adherence, giving users more control over outputs. The new video generator also features a significant update to text alignment, showcasing the ability to craft realistic branded scenes and advertising content. Pika has already attracted over 11M users and secured $80M in funding, and the new version follows its viral āeffectsā launch in October.
| Why it matters: Pikaās new upgrades are wild,Ā continuing to move video outputs out of the āslot machineā luck phase into a more customizable, personalized experience. While we patiently waited for Sora, the AI video scene leveled up in a major way ā with Pika, Luma, Runway, Kling, Hailuo, and others dulling the impact of OpenAIās latest release. |
|
| | | | | šĀ Reddit Answers - AI-powered search tool that lets you find human perspectives, recommendations, and info powered by Reddit communities š·Ā Doctronic AI - Instant, accurate care from home with an AI consultation followed by video visits with licensed doctors āļø Paperguide AI writer - Easily write well-researched articles and academic papers with AI šĀ iMerch AI - Next-gen AI e-commerce tool offering intelligent product recommendations and personalized product lists āļø Depth AI - Answer complex questions on large and messy codebases, onboard new engineers quickly, and ship code faster
| | |
|
| | | | xAIĀ rolled out an upgraded version of Grok-2 to all X platform users, featuring tripled speed, improved multilingual capabilities, and integration of web search and advanced image generation features. | Metaās FAIRĀ released a suite of new AI research projects including Meta Motivo for embodied agent control and Meta Video Seal for video watermarking, alongside improved models for memory scaling and social intelligence. | OpenAI cofounder Ilya SutskeverĀ warned that AI has reached 'peak dataā during the NeurIPS conference, predicting a shift from current training methods to more autonomous, reasoning-based systems that will become increasingly unpredictable. | GoogleĀ unveiled NotebookLM Plus with interactive audio features and Gemini 2.0 Flash integration, allowing users to verbally engage with AI hosts during Audio Overviews and access expanded enterprise capabilities. | OpenAIĀ published new email correspondences and a timeline of events with Elon Musk, claiming that Musk initially wanted the company to be a for-profit entity despite active lawsuits. | DeepSeekĀ released VL2, a new vision-language model family leveraging MoE architecture that performs similarly to rival models despite smaller sizes. | Anonymous-chatbotĀ hasĀ returnedĀ to the LM Arena, which was previously used to test GPT 4o, sparking rumors of a potential GPT 4.5 or upgraded OpenAI model coming soon. |
|
| | | | SPONSOR US | Get your product in front of over 800k+ AI enthusiasts | Our newsletter is read by thousands of tech executives, investors, engineers, managers, and business owners around the world. Get in touch today. |
|
| | That's it for today!Before you go weād love to know what you thought of today's newsletter to help us improve The Rundown experience for you. | | See you soon, | Rowan, Joey, Zach, and Alvaroāaka The Rundown Team | |
|
|
|
