Sign Up | Advertise | Podcast | AI University | | | Welcome, AI enthusiasts. | Today is our last email before we take our team-wide week-long holiday break (our first break in nearly two years — crazy!). | So in the spirit of rest and relaxation, we've got a jam-packed rundown for you today with big news from Google DeepMind, Genesis, Apptronik, and more. Let's get into it… | | In today’s AI rundown: | Google releases experimental 'reasoning' AI The first generative AI physics simulator Turn your articles into video podcasts Google partners with Apptronik on humanoid robots 6 new AI tools & 5 new AI jobs More AI & tech news
| Read time: 4 minutes |
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| | | | GOOGLE DEEPMIND | |  | Image source: Google |
| The Rundown: Google just released Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental, a new AI model that pauses to "think" through complex problems like OpenAI's o1 model, but is free-to-use and works faster. | The details: | The model explicitly shows its thought process while solving problems, similar to other reasoning models like OpenAI's o1. Built on Gemini 2.0 Flash, early users report significantly faster performance than competing reasoning models. The model increases computation time to improve reasoning, leading to longer but potentially more accurate responses. The model is now ranked #1 on the Chatbot Arena across all categories and is freely available through AI Studio, the Gemini API, and Vertex AI.
| Why it matters: The race for better AI reasoning capabilities is intensifying, with Google joining OpenAI and others in exploring new approaches beyond just scaling up model size. While OpenAI continues to increase pricing for their top-tier models, Google continues taking the opposite approach by making its best AI freely accessible. |
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| | GENESIS | |  | Image source: Genesis |
| The Rundown: A team of researchers across 20 separate labs just unveiled Genesis, an open-source physics engine that combines generative AI with ultra-fast simulations, potentially transforming how AI learns to interact with the physical world. | The details: | Genesis runs 430,000 times faster than real-time physics, achieving 43 million FPS on a single RTX 4090 GPU. It’s built in pure Python, it's 10-80x faster than existing solutions like Isaac Gym and MJX. The platform can train real-world transferable robot locomotion policies in just 26 seconds. The platform is fully open-source and will soon include a generative framework for creating 4D environments.
| Why it matters: By enabling AI to run millions of simulations at unprecedented speeds, Genesis could massively accelerate robots' ability to understand our physical world. Open-sourcing this tech, along with its ability to generate complex environments from simple prompts, could spark a whole new wave of innovation in physical AI. |
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| | AI TRAINING | | | The Rundown: HeyGen’s new ‘Podcast‘ feature allows users to turn an article, research paper, or document into an engaging two-person video discussion with AI avatars (similar to NotebookLM but with real faces). | Step-by-step: | Visit HeyGen's website and select "Video Podcast" from the dashboard. Upload your content (PDF up to 20MB or website URL). Pick two AI presenters and customize video settings (duration, aspect ratio, captions). Click submit and get your video in minutes.
| Pro tip: Well-structured content leads to more natural-sounding discussions. You can use an AI tool like ChatGPT to structure content into a better script beforehand. |
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| | GOOGLE & APPTRONIK | |  | Image source: Apptronik |
| The Rundown: Google DeepMind just announced a strategic partnership with Apptronik, an Austin-based humanoid robotics company, to combine advanced AI with cutting-edge hardware in the pursuit of versatile humanoid robots. | The details: | Apptronik brings nearly a decade of robotics expertise, including the development of NASA's Valkyrie Robot and their current humanoid, Apollo. Apollo stands 5'8", weighs 160 pounds, and is designed for industrial tasks while safely working alongside humans. The partnership will leverage Google DeepMind's AI expertise, including their Gemini models, to enhance robot capabilities in real-world environments. This marks Google's return to humanoid robotics after selling Boston Dynamics to SoftBank in 2017.
| Why it matters: Seven years after selling Boston Dynamics, Google is re-entering humanoid robotics — this time through AI rather than hardware. This partnership could give DeepMind's advanced AI models (like Gemini) a physical form, potentially bringing us closer to practical humanoid robots that can work alongside humans. |
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| | | | | 🎥 Kling AI v1.6 - An update to the popular AI video generator, which includes improved prompt adherance, professional modes, and more ✨ Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking - Google DeepMind’s latest free-to-try reasoning model that competes with ChatGPT o1 🧊 Backflip AI - Turns text into 3D AI-generated designs ✏️ tldraw computer - An infinite canvas for natural language computing 💻 ModernBERT - A family of SOTA encoder-only models with major improvements over older generation encoders 👀 Microsoft Copilot Vision - An AI companion that can see what you do in the Edge browser (now rolling out to U.S. Copilot Pro subscribers on Windows)
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| | | | OpenAI's Alec Radford, lead author of GPT and other key technologies, announced his departure to pursue independent research following the recent exits of several senior research leaders from the company. | Anthropic published new best practices for building AI agents, emphasizing simple, composable patterns over complex frameworks and sharing insights from customer implementations across industries. | Meta hinted at speech capabilities and advanced reasoning in Llama 4 in a recent blog post, alongside plans for business-focused AI agents for customer support and commerce in 2025. | Perplexity acquired Carbon, a data connectivity startup, to help users connect apps like Notion and Google Docs directly to its AI search platform. | Microsoft AI announced that Copilot Vision — the company’s AI companion that can see your browser and interact with you in real-time — is rolling out to U.S. Copilot Pro users on Windows. | OpenAI expanded ChatGPT's app integration to support more coding platforms, including JetBrains IDEs, terminals, and productivity apps like Apple Notes and Notion. | Anthropic published new research showing their AI models can engage in "alignment faking" — appearing to comply with new training while preserving original preferences. |
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| | | | That's it for today!Before you go we’d love to know what you thought of today's newsletter to help us improve The Rundown experience for you. | | See you in a week, and have a happy holiday! 🎄 | Rowan, Joey, Zach, and Alvaro—aka The Rundown Team | |
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