🐜 Nature inspires new AI startup

Welcome back, Superhuman. A new startup thinks we’ve been looking at AI all wrong. Instead of just scaling up models, Softmax is taking a page from biology — because nature might have already cracked the code. Also: Elon Musk makes a mega move as his AI startup xAI acquires his social media platform X.

Today’s Insights

• xAI acquires X, Manus’ major upgrade, and AI-powered therapy

• Startup turns to nature for help solving AI mysteries

• Tutorial: How to create Ghibli style videos with AI

• 5 new AI tools to boost your productivity

• News, memes, what’s trending on socials, and more

TODAY IN AI

1. xAI acquires X for $45B: Elon Musk announced that his AI startup xAI has acquired his social media platform X in a deal that values the new combined entity at a whopping $113B. The idea is to bring both companies’ “data, models, compute, distribution, and talent” under one roof. That’ll make for a potent combo, combining xAI’s Colossus supercomputer — considered the largest of its kind in the world — with X’s massive distribution network, made up of an estimated 650M users.

1. Manus’ viral agent just got a major upgrade: Chinese startup Butterfly Effect stunned users earlier this month with an agent called Manus that some say works even better than OpenAI’s Operator. And the Claude-powered platform might have just pulled off another upset by upgrading to Claude 3.7, making it even more powerful. It also unveiled a mobile app, longer context windows, and premium subscriptions — although some users say they’re still struggling to get waitlist approval after weeks of trying.

1. Study suggests AI works just as well as therapists: Researchers at Dartmouth College say they’ve conducted the first study that looks at how an LLM trained specifically for therapy performs compared to traditional therapists. The Therabot app was surprisingly effective, reducing symptoms of depression by 51% and of anxiety by 31% — about on par with human-led cognitive therapy. But the researchers cautioned more experiments are needed to verify those results.

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FROM THE FRONTIER

Twitch CEO’s next venture: Building AI that’s perfectly aligned with our needs

A new startup plans to be the first to finally harmonize man and machine. Sounds familiar, right? This time though, it’s Twitch founder Emmett Shear in the driver’s seat, and he’s taking a uniquely “biological” approach to understanding how LLMs really work. His new startup, Softmax, just came out of stealth with backing from a16z and Lionheart Ventures.

If his name rings a bell, it might be because Shear was the “extremely interim CEO of OpenAI” during the startup’s infamous 2023 coup, when the board axed Sam Altman before reinstating him days later. He told Core Memory that the experience convinced him most tech startups are thinking about AI all wrong.

Here’s where things get philosophical: Shear believes the key to understanding how intelligence really works is by digging deep below the surface. Humans, for example, are made up of trillions of unique, individual cells. Ants and even trees know how to cooperate to increase their chances of survival.

Shear has assembled a 10-person team to explore what that means for AI: One recent experiment focuses on how different agents work together in a virtual world. The hope is that by understanding the fundamental building blocks of life, we’ll be able to build LLMs that are safer to use — for both humans and the artificial beings we might one day create.

THE AI ACADEMY

How to create Ghibli style videos with AI

• Go to ChatGPT and create a Ghibli style image of your choice.

• Now head over to Hedra AI and sign in with your account.

• Upload your Ghibli style image, add prompt explaining gestures and emotions of your character, drop in your script, and hit generate.

Sample Prompt: Turn this image into a live animation. Keep the anime style consistent. Add natural mouth and facial movements to simulate her talking as if she’s hosting a podcast. Occasionally blink her eyes and add subtle head nods or hand gestures to emphasize key points. The background bookshelves and lamp should remain mostly still, but a soft ambient lighting flicker or slight camera zoom could add a sense of depth and realism. Make the overall vibe warm, professional, and engaging.

• Wait for a few minutes and you’ll get an amazing Ghibli style video ready.

• Download it and share it with others.

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AI & TECH NEWS

Everything else you need to know today

✨ Pro Preview: Google announced that anyone can now try its state-of-the-art model Gemini 2.5 Pro at no cost, although there are still rate limits for non-subscribers.

📱 Silicon Sidekick: AI app-building platform Replit announced its Agent v2 model is now available for all users, with 10x more autonomy and a 5x higher success rate than its predecessor.

📚 AI Insurgent: Stability AI co-founder Emad Mostaque’s new project, Intelligent Internet, unveiled an open-source deep research agent called II-Researcher that it claims beats xAI and Perplexity’s latest offerings.

☎️ Phone a Friend: Sesame, whose realistic, human-like voice bots took the internet by storm earlier this month, announced that you can now login to the platform to get 30-minute calls with its two avatars, plus “shared memory across devices.”

🕰️ Blast from the Past: To bring back OG users, Facebook will now offer a “friends-only” tab that gets rid of algorithmic recommendations and sponsored content and surfaces only your friends’ posts.

PRODUCTIVITY

5 AI Tools to Supercharge Your Productivity

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✅ Reve Image: Generate realistic images from text descriptions without requiring advanced prompt engineering.

✅ Epiphany: Capture your voice notes and instantly turn them into actionable tasks within your existing workflow tools.

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PROMPT OF THE DAY

Improve Decision-Making

Prompt: Help me improve my decision-making skills with practical exercises and mental models. Provide a step-by-step framework for making better choices in high-stakes situations. Include real-world scenarios where I can apply models like first principles thinking, second-order consequences, or probabilistic reasoning. Also, suggest fun decision-making games or thought experiments (e.g., the Monty Hall problem or paradoxes) to sharpen my critical thinking. Bonus: Give me a way to track and analyze my past decisions to identify patterns and improve future choices!

SOCIAL SIGNALS

What’s trending on socials today

🧾 Proof Problems: Investor Deedy Das explains why native image generation is much bigger than some viral Studio Ghibli memes. For example, AI-generated receipts could scramble current flows related to verifying our purchases online.

💼 Animated Innies: AI artist Bennett Waisbren used GPT-4o to recreate a scene from the hit TV show Severance across eight famous animation styles, from Pixar to French surrealism to 1930s-era black-and-white.

📺 Quirky Crossover: If you’re more of a fan of “The Office,” check out this Ghibli-fied monologue from Dwight Schrute, made by a16z’s Justine Moore. (She shares her simple workflow here.)

⭐ 15 Minutes of Fame: Roy Lee just got kicked out of Columbia University for cleverly building an AI platform that can beat tech companies’ coding proficiency tests on its own. Now, he’s watching the fallout with glee on X, while planning to share his app with even more job seekers.

🔁 Feedback Loop: Psychedelics researcher Josie Kins asked ChatGPT to create a series of comics starring itself. The eerie result went viral, sparking a conversation about just how naive LLMs really are.

AI-GENERATED IMAGES

Famous paintings in Ghibli style

ChatGPT Prompt: [upload image] convert this painting into studio Ghibli style 

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Zain & the Superhuman AI team