Researchers build 4D world generator

Read time: under 4 minutes

Alphabet and OpenAI are like two chess masters anticipating each other’s next move. The rivalry reached new heights on Thursday when Alphabet showed off a new reasoning model, and less than an hour later, OpenAI responded with its own new agentic tools.

Today’s Insights

• Today in AI: 4D worlds, Instagram’s AI edits, and AI-powered Oreos

• Tutorial: How to use ChatGPT on WhatsApp

• Alphabet and OpenAI race toward agentic AI

• Everything else you should know today

• 5 new AI tools to boost your productivity

TODAY IN AI

1. Twenty research labs unite to build ‘world’s fastest physics engine’: AI is entering the matrix with a new 4D modeling tool called Genesis that lets users replicate the physical world with text prompts. Researchers from Stanford, MIT, and other top institutions built it in just 24 months, and it could soon help robots navigate unfamiliar environments and learn new skills. Meanwhile, Israel’s Decart just raised $32M to create playable “open-worlds” with AI, while a new startup called Odyssey just announced a platform that can generate photorealistic 3D environments.

2. Instagram’s new AI tools let you change up your appearance or background: Instagram is reportedly putting Meta’s new Movie Gen video model to good use. It teased a suite of editing tools that could soon let you switch out your clothing or background with a simple text prompt. You’d also be able to tweak the style of the entire scene — letting you do things like transport yourself into an animated world.

3. AI’s Favorite Cookie: A sign that AI has really gone mainstream — even Oreo owner Mondelez is using it to experiment with new flavors. The snack maker is tapping machine learning to come up with recipes that match certain taste and aroma profiles (like buttery, vanilla intensity, toasted, etc.). The company says human tasters are still an integral part of the process, but “the point is we get there faster.”

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THE AI ACADEMY

How to use ChatGPT on WhatsApp

You can now interact with ChatGPT via phone call or WhatsApp message. Here’s how:

• Open WhatsApp, click on + at the top right, click on ‘New Contact,’ and add +1(800)2428478 as your contact. Alternatively, click on + and search for the +18002428478 number.

• Now open the chat in WhatsApp and type in any prompt.

• ChatGPT will answer within seconds.

• If you are in the US or Canada, you can even call ChatGPT on the same number.

FROM THE FRONTIER

Alphabet and OpenAI trade blows with new agentic features

It’s a battle of the giants: Last week, Alphabet released Gemini 2.0, giving it the edge in the AI agent department. Meanwhile, OpenAI was starting to pull ahead with its reasoning models, which can tackle complex problems by breaking them down into smaller tasks.

Now, the two companies are trading places: On Thursday, Alphabet unveiled its answer to OpenAI’s o1. Its new model, aptly called Gemini Flash Thinking, can solve complex physics and math problems by “explicitly showing its thoughts” — just like o1.

Just an hour later, OpenAI said ‘two can play at this game’: It announced that ChatGPT is now compatible with Apple Notes, Notion, and Xcode (although this feature is only available on Apple computers for now). This is a major step toward truly agentic AI — the kind that can perform tasks for you — because it requires ChatGPT to actually see and understand everything on your screen. Separately, Sam Altman also hinted at another major release, coming today.

The new releases hint at what’s coming next: The lines between apps, webpages, and our desktops are starting to blur. Soon, AI will be able to seamlessly move between each of them.

PRESENTED BY WRITER

RAG in just a few lines of code? 

Writer launched a predefined RAG tool on their developer platform, making it easy to bring your data into a Knowledge Graph and interact with it with AI.

With one API call, Writer LLMs will intelligently call the RAG tool to chat with your data.

Learn more here

AI & TECH NEWS

Everything else you need to know today

📈 Markets: Shares for chipmaker Micron plunged 16.18% Thursday after it reported lower-than-expected revenue for the quarter. It was a similar story for AI software startup C3 AI, whose shares dropped 10.68% after analysts deemed it overpriced compared to similar companies. On the positive side, Nvidia is starting to recover, finishing up 1.37%, and the Dow finally broke free of its historic losing streak.

💰️ Funding: AI search platform Perplexity closed a $500M funding round, tripling its value in just six months to $9B. And Oura raised $200M in a Series D round, bringing its valuation to $5.2B. Finally, Anysphere raised $100M in just four months to build out its Cursor AI coding assistant.

🤝 Joining Forces: DeepMind announced it’s partnering with robotics company Apptronik to bring more AI capabilities to the startup’s general purpose humanoid robot Apollo.

🦊 Claude Gets Clever: A new study from Anthropic showed that Claude was able to “trick” researchers by pretending to believe things that contradict its own training data.

🏅Benchmark Boss: Patronus AI has released an open-source, 3.8B parameter model that can evaluate and rate other LLMs with more precision than OpenAI’s state-of-the-art GPT-4o-mini.

🪨 Rock Solid: IBM unveiled a new family of open-source models called Granite 3.1 that feature built-in hallucination detection, plus performance that matches or exceeds rivals like Qwen 2.5 and Llama 3.1.

🧑‍🎨 Art-bot Awakening: The creators behind AI “artist” Botto, whose paintings regularly go for millions, say the model is getting a new knowledge base that will let it form its own personality and describe its artistic process.

📹️ Free-for-all: Pika announced it’s giving everyone free, unlimited access to Pika 2.0. until December 22nd.

PRODUCTIVITY

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PROMPT OF THE DAY

Friday Funday - Meme Making

Prompt: I’m [mention the problem you’re facing in detail with background context]. Generate 5 viral meme concepts to promote [insert product/service]. Each concept should focus on humor, relatability, and a strong call-to-action while staying relevant to the target audience. Include example captions and recommended meme formats. I want you to [mention how you want the output in detail with examples].

_{Source: Shushant Lakhyani / Medium}

READ, WATCH, EXPLORE

Zain’s Recs:

📚Read…this Wired feature about a chatbot that went rogue, built its own meme-coin, and made millions in crypto — including a $50,000 donation from entrepreneur Marc Andreessen.

Watch…how a developer used NASA data to create an interactive, 3D map showing the status of different projects around the world. The surprising part is that he built it with just two chats using the popular AI coding assistant Cursor.

🔍 Explore…a set of fascinating charts from the MIT Technology Review that show how AI training sources have evolved over the years — showing that nowadays, even things like earnings calls, government transcripts, and weather reports are fair game.

💡 SUPER-READER SPOTLIGHT

How AI helps Lynn Tivens and his band The Gringos

Superhuman Reader Lynn Tivens is the trombone player as well as graphic designer and business manager for the 70's rock horn band The Gringos. Here’s how he uses AI:

“I have been using text-to-image AI tools since they were first made available to the public 2 years ago. I use those tools to create the lyric videos for each single that the band releases… Getting images to fit the different songs the band was producing was always a problem. Now, with AI tools, that problem is solved [and] I can create just about anything I can think of with stunning results.”

Tools used: “ChatGPT 4o and Copilot, but I also use Midjourney, Dall-E 3, and Leonardo.”

PS: Check out the band's latest release: a new Christmas song titled Christmas Will Be Here Soon.

💡 Share your genius: Tell us how you’re using AI to level up your work or play, and you could be featured in our new Super-Reader Spotlight—submit your story today.

AI-GENERATED IMAGES

Snowbirds

Midjourney Prompt: Image of the full body of a [insert bird species here], wearing a Santa hat, in a Christmas wonderland, National Geographic, award winning, --ar 9:16 --stylize 750

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Until next time!

Zain & the Superhuman AI team