Welcome, AI enthusiasts.
Walmart just reported that generative AI has helped the corporate update 850 million product catalog entries, 100x faster than humans.
Because the retail giant plans to integrate AI across all operations, are we witnessing the longer term, or the start of widespread job displacement? Let’s get into it…
In today’s AI rundown:
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AI makes Walmart 100x more productive
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SoftBank’s AI chip faces setback
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Create a Siri-like voice AI with Llama 3.1
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Hermes 3 is the most recent open-source model
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5 recent AI tools & 4 recent AI jobs
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More AI & tech news
Read time: 4 minutes
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
WALMART
🛒 AI makes Walmart 100x more productive

Image source: Walmart
The Rundown: Walmart’s CEO Doug McMillon just reported that the corporate is using generative AI to extend its productivity, updating 850 million product catalog entries 100 times faster than human-led methods.
The main points:
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The report got here throughout the company’s Q2 financial earnings call, where McMillon also announced AI improvements to customer search and seller support.
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Customers can now use AI-powered search and a brand new shopping assistant on Walmart’s app and website — it even provides advice for questions like “Which TV is best for watching sports?”.
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Walmart can also be testing a totally recent AI-driven experience for U.S. based marketplace sellers, but the small print will not be yet available.
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McMillon said the corporate plans to proceed experimenting with AI globally across all parts of its business.
Why it matters: One other multibillion dollar company is using AI to extend productivity, but most notably, Walmart is exploring the tech in all areas of its business ops. Whether people ought to be excited concerning the countless possibilities ahead or concerned concerning the relevance of their jobs is a matter that’s not going away any time soon.
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Keynotes from Marc Andreessen, Mira Murati (OpenAI), and more
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Real-world AI scaling strategies from Netflix, Instacart, and others
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SOFTBANK
🦄 SoftBank’s AI chip faces setback

Image source: Midjourney
The Rundown: SoftBank’s ambitious Project Izanagi initiative, aimed toward developing AI processors to rival Nvidia, is reportedly facing a significant setback after Intel failed to fulfill volume and speed requirements.
The main points:
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SoftBank had been working with Intel to develop AI processors for Project Izanagi since it lacks in-house chip design expertise, but Intel failed to fulfill SoftBank’s demands.
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In an effort to maintain Project Izanagi on course, SoftBank is considering a brand new partnership with TSMC, the world’s largest chipmaker.
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TSMC has its own issues, nevertheless, failing to fulfill its current chipmaking demands, which has stalled the negotiations.
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Despite the complications, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son stays committed to the corporate’s ambitious plan and is searching for investments from Saudi Arabia, UAE, and major tech corporations.
Why it matters: Nvidia is currently dominating the AI chip space, which propelled the corporate to its current $3 trillion dollar market capitalization. But with recent delays of Nvidia’s next-gen Blackwell AI chip, it may very well be time for competitors to strike.
AI TRAINING
🗣️ Create a Siri-like voice AI with Llama 3.1

The Rundown: This recent custom iPhone shortcut trick allows you to create a lightning-fast, Siri-like voice assistant powered by Meta’s Llama 3.1 and Groq’s API.
Step-by-step:
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Generate an API key in Groq’s website.
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Create a brand new shortcut within the iPhone Shortcuts app.
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Add actions to capture voice input, store your API key, and set the Groq API endpoint for Llama 3.1.
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Call the Llama 3.1 API using a “Get Contents of URL” motion with the suitable headers and request body.
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Extract the generated response.
Note: Members at The Rundown AI University can download this shortcut template directly into their phones.
Get more AI tutorials →
PRESENTED BY ZAPIER
The Rundown: Give your computer the gift of gab with ZAP’s loudest flavor, Chatty Cherry Blast — an AI-powered energy drink that helps corporations take their customer support to the subsequent level.
With Chatty Cherry Blast, you’ll be able to:
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Construct low-cost, automated support channels
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Connect your platform to over 7,000+ apps
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Handle customer queries across the clock
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Enjoy seamless, efficient support operations
NOUS RESEARCH
🆕 Hermes 3 is the most recent open-source model

Image source: Nous Research
The Rundown: Nous Research just released Hermes 3, a brand new open-source model with significant improvements in roleplaying, agentic tasks, function calling, multi-turn chats, and long context coherence.
The main points:
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Hermes 3 is offered in three sizes (8B, 70B, and 405B) with the 405B parameter model achieving state-of-the-art performance relative to other open models.
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The model is instruct tuned, or trained, to faithfully reply to user requests and closely follow provided system prompts, unlike base or foundation models.
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It achieves similar or higher performance to Meta’s Llama-3.1 405B in judgement, reward modeling, interpretable problem-solving, code generation, and gear use.
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Hermes 3 is offered now at no cost via Lambda Chat or within the Nous Research Discord server.
Why it matters: Meta has been the leader in open-source AI for awhile, but corporations like Nous Research and Mistral are catching up with their latest Hermes 3 and Large 2 models. And the more free, customizable and state-of-the-art AIs available to the general public, the more transparency the world has.
NEW TOOLS & JOBS
Trending AI Tools
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📈 minusx – AI data scientist integrated in your favorite analytics tools
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🎥 Neural Frame – Create audio reactive AI music videos
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📸 a1 Art – Immediately turn photos into GIFs and videos
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🐘 Tusk – Complete UI ticket and pull requests with AI
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✨ Sparkle – Robotically clean up and organize your files with AI
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🤖 Hedra Labs – Create AI avatars with lifelike animations
Browse more AI tools →
Latest AI Job Opportunities
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🌐 Weights & Biases – Web Experience Manager
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🧑💻 Databricks – Data Scientist – Latest Grad
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📈 Hive – Sales Operations Manager
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🛠️ Sanctuary AI – DataOps Engineer
Browse more AI jobs →
QUICK HITS
Elon Musk revealed that xAI is developing an in-house image generation system to switch the present Flux model in Grok 2 but it surely’s currently months away from release.
Google recently expanded its AI-generated search summaries to 6 recent countries and added hyperlinks and quality improvements after initial issues.
The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau highlighted risks of AI in finance, saying existing laws apply and innovation requires consistent regulatory treatment.
Grammarly is reportedly rolling out a brand new AI content detector tool that may detect whether AI, a human, or a mixture of the 2 created content.
CodeRabbit raised $16 million to automate code reviews using AI, which claims to supply actionable, human-like feedback to developers.
Apptronik, an automation company that makes humanoid robots, recently reported that the corporate is preparing for a business launch by the tip of 2025.
THAT’S A WRAP
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