Humanoid robot makes art history

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

The art world just witnessed a $1.3M reality check from an unexpected painter — a humanoid robot named Ai-Da.

As traditional notions of creativity and authorship get challenged, is the AI and robotics boom about to usher in a brand new artistic era? Let’s get into it…

In today’s AI rundown:

• AI robot artwork shatters auction estimates

• Anthropic expands Claude AI to defense sector

• Transform research tabs into reports

• ByteDance unveils powerful AI portrait animator

• 6 recent AI tools & 4 recent AI jobs

• More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

AI, ROBOTICS & ART

🎨 AI robot artwork shatters auction estimates

The Rundown: Humanoid robot artist Ai-da just made history at Sotheby’s Auction House, with its portrait of computer science pioneer Alan Turning selling for $1.3M — marking the primary major auction sale of a robot-created artwork.

The main points:

• The “AI God” painting sparked intense bidding interest with 27 offers, selling for nearly 10x the originally estimated value of $120,000 to $180,000.

• The piece combines traditional portrait artistry with AI-driven techniques, using cameras in Ai-Da’s eyes and robotic arms to capture and create the image.

• The work is an element of a bigger series examining humanity’s relationship with technology, and the work was previously exhibited on the UN’s AI for Good Summit.

• Sotheby’s said the artwork is the primary by a humanoid robot artist, and Ai-Da commented that it ‘serves as a dialogue about emerging technologies.’

Why it matters: Is the world able to embrace non-human artists? Should you’ve seen the reactions to AI artwork on social media, the reply might be not, nevertheless it’s clear some are able to challenge traditional notions of creativity and authorship. Someday, pieces like Ai-Da’s could also be historical artifacts from the early days of the AI and robotics boom.

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ANTHROPIC

🪖 Anthropic expands Claude AI to defense sector

The Rundown: Anthropic just announced a significant partnership with Palantir and AWS to bring its Claude AI models to U.S. intelligence and defense agencies, joining Meta and OpenAI within the tech’s shifting role inside government operations.

The main points:

• Claude will probably be integrated into Palantir’s IL6 platform powered by AWS, considered one of the best security environments designed for classified government ops.

• The move allows defense agencies to leverage AI for complex data evaluation, pattern recognition, document processing, and rapid intelligence assessment.

• Special policies are crafted to enable foreign intelligence evaluation and threat detection, with weapons development and cyber operations restrictions.

• Access will probably be limited to authorized personnel in classified environments, with security protocols and strict compliance in place.

Why it matters: AI firms have historically been cautious about intertwining with military applications, but with OpenAI, Meta, and now Anthropic operating with the federal government and defense contractors, the floodgates have opened. Accessing top AI models quickly becomes an enormous security and military advantage.

AI TRAINING

📚 Transform research tabs into reports

The Rundown: NotebookLM can turn your browser tabs and research materials into well-organized, AI-powered briefs and reports.

Step-by-step:

1. Head over to Google’s NotebookLM and create a brand new notebook.

2. Add your open browser tabs by pasting URLs as sources.

3. Generate an initial transient with a structured prompt (e.g., “Write a 1-page transient on [topic] with key trends, examples, and implications”).

4. Refine with focused follow-up prompts targeting specific industries or perspectives.

Pro tip: Create a customized Audio Overview for stakeholder-specific summaries and export your insights.

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• Query all of your unstructured data efficiently

• Create vector embeddings together with your favorite models

• Use the vector database for RAG, semantic search, recommendations, and more

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AI RESEARCH

🎭 ByteDance unveils powerful AI portrait animator

The Rundown: ByteDance just revealed X-Portrait 2, an AI system that may transform static images into expressive animated performances by mapping facial movements onto a driving video.

The main points:

• X-Portrait 2 requires only a single reference video to ‘drive’ the motion and a picture to rework right into a recent character or style.

• The system can transfer subtle facial expressions and sophisticated movements like pouting, frowning, and tongue movements with realism and fluidity.

• X-Portrait 2 works across realistic portraits and cartoon characters, opening possibilities for animation, virtual agents, and visual effects.

• The update builds on the July release of X-Portrait 1 and will potentially be integrated into TikTok as a free competitor to larger AI avatar/lip sync platforms.

Why it matters: We’re not far off from professional-grade character animation being accessible to anyone — with wild implications for each content creation and creativity as a complete. But with nearly indistinguishable levels of lip-syncing and character transfer, will the world lose its sense of true ‘reality’ in the method?

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

• 🛍️ CommercePro by CapCut – Generate shoppable video ads, product images, and social content from a product link

• 📝 PaperGen – Create AI-generated long-form papers featuring citations, charts, and more with originality, clarity, and precision

• 👨🏻‍✈️ CopilotKit (feat. CoAgents) – Construct AI copilots and agents into any React application

• ⚙️ PromptQL – An information access agent to construct AI assistants on any data

• 🖍️ ColorPageAI – Create custom coloring pages in seconds with AI

Latest AI Job Opportunities

• 🛡️ TaskUs – Head of Quality, AI Data Operations

• 📊 The Rundown – Partnerships Manager

• 🤖 Meta – AI Research Scientist, Computer Vision

• ✍️ Rad AI – Technical Author

• 💼 OpenAI – Revenue Operations Manager

QUICK HITS

Microsoft began integrating Copilot AI features into standard Microsoft 365 subscriptions in certain Asia-Pacific markets, signaling a possible shift away from its separate Copilot Pro subscription model.

Black Forest Labs launched a brand new upgrade to its FLUX1.1 pro model, featuring a brand new ‘Ultra’ mode for 4x higher image resolution in text-to-image generations and a ‘raw’ mode for more realistic generations.

Fast-food giant Wendy’s is partnering with Palantir to deploy an AI-powered supply chain management system that predicts shortages and automates inventory ordering.

Mistral debuted a brand new multi-language content moderation API that powers its Le Chat platform, helping developers implement safety guardrails in applications across nine policy categories.

Krea AI added custom model training capabilities, allowing users to create personalized AI models to learn specific characters, artistic styles, and product designs.

Chinese EV maker XPENG unveiled Iron, a virtually 6-foot-tall robot equipped with dexterous hands and the corporate’s Turing AI chip, already deployed in its vehicle factory alongside its autonomous driving technology.

Nous Research launched its first public chatbot interface called Nous Chat, powered by its Hermes 3-70B model.

THAT’S A WRAP

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, and Alvaro—aka The Rundown Team