Grok breaks free from X

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot is finally breaking free from X’s walled garden — moving beyond social media and into the AI big leagues.

With a brand new standalone app and Grok 3 on the horizon, could xAI be preparing for a serious move up the AI power ladder in 2025?

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In today’s AI rundown:

• xAI breaks Grok free from X with standalone app

• Google tests AI-powered ‘Every day Listen’ podcasts

• Turn research papers into learning sessions

• AI model decodes gene activity in human cells

• 4 latest AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

XAI

📱 xAI breaks Grok free from X with standalone app

The Rundown: xAI just launched a brand new beta standalone app for its Grok AI assistant, marking the primary shift away from its X (Twitter) integration and positioning the chatbot as a more direct competitor to rivals like ChatGPT and Gemini.

The small print:

• The brand new iOS app gives users access to Grok 2, xAI’s latest AI model, without requiring an X account or subscription.

• Users can access the app through various login options including Apple, Google, X accounts, or email, with each free and premium tiers available.

• The app includes features like image generation, text summarization, and real-time information access through web and X data.

• As well as, Grok appears to have improved its search feature, now gaining the power to reference older posts from any user across X.

Why it matters: Despite xAI’s later begin to the race, Grok’s development has moved at a breakneck pace — but living solely inside X has likely limited users seeing it as a real competitor to ChatGPT. With a brand new standalone platform and a possible Grok 3 release across the corner, xAI could also be positioning for a serious move up the AI ladder in 2025.

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GOOGLE

🎧 Google tests AI-powered ‘Every day Listen’ podcasts

The Rundown: Google just rolled out ‘Every day Listen’, a brand new experimental AI feature in Search Labs that transforms users’ search interests and browsing data into personalized five-minute podcasts.

The small print:

• The feature generates 5-minute AI-voiced podcasts based on users’ Google Search history and Discover feed preferences.

• Every day Listen appears within the Google mobile app’s homepage, featuring real-time transcripts and related story links for deeper exploration.

• The experiment is currently limited to U.S. users who opt into Search Labs, with content currently only available in English.

• The feature is an identical format to Google’s NotebookLM Audio Overviews, specializing in news and updates reasonably than document summaries.

Why it matters: Google stumbled onto lightning in a bottle with NotebookLM, and now its bringing the style to other formats as well. As attention spans get shorter and shorter, quick, engaging podcast summaries like these may grow to be a typical way for the way many users (particularly auditory learners) prefer to devour information.

AI TRAINING

🎧 Turn research papers into learning sessions

The Rundown: NotebookLM’s latest “Join In” feature can turn complex research papers into engaging audio discussions where you may participate and deepen your understanding.

Step-by-step:

1. Upload your research paper to NotebookLM.

2. Configure your discussion parameters in Audio Overview by choosing “Customize”.

3. Join the interactive conversation by choosing “Interactive mode”.

4. Play the podcast and click on “Join” to ask for specific questions or provide feedback.

Pro tip: You can too create study materials using NotebookLM’s built-in tools, comparable to Briefing Doc, Study Guide, or FAQ.

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AI RESEARCH

🧬 AI model decodes gene activity in human cells

The Rundown: Columbia University researchers just developed General Expression Transformer (GET), an AI model which accurately predicts gene expression in any human cell — potentially revolutionizing the study of biological processes and diseases.

The small print:

• GET is trained on a dataset of over 1.3M cells from normal human tissues and may understand gene behavior in cell types it hasn’t seen before.

• In tests, GET’s predictions matched real lab results with remarkable accuracy, accurately forecasting gene activity patterns 94% of the time.

• Researchers tested GET’s capabilities by utilizing it to uncover mechanisms driving a type of pediatric leukemia, showing potential for disease research.

• GET may detect relationships between distant genes which might be over 1,000,000 DNA letters apart, revealing necessary long-range genetic interactions.

Why it matters: Our bodies contain 1000’s of various cell types, each using the identical DNA blueprint in unique ways. GET’s ability to accurately predict this process across any cell type could speed up research into genetic diseases and cancer, and in turn spur a revolution of AI-guided medicine and drug development.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 📈 Sagehood – AI agent for a 360 degree evaluation of the U.S. stock market

• ⚙️ Fernado AI – Construct mobile apps and web sites with no code

• 🤝 AI Follow-ups – AI CRM that implies the perfect results in follow-up on

• 🤖 Trellis AI – Swarms of agents that automate manual PDF tasks

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🩺 Hippocratic AI – Associate Chief Medical Officer

• 💰 Databricks – Treasury Manager

• ⚖️ DeepL – Legal Counsel

• 🤝 Dataiku – Talent Acquisition Partner

📰 Every part else in AI today

OpenAI began rolling out a brand new Custom Instructions interface for ChatGPT, including latest fields to offer more information to the assistant and ‘traits’ to further personalize responses.

Microsoft published a brand new rStar-Math technique, enabling small language models to realize 90% accuracy on advanced mathematics benchmarks despite their size.

Alibaba unveiled a brand new web interface for its Qwen language models, featuring its Qwen2.5-Plus flagship model alongside specialized versions for vision, reasoning, and coding tasks.

Cohere launched North, a brand new enterprise AI platform built on the corporate’s Command R model featuring custom assistants, search capabilities, content generation and more.

Hailuo AI debuted its S2V-01 video model, which may maintain consistent character appearance across video sequences with only a single reference image.

ByteDance introduced STAR, an video upscaling tool that uses text-to-video AI to realize state-of-the-art clarity in outputs.

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See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team