DeepSeek’s ‘Sputnik moment’

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. The AI world continues to be digesting DeepSeek’s latest R1 breakthrough, but the corporate is already back with one other launch, taking aim on the image generation arena.

With two major releases in a matter of weeks, is tech’s latest disruptor about to upend the AI power balance?

In today’s AI rundown:

• DeepSeek launches latest AI image model

• Qwen launches AI models that control devices

• Turn product photos into 3D objects

• Meta AI gets a personalization upgrade

• 4 latest AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

DEEPSEEK

🐋 DeepSeek launches latest AI image model

The Rundown: Chinese AI startup DeepSeek just released Janus-Pro, a brand new open-source multimodal AI model that outperforms major image generation rivals like DALL-E 3 and StabIe Diffusion — coming on the heels of the corporate’s viral R1 launch.

The main points:

• The brand new Janus-Pro model family generates high-quality images from text descriptions, with 1B and 7B parameter models available.

• Janus-Pro outperformed DALL-E 3 and Stable Diffusion in key industry benchmarks for image quality and accuracy, similar to GenEval and DPG-Bench.

• The models were released under an MIT license, allowing developers to freely use and modify the model for industrial projects.

• The launch follows DeepSeek’s R1 release, which achieved o1-level reasoning capabilities at far lower costs — shaking U.S. markets and the industry.

Why it matters: DeepSeek is the talk of the town, and the consequences of R1 are being felt throughout markets because the world digests the reshaping of assumptions around development costs and capabilities. While the present panic could also be an overreaction, the Chinese lab has raised questions on the U.S.’s perceived lead within the space.

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ALIBABA

🚀 Qwen launches AI models that control devices

The Rundown: Alibaba’s Qwen team just released Qwen2.5-VL, a brand new family of vision-language models that may interact with computers and phones, alongside latest advanced capabilities in document and video evaluation.

The main points:

• The flagship 72B model outperforms GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet on key benchmarks for document parsing and video understanding tasks.

• The system can analyze hour-long videos and extract specific moments while processing complex documents like invoices and forms.

• A brand new feature gives the AI agentic control for smartphone apps and computers, with demos including airfare booking, image editing, and code installation.

• The smaller 3B and 7B versions are freely available, with the 72B model requiring permission for large-scale industrial uses.

Why it matters: A brand new ‘operator’ has entered the chat — with Qwen’s computer using vision model coming just every week after OpenAI’s hyped release. Between Qwen and DeepSeek’s massive past week of releases, the gap between open and closed and China vs. U.S. models continues to feel closer than ever before.

AI TRAINING

🎨 Turn product photos into 3D objects

The Rundown: Krea AI’s real-time generation feature allows you to create skilled product visualizations by combining images, shapes, and AI-assisted enhancements.

Step-by-step:

1. Access Krea AI‘s real-time generation feature from the Generate menu.

2. Upload your product image and position it on the canvas.

3. Add shapes and painted areas where you would like additional elements.

4. Wonderful-tune using the AI Strength slider and positioning tools.

Pro tip: Keep AI Strength low for realistic products. Increase it for creative backgrounds and effects.

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META

🧠 Meta AI gets a personalization upgrade

The Rundown: Meta just announced the rollout of latest AI personalization features that permit its assistant remember conversations and tap into user data across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

The main points:

• Meta AI can now remember key details from one-on-one chats, like dietary preferences and interests, to supply more tailored responses.

• The assistant can even access users’ Facebook locations, Instagram viewing history, and other profile data for personalized recommendations.

• The features are launching within the U.S. and Canada across Meta’s platforms with no opt-out option, though specific conversation memories may be deleted.

• ChatGPT and Gemini have also added ‘memory’ to their assistants, though limited to strictly in-chat and never Meta’s social data and integrations.

Why it matters: Meta has a wealth of social data at its disposal, and tapping into it (just like its hyper-personalized ads) could give a novel edge with an assistant more in tune with users. Nevertheless, the dearth of an opt-out option seems like a significant miss, especially given the corporate’s complicated history with user data and trust.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🤖 Qwen2.5-1M – Alibaba’s updated models with 1M token context length

• 🦙 Llama Stack – Bring GenAI applications to market with unified APIs

• 📋 OpenAI Canvas – Now available in ChatGPT with o1 and on desktop, with latest code rendering capabilities

• ⚙️ co.dev – Turn ideas into full-stack apps using natural language

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🤖 The Rundown – Author (Robotics/Tech)

• 🤝 Waymo – HR Business Partner & Recruiter

• 🧠 Perplexity AI – LLM Teacher (Contract)

• 🔬 Luma AI – Senior Research Engineer

📰 Every little thing else in AI today

LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman announced a $24.6M raise for Manas AI, a brand new AI-powered drug discovery platform targeting cancer treatments.

DeepSeek’s R1 surged to No.1 on Apple’s App Store with 2.6M downloads, but attributable to reported cyberattacks, it has paused latest user sign-ups outside of China.

xAI’s upcoming Grok-3 model briefly appeared to go live for some users, showcasing improved reasoning capabilities — with a full release expected this week.

Pika Labs launched v2.1 of its AI video generation model, which features advanced motion control, realistic physics, and customizable scene elements.

Apple released iOS 18.3, with the brand new system update turning on Apple Intelligence by default on devices — though AI summaries still remain disabled.

French government AI chatbot Lucie was suspended just days after launch following widespread errors with basic facts, despite funding from President Macron.

COMMUNITY

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See you soon,

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