Alibaba’s powerful recent AI image editor

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. There’s no shortage of impressive image models available on the market — but teaching AI to exactly edit without ruining the unique output has been the actual challenge.

But, with Alibaba’s recent (and open-source!) Qwen-Image-Edit crushing benchmarks and the mysterious ‘nano-banana’ model lighting up LM Arena, it looks like natural language photo editing is about to have its ChatGPT moment.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Qwen’s powerful, recent image editing model

• Grammarly’s recent AI agents for writing

• Use Perplexity Comet to avoid wasting time on social media

• Game developers embrace AI at an enormous scale

• 4 recent AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

ALIBABA

🎨 Qwen’s powerful, recent image editing model

The Rundown: Alibaba’s Qwen team just dropped Qwen-Image-Edit, a 20B parameter open-source image editing model that tackles each pixel-perfect edits and magnificence transformations while keeping the unique characters and objects intact.

The small print:

• Qwen-Image-Edit splits editing into two tracks: changes like rotating objects or style transfers, and edits to specific areas while keeping every thing else intact.

• Built-in bilingual capabilities let users modify Chinese and English text directly in images without breaking already present fonts, sizes, or formatting decisions.

• Multiple edits can stack on top of one another, letting users fix complex images piece by piece quite than starting over every time.

• The model achieves SOTA performance across a series of image and editing benchmarks, beating out rivals like Seedream, GPT Image, and FLUX.

Why it matters: Image generation has seen a parabolic rise in capabilities, but the primary strong AI editing tools are only beginning to emerge. With Qwen’s open-sourcing of Image-Edit and the hyped “nano-banana” model currently making waves in LM Arena, it looks like granular, natural language editing powers are about to be solved.

TOGETHER WITH AUGMENT CODE

🔥 Ditch the vibes, get the context

The Rundown Augment Code’s powerful AI coding agent meets skilled software developers exactly where they’re, delivering production-grade features and deep context into even the gnarliest codebases.

With Augment Code, you may:

• Keep using VS Code, JetBrains, Android Studio, and even Vim

• Index and navigate hundreds of thousands of lines of code

• Get easy answers about any a part of your codebase

• Construct with the AI agent that gets you, your team, and your code

Ditch the vibes and get the context you could engineer what’s next.

GRAMMARLY

✍️ Grammarly’s recent AI agents for writing

The Rundown: Grammarly just released eight recent AI agents that act as intelligent writing collaborators, robotically assisting each students and professionals across tasks like citations, grading, proofreading, plagiarism detection, and more.

The small print:

• Agents include Reader Reactions, which predicts confusion a reader could have, and AI Grader for giving feedback and grades based on rubrics/course info.

• A Plagiarism Checker agent queries databases and published works to cross-reference writing, and an AI Detector agent grades writing on how human it’s.

• All agents operate inside Grammarly Docs, a brand new “AI-native writing surface” that gives targeted assistance throughout the writing process.

• The agents are rolling out to Grammarly’s Free and Pro tiers immediately, with the AI Detector agent and Plagiarism Checker only available to paid users.

Why it matters: The education system is scrambling to balance AI with real learning, while workplaces are moving to AI-first skillsets. Writing agents could help bridge that divide, giving users real skills alongside automated help to organize for a world where knowing when and find out how to use AI matters greater than avoiding it entirely.

AI TRAINING

☄️ Use Perplexity Comet to avoid wasting time on social media

The Rundown: On this tutorial, you’ll learn find out how to use Perplexity Comet, an AI browser that may read and summarize, to take motion on any webpage content without copying and pasting — for every thing from Twitter threads to YouTube videos.

Step-by-step:

1. Download Perplexity Comet as a separate app for Mac or Windows (Rundown University members can get invite codes)

2. Navigate to any Twitter/X thread or YouTube video and click on the Assistant button in the highest right

3. Prompt examples: “Summarize this thread,” “Explain SaaS flipping in easy terms,” or “Write a motivational post about having an ideal day”

4. Review AI-generated summaries or drafted posts before Comet posts them to your social accounts

Pro tip: Use Comet on long-form YouTube content like Lex Fridman podcasts to get key insights in minutes as an alternative of hours, then ask follow-up inquiries to make clear technical concepts you do not understand.

PRESENTED BY BOX

📈 Thriving within the AI-first era of business

The Rundown: BoxWorks 2025 will tackle the challenge every enterprise faces: find out how to extract real value from the large amounts of unstructured data that’s often spread across systems. With recent AI models emerging continuously, the chance to rework this chaos right into a competitive advantage has never been greater.

What you will experience at BoxWorks:

• AI data extraction techniques that turn documents into actionable insights

• Interactive sessions with Box’s latest intelligent Content Management capabilities

• AI-enhanced security protocols that protect sensitive data while enabling automation

• Networking opportunities with industry experts solving similar challenges

Register now for BoxWorks San Francisco and save 50% on in-person passes.

AI RESEARCH

🎮 Game developers embracing AI at massive scale

The Rundown: Google Cloud revealed recent research that found over 90% of game developers are integrating AI into their workflows, with respondents saying the tech has helped reduce repetitive tasks, drive innovation, and enhance player experiences.

The small print:

• A survey of 615 developers across five countries found teams using AI for every thing from playtesting (47%) to code generation (44%).

• AI agents are actually handling content optimization, dynamic gameplay balancing, and procedural world generation, with 87% of devs actively deploying agents.

• The rise of AI can also be impacting player expectations, with users demanding smarter experiences and NPCs that learn and adapt to the player.

• Despite the adoption, 63% of surveyed devs expressed concerns about data ownership rights with AI, with 35% citing data privacy as a primary issue.

Why it matters: Gaming sits at an ideal intersection for AI, requiring assets like real-time world simulation, 3D modeling, dynamic audio, and sophisticated code that models excel at. While not everyone within the industry will probably be blissful about it, the adoption rate shows a bet that players care more about great experiences than how they’re made.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🎆 Qwen-Image-Edit – Qwen’s recent image editing model

• 🎹 Eleven Music API – Integrate high-quality music into products & workflows

• 🤖 GenFlow 2.0 – Baidu’s general AI agent for complex tasks

• ⛈️ Stormy – AI agent for influencer marketing

📰 All the pieces else in AI today

ByteDance Seed introduced M3-Agent, a multimodal agent with long-term memory, to process visual and audio inputs in real-time to update and construct its worldview.

Character AI CEO Karandeep Anand said the typical user spends 80 minutes/day on the app talking with chatbots, saying most individuals may have “AI friends” in the long run.

xAI’s Grok website is exposing AI personas’ system prompts, starting from normal “homework helper” to “crazy conspiracist”, with some containing explicit instructions.

Nvidia released Nemotron Nano 2, tiny reasoning models starting from 9B to 12B parameters, achieving strong results in comparison with similarly-sized models at 6x speed.

U.S. Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a probe into AI tools, including Meta and Character AI, focused on “deceptive trade practices” and misleading marketing.

Meta is set to launch “Hypernova” next month, a brand new line of smart glasses with a display (a “precursor to full-blown AR glasses), rumored to begin at around $800.

COMMUNITY

🤝 Community AI workflows

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader Bo H. in Cincinnati, Ohio:

“I’m a lawyer and fintech founder who’s using AI to construct legal tech applications. While I had some product management experience, I used to be not a developer. Anthropic’s Claude has modified that, and now I’m constructing proprietary applications to deliver value to clients and improve my team’s efficiency. Most of my applications are built for small businesses that sometimes cannot afford to rent lawyers frequently and for highly regulated clients (e.g., asset managers) who’re suffocated by BigLaw hourly rates of over $2,000/hr.”

How are you using AI? Tell us here.

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

• Read our previous newsletter: Dinner with Sam Altman

• Today’s AI tool guide: Use Perplexity Comet to avoid wasting time on social media

• Watch our last live workshop: Mastering AI agents for customer support

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer—the humans behind The Rundown