Sora 2 breaks the web

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. OpenAI just dropped a video model that may actually break the web — in additional ways than one.

With Sora 2’s incredible physics and realism and a brand new Cameo feature bringing easy viral potential, the following step up in video generation is here. But once the floodgates open, will this recent AI social app break through the noise or simply add to the slop?

In today’s AI rundown:

• OpenAI’s Sora 2 with social video app

• Periodic Labs’ AI scientist for physical world

• Construct full-stack AI productivity tools without coding

• Amazon’s recent Alexa+ integrated devices

• 4 recent AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

OPENAI

🎥 OpenAI’s Sora 2 with social video app

The Rundown: OpenAI just released Sora 2, its latest video model that now includes synchronized audio and dialogue, alongside a brand new social app where users can create, remix, and insert themselves into AI videos through a “Cameos” feature.

The main points:

• Sora 2 shows huge improvements in physics in comparison with earlier models, also featuring longer 5-10 second outputs that may handle complex scene changes.

• The model also can generate matching audio alongside visuals, creating realistic dialogue and sound effects that synchronize across content styles.

• The brand new Sora social app centers around ‘Cameos’, a feature that lets users record and use their likeness across AI-generated scenes.

• The app launches free with usage limits within the U.S. and Canada, with Pro subscribers gaining access to a Sora 2 Pro model and API access coming soon.

Why it matters: Model-wise, Sora 2 looks incredible — pushing us even further into the uncanny valley and creating tons of recent storytelling capabilities. Cameos looks like a brand new viral memetic tool, but time will tell whether the AI social app can overcome the slop-factor and have endurance past the initial novelty.

TOGETHER WITH ASAPP

📱 Confer with GenerativeAgent live

The Rundown: You’ve probably heard the MIT stat circulating that 95% of enterprise AI pilots fail. Need to experience the opposite 5%? ASAPP’s GenerativeAgent® is an enterprise-grade AI customer support agent you’ll be able to call today. Purpose-built for complex customer calls & chats, it resolves real issues with speed, safety, and control.

Pick a use case, call in, and experience:

• Human-like conversations that transcend easy FAQs

• Fast, accurate resolutions—the primary time

• Enterprise-grade guardrails that prevent hallucinations

Confer with GenerativeAgent today.

PERIODIC LABS

🧪 Periodic Labs’ AI scientist for physical world

The Rundown: ChatGPT co-creator Liam Fedus’ recent startup, Periodic Labs, just launched, revealing its mission to construct AI scientists that learn from physical experiments somewhat than web text — with over 20 researchers from top AI labs.

The main points:

• The corporate is constructing autonomous laboratories where robots will execute hundreds of materials science experiments.

• The labs will generate gigabytes of unique data per trial, with AI systems then analyzing to guide future experimentation.

• Periodic Labs raised over $300M in funding at a $1B valuation, with initial projects targeting superconductors and chip manufacturing efficiency.

• The team argues that current LLMs have exhausted the web’s text and may’t achieve real discovery without real-world experimentation.

Why it matters: Researchers from OpenAI, Meta, Google DeepMind, and other labs turned down serious money to affix Periodic Labs, with a worthy goal of accelerating science across the board. This vision shows the opposite side of the AI coin — some see the content slop, others see the visionary opportunity for world-changing discovery.

AI TRAINING

💻 Construct full-stack AI productivity tools without coding

The Rundown: On this tutorial, you’ll learn easy methods to construct AI-powered productivity apps using Lovable — a platform that handles UI, backend, database, and AI integration through easy prompts with no coding required.

Step-by-step:

1. Go to lovable.dev, join (5 free credits/day), after which prompt: “Construct a task tracking app called TaskPrioritizer with a form for task name and outline, display tasks as cards with checkboxes, and store in a database”

2. Add AI integration by prompting: “Add AI using Gemini to mechanically prioritize tasks as low/medium/high based on urgency keywords like ‘ASAP’ or ‘today’, show coloured badges, and include a kind button”

3. Enable authentication with: “Add user accounts with signup/login so people can save their very own tasks privately. Each user only sees their very own tasks”

4. Test your app by creating tasks with different urgency levels, then click “Publish” in the highest right to get a live URL

Pro tip: Use Claude or ChatGPT to draft a product spec before constructing — describe your idea and ask for a requirements doc to enable you to think through features upfront.

PRESENTED BY K2 THINK

🧠 Open reasoning, unlocked

The Rundown: K2 Think isn’t just one other model release, it’s fully open source with training data, parameter weights, and deployment code all accessible — ensuring reproducibility and accelerating global collaboration. From labs to startups, K2 Think gives AI builders a transparent, high-performance reasoning system to trust and extend.

K2 Think’s upgrades include:

• Performance at just 32B parameters that rivals 600B+ reasoning LLMs

• Chain-of-thought depth and test-time scaling

• Optimized for Cerebras wafer-scale inference

Explore the research.

AMAZON

📦 Amazon’s recent Alexa+ integrated devices

The Rundown: Amazon just unveiled a series of recent devices designed specifically for its recent AI-infused Alexa+, including recent Echo home systems, Ring cameras, Fire TVs, Kindle readers, and more.

The main points:

• Alexa+ can now handle more natural conversations, book reservations, control smart homes, and complete complex web tasks autonomously.

• Recent Echo devices feature custom chips to process AI requests on-device, with improved voice detection sensors to acknowledge people and environments.

• Ring AI upgrades include Alexa+ Greetings for a private AI door attendant, Familiar Faces for people recognition, and Search Party for locating lost pets.

• Kindles gain AI-powered notetaking, with Fire TVs getting Alexa+ guidance for movie recs and info, more intelligent search, and broader home integrations.

Why it matters: Alexa+ is heading across Amazon’s product line, with some practical and useful integrations — but nothing that feels truly next level in an area where things are moving a mile a minute. With Apple still in AI limbo, Amazon’s moves are a small step forward… But hardware still looks like it’s waiting for a real breakout AI integration.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🎥 Sora 2 – OpenAI’s recent SOTA video generation model

• 💼 Agent Mode – Microsoft’s ‘vibe working’ capabilities in Office apps

• 💭 Imagine with Claude – Generate UI and apps on the fly with Claude

• ⚙️ Essential – Nothing’s ‘digital playground’ to create apps with text prompts

📰 All the pieces else in AI today

Agentic Memory & Context Engineering Hackathon, SF, Oct. 11 — Push the boundaries of what you’ll be able to construct with MongoDB’s Atlas Vector Search and Voyage AI embeddings. Register now.*

Elon Musk revealed that xAI is constructing ‘Grokipedia’, which will probably be a “massive improvement” over Wikipedia and a step towards “understanding the universe.”

Microsoft introduced Agent Mode in Excel and Word, together with Office Agent in Copilot, enabling the creation of spreadsheets, docs, and presentations with text.

Opera launched Neon, a brand new AI-powered browser that may take agentic actions on a user’s behalf, released as a premium subscription via waitlist.

Meta acquired chip startup Rivos, searching for to speed up the corporate’s internal AI chip development and reduce reliance on Nvidia.

OpenAI reportedly generated $4.3B in revenue through the first half of 2025, but in addition burned $2.5B on research and compute costs, based on The Information.

*Sponsored Listing

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 Christopher J. in West Hollywood, CA:

“I exploit AI as a full-fledged personal health team. I gather results from my physical exams and make prompts to interrupt things down in order that a senior in highschool could understand them. Then I ask for dietary recommendations to support my longevity, anti-inflammation, and brain health. Based on this, I prompt for specific dietary instructions, including meal plans, shopping lists, and recipes. I then give an inventory of the markets nearest to me for a particular shopping list with sizes and costs.”

How do you utilize AI? Tell us here.

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

• Read our last AI newsletter: OpenAI’s e-commerce takeover

• Read our last Tech newsletter: Microsoft launches ‘vibe working’ AI

• Read our last Robotics newsletter: Google’s robots learn to ‘think’ first

• Today’s AI tool guide: Construct full-stack AI productivity tools

• RSVP to our next workshop @ 4 PM EST Friday: Vibe coding for non-devs

See you soon,

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