Meta’s AI chief scientist leaves with parting shots

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Acclaimed AI chief scientist Yann LeCun just departed Meta after over a decade, and the outspoken researcher definitely didn’t leave quietly.

From calling his boss Alexandr Wang “inexperienced” to admitting Llama 4 benchmarks were “fudged,” LeCun’s parting shots in a candid interview encapsulate the strain between Meta’s old guard and latest AI direction.

In today’s AI rundown:

• LeCun blasts Meta’s AI leadership on way out

• The Rundown Roundtable: Our 2026 AI predictions

• Create Claude Skill to design YouTube thumbnails

• Grok faces backlash over ‘undressing’ AI capabilities

• 4 latest AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

YANN LECUN & META

🚪 LeCun blasts Meta’s AI leadership on way out

The Rundown: Meta’s outgoing chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, just shed light on his latest AI startup and criticized Meta in an FT interview, calling Alexandr Wang “inexperienced” and predicting more departures from the corporate’s GenAI team.

The main points:

• LeCun called Wang, who was elevated to run Meta’s Superintelligence Labs after the $14B Scale AI deal, “young” and lacking research experience.

• He also admitted Llama 4 benchmarks were “fudged a little bit bit,” with Zuckerberg reportedly losing confidence in the whole GenAI org.

• LeCun said Meta’s latest AI hires are “completely LLM-pilled,” while he maintains LLMs are a “dead end” for achieving superintelligence.

• Lecun revealed that he will probably be the ‘executive chair’ of his latest AMI enterprise, with French AI healthcare startup Nabla’s founder Alex LeBrun leading as CEO.

Why it matters: The stress between Meta’s old guard and latest hires has been felt since this summer’s re-org, and LeCun has at all times been outspoken… But these are serious statements to make publicly. Only time will tell if Zuck, Alexandr Wang, and co’s latest direction finally ends up proving him right — or makes him look out of touch.

TOGETHER WITH GURU

🧠 Your AI source of truth

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Guru permits you to:

• Connect all knowledge with permission-aware access

• Get trusted, cited answers in chat and all over the place else you’re employed

• Experience knowledge that improves and verifies itself

Learn more about Guru.

THE RUNDOWN ROUNDTABLE

🔮 The Rundown Roundtable: Our 2026 AI predictions

The Rundown: The Rundown Roundtable is a weekly feature wherein we poll members of The Rundown staff about how we use AI in our work and every day lives. In today’s first edition of 2026, we’re giving our industry predictions for the 12 months ahead.

Rowan, Founder & CEO: Google finally nails the mixing of AI into its existing products (Gmail, Search, YouTube, Android) and starts gaining a lead over OAI in total AI users. ChatGPT stays the dominant chatbot, but Google dominates all other AI capabilities (integrating with existing products, video, and image gen).

Jason, Developer: We see our first major AI drug moment, and the tech stops being a cool lab demo and becomes a boring, repeatable strategy to produce drug candidates. I’m not saying AI cures cancer, but an AI-first candidate gets an enormous Phase 3 launch or something similar, which prompts the wave of “AI discovery stack” across pharma.

Zach, AI Author: Certainly one of the most important Western labs declares a brand new release as AGI in 2026, though the term has been so overused and distorted that everybody continues to argue over definitions. The “AGI” model is an upgrade, but nothing world-shaking — and life goes on very similar to after other invisible broken milestones just like the Turing Test.

AI TRAINING

🤩 Create Claude Skill to design YouTube thumbnails

The Rundown: On this tutorial, you’ll learn the way to construct a custom Claude Skill that routinely generates branded YouTube thumbnails by analyzing top-performing videos and applying your brand guidelines.

Step-by-step:

1. Go to Claude Settings → Capabilities, enable Code execution & file creation, then toggle skill-creator under Skills and click on Try in Chat

2. Start a chat, upload your logo, and prompt: “Create a skill that generates high-CTR YouTube thumbnails. It should analyze video links, use the PIL library, place the emblem top-right, and use Black, White, and Blue”

3. Download the generated ZIP, then go to Profile → Settings → Capabilities → Upload Skill and install the skill

4. Start a brand new chat and prompt: “Generate a YouTube thumbnail for ‘AI Productivity Tools 2025’. Listed below are the highest videos: [paste URLs]. Create a high-CTR thumbnail with the emblem top-right using brand colours”

Pro tip: Refine the thumbnails with follow-ups or use this approach to create Skills for other productivity tasks, corresponding to presentation generation.

PRESENTED BY CONCIERGE

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Modern brands use Concierge to:

• Handle any buyer query (regardless of how technical) with advanced RAG in your content & media

• Control and visibility over every conversation, with guardrails and sentiment evaluation

• Construct trust with website visitors before they’re willing to commit to a demo

Use Concierge to show every query into a chance. 

XAI & GROK

⚠️ Grok faces backlash over ‘undressing’ AI capabilities

The Rundown: xAI’s Grok is facing criticism and government motion from multiple countries after complying with users’ requests to edit images of ladies and minors in revealing fashion — a trend that has change into prevalent throughout the platform.

The main points:

• X has been flooded with users prompting Grok to digitally undress people using the model’s AI editing capabilities, with some requests involving minors.

• Musk said users making illegal content with Grok “will suffer the identical consequences as in the event that they upload illegal content.”

• France, India, Malaysia, and the UK have all condemned the outputs, with France calling them “clearly illegal” under the EU’s Digital Services Act.

• The X @Safety account posted an analogous statement as Musk, saying it’s going to work to remove, permanently suspend accounts, and work with law enforcement.

Why it matters: Grok’s less restrictive behavior has been marketed as a feature, but we’re now witnessing one among the primary viral results of giving powerful, unrestricted AI editing powers to the masses — and it’s ugly. While Musk and X talk of taking motion, anonymous accounts and a worldwide userbase make that a tall task.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• ⚙️ Claude Code – Anthropic’s deep-context agentic AI coding tool

• 🌌 Grok Imagine – xAI’s image and video generation platform

• 🎥 Kling 2.6 – Featuring Motion Control for precise character animation

• 🏷️ Shopify SimGym – Simulate buyer behavior with AI shoppers

📰 All the pieces else in AI today

Google Principal Engineer Jaana Dogan shared that Claude Code replicated in a single hour what her team spent a 12 months attempting to construct.

Elon Musk responded to a post from Midjourney founder David Holz on AI coding development, declaring that “now we have entered the Singularity”.

Prime Intellect published research on Recursive Language Models, an approach allowing AI agents to administer their memory to enable tasks spanning weeks/months.

Anthropic is purchasing as many as 1M of Google’s TPUv7 AI chips from Broadcom, with the Ironwood chip line continuing to achieve ground as an alternative choice to Nvidia.

xAI released a brand new upgrade to its Grok Imagine creative platform, with Elon Musk revealing that there will probably be “one other major upgrade” in 3 weeks.

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 Suvankar in Australia:

“I received a bread-maker for Christmas. I exploit AI to work alongside me as a diagnostic partner somewhat than simply handing my recipes, translating what I see, feel, and smell into small, controlled adjustments that steadily improve results. Each bake builds on the last. We observe dough behaviour early, interpret it through easy baking science, then change just one or two variables at a time in order that cause and effect stay clear.

This turns the machine from a black box right into a predictable tool, helps me develop repeatable house recipes, and offers me the boldness to correct a loaf instinctively.”

How do you utilize AI? Tell us here.

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

• Read our last AI newsletter: Instagram’s AI-driven identity crisis

• Read our last Tech newsletter: Neuralink’s bet to scale brain surgery

• Read our last Robotics newsletter: Robotaxis that plug into your brain

• Today’s AI tool guide: Create Claude Skill to design YouTube thumbnails

See you soon,

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