Rowan Cheung

Vancouver

Founder of the world’s most read daily AI newsletter @therundownai. Sharing the latest developments in the world of artificial intelligence.

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Articles

Midjourney makes its AI video debut with V1 model

1 week ago | therundown.ai | Zach Mink |Rowan Cheung

Read Online | Sign Up | AdvertiseGood morning, AI enthusiasts. Midjourney’s first video model is finally here, bringing images to life with the company’s signature aesthetic. With V1 serving as a stepping stone toward a vision of an open-world simulator, the long-awaited release feels less like a catch-up and more like the start of a whole new creative direction.
Solo-owned vibe coding startup's six-month, $80M speedrun

1 week ago | therundown.ai | Zach Mink |Rowan Cheung

Read Online | Sign Up | AdvertiseGood morning, AI enthusiasts. Top AI minds have predicted AI will soon enable solo unicorn businesses — and a solo-bootstrapped vibe coding platform just provided some early evidence. With Maor Shlomo’s Base44 going from zero to 250k users and an $80M acquisition in just six months, the AI-fueled entrepreneurship movement is just getting started. P.S. — Our next live workshop is today at 4 PM EST.
Tinder's new move: double dates

1 week ago | tech.therundown.ai | Jennifer Mossalgue |Rowan Cheung

Read Online | Sign Up | AdvertiseGood morning, tech enthusiasts. Tinder’s new Double Date feature lets you and your bestie swipe as a team and match with other pairs — think less solo stress, more group chemistry. As rivals like Bumble and Hinge push community-focused dating, Tinder is aiming to boost engagement and shift its ‘hookup app’ image — but will double dating become the new norm for finding love online?
AI avatars outsell humans in 6-hour livestream

1 week ago | therundown.ai | Zach Mink |Rowan Cheung

Read Online | Sign Up | AdvertiseGood morning, AI enthusiasts. The future of e-commerce just arrived in China, with an entrepreneur’s six-hour AI avatar livestream raking in millions and outperforming real human creators. With hyper-realistic AI twins now able to effectively sell products 24/7, is this streaming success a peek at a new blueprint for retail's automated future?
š MIT's SEAL framework teaches AI to upgrade itself

2 weeks ago | therundown.ai | Zach Mink |Rowan Cheung

Read Online | Sign Up | AdvertiseGood morning, AI enthusiasts. The path to superintelligence just got a bit clearer, with MIT researchers teaching AI to self-improve without human help. As models eventually learn to rewrite their own code, training data, and capabilities at scale, is this the first baby step towards the exponential intelligence explosion that experts both crave and fear?
Hollywood heavyweights sue Midjourney

2 weeks ago | therundown.ai | Zach Mink |Rowan Cheung

Read Online | Sign Up | AdvertiseGood morning, AI enthusiasts. The Mouse just lawyered up — and unlike media outlets that settled for licensing deals, Disney, Marvel, and other major Hollywood studios are choosing the courtroom over compromise. With Hollywood playing hardball on Midjourney’s reproduction of its IP in outputs and model training, the AI industry’s fair use defense may be about to get its toughest stress test yet.
OpenAI, Microsoft partnership reaches 'boiling point'

2 weeks ago | therundown.ai | Zach Mink |Rowan Cheung

Read Online | Sign Up | AdvertiseGood morning, AI enthusiasts. The AI world’s biggest partnership feels ready to explode — with a new report saying OpenAI is potentially ready to drop the “nuclear option” of antitrust complaints against Microsoft. With tensions between the two sides reportedly reaching a “boiling point,” it seems like the alliance that defined the AI boom might end with lawyers instead of AGI.
OpenAI's o3-pro release brings cheap frontier intelligence

2 weeks ago | therundown.ai | Zach Mink |Rowan Cheung

Read Online | Sign Up | AdvertiseGood morning, AI enthusiasts. OpenAI just dropped o3-pro, the company’s new top reasoning model — coming alongside a massive price cut that shows intelligence is becoming cheaper than ever, even as capabilities soar. With early testers calling the release "much smarter" and CEO Sam Altman writing that humanity has “passed the AI event horizon,” the optimism coming out of the AI leader feels higher than ever.
Meta's $15B AI power grab

2 weeks ago | tech.therundown.ai | Jennifer Mossalgue |Rowan Cheung

Read Online | Sign Up | AdvertiseGood morning, tech enthusiasts. Meta just inked a nearly $15B deal to acquire a 49% stake in Scale AI — bringing on 28-year-old CEO Alexandr Wang to lead its AI reboot after the underwhelming Llama 4 launch. As OpenAI and Google pull ahead, Meta’s bold move raises the stakes — but could this power play turn Scale from a trusted industry supplier into just another Meta satellite?
OpenAI's big privacy problem

2 weeks ago | therundown.ai | Zach Mink |Rowan Cheung

Read Online | Sign Up | AdvertiseGood morning, AI enthusiasts. OpenAI’s NYT copyright battle just turned into a privacy nightmare — with a court order forcing the AI leader to retain millions of private (and even deleted) user conversations. With CEO Sam Altman proposing “AI privilege” and the tech moving towards deeper digital relationships with always-listening devices, this legal fight may set the stage for a new era of digital rights.