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Good morning, {{ first_name | AI enthusiasts }}. The past year of AI video acceleration has brought hyper-realism, smooth motion, and perfect lip-syncs — all trapped in frustrating 5-second bursts.
But an open-weight model just shifted the conversation from fragmented edits to real-time directing of 60-second generations — with LTXV’s update handing creators the keys to a brand-new style of AI video production.
In today’s AI rundown:
LTXV unlocks 60-second AI videos
New ChatGPT agents for Excel, PowerPoint
Research market conditions and create financial dashboards
Self-driving AI lab discovers materials 10x faster
4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
LIGHTRICKS
🎥 LTXV unlocks 60-second AI videos
Image source: Lightricks
The Rundown: Lightricks just released an update to its open-weights LTXV model, now allowing for image-to-video generations over 60 seconds long — streamed in real time, with live prompt control and efficient performance on consumer GPUs.
The details:
The model streams video live as it generates, returning the first second instantly while building scenes continuously without cuts.
Users can apply control inputs throughout generation, adjusting poses, depth, and style mid-stream for dynamic scene evolution.
LTXV is trained on fully licensed data, with direct integration with LTX Studio’s production suite and the ability to run efficiently on consumer devices.
The open-source model has both 13B and mobile-friendly 2B parameter versions, available free on GitHub and Hugging Face.
Why it matters: With most video models topping out at just a few seconds of output, LTXV’s real-time, 60-second outputs change what’s possible with current AI video content. The shift from waiting minutes for short clips to directing longer scenes as they generate will open up entirely new creative workflows.
TOGETHER WITH ARTISAN
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The Rundown: Struggling to identify local business decision makers? Our AI BDR, Ava, taps into a database of 200M+ local Google businesses and does fully autonomous outreach, so you can focus on closing deals, not chasing leads.
Ava operates within Artisan, which consolidates every tool you need for outbound:
300M+ high-quality B2B prospects
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Multi-channel outreach with full email deliverability management
Live intent signal scraping, website visitor ID, fundraise announcements & more
OPENAI
📊 New ChatGPT agents for Excel, PowerPoint
Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown
The Rundown: OpenAI is reportedly developing ChatGPT agents that can create and edit spreadsheets or presentations directly in chat and bypass the need for suites like Microsoft Office and Google Workspace, according to a report from The Information.
The details:
ChatGPT will feature dedicated buttons below the search bar to generate spreadsheets and presentations using natural language prompts.
The outputted reports will be directly compatible with Microsoft’s open-source formats, allowing users to open them across common applications.
An early tester reported “slow and buggy” performance from the ChatGPT agents, with a single task taking up to half an hour.
OpenAI reportedly also has a collaboration tool allowing multiple users to work together within ChatGPT, but there is no information on its release yet.
Why it matters: The ability to create sheets and presentations in ChatGPT, away from Microsoft’s Office empire, feels like a personal shot — but OpenAI “steamrolling” some of the most-used business apps isn’t a surprising move. Still, “slow and buggy” won’t cut it if it truly wants to displace Microsoft and Google’s widely adopted products.
AI TRAINING
📊 Research market conditions and create financial dashboards
The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Grok 4's advanced research and canvas to conduct comprehensive market analysis and build dynamic financial forecasting models.
Step-by-step:
Access Grok and choose Grok 4 in the model dropdown menu
Request comprehensive market research for [INDUSTRY] financial forecasting by analyzing current economic conditions.
Ask for scenario planning: “Create three financial scenarios: best case, most likely, and worst case for the next 18 months.”
Create visualizations using its Canvas by asking it to code a visual financial dashboard with revenue projections and key economic indicators.
Pro tip: Grok 4's real-time access keeps your forecasts current as market conditions evolve.
PRESENTED BY SLACK FROM SALESFORCE
🔎 Find everything with enterprise search in Slack
The Rundown: Slack just introduced enterprise search, turning a single search bar into your company’s knowledge engine to pull answers across your data and from third-party apps without a single context switch.
In this 20-minute webinar, you’ll learn:
How Slack unifies structured and unstructured data by connecting to apps like Salesforce, Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, and more
Best practices for structuring questions to get the best results from enterprise search
How enterprise search with Agentforce equips employees to ramp faster & work smarter
AI RESEARCH
🧪 Self-driving AI lab discovers materials 10x faster
Image source: North Carolina State University
The Rundown: North Carolina State University researchers developed an AI-powered, self-driving lab that continuously streams chemical experiments, collecting 10 times more data than traditional systems and speeding up the search for new materials.
The details:
The new system uses dynamic, real-time experiments instead of waiting for each chemical reaction to finish, keeping the lab running continuously.
By capturing data every half-second, the lab’s machine-learning algorithms quickly pinpoint the most promising material candidates.
The approach also significantly cuts down on the amount of chemicals needed and slashes waste, making research more sustainable.
Researchers said the results are a step closer to material discovery for “clean energy, new electronics, or sustainable chemicals in days instead of years”.
Why it matters: Many of the scientific breakthroughs coming in the AI boom have been medical-related, and materials science underpins many of the fields set to drive these world-changing innovations. Just like we’ve seen across other domains, the theme remains the same — AI taking complex research from years to days.
QUICK HITS
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⏺️ Record Mode - Capture & summarize meetings & voice notes with ChatGPT
☎️ AI Mode - Use Google’s AI agents to make calls on your behalf
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📰 Everything else in AI today
Meta reportedly poached Jason Wei and Hyung Won Chung from OpenAI, with the two researchers previously contributing to both the o1 model and Deep Research.
Anthropic is gaining Claude Code developers Cat Wu and Boris Cherny back, with the duo returning after joining Cursor-maker Anysphere earlier this month.
Microsoft is rolling out Desktop Share for Copilot Vision to Windows Insiders, allowing the app to view and analyze content directly on users’ desktops in real-time.
Scale AI is laying off 14% of its staff in a restructuring following the departure of CEO Alexandr Wang and other employees as part of a multibillion-dollar investment by Meta.
OpenAI is reportedly creating a checkout system within ChatGPT for users to complete purchases, with the company receiving a commission from sales.
Anthropic is receiving interest from investors for a new funding round at a valuation of over $100B, according to a report from The Information.
AWS unveiled Bedrock AgentCore in preview, a new enterprise platform of tools and services for deploying AI agents at scale.
COMMUNITY
🎥 Join our next live workshop
Join our next workshop this Friday, July 18th, at 4 PM EST with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the end of the workshop, you'll be able to use Perplexity Comet (and other alternatives) to automate your browsing experience.
RSVP here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.
See you soon,
Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team
