Digest #517 → Subscribe³ | Upgrade to Pro³⁷

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TLDR; inside today’s newsletter

• OpenAI’s 3/12 days and what others (Google, xAI, Meta) have been up to.

• ICYMI: new tutorials and blogs we launched

• 8 new AI tools including Reddit Answers and Microsoft's Copilot Vision

• Why should you care about: OpenAI’s Sora launch

• 6 interesting posts from around the web (plus Trump's new AI Czar!)

• to-do’s

Alright, let’s get to it!

 🔎 Trends & news

• OpenAI's "12 Days” launch spree is 25% done and they're not playing around:

  • Day 1 delivered the full o1 model plus a new $200/month Pro tier¹⁰⁴. ChatGPT Pro gives you unlimited access to everything OpenAI is cooking up. Also, o1 can now see images too (but it can’t read files yet). In the Pro mode, o1 can think much longer—the more it thinks, the better the answers are.

  • On day 2, OpenAI added a new way of fine-tuning called RFT (Reinforcement Fine-Tuning¹²⁸). They want to help experts make custom AI models without dealing with GPUs (trust me it’s a nightmare). RFT is still in alpha though, full launch in 2025.

  • Day 3 brought Sora¹⁶⁹, their text-to-video model product. Finally launching after that viral Feb demo, but with a twist - it's way faster now and bundled right into ChatGPT Plus/Pro. Separate product but no extra subscription dance. (more on Sora below and here³¹⁴).

  The $200/mo Pro tier is not for everyone but with all that's getting packed into it, it's still cheap—and we have 9 more days to go. I’m still updating our live blog¹¹⁴ every day with a quick recap of what OpenAI launches, see you there.

• Also, it was Gemini’s 1st anniversary on Friday and Google shipped another experimental model¹⁹⁰ in Google AI studio. Gemini-exp-1206 is blowing the competition out of the water on lmarena²³² and I’ve never seen Twitter so quacky about Gemini (in a good way). It’s also giving the full o1 a run for its money.

• xAI now has its own image generation model¹⁰¹, code-named Aurora. It now replaces Flux for generating images on Twitter’s Grok tab. Also, free Twitter users⁵⁸ now have limited access to Grok.

• Looking for funding for your startup?¹⁴⁷ Forum Ventures invests in early-stage B2B SaaS companies and is making their final investments in 2024. Get a $100k plus highly personalized GTM, sales and fundraising support through their world class accelerator. Don’t wait – pitch them today!¹⁴⁷*

• Meta released Llama 3.3 70B⁴⁰⁹ - with comparable performance to Meta’s Llama 3.1 405B (and old GPT-4o). Zuck says the next stop is Llama 4 in 2025.
  *sponsored

👀 ICYMI: New stuff we’ve launched

• Tutorial: Review marketing emails¹²⁵ and synthesize learnings (inspired by Ben’s Bites community request).

• Blog: 4 ways AI can improve your customer onboarding and retention¹¹⁷.

⚙️ Top new tools

• Spotter Studio²³⁰:²³⁰ AI-powered partner, personalized to your YouTube channel, generating high-performing video ideas, titles, and thumbnails.*

• Copilot Vision by Microsoft²²⁸ - Let AI see what you browse and help you along the way.

• Reddit Answers²⁹⁶ - Ask questions and receive answers from Reddit’s hivemind. (official blog post¹²⁸)

• Tables by Playmaker^256† - Transform unstructured data into actionable data, instantly.

• Pointer²⁴¹ - AI editing co-pilot for Google Docs.

• Athina²⁰⁵ - Build, test and monitor AI apps and agents.

• Reforged Labs⁹⁴ - Effortless AI ads for mobile game studios.

• Chrome on Android just got a listen to this article feature + more AI for Android⁸⁶ updates.

More tools here →⁹⁴
*sponsored

🗣️ Everyone's talking about...OpenAI's Sora launch

OpenAI has finally released Sora¹⁶⁹, their text-to-video model, as a full-blown product. It's part of their "12 Days of OpenAI" announcement series and comes months after it went viral in February.

What's going on here?

Sora is now available to ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers on sora.com¹⁸⁸ (I’ve already burnt half my credits)

What does this mean?

You get a clean interface to turn text into videos, plus some neat editing features to extend clips or string multiple scenes together to storyboard. It’s clear that Sora is built as a product for video makers. For the cost, Plus users ($20/month) can make 50 videos, and Pro users ($200/month) get 500 fast videos and unlimited slow access.

But Sora might be late to its own party—other AI video tools have been crushing it while OpenAI was still building behind the curtain.

The good news? Videos generate way faster now than at launch - we're talking minutes instead of hours. It's likely the best at generating consistent characters in longer videos. The not-so-good? Some basic stuff like turning images into videos isn't great yet.

Why should you care?

If you're making marketing videos or need quick content for social media, Sora could be worth the $200/month - that's cheaper than many video subscriptions or hiring someone to shoot footage. But don't expect it to replace your video team just yet.

Right now, they've hit pause on new sign-ups because everyone's trying to get in. For EU folks, the wait is even longer because OpenAI is not offering Sora in most of Europe as of now. In the meantime, check out our full post³¹⁴ if you want to see what exactly you get with Sora (with some of our own generations).

 📜 Interesting posts

• What can generative AI actually do well?^454†

• Extendable Articles¹⁴⁷ - Ask AI to get behind the scenes of an essay.

• New types of UI⁴⁰⁹ that generative AI has necessitated.

• Top 50 AI platforms for marketing²³⁰ and their areas of use.

• How to read a book⁴⁸¹ using o1.

• Trump appoints David Sacks as the AI and Crypto Czar.¹²¹

• And in other side quests, Google made a new quantum chip⁸¹. Maybe nothing, maybe something ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

📌 To-dos

1. Let us know^28† if you have any tutorials or courses you want us to create—we’re always open to ideas.

2. What do you want to know about OpenAI’s new launches? Hit reply, and send us your questions. Don’t be shy. We’ll try to answer them in another dedicated blog.

That wraps things up for today! See you again on Thursday. 👋

Ben

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