Good morning, {{ first_name | AI enthusiasts }}. China's AI labs are on a tear in the video space — and ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 might be the most impressive entry yet.
With viral examples coming out of its beta across a range of styles and use cases that look stronger than anything available, the TikTok parent is making a serious case that the next creative leap in AI video is coming from the East.
In today’s AI rundown:
ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 stuns the AI video world
OpenAI officially starts showing ads in ChatGPT
Build an AI-powered sales objection handler
Waymo taps Genie 3 to train self-driving cars
4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
BYTEDANCE
Image source: RioAIGC on Douyin
The Rundown: Chinese AI giant ByteDance is going viral across social media with Seedance 2.0, a new model in beta with upgraded cinematic shots, consistency, and synced audio that looks to surpass current top available systems.
The details:
The model can reportedly handle text, image, audio, and video inputs, with tests showing impressive outputs across a range of styles and use cases.
The system also features native audio generation, 2K resolution, and 15s outputs, currently only available via ByteDance’s Jimeng AI video platform.
ByteDance also appears to have released Seedream 5.0 image model in preview on some third-party apps — marking its answer to Nano Banana Pro.
The model comes just days after the launch of rival Kuaishou’s Kling 3.0, with Chinese models seemingly moving near the frontier of the video sector.
Why it matters: China’s top labs are putting out some seriously powerful new video models, and Seedance 2.0 looks next in line for the next leap. With strong examples like smooth fight scenes, animation, UGC content, and motion graphics, Seedance 2.0 may have Veo-like implications for a much broader range of creative disruption.
TOGETHER WITH MONGODB
The Rundown: MongoDB is closing the gap between AI prototype and production — helping teams keep conversational context clean, retrieve the right information from thousands of interactions, and connect AI agents to their data without custom plumbing.
With MongoDB's platform, you get:
Faster prototype-to-production for AI apps
Voyage AI frontier embedding + reranking models
One platform for vectors and operational data
OPENAI
Image source: OpenAI
The Rundown: OpenAI just officially started testing ads in ChatGPT for U.S. users on its free and $8/month Go tiers, a move the company has been circling for months and that Anthropic used as ammo for its Super Bowl ad campaign this past weekend.
The details:
Ads appear below chat responses and are targeted based on the active conversation, chat history, memory, and prior ad engagement.
OAI emphasized that the ad content will not impact ChatGPT’s answers, “protecting the trust (users) place in it for important and personal tasks”.
Free-tier users can opt out of advertising entirely, but doing so cuts their daily message allowance — acting as a funnel towards paid plans.
The pilot has a reported minimum price tag of $200K for advertisers, with major marketing firms like Omnicom already locking in spots for their clients.
Why it matters: We’ve frequently said ads within AI feels like a slippery slope, but OAI is ripping the band-aid as the first test case for the industry. While the execution seems fine, encroaching sponsors could change the dynamic of how many experience ChatGPT — still, the tradeoff for free access to advanced intelligence is hard to argue.
AI TRAINING
The Rundown: In this guide, you will learn how to actually build something useful with those sales call transcripts you are accumulating. This is a simple, weekly process that turns your weekly call transcripts into a handy, quick reference document.
Step-by-step:
Create a ChatGPT Project named "Sales Objections". Upload a text file listing your product lines, pricing, and core offers so the AI understands what you sell.
Go to Instructions in project settings and paste: "Read the attached transcripts. Create a weekly report template. For every objection: Number the objection, State the objection clearly, Provide 3 descriptive bullets on the context, List which lead or prospect surfaced it, Provide two short, punchy rebuttals.”
Each week, upload call transcripts into your project. Make sure they have the date and name of the client. Open a new thread, and tell it to create the report.
Open a blank Notion page. Create a “Toggle Heading” for the week (e.g., "Week of Feb 9"). Copy the ChatGPT output and paste it inside the toggle.
Pro tip: Connect Notion inside ChatGPT (Settings → Connected Apps) so ChatGPT can see your current page and reference past weeks.
PRESENTED BY TELY AI
The Rundown: You’re in a niche industry. Customers search on Google, ChatGPT, and Perplexity, but your company doesn’t show up because your website doesn’t answer their questions. Tely AI analyzes the questions your customers ask and automatically creates and publishes content that answers them on your website, bringing high-quality leads on autopilot.
With Tely AI, you can:
Have +20% monthly organic growth
Get indexed on Google, ChatGPT, and Perplexity in as little as 1 week
Enjoy full automation for topics, writing, and publishing
Get discovered by buyers already searching for your solution
SELF-DRIVING CARS & AI
Image source: Waymo
The Rundown: Waymo just introduced the Waymo World Model, a driving simulator built on DeepMind's Genie 3 that generates hyper-realistic scenarios the company's fleet of self-driving cars has never encountered to help it deal with extreme edge cases.
The details:
The model takes Genie 3's visual knowledge and converts it into paired camera and lidar outputs, helping dream up scenarios its cars have never actually seen.
Engineers can reshape scenes with text prompts, driving inputs, or layout edits (like changing weather or adding obstacles) to test "what if" responses.
Waymo found a workaround for Genie 3's short memory by running footage at 4x speed, stretching simulations long enough to cover longer driving tasks.
Why it matters: Google's Street View data gave Waymo a head start in mapping the real world for its cars, but world models can now generate the extreme edge cases that no amount of road miles can produce. Waymo’s use of Genie is a prime example of one of the top use cases for world models — simulations for robotics training data.
QUICK HITS
💻 Codex App - OpenAI’s Mac app interface for managing agents
🚀 Composer 1.5 - Cursor’s updated in-house agentic coding model
🎧 Audiobooks - ElevenLab’s AI-powered narration suite for audiobooks
⚙️ Context Engine MCP - Augment Code’s semantic search in coding agents
Teleport announced an open-source blueprint for securing agentic AI. Join the Feb 19 webinar to learn why identity is the foundation for scaling agents.*
Sam Altman reportedly told employees that ChatGPT is surpassing 10% monthly growth, Codex weekly usage is up 50%, and a new updated model is coming this week.
Anthropic is set to raise a new funding round of $20B+ next week, according to a new report from Bloomberg — pushing the company’s valuation to $350B.
ElevenLabs launched Audiobooks, a full production suite powered by AI-generated narration for authors to streamline audiobook creation and distribution.
Anthropic is eyeing at least 10GW of data center capacity in the coming years, hiring Google and Stack Infrastructure execs to lead the push into leasing its own facilities.
*Sponsored Listing
COMMUNITY
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 Clay D. in Carson City, NV:
"After serving in combat in Iraq, I was initially rated at 50% disabled by the VA. I knew that rating did not fully reflect the severity of my conditions...
I provided ChatGPT with my medical records, original claim, and publicly available VA Board of Veterans’ Appeals decisions from other similar cases. I instructed it to identify approval and denial patterns, apply relevant claim law, and rewrite my claim to avoid errors. The result was a stronger submission that led to a 100% VA disability rating..."
How do you use AI? Tell us here.
Read our last AI newsletter: AI ads steal the show at Super Bowl LX
Read our last Tech newsletter: Paris raid raises stakes for X
Read our last Robotics newsletter: Uber to launch robotaxis in 15 cities
Today’s AI tool guide: Build an AI-powered sales objection handler
RSVP to our next workshop on Feb. 11: Agentic Workflows Bootcamp pt. 1
That's it for today!
See you soon,
Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown
