Good morning, {{ first_name | AI enthusiasts }}. AI music generators have already been producing tracks good enough to fool casual listeners — but you had to know where to find them.
But with Google’s integration of its new Lyria 3 model directly into Gemini, AI music creation just became accessible to one of the largest consumer AI audiences on earth.
P.S. We love to see all the different ways our readers are using AI. Share your own AI use case for a chance to appear in the Community AI Workflows section below!
In today’s AI rundown:
Google brings AI music creation into Gemini
OpenAI poaches Instagram's Hollywood dealmaker
Turn product photos into scroll-stopping videos
Tavus’ new AI avatars actually read the room
4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
Image source: Google
The Rundown: Google just rolled out Lyria 3 in Gemini, the company’s new AI music generation model — letting users turn a text prompt or photo into customized, 30-second tracks with auto-generated lyrics and cover art.
The details:
The model handles everything from genre and tempo to vocal style and lyrics on its own, with users able to feed text, photos, or videos as a starting point.
DeepMind has been working on Lyria since 2023, but this marks the first time the tech is reaching the main consumer audience through the Gemini app.
Every track gets tagged with Google's SynthID watermark, with Gemini also allowing users to upload any audio file to check whether it was created with AI.
YouTube creators are also getting access to Lyria 3 through Dream Track for Shorts, enabling easily customized audio tracks to accompany video posts.
Why it matters: AI music platforms like Suno and Udio have quietly gotten scary good, producing full tracks that can fool most listeners — but are still far from ‘mainstream’. Embedding Lyria inside Gemini is a different beast, putting AI music creation a prompt away for millions of users who've likely never even heard of a dedicated music model.
TOGETHER WITH VISA
The Rundown: The groundbreaking framework that enables AI agents to find and buy. Together with AI industry leaders, Visa Intelligent Commerce provides the tools and safeguards for secure agentic payments.
Visa Intelligent Commerce APIs Offer:
Tokenized credentials for enhanced payment security
Spend controls and secure user authentication
Controlled GenAI-assisted shopping on your terms
OPENAI
Image source: Lovart / The Rundown
The Rundown: OpenAI hired Meta's longtime celebrity partnerships chief Charles Porch as its VP of global creative partnerships, according to Vanity Fair — a new role aimed at bridging the gap between the AI giant and a distrusting entertainment industry.
The details:
Porch spent 15+ years as the go-to exec for getting A-listers onto IG, handling viral moments like Beyonce’s 2013 album drop and onboarding the Pope.
The hire follows OAI's $1B Disney deal in December, which opened its Sora video platform up to animated characters from Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars.
Porch says his first move will be a "listening tour" across creative communities this spring, reporting to OAI's applications CEO Fidji Simo.
Why it matters: While we’ve seen celebs move into platforms like ElevenLabs, the broader Hollywood sentiment towards AI has been frigid at best. Porch's deep rolodex and reputation as a translator between tech and talent make him the kind of person who can help gain trust in rooms with names that could shift sentiment for the industry.
AI TRAINING
The Rundown: In this guide, you'll learn how to turn a product photo into a cinematic clip ready for social media using Runway's video generation tool. This method excels at creating consistent clips that are ready for ad campaigns and product announcements.
Step-by-step:
Grab a product photo first — Runway will use it for the start frame. Don’t have a product? Use a software mockup or ask Gemini to generate one for the brand
Drop the photo into any AI, prompting: "Write me a brief video prompt to use in Runway to generate a social media video based on this product photo. Add animations and/or camera movement if applicable"
Next, go to Runway > Tool > Video and add your starting frame and the AI-generated prompt
Rinse and repeat for the rest of your product photos. Try different combinations of text overlay and music when you post them to socials
Pro tip: This is also a great way to enhance your existing ad sets — try adding them to your in Google or Meta campaigns.
PRESENTED BY VANTA
The Rundown: Risk and regulations are ramping up, and customers now expect proof of security just to do business. Vanta brings compliance, risk, and customer trust together on one AI-powered platform — so you stay secure and keep deals moving.
With Vanta, you can:
Automate up to 90% of the work for SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and more
Streamline security reviews with AI-powered questionnaires
Spend 82% less time on audits, like companies including Ramp and Writer
Watch the on-demand demo to see how Vanta works.
AI RESEARCH
Image source: Tavus
The Rundown: Tavus just introduced Phoenix-4, a real-time human rendering model that can generate AI avatars that have full facial expressions, shift between emotions mid-conversation, and actively listen with contextual reactions.
The details:
Phoenix-4 generates every pixel of the face and head from scratch each frame, trained on thousands of hours of real human conversation.
The model handles 10+ emotional states and transitions between them in real time, avoiding awkward mismatched reactions or expressions during convos.
Tavus is pitching the tech for healthcare, education, and sales use cases where feeling "heard" by the person on screen can directly impact outcomes.
Phoenix-4 also runs at HD quality and at 40 FPS for live video call smoothness, making interactions feel more real than older model generations.
Why it matters: AI text interactions are becoming more human than ever, and video avatars are now catching up to the pace — leaving the hollow ‘uncanny valley’ of robotic emotion for a conversation partner that feels like it’s actually listening. The positive applications are endless… But so are the coming opportunities for deception.
QUICK HITS
🗣️ Unwrap Customer Intelligence - Turn unstructured customer feedback into data-backed insights that inform your product roadmap*
🎶 Lyria 3 - Google’s new AI music generation model in Gemini
🗣️ Phoenix-4 - Tauvus’ real-time human avatar AI with emotional intelligence
⚡️ Grok 4.20 - xAI’s upgraded AI model with new agentic capabilities
*Sponsored Listing
Ex-DeepMind researcher David Silver is reportedly raising $1B at a $4B valuation for his London-based AI startup Ineffable Intelligence, in Europe’s largest ever seed round.
‘AI godmother’ Fei-Fei Lei’s World Labs announced a $1B round, including $200M from Autodesk, with plans to bring its world models into 3D and entertainment work.
Perplexity is reportedly pulling ads from its platform entirely, with execs saying sponsored content undermines trust in AI-generated answers.
OpenAI acqui-hired enterprise AI search startup Nerve, with the team joining to help build ChatGPT's search capabilities at a larger scale.
The trailer for ‘The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist’ is going viral ahead of its debut, featuring sit-downs with AI leaders like Sam Altman, Dario Amodei.
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 Pradeep A. in Washington, DC:
"My garage door wasn’t closing. I asked Claude…and it asked me to look at the sensor lights. Upon checking, I discovered there was no light in one of the sensors.
It asked me a couple of questions about the make of the motor, and then gave me the part number for the sensor light. I got the part from Amazon and installed it myself without even having to call a mechanic."
How do you use AI? Tell us here.
Read our last AI newsletter: Anthropic’s mid-tier model punches up
Read our last Tech newsletter: Apple’s ‘2026 product blitz’
Read our last Robotics newsletter: Apptronik’s $935M humanoid moment
Today’s AI tool guide: Turn product photos into scroll-stopping videos
RSVP to our next workshop on Feb. 25: Agentic Workflows Bootcamp pt. 3
That's it for today!
See you soon,
Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown
