The world's first AI diplomat

PLUS: Google Chrome gets an AI shortcut

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

Ukraine just appointed a new spokesperson — and she’s unlike anything the world has ever seen.

As the first “AI diplomat”, the debut offers an early glimpse into a future where AI could play a critical role in government affairs. Let’s explore…

In today’s AI rundown:

  • Ukraine’s new AI spokesperson

  • Create infinite styles with new Midjourney

  • Google Chrome gets Gemini shortcut

  • AI model predicts drug effectiveness

  • 6 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

AI & GOVERNMENT

Image source: Ukraine Ministry of Foreign Affairs

The Rundown: Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs just introduced ‘Victoriya Shi’, an AI-generated avatar, as the department’s digital spokesperson — a first in the world of diplomacy.

The details:

  • Victoriya Shi will deliver pre-prepared official statements on behalf of the ministry — with just the visual avatar generated by AI.

  • The avatar's appearance and voice are modeled after Rosalie Nombre, a Ukrainian singer and reality TV personality.

  • To combat deepfakes, each of Victoriya's statements will include a unique QR code linking to the official text version on the ministry's website.

  • Watch the first video of Victoriya Shi here.

Why it matters: As the first “AI diplomat”, Ukraine’s avatar is an early adoption of tech that might become commonplace throughout government affairs. While only visual for now — it’s not hard to imagine a future where an AI trained on rules and foreign policy handles far more critical tasks and communication.

TOGETHER WITH WEBAI

The Rundown: Navigator enables teams to build AI-powered solutions and put them into production quickly and efficiently, regardless of ML resources.

With Navigator, you can:

  • Accelerate AI projects with models trained and tuned in minutes and hours

  • Maintain data ownership and confidentiality

  • Deploy seamlessly to local edge devices or cloud-based solutions

  • Build with full code or drag & drop for all levels of expertise

Get early access to Navigator now and bring AI projects to life faster than ever before.

GOOGLE

Image source: Google

The Rundown: Google just introduced a new Chrome shortcut that lets users initiate Gemini conversations directly from the browser's address bar, alongside a broader Gemini roll out into apps like Maps and YouTube.

The details:

  • Users will be able to type '@gemini' followed by a prompt in Chrome’s desktop address bar to get responses from the AI without navigating to a separate site.

  • The feature builds on existing shortcuts like '@bookmarks' and '@history', making AI chat as seamless as other browser functions.

  • Gemini’s Extensions feature now also connects the chatbot to Maps, YouTube, Hotels, and Workspace.

  • The features are only being rolled out to supported languages and countries.

Why it matters: Gemini just got a whole lot more accessible — with the shortcut and integrations not only boosting the chatbot’s reach, but also introducing a wave of non-AI users to the tech. Subtle but impactful changes like these are what drive serious shifts in user habits.

AI TRAINING

The Rundown: Midjourney’s new parameter feature called --sref random lets users generate images in completely random styles to help spark creativity.

Step-by-step:

  1. Visit Midjourney’s Discord. You will need a paid subscription to use this feature.

  2. Type -sref random after your prompt to grab a completely random style.

  3. To create a new image based on a previous style, grab the URL of the image, and type -sref [URL]

Example prompt: “Portrait of a woman smiling –sref https://www....”

THE RUNDOWN UNIVERSITY

The Rundown: Last month, we launched The Rundown AI University—the best place on the internet to learn how to apply AI in your work. Each week, we host live workshops like deploying AI agents, running LLMs locally, Llama 3, and more.

Join us live:

  • Tomorrow, we tackle the use cases of AI voice agents and how to create them for free.

  • The workshops are beginner-friendly and don’t require coding skills.

  • By joining, you’ll get full access to all our previous and upcoming workshops, hundreds of daily tutorials, and an exclusive community to network and learn from.

We’re offering the next 100 spots for The Rundown University at 50% off with coupon code: TRAI50

Join today and get 50% off.

AI RESEARCH

Image source: DALL-E 3

The Rundown: Ohio State University researchers just developed CURE, an AI model that can accurately estimate drug treatment effects and effectiveness without clinical trials.

The details:

  • The model is trained on de-identified health records of over 3M patients, allowing it to gain a deep understanding of patient characteristics.

  • CURE outperformed seven other leading AI models in treatment effectiveness predictions, with improvements of 7-8% on key benchmarks.

  • The AI predictions are closely aligned with clinical trial findings in tests, showcasing the potential to generate insights that streamline drug testing.

Why it matters: With the ability to crunch massive medical datasets, CURE represents a significant step towards systems that can reliably estimate real-world drug effectiveness — potentially accelerating the discovery of new treatments without the cost and long timeframes of traditional clinical trials.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

  • 📱 Claude iOS App - The powerful AI assistant by Anthropic, now on your iPhone

  • 🎵 Udio New Features - Generate AI music longer than 2 minutes and extend tracks up to 15 minutes

  •  Loom AI workflow - Turn any loom video into share-ready docs in a click

  • 🧠 Atlassian Rovo - AI Teammate for data-driven business decisions

  • 📊 Kratful - AI-driven feedback analysis for product optimization

  • 🎨 Stability Matrix - Simplify Stable Diffusion UIs and models management

  • 👩‍💻 Perplexity AI - Program Manager - Community

  • 🏙️ Metropolis - Senior Director of Sales Engineering

  • 💻 Luma AI - Senior Backend Software Engineer

  • ✍️ Cohere - Copywriter / Copy Editor (part-time, contractor)

QUICK HITS

Anthropic launched a $30/month Team plan for Claude featuring increased usage access and a 200k context window, alongside a new iOS app for mobile access to the chatbot.

CoreWeave secured $1.1B in new funding at a valuation of a whopping $19B as the company expands its specialized AI cloud infrastructure to meet global demand.

Nvidia announced new enhancements to its ChatRTX AI chatbot, including integration of Google’s Gemma model and voice query capabilities.

Axel Springer and Microsoft announced an expansion of their partnership, focusing on advertising, AI-driven user experiences, content, and Azure scalability.

Sam's Club is rolling out new AI technology across nearly 600 stores to speed up checkouts by verifying purchases without manual receipt checks.

Sanctuary AI announced a new partnership with Microsoft to advance AI development for humanoid robots utilizing Azure infrastructure.

British entertainer FKA Twigs spoke in front of the U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee on AI, revealing that she created her own digital clone to interact with fans.

THAT’S A WRAP

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