New AI model tops tool charts

PLUS: 'Electric tongue' gives AI the ability to taste

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

The AI race just got a new dark horse contender, and they are somehow competing with the top dogs at a fraction of the size and cost.

Writer's new model is topping leaderboards and turning heads, and with new expert tool capabilities, AI agents have just taken another big step forward. Let's get into it…

In today’s AI rundown:

  • New model tops tool-calling leaderboard

  • Zoom launches new AI platform features

  • Add Claude Artifacts to your Cursor projects

  • Electronic tongue enables AI to taste

  • 6 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

WRITER

Image source: Writer

The Rundown: AI startup Writer just introduced Palmyra X 004, an LLM that sets a new standard for action capabilities and function calling in enterprise AI — beating out top models from OpenAI and Anthropic.

The details:

  • Palmyra X 004 outperforms OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Google models on Berkeley's Tool Calling Leaderboard, leading by nearly 20% accuracy.

  • The model offers a 128k context window, supports over 30 languages, and handles multimodal inputs (text, images, audio).

  • Palmyra can interact with external tools via tool calling, enabling it to perform tasks like updating databases, sending emails, triggering workflows, and more.

  • The 150B parameter model was trained on synthetic data, which the company said significantly reduced costs compared to the top AI labs.

Why it matters: As companies race to integrate AI, models that can take concrete actions rather than just provide information are in high demand. Palmyra X 004's impressive skills could give Writer a new edge in the enterprise AI market and also serve as an example that not all top models require massive computing resources.

TOGETHER WITH PILLAR SECURITY

The Rundown: Pillar Security's new free report offers exclusive insights into real-world AI vulnerabilities, analyzing over 2,000 LLM apps to help you stay ahead of potential threats.

Inside you’ll find:

  • Key attack patterns disrupting GenAI applications

  • Adversaries' objectives and motivations

  • Real-world attacks, including jailbreak methods and outcomes

  • Technical insights and forecasts for 2025

Download the full report for free and protect your AI infrastructure today.

ZOOM

Image source: Zoom

The Rundown: Zoom just unveiled a suite of new AI-driven innovations to its platform at its Zoomtopia 2024 event, including AI companion 2.0, a custom AI add-on plan, personalized avatars, and more.

The details:

  • Companion 2.0 is an AI assistant that works across Zoom Workplace, offering expanded context, web access, and the ability to take agentic-type actions.

  • Zoom Tasks is a new AI-powered feature to help detect, recommend, and complete tasks based on conversations across Zoom Workplace.

  • Custom AI avatars will become available in Zoom Clips in 2025, with the ability to create video content from text scripts.

  • Zoom founder Eric Yuan previously said that AI avatars will eventually be capable of attending Zoom meetings and making decisions on a user’s behalf.

Why it matters: Zoom says it wants to overhaul work in the digital age, and these announcements point to a new AI-driven world of interconnected tools and workflows. While avatars attending meetings and acting on your behalf might sound wild now, the work landscape is about to be turned upside down as AI continues to grow and scale.

AI TRAINING

The Rundown: With this AI tool trick, developers can incorporate Claude-generated Artifacts into Cursor projects to significantly speed up development workflows.

Step-by-step:

  1. Generate your desired component or code snippet using Claude AI.

  2. Set up a new Next.js project in Cursor using “npx create-next-app@latest”.

  3. Use Composer (Cmd+I or Ctrl+I) to incorporate the Claude artifact. Type “@codebase” for context.

  4. Review changes and use AI chat (Cmd+L or Ctrl+L) to fix any issues.

  5. Test your integration with “npm run dev.”

Pro tip: Use Cursor's AI capabilities to resolve integration issues quickly. Simply highlight problematic code and ask the AI for a fix!

PRESENTED BY GALILEO

The Rundown: Galileo’s GenAI Productionize 2.0 is a free virtual summit that brings together industry pioneers to explore how to effectively implement generative AI at enterprise scale.

At the conference, you'll:

  • Discover actionable strategies for productionizing GenAI

  • Hear from AI experts at leading global brands, research labs, and startups

  • Understand best practices for AI governance and compliance

  • Dive into techniques for AI evaluation and real-time observability

Register now for free and secure your spot for October 29th! 

AI RESEARCH

Image source: Midjourney

The Rundown: Scientists at Penn State just created an AI-powered 'electronic tongue' that can identify subtle differences in liquids, detect food spoilage, and gain broader insights into AI’s decision-making processes.

The details:

  • The electronic tongue combines a special sensor with an AI modeled after the human brain's taste center, enabling it to ‘taste’ liquids.

  • The tongue can ID differences in similar liquids like watered-down milk, sodas, coffee, and spoiled fruit juices with over 80% accuracy in about a minute.

  • When the AI was allowed to interpret the sensor data on its own terms, it achieved over 95% accuracy in identifying the samples.

  • Researchers also used methods to examine the AI's thought process, helping understand how it weighs different pieces of information to make decisions.

Why it matters: AI achieved some serious sensory upgrades this year, from vision and hearing capabilities to humanoid robotic touch — and now, add taste to the list. This research has major applications for food safety and quality control and could shed light on the inner workings of AI decision-making in a brand new way.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

  • ⚙️ OpenAI Gradio - A Python package making it easy for developers to create apps powered by OpenAI’s API

  • 😇 Godmode - AI agents to understand and contact customers

  • 🧠 Miro Innovation Workspace - AI-powered collaboration platform to help teams move faster from idea to outcome

  • 📢 Adsby 2.0 - Quick, actionable insights on Google Ads using AI

  • 🗣️ Wispr Flow - Write 3x faster using your voice

  • 🤳 Cooraft - Turn a selfie into professional portrait videos

QUICK HITS

1 Hour to AI Proficiency. Join Section’s free workshop focused on getting you AI confident and prompting proficient over your lunch break. Register.*

Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis and John Jumper were co-awarded a Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work on AlphaFold, an AI system that can predict and design protein structures.

Amazon introduced AI Shopping Guides for over 100 product types, leveraging generative AI to streamline product research and offer tailored recommendations within its U.S. app and mobile website.

Chinese startup MiniMax’s Hailuo AI launched a new image-to-video feature, alongside new style controls and enhanced processing and control.

Meta expanded Meta AI to six new countries, including the EU, and is rolling it out internationally in Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses — though the EU will be excluded from multimodal capabilities due to regulatory issues.

Stripe announced expanding its partnership with NVIDIA, enabling global access to NVIDIA’s AI cloud services and leveraging the chipmaker’s platform for improved fraud detection.

*Sponsored listing

THAT’S A WRAP

That's it for today!

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Rowan, Joey, Zach, and Alvaro—aka The Rundown Team

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