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- OpenAI's o1 goes pro
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Welcome, AI enthusiasts.
OpenAI just dropped day one of its holiday surprise series – delivering a big start with a souped-up o1 model alongside an elite (but pricey) Pro tier.
Will more powerful reasoning and unlimited access justify a hefty $200/m price tag? Let’s get into it…
In today’s AI rundown:
OpenAI launches full o1, new Pro mode
Microsoft launches Copilot Vision feature
Transform any lecture into a comprehensive study guide
Clone debuts realistic humanoid with synthetic organs
5 new AI tools & 5 new AI jobs
More AI & tech news
Read time: 4 minutes
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
OPENAI
Image source: OpenAI
The Rundown: OpenAI just released its o1 model out of preview during the first day of its ‘12 days of OpenAI’ event, alongside a new $200/m ChatGPT Pro subscription tier that includes enhanced access to the reasoning model’s most powerful features.
The details:
The full o1 now handles image analysis and produces faster, more accurate responses than preview, with 34% fewer errors on complex queries.
OpenAI’s new $200/m Pro plan includes unlimited access to o1, GPT-4o, Advanced Voice, and future compute-intensive features.
Pro subscribers also get exclusive access to 'o1 pro mode,' which features a 128k context window and stronger reasoning on difficult problems.
OpenAI’s livestream showcased o1 pro, tackling complicated thermodynamics and chemistry problems after minutes of thinking.
The full o1 strangely appears to perform worse than the preview version on several benchmarks, though both vastly surpassed the 4o model.
o1 is now available to Plus and Team users immediately, with Enterprise and Education access rolling out next week.
Why it matters: OpenAI is coming out hot with its first reveal of the holiday event — with the long-awaited full o1 and Pro mode providing a nice starting point to get the hype flowing. While the new $200 tier is a steep climb from previous plans and rivals, power users will likely be more than happy to scale up for more intensive tasks.
TOGETHER WITH NORTHERN DATA GROUP
The Rundown: Northern Data Group’s Taiga Cloud now offers instant access to NVIDIA’s H200 Tensor Core GPUs — delivering enhanced performance for LLMs, big data, scientific research and more.
With the H200 GPU, you'll experience:
Up to 2x better LLM inference performance
110x faster time to results, speeding up projects
50x reduction in energy use and TCO, optimizing costs and sustainability
Nearly double the memory capacity compared to the H100
Pre-register today to access next-level AI compute hardware for your business.
MICROSOFT
Image source: Microsoft
The Rundown: Microsoft just launched its Copilot Vision feature, which allows its assistant to see and interact with web pages a user is browsing in Edge in real-time — now available in preview to a limited number of its Pro user base.
The details:
Vision integrates directly into Edge's browser interface, allowing Copilot to analyze text and images on approved websites when enabled by users.
The feature can assist with tasks like shopping comparisons, recipe interpretation, and game strategy while browsing supported sites.
Microsoft previously revealed the feature in October alongside other Copilot upgrades, including voice and reasoning capabilities.
Microsoft emphasized privacy with Vision, making it opt-in only — along with automatic deletion of voice and context data after the end of a session.
Why it matters: This was one of the most insane products we’ve tried all year. The addition of real-time context and the ability for AI to ‘see‘ everything in your browser makes for a wild new form of AI that we’re likely to start seeing a lot more of in 2025.
In case you missed it, Rowan (founder of The Rundown) sat down with Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman to discuss how Copilot Vision works, infinite memory, AI companions, agents, and more.
AI TRAINING
The Rundown: Gemini’s Video Input feature allows you to convert your lecture recordings into detailed study materials with structured notes, key insights, and practice questions.
Step-by-step:
Access Google AI Studio, select Gemini 1.5 Pro, and upload your lecture recording.
Generate structured notes with main topics and key concepts.
Create practice questions and real-world applications.
Build a complete review system for effective studying.
Pro tip: Combine AI-generated study guides with class participation notes for the ultimate exam prep strategy.
We also wrote detailed prompts for premium Rundown University members that you can copy and paste from here.
PRESENTED BY VANTA
The Rundown: Vanta’s trust management platform helps AI companies become ISO 42001 compliant — so you can build customer trust, secure more business, and differentiate from competitors.
Read Vanta's ISO 42001 compliance checklist to:
Understand the requirements for certification
Set expectations for your compliance journey
Streamline the process with Vanta's automated solutions
Download the checklist and take the first step toward AI compliance.
CLONE ROBOTICS
Image source: Clone Robotics
The Rundown: Clone Robotics introduced Clone Alpha, an (extremely) humanoid robot featuring synthetic organs and water-powered artificial muscles, with 279 officially available for preorder in 2025.
The details:
The robot uses water-pressured "Myofiber" muscles instead of motors to move, mirroring natural movement patterns with synthetic bones and joints.
The company is taking orders for its first production run of 279 robots, though it has yet to publicly show a complete working version.
Alpha’s skills include making drinks and sandwiches, laundry, and vacuuming — also capable of learning new tasks through a ‘Telekinesis’ training platform.
The system runs on "Cybernet," Clone's visuomotor model, with four depth cameras for environmental awareness.
Why it matters: Clone Alpha is definitely a unique build (to say the least) compared to the other top humanoid robots on the market — with a more human-inspired approach allowing for more natural movement and dexterity. But until we see demos and more info released, a wait-and-see approach is probably smart before rushing to pre-order.
NEW TOOLS & JOBS
🗣️ Conversational AI by ElevenLabs - Build AI agents that speak for your website, app, or call center
🫵 Pointer - AI editing co-pilot for Google Docs offering efficient, polished, real-time edits
📊 Tables - Instantly transform unstructured data into actionable tables
🤝 SDRx - An AI SDR that builds targeted lists, conducts account research, crafts personalized emails, and more
🤖 Athina - An AI development platform to build, test, and monitor AI apps and agents
🏦 Hebbia - Engagement Manager, Equities
💼 Kumo - Account Executive
🤖 Deepmind - Software Engineer, Strategic Initiatives
📋 Abridge - Senior Implementation Manager
🧪 Mistral AI - QA Engineer
QUICK HITS
OpenAI’s ongoing 12-day event will include the launch of its Sora video generation model, according to a report from The Verge.
Google launched PaliGemma 2, the next-gen version of its vision-language model, which features enhanced capabilities across multiple model sizes, improved image captioning, and specialized task performance.
Elon Musk’s xAI officially secured $6B in new funding, set to help fund a reported massive expansion of its Colossus supercomputer to over 1M GPUs.
Humane introduced CosmOS, an AI operating system designed to work across multiple devices like TVs, cars, and speakers, following the negative reception of the startup’s AI pin device.
LA Times newspaper owner Soon-Shiong announced plans to implement an AI-powered 'bias meter' on news articles amid editorial board restructuring and staff protests.
Google also rolled out new Gemini 1.5 updates across Android, adding AI-powered photo descriptions in the Lookout app, Spotify integration for Gemini Assistant, and expanded phone controls and communications features.
THAT’S A WRAP
That's it for today!Before you go we’d love to know what you thought of today's newsletter to help us improve The Rundown experience for you. |
See you soon,
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