- Tavus’ Griffin passes for human on video calls
- Rowan’s Corner: My recurring AI performance review
- Is ChatGPT ‘Dots’ worth upgrading to Pro for?
- Google’s AI watermarks cross into the lab
Tavus’ Griffin passes for human on video calls
Image source: TavusThe Rundown: AI startup Tavus just previewed Griffin, a ‘Human Interaction Model’ that renders a lifelike person who can hear, see, talk, and react over live video — with the company claiming nearly half of users in video call tests thought it was a human. The details: - Griffin watches and listens instead of waiting its turn, nodding mid-sentence or working in details from a user’s screen (like the peacock above) into its response.
- Tavus tested Griffin-Lite in a face-to-face study, with 48% of participants believing their conversation partner was human, up from just 2.4% in previous models.
- The model also came within 0.09 points of real people on NVIDIA's VideoFDB, a test of natural video chat, and beat the next-best AI model by over a point.
- Tavus is only making Griffin-Lite available to trusted testers for now to continue working on safety and disclosure features, with a public rollout later on.
From search box to workflow copilot
The Rundown: Search used to be a list of links. Now it’s a list of actions aligned with remote MCP servers built for tool-using agents. These agents require fast, intelligent retrieval and ranking to understand user intent, find relevant data, and execute. Failing to build systems that help agents move faster slows down your entire organization.In this white paper, you’ll learn:- How Algolia’s retrieval and ranking layer powers enterprise intent routers
- The intricacies behind an indexed tool catalog
- The ins and outs of ranking candidates under policy constraints
- How Algolia turns natural language into safe, auditable action
My recurring AI performance review
Rowan: If you’ve been following my content for a while, you’ll know that I’m pretty boring in most ways, but a complete nut case for two things. The first is personal optimization; the second is tracking my data so I can optimize even more.I do everything from aggressively tracking my health data to using AI agents to store our team's workflows and meeting summaries for future employees, to exporting my social media data to create better content.A couple of months ago, I wrote a Rowan’s Corner called “I asked AI to audit me.” The short version is that I exported my entire AI conversation history, dropped it in Claude, and had it find ways I can improve as a human, CEO, and creator.The results shocked me, but they made me realize something bigger. There’s a new, extremely valuable source of data we’re all collecting under our fingertips every day: the history sitting in our chatbots.So now, naturally, I’m building a system around this. Every 3 months or so, I export only my last 90 days of chat history, re-run the same audit prompt, and have it compare against the previous audit to tell me what actually changed.It's essentially a recurring performance review of myself as a human. My first comparison just came back, and it was humbling (in a good way)… My delegation has improved since August, but it caught a bad new habit forming.If you use chatbots as consistently as I do, this is the most powerful life coach in the world right now. And easily one of my favorite AI use cases of all time.The full steps and my audit prompt are in the same free Google Doc if you want to run your own.AI TRAINING
Is ChatGPT ‘Dots’ worth upgrading to Pro for?
The Rundown: In this guide, you will learn how to set up ChatGPT Dots, and also decide whether it's worth upgrading to ChatGPT Pro ($100/month) in order to use it.Step-by-step:- Do you already have a ChatGPT account? If you do, that's a point in the yes column. Your "dot" will not pull from ChatGPT or Codex limit. Make sure your desktop app is upgraded, and you will see the dots option in the sidebar
- Do you work in Slack? We found the Slack integration easier to set up and use than any other agent. Just click on your dot and find the Connect to Slack button
- Are you concerned about data privacy? The desktop app asks for a lot of permissions by default. We recommend skipping these and just letting it work in the cloud + integrations. During setup, give hard rules on what it can and can’t do
- Do you already use Grok Bot or Muse? The dots experience feels the most similar to these products. But they are more generous with free or cheaper tokens
Your agent's source of truth
The Rundown: Cube is the agentic analytics platform built on a semantic layer. Your agent reads the definitions your business already agrees on so the answers come back in your terms, not its own.With Cube, you can:- Ask the hardest questions, get real answers
- Connect Claude or ChatGPT to governed data
- Brex improved AI answer accuracy to ~90%
Google’s AI watermarks cross into the lab
Image source: Google The Rundown: Google DeepMind just introduced SynthID Bio, a proof of concept that extends its AI watermarking tech to proteins, potentially helping DNA suppliers trace unfamiliar designs before filling an order. The details: - SynthID Bio tweaks Google’s protein-folding AlphaFold 3 model to leave a hidden pattern in its predicted protein shapes, without reducing prediction accuracy.
- Google’s lab tests found that proteins with watermarks still worked as intended once produced, with marks still detectable in the physical form.
- Companies that make custom DNA currently check orders for known threats, but unfamiliar AI designs can need manual review that delays research.
- The watermark doesn't offer any complete safety guarantees, with Google still working on preventing tampering.
Trending AI Tools
FLUX 3 Image - Black Forest Labs' image model with box-by-box layout control
Runway Ads - Runway's AI system that makes, posts, and retunes paid ads
MAI-Transcribe-2-Streaming - Microsoft's top-ranked live speech-to-text AI
Canvas - Shopify’s AI workspace for designing every page of a store
Everything else in AI todayThree OpenAI researchers were reportedly let go for allegedly passing internal info to an AI-safety group amid investigations into the company over rogue agent activity. AI engineer Carter Church decrypted a military dispatch from 1809 to Napoleon's Marshal Marmont with GPT-6 Astra, reading a blurry photo and the cipher in ~6 hours.Microsoft AI released MAI-Voice-2.1 and a faster Flash version alongside MAI-Transcribe-2-Streaming, its first live transcription model that ranked No. 1 on Artificial Analysis’ transcription leaderboard. OpenAI published an investigation pinning a July effort to copy its models' hidden reasoning on people tied to China’s Moonshot AI, saying the campaign leveraged 15,000+ accounts before it was shut down.California governor Gavin Newsom signed California's “No Robo Bosses Act,” which requires a human to be in the loop for any firing or discipline driven mainly by AI.
Highlights: News, Guides & Events- Read our last AI newsletter: Argon aims to return Google to the frontier
- Read our last Tech newsletter: SpaceX's $15B megarocket finally delivers
- Read our last Robotics newsletter: DoorDash puts its own drone on the menu
- Today’s AI tool guide: Is ChatGPT ‘Dots’ worth upgrading to Pro for?
- RSVP to next workshop on Oct. 7: Build + deliver a real AI consulting project
Source: https://therundownai.beehiiv.com/p/tavu ... -back-live