AI image generation levels up again

PLUS: BMW, Alibaba bringing AI-powered cars

Author

Rowan Cheung
March 27, 2025

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Another SOTA text-to-image model just dropped — but the only thing on everyone’s mind seems to be turning images into Ghibli-style anime.

Between Ideogram’s 3.0 launch, GPT-4o’s viral image generation capabilities, and Reve’s debut, AI creativity has gone to a brand new level this week.

In today’s AI rundown:

  • Ideogram’s advanced 3.0 image model

  • BMW, Alibaba bringing AI-enabled cars

  • Create custom study assistants for any subject

  • Alibaba’s multi-sensory AI for mobile

  • 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

IDEOGRAM

Image source: Ideogram

The Rundown: Image generation startup Ideogram just released version 3.0 of its AI model, introducing major improvements in photorealism, text rendering, and style consistency — while outperforming competitors in human evaluations.

The details:

  • Ideogram 3.0 brings new text rendering and graphic design capabilities, enabling precise creation of complex layouts, logos, and typography.

  • In testing, the model significantly outperformed leading text-to-image models, including Google’s Imagen 3, Flux Pro 1.1, and Recraft V3.

  • A new ‘Style References’ feature allows users to upload up to three images to guide the aesthetic of generated content, alongside a library of 4.3B presets.

  • The model is now available on Ideogram’s platform and iOS app, with all features accessible to free users.

Why it matters: Ideogram’s new model is very impressive, but the launch timing is unfortunate given the hype around OpenAI’s 4o image capabilities. What’s become apparent from releases from Ideogram, OpenAI, and Reve this week is that graphic design and accurate text generation are all but fully solved for this wave of AI models.

TOGETHER WITH WORKOS

The Rundown: WorkOS Radar is a security solution that shields your AI platform from fake signups, throwaway emails, and brute force attempts — all powered by advanced device fingerprinting and real-time detection.

With WorkOS Radar, you can:

  • Rapidly detect and challenge unfamiliar and suspicious devices in real time

  • Stop free-tier abuse and fraudulent behavior with advanced detection

  • Customize threat responses to fit your app’s exact security needs

BMW & ALIBABA

Image source: Alibaba

The Rundown: Chinese tech giant Alibaba and automaker BMW announced a strategic alliance to develop advanced in-car AI tailored for the Chinese market, bringing cutting-edge vehicle cockpit tech to BMW models as soon as 2026.

The details:

  • The partnership centers on a new in-car AI assistant powered by Alibaba's Qwen, featuring enhanced voice recognition and contextual understanding.

  • The assistant will feature real-time dining, parking availability, and traffic management, using natural commands rather than touchscreen interfaces.

  • BMW also plans to roll out two AI agents: Car Genius for vehicle diagnostics and Travel Companion for personalized recommendations and trip planning.

  • The system will also include multimodal inputs like gesture recognition, eye tracking, and body position awareness for more intuitive driving experiences.

Why it matters: BMW has been at the forefront of AI and robotics, making it only a matter of time before advanced AI systems are integrated into new cars. While Tesla, with its internal xAI partnership, remains a strong contender, other automakers are also taking strategic steps to lead in the AI era.

AI TRAINING

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Google Gemini's Gems feature to create personalized AI assistants for specific subjects, homework help, and project research — completely free of cost.

Step-by-step:

  1. Visit Google Gemini, click the diamond Gem icon on the left sidebar, then select "New Gem."

  2. Name your Gem specifically (e.g., "Physics Problem Solver") and write detailed instructions about how it should help with your subject.

  3. Add course materials like notes, textbook chapters, or study guides to the Knowledge section.

  4. Test your Gem with sample questions and refine its instructions until it responds perfectly.

Pro tip: You can create multiple Gems for different papers instead of one general helper; this keeps each assistant focused on a specific subject.

PRESENTED BY INNOVATING WITH AI

The Rundown: Innovating with AI's new program, AI Consultancy Project, transforms AI enthusiasts into professional consultants — tapping into a market projected to reach $54.7B by 2032.

The 6-month program delivers:

  • Proven frameworks for client acquisition and service delivery

  • A step-by-step path to six-figure consulting income

  • Students who land their first AI client in as little as 3 days

ALIBABA

Image source: Alibaba

The Rundown: Alibaba released Qwen2.5-Omni-7B, a new multimodal AI capable of processing text, images, audio, and video simultaneously while being efficient enough to run directly on consumer hardware like smartphones and laptops.

The details:

  • The model uses a new "Thinker-Talker" system for real-time processing across modalities (text, audio, image, video) with text and speech outputs.

  • It shows strong performance in speech understanding and generation, outperforming specialized audio models in benchmark testing.

  • Alibaba says Omni-7B can run efficiently on phones and laptops, enabling real-world applications like real-time audio descriptions for visually impaired users.

  • It’s immediately available on Hugging Face and GitHub, with Alibaba positioning the model as the foundation for developing practical AI agents.

Why it matters: The age of do-it-all models is nearly here, with omni systems set to unlock completely new experiences and categories of applications. Intelligence that can understand and respond to the full complexity of human environments—while being open-source and easily accessible—is a powerful combination.

QUICK HITS

  • 💻 UiPath - Software Engineer

  • 📊 LabelBox - Data Operations Engineer

  • 💰 Runway - Staff Accountant

  • 🛠️ xAI - Fiber Superintendent

OpenAI announced it will adopt Anthropic’s open-source Model Context Protocol, enabling ChatGPT and other products to integrate with external data and software.

Microsoft 365 Copilot unveiled Researcher and Analyst, two new AI agents designed to handle workplace tasks with research and data analysis directly in users’ workflows.

A federal judge rejected music publisher UMG’s request to block Anthropic from using song lyrics to train Claude, saying the claim failed to show “irreparable harm”.

xAI announced that its Grok chatbot is now integrated directly into messaging app Telegram, available to Premium users at no additional cost.

Amazon launched ‘Interests,’ a new AI-powered shopping feature that automatically scans its store to notify users about new products based on natural language prompts.

Midjourney revealed in its weekly Office Hours session that its highly-anticipated new V7 model is expected to arrive on Monday, March 31.

The U.S. government added over 50 Chinese tech entities to an export blacklist, targeting firms developing advanced AI, supercomputing and quantum tech.

COMMUNITY

Join our next workshop today at 3 PM EST to learn how to build AI Voice Agents using Vapi, led by Jordan Dearsley, the Founder & CEO at Vapi.

RSVP here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

We’ll always keep this newsletter 100% free. To support our work, consider sharing The Rundown with your friends, and we’ll send you more free goodies.

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.

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team

Reply

or to participate.