AI poetry outperforms Shakespeare

PLUS: ChatGPT launches desktop app upgrades

Author

Rowan Cheung
November 15, 2024

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

AI just beat Shakespeare at his own game—with readers struggling to ID generated verses and preferring them over the Bard's timeless works.

Is this the final frontier for human creativity or simply the beginning of a new chapter in how we define art? Let's get into it…

In today’s AI rundown:

  • AI poetry outshines human classics in blind test

  • ChatGPT desktop app gains direct app integration

  • Create your own AI writing assistant

  • TikTok launches Symphony Creative Studio

  • 5 new AI tools & 5 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

Important: The Rundown is slowly being sent from a new email address. To ensure you get our newsletter, please add [email protected] to your contact list.

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

AI RESEARCH

Image source: Midjourney / The Rundown

The Rundown: A new study from the University of Pittsburgh researchers just revealed that AI can now generate poetry that readers not only struggle to distinguish from human-written texts but actually prefer over works by legendary poets like Shakespeare and Dickinson.

The details:

  • In experiments with over 1,600 participants, readers could identify AI-generated versus human-written poems just 46.6% of the time.

  • AI-generated poems were also consistently rated higher across 13 different qualitative measures, including rhythm, beauty, and emotional impact.

  • Five poems rated as ‘least likely’ to be human were written by famous poets, while four rated most "human-like" were AI-generated.

  • When participants were explicitly told poems were AI-generated, they rated them lower regardless of authorship.

Why it matters: This study may ruffle some feathers in the literature community, but it's a clear sign that it's becoming impossible to distinguish between AI and human writing — even in creative domains like poetry. Some difficult questions are about to be raised as AI begins to rapidly surpass humans in unexpected areas of culture.

TOGETHER WITH AGENTQL

The Rundown: AgentQL eliminates the hassle of web automation and scraping by introducing the first AI-native query language — turning the web into a seamless environment where AI agents can extract, automate, and adapt effortlessly.

With AgentQL, you can:

  • Write natural language queries to access web data as easily as having a conversation

  • Extract structured data in real time from regulatory filings, e-commerce platforms, and multilingual sources

  • Automatically adapt to website changes, reducing downtime and manual intervention

  • Process PDFs, images, and documents just like websites, converting them into actionable insights

Experience the future of web automation today and get started at our playground.

OPENAI

Image source: OpenAI

The Rundown: OpenAI just pushed an update to its desktop app that enables ChatGPT to interact directly with third-party applications on Mac for seamless AI-assisted workflows, along with expanded Windows desktop app access.

The details:

  • The new ‘Work with Apps’ feature allows ChatGPT to read and analyze content from select developer tools, including VS Code, Xcode, Terminal, and iTerm2.

  • Users can now get AI assistance without copying and pasting, with ChatGPT automatically understanding code context via the connected apps.

  • Multiple apps can be connected simultaneously for more complex workflows, with OpenAI planning to expand beyond developer tools in the future.

  • The new feature is available in early beta for Plus and Team users, and Enterprise and Education users will receive access in the coming weeks.

  • The Windows desktop app is also now available to all users, featuring Advanced Voice Mode, shortcuts, a companion window, and more.

Why it matters: With rumors of an upcoming ‘Operator’ agent, this feels like a major stepping stone towards a system that can naturally understand and take action with our workspaces. This update is about to create some wild new workflows and shift users towards a new mindset with ChatGPT interactions.

AI TRAINING

The Rundown: Using code templates provided with xAI, you can easily create an AI assistant that replicates your unique writing style using the xAI API.

Step-by-step:

  1. Visit x.ai, create an account, and generate an API key (you’ll get $25 free credits).

  2. Install the necessary libraries in Python using pip.

  3. Set up your API credentials securely.

  4. Use the provided code template by xAI to create your assistant.

  5. Ask any AI chatbot to code a content-writing AI assistant and paste the API code from step 4.

Pro tip: We’ve created a pre-configured AI assistant that you can access directly here. You just need to add your API key, writing examples, and prompts.

PRESENTED BY IBM

The Rundown: Meet IBM’s new third generation of Granite with new open, compact, and efficient 2B and 8B language models.

Designed to give enterprises more ways to embed and scale AI in their businesses, these new 2B and 8B compact models are:

  • Trained with carefully curated data;

  • Cost-efficient;

  • Designed to run high-performance solutions.;

BYTEDANCE

Image source: TikTok

The Rundown: TikTok just released Symphony Creative Studio, an AI-powered video generation platform that offers new automated tools for brands to produce and scale advertising content.

The details:

  • The new platform converts product information or URLs directly into TikTok-ready videos in minutes, drawing from top-performing content styles.

  • Advertisers can now leverage AI digital avatars, choosing from pre-built or customized options with the ability to edit voice, position, style, and more.

  • A translation and dubbing feature enables automatic content conversion into multiple languages in over 30 languages with lip-sync capabilities.

  • The platform includes a daily auto-generation feature that creates new video options based on brand history and platform trends.

  • All AI-generated content is automatically labeled for transparency, with the company touting built-in safeguards for avatar likeness rights.

Why it matters: TikTok’s Symphony is shifting the marketing world in the AI era. Tasks that previously required teams of copywriters, videographers, editors, translators, and media buyers are now handled by a single brand manager curating AI-generated content, with improved ad results as the cherry on top.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

  • 🔊 Projects by ElevenLabs - Structure, edit, and generate long-form audio with precision

  • 📫 ZEPIC - AI-powered email and WhatsApp marketing platform to turn campaigns around in minutes

  • 🛠️ BuildShip V2 - Visually develop backend APIs and workflows with AI

  • 🤖 Integry App Functions for AI - Enable your AI agent to perform actions in hundreds of apps

  • 🗣️ Output Media API by Recall - Build AI agents that can join video conferences, output audio and video, listen, and respond

QUICK HITS

InVideo launched a new AI video creation tool that can generate multi-minute videos with music and text in various styles from a single prompt.

Google released a new standalone Gemini iPhone app featuring Gemini Live voice conversations, image generation capabilities, and broader integration with Google services.

AI visionary Francois Chollet announced his departure from Google after a decade, with plans to launch a new venture while maintaining involvement with his Keras open-source AI framework.

Anthropic added new developer tools in its Console to automatically improve prompts, with the ability to manage examples and evaluate outputs to boost response accuracy and consistency.

Stripe introduced a new agent toolkit, enabling developers to integrate payments, financial services, and usage-based billing into LLM-powered agent workflows.

Apple released its Final Cut Pro 11 editing software, featuring new AI-powered features like Magnetic Mask for green screen-free object isolation and LLM-driven caption generation.

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.

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

See you soon,

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

Reply

or to participate.