Apple's AI emergency

PLUS: Sora video generator coming to ChatGPT

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. If you were hoping that your iPhone’s Siri would finally live up to the AI hype with the launch of Apple Intelligence, you might be waiting a few more YEARS.

A fully revamped Siri may now be reportedly delayed as far as 2027 — and with voice assistant rivals like Amazon pushing ahead, Apple’s AI rollout is quickly turning into a full-blown internal emergency.

In today’s AI rundown:

  • Apple's Siri overhaul facing major delays

  • New AI voice to cross ‘uncanny valley’

  • Auto-screen resumes with AI

  • Sora video AI coming to ChatGPT

  • 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

APPLE

Image source: Apple

The Rundown: Apple's plans for a completely revamped AI-powered Siri have been pushed back, according to a new report from Bloomberg insider Mark Gurman — with employees now believing the assistant won't be fully modernized until 2027.

The details:

  • The smart assistant currently operates with a fragmented architecture, where traditional functions and newer AI features work as separate systems.

  • Apple had planned to merge the two into a single architecture, but the integration has reportedly fallen behind schedule.

  • Adoption metrics show that users aren't embracing current Apple Intelligence features, with many finding them limited compared to rival offerings.

  • The AI division is also reportedly struggling with talent poaching, leadership changes, and challenges in securing necessary AI chips.

Why it matters: Apple is known for perfecting existing tech rather than being first to market, but the rapid evolution of voice AI is exposing a massive gap in its capabilities. The year 2027 is a century away in AI progress—and with Alexa upgrades and other rivals levelling up, it’s starting to feel like a full-blown AI emergency for Apple.

TOGETHER WITH HUBSPOT

The Rundown: HubSpot’s new “200+ AI-Powered Income Ideas” free guide offers actionable strategies to turn artificial intelligence into your own personal revenue generator — unlocking a gateway to financial innovation in the digital age.

With this guide, you can:

  • Explore hundreds of revenue-generating ideas across industries with real-world applications

  • Follow simple, step-by-step instructions that make AI accessible to everyone

  • Adopt cutting-edge strategies to keep you ahead in today's fast-paced market

SESAME

Image source: Sesame

The Rundown: Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe’s new startup Sesame just launched a demo of its voice tech aiming to cross the "uncanny valley" of AI speech — showcasing a model that responds with genuine emotions and natural speech patterns.

The details:

  • Sesame’s Conversational Speech Model gives natural voice responses by considering a conversation's context in real-time, not just individual sentences.

  • The system also incorporates emotional awareness, allowing the AI to adjust its tone and rhythm based on the conversation's mood and content.

  • Early demos showcase abilities like adjusting speaking pace, incorporating natural pauses, and maintaining conversational threads when interrupted.

  • Sesame is also developing AI glasses that integrate its voice tech, offering an always-available AI companion to observe the world and assist in real-time.

Why it matters: After spending years with subpar voice assistants, consumers are in for an eye-opening shift as voice technology gets a massive upgrade in 2025. With Hume, Alexa+, and now Sesame making moves, this past week has given a glimpse of the more human, context-aware systems to come.

AI TRAINING

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use AI tools to evaluate job applications by extracting key qualifications, identifying missing skills, and getting objective feedback.

Step-by-step:

  1. Head over to your favorite AI assistant, e.g, ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini.

  2. Create a template prompt defining your job requirements and asking for a summary, match score, matched skills, and red flags.

  3. Process each resume by adding its text below the template prompt and submitting it to the AI assistant.

  4. Track results in a spreadsheet and use your AI to draft personalized follow-up emails for each candidate tier.

Pro tip: You can also add your own resume to the template to improve it based on the AI feedback. The Rundown University members can access the top prompts here.

PRESENTED BY HUME

The Rundown: While other text-to-speech systems just “read” words aloud, Octave is the first TTS that grasps their meaning. Built on a speech-language model, it brings natural expression to AI voice generation.

With Octave, you’ll experience:

  • The ability to describe emotive voices for any character or persona

  • Context-aware expression that matches emotional intent

  • Acting instructions like “whisper with intrigue” or “speak angrily”

  • Consistent across long-form content (audiobooks, podcasts)

OPENAI

Image source: OpenAI

The Rundown: OpenAI confirmed plans to integrate its Sora video-generation tool directly into the ChatGPT interface during the company’s first “Sora Global Office Hours” chat on Discord, alongside a new model and image generation capabilities.

The details:

  • Sora product lead Rohan Sahai revealed during a Discord office hours session that the integration is actively being developed, though no timeline was shared.

  • The ChatGPT version will likely have limited functionality compared to Sora’s web app, which offers advanced features like video editing and splicing.

  • Beyond ChatGPT integration, the company is exploring a dedicated mobile app for Sora and is actively recruiting engineers for the project.

  • Also in the works is a Sora-powered image generator that could surpass the current DALL-E 3 model in photorealism and a faster Sora Turbo model.

Why it matters: While Sora was once the tool everyone was holding their breath for, advances from competitors and a disappointing rollout have dampened its impact. Adding Sora into ChatGPT will put it front and center for better workflow integrations, but big quality upgrades are still needed to match rivals like Google’s Veo 2 and Kling.

QUICK HITS

  • 🤖 GPT 4.5 - OpenAI’s latest model with advanced emotional intelligence

  • 💨 Hunyuan Turbo S - Tencent’s new ‘fast-thinking’ AI model

  • 🖼️ Ideogram 2a - Fast image generation AI, optimized for graphics and text

  • 🎬 Pika 2.2 - Upgraded video AI with transition and transformation capabilities

DeepSeek revealed that its AI models theoretically generate 545% profit margins on inference costs, a stark contrast to U.S. rivals currently operating at a loss.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said that the company is “reserving” Claude 4 models for “substantial leaps” and that AI will surpass the best human coders in 2026.

SoftBank is reportedly seeking $16B in loans to fuel its AI investment strategy — with Elon Musk posting that CEO Masayoshi Son is “already over-leveraged.”

Anthropic will join the Department of Energy’s “1,000 Scientist AI Jam,” where its Claude model will be evaluated on scientific research and national security use cases.

Samsung launched new $300 Galaxy A series phones, bringing AI features like Circle to Search and AI photo editing to compete with Apple's new $599 iPhone 16e.

Chinese smartphone giant Honor announced a $10B AI investment plan to transform into a global AI device ecosystem company.

COMMUNITY

We just did a full workshop on how to take full advantage of Claude 3.7 Sonnet’s frontier reasoning capabilities, along with advanced prompting strategies, with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor.

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

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See you soon,

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

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