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Good morning, AI enthusiasts, and welcome to the 5,705 new readers who joined us yesterday. Last month, over a thousand frontier AI staffers asked the industry for an option to slow down. OpenAI just showed what that looks like in practice, though two weeks might not have been what they had in mind. |
The company revealed a (now-finished) pause on training its upcoming models, with its largest planned run now “on hold” for further safety testing. Whether the “pacing” lasts may depend on the next security breach or the competition. |
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In today’s AI rundown: |
OpenAI pauses frontier training over misalignment Teens get moved to their own ChatGPT Build, test, and publish an app without leaving Codex a16z partner’s AI experiment takes on Alabama sorority rush
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OPENAI |
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Image source: Sam Altman (@Sama on X) / The Rundown |
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The Rundown: OpenAI just confirmed it paused training on its future models for two weeks and is “pacing” development of its biggest frontier run, with Sam Altman telling reporter Alex Heath that private models are showing "various degrees of misalignment." |
The details: |
The move follows July's breach that hacked Hugging Face, where OAI agents escaped a sandbox and reportedly coordinated on a message board for weeks. An Aug. 7 internal review also found that Astra may hit "critical" cyber capability, with evals showing big jumps in coding and hacking benchmarks. Automated investigators will now review model actions and reasoning, with staff meant to halt work unless they dismiss an alert as false within 30 minutes. OAI is also rewriting its 2023 Preparedness Framework, with Altman saying, “getting AI safety right is more important than any company’s momentum.”
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Why it matters: The blog is written in the past tense, meaning OAI's two-week pause came and went, and Altman said, "We still expect to ship great models soon; this impacts further out releases." With Astra reportedly around the corner, safety hasn’t hurt launch timing yet — the question is what happens when it actually does. |
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TOGETHER WITH GLEAN |
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The Rundown: Attend Glean:GO 2026 on Aug. 26–27 to learn how leading organizations turn AI into measurable impact. Hear bold keynotes, join hands-on sessions, and leave with strategies you can use immediately. |
Register for Glean:GO to: |
Hear from leaders at OpenAI, NVIDIA, Snowflake, and more Attend personalized hands-on trainings and breakouts with experts Learn best practices for driving AI adoption and ROI
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Register now. |
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OPENAI |
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Image source: OpenAI |
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The Rundown: OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT for Teens, a new mode that pushes users flagged as underage by the company’s systems (or who admit to being 13-17) to a restrictive, study-focused platform with stronger safeguards against sensitive topics. |
The details: |
OAI’s age detection system factors in login times, account age, and thousands of other signals, automatically categorizing users believed to be underage. Teens who ask for “quick answers” to homework will be pushed towards Study Mode, which parents can also toggle on by default via a “Study Hours” feature. High-risk alerts can reach linked parents, with teen defaults restricting chats about explicit content, eating disorders, violence, self-harm, and more. The dedicated mode comes just months after the state of Florida sued OAI over the safety of children on the platform.
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Why it matters: AI is a polarizing topic, and it only gets more heated when the subject is how kids should be exposed to this technology. There is no shortage of tragic stories just a few years in, which makes safeguards a positive step. But, as we have seen with social media, it’s not easy to hold off teens set on using platforms however they want. |
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AI TRAINING |
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The Rundown: In this guide, you will learn how to use Codex to prep your app for the App Store. You just need an app, Xcode installed on your Mac, and an Apple Developer account. Codex can handle the rest. |
Step-by-step: |
If you don't have a ready-to-publish app, Codex can create one. Try: "Build me a calendar planning iOS app for couples. No database or payments” Make sure you have Xcode installed, along with at least one iOS simulator. Ask Codex for help if you're not sure how to do this Tell Codex to test the app in the simulator. When it opens, prompt: “Scan for App Store readiness, list what’s missing, then fix it and package it for Xcode” Sign up for the Apple Developer Program and subscribe at $99/year. Then, push the final Xcode project to the App Store via App Store Connect
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Pro tip: Have Codex create the required privacy policy and support pages in Notion. For more tricks like this, check out the full video guide. |
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PRESENTED BY GOOGLE |
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The Rundown: Startup School: Agent Builder is a four-part technical series starting September 15th that equips developers to build, master, and securely deploy autonomous, multi-agent suites using Google's advanced enterprise tools. |
In this series, you’ll learn to: |
Build workflows with Google's Agent Development Kit. Implement long-term memory and multimodal RAG. Deploy secure agent runtimes on Google Cloud.
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Register for the series here. |
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AI & CONTENT CREATORS |
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Image source: Olivia Moore (@omooretweets on X) |
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The Rundown: a16z partner and AI experimenter Olivia Moore revealed that Janie, a redheaded 19-year-old whose University of Alabama sorority recruitment videos pulled in ~1M views on TikTok in a week, was an AI character created and ran for around $100. |
The details: |
Moore created Janie from one ChatGPT image, then spent about 30 minutes a day prompting MiniMax and Grok Imagine to animate her daily posts. Janie racked up followers and views on TikTok and in the mainstream press, even after viewers caught the AI tells just days into the experiment. Moore said that despite not disclosing the AI use, TikTok still flagged 8 of 20 videos with an AI label, though it didn’t impact video performance. Moore eventually revealed the AI experiment, saying that, to her surprise, the “overwhelming majority of feedback was positive” with requests for more.
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Why it matters: Moore’s post-mortem asks whether it even matters if a creator is real, and her answer comes down to the disclosure of AI use (not tricking the audience) and the creator actually putting in the effort. Either way, the question is being confronted now, with AI video nearing the point of no return for being distinguishable from reality. |
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COMMUNITY AI WORKFLOW OF THE DAY |
▸ Cheyenne built an AI wardrobe stylist with ChatGPT and Lovable |
Today’s workflow comes from reader Cheyenne Dominguez: |
"I built the M(AI)VENS Closet Lab, an AI-powered wardrobe stylist that helps women create more outfits using clothes they already own. |
The idea was inspired by a friend who completed a 30-day challenge to restyle pieces from her closet instead of buying new clothes. I wondered whether AI could take the idea further by helping people rediscover what they already own, style overlooked pieces, pack for a trip, and pull outfits together more easily in everyday life. I have no coding experience, so I used ChatGPT and Lovable to build the app. |
I photographed 16 pieces from my personal wardrobe, uploaded and categorized each item, selected a pair of hot pink wide-leg pants, and clicked 'Style Me.' The app generated three complete looks using my uploaded clothing: a matching pink suit, a casual outfit with loafers, and a layered look with a white blouse, heels, and a denim jacket. The working prototype took approximately five or six prompts across two days." |
See the full workflow here. How do you use AI? Tell us for a chance to be featured. |
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👨🏻⚖️ Harvey II - Legal AI agents that inherit matter context 🧑🧑🧒 ChatGPT for Teens - OAI's new teen experience with default safety limits 🐦 Berd - Block's open-source desktop hub for running custom AI agents ⚙️ Origin - Cursor's code hosting with GitHub sync and built-in agents
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Can AI build a production-ready MCP server? CData's independent report has the answer. Read the results here.* |
AI math startup Axiom claimed to have formalized the "246 theorem," the 12-year-old record on gaps between primes, marking another milestone of AI in mathematics. |
U.S. AI chip startup Etched raised $700M in a new funding round led by trading firm Jane Street, doubling its valuation to $21B in under a month. |
Legal AI startup Harvey debuted Harvey II, which lets agents inherit a legal matter's context and remember each lawyer's style, while debuting its first in-house legal model. |
Fmr. U.S. presidential candidate Andrew Yang proposed an annual $15k per family payment to compensate for AI giants generating wealth by building “upon our data". |
*Sponsored Listing |
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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. |
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See you soon, |
Rowan, Zach, Shubham, Jennifer, and Nate — the humans behind The Rundown |
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