Our product update, and introducing Pressmate

News Whip

New Microsoft Ai products dropping today. OpenAI has been losing its most safety-focused researchers. The Godfather of AI says universal basic income may need to be established to deal with the impact of AI on inequality. Loneliness is a problem that AI Won’t Solve. Kunal Bahl, cofounder of venture capital firm Titan Capital, said GPT-4o is “the ultimate edtech utility” that could teach millions of students in their native language who wouldn’t need teachers or schools.

Product Update: Done is Better than Perfect

The Rundown Studio, Artwork

The Rundown team is pushing hard toward our internal mantra: done is better than perfect. My co-founder, Thomas and I wanted to give you a product update this week.

Thomas is working on the back-end. “Our tool for creating courses with AI tooling is close to completion. We have just finished up the embedding process for adding videos. We are moving to the front-end build, so you can soon view our upcoming course. We are quite excited about the possibilities of generative UI and what that means for learning beyond a chat window.”

Prototype course design

We are at a point where we now have incredible foundational tools to build our ideas. Two years ago, things were pretty rough around the edges. The services available now mean that pipedreams can become functioning software in weeks.

We are at an App Store moment in proliferation of software, says Thomas

We have been testing ChatGPT 4o. It’s impressive, and the reasoning is strong. The impending access to the multimodal offerings will significantly help us think through our Alisha BOT Assistant on the rundown.studio The appeal is also it’s half the cost to build and twice as fast. 

With the large context windows and better reasoning, we can be less reliant on a RAG based system. The speed means that we don’t have to worry about streaming so much, although I think it helps from a UX perspective as you see the text being composed/written as it is generated rather than instantly displayed — this is important as the way information appears changes our perception of what is fact vs opinion (another reason to cite “Generated by AI”). There are still serious issues with GPT4o just making stuff up to suit a prompt, which plays to the favour of a RAG, as you can cite a source and structure the interface to show where that came from - Thomas Brasington, Co.Founder, The Rundown Studio

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Pressmate AI

Since leaving CNN and working in various communication spaces ranging from start-up communications to corporate communications to public relations and media outreach, there’s one piece that sits at the center of it all. The press release.

I’ve not been a fan of time-consuming, process driven releases that often do not land correctly for journalists looking for newsworthy stories. Releases often lack a clear news lead, lack newsworthy context, and are packed with background information, often in jargon that’s not accessible.

We have decided to work on how to solve these problems for communications teams. So we are building a press release tool called Pressmate. Here’s a sneak peek.

Pressmate

With the reference documents of your own in-house team, we will cut the time it takes to write a release. We have prompted our tool to select leads, articulate in clear and simple language what’s needed, and offer inputs for you to make. The goal is to efficiently produce releases that will appeal to journalists. Importantly, reference documents, once ingested, can draw upon internal company language, brand guidelines and specific regional or country based stories.

Here’s one Pressmate release about Luka, my King Charles Spaniel.

Pressmate

We will make Press Mate available as a Rundown product. For now, we are doing a free private beta. If you would like access to this tool, please contact us directly to discuss it.

Help us Build the Rundown

We are keen to hear from communications professionals on how they are using AI and ed tech platforms in their day-to-day lives. If you have a moment, fill out our survey, or if you have the time, we would love to hear from you in a one-on-one session. Email us at zain@therundown.studio or thomas@therundown.studio to tell us a bit about your work and challenges, and we can then set up a call.

You can also help us by offering a paid subscription that keeps us encouraged and keeps the lights on. We have a bitcoin wallet, if that’s easier! Thank you in advance.

Here’s a picture below, of Thomas at work. Can you see him?

Pitch Mate AI

This is coming soon. After a great press release, communications teams need clear pitches with key messages and stories to garner the interest of journalists.