🔥 Weekly AI news: Did you miss it?!

AI-HOI, AInauts!

Maybe you didn't catch all the news, tools, and hacks about AI last week, or maybe you've only recently joined us. Either way, here's our recap with all the headlines from the newsletter - just one click away!

Click the links to jump right to the article - or read our picks below.

• 🤗 The emotional AI avatars are among us.

• 🤹‍♂️ Images with Text - Ideogram's long road to perfection

• 🐶 Thermonator, the fiery robot dog

• 😈 Videos: What is AI, and where is it going?
  (PLUS: Vidu, the Chinese Sora alternative)

• 🤖 How to easily create content for all platforms with AI

• ✍️ With this prompt you can create content for many platforms

• 🎧 You have to listen to this podcast

→ Selection of the top posts of the last week ←

🐶 Thermonator, the flame-throwing Robodog

May we introduce: The Thermonator is the first flame-throwing robot dog for the home. Or alternatively, the wasp drone for the wall of flames from the sky …

And if you're now wondering what you need it for … the provider's FAQ shows a few uses that aren't quite as dystopian as you might think at first glance:

• Soil cleaning or controlled agricultural burns

• Melting or removing ice and snow

• Burning of weeds and other unwanted ground plants

• Controlled fires to prevent forest fires

• Pyrotechnics & film production (… and even Burger King commercials)

If you also want to clear your driveway of snow and ice - or weeds - with the new robot dog, you can do so from $9,420 (and they also deliver outside the USA). Just don't burn down the house …

Our take: Something the world doesn't need - but it can be done differently!

Well, the flame-throwing Robodog certainly created a buzz. But it is more of a spectacle than a product that mankind has really been waiting for. And it stirs up fears, because you don't need much imagination to see negative horror scenarios in your mind's eye.

In other areas of robotics, there are some interesting announcements. We are always looking for assistance in the household … because there are now many prototypes waiting for the reality check.

Elon Musk has also announced that Tesla is now a robotics company. Its Optimus robot could even be on the market by the end of 2025 for under $30,000. We will see - Tesla is notorious for not delivering on its promises.

P.S.: And now it's also official that not only AI drones have a place on the battlefield, but that an AI-controlled F-16 fighter jet competed against a human pilot under the supervision of the American DARPA. The winner was not announced …

😈 Videos: What is AI, and where is it going? (PLUS: the Chinese Sora alternative)

We may be AI fanboys, but we are well aware that everything has its downsides. Therefore, we would like to conclude with two videos that we can highly recommend. The sentiment is not only positive, but the risks and dangers are also addressed in clear terms.

From AI's potential to emulate human intelligence to the ethical issues shaping its development, these two videos provide deep insights into this “brave new world” of current and future artificial intelligence.

And as a little tidbit at the end, here's the new TED promo video - proudly presented by OpenAIs Sora & Paul Trillo.

By the way, Chinese tech company ShengShu-AI and Tsinghua University have just launched the presented the new AI model Vidu - the answer to OpenAI's Sora.

Vidu creates 1080P video clips up to 16 seconds long using a combination of diffusion and transformer technologies. At first, there were only a few short 3 to 5-second clips, and now longer clips have also appeared. It's certainly impressive, but not yet Sora level. Right?

🤖 How to easily create content for all platforms with AI

Today, we're talking about a topic that keeps us busy: Content!

The main focus will be on content for various purposes and how you can create and distribute it as quickly and easily as possible.

Our newsletter is a kind of “long form content”, and of course AI also supports us in preparing it.

But let's be honest: there is a lot of manual work involved to ensure that it meets our expectations and quality standards.

Content is one thing, the other part is the distribution.

Every company knows this probably, hopefully, definitely, too: of course you have to be active on social media platforms such as X, Facebook, Instagram etc.

We've been experimenting with this for a while for way too long …

We have built some Zapier automations that automatically prepare content postings for the various platforms from each newsletter.

First, the newsletter is divided into individual sections using a JavaScript (we can’t code, it was all built with natural language and ChatGPT/Zapier assistant), and then posts and images are generated based on this, added to a Google Sheet, and distributed from there via Publer.io.

Our goal: to create and publish good (!) content without any manual work, most of the time. We are not completely happy with the current solution and are looking for a better way.

This is why we are currently testing the Content Hub from our sponsor HubSpot, and today we want to introduce you to one of its most powerful features:

🍹 The content remix or content editing feature!

The content remix feature allows us to do exactly what we described above as our challenge.

The process is simple:

1. Take a blog post or, in our case, the newsletter,

2. upload it and

3. then select the types of content you want to create from it.

You can also use your website or enter a longer text manually using copy and paste. A nice bonus: If you already use HubSpot as a CRM etc., you can access all content directly.

Now it's getting exciting: HubSpot creates up to four types of new content at the same time based on your input!

This can be a suitable image, but much more elaborate assets such as an ad, landing page, email or even an audio file are also available.

In our case, we’ve created four new assets in just 30 seconds!

• A picture that fits the content

• An Instagram Posting

• An Audio file

• And a Facebook ad

You can then conveniently edit and customize the generated content in the editor.

And here's the kicker: Since you can link all your social media accounts etc. directly with HubSpot, you can also post directly from HubSpot to your channels. Either with manual approval or fully automated.

We have also linked our ad accounts here, and HubSpot can post our ads, and we can monitor the performance in the dashboard.

👀 Conclusion: The HubSpot Content Hub™ is …

… really promising! We are still in the middle of testing, but the content remix feature has already proven to be extremely powerful. And at the same time, it is super simple to use.

You take your input content and create different variations and teasers from it in just a few minutes, AND you can publish all of that directly.

When we compare how long it took us to build our current automations (hours! days?), HubSpot's 15-minute time investment was insane for the quality of results.

Probably the biggest power under the hood is: HubSpot is multimodal and can generate text, images, and audio content, which can then be published immediately - automatically or after approval.

And all of this is integrated into a workflow and a cockpit, which is very powerful.

Of course, the tool is not free, and the content remixer is part of the Pro plan. It is therefore of particular interest to professional users and companies. But the Content Remix is just one feature of the whole package.

One step is still missing to achieve even better results by adding your own brand identity. We will take a look at this soon and keep you posted.

Click here to try out HubSpot for yourself, there's even a free trial. And if you want to take marketing for your business to the next level, then the paid plan is definitely worth it.

✍️ Create good content for many platforms with this prompt

Here's a slimmed-down version of a prompt that you can use to generate excellent posts from blog articles.

We use a few prompt hacks here, which we explain briefly below. But first, here’s the prompt:

Your task is to create engaging social media posts for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn based on a [base text] of a blog article I provide. Please use the most effective copywriting frameworks to make the posts compelling and tailored to each platform.

Here is the [Base text]:
<base text>
{$BASE TEXT}
</base text>

Please create 2-3 posts for each of the following platforms - Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn - in these categories:

- Advice 
- Observations 
- Contrasting views 
- Past vs. present

Make sure to write the posts in an informal, casual and authentic tone that fits the target audience of the blog article. Use platform-specific hashtags and emojis to make the posts more appealing.

Each post should contain a call-to-action that encourages readers to read the original blog article. Include a link to the blog article in each post.

Adapt the length of the posts to the character limits and best practices of the individual platforms.

Please output each post within <post> tags and add a label indicating the platform and category, as here:
<post platform="..." category="...">
[Article text]
</post>

Optional: If you have ideas for suitable images, videos or GIFs that could visually support the posts, add these suggestions under the respective post.

I look forward to seeing your creative and engaging social media posts! Please give me a short feedback at the end if the created posts meet your requirements and if there are any suggestions for improvement.

The most important prompt hacks that we use here:

1. The new models in particular, such as Claude Opus etc., are already very well-trained and know what type of content is well received on which platforms. That's why we don't have to be too specific. But we provide a good framework with the categories, which improves the results even further.

2. We also address tonality, hashtags, emojis and demand a clear call-to-action.

3. We tell the AI how the response should be structured with <post platform="...” category)="...”> This ensures that the response is structured and clearly displayed. This can be easily read by Zapier via an API interface, for example, and posted directly to social media platforms.

4. This is our favorite: We ask the AI at the end whether it also likes the results itself or what can still be improved. This often leads to automatically improved results.

We made it! But no need to be sad. The AInauts will be back soon, with new content for you.

See you on Monday with a fresh round of news, hacks and insights!

Your AInauts, Fabian & Reto

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