Render Time: August 5 Edition
Meta goes mega: Gods, Manhattan, and mega-bucks.
Zuck’s Prometheus (yes that’s really what they’re calling it) project shows no signs of slowing down. This week, the plan to build god-level AI moved from sci-fi nameplates to real, real estate, with talks of data centers the size of Manhattan and salaries starting with a 1 and ending with seven zeros.
But alongside that ambition comes the strange duality of our AI future.
On one hand, a missing hiker is found in the Alps after AI scans 2,600 drone images in a single afternoon. On the other, Amazon is funding a platform where you can generate entire TV episodes with a few prompts and a selfie.
Headlines at a Glance
Meta’s Prometheus AI project is real. Manhattan-sized data centers incoming.
Hypernatural raises $9.2M for what it calls the “Canva for video.”
Elon Musk confirms Grok text-to-video by October for Super-Grok subs.
AI Film Festival proves generative cinema can still get weird and weepy.
Zuck’s Supervillain Era, Extended Cut
Zuckerberg doubles down on his supervillain cosplay by investing billions to build mega‑compute centers named Prometheus and Hyperion.
This week, plans solidified for the two new data centers, built to support Meta’s most powerful AI systems yet. Prometheus alone will sprawl across a footprint the size of Manhattan and consume more than 1 gigawatt of energy, enough to power Honduras, or light up Bhutan four times over.
Meta is bleeding billions to build its dream team; raiding GitHub, Apple, Scale AI and trying (but failing) to recruit top talent from OpenAI. This week, it emerged that former Open AI whiz Andrew Tulloch rejected a $1 billion offer from Zuckerberg to join the Superintelligence Lab.
Tune in next week for another episode of Keeping Up with the Gen Intelligences.
AI Drone Spots Missing Hiker in Alps
In northern Italy, a search-and-rescue team used drones and AI to do in one afternoon what would’ve taken humans months: scan 183 hectares of alpine terrain and spot a single red helmet on Monviso’s north face.
The helmet belonged to 64-year-old Nicola Ivaldo, a doctor who vanished in September 2024.
AI software flagged the pixels on Tuesday. By Thursday morning the team confirmed the location at 3,150 meters and retrieved the body with the help of a helicopter.
The operation was a collaboration between drone pilots, mountain rescue experts, and thermal-sensing machine vision.
In an age obsessed with whether AI will replace us, it’s worth asking, what if it ends up replacing us at saving us too?
More Meta News in Brief
Meta buys 3% of EssilorLuxottica (€3B) and smart‑glass sales triple Read more
Oakley Meta HSTN hits $499 : 3K video, 8-hour battery, very divisive stylings Read more
Amazon Backs the “Netflix of AI”
Amazon just backed Showrunner, an AI-generated TV platform from Fable that promises to be the “Netflix of AI.” Type a few words, and out comes an animated scene or a full episode.
You can even star in it. Just upload a selfie and top billing is yours.
Launched publicly this week, the tool is free (for now), but will soon charge $10–$20 a month for creators to pump out episodic content.
Early offerings include:
Exit Valley – a satire of Silicon Valley elites (of course)
Everything Is Fine – an Ikea-fueled marital breakdown that turns into a multiverse quest (I’m as confused as you are)
Fable’s CEO Edward Saatchi says this isn’t about making shows cheaper, it’s about redefining what a TV show even is.
Let’s be real: this is a very slippery slope. With an avalanche of questions:
Who owns what in a Disney-licensed promptfest?
What happens when users remix licensed IP?
How do you moderate millions of episodes generated at scale?
Saatchi is already in talks with major studios to license IP, even as those same studios are suing other AI companies for copyright infringement.
You literally couldn’t make this up.
AI Product Updates + Experiments
Google Cloud releases Veo 3 + Veo 3 Fast on Vertex AI. Read more
Netflix and Disney fold Runway’s Aleph into internal toolkits Read more
Shekhar Kapur’s Warlord is a full-on AI-built sci-fi universe Read more
Silicon Splurges
Diva Mezza Utopia Speakers : $69,000
French-made and sculpted like a spaceship. Tuned for Dolby Atmos and styled like sound had a skincare routine. Read moreVertu METAVERTU AI x Web3 Phone : $9,800 to $19,800+
Built-in LLM, NFT wallet, sapphire glass, real crocodile leather. A crypto bro’s dream, if that bro wore Tom Ford and Audemars. Read moreLayer Museum-Grade Digital Canvas : $22,000
A 4K OLED display for your rotating generative art collection, complete with AWS-powered curation. Read more
How are we feeling about this timeline we’re in? (Be honest.)