Enjoy your weekend and your coffee, loves ?? ?? pic.twitter.com/GmLFHcHFWt
— Kris Kashtanova (@icreatelife) November 22, 2025
A holographic table that makes every traditional presentation look outdated. pic.twitter.com/CxxurXYp6v
— Architecture Presentation (@arcpresentation) November 23, 2025
“Whither Rivers Flow” by Photographer Ximeng Tu — from booooooom.com by Ximeng Tu
Zaha Hadid Architects completes waterfront stadium and sports centre in Guangzhou — from dezeen.com by Amy Peacock
AI agents: Where are they now? From proof of concept to success stories — from hrexecutive.com by Jill Barth
The 4 Rs framework
Salesforce has developed what Holt Ware calls the “4 Rs for AI agent success.” They are:
Synthetic Reality Unleashed: AI’s powerful Impact on the Future of Journalism — from techgenyz.com by Sreyashi Bhattacharya
Table of Contents
The latest video generation tool from OpenAI –> Sora 2
Sora 2 is here — from openai.com
Our latest video generation model is more physically accurate, realistic, and more controllable than prior systems. It also features synchronized dialogue and sound effects. Create with it in the new Sora app.
And a video on this out at YouTube:
Per The Rundown AI:
The Rundown: OpenAI just released Sora 2, its latest video model that now includes synchronized audio and dialogue, alongside a new social app where users can create, remix, and insert themselves into AI videos through a “Cameos” feature.
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Why it matters: Model-wise, Sora 2 looks incredible — pushing us even further into the uncanny valley and creating tons of new storytelling capabilities. Cameos feels like a new viral memetic tool, but time will tell whether the AI social app can overcome the slop-factor and have staying power past the initial novelty.
OpenAI Just Dropped Sora 2 (And a Whole New Social App) — from heneuron.ai by Grant Harvey
OpenAI launched Sora 2 with a new iOS app that lets you insert yourself into AI-generated videos with realistic physics and sound, betting that giving users algorithm control and turning everyone into active creators will build a better social network than today’s addictive scroll machines.
What Sora 2 can do
The best video to show what it can do is probably this one, from OpenAI researcher Gabriel Peters, that depicts the behind the scenes of Sora 2 launch day…
Sora 2: AI Video Goes Social — from getsuperintel.com by Kim “Chubby” Isenberg
OpenAI’s latest AI video model is now an iOS app, letting users generate, remix, and even insert themselves into cinematic clips
Technically, Sora 2 is a major leap. It syncs audio with visuals, respects physics (a basketball bounces instead of teleporting), and follows multi-shot instructions with consistency. That makes outputs both more controllable and more believable. But the app format changes the game: it transforms world simulation from a research milestone into a social, co-creative experience where entertainment, creativity, and community intersect.
Also along the lines of creating digital video, see:
What used to take hours in After Effects now takes just one text prompt. Tools like Google’s Nano Banana, Seedream 4, Runway’s Aleph, and others are pioneering instruction-based editing, a breakthrough that collapses complex, multi-step VFX workflows into a single, implicit direction.
The history of VFX is filled with innovations that removed friction, but collapsing an entire multi-step workflow into a single prompt represents a new kind of leap.
For creators, this means the skill ceiling is no longer defined by technical know-how, it’s defined by imagination. If you can describe it, you can create it. For the industry, it points toward a near future where small teams and solo creators compete with the scale and polish of large studios.
Bilawal Sidhu
OpenAI DevDay 2025: everything you need to know — from getsuperintel.com by Kim “Chubby” Isenberg
Apps Inside ChatGPT, a New Era Unfolds
Something big shifted this week. OpenAI just turned ChatGPT into a platform – not just a product. With apps now running inside ChatGPT and a no-code Agent Builder for creating full AI workflows, the line between “using AI” and “building with AI” is fading fast. Developers suddenly have a new playground, and for the first time, anyone can assemble their own intelligent system without touching code. The question isn’t what AI can do anymore – it’s what you’ll make it do.
The AI-enhanced learning ecosystem: A case study in collaborative innovation — from chieflearningofficer.com by Kevin Jennings
How artificial intelligence can serve as a tool and collaborative partner in reimagining content development and management.
Learning and development professionals face unprecedented challenges in today’s rapidly evolving business landscape. According to LinkedIn’s 2025 Workplace Learning Report, 67 percent of L&D professionals report being “maxed out” on capacity, while 66 percent have experienced budget reductions in the past year.
Despite these constraints, 87 percent agree their organizations need to develop employees faster to keep pace with business demands. These statistics paint a clear picture of the pressure L&D teams face: do more, with less, faster.
This article explores how one L&D leader’s strategic partnership with artificial intelligence transformed these persistent challenges into opportunities, creating a responsive learning ecosystem that addresses the modern demands of rapid product evolution and diverse audience needs. With 71 percent of L&D professionals now identifying AI as a high or very high priority for their learning strategy, this case study demonstrates how AI can serve not merely as a tool but as a collaborative partner in reimagining content development and management.
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How we use GenAI and AR to improve students’ design skills — from timeshighereducation.com by Antonio Juarez, Lesly Pliego and Jordi Rábago who are professors of architecture at Monterrey Institute of Technology in Mexico; Tomas Pachajoa is a professor of architecture at the El Bosque University in Colombia; & Carlos Hinrichsen and Marietta Castro are educators at San Sebastián University in Chile.
Guidance on using generative AI and augmented reality to enhance student creativity, spatial awareness and interdisciplinary collaboration
Blend traditional skills development with AI use
For subjects that require students to develop drawing and modelling skills, have students create initial design sketches or models manually to ensure they practise these skills. Then, introduce GenAI tools such as Midjourney, Leonardo AI and ChatGPT to help students explore new ideas based on their original concepts. Using AI at this stage broadens their creative horizons and introduces innovative perspectives, which are crucial in a rapidly evolving creative industry.
Provide step-by-step tutorials, including both written guides and video demonstrations, to illustrate how initial sketches can be effectively translated into AI-generated concepts. Offer example prompts to demonstrate diverse design possibilities and help students build confidence using GenAI.
Integrating generative AI and AR consistently enhanced student engagement, creativity and spatial understanding on our course.
How Texas is Preparing Higher Education for AI — from the74million.org by Kate McGee
TX colleges are thinking about how to prepare students for a changing workforce and an already overburdened faculty for new challenges in classrooms.
“It doesn’t matter if you enter the health industry, banking, oil and gas, or national security enterprises like we have here in San Antonio,” Eighmy told The Texas Tribune. “Everybody’s asking for competency around AI.”
It’s one of the reasons the public university, which serves 34,000 students, announced earlier this year that it is creating a new college dedicated to AI, cyber security, computing and data science. The new college, which is still in the planning phase, would be one of the first of its kind in the country. UTSA wants to launch the new college by fall 2025.
But many state higher education leaders are thinking beyond that. As AI becomes a part of everyday life in new, unpredictable ways, universities across Texas and the country are also starting to consider how to ensure faculty are keeping up with the new technology and students are ready to use it when they enter the workforce.
In the Room Where It Happens: Generative AI Policy Creation in Higher Education — from er.educause.edu by Esther Brandon, Lance Eaton, Dana Gavin, and Allison Papini
To develop a robust policy for generative artificial intelligence use in higher education, institutional leaders must first create “a room” where diverse perspectives are welcome and included in the process.
Q&A: Artificial Intelligence in Education and What Lies Ahead — from usnews.com by Sarah Wood
Research indicates that AI is becoming an essential skill to learn for students to succeed in the workplace.
Q: How do you expect to see AI embraced more in the future in college and the workplace?
I do believe it’s going to become a permanent fixture for multiple reasons. I think the national security imperative associated with AI as a result of competing against other nations is going to drive a lot of energy and support for AI education. We also see shifts across every field and discipline regarding the usage of AI beyond college. We see this in a broad array of fields, including health care and the field of law. I think it’s here to stay and I think that means we’re going to see AI literacy being taught at most colleges and universities, and more faculty leveraging AI to help improve the quality of their instruction. I feel like we’re just at the beginning of a transition. In fact, I often describe our current moment as the ‘Ask Jeeves’ phase of the growth of AI. There’s a lot of change still ahead of us. AI, for better or worse, it’s here to stay.
AI-Generated Podcasts Outperform Textbooks in Landmark Education Study — form linkedin.com by David Borish
A new study from Drexel University and Google has demonstrated that AI-generated educational podcasts can significantly enhance both student engagement and learning outcomes compared to traditional textbooks. The research, involving 180 college students across the United States, represents one of the first systematic investigations into how artificial intelligence can transform educational content delivery in real-time.
What can we do about generative AI in our teaching? — from linkedin.com by Kristina Peterson
So what can we do?
Teachers Are Not OK — from 404media.co by Jason Koebler
The response from teachers and university professors was overwhelming. In my entire career, I’ve rarely gotten so many email responses to a single article, and I have never gotten so many thoughtful and comprehensive responses.
One thing is clear: teachers are not OK.
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In addition, universities are contracting with companies like Microsoft, Adobe, and Google for digital services, and those companies are constantly pushing their AI tools. So a student might hear “don’t use generative AI” from a prof but then log on to the university’s Microsoft suite, which then suggests using Copilot to sum up readings or help draft writing. It’s inconsistent and confusing.
I am sick to my stomach as I write this because I’ve spent 20 years developing a pedagogy that’s about wrestling with big ideas through writing and discussion, and that whole project has been evaporated by for-profit corporations who built their systems on stolen work. It’s demoralizing.
From DSC:
Whenever we’ve had a flat tire over the years, a tricky part of the repair process is jacking up the car so that no harm is done to the car (or to me!). There are some grooves underneath the Toyota Camry where one is supposed to put the jack. But as the car is very low to the ground, these grooves are very hard to find (even in good weather and light).
What’s needed is a robotic jack with vision.
If the jack had “vision” and had wheels on it, the device could locate the exact location of the grooves, move there, and then ask the owner whether they are ready for the car to be lifted up. The owner could execute that order when they are ready and the robotic jack could safely hoist the car up.
This type of robotic device is already out there in other areas. But this idea for assistance with replacing a flat tire represents an AI and robotic-based, consumer-oriented application that we’ll likely be seeing much more of in the future. Carmakers and suppliers, please add this one to your list!
Daniel
CES 2024: Unveiling The Future Of Legal Through Consumer Innovations — from abovethelaw.com by Stephen Embry
The ripple effects on the legal industry are real.
The Emerging Role of Smart TVs
Boothe and Comiskey claim that our TVs will become even smarter and better connected to the web and the internet. Our TVs will become an intelligent center for a variety of applications powered through our smartphone. TVs will be able to direct things like appliances and security cameras. Perhaps even more importantly, our TVs can become e-commerce centers, allowing us to speak with them and conduct business.
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This increased TV capability means that the TV could become a more dominant mode of working and computing for lawyers. As TVs become more integrated with the internet and capable of functioning as communication hubs, they could potentially replace traditional computing devices in legal settings. With features like voice control and pattern recognition, TVs could serve as efficient tools for such things as document preparation and client meetings.
From DSC:
Now imagine the power of voice-enabled chatbots and the like. We could be videoconferencing (or holograming) with clients, and be able to access information at the same time. Language translation — like that in the Timekettle product — will be built in.
I also wonder how this type of functionality will play out in lifelong learning from our living rooms.
Also, some other legaltech-related items:
Are Tomorrow’s Lawyers Prepared for Legal’s Tech Future? 4 Recent Trends Shaping Legal Education | Legaltech News — from law.com (behind paywall)
Legal Tech Predictions for 2024: Embracing a New Era of Innovation — from jdsupra.com
As we step into 2024, the legal industry continues to be reshaped by technological advancements. This year promises to bring new developments that could revolutionize how legal professionals work and interact with clients. Here are key predictions for legal tech in 2024:
Miss the Legaltech Week 2023 Year-in-Review Show? Here’s the Recording — from lawnext.com by Bob Ambrogi
Last Friday was Legaltech Week’s year-end show, in which our panel of journalists and bloggers picked the year’s top stories in legal tech and innovation.
So what were the top stories? Well, if you missed it, no worries. Here’s the video:
Canva’s new AI tools automate boring, labor-intensive design tasks — from theverge.com by Jess Weatherbed
Magic Studio features like Magic Switch automatically convert your designs into blogs, social media posts, emails, and more to save time on manually editing documents.
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Canva launches Magic Studio, partners with Runway ML for video — from bensbites.beehiiv.com by Ben Tossell
Here are the highlights of launched features under the new Magic Studio:
Addendums on 10/11/23:
We released a new model ?
!!! Firefly Image 2 !!!!
As a scientist I am in disbelief that such model is possible with a small dataset as we had.
We compensated artists for training it.
We worked very hard on it. Please, enjoy! #AdobeMax https://t.co/j2TUiiyjN7 pic.twitter.com/gqABThSBWZ
— Kris Kashtanova (@icreatelife) October 10, 2023
Adobe Releases New AI Models Aimed at Improved Graphic Design — from bloomberg.com
New version of Firefly is bigger than initial tool, Adobe says Illustrator, Express programs each get own generative tools
A few hours ago, Adobe released Firefly 2, their new AI image generator.
But how good is it?
I compared it to Midjourney & DALL-E 3 across 10 very different image categories so you don’t have to.
Here are the results:
— Chase Lean (@chaseleantj) October 11, 2023
Why we don’t intuitively get how fast the world is changing.
Our brains understand linear not exponential growth.
30 linear steps = +30
30 exponential steps = +1 billion pic.twitter.com/z9a42eFmZM— Misha (@mishadavinci) July 29, 2023
From DSC:
Which reminds me of some graphics:
101 creative ideas to use AI in education, A crowdsourced collection — from zenodo.org by Chrissi Nerantzi, Sandra Abegglen, Marianna Karatsiori, & Antonio Martínez-Arboleda (Eds.); with thanks to George Veletsianos for this resource
As an example, here’s one of the ideas from the crowdsourced collection:
On a somewhat related note, also see:
Merlyn Mind launches education-focused LLMs for classroom integration of generative AI — from venturebeat.com by Victor Dey
Excerpt:
Merlyn Mind, an AI-powered digital assistant platform, announced the launch of a suite of large language models (LLMs) specifically tailored for the education sector under an open-source license.
Designing courses in an age of AI — from teachinginhighered.com by Maria Andersen
Maria Andersen shares about designing courses in an age of artificial intelligence (AI) on episode 469 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.
With generative AI, we have an incredible acceleration of change happening.
Maria Andersen
VR system to be used to prepare crime victims for court — from inavateonthenet.net
Excerpt:
An innovative VR system is being used to help victims of crime prepare for giving evidence in court, allowing victims to engage with key members of the judicial process virtually.
The system, designed by Immersonal, is to be rolled out across 52 Scottish courts over the next year, with the technology also being piloted in the Hague as part of the International Criminal Court. The aim is to dissuade the fears and discomfort of victims and witnesses who may be unfamiliar with the court process.
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Here’s another interesting item for you…one that also may eventually be XR-related:
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Brainyacts #57: Education Tech— from thebrainyacts.beehiiv.com by Josh Kubicki
Excerpts:
Let’s look at some ideas of how law schools could use AI tools like Khanmigo or ChatGPT to support lectures, assignments, and discussions, or use plagiarism detection software to maintain academic integrity.
AI Will Democratize Learning — from td.org by Julia Stiglitz and Sourabh Bajaj
Excerpts:
In particular, we’re betting on four trends for AI and L&D.
In a world where only 7 percent of the global population has a college degree, and as many as three quarters of workers don’t feel equipped to learn the digital skills their employers will need in the future, this is the conversation people need to have.
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Taken together, these trends will change the cost structure of education and give learning practitioners new superpowers. Learners of all backgrounds will be able to access quality content on any topic and receive the ongoing support they need to master new skills. Even small L&D teams will be able to create programs that have both deep and broad impact across their organizations.
The Next Evolution in Educational Technologies and Assisted Learning Enablement — from educationoneducation.substack.com by Jeannine Proctor
Excerpt:
Generative AI is set to play a pivotal role in the transformation of educational technologies and assisted learning. Its ability to personalize learning experiences, power intelligent tutoring systems, generate engaging content, facilitate collaboration, and assist in assessment and grading will significantly benefit both students and educators.
How Generative AI Will Enable Personalized Learning Experiences — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly
Excerpt:
With today’s advancements in generative AI, that vision of personalized learning may not be far off from reality. We spoke with Dr. Kim Round, associate dean of the Western Governors University School of Education, about the potential of technologies like ChatGPT for learning, the need for AI literacy skills, why learning experience designers have a leg up on AI prompt engineering, and more. And get ready for more Star Trek references, because the parallels between AI and Sci Fi are futile to resist.
The Promise of Personalized Learning Never Delivered. Today’s AI Is Different — from the74million.org by John Bailey; with thanks to GSV for this resource
Excerpts:
There are four reasons why this generation of AI tools is likely to succeed where other technologies have failed:
Latest NVIDIA Graphics Research Advances Generative AI’s Next Frontier — from blogs.nvidia.com by Aaron Lefohn
NVIDIA will present around 20 research papers at SIGGRAPH, the year’s most important computer graphics conference.
Excerpt:
NVIDIA today introduced a wave of cutting-edge AI research that will enable developers and artists to bring their ideas to life — whether still or moving, in 2D or 3D, hyperrealistic or fantastical.
Around 20 NVIDIA Research papers advancing generative AI and neural graphics — including collaborations with over a dozen universities in the U.S., Europe and Israel — are headed to SIGGRAPH 2023, the premier computer graphics conference, taking place Aug. 6-10 in Los Angeles.
The papers include generative AI models that turn text into personalized images; inverse rendering tools that transform still images into 3D objects; neural physics models that use AI to simulate complex 3D elements with stunning realism; and neural rendering models that unlock new capabilities for generating real-time, AI-powered visual details.
Also relevant to the item from Nvidia (above), see:
Unreal Engine’s Metahuman Creator — with thanks to Mr. Steven Chevalia for this resource
Excerpt:
MetaHuman is a complete framework that gives any creator the power to use highly realistic human characters in any way imaginable.
It includes MetaHuman Creator, a free cloud-based app that enables you to create fully rigged photorealistic digital humans in minutes.
From DSC:
After seeing this…
“Make me an app”—just talk to your @Replit app to make software pic.twitter.com/U1v5m5Un1U
— Amjad Masad ? (@amasad) March 24, 2023
…I wondered:
This line of thought reminded me of this posting that I did back on 10/27/2010 entitled, “For those institutions (or individuals) who might want to make a few million.”
And I want to say that when I went back to look at this posting, I was a bit ashamed of myself. I’d like to apologize for the times when I’ve been too excited about something and exaggerated/hyped an idea up on this Learning Ecosystems blog. For example, I used the words millions of dollars in the title…and that probably wouldn’t be the case these days. (But with inflation being what it is, heh…who knows!? Maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on myself.) I just had choirs in mind when I posted the idea…and there aren’t as many choirs around these days. 🙂
Explore Breakthroughs in AI, Accelerated Computing, and Beyond at GTC — from nvidia.com
The Conference for the Era of AI and the Metaverse
Addendums on 3/22/23:
Generative AI for Enterprises — from nvidia.com
Custom-built for a new era of innovation and automation.
Excerpt:
Impacting virtually every industry, generative AI unlocks a new frontier of opportunities—for knowledge and creative workers—to solve today’s most important challenges. NVIDIA is powering generative AI through an impressive suite of cloud services, pre-trained foundation models, as well as cutting-edge frameworks, optimized inference engines, and APIs to bring intelligence to your enterprise applications.
NVIDIA AI Foundations is a set of cloud services that advance enterprise-level generative AI and enable customization across use cases in areas such as text (NVIDIA NeMo™), visual content (NVIDIA Picasso), and biology (NVIDIA BioNeMo™). Unleash the full potential with NeMo, Picasso, and BioNeMo cloud services, powered by NVIDIA DGX™ Cloud—the AI supercomputer.
Mixed media online project serves as inspiration for student journalists — from jeadigitalmedia.org by Michelle Balmeo
Excerpt:
If you’re on the hunt for inspiration, go check out Facing Life: Eight stories of life after life in California’s prisons.
This project, created by Pendarvis Harshaw and Brandon Tauszik, has so many wonderful and original storytelling components, it’s the perfect model for student journalists looking for ways to tell important stories online.
