For years, the startup Runway has built its reputation as a purveyor of AI in Hollywood, signing on studios and filmmakers to use its video models. But the company recently opened up a new line of business aimed at a wider clientele, including robotics companies and video game makers.

Runway’s new family of world models is designed to combine the photorealistic imagery it offers moviemakers with physics prompts that will generate fully simulated real-world environments.

“Our perspective is that world models are really the most important problem that we need to solve in order to further advance the field,” Runway CTO and co-founder Anastasis Germanidis told us. “The next stage will be about building systems that can interact with the physical world and understand the physical world. And text alone cannot get us there.”

After two years in the works, the project is arriving at a buzzy time for the concept of world models. Some AI luminaries argue that the scaling laws that have allowed AI labs to squeeze better performance from ever-bigger models won’t hold much longer. World models—billed in some cases as a way to better orient foundation models in real-life physical environments—have been floated as a next phase for AI progress.

Keep reading here.—PK

What do Napoleon Bonaparte, a 192-year-old tortoise named Jonathan, and a Subaru Solterra have in common?

They’ve all called one of the world’s most remote locations home. While Napoleon and Jonathan’s residencies on the island of St. Helena date to the 1800s, the Subaru EV is a newer inhabitant. It arrived on the island to take part in a project aimed at figuring out the logistics of charging electric vehicles—and therefore, advancing sustainability—in an isolated, rugged environment.

The UK division of the Japanese automaker announced the initiative to install what it’s touting as the “world’s most remote public electric vehicle charge point.” The project’s partners worked together to install an EV charging station near the Museum of St. Helena in the island’s capital city, Jamestown.

What makes the test run unique is that it’s taking place more than 1,000 miles away from the closest mainland. St. Helena—a British Overseas Territory—is more than 1,200 miles off the Southwest coast of Africa. The goal, per a news release, is “to test the feasibility, reliability, and adaptability of electric vehicle use on one of the most remote inhabited islands on the planet.”

Keep reading here.—JG

It’s hard to know what’s real these days.

For marketers, that goes beyond outlandish headlines or AI slop. Outsized reactions to brand campaigns and rebrands in online spaces have dominated headlines this year, prompting brand hand-wringing and business course-changing—but those reactions aren’t always entirely real.

This summer, Cracker Barrel rolled out a rebrand that quickly appeared like it was being disastrously received by the public, but narrative intelligence platform PeakMetrics found that the backlash to the rebrand was disproportionately driven by bots, meaning that the company’s eventual decision to backtrack could have been informed, at least in part, by artificial activity. Cracker Barrel did not respond to a request for comment.

PeakMetrics has also tracked bot attacks targeting American Eagle, McDonald’s, Boeing, and the PGA this year, finding that automated accounts often amplify organic criticism in an apparent effort to shape public opinion and, in some cases, shift geopolitical narratives about certain brands.

Molly Dwyer, director of insights at PeakMetrics, told us that generative AI has made it easier than ever to create and operate bot networks, making it likely that inauthentic activity will grow across social channels as certain bad actors seek to cause chaos, push specific narratives, or simply monetize engagement.

“More of the content that we’re seeing is not necessarily created by bots, but is being amplified by bots,” she said. “That’s messing with our sense of reality and what matters.”

Keep reading on Marketing Brew.—KH, KM