📰 News Roundup

• Got $10 Million? OpenAI will consult. Taking a page out of Palantir’s playbook, OpenAI now offers consulting services to Fortune 500 companies and government agencies, for a minimum spend of $10 Million.

• Google poaches Windsurf from OpenAI: In another hit to OpenAI, the deal to acquire artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf for $3 Billion, has collapsed, and Google has now offered $2.4B for the company. Google will be acquiring Windsurf Chief Executive Officer Varun Mohan and co-founder Douglas Chen, along with a small group of staffers, to work at its DeepMind artificial intelligence unit.

• Grok is being installed on Teslas next week: The xAI model will be brought to all Teslas next week via a software update claims Musk via the X platform. Users are already polarized over the potential update with one user seeing the positives: “Going to be cool to have an actual conversational AI in the car. Complex directions, build me a playlist, summarize what’s going on in this area today. Exciting stuff” whilst another points out the dangers “Get ready to be directed to a charging station that doesn’t exist, and to have Grok snitch your private driving location and photos/videos from all the internal and external cameras”

• Dream Lab LA: Luma AI is coming to Los Angeles by creating a brand new hub called the “Dream Lab”. The lab will be head up by Verena Puhm, who states “We want to provide a creative R&D space to educate the filmmakers and educate the studio partners.” The Hollywood Reporter have a full breakdown on the project, so give it a read here.

• YouTube demonitizes AI Slop: Starting July the 15th, YouTube will no longer allow monetization on “repetitive or mass-produced content”. The new policy is a shot across the bow at AI Slop which is currently flooding the video search engine, and social media like Instagram and TikTok alike.

🛠️ Tool Of The Week: 11ai

This week’s tool comes from friends of Artist and the Machine, and sponsor, Elevenlabs who have launched a new-generation voice assistant named 11ai. They say context is key, and this is what Elevenlabs have built, the first voice assistant that is free from singular questions, being able to connect and work ahead of time.

In a blog post from the pioneering audio AI brand, Elevenlabs state: “Traditional voice assistants face limitations when it comes to actually accomplishing something meaningful. They can answer questions but can’t research new findings based on supplied data. 11ai is our foray intro addressing this by connecting directly to the tools you use everyday through MCP integration.”

🎨 Interview: Chloe Ryan, Founder, Acrylic Robotics

One of our favorite startups from our AI & Creativity Summit in New York was Acrylic Robotics, a technology company democratizing art, founded by Chloe Ryan. Whilst Chloe spoke on stage on Emodied AI and hardware, which you can watch here, we wanted to catch up with her on the mission of Acrylic Robotics:

James Joseph: What was the original spark that led you to create Acrylic Robotics? Was there a specific moment or idea that set everything in motion?

Chloë Ryan: I've been a painter since I was 14. I started selling my paintings for like a few hundred a piece when I first started working as an artist and I became really frustrated because it would take me weeks or months to make a particular piece and I could only ever sell it one time, to one person. I eventually did the back of the napkin math and realised, I'm making like $2 an hour. So that was my entrepreneurial kick there. Realizing this is fun, beer money as a teenager, but how on earth will anybody ever make a living doing art?

I thought it was silly that art seemed to be valued not based on how good it is and how many people it resonated with, but based on how much someone could artificially restrict access to it. It just felt counterintuitive to the whole point of art, which to me was, let me pour myself into a physical object of some kind, and then let me let me have as many people as possible see it, enjoy it, be moved by it. I also studied mechanical engineering. That's my technical background or my formal academic background. So, I started building painting robots when I was 19 midway through my undergrad.

The idea at the beginning was to build a painting robot to actually just help me replicate my own art style many times over. That quickly snowballed into opening up access to other artists and then it snowballed obviously into the AI creation components.

That’s really interesting, so how do you define the artworks the system produces? With the texture and time commitment of an original work, yet a defined copy, they sit potentially in a new medium.

I think between a print and an original is an is an accurate way of of describing things. We came up with the term that we use to to call the art pieces. It's called an Aurograph. It's kind of like a lithograph.

If we can showcase the stroke chronology and the brushstroke handywork and the physicality of the materials, I think you capture a lot more of the artist's intent or essence or message that they're trying to communicate. If I just show you a sub subsection of our works, most people can't would not be able to say like, "Oh, that's made by a robot. It just looks like a painting.

Exactly. The artwork you created at our NY Summit looks like an original. I assume that you're pushing towards that democratization of art because I feel like that's really what you’re doing here.

Yes, an original except that more people can own it would be one way to phrase it. I think art accessibility is the core essence of what we're building, I think the fundamental belief that art should be valuable because it's good not because it's rare. I think for me it's how can we make access to amazing art way more accessible to a much broader subsegment of society. The stat is that 67% of Americans have never bought a single work of art of any kind.

That does lead to a question that I had about artist data. There’s this fascinating data component to Acrylic Robotics, in time with artists being able to licence their own models, how do you see this taking place at Acrylic, and just how can this help artists in this new AI world?

Practically speaking, I think that that's where the world of of visual creativity is going. The whole point of our future products that we want to release are, hey artist, upload a body of your work, give us access to some of your style with your consent, and allow people to use our tool plus your style to create versions in your similar style for other purposes.

I think you you are going to see a shift from artist as an artisan crafts person to artist as a brand or as a taste maker. That being said I think new tools like this will create new markets for all the things that I just said. But to me that's not necessarily connected to the future of art with a capital A. Art is a form of societal commentary. I always say art is one of the most important forms of societal critique, culture, dialogue. Artists are always going to be making art.

Can you talk about the training process? How does the robot “learn” an artist’s brushstroke, the right pressure, or order to paint?

So our core input technology is actually just digital painting, digital artwork. So an artist will use a tool like Adobe Illustrator or some other sort of of digital art soft digital art creation tool and we have built softwares that will pull all of their brush strokes.

Then we are working on machine learning models that will allow us to go from an image to a painting. So forget the need to learn exactly how to do these strokes with this blending. Simply give us a photo or tweak around with it and we can show you a render immediately of what that image would look like painted by the robots and you can control different stroke parameters to achieve your exact desired style. We are also working on machine learning models to try and capture the essence of an artist's style techniques and then transpose those onto an image or onto the brush strokes that we create.

What do you envision for the future of human-robot collaboration in modern art? Could we be seeing robot paintings at Frieze and Basel?

I think that there will be a lot of pioneering artists who see this as a novel art creation technique and want to get their hands on it to create one of one works to appear at places like Frieze and Basel. I feel like artists are the people to get excited and experiment with what they can make with it. That said, it doesn't necessarily mean they always end up in super high-end galleries, but I think from a high-end gallery or auction house standpoint it's like if we can produce something that is so much higher fidelity to an artist's original work, why would you not use that instead of a photo print? It's like you can get the real deal or you can get a knockoff.

🤖 The AI Content Conundrum

This week, both YouTube and Reddit have made major announcements in the fight of human vs AI content. The AI content boom whilst creating some fresh new perspectives, and allowing artists and creators to express themselves in new ways, has caused mayhem for platforms with what feels like unlimited AI Slop. We’re now seeing a fight back, as platforms come to terms with the new trend. The battle for SEO is becoming the battle for LLM training

YouTube has announced that “repetitive or mass-produced content” will no longer be monetized on the platform which is a direct hit at AI content farms. Original content creators are hoping this will see a rise in their viewing numbers, as AI Slop is predicted to reduce on the platform.

Reddit is also struggling to defend its subreddits from AI generated slop. Reddit historically ranks extremely well on search engines, giving brands and marketers big incentives to do well on Reddit for SEO purposes. Now with LLMs seeing Reddit as a goldmine, the battle to give authentic, original content is moving to humans vs AI. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman states: “It’s an arms race, it’s a never ending battle. The AI version of it, it’s a new frontier in the same battle that we’ve been fighting for a long time.”

With Meta investing so heavily in AI talent over the past few weeks, time will tell how the social media giant will tackle the same issue.

👾 THE AI & CREATIVITY SUMMIT: LA Edition

We’re thrilled to share that The AI & Creativity Summit is coming to Los Angeles on November 19, 2025! After a hugely successful NY Summit in April, we're back by popular demand - this time in Los Angeles, bigger and bolder than ever 😈.

Join 300 pioneers as we explore and celebrate the intersection of AI, Creativity, and human-machine collaboration. We’re offering a full-day deep dive experience thoughtfully curated across intimate conversations, live showcases, and spaces designed to foster deep connection and realtime insights.

Speakers will be announced soon. But to give you a feel for the last one, we had the likes of: Alejandro Matamala-Ortiz (CDO & Co-Founder, Runway), Claire Silver (World-renowned GenAI Artist), Dom Heinrich (Global Head of AI Design, Coca-Cola), Harry McCracken (Tech Editor, Fast Company), Vince Kadlubek (Founder, Meow Wolf), Hasard Lee (Author & Former F-35 Pilot), Paige Piskin (Creator), and many more. Check the below sizzle for a teaser of NY’s vibe…

​Please note: To ensure a high quality, curated experience, space is extremely limited and subject to approval.

Our friends at FWB

Friends With Benefits returns to the woods for the fourth edition of FWB FEST, a three-day summit of music, experimental scenes, and emerging tech, set on a historic arts campus in Idyllwild.

This year’s lineup includes Kamasi Washington, Clams Casino, LSDXOXO, SASAMI, Sudan Archives, and Nick León, plus intimate talks with your favorite yapper’s yapper, late-night DJ sets, and speculative workshops.

FEST is a secret third thing for the very online. Touch grass. Be a living angel on earth. Grab tickets for $99 https://www.fwbfest.info/

🤖 We’re Hiring

Join the team at AATM!

Partnerships Lead (Contract-to-Hire) A driven, entrepreneurial seller ready to bring in aligned, high-impact sponsors and partners. https://lnkd.in/g9NQNAhm

Event Operations & Partner Manager (Contract) For the ultra-organized, emotionally intelligent operations whiz who ensures every speaker and sponsor experience feels high-touch and seamless. https://lnkd.in/ggVbg9DH

Til next time,

Dani Van de Sande (Founder), James Joseph (The Weekly Newsletter’s Editor) & the Artist and the Machine team.

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