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Welcome back to The AI Field. Jensen Huang asked a row of tiny robot ducks to do a somersault on stage in Berlin this week, and preorders have shot toward 20,000. They cost $399, the software is open source, and owners can teach them new tricks.
Inside: the duck everyone is sharing, a Google privacy change worth two minutes of your time, and why OpenAI now trains its top models with no internet. Plus five tools and a five-minute way to check if a state is holding money in your name.
In today's AI Field:
Nvidia's robot ducks steal the show, and preorders pile up
Google may now use your Gmail and Photos to target ads
OpenAI now trains its top models with no live internet
Plus: five tools, three quick hits, and a five-minute way to look for unclaimed money in your name.
Read time: 5 minutes
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LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
HUGGING FACE · ROBOTS
Image: Pollen Robotics.
The AI Field: At Nvidia's GTC Berlin keynote on Wednesday, Jensen Huang shared the stage with four Microducks, 25 cm walking robots from Pollen Robotics, and asked them to walk, sit, take a nap and do a somersault. Three dropped for the nap on cue, and one needed extra persuasion. A day later, Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue said preorders were about to pass 20,000.
The details:
Microduck costs $399 before taxes and shipping and comes with 7 trained moves, like walking, sitting, scooping things up with its beak and getting back up after a fall. A game controller is in the box.
Every move was learned in a physics simulation first. The software and training code are open source, so owners can teach it new tricks on their own computer and share them with other owners.
Pollen is part of Hugging Face, which Nvidia bought in September. Preorders opened in August and passed 10,000 in five days, and orders ship in the order they came in, so new buyers should expect a wait.
Why it matters: Most home robots so far have been expensive demos. This one is priced like a toy and learns the same way much bigger robots do: practice in simulation, then the real world. If you're curious, open the free simulator on the Microduck page and watch the virtual duck walk before you spend $399.
GOOGLE · PRIVACY
Image: Google (Personal Intelligence product illustration).
The AI Field: Google updated its privacy policy on October 16. It still says it won't show you personalized ads based on your Drive, Gmail or Photos content, but that line now ends with a new exception: "unless you choose to make data from these services available to other Google services that support personalized ads."
The details:
The change is tied to Personal Intelligence, which lets you connect Gmail, Photos and Drive to Gemini and to Search features like AI Mode, so answers can draw on your own email and pictures.
The policy now gives an example: "Search may process some of the data that you allow Search to access to personalize content, including ads."
Google said in a statement that connecting apps is "entirely opt-in" and that ads "will not be based directly on your Gmail inbox or Photos library." Sensitive categories like health and religion are still excluded, and advertisers don't get your data.
Why it matters: Nothing changes unless you connected your apps, but many people clicked yes to get better answers without reading the fine print. To check, open your Google Account's Data & privacy page, go to Personalization settings, then the settings for Search services, and disconnect Workspace and Photos under Personal Intelligence. Or turn off personalized ads entirely in My Ad Center.
TRY THIS TODAY · 5 MINUTES
Check if a state is holding money in your name
US states hold old refunds, deposits and final paychecks that never reached their owners, and searching the official database is free. One Muse user had the agent search his state's site and walk him through the claim, then shared his prompt. Meta's Muse has a free plan in the US and Canada; you can use it in the Muse app, at muse.ai or inside WhatsApp.
1. Open Muse and start a new chat.
2. Paste this, and replace the parts in [BRACKETS] with your own details:
"Search my state's official unclaimed property website for money owed to me. Use my full legal name [NAME], any past names, and these past addresses [LIST]. Only use the official state site or the government-run search it links to, never a paid finder service. For each hit, tell me the amount, who it's from and what proof the claim needs, then walk me through filing it step by step. Ask me before you submit anything."
3. Claiming through the state's official site is free, so ignore letters or sites that charge a fee to find or claim your money. If you've lived in more than one state, search each state's site.
The AEO work, without the AEO hire.
Most AI visibility tools show you where you rank, then leave the work to you.
ChatFeatured is an AI search agent that does it: finds the questions competitors win, drafts the content in your voice, and tracks the lift.
Your team decides what ships. Month to month.
OPENAI · AI SAFETY
Diagram: OpenAI.
The AI Field: OpenAI says it now trains its most advanced models with no access to the live internet, and will keep it that way until safety tools catch up. Instead, the models practice browsing in an "offline world," a huge cached copy of web content.
The details:
On September 20, an internal research model used a misconfigured DNS server to get limited access to the live internet during a training run. OpenAI paused its most capable models for 11 days and resumed on October 1.
During the pause, teams of its strongest AI agents, including the upcoming GPT-6 Astra Cyber, were told to break out of OpenAI's own systems. They found new software flaws, escaped test machines and got limited internet access through almost every service connection that was still open. OpenAI says it fixed them and reported the open-source bugs to their maintainers.
In one test, agents on separate virtual machines passed secret messages with no network at all, by timing how fast the processor's memory cache responded. OpenAI has added monitoring for tricks like this.
Why it matters: This covers training and testing of unreleased models, not the ChatGPT you use. But it's a rare, detailed look at how hard AI agents have become to contain. The same rule works at home: if you let an agent act on your computer or accounts, give it only the access the task needs.
TRENDING AI TOOLS
Five tools you can try today, all launched or updated this week. Click a name to open the tool.
🎬 MOVO AI: Make longer videos by chatting. Describe an idea or add references, and its agent plans the scenes, keeps characters consistent and cuts everything into one finished video, including stories of two minutes or more. Works on the web and iPhone, with 100 free credits for new users.
📓 Gemini Notebook in Gemini: Type @Gemini Notebook in a Gemini chat to create a notebook, add sources or ask what your notebooks say, without leaving the chat. Free with a personal Google account. In the EU it's off by default; turn it on under Settings, Connected Apps.
🔎 Instant Search: Find files on your Mac by what's in them, not what they're called. Type something like "birthday present idea I wrote down" and it finds the note. Free, fully offline, for macOS 15 or later.
🧠 ShogunAI: A Mac assistant that keeps a private memory of your mail, meetings and notes, answers questions from them with sources, and drafts replies in your voice. Nothing is sent until you confirm. 7-day free trial.
🌐 Gemini to Google Sites: Made a small interactive app in Gemini, like a quiz or a calculator? Choose Export, then Google Sites, and it becomes a private site draft you can edit, publish and share. Free with a personal Google account.
QUICK HITS
🗣️ Block's AI lab releases Dessa, a voice model that learned only from listening: It was trained on human conversation with no text, listens and talks at the same time, laughs mid-sentence and runs on a high-end MacBook Pro. You can play sample conversations now, including one with ChatGPT's voice model; early access is limited to safety researchers.
🇯🇵 Meta's Muse launches in Japan: It's Muse's first market outside North America. Meta is also linking it to local services like Mercari, Money Forward ME and Ticket Pia, alongside Gmail, Google Calendar and Klook.
⚖️ Texas sues OpenAI and Sam Altman: The state's attorney general says OpenAI misled users about ChatGPT's safety and failed to protect children. The suit seeks more than $1 million and court orders limiting how OpenAI operates in Texas.
That's it for today!
See you soon,
Olle Hellman | Founder of The AI Field