China’s Coming for Sora and Veo (And They’re Not Holding Back) | Austin's AI Newsletter

Hey friends — Austin here!

The AI game’s heating up.

Baidu just came out swinging. Google’s getting grilled in the EU. And we rolled out some killer upgrades that make video creation even easier inside Syllaby.

Buckle up—this week’s stacked.

🚨 In This Week’s Issue

• Breaking News: Baidu Just Body-Slammed Sora and Veo
• Syllaby: Bulk Creation. Smoother Motion. Smarter Scheduling.
• AI Marketing World: The Hidden Gem of AIMW (Most Attendees Miss This!)
• This Week in AI: Antitrust Heat, AI Voices, and Embracing the Mess
• Top AI Tools:Traffic, TL;DRs, and Funnels That Sell in Your Sleep
• Meme of the Week

📰 Breaking News: Baidu Just Body-Slammed Sora and Veo

Move over, OpenAI and Google—Baidu just came in swinging with MuseSteamer, a multimodal monster that might be the most underrated drop of the year.

✅ 10-second clips with synced visuals, sound effects, and spoken dialogue
✅ Powered by their in-house VLM (Vision-Language Model)
✅ Dialogue + SFX? Auto-generated and synced—no post needed

But here’s the real mic drop…

They open-sourced Ernie, their flagship LLM—and it’s no toy. Insiders are calling it the DeepSeek R1 of China, saying it could rival the biggest Western models.

Some even say it’s the most powerful open-source release since Meta’s LLaMA.

The message is clear:

China’s not catching up. They’re closing the gap—and fast.

Western labs? You’ve got two options now: go open, or get outpaced.

🎉 Sponsored by Syllaby

Coming Soon from Syllaby: Bulk Creation Gets Even Better

A couple of exciting updates are on the way—we’ve been building features that make content creation smoother and way less time-consuming.

✅ Animated Slides (Post-Video)

Soon, you’ll be able to add motion to multiple images after your video’s done—right inside the editor.
It’s a small tweak, but makes your videos look way more polished with almost no effort.

✅ CSV Upload for Bulk Video Creation

Got a bunch of scripts or product links ready?
You’ll be able to drop them into a CSV and generate all your videos in one go.
Perfect for batch creators who don’t want to do things one by one.

Just a couple of ways we’re trying to save you time and make the process easier.
Can’t wait to share these with you soon!

🎟️ Sponsored by AI Marketing World Conference

The Hidden Gem of AIMW (Most Attendees Miss This!)

Everyone shows up for the speakers.
But the savvy ones? They know the real magic happens in the back corner.

📍 The AI Vendor Zone isn’t just for browsing—it’s where you roll up your sleeves and actually try stuff.

Here’s why it’s kind of a cheat code:

✅ You get to test the newest AI tools on the spot—no long pitches, just hands-on
✅ You can talk directly with the people who built them (yes, they’re real and friendly)
✅ You might find something that saves you hours a week—before the conference even ends

Most folks overlook it. The smart ones build their entire toolkit from it.

So yeah, don’t skip the zone.
Come in curious. Walk out with a whole new setup.

🌐 This Week in AI — Smarter Teams, Smarter Tools, and Video Editing on the Go

Google Faces EU Antitrust Complaint Over AI Overviews

Google’s AI summaries just triggered a regulatory firestorm.

European publishers are accusing the tech giant of hijacking their traffic with AI-generated answer boxes—without proper credit or compensation.

🔹 37 of the top 50 U.S. news sites are losing clicks
🔹 Zero-click searches are up to 69%
🔹 Google’s response? “We help discovery” (publishers: not buying it)

👉 Read the full breakdown

VoiSpark – Clone Any Voice. Speak Like a Pro.

VoiSpark lets you generate smooth, natural speech—or even clone your voice—for content that actually sounds human.

🔹 Upload text or prompts
🔹 Choose a voice (or train your own)
🔹 Export for podcasting, narrations, or video dubs

It’s like ElevenLabs, but with a cleaner UI and lightning-fast render time.

👉 Try VoiSpark

Brex Says: Don’t Fear AI Chaos—Lean Into It

Fintech darling Brex is thriving not in spite of AI messiness—but because of it.

Instead of over-engineering guardrails, they’re embracing messy data and scrappy experiments to stay ahead.

🔹 AI isn't polished—yet—but it's powerful
🔹 Build fast, break things (with a plan)
🔹 Smart teams are rethinking structure, not just tools

👉 See how Brex is doing it

🛠️ Top AI Tools — Traffic, TL;DRs, and Funnels That Sell in Your Sleep

1. Ranked AI – SEO That Works (and Won’t Wreck Your Wallet)

Want Google to love you—without hiring an SEO agency?

Ranked AI automates your search strategy and helps you climb the ranks while you stay focused on creating.

🔹 Real SEO results, no fluff
🔹 Built for solopreneurs, startups, and content-first marketers
🔹 Just plug in, optimize, and go

👉 Explore Ranked AI 

2. FastRead – Your AI Speed Reader for Articles, PDFs & Reports

Info overload? FastRead is your new secret weapon.

It chews through dense PDFs, blogs, or reports—and gives you digestible summaries in seconds.

🔹 Just drop a link, file, or doc
🔹 Get the key insights instantly
🔹 Ideal for students, execs, and knowledge hoarders

👉 Try FastRead

3. GoHighLevel – Funnels, CRM, Emails… All in One Dashboard

Stop duct-taping tools together.

GoHighLevel replaces your entire marketing stack in one sleek, no-code platform.

🔹 Funnels, CRM, email, SMS, scheduling—done
🔹 Made for creators, consultants, and digital hustlers
🔹 Automate everything without touching a single line of code

👉 Check Out GoHighLevel

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AdQuick unlocks the benefits of Out Of Home (OOH) advertising in a way no one else has. Approaching the problem with eyes to performance, created for marketers with the engineering excellence you’ve come to expect for the internet.

Marketers agree OOH is one of the best ways for building brand awareness, reaching new customers, and reinforcing your brand message. It’s just been difficult to scale. But with AdQuick, you can easily plan, deploy and measure campaigns just as easily as digital ads, making them a no-brainer to add to your team’s toolbox.

Learn more now.

🎮 Meme of the Week

Wrapping It Up…

This week’s reminder:
The winners in AI aren’t the ones watching. They’re the ones building.

Move fast. Try new tools. Break th

Stay awesome,
Austin Armstrong, CEO
Syllaby, Inc.