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- 📰Trace Lab Newsletter #13
📰Trace Lab Newsletter #13
(English version)
Nicolas Sainte Cluque
May 12, 2025
🌍 Welcome back Tracers!🌟
Welcome to the 13th edition of the Trace Lab newsletter – your backstage pass to the boldest breakthroughs in AI, fresh tools to level up your creative workflows, and the innovations shaping the future of media.
This week, we’re zooming in on Adobe’s smart video-editing upgrades, ByteDance’s surprise move in AI video, and OpenAI’s secret plans to go social 👀. We’re also highlighting why tech giants want teens coding AI before they graduate — and dropping some next-gen tools you’ll actually want to try out.
🚀 Let’s dive in, stay sharp, and keep leading the curve together!
And if you don’t want to read it, you can now listen to it! 🎧
👇
LATEST NEWS
Adobe
🔥 Adobe's Premiere Gets an AI Boost with Firefly Extend!
Say goodbye to tedious reshoots! Adobe just rolled out a powerful Firefly-powered update to Premiere Pro called Generative Extend. This new AI feature brings slick 4K clip extensions, smarter footage search, and instant subtitle translation into your editing workflow.
What’s new:
Generative Extend: Easily stretch video and ambient audio clips up to 4K — no need for reshoots, just seamless AI-generated filler frames.
Media Intelligence Panel: Search footage using natural language to locate people, objects, or camera angles fast.
Caption Translation: Instantly translate subtitles into 27 languages — goodbye, manual translation!
Vertical video support: Designed with social-first content creation in mind.
Why it matters for Trace
This update is a game-changer for our editors and producers. Whether it’s extending interviews, adapting content for multilingual audiences, or speeding up post-production — these tools directly enhance agility, reduce costs, and keep us ahead in fast-paced content cycles. Perfect for Trace Studios, TV and social formats.
ByteDance
🎥 Seaweed: ByteDance’s Tiny Video Model Making Big Waves
ByteDance just dropped Seaweed, a lean and mean 7B-parameter video generation model that's going toe-to-toe with giants like Google Veo and Kling — but using a fraction of the compute. It’s a breakthrough for efficient, high-quality content creation.
Key Points:
Multimodal generation: From text, image or audio inputs to 20-second clips — Seaweed does it all.
Top-tier results: Outperforms Sora and Wan 2.1 in human evaluations, especially in image-to-video generation.
Cinematic precision: Handles storytelling, camera movement and lip-sync audio — yes, it animates humans realistically!
Optimized for creators: Tuned for tasks like human animation and dialogue scenes, great for storytelling formats.
Why It Matters for Trace
Seaweed is a major signal that video AI is maturing fast — and becoming more affordable. For Trace, that means low-latency tools for animating music video ideas, verticals, or even AI-driven show intros. With models like this, our creative teams can experiment more — without draining budgets or compute power.
Education
🧠 AI Education Goes Mainstream: Tech Giants Push for High School AI Courses
Over 250 tech leaders — including CEOs from Microsoft, Adobe, Zoom, and Airbnb — just signed a powerful open letter urging U.S. states to mandate AI and computer science courses in high schools. The message? AI fluency should be as fundamental as math or English.
Key Points:
The letter calls for the U.S. to stay competitive with countries like China, which already mandate AI learning at school.
Research shows just one high school CS course can boost wages by 8%, across all sectors.
Major signatories: Executives from Microsoft, AMD, Uber, Dropbox, LinkedIn, Indeed, and Khan Academy.
Backed by policy: Comes alongside Trump’s new executive order to grow K–12 AI education nationwide.
Why It Matters for Trace
As a youth-focused media brand, Trace should pay close attention to how AI literacy will define the next generation. This shift opens doors for Trace Academia to become a leader in accessible, mobile-first AI learning — and for our content teams to create formats that help young people build real-world tech skills.
OpenAI
🧵 OpenAI's Next Big Move? A Social Network Powered by ChatGPT
It’s not just talk anymore: OpenAI is reportedly prototyping a social platform that would tap into ChatGPT’s massive user base — merging AI generation with community interaction, and possibly shaking up the social media status quo.
Key Points:
A prototype feed is in development internally, showcasing ChatGPT’s image creation and likely featuring interactive AI content.
Format TBD: It might be a new app, a ChatGPT feature, or just vaporware — but it's real enough for CEO Sam Altman to seek outside feedback.
Altman teased the idea after Meta’s assistant news, replying “ok fine, maybe we’ll do a social app.”
The move would give OpenAI access to live, real-world data at scale — a goldmine for model training.
Why It Matters for Trace
An OpenAI social platform could open up entirely new forms of user engagement with AI — and potentially reshape how creators build, share, and monetize content. It’s worth keeping an eye on, both for community-based formats and real-time feedback loops for creative media.
Training
🧠 NotebookLM – AI-Powered Research Gets Smarter with “Discover Sources”
“Your new research BFF — now with one-click source discovery.”
Google’s NotebookLM is already one of the smartest tools out there for turning documents into dynamic research hubs. But the new Discover Sources feature takes things to the next level — letting you find and add web-based insights directly into your notebook with just a few clicks.
Here is how it works:
In your notebook, hit the “Discover” button in the Sources panel.
Enter a specific topic, like “AI-driven dubbing tools for multilingual content” or “TikTok algorithm transparency”.
NotebookLM will pull together a curated list of relevant web sources, including articles, reports, and expert pages.
Add your favorites to your notebook instantly — no need to search Google manually.
From there, use NotebookLM’s AI to:
Generate Briefing Docs that summarize multiple sources.
Ask questions through the integrated chat interface.
Create audio overviews for on-the-go learning.
Why It Matters for Trace
This is a game-changer for editorial and production teams researching new trends, prepping guest interviews, or scanning for tech updates. It cuts research time dramatically while keeping everything centralized and interactive.
Pro tip: Be very specific with your topic — NotebookLM works best when it knows exactly what you’re after.
NEW PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS
GPTs and AI Tools Spotlight
🎨 Canva Visual Suite 2.0 – Create across all formats with AI
Design presentations, videos, social posts, and docs with AI-powered tools that generate visuals, auto-layout content, and even voice narrate.
🎹 Suno 4.5 – Next-gen AI music creation
Compose full tracks from text prompts — perfect for backing music, sound branding, or show intros. Now supports complex musical structures and better vocals.
📈 Freepik AI Video Upscaler – Upscale low-quality footage to 4K in a click
Great for reviving old assets or giving social clips a professional edge. AI sharpens visuals, fixes blur, and enhances resolution automatically.
📱 Vista Social – A simply better social media manager
Plan, publish, and analyze across all your social channels. Built with agencies in mind, it supports collaboration, content calendars, and AI-enhanced scheduling.
🤖 Tidio – Resolve customer requests with Lyro AI Agent
Automate up to 64% of your support across chat, email, and social in 12 languages. Ideal for streamlining user interaction on Trace platforms or brand campaigns.
UNTIL NEXT TIME…
Let’s keep exploring — together!
What you just read isn’t just news — it’s raw material. Tools to remix. Ideas to steal (ethically 😎).
Whether you’re in the studio, behind a lens, on the mic, or shaping tomorrow’s formats — AI is now part of the creative stack.
Use this drop as fuel. Build something weird. Break something old. Prototype that wild idea you’ve been sitting on.
And remember: Trace Lab’s got your back. Want to co-create a GPT? Rethink a workflow? Test a crazy feature in the wild? Let’s talk.
Next week, same time. New tools, new power moves.
👁️ Stay bold, stay playful, stay in beta.