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The Week That Accelerated AI: Key Insights for Business Leaders
As 2024 draws to a close, AI development shows no signs of halting—even while many organizations wind down for the year. Far from slowing, major tech players are executing billion-dollar deals, launching advanced models, and unlocking new use cases for businesses worldwide. Here’s a concise, detail-driven breakdown of the AI advancements spotlighted in this week’s industry roundup—curated specifically for strategic business impact.
AI Partnerships: Examining OpenAI’s $10 Billion Move with Amazon
OpenAI is reportedly in confidential talks with Amazon for a partnership that could exceed $10 billion. Unlike previous exclusive arrangements, this deal would grant OpenAI access to AWS’s AI chips and potentially increase flexibility after OpenAI’s October restructuring. The partnership aligns with a broader strategy to diversify compute resources beyond Microsoft, which has invested over $13 billion since 2019.
Business value:
Reduces dependency on a single compute provider (Microsoft), offering greater operational resilience.
Facilitates rapid scaling to meet rising AI-powered product usage.
OpenAI’s pursuit of additional capital (potentially valuing the company at over $800 billion) signals aggressive expansion—opening possibilities for enterprise customers who require robust, scalable AI solutions.
Model Innovations: Meta, Google, and OpenAI Redrawing Boundaries
Meta’s AI Model Roadmap: Mango and Avocado
Meta is preparing new image/video (Mango) and text (Avocado) models for release in 2026. Notably, these may shift away from open source toward proprietary offerings—a response to competitive pressure from Google, OpenAI, and Adobe, whose tools are rapidly gaining traction.
Business value:
Companies using Meta’s models can anticipate increased performance and possibly new licensing models or access guidelines—critical for AI-dependent product strategists.
Google’s Gemini 3 Flash: Default for Billions
Google launched Gemini 3 Flash, now the default for free users in Google’s Gemini app and search AI mode. It outperforms even the Pro version on key coding agent benchmarks (like SWE Bench Verify), thanks to advanced reinforcement learning techniques—indicating rapid evolution in practical AI capabilities.
Business value:
Multimodal reasoning (analyzing video, audio, text, and images) available to the broadest user base yet, foreshadowing a drastic increase in AI-driven tasks with low compute costs.
As Google experiments with defaulting search to AI, enterprise visibility and SEO strategies may require significant adaptation.
OpenAI’s GPT-1.5 Image: New Benchmark Leader
OpenAI’s GPT-1.5 Image now leads LM Arena’s text-to-image benchmarks, edging out Google’s Nano Banana Pro model. Differences are nuanced: Google’s model excels with realistic image output and text-intensive graphics; OpenAI’s model better handles iterative workflows and context awareness. Both signify advancements but with application-specific strengths.
Business value:
More reliable image editing and creation at speed, allowing content teams and marketing departments to streamline creative processes.
The emergence of collaborative workspaces within the apps suggests new approaches for project ideation and productivity.
Agentic AI Tools: Claude Chrome Plugin and OpenAI’s App Store
Anthropic expanded access to its Claude Chrome plugin, allowing automation of form fills, email/calendar management, and workflow completion directly from a browser extension. This signals a move toward more accessible agentic AI, not just for developers, but now for non-technical users.
Simultaneously, OpenAI’s App Store for ChatGPT now opens to third-party developers. Over 35 apps—including integrations with Photoshop, GitHub, Gmail, and Stripe—are available at launch, enabling functional expansion directly within ChatGPT’s interface.
Business value:
Browser-based AI agents reduce friction for repetitive or multi-step business tasks, increasing knowledge worker productivity.
Third-party app integration means specialized solutions (from financial ops to marketing) can be quickly embedded into core workflows.
Government-Led AI Initiatives: The Genesis Mission
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Genesis mission brings together 24 leading firms—including AWS, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, Intel, and more—to develop architecture-agnostic AI tools for scientific discovery, national security, and energy innovation. The initiative aims to reduce exposure to foreign adversaries and increase domestic AI leadership.
Business value:
Fosters an open, cross-vendor ecosystem, spurring competition and ensuring U.S.-based companies retain access to frontier models and research.
Innovation in sovereign AI will impact regulatory compliance, security standards, and supply chain strategies for U.S.-focused enterprises.
Practical Productivity Gains: NotebookLM, Personalization, and Data Tables
Google NotebookLM, now leveraging Gemini 3, provides improved multimodal reasoning and integration features. Notable releases include data tables (auto-generating structured insights from unstructured sources) and exports to Google Sheets—improving extract-transform-load (ETL) operations for analytical teams.
Users also benefit from new ChatGPT personalization options: toggling warmth, enthusiasm, and content formatting to suit communication or brand standards.
Business value:
Enhanced speed and reliability in synthesizing project research and operational data, vital for consultants and knowledge-based work.
Customizable AI communication features support more consistent branding and stakeholder engagement when deploying AI-generated content.
Shifts in Deployment and Leadership: Enterprise Adoption and New Strategic Hires
Other notable moves:
BBVA deployed Chatt GBT Enterprise to 120,000 employees, marking one of the industry’s largest corporate rollouts.
Amazon’s AI leadership shuffle underscores its intent to consolidate AI, chip design, and quantum computing under focused innovation leadership—hinting at vertical integration that could impact enterprise supplier negotiations.
Conclusion: Fast-Moving Landscape Demands Constant Oversight
End-of-year slowdowns are not reflective of the AI sector’s momentum. Cross-company partnerships, constant model upgrades, and government-backed initiatives mean businesses must continuously reassess technology adoption, competitive positioning, and regulatory compliance. For those reimagining workflows, data analysis, or customer engagement, the period ahead promises more practical opportunity—but only for those ready to keep up.
Topics Covered in This Episode:
- OpenAI and Amazon $10B AI Partnership Talks
- Microsoft-OpenAI Partnership Structure Update
- Meta's Mango and Avocado AI Model Launch
- Anthropic Claude Chrome Plugin Public Release
- OpenAI's ChatGPT App Store Launch
- Google Gemini 3 Flash Model Default Rollout
- US Department of Energy Genesis Mission Partners
- Google NotebookLM Gemini 3 Integration and Updates
- OpenAI GPT-4 Turbo Image 1.5 Benchmarks
- Meta, Google, Amazon AI Competitive Positioning
Episode Transcript
Jordan Wilson [00:00:16]:
It's the end of the year, so maybe things have started to wind down for you or your company, and that's understandable. That's usually what happens, especially here in The US with the holidays around the corner. But don't sleep on what happened in the AI world this week, because while maybe many of us are starting to wind down, if anything, the AI wars have only started to heat up. I mean, just this week, we have a new multibillion dollar partnership, a new large language model update that may impact billions of Internet users, and a new image model that at least by the rankings is the best in the world. Alright. If you're not ready to clock out yet for 2025 and you wanna know what's happening in the world of AI without wasting hours every single day, we got you. Let's get into it. Welcome.
Jordan Wilson [00:01:14]:
My name is Jordan Wilson, and this is Everyday AI. If you're new here, this is a daily livestream podcast and free daily newsletter helping everyday business leaders like you and me not just keep up with what's happening in the world of AI, but how we can make sense of the nonstop updates because they are nonstop, and just extract the important insights to grow our companies and our careers. Starts here with the unedited, unscripted livestream podcast, but to really take it to the next level, your cheat code is our website, youreverydayai.com. There, you can obviously go watch and listen to more than 670 episodes all sorted by category, but you're gonna go wanna sign up for our free daily newsletter where each day we recap the podcast, and we give you the AI news that you need for the day. Alright. So, FYI, if you missed it last week, make sure you go back and listen to episodes six seventy four and six seventy six, our 2025 AI roadmap rewind. It's extremely important. They're quicker episodes, so make sure you go back and give those a listen.
Jordan Wilson [00:02:13]:
Also, couple housekeeping things. So the newsletter and podcast will be taking the short break at the end of this week from Wednesday to Friday. Yeah. With, Christmas Eve and Christmas, and like I said, most people, especially in The US winding down, we at Everyday AI are going to as well. So we're gonna be also, for the rest of the year playing some of our top, podcasts from the year, so don't miss that. So maybe you missed something back in June or an important interview, back in May. We're gonna be playing some of our favorites as we cook up something special for you. So make sure you stay tuned for that.
Jordan Wilson [00:02:49]:
Alright. Let's get into the AI news that matters now for the week of December 22. Alright. First, a big one here. A $10,000,000,000 partnership between two of the biggest names in tech that not a lot of people are talking about. So, according to reports, OpenAI is in confidential discussions with Amazon about a potential investment and an agreement for OpenAI to use AWS's AI chips. So according to reporting from the information, the talks could include an investment that might exceed $10,000,000,000, from, Amazon to OpenAI, though details remained fluid and are subject to change. So the information first reported the details and then, some more information here, from the CNBC report that I'm showing on screen.
Jordan Wilson [00:03:38]:
So the discussions follow OpenAI's October restructure that gave it greater flexibility to raise outside capital and to enter partnerships, for compute beyond its primary backer, Microsoft. So Microsoft has invested more than 13,000,000,000 in OpenAI since 2019 and maintains a major partnership, but it no longer has exclusive rights to be OpenAI's compute provider after those October changes. So Amazon already has large investments in the AI startup scene of aside from their own Nova models, and obviously their AWS presence, including at least $8,000,000,000 invested in anthropic and is also expanding its AI chip strategy with its new Trainium line. So, OpenAI has also signed these similar deals and, you know, there's a lot of scrutiny out there, right, when people are like, oh, OpenAI raised $10,000,000,000, but sometimes you gotta read the, the footnotes, and it's like, oh, well, it's mainly just to, you know, buy, these chips or to use, you know, these certain chips. So, you know, they have a kind of similar deal, with other big providers such as Nvidia, AMD, and even Broadcom, where they're reportedly working on their own in house AI chips. So, OpenAI recently completed a $6,600,000,000 secondary share that valued the company at about $500,000,000,000, but there's new reporting this week that OpenAI is out to raise another fresh set of, funds that would value the company at more than $800,000,000,000. So pretty big news here. And OpenAI even came out with, a lot of people found it kind of strange.
Jordan Wilson [00:05:22]:
Right? They put a video out, that said, hey. We've had to pause research, you know, because we have all these, you know, viral, you know, products. Right? And they're like, we don't have enough compute. So, maybe this is, this new $10,000,000,000 partnership, with Amazon is something that will help them scale in 2026 and beyond as Google has really started to pick up the steam and catch OpenAI on a lot of fronts. Alright. Speaking of catching Google, Meta is reportedly coming out with their own version of nano banano, nano banana. Sorry. So, according, to reports in the Wall Street Journal, Meta is preparing to release Mango, a new image and video model, and then Avocado, which we mentioned last week, their new generation text model.
Jordan Wilson [00:06:13]:
So, Meta's super intelligence labs with which is led, by former Scale AI founder Alexander Wang is reportedly developing Mango for images and video and Avocado for text with both models expected to be released in the 2026 according to The Wall Street Journal. So the plan launches come as Metis tries to close the gap with rivals in creative AI, especially, Google, OpenAI, and Adobe, which already offers strong image and video generation tools. And, I mean, if you've been paying attention at all, I mean, Google's recent nano banana image generation, image generation tool has just gone absolutely viral and has been one key factor at least in Google really closing the gap with OpenAI when it comes to just overall users. So Meta's move highlights how the consumer AI race has kinda shifted from just text chat to more just trying to create viral visual content or at least useful AI visual content. And we did, talk about this last week. These new models from OpenAI may reportedly be proprietary. Right? So, their previous llama models have been, essentially open source models, right, that you can, use for free under most conditions. So reporting has said that Meta may be shifting their strategy, and they've been kind of essentially quiet for nearly eight months with no major releases at least on the LLM side.
Jordan Wilson [00:07:41]:
They've had a lot of, releases on their Sam side, the segment, anything, but it's kind of been quiet on the large language model text front. I don't even think that their, llama four behemoth model, was actually released. I'll have to go back and check that unless you guys know in the newsletter. But, yeah, it's been kind of quiet on the meta front ever since they've been spending, tens of billions of dollars on these aqua hires, these acquisitions, paying researchers reportedly, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars over short term contracts. So I I don't know. We'll find out, I guess, in early twenty twenty six if men is gonna come out cooking or if it's gonna be a swing and miss, but we do know at least where they're trying to compete. Alright. Next piece of AI news, and this may seem like a small little update, but I think it's actually gonna be bigger and might be shifting my viewpoint on anthropic in the new year.
Jordan Wilson [00:08:33]:
So anthropic has just, widened access and released their Claude Chrome plugin to anyone on a paid plan, where previously, it was restricted to only those, users on the max, tier or on enterprise, tier plans. So the cloud, Claude Chrome plug in, yeah, which runs on the cloud, but Claude Chrome, plug in, lets paid Claude users install the extension and have Claude interact with websites, which means the model can now fill forms, manage email and calendars, and complete multi step workflows on a user's behalf. And this is pretty big. Right? Not just, you know, finally rolling out access to all paid users, but even just their approach here because we know that Claudette has some of the best computer use in agentic models in the world, with their new 4.5, releases. So a little bit different strategy here when it comes to the agentic side for consumers, right, where, you see perplexity and OpenAI taking more of approach of releasing agentic browsers in Comet and Atlas, respectively. And Claude, on the other hand, going the Chrome extension route. So I have been testing it for a couple of days. There's some things I think it does pretty well.
Jordan Wilson [00:09:53]:
And it does maybe just as well as perplexity or Atlas. And then there's other things that I think it maybe falls short on, and that would maybe be better suited, for an agentic browser. Yet, at the same token, right, we've heard OpenAI kind of, you know, had to pause or slightly slow down a lot of their other projects, including reportedly the Atlas browser, although it's back to being updated fairly regularly right now. So a little bit different, you you know, strategy here with Anthropic, but I think it's encouraging to see, some of their later moves in 2025 maybe signaling a shift that they are not necessarily abandoning the everyday non coding, consumer and non coding teams. Right? That's kind of been their specialty is just anything on software engineering, development, coding. Right? So now it's encouraging to see Anthropic rolling out, you know, still, yes, little technical, updates, but ones that are not necessarily, just for people in the software engineering and related spaces. All right, next piece. And I didn't even tease this one, in the opener and it might be one of the biggest news AI news stories of the year, technically, because this is either going to be a big splash or a flop.
Jordan Wilson [00:11:07]:
We'll see. So OpenAI has officially launched its app store and is now accepting third party app submissions. So, yes, this week, they did launch their app directory, so you can go find it at chatgpt.com/apps, making it possible for chat g p t's 800 plus million users to search, discover, and install apps that run directly inside of conversations. So, developers and here's the new news aside from the App Store is now live. And I think last count, there was maybe, 35 or so apps available depending on what country, you're in. But the big news here is now developers can submit apps. Whereas before, OpenAI had a very kind of controlled rollout with just some trusted partners. But now app submissions are open to third party developers, and those may be approved as soon as early twenty twenty six.
Jordan Wilson [00:12:03]:
So if you are a developer, you can submit apps through the OpenAI developer platform. You can track the review status, and you must meet OpenAI's usage, safety, and privacy guidelines before any apps appear in the app directory. So if you're trying to use apps, well, once you install them and for some of them, obviously, you would need to connect your account. So if you wanna use the Canva app as an example and design things inside of chat g b t, well, you wanna connect your Canva app. But once installed, users can just invoke, apps by hitting the apt, button and then clicking it or sometimes depending on what you say, OpenAI will just assume, oh, you want to use this certain app. So there's some early restrictions right now. Apps may link out to complete purchases, but only for physical goods and selling digital goods, subscriptions, or in app services is not available right now. Also, all apps must be suitable for general audiences, including teens and include a clear privacy policy and support contact.
Jordan Wilson [00:13:04]:
So, yeah. And if you haven't been paying attention, the last couple of weeks, there's actually been some fairly useful apps that have been released. Right? So we covered last week, Photoshop released a handful, including their Photoshop app, but here's some other ones that just dropped. I mean, now you have GitHub, Replitz, Gmail, Lovable, Mailchimp, Stripe. So, yeah, a lot of other apps that have just launched. Alright. Next big piece of AI news, and this is the one that will technically impact billions of Internet users, and it's actually much bigger than you may think. So Google has launched Gemini three Flash, a faster and cheaper version of its Gemini three Pro model.
Jordan Wilson [00:13:53]:
And here's the big piece of news. They made it the default model in the Gemini app, even for free users and in AI mode in search also for free users. So, yeah, even if you are a free user, if you're using Google Gemini or if you're just using AI mode in search, now it is run by Gemini three Flash, which is pretty cool because the benchmarks on Gemini three Flash are very impressive. So Google says Gemini three Flash is faster and cheaper to run than previous Flash releases, and it will replace eventually Gemini 2.5 Flash for routine tasks nationwide. So the new model adds multimodal reasoning. It can watch videos, inspect images, listen to audio, and even read text. Right? Then turn those inputs into content and answers. So, Google also according to their internal benchmarks, which is very impressive.
Jordan Wilson [00:14:49]:
So this is the smaller, faster version of Gemini three Pro, which was released just over a month ago. Yet Gemini three Flash outperforms Gemini three Pro on some key benchmarks, including SWE Bench Verify, which is a coding agent benchmark. So a lot of people were wondering on Twitter and elsewhere, okay, how is this brand new model, you know, outperforming the bigger version, the pro version on one of the most important metrics going into 2026, which is, you know, SuiteBench verified, which is a coding agent benchmark. Right? And essentially, some Google staffers have, kind of said that this model is not a distilled version of the bigger model, which a lot of people assume, oh, the big model, they build that in the flash or the small or the mini, right, depending on which company that you're looking at, is just a distilled version. Right? It's a watered down version of the big one, and that's not necessarily true in this case. Right? Because, Google did say that they, applied some new, reinforcement learning techniques to Gemini three Flash, which allowed actually some of the benchmarks to improve over the model that they just released a month ago. And they also did denote that Gemini three Pro will probably be getting a couple refreshes even before the generally available model. So, yeah, you're not gonna see a Gemini probably not gonna see a Gemini, you know, 3.1, pro or anything like that, but we will see versions of Gemini three pro that are better and more capable than the one that we got in mid November.
Jordan Wilson [00:16:21]:
And like I said, this is big because we've heard that eventually Google may default, the Google search to AI mode. Right? So it running on Gemini three flash is literally potentially bringing one of the now world's most capable models. Right? Gemini three Flash, is a top five model on artificial analysis. Yes. The small, cheap, fast version is extremely powerful. And like I said, this could be rolling out, right, when when and if Google does make that transition to billions of users worldwide. Alright. More intelligence for everyone.
Jordan Wilson [00:16:59]:
Yum. Yum. Yum. Alright. Next piece of AI news, speaking of intelligence, but this time at the federal level. So the US Department of Energy has announced agreements with 24 tech organizations to collaborate on their Genesys mission, a government led effort to use advanced AI systems to accelerate scientific discovery, strengthen national security, and drive energy innovation. So we did cover the Genesis mission a couple of weeks ago when it was first announced, but now we know which third parties are going to be involved in this domestic project, and that includes some of the biggest names in tech. Right? So Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, Intel, IBM, AMD, OpenAI, Anthropic, Oracle, HPE, Dell, Cerebras, Grok, the Inference company, not XAI's chatbot, CoreWeave, Palantir, right, several others.
Jordan Wilson [00:17:56]:
So, essentially, any big name in tech or big any big name, in AI, is involved. I don't know if I read off, Infropic and Oracle on that list, but they're in there too. So the announcement follows president Trump's executive order on removing barriers to American leadership in AI. And also supports the administration's Americans, America's AI action plan aimed at reducing reliance on foreign adversaries. So the department of energy says the Genesis mission will unite companies, universities, nonprofits, and national laboratories to accelerate research productivity, and just really push The US on science, innovation, and AI development. So the DOE specified that any tool or products developed for Genesys mission will be architecture agnostic. In other words, they'll be designed to work across different hardware and software systems, which could broaden access for researchers and company. And obviously, the amount of data, that is going to be available is amounts of data that we have not generally seen, for Frontier models.
Jordan Wilson [00:19:05]:
So this is actually exciting and we'll see how this develops. We don't know a lot about these new partnerships, yet, but it's gonna be unfolding. And, hey, spoiler alert, when we go into our 2026, AI road map series, Sovereign AI is definitely gonna be at the top of the list, and this Genesis mission does play into it. And I think this does impact everyone. Right? Even if you're not an international company, whether you realize it or not, the AI race, it's it's impacting people's four zero one k, especially here in The US. It's it's impacting national security. It's impacting energy. Right? So it's impacting things at home that you may not even be aware of.
Jordan Wilson [00:19:46]:
So this is something that we're definitely gonna be keeping an eye on over the next couple of months. All right. Next piece of AI news, everyone's favorite AI tool. Right? I don't know. It's it's it's a top toss-up for me, but I can't go through more than a day or so without using notebook l m, and notebook l m has announced a series of pretty big product updates this week. Kind of snuck them in like ever right? When everyone's logging off, for 2026, notebook out loud is like, here, let's slap you with a bunch of big updates. So, one of the biggest one is now it runs on Gemini three. So previously, notebook l m was powered by Gemini 2.5.
Jordan Wilson [00:20:35]:
Now it is powered by Gemini three, Google's most capable model, improving reasoning and multimodal understanding compared to prior versions and a promising more accurate synthesis of text, images, and unstructured data. Alright. Couple more big updates. The next one, and this one is maybe just as big. Well, Gemini and notebook LM integration is now live for many paid users at least. So if you go into, your paid, account and if you click the plus button in notebook l n, you'll probably see, or sorry, in Google Gemini, you'll probably see a new notebook l m tab, and then you can upload notebooks into the Gemini app, enabling combined notebook projects, generations of images or apps inspired by your notebook research, and continue development of notebooks with integrated web research tools. So at least for me, this didn't go to any of my paid workspace accounts, but it did go to my paid personal account. So, we'll see if that, remains true.
Jordan Wilson [00:21:38]:
I'm hoping it does roll out to all paid accounts. But I would check yours as, as well. Just right now, go into the Gemini app, click that little, plus button, there in Gemini. And if it's there, there'll be a new notebook l m tab. So where you would normally see things like, you know, upload files, add from drive, import code, there will or should be a new button there if you're on a paid personal plan. Alright. That's not all. There's two other updates.
Jordan Wilson [00:22:07]:
So one was data tables are available now to all pro and ultra users with free users getting access in the coming weeks. So tables essentially let users synthesize facts across sources, find hidden insights and export tables directly to Google sheets for further analysis. And this is huge. Right? I've been talking so much, right? And on our 2025, AI roadmap rewind, I talked about AI's impact so far on the consulting industry and its upcoming and forthcoming impact. And this is another, small but big thing. Right? Notebook, now notebook LM's ability to obviously stay grounded, which is number one, the most important thing when working with a large language model. But then also now being able to, take all of this unstructured data and structure it into tables, is extremely huge. And then the last release, which is big.
Jordan Wilson [00:23:00]:
Right? And also on the last one, you can export those tables directly to Google Sheets. And then last but not least, Google, promoted some new features that enable you to export and share, different, creatives from the studio panel, enabling one click export of study guides, briefing documents, and save notes to Google docs or sheets with full table preservation for handoff or collaboration. Alright. Yeah. Big updates from NotebookLM. Check it out and let me know in the comments. Right? Whether you're listening on the podcast, you know, I go back and, read the Spotify comments, or if you're listening here on the live stream, which one of those NotebookLM updates are you most excited about? Maybe we'll have to do another, you know, notebook LM episode or who knows, maybe we'll do a notebook LM course on that thing that we're cooking up that you gotta pay attention to. We're gonna be announcing some details soon.
Jordan Wilson [00:23:51]:
Alright. Last big news. There is a new AI image model king in town, and it's not named Nano Banana. So OpenAI has released their new AI image model, GPT five image 1.5, Their new flagship, image generation model that's now available in chat GPT and the OpenAI API aimed at generating better images and editing photos more quickly. So according to OpenAI, the model produces images up to four times faster than the previous GPT image model and preserves fine details and user intents more reliably than prior versions. So the update adds a new image tab as well in the ChatGPT app in the browser at chatgbt.com/images, which combines an image creation workspace with a discovery and brainstorming feed to inspire, users, which is pretty cool. We see we've seen a similar, output in, Google Gemini with the my stuff feature, but a little different. Right? It's it's almost like a little collaborative image workspace, in OpenAI, which I thought was pretty cool.
Jordan Wilson [00:25:00]:
But here's the interesting part. So early benchmarks show that g b t five image 1.5 tops LM Arena's text image leaderboard where it displaced Google's Nano Banana Pro from first place. So real world edits and reviews so far are mixed, kind of directs comparisons of, you know, different, outputs show different things, and I've been doing a lot of, outputs myself. So when I saw the Ella Marina, scores, at first, I was like, I don't think so. Right? At least in my limited use, up to that point, I really thought GPT, image 1.5 was not quite as good as, Google's Nano Banana Pro. But the more that I looked at it and iterated, I was like, okay. I can at least see how they're on the same playing field at least. Right? So I don't know if I would necessarily say, that, GPT image 1.5 is better for all use cases, but on the blind taste test that is LM arena, it is ahead.
Jordan Wilson [00:26:04]:
Right? So it also depends on what your taste is. I do think, right? So even on the same text image prompts, I think a lot of times, Nano Banana Pro creates something that looks more real. Right? Like, it was taken with, you know, a high end smartphone, where, GPT image 1.5 looks a little more polished. Right? It looks almost like it's a studio, setup. Right? It's it's almost like, you know, skin tones are a little glossy, so it almost looks a little hyper realistic. It still looks really good and leaps and bounds better than their first GPT image. So I guess it depends what you're going for. One other thing that I will say GPT image 1.5 is probably a little bit better than Nano Banana Pro at is just iterating and understanding the context.
Jordan Wilson [00:26:49]:
I still think Nano Banana is much better at infographic, better at complex images that require a lot of text. I don't think GPT five image or, GPT 1.5 image is there yet. But I think when it comes to iterating and understanding Nuance context, of a conversation, I think GPT five, g p t 1.5 image from chat g p t, yeah, it might be a little bit better. If you're trying to one shot, if you're trying to get photos that just look right, especially photos of people or groups of people or, venues, event spaces, I think Nano Banana Pro still takes it. But, hey, it's at least a competition, which means in the end, we all win. Alright. That is not all of the AI news. That is our big, news stories, but let's go ahead and recap the what's new and what's next.
Jordan Wilson [00:27:40]:
So on other weeks, some of these might have been our some of our top AI news stories. Right? For the most part, each week, we give you the top eight to 10, and then we give you a quick, bullet points, kind of, firestorm run through of everything else. So some of these are, new product releases, partnerships that have already been confirmed. Some are rumors and leaks, but let's get straight into them because this week, we actually have a ton. Alright. Here we go. So OpenAI launched a new real time and text to speech model for devs on its playground. Lovable, the AI vibe coding platform, raised $333,000,000 at a $6,600,000,000 valuation.
Jordan Wilson [00:28:21]:
Chatt GBT is rolling out and has rolled out a new writing blocks feature that makes it easier to collab with the system for writing emails and easier to format. Spanish banking giant, BBVA, rolled out Chatt GBT enterprise to a 120,000 staffs may staff members, making it one of the largest AI deployments ever. Former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders urged a nationwide halt to new AI data center construction to let democracy quote unquote catch up. Google updated its translate, with Google, or sorry, with Gemini AI adding live headphone translation beta for over 70 languages. Really cool. Allows people with, using the the service to speak in different languages, and hear and understand each other. Mozilla hired a new CEO that pledged it would turn, Firefox into a modern AI browser. ChatGPT rolled out some new personalization settings, which I think so far are amazing, where you can toggle the amount of warmth, enthusiasm, headers, lists, and emojis.
Jordan Wilson [00:29:26]:
So there's essentially, you know, default less or more for those four different categories. I'm loving it so far. Google has released an open source function Gemma model that's meant to be fine tuned for your specific function function calling tasks. Google also unveiled, new AI smart glasses with Samsung, Gentle Monster, and Warby Parker. More Google Google engineers, like I said, hinted that there will be, new versions of Gemini three that may come out in the next couple of weeks. Cursor acquired Graphite, an AI code review platform. Chad GVT rolled out pin chats, so you can add certain chats as your favorites to the sidebar. Meta added a, Sora cameo esque style feature, that lets you add yourself to any AI generated photos or videos.
Jordan Wilson [00:30:15]:
Google announced an upgrade to deep research. So now there's visuals in there. So you know what it does? Just stare at, you know, huge blocks of text. It will create visuals in there as well. OpenAI released GPT five to codex, its best agentic coding model. Mistral released Mistral OCR three, the best AI OCR model in the world, which is actually a big deal. Right? If you're, you know, trying to work with a large amount of PDFs and using AI, you might wanna look at Mistral OCR three. A leak, Anthropic is planning a new agent mode with tasks on the front end.
Jordan Wilson [00:30:48]:
Right? So almost having a, front end, agent mode, that will be pretty cool. Google has rolled out gems from labs, which essentially brings in the Opal app experience into reusable gems inside Google Gemini. Google also launched CC, an agent that delivers a summary of your inbox. But right now, it's super limited, and it's a wait list, and I believe only personal Gmail's can sign up. Google also launched, Gen Tabs, a beta feature that turns open tabs into apps, which is really cool. And then last but not least, Amazon shuffled their AI leadership, appointing Peter DeSantis, to oversee, some new, sections including, Amazon's AI models, chips, robotics, and quantum computing. That was a ton, y'all. If you think if you think you can just take the first, you you know, the last couple of weeks of December off and and and have a slow start in 2026, I'm letting you know that is not the case.
Jordan Wilson [00:31:52]:
Right? Your competitors are still keeping up. The AI companies aren't stopping shipping. Right? If you take a month off and decide to hibernate, you come back, you're gonna be behind. I'm letting you know that because, yeah, we're taking a, you know, like I said, three days off, you know, this week to recharge, but I'm letting you know we're gonna be launching something very soon. So if one of your big goals personally for your company, for your department is to really invest in understanding large language models and using front end, large language models for your business. Trust me, you're gonna wanna be tuning in. We're gonna be, releasing some new offerings pretty soon for free, obviously. So don't miss that.
Jordan Wilson [00:32:34]:
It's gonna be limited at first as we roll them out. So you gotta be reading our newsletter. You gotta be opening it, and you gotta be tuning in. So thank you for listening today. If this was helpful, if you're listening on the podcast, please leave us a rating and follow the show. We really appreciate that. Like I said, make sure to check out the 2025 AI road map rewind episode six seventy four and six seventy six from last week. Like I said, we're gonna be, taking Wednesday through Friday off here to recharge, to work on some cool things.
Jordan Wilson [00:33:06]:
That's it. Thank you for tuning in. Hope to see you back tomorrow in everyday for more everyday AI. Thanks, y'all.