Chrome Just Turned into an AI Browser

Happy Friday!

As always, it's been a flood of a week in AI land.

Trying a new format to help you cut through the noise faster.

Let me know how you like it.

Google Turns Chrome Into an AI Browser

Google just launched 10 new AI features for Chrome, calling it "the biggest upgrade in Chrome's history."

The standout: Gemini is now built directly into Chrome. You can ask it to explain any webpage you're reading, compare information across multiple tabs, or recall websites you visited weeks ago by describing what you remember.

There's more: Chrome is adding "agentic browsing" in the coming months. This means Gemini will be able to book appointments, order groceries, and handle other tedious web tasks for you.

Plus Chrome can now detect scams in real-time, change compromised passwords, and access Google AI search from the address bar.

Meta's New Smart Glasses Read Your Mind (Sort Of)

Meta unveiled their latest AI Ray-Ban glasses. The crazy part? Your muscle movements can control its display.

Here's how: The glasses come with a wristband that reads your body's electrical signals. Think about tapping your finger? The wristband catches that and turns it into a command.

The glasses project a full-color display onto their right lens that only the wearer can see. Notifications, navigation, messages, and videos.

What about AI? Meta AI runs everything. Live captions that isolate voices in crowds, instant language translation, ask questions about your surroundings. They can also edit photos, filter messages, and help you during calls.

OpenAI's Coding Tool Gets an Upgrade

OpenAI gave their AI coding tool, Codex, a new model (GPT-5-Codex).

What changed? Before, Codex was smart autocomplete (devs would ask for code, it would write it, then they'd debug and fix it themselves).

Now it's more like an AI developer that doesn't sleep. Give it a project and it plans the architecture, writes the code, tests and debugs issues. It can work for up to 7 hours straight.

Why does this matter for non-technical workers? Your developers can hand off bigger projects and focus on strategy instead of debugging. Faster turnaround, fewer "that'll take two weeks" convos.

• Notion Adds AI Agents Notion 3.0 includes agents that can work independently for 20+ minutes. They build databases, create launch plans, consolidate across apps, and handle multi-step workflows.
• ChatGPT Speed Controls You can now choose how long ChatGPT "thinks" before responding. Light mode for quick answers, Heavy mode when you need it to work through complex problems.
• Microsoft Auto-Installing Copilot Starting October, Microsoft is automatically installing Copilot across all Office365 apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook). It'll show up as a sidebar for all business users..
• YouTube's AI Video Integration YouTube put Google's Veo 3 Fast model into Shorts, letting creators generate AI video clips. Plus new "Edit with AI" turns raw footage into polished videos with transitions and music.
• Zoom AI Companion 3.0 Zoom announced photorealistic AI avatars (coming December) so you can "attend" meetings when you're not camera-ready. They also added note-taking abilities outside Zoom and other skills.
• Gamma 3.0 The presentation tool launched an AI agent that can make sweeping edits. Think "make it more visual" and it'll scan every slide to add charts and graphics. They also added multi-language translation.

Big AI Wants Control of Your Wallet

Three recent moves that show where this is heading:

1. OpenAI is preparing to launch an "Orders" section in ChatGPT. Store credit cards, buy plugins and services, track purchases all inside the app.
2. Google open-sourced a payment system that lets any AI app handle purchases. Coinbase, PayPal, Mastercard + 60 others are already supporting it.
3. Google is partnering with PayPal. They'll be embedding AI-powered shopping across Google's ecosystem and working to create new agentic shopping experiences.

When AI researches, recommends, and buys for you, whoever controls that flow controls serious money. Your purchases could shift to whoever has the best AI shopping experience.

• Google's Gemini beat ChatGPT as #1 iPhone app thanks to their "Nano Banana" image creation and editing model. Shows viral features are more important than intelligence for the masses.
• AI models getting too smart to train OpenAI and Anthropic struggling to create tasks hard enough for their latest models. The models are outpacing humans' ability to teach them new things.
• Albania gave AI a government job Appointed AI named "Diella" to oversee public contracts and fight corruption. This is the first country to give AI government authority.
• AI predicts 1,000+ diseases years early Analyzes medical records, tells you diabetes/cancer/heart risk up to 20 years out. Already tested on millions with crazy accuracy.

• Rumors point to Claude 4.5 dropping any day now.
• Gemini 3 is expected before the holidays, with noise it could come sooner than later.
• Grok 5 is also targeting a release before 2026.