Google Labs’ Recent Releases, Pickle Robot’s Ex-Tesla CFO, Claude’s Vending Machine, and ChatGPT Mobile’s $3B+ in Consumer Spending
This Week in AI Newsletter: 12/19/2025
Google added a new Gemini feature that lets you upload an image or video and check for a SynthID watermark to see whether it was created or edited with Google AI. More here.
Anthropic let a Claude-powered “vending machine operator” run a WSJ newsroom snack shop for a few weeks, the vending machine has control over research, purchasing, pricing, and inventory. More here.
Pickle Robot, a Massachusetts startup building autonomous warehouse unloading robots, named former Tesla investor relations leader Jeff Evanson as its first CFO shortly after news of a major UPS deal. More here.
Google Labs has been releasing new products like crazy and I reviewed seven of them in this demo, and gave Notebook LM its own demo. Here is their full list of products:
Doppl — AI fashion discovery with a personalized feed, shoppable links, and saved collections.
Mixboard — Collaborative boards for creating presentations, uploading files, and managing multi-board projects.
Pomelli — Turns content into on-brand animated visuals using Veo-powered generation.
JulesAgent — Proactive AI collaborator that surfaces tasks and auto-fixes issues before you ask.
Stitch by Google — AI design and prototyping tool for generating UI, HTML, and layout insights.
Disco — Experimental AI web-browsing tool that remixes open tabs into custom apps (via GenTabs).
CC — AI email productivity agent in Gmail that briefs your day and helps on demand.
NotebookLM — AI research notebook for summaries, slide decks, audio overviews, and document analysis.
Opal — Google Labs creative tool now inside Gemini, featuring Nano Banana Pro image generation.
Flow by Google — AI video editing tool with object removal and high-resolution image downloads.
More here.
ChatGPT’s mobile app has now passed $3B in lifetime consumer spending, driven largely by a huge 2025 surge in subscriptions and putting it ahead of TikTok and major streaming apps in how fast it reached the milestone. More here.
Google’s Veo 3.1, Google Vids’ AI avatars just got noticeably more lifelike, with early tests showing users choosing them far more often than comparable alternatives. More here.
Grok’s Business offering just added integrations for Google Drive, Slack, and Notion inside the xAI API. More here.
Anthropic just expanded Claude’s Chrome experience across all paid tiers and added a Claude Code integration so developers can build and validate work directly in the browser. More here.
Gemini 3 Flash lets you talk through a topic, then get a quick breakdown of what you missed plus a short quiz to lock it in. More here.