Gmail's Gemini glow-up

PLUS: Microsoft turns Copilot into a checkout counter

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Google's taken a slower, measured approach to weaving Gemini into its flagship products, but the pace is now picking up.

Gmail just landed a wave of new features, including AI Mode for search, a proactive AI inbox, and more — a signal that the deeper integrations into Google's massive product ecosystem may finally be accelerating.

Reminder: Our first live workshop of 2026 is today at 4 PM EST! Join part 1 of our AI Foundations Bootcamp and learn how to diagnose common failure patterns with AI usage and gain practical frameworks to get better outputs. RSVP here.

In today’s AI rundown:

  • Gmail gets Gemini-powered AI features

  • Microsoft turns Copilot into a checkout counter

  • Use Gemini 3 to build powerful simulations

  • Major Chinese AI lab goes public

  • 4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

GOOGLE

Image source: Google

The Rundown: Google just introduced a wave of new Gemini AI upgrades to Gmail, enabling users to ask natural language questions about their inbox, get automatic summaries, and take more proactive actions across the platform.

The details:

  • An integrated AI Overviews feature lets users search the inbox through natural language instead of hunting through keywords or opening dozens of emails.

  • A new ‘AI Inbox’ acts as a personal assistant, surfacing the most important messages and crafting to-do lists and reminders.

  • Other additions include a Grammarly-style proofreader (Pro / Ultra only), expanded Help Me Write access, and Suggested Replies for quick responses.

Why it matters: Google has been sprinkling AI into Gmail for years, but this is the most aggressive push yet. It’s been relatively slow in intertwining Gemini with its highly used products and platforms, but 2026 (like Rowan predicted in our Monday Roundtable) could be the year the integrations ramp up and actually become a major advantage.

TOGETHER WITH NORTON NEO

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Key Features:

  • Privacy and security are built into its DNA.

  • Tabs organize themselves intelligently.

  • A personal memory adapts to how you work over time.

Try Norton Neo and experience the future of browsing.

MICROSOFT

Image source: Microsoft

The Rundown: Microsoft just launched Copilot Checkout, a new feature that lets U.S. shoppers complete purchases directly inside the AI assistant without ever leaving the chat window — with major sellers and retailers already integrated into the platform.

The details:

  • Users can navigate the entire shopping experience, from search to payment, within the chat, with retailers maintaining full control over transactions.

  • Payment is integrated with PayPal, Shopify, and Stripe, with retailers like Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Etsy, and Shopify stores live at launch.

  • Microsoft said users were 2x more likely to purchase via Copilot over normal search, with sessions seeing 53% more purchases within 30 minutes.

  • Microsoft also released new retail AI agents for tasks like operations, product management, branding, and creating personalized shopping experiences.

Why it matters: AI commerce is exploding and completely reshaping how people buy things online. With a 7x surge in AI-driven retail traffic this holiday season alone, the checkout experience is migrating from browsers and apps directly into AI chats — and every major assistant will likely follow as conversational shopping becomes the default.

AI TRAINING

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Gemini 3 to create interactive simulations, educational visualizations, and functional tools in one shot, leveraging its benchmark-shattering capabilities for visual learning and rapid prototyping.

Step-by-step:

  1. Go to the Gemini homepage and select "Gemini 3 Pro" for reasoning, or "DeepThink" for advanced performance (confirm availability in your region)

  2. Enter your prompt in the chat box — example: "Build a 3D simulation of a quantum computer"

  3. Review the immersive simulation output and click "Explain" to activate the AI tutor for summarized learning, then view or share the code

  4. Experiment with different projects like games, content schedulers, or data dashboards; try again if the sim is not functional and visually appealing

Pro tip: Try comparing solutions across scenarios to understand the underlying reasoning patterns. This helps build better problem-solving skills for future challenges.

PRESENTED BY FIDDLER

The Rundown: Fiddler AI breaks down 5 critical lessons to move AI Agents from demo to dependable production. Discover the testing strategies, architectural frameworks, and approaches for building agents that handle complex judgment calls.

In the guide, you’ll learn:

  • A New Testing Playbook using "checkpoint verification" for unpredictable AI systems

  • When to use a single vs. multi-agent design based on domain, governance, or model requirements

  • How to build agents that deliver real value through judgment, rather than rule-based tasks

Download the free guide to get the 5 field-tested lessons for building production-ready AI agents.

ZHIPU AI

Image source: Google Finance

The Rundown: Zhipu AI just debuted on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange after raising $558M, becoming the first major Chinese AI company to go public — and firing a shot at U.S. rivals with prices a fraction of what labs like OpenAI and Anthropic charge.

The details:

  • Share prices on day one valued the company at between $6-8B, a fraction of Anthropic's recent $350B or xAI’s reported $230B valuations.

  • Zhipu's AI assistant runs about $3/month, with its leadership saying that gap will force U.S. competitors into the same price war playing out in China.

  • The IPO comes weeks after Zhipu’s GLM-4.7 coding model release topped open rivals on benchmarks and surpassed closed systems like Sonnet 4.5.

  • Chinese rival MiniMax also goes public Friday after its own $619M raise, with analysts calling 2026 a breakout year for Chinese AI listings in Hong Kong.

Why it matters: DeepSeek rattled markets last year by nearing U.S. performance at a sliver of the cost, and now a wave of Chinese AI startups is going public with a similar playbook. Zhipu's chairman isn't shy about the strategy — flood the market with cheap, capable models until Western labs have no choice but to compete on price.

QUICK HITS

  • 🤖 Speechmatics – Build voice-powered products with Speechmatics’ Startup Program and get $50K to take your project to production*

  • 📫 Gmail - Google’s email inbox, now infused with Gemini 3

  • 🤖 Copilot - Microsoft’s AI assistant, with new agentic commerce capabilities

  • 🩺 ChatGPT Health - OpenAI’s new experience for private health convos

*Sponsored Listing

OpenAI is reportedly acqui-hiring the team of Convogo, an AI platform for executive coaches and leadership, marking the company’s ninth acquisition in the past year.

Artificial Analysis revamped its AI Intelligence Index, swapping out saturated benchmarks for tests focused on whether models can perform professional tasks.

Elon Musk posted that Grok Code will receive a “major upgrade” in February, which will be capable of ‘one-shotting’ many complex coding tasks.

Google and Character AI reached a settlement with the family of a Florida teen whose suicide followed months of conversations with a companion chatbot.

A federal judge denied OpenAI's motion to dismiss Elon Musk's lawsuit alleging the company misled him about its nonprofit mission, sending the case to trial in March.

COMMUNITY

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader TheAverageGuyAI in Texas:

"I used AI to automate my holiday shopping logistics. When my son circled 47 toys in a physical catalog, I didn't waste time searching through the website to fill his cart.

I filmed a video of me turning the pages and uploaded it to AI with the prompt: "Identify every toy circled in red and make a table with prices and links." It recognized the visual cues (the red circles) throughout the video and generated a fully shoppable list with links and battery requirements in seconds, saving me hours of data entry."

How do you use AI? Tell us here.

That's it for today!

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See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown

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