AI Newsletter Digest

What's new in AI for iHR + ITAM

82 emails
34 takeaways
May 7 – May 23, 2026

New AI Features & Capabilities 6 items

1
Google Gemini Spark — a 24/7 personal agent natively integrated with Gmail, Drive, and Calendar that works in the background even when your laptop is closed.Try this
Unlike Claude Code or Codex, no complex setup required. Most accessible AI agent yet for non-technical users. Rolling out to Google AI Ultra subscribers first.
Jeff Su · May 21 · "Google I/O 2026: 9 announcements, only 3 matter"
2
Claude "Dreaming" reviews past conversations on a schedule, spots patterns and recurring mistakes, proactively suggests fixes — without being asked.Try this
First step toward a truly proactive AI assistant that comes to you rather than waiting. Currently in the Managed Agents platform only.
Matt from FutureTools · May 8 · "GPT-5.5 remembers (mostly)"
3
Gemini 3.5 Flash launched at I/O — faster than prior versions and competes with frontier models.
Gemini now has 900M monthly active users. Note: Google's best agent ecosystem (Spark, Daily Brief) requires Ultra subscription at $100/month.
Jeff Su · May 21 · "Google I/O 2026: 9 announcements, only 3 matter"
4
GPT-5.5 Instant is ChatGPT's new default with 52.5% fewer hallucinations and 37.3% fewer inaccurate claims in challenging domains.
Now shows which memories and past conversations shaped a response. More reliable for high-stakes finance, ops, and CST use cases.
Matt from FutureTools · May 8 · "GPT-5.5 remembers (mostly)"
5
Andrej Karpathy joined Anthropic — OpenAI cofounder and former Tesla AI lead now on the pretraining team that builds Claude's core capabilities.
Signals Anthropic is aggressively winning the talent race and Claude will likely accelerate. 17M+ views on the announcement.
Zain Kahn · May 20 · "Gemini becomes your personal agent"
6
Hark raised $700M at $6B valuation to build a universal AI interface — listens, sees, acts as the OS layer for personal AI.
Founded by Brett Adcock. First multi-modal models ship this summer, devices follow. Watch — positioning to be the dominant personal AI OS layer.
Zain Kahn · May 22 · "ChatGPT gets PowerPoint skills"

Marketing 10 items

7
Google rebuilt Search around Gemini 3.5 — retired the 10-blue-links format for a conversational, multimodal search box that generates custom UI per search.Try this
Changes how iHR/ITAM show up in search. FAQ schema is effectively dead. Optimize for AI-surfaced answers, not ranked links.
Matt from FutureTools · May 22 · "Google I/O: AI for Everyone"
8
GA4 now auto-tracks AI assistant traffic (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude) as a dedicated "AI Assistant" channel — no custom regex needed.Try this
Action: pull this report for iHR and ITAM now to get a baseline of AI-driven discovery vs organic search.
GrowthHackers · May 21 · "AI Search, Reddit Ads & Google's AI Agent Future"
9
90% of brands have zero AI search mentions per a new study. AI search (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini) is becoming a real traffic source and brands aren't optimized for it.Try this
Winners are structured, citable, and trusted by AI systems — not just SEO-ranked. Audit iHR/ITAM AI search visibility now before the gap widens.
GrowthHackers · May 20 · "Growth Daily: Google's AI Design Push…"
10
Tempo launched an autonomous AI head of growth that builds weekly growth plans and deploys them — pulling from ad accounts, reviews, and e-commerce platform.Try this
7 agent roles, canvas showing each agent's reasoning. Launch video hit 1.5M+ views. Direct competitor to hiring a growth lead.
Zain Kahn · May 21 · "Tempo launches an AI head of growth"
11
Creatify Agent handles the entire ad production loop — paste a URL, it researches competitors, generates video/images, self-checks, produces a finished ad.Try this
No brief, no creative director handoff. Could replace or heavily augment iHR/ITAM paid social creative production.
Zain Kahn · May 20 · "Gemini becomes your personal agent"
12
Tavus Image-to-Replica turns a single still image into a fully interactive AI human that watches, listens, responds in real time.Try this
No video recording or editing. Drop in a product photo, brand mascot, or founder headshot and get a live AI video avatar. Direct application for product marketing.
Zain Kahn · May 15 · "Tavus turns any image into an AI human"
13
Gmail AI Inbox is redefining email deliverability — AI now evaluates emails before a human sees them.Try this
Major shift for iHR/ITAM email marketing: generic promotional blasts get downgraded, personalized + contextually relevant content wins.
GrowthHackers · May 14 · "AI, Privacy & Deliverability: This Week"
14
Google Pics — AI design tool inside Workspace (Nano Banana 2) generating birthday invites, social graphics, and design assets from text descriptions.Try this
Every element stays editable like a Google Doc. Direct Canva competitor for quick marketing assets without a designer.
Matt from FutureTools · May 22 · "Google I/O: AI for Everyone"
15
Google Ask YouTube launched — AI-powered conversational video search that understands nuanced prompts and surfaces relevant content with follow-ups.Try this
Gemini Omni also added to YouTube Shorts for creative remixing. iHR YouTube content: optimize titles/descriptions for conversational AI queries.
GrowthHackers · May 20 · "Growth Daily: Google's AI Design Push…"
16
Spotify launched personal podcast creation and a Universal Music deal allowing fan-made AI covers and remixes (paid, with revenue share).
Stability AI also released audio model generating 6-min professional-grade songs. AI audio is now commercially viable and licensed — relevant for iHR branded content and playlist marketing.
GrowthHackers · May 22 · "Growth Daily: The Death of FAQ SEO…"

Operations 7 items

17
Amazon replaced Rufus with Alexa for Shopping — a full conversational AI assistant front and center in the Amazon search bar, app, and Echo Show.Try this
Handles natural language queries, price alerts, comparisons, can shop other sites via "Buy for Me." Brands selling on Amazon need to optimize listings for conversational AI, not keyword matching.
Matt from FutureTools · May 15 · "The data center in your house"
18
Google Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) — first production blueprint for what every e-commerce site needs to expose to AI agents.Try this
Discoverable actions, predictable outcomes, persistent sessions, explicit agent policies. Sites not structured for AI agent interaction will lose traffic. iHR/ITAM should review UCP compliance.
GrowthHackers · May 19 · "Is This Your Daily Growth?…"
19
ChatGPT now builds and edits PowerPoint decks directly in the app — slides stay fully editable in PowerPoint's native tools after AI generation.Try this
In beta now. Useful for pitch decks, board materials, internal presentations.
Zain Kahn · May 22 · "ChatGPT gets PowerPoint skills"
20
Claude is now GA for Microsoft 365 — works across Word, PowerPoint, Excel with persistent conversational context across documents.Try this
For any Emazing staff on M365, a free upgrade path for AI-assisted document work without switching tools.
Zain Kahn · May 8 · "Claude's now available for Microsoft 365"
21
Cursor Composer 2.5 — most powerful in-house coding model, matching frontier models at a fraction of the cost.Try this
Also announced a much larger model with SpaceXAI using 10x more compute. For Shopify customizations or internal tools at Emazing, Cursor remains the best coding agent.
Zain Kahn · May 19 · "Odyssey raises the bar for world models"
22
Figma added an AI agent on its design canvas — natural language prompts generate designs, edit existing ones, automate iterations. Multiple agents run in parallel.Try this
Figma Q1 revenue +46% YoY to $333M. For iHR/ITAM design team: faster concept iteration, fewer revision cycles with freelancers.
AI For Work · May 20 · "You can now ask Gmail a question…"
23
Gmail Live — ask your inbox natural language questions powered by Gemini (Airbnb door code, flight detail, order number) and it pulls answers with context from your emails.
Launching summer 2026 for AI Ultra subscribers. Will change how executives process email at Emazing.
AI For Work · May 20 · "You can now ask Gmail a question…"

Customer Service 3 items

24
Amazon Ring now routes 100% of customer calls through Vapi — AI voice platform with CSAT improving after deployment.Try this
Vapi handles 1-5M calls/day, raised $50M Series B at $500M valuation. Amazon tested 40+ vendors before choosing. CST at Emazing should evaluate this.
AI For Work · May 12 · "OpenAI just built an AI that finds security holes…"
25
Airbnb expanded AI for host onboarding and customer support — handling routine support queries and guiding new hosts through setup.Try this
Comparable consumer brand. Validates AI handling tier-1 CST tickets at iHR/ITAM, freeing humans for complex issues.
GrowthHackers · May 21 · "AI Search, Reddit Ads & Google's AI Agent Future"
26
Air Canada chatbot ruling — chatbot gave a customer wrong refund info, court held Air Canada liable (not the bot).
Key lesson: AI chatbots are legal liability, not a separate entity. CST AI agent responses need guardrails, accuracy, audit trail. Document bot behavior before deployment.
GrowthHackers · May 22 · "Growth Daily: The Death of FAQ SEO…"

HR & People 3 items

27
LinkedIn rolling out AI-powered recruiter outreach — AI-generated targeted messages to top candidates.Try this
Crosscheck AI also expanded to all users (compare AI model outputs side-by-side). Useful for Anne when sourcing candidates.
GrowthHackers · May 22 · "Growth Daily: The Death of FAQ SEO…"
28
GM laid off 600 IT workers (10%+ of IT dept) and is replacing them with AI-native hires.
Clearest signal yet that the workforce shift is real and accelerating beyond tech, into operations. For Emazing hiring: prioritize candidates who work with AI tools over those doing manual IT or data tasks.
AI For Work · May 12 · "OpenAI just built an AI…"
29
Google Gemini fitness coach + Fitbit Air launched — AI fitness/sleep/vitals coaching with personalized 24/7 guidance.
Fitbit Air screenless wearable ships May 26. For Emazing wellness benefits, a near-zero-cost perk to point employees toward.
Zain Kahn · May 8 · "Claude's now available for Microsoft 365"

Finance 2 items

30
ChatGPT for personal finance — connect 12,000+ financial institutions via Plaid, ask ChatGPT questions about your money.
Long-term: changes how consumers evaluate purchases and manage spend. Worth watching impact on discretionary e-commerce purchases.
GrowthHackers · May 18 · "Growth Daily: AI Analytics, Infinite Content…"
31
OpenAI Guaranteed Capacity — enterprises can lock in 1-3 year compute commitments with discounts scaling by spend.
Compute becoming a strategic resource like cloud hosting. If Emazing scales agent workloads, evaluate guaranteed capacity pricing vs pay-as-you-go.
Zain Kahn · May 21 · "Tempo launches an AI head of growth"

Strategy 3 items

32
Anthropic projecting first profitable quarter — Q2 2026 at $10.9B revenue, doubling prior quarter.
Validates Claude staying power and signals accelerated improvements. As Emazing's primary AI stack runs on Claude, vendor stability matters.
GrowthHackers · May 21 · "AI Search, Reddit Ads & Google's AI Agent Future"
33
Long-horizon agent drift study — models from major labs drifted into unpredictable behavior over 15-day autonomous runs.
Real risk flag for production AI agents touching financial or customer data. Anthropic responded with open-sourced agent security tools. If Emazing runs longer autonomous workflows, warrants a safety review.
AI For Work · May 18 · "3 ways to improve your results with prompting"
34
OpenAI Deployment Company — $4B consulting unit embedding engineers directly into client organizations.
Validates AI-embedded operators vs API access. At $100M+ scale, Emazing could qualify for direct engagement if AI becomes operationally central.
Matt from FutureTools · May 13 · "Why Claude blackmailed engineers"