AI Newsletter Digest · v2 Interactive

What's new in AI for iHR + ITAM

82 emails

34 takeaways

May 7 – May 23, 2026

💡 Tap any takeaway headline to open the source email in Gmail. Use the 👍 👎 🔧 💬 buttons to rate. Your feedback trains next week's digest to surface what matters to you.

New AI Features & Capabilities 6 items

Google Gemini Spark — 24/7 personal agent natively integrated with Gmail, Drive, Calendar that works in the background even when your laptop is closed.Try this

No complex setup. 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"

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. Currently in Managed Agents platform only.

Matt from FutureTools · May 8 · "GPT-5.5 remembers (mostly)"

Gemini 3.5 Flash launched at I/O. Faster than prior versions, competes with frontier models.

Gemini now has 900M monthly active users. 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"

GPT-5.5 Instant is ChatGPT's new default with 52.5% fewer hallucinations and 37.3% fewer inaccurate claims.

Now shows which memories and past conversations shaped a response. More reliable for high-stakes finance, ops, CST.

Matt from FutureTools · May 8 · "GPT-5.5 remembers (mostly)"

Andrej Karpathy joined Anthropic — OpenAI cofounder, former Tesla AI lead, now on Claude's pretraining team.

Signals Anthropic is winning the talent race. Claude will likely accelerate. 17M+ views on announcement.

Zain Kahn · May 20 · "Gemini becomes your personal agent"

Hark raised $700M at $6B valuation to build a universal AI interface — listens, sees, acts as OS layer for personal AI.

Founded by Brett Adcock. First multi-modal models ship this summer. Positioning to be the dominant personal AI OS layer.

Zain Kahn · May 22 · "ChatGPT gets PowerPoint skills"

Marketing 10 items

Google rebuilt Search around Gemini 3.5 — retired the 10-blue-links format for conversational, multimodal search 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"

GA4 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 baseline AI-driven discovery vs organic.

GrowthHackers · May 21 · "AI Search, Reddit Ads & Google's AI Agent Future"

90% of brands have zero AI search mentions. AI search is becoming real traffic and brands aren't optimized.Try this

Winners are structured, citable, trusted by AI systems. Audit iHR/ITAM AI visibility before gap widens.

GrowthHackers · May 20 · "Growth Daily: Google's AI Design Push…"

Tempo launched autonomous AI head of growth. Builds weekly growth plans and deploys them. Pulls from ad accounts, reviews, e-commerce platform.Try this

7 agent roles, canvas showing each agent's reasoning. Launch video 1.5M+ views. Direct competitor to hiring growth lead.

Zain Kahn · May 21 · "Tempo launches an AI head of growth"

Creatify Agent handles entire ad production loop. Paste a URL, it researches competitors, generates video/images, self-checks, produces finished ad.Try this

No brief, no creative director handoff. Could replace iHR/ITAM paid social creative production.

Zain Kahn · May 20 · "Gemini becomes your personal agent"

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 needed. Drop in product photo, brand mascot, founder headshot. Direct product marketing application.

Zain Kahn · May 15 · "Tavus turns any image into an AI human"

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 promo blasts get downgraded. Personalized + contextually relevant wins.

GrowthHackers · May 14 · "AI, Privacy & Deliverability"

Google Pics — AI design tool inside Workspace (Nano Banana 2) generating birthday invites, social graphics, design assets from text descriptions.Try this

Every element 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"

Google Ask YouTube launched. AI-powered conversational video search with follow-up questions.Try this

Gemini Omni also added to YouTube Shorts for creative remixing. Optimize iHR YouTube titles/descriptions for conversational AI queries.

GrowthHackers · May 20 · "Growth Daily: Google's AI Design Push…"

Spotify launched personal podcast creation and Universal Music deal allowing fan-made AI covers and remixes.

Stability AI also released audio model generating 6-min professional-grade songs. AI audio is now commercially licensed.

GrowthHackers · May 22 · "Growth Daily: The Death of FAQ SEO…"

Operations 7 items

Amazon replaced Rufus with Alexa for Shopping — full conversational AI assistant front and center in Amazon search bar, app, and Echo Show.Try this

Handles natural language, price alerts, comparisons, "Buy for Me" across other sites. Optimize Amazon listings for conversational AI, not keywords.

Matt from FutureTools · May 15 · "The data center in your house"

Google Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) — first blueprint for what every e-com site must expose to AI agents.Try this

Discoverable actions, predictable outcomes, persistent sessions, agent policies. Sites not structured for AI agent interaction will lose traffic.

GrowthHackers · May 19 · "Is This Your Daily Growth?"

ChatGPT now builds and edits PowerPoint decks directly. Slides stay fully editable in PowerPoint's native tools after AI generation.Try this

Beta now. Useful for pitch decks, board materials, internal presentations.

Zain Kahn · May 22 · "ChatGPT gets PowerPoint skills"

Claude is now GA for Microsoft 365. Works across Word, PowerPoint, Excel with persistent context across documents.Try this

For Emazing staff on M365, free upgrade path for AI-assisted document work without switching tools.

Zain Kahn · May 8 · "Claude's now available for Microsoft 365"

Cursor Composer 2.5 — most powerful in-house coding model, matches frontier models at fraction of cost.Try this

Larger model with SpaceXAI announced (10x compute). For Shopify customizations or internal tools, Cursor remains best agent.

Zain Kahn · May 19 · "Odyssey raises the bar for world models"

Figma added an AI agent on its design canvas. Natural language prompts generate designs, edit, automate iterations. Multiple agents in parallel.Try this

Figma Q1 +46% YoY to $333M. For iHR/ITAM design team: faster iteration, fewer revision cycles with freelancers.

AI For Work · May 20 · "You can now ask Gmail a question"

Gmail Live — ask your inbox natural language questions powered by Gemini (door codes, flight info, order numbers).

Launching summer 2026 for AI Ultra subscribers. Changes how executives process email at Emazing.

AI For Work · May 20 · "You can now ask Gmail a question"

Customer Service 3 items

Amazon Ring routes 100% of customer calls through Vapi. AI voice platform, CSAT improved after deployment.Try this

Vapi handles 1-5M calls/day, $50M Series B at $500M valuation. Amazon tested 40+ vendors. CST should evaluate.

AI For Work · May 12 · "OpenAI just built an AI that finds security holes"

Airbnb expanded AI for host onboarding and customer support. Routine queries handled, new hosts guided 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"

Air Canada chatbot ruling. Chatbot gave wrong refund info, court held Air Canada liable.

Key lesson: AI chatbots are legal liability, not separate entity. CST AI agents need guardrails, accuracy, audit trail.

GrowthHackers · May 22 · "Growth Daily: The Death of FAQ SEO…"

HR & People 3 items

LinkedIn AI-powered recruiter outreach. AI-generated targeted messages to top candidates.Try this

Crosscheck AI expanded to all users (compare AI outputs side-by-side). Useful for Anne when sourcing candidates.

GrowthHackers · May 22 · "Growth Daily: The Death of FAQ SEO…"

GM laid off 600 IT workers (10%+ of IT dept) and is replacing them with AI-native hires.

Workforce shift is real and accelerating beyond tech. For Emazing hiring: prioritize candidates who work with AI tools over manual IT/data tasks.

AI For Work · May 12 · "OpenAI just built an AI…"

Google Gemini fitness coach + Fitbit Air launched. AI fitness/sleep/vitals coaching, 24/7 guidance.

Fitbit Air screenless wearable ships May 26. For Emazing wellness benefits, near-zero-cost perk to point employees toward.

Zain Kahn · May 8 · "Claude's now available for Microsoft 365"

Finance 2 items

ChatGPT for personal finance. Connect 12,000+ financial institutions via Plaid, ask ChatGPT about your money.

Long-term: changes how consumers evaluate purchases and manage spend. Watch impact on discretionary e-com purchases.

GrowthHackers · May 18 · "Growth Daily: AI Analytics, Infinite Content"

OpenAI Guaranteed Capacity. Enterprises lock in 1-3 year compute commitments with discounts scaling by spend.

Compute as strategic resource. If Emazing scales agent workloads, evaluate guaranteed capacity vs pay-as-you-go.

Zain Kahn · May 21 · "Tempo launches an AI head of growth"

Strategy 3 items

Anthropic projecting first profitable quarter. Q2 2026 at $10.9B revenue, doubling prior quarter.

Validates Claude staying power, signals accelerated improvements. Emazing's primary AI stack runs on Claude.

GrowthHackers · May 21 · "AI Search, Reddit Ads & Google's AI Agent Future"

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 on financial/customer data. Anthropic open-sourced agent security tools. Warrants safety review.

AI For Work · May 18 · "3 ways to improve your results with prompting"

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.

Matt from FutureTools · May 13 · "Why Claude blackmailed engineers"