Gemini’s ‘Personal Intelligence’ upgrade

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Good morning, {{ first_name | AI enthusiasts }}. As frontier models converge on capability, the differentiator is becoming personal context — and no one has more of it across the internet than Google.

The company’s latest ‘Personal Intelligence’ upgrade lets Gemini pull from Gmail, Photos, and YouTube automatically, turning the apps billions already use into an AI moat rivals will struggle to cross.

In today’s AI rundown:

  • Gemini’s new ‘Personal Intelligence’ upgrade

  • McConaughey trademarks himself to fight deepfakes

  • Get the most out of Google’s Gemini in Gmail

  • Z AI’s open image model trained on Huawei chips

  • 4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

GOOGLE

🧠 Gemini’s new ‘Personal Intelligence’ upgrade

Image source: Google

The Rundown: Google just launched Personal Intelligence, a new beta feature that lets Gemini reason across apps like Gmail, Photos, YouTube, and Search data to deliver more personalized responses without users needing to specify which app to pull from.

The details:

  • Personal Intelligence connects Google’s app suite to Gemini, letting the assistant understand, locate, and proactively use personalized details.

  • The tool can reason across text, images, and videos, with VP Josh Woodward detailing the AI referencing his photos and emails to help at a tire shop.

  • Personal Intelligence is off by default, with Google saying it won’t train its AI models directly on connected info like inboxes or photo libraries.

  • The feature is rolling out to Gemini AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in the U.S. first, with plans to expand to free tiers and AI Mode in the future.

Why it matters: This feels like Google is finally playing the card its AI rivals will always struggle to match: billions of users already living inside Gmail, Photos, and YouTube. As the frontier models all become extremely capable for the average user, deep integrations with personal context from widely used apps will be the big differentiator.

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AI & COPYRIGHT

⭐️ McConaughey trademarks himself to fight deepfakes

Image source: Lovart / The Rundown

The Rundown: Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey secured eight trademark approvals from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office covering his voice, likeness, and video clips, according to the WSJ, citing the need to combat AI deepfakes and misuse.

The details:

  • The approved trademarks include audio of his famous “Alright, alright, alright” catchphrase and short clips of him speaking and staring into a camera.

  • McConaughey told the WSJ that they “want to create a clear perimeter around ownership with consent and attribution the norm in an AI world.”

  • McConaughey’s lawyers say the filings give them a federal court avenue to pursue AI misuse, rather than relying on state-by-state publicity laws.

  • The actor is an investor in AI voice startup ElevenLabs, as well as the face of Salesforce’s Agentforce TV campaigns.

Why it matters: The capabilities of AI image and video models are blurring reality more than ever, and newer, powerful releases have been far more lax on creating real likenesses and IP. McConaughey is right to push against the unclear ownership rules in the AI era, but thus far, it’s been a tough legal game to play without strong results.

AI TRAINING

📧 Get the most out of Google’s Gemini in Gmail

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Google’s new Gemini features in Gmail, what is available right now, and the most beneficial and disappointing parts about this initial rollout.

Step-by-step:

  1. With a Google Workspace or “AI Pro” personal account, go to gmail.com and click on settings in the top right. Make sure all the “smart features” are enabled

  2. In your inbox, click the “Ask Gemini” button next to settings and ask anything about your inbox, like: “What emails do I have about [subject]?”

  3. In any draft, you can press Option + H (Mac) or Alt + H (Windows), or click “Help me write” to take Gemini’s help to write based on the email’s context

  4. After a reply is written, you can click “Recreate” to regenerate it or click “Refine” to change the tone or length of the reply.

Pro tip: Use “help me schedule” in the draft pane to have Gemini read the email thread, check the calendars, and suggest meeting times to whomever you’re emailing.

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Research reveals that early adopters of agentic AI in particular are seeing:

  • 21% reduction in operating costs

  • 35% increase in customer satisfaction

  • 31% improvement in employee efficiency

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ZHIPU AI

🎇 Z AI’s open image model trained on Huawei chips

Image source: Z AI

The Rundown: Chinese AI startup Zhipu AI just released GLM-Image, an open-source image generator hailed as the first major model trained entirely on Huawei hardware — though early testing has not been positive despite strong benchmark scores.

The details:

  • The 16B-parameter model was developed using Huawei’s Ascend chips and software, with zero reliance on US semiconductors.

  • Z AI claims GLM-Image excels at text-heavy images and beats Nano Banana Pro on accuracy benchmarks, though early user tests have not backed that up.

  • The model trails top options like Nano Banana Pro and Seedream on overall image quality, but is released fully open-source under a permissive license.

Why it matters: Zhipu made its AI presence felt with a powerful GLM-4.7 release in December (and a recent HK IPO), and now brings a capable, open image model debut trained entirely without Nvidia to the table. While it may not beat out closed rivals, it’s a sign that China’s AI industry isn’t waiting around for the chip war to end.

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📰 Everything else in AI today

OpenAI announced a deal with chipmaker Cerebras to deploy 750MW of dedicated processing power for faster AI responses, with capacity rolling out through 2028.

ElevenLabs is partnering with Deutsche Telekom to deploy AI voice agents for customer service, offering 24/7 support without wait times via app and phone.

Slack updated its Slackbot, now acting as a personal AI agent that taps into messages, channels, and files to answer and leverage context throughout work.

OpenAI made its GPT-5.2-Codex model available to developers via the Responses API, extending the model’s availability beyond the company’s Codex platform.

Microsoft reportedly became one of Anthropic’s top customers, according to The Information, ramping spending on its models to nearly $500M annually.

COMMUNITY

🤝 Community AI workflows

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 Jon M. in Wake Forest, NC:

“I coach youth basketball and always struggled with substitutions: how to give every kid fair playing time while keeping balanced lineups on the court… I built a simple roster table, rated each player on height, offense, and defense (1–10), and asked ChatGPT to design a single-page HTML app that would generate substitutions.

The first version worked, but I refined it using Claude for hands-on code edits, improving mobile usability and flow. Now I can toggle who’s present, choose starters, and instantly get a quarter-by-quarter substitution plan with clear tracking.”

How do you use AI? Tell us here.

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

See you soon,

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

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