A sneak peak at Perplexity's new browser and ChatGPT's new image generator
Plus: How to make AI features visible, Instagram brain rot, Microsoft Research Agents
Hi product people 👋,
Coming up this week, Perplexity’s CEO gives us a sneak preview of their upcoming new browser, ChatGPT unveils its incredibly powerful new image generation tool and a new study from Google which could have a significant impact on how you decide which of your features to keep - and which ones to bin.
Plus, a handy guide on how to make your AI features noticeable to users, Microsoft releases an AI Researcher and Data Analyst agent and a new tool that works a little bit like Miro for product design - with a difference.
Enjoy the rest of your week!
More here: Watch on YouTube | Follow on Substack Notes | Upgrade to unlock the full newsletter
Key reads and resources for product teams
New from the Department of Product this week:
Knowledge Series - How to use Google’s new Gemini Canvas at work
In this Knowledge Series tutorial, we’ll dig a little deeper into how Google Canvas works and how you can use it at work for crafting documents, building prototypes and teaching yourself how to learn new concepts at work.
Deep - The UX of notifications
In this deep dive, we analyse the UX of notifications from top companies including Google, Notion, Dropbox, Slack, Uber and more. We’ll explore the different types of notifications across web, in-app, mobile and more. With the full report also including a Miro board of all of the notifications UI from 20+ companies featured. (Department of Product)
Thought piece - Why handing over total control to AI Agents would be a huge mistake
When AI systems can control multiple sources simultaneously, the potential for harm explodes. We need to keep humans in the loop, argues policy researchers at Hugging Face. (MIT).
UX - How to make AI features discoverable
The first step to delivering a successful AI feature in your product is to make sure it’s valuable to your users and business. But even valuable AI features will still fail if users don’t see them. (NN Group)
Strategy - How to lead a successful product turnaround
When a company, division, or product line has been struggling for some time, it can feel nearly impossible to get things back on track. But big turnarounds are possible, provided you have a team willing to work hard, be creative, and embrace change. A conversation with former Marvel head Peter Cuneo on what it takes to shake up a team or organization. (Harvard Business Review)
Report - User Authentication Trends 2025
Passkeys, adaptive authentication, 2FA, MFA, Digital IDs… keeping up to date with the latest authentication trends can feel daunting for product teams. The 2025 user authentication trends report highlights key strategies—routine identity proofing, AI-driven fraud detection for deepfakes, adaptive authentication with passkeys, and digital IDs—to transform security and user experience.
New product features and innovation this week
Google unveiled its latest major AI model release with Gemini 2.5 this week, topping the LMArena leaderboard. Perhaps most notably for product teams, it scored a 63.8% score on the software engineering test SW-bench, beating GPT 4.5 but failing to surpass the current leader, Claude 3.7 Sonnet which boasts an impressive 70.3% score. Despite this, most commentators have said that its coding skills are very impressive.
Google is also continuing with its plans to rollout Gemini everywhere it physically can. This week, it’s included “nudges” in Google Drive that contain little prompts to suggest things like “summarize this folder”. These use cases really don’t seem valuable to me. But one new Workspace update unveiled this week that does seem valuable, is this.
Meanwhile…
Perplexity has added a new feature called “answer tabs” which allows users to search for images, video, travel, shopping, and more in one place. It works a little bit like Google’s Search tabs where you can filter your results in one go.A recent head to head in the Wall Street Journal crowned Perplexity the winner vs Google AI Mode, ChatGPT and Copilot in a head to head for ecommerce.
Their CEO teased their new browser this week, too. It looks like the browser will use your search and browsing history to allow you to tailor your experience. Let’s hope they manage to figure out how to keep that secure before it gets released.
Microsoft is getting its own version of Deep Research in the form of an AI Agent called “Researcher”. It will work in a similar way to competitors but it will be plugged into proprietary data sources that Microsoft 365 has access to. Microsoft says it saved users an average of 6-8 hours a week during its testing with early adopters. Microsoft says its Analyst agent is designed to function like a personal data scientist. It can process diverse data sources, including Excel files, CSVs, and embedded tables in documents, generating insights through code execution and visualization. One use case cited by a Microsoft VP says a Research Agent at a large telecomms company was able to research complex RFP responses by assembling information from across multiple internal documents and knowledge sources.
In other news…
A new AI coding startup has raised $52 million in funding. But isn’t competing directly with the likes of Copilot and other AI coding tools that could ultimately displace humans. Instead, it focuses on helping human engineers review their code. Graphite learns a code base and then provides fast code reviews, breaking long pull requests up into smaller chunks.
ChatGPT has released its latest new image generation models and the results are seriously impressive. Like Gemini Flash’s image generation that was announced a few weeks back, ChatGPT’s image generation is capable of “conversational editing” as well as photo realistic text. Based on the latest set of models, I’d say we’re now at the point where it’s impossible to tell AI generated content apart from real world content. A video where users are asked to determine which videos are real and which ones are AI has also been doing the rounds this week. I failed at most of these examples.
Sam Altman’s vision of the future of OpenAI
OpenAI’s CEO recently spoke about his plans for product strategy, vision and monetization options for OpenAI. Here’s some takeaways worth knowing:
Tools you can use
Flora - an intelligent, infinite canvas that connects all of your AI tools in one place. Designed for product designers and creatives.
Calligraphr - transform your handwriting into your own font.
Exist - a wellness app that’s like TikTok for your feelings.
📈 Product data and trends to stay informed
Using ChatGPT too much can create an unhealthy emotional dependency. A study commissioned by OpenAI and MIT shows that “power users” are most at risk of emotional dependency - particularly when they use voice mode. “Generally, users who engage in personal conversations with chatbots tend to experience higher loneliness,” the researchers wrote. “Those who spend more time with chatbots tend to be even lonelier.”
News isn’t important to Google’s revenue. In a study commissioned by Google, when News was completely removed, there was no change to ad revenue and a 0.8% drop in usage. Google says it is committed to supporting news but the study shows that switching off features can be a bold way to figure out what’s really important for product teams. That’s one idea to consider for your next product roadmap.
Meta has confirmed that its open source Llama models have hit 1 billion downloads. But there are question marks emerging about how Meta makes money from its Llama models with one copyright lawsuit revealing that Meta “shares a percentage of the revenue” that companies hosting its Llama models generate.
AI generated “brain rot” is going viral on Instagram generating significant engagement. Recent examples include an iPhone made of skin, and other disturbing videos.
The messaging app Signal hit the headlines this week. And it’s now on track for a record year. App downloads have spiked and are quickly outpacing previous years with 3 million downloads so far which, if it continues, could see it reach 12 million downloads by the end of the year.
Perplexity has crossed $100m in revenue in just 20 months.
Other product news in brief
🙏 Samsung’s CEO Jong-hee Han has died aged 63.
🤖 AWS’ head of generative AI is leaving to launch his own startup.
🙌Microsoft has appointed a new strategy chief.
💻Anthropic and Databricks have signed a new $100m deal to build AI agent products together.
Paid subscribers get the full DoP Substack including: The Knowledge Series for sharpening their tech skills, AI tutorials for putting AI into practice at work and DoP Deep dive reports to learn from the world’s top tech companies.