A warning from Anthropic’s CEO and new features from Retool explored
Plus: Perplexity gets new powers, the agentic browser wars begin, how to transform your Google Doc into a Zen-like experience
Hi product people 👋, Rich here with the weekly product briefing.
After the reasonably wild frenzy of tech conferences and announcements last week, if there was a common theme from this week, it would be the creeping realisation of the economic impact of AI on the future of work. McKinsey announced fresh layoffs, Retool released new agents and Anthropic’s CEO issued a stark warning about what all of this means - along with some practical suggestions about what we can do about it.
But there’s still reason to be optimistic and excited.
This week, Google’s CEO paints a more positive outlook of the transformative effect of AI and how it could democratize the product creation process. The emergence of new agentic browsers kicks off a new era that may redefine what a browser is. Plus, how you can transform your Google Docs into a Zen-like sanctuary for mindful reflection - even when you’re dealing with the chaos of work.
Happy Friday and enjoy your weekend!
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New voices and agents from Claude, Retool and ElevenLabs
First up, Anthropic’s Claude has added voice mode to its mobile app. It’s currently only available in beta but it can access third party applications like your Google Calendar to perform some genuinely useful tasks. It also does something other voice assistants don’t seem to have done just yet which is to display a summary of your conversation as text on screen so that you can easily flip between voice and text modes. Grok also launched its own Voice mode but in doing so took away one of its best features: the ability to swipe to start a new chat thread.
In other news…
Retool has launched a new Agents feature that can drastically reduce the time spent on tasks. In a demo video, the company showed how a task like managing Stripe chargebacks is 50x faster with the use of agents vs humans. Their CEO David Hsu said in an interview that following the launch, the conversation his clients are having is: "How do we get LLMs to replace labor?" .
ElevenLabs has released a new “batch calling” feature which will conduct hundreds of calls simultaneously. It uses custom variables that allow you to personalize each call to the specific needs of every user. So, for example, if a user is expecting a package from a specific retailer, those variables can be passed into the voice conversation. Definitely worth checking out if your company is looking for ways to personalize outreach beyond email or SMS.
Slack has released a new “pinch to summarize” feature that lets users pinch the screen on a specific channel and get a summary of its contents. The designer who worked on it says it was inspired by Arc’s pinch to summarize.
The battle of the agentic browsers has officially started
This week, Opera unveiled Opera Neon - a new browser for the agentic web. It’s designed to understand your intent, assist with tasks like filling in forms, and take actions on your behalf. It can also build mini apps and websites - a feature could transform browsers into builders (as a side note, I’ve also been trying to work out what accent the bot has in their promo video which is a curious mix of Scandinavian, Robot and British. Scandi robo-British if you will. It’s quite odd but it works).
Perplexity teased a preview of its upcoming agentic browser, Chrome released its own client side Agent capabilities and the Browser Company outlined some of the reasons behind its strategic decision to sideline Arc and launch a new product, Dia. One of the biggest drivers was the lack of product stickiness for Arc’s features: Only 5.52% of DAUs used more than one Space regularly, only 4.17% used Live Folders (including GitHub Live Folders) and just 0.4% used one of the company’s favorite features, Calendar Preview on Hover.
Google’s CEO on the future of Search, AI agents and more…
Sundar Pichai spoke to the Verge where he outlined his vision of the future. Some of his boldest comments include the prediction that the abstraction of UI away from users could mean companies like Uber and Airbnb demand new revenue sharing agreements and that AI means users will democratize the app building process.
Here are some key takeaways:
Key reads and resources for product teams
New from the Department of Product Substack this week:
Knowledge Series - How to improve your negotiation skills at work with AI
In this Knowledge Series, we’ll use the latest set of AI capabilities along with frameworks designed by Harvard University to boost your negotiation skills with a series of practical examples to lean on. Use Perplexity to structure a pay rise discussion, Gemini Pro to frame a third party API vendor negotiation and more.
Deep - Big tech’s big new AI announcements that actually matter
Last week Google and Microsoft made over 200 different AI announcements at their I/O and Build conferences. But with so many announcements all made at once, it’s easy to miss some of the hidden gems that matter. (Department of Product)
More reads to feed your product brain
Why the era of the human-computer interface is dying (Substack)
5 principles for product managers fending off obsolescence in the AI era (A16Z)
When to use progressive web apps and when to go native (The New Stack)
How to turn your Google Docs into a Zen-like experience (Substack)
How generative AI tools can support (or undermine) your next presentation (MIT)
Tools you can use
Magic Path - an infinite canvas and component designer in one place.
Context - your all in one AI office suite (that raised $11m this week).
Modoki - switch your Mac dock apps depending on your productivity flow.
Claude for Sheets - the official Anthropic Claude plugin for Google Sheets.
📈 Product data and trends to stay informed
“Shadow AI” is emerging as a new trend at work. Shadow AI describes the use of unauthorized, self-built apps that augment your work. The number of shadow apps used at work is set to grow to over 160,000 by Q2 next year.
Within top consulting firms, the use of self-built, unauthorized apps continues to grow with 50 new AI apps built a day for personal use in consultancy. The consultancy industry is getting hit hard by AI: McKinsey is cutting 10% of its workforce, PwC cut roughly 2% of its staff and Accenture cut 2.5% of its workforce. One user over on Reddit has even crafted a prompt it says can do the job of a strategy growth consultant and Perplexity released its own set of new tools that could impact the market further.
A new report from SignalFire says Google is losing more staff than any other company with 5.4% of its AI Labs staff being poached in 2024.
Using AI at work does result in teams generating more creative ideas - but only just. On average, individuals working with AI produced higher-quality ideas than those coming from either individuals or pairs with no AI help. The AI-powered teams generated a disproportionately high number of the top 10% highest-quality ideas in the study.
ChatGPT might not be as popular as we all assume. New analysis from Benedict Evans from his annual State of the Nation style report shows that somewhere between 5% and 15% of people are finding a use for this every day, but at least twice as many people are familiar with it and choose to use it only once a week.
Anthropic raised its safety level after its Opus model was found to blackmail engineers when threatened with replacement 84% of the time. In an interview, Anthropic’s CEO said we should be prepared for a white collar job bloodbath in the next 1 to 5 years that could see 50% of entry level jobs wiped out. You can keep track of tech layoffs here.
Perplexity generated $34m in revenues last year according to a new report. But at the same time, it burnt $65m of cash and had just 1.6m users and 260,000 paying users. This week, they ditched the widgets that appeared beneath the search box.
Other product news in brief
Ⓧ Grok has signed an agreement worth $300 million to power Telegram’s AI assistant.
🥕Instacart has appointed a new CEO.
🍏iOS 19 will be rebranded as iOS 26 as Apple renames all of its operating systems to make them consistent.
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