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Gemini is quickly closing the gap with ChatGPT. Backed by Google’s massive distribution, it may only be weeks to challenge the top spot. Plus, AI-generated video is now so realistic that only ~10% of viewers can tell it apart from real footage. At the same time, AI is fundamentally changing how R&D is done, with faster cycles, lower costs, and fewer humans in the loop.

More on this today. Stay curious.

• ChatGPT’s Lead Is Shrinking as Gemini Surges

• 90% of People Can’t Tell Real Video From AI

• 🧰 AI Tools

• AI Is Rewriting Product Development

• 📚Learning Corner - Coding

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📰 AI News and Trends

• Louisville, Kentucky, joins a growing number of cities bringing AI to permitting. The town also appointed its first-ever chief AI officer.

• Micron broke snowy winter ground in New York on Friday to begin building a chip fab that promises to bring up to 50k jobs and much-needed computer memory production to the US.

• OpenAI is asking steep prices for early ChatGPT ads that could be hard to scale up.

• Apple plans to unveil a Gemini-powered Siri assistant in February, leveraging Google's AI models to enhance task completion using user data.

• Meta paused teens’ access to AI characters as it prepares a new version with parental controls.

Other Tech News

• CBP Wants AI-Powered ‘Quantum Sensors’ for Finding Fentanyl in Cars.

• The U.S. wants 40% of chips made onshore. But quietly, the equipment that makes those chips is moving offshore fast. This gap matters as much as the chips themselves.

• Chinese companies like WeRide, Baidu, and Pony.ai are scaling robotaxi fleets across the Gulf while US Waymo and Cruise focus on domestic markets.

• Substack Launches TV App. Creators, Subscribers Decry It As “Veering Away From The Written Word.”

• Big Tech is facing multiple high-profile social media addiction lawsuits. Meta, TikTok, and YouTube will face parents’ accusations in court this week.

• Amazon will begin a round of about 14,000 layoffs next week, affecting thousands of corporate employees, to help reduce management layers and bureaucracy. Bringing the total number of laid-off employees to as many as 30,000 in the last 6 months.

• Netflix has agreed to buy Warner Bros. Discovery's studio and streaming business in an all-cash deal for $27.75 a share.

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90% of People Can’t Tell Real Video From AI

AI video has crossed a major realism threshold. In a controlled study by Runway, 1,043 participants watched 20 short videos (10 real, 10 AI-generated) and nnly 9.5% (99 people) could reliably tell real from AI. Overall detection accuracy was 57.1%—barely above random guessing (50%).

Where AI fooled people the most, viewers were in Animals & architecture videos, where detection fell below chance (45–47%), meaning people often thought AI videos were real. Humans (faces, hands, actions) are slightly easier to detect as models are creating more realistic human features, especially when looked closely, but still weak at 58–65% accuracy.

AI video quality has improved exponentially since early 2023. What once took minutes to generate blurry clips and hands with 6-8 fingers now produces near-indistinguishable 5-second videos. The industry has hit a tipping point in terms of detection alone. But it also changes the way videos and even movie studios create footage. The technology will continue to become more powerful, fast and more realistic, to the point that entire high-quality movies will be created with powerful prompts. The winner may be the best storytellers with great imagination who know what people need emotionally.

📚Learning Corner

Coding

• Best practices for coding with agents

• How to write a good spec for AI agents

AI Is Rewriting Product Development

Manufacturers are using AI to compress weeks or months of R&D into days and unlock solutions humans wouldn’t normally try.

• PPG used deterministic AI (physics + chemistry, not chatbots) to design a fast-drying automotive clear coat.

  • Dry time dropped from ~30 minutes to ~5 minutes when heated at 140°F.

  • Air-dry time fell to <1 hour vs ~2 hours for competitors.

  • Result: higher body-shop throughput and real commercial sales.

• Procter & Gamble uses AI to generate new scents for soaps, detergents, and home fragrances.

• Mars cut development time 40% on a redesigned gum bottle and saved 246 tons of plastic.

• 3M applied AI to optimize a sanding disc for better dust capture and grinding performance. Its CTO calls AI a “fourth expert” in the lab.

• Startups and suppliers like Citrine Informatics report customers shrinking product development cycles from weeks to days, optimizing multiple properties at once (strength, weight, cost, sustainability).

AI seems to be quietly becoming a core R&D engine in chemicals, materials, and manufacturing, driving faster launches, lower costs, and sustainability gains.

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ChatGPT’s Lead Is Shrinking as Gemini Surges

The AI traffic race is tightening fast.

• ChatGPT fell to 64.6% global traffic share in January 2026, down from 86.6% a year ago (–22 pts). This is the first time below 65% since 2023, per Similarweb.

• Gemini jumped to 22% share, up from 5.3% last January, a +315% increase YoY.

• Grok overtook DeepSeek for the first time (3.5% vs 3.3%).

• Claude held at 2.1%; Perplexity slipped to 1.9%; Microsoft Copilot fell to 1.1%.

Why Gemini is winning

• Google embedded Gemini across Search, Gmail, Workspace, and Android, driving massive distribution.

• Monthly users jumped from 450M to 650M in 2025.

• The new Google-Apple partnership positions Gemini models inside Apple Intelligence later this year.

Still, ChatGPT dominates influence

• ChatGPT drove 1.6B outbound website visits (Sep–Nov 2025) vs 287M from Gemini.

• AI-referred traffic converts ~11× better than search (1.66% vs 0.15%), though it’s still <1% of total web traffic for most sites.

Big picture

• The AI market is fragmenting fast.

• ChatGPT remains the largest player, but distribution, not model quality alone, is now the decisive weapon.

• For marketers and publishers, “optimize for Google” is no longer enough; AI platform–specific strategies are now mandatory.

🧰 AI Tools of The Day