OpenAI is feeling the heat 🔥

Welcome back, Superhuman. I figured Google would lay low ahead of its big event later this month. I was wrong. The search giant just dropped a powerful new update to its Gemini lineup. And: If you thought OpenAI’s restructuring compromise would silence the critics, think again.

Today’s Insights

• Gemini’s coding upgrade, Microsoft’s AI PCs, and two new models to try

• OpenAI’s restructuring compromise hasn’t silenced the critics

• Tutorial: How to Create YouTube Thumbnails with ChatGPT

• 5 new AI tools to boost your productivity

• News, memes, what’s trending on socials, and more

TODAY IN AI

1. Gemini gets game-changing coding upgrade: Google’s big I/O conference is only weeks away, but the tech giant apparently couldn’t resist a good tease. It just gave Gemini a major overhaul that’ll make vibe coders very happy. Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview is especially good at generating fully functioning user interfaces and apps. The update also lets you do things like convert a YouTube video into an interactive quiz or transform a nature photo into a dynamic animation.

2. Microsoft’s AI PCs and tablets are getting more affordable: AI capabilities are quickly becoming an ordinary part of consumer laptops. The latest example: Microsoft just unveiled a Surface Laptop and Surface Pro tablet that are each powerful enough to run models locally (without an internet connection) while coming in at $900 and $800. The company is also bringing more AI features to Windows, letting you do things like change settings with simple voice prompts.

3. Here are two new frontier video models to try: First up, Lightricks (the company behind Facetune) just launched its “most powerful open-source video generation model yet.” The big talking point is that it can allegedly generate clips faster than you can watch them. (Try it out here.) Meanwhile, HeyGen released Avatar IV, which lets you generate a realistic lip-synced avatar with just a photo and script.

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FROM THE FRONTIER

OpenAI can’t catch a break, even after its restructuring compromise

OpenAI isn’t out of the woods yet. On Monday, it backed down from a plan that would have stripped its non-profit board of some of its power. Under the new restructuring, the board will still call the shots and own the majority of the company, similar to how things currently work.

Critics say that while that might sound good on paper, the devil’s in the details. For one, it looks like the current profit cap might be going away. That rule says that if OpenAI’s investors make more than 100x their initial investment, the excess has to go to the non-profit. With that stipulation gone, OpenAI is hoping it can generate even more funding.

Elon Musk isn’t backing down: The xAI CEO, who counts himself as an OpenAI co-founder, is reportedly moving forward with his lawsuits against the startup. He believes OpenAI has abandoned its founding mission (reaching AGI for the “benefit of humanity”) in favor of shareholders.

Between a rock and a hard place: Even if OpenAI were to totally submit to Musk’s demands, there’s an equally unhappy party on the other side: Microsoft. The company is allegedly worried that its $13.75B investment in OpenAI could be in jeopardy. As OpenAI gets squeezed from all sides, it’s pretty clear that it has a long road ahead.

THE AI ACADEMY

How to Create YouTube Thumbnails with ChatGPT

• Head to ChatGPT and upload your photo or the subject you want featured in the thumbnail.

• Write a detailed prompt describing exactly what you want.

• Be specific about the layout, any text you want in the thumbnail, and the emotion or reaction you want the subject to show.

• Define the overall style of the thumbnail, or you can simply say ‘inspired by popular YouTubers like MrBeast’.

Sample Prompts: “Create a YouTube thumbnail of a man looking stunned with glowing eyes, surrounded by flying code and neon lights. Add bold text on the side: 'AI Just Broke the Internet!”

“Make a YouTube thumbnail where a woman is whispering to the camera with glowing speech bubbles around him. Add text: 'AI's Best Kept Secret...'“

• After the thumbnail is generated, review the result and tweak the prompt or ask for variations until you're satisfied.

• You can also upload a rough sketch of your thumbnail and ask ChatGPT to turn it into a YouTube thumbnail.

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AI & TECH NEWS

Everything else you need to know today

🎬 Movie Magic: Generative video platform Higgsfield AI just dropped a new VFX collection, which includes effects like Thunder God, Turning Metal, and Soul Jump. Here are 10 examples of what you can create.

📱 Long Story Short: Google’s iOS app is adding a new “simplify” tool that can give you a quick summary of any webpage.

⏰ Wake-Up Call: Micha Kaufman, CEO of freelancing marketplace Fiverr, warned his employees this week that AI is coming for their jobs — and his job, too. He joins a growing list of CEOs who are embracing “radical candor” as AI reshapes their industries.

📰 News Navigator: Alums from Twitter and Tesla just launched a sleek news aggregation platform that uses AI to surface articles while citing each of its sources so readers can click to learn more.

👑 Image Crown: Recraft, a design-savvy image generator that has outperformed Dall-E and Midjourney on some major benchmarks, just landed $30M in new funding.

PRODUCTIVITY

5 AI Tools to Supercharge Your Productivity

✅ Lens: Trim, sync, and style your video with a single prompt.

✅ DeepL: Translate any text and document instantly with AI.

✅ Codename Goose: An on-machine, open-source AI agent that can automate your tasks, with extensions that integrate with your existing tools and apps.

✅ Studocu: Find top-rated study notes from students taking the same courses as you.

✅ Lovable: Turn your idea into an app in seconds, with your personal full-stack engineer.

 🎁 Want more? Check out our Top 125 AI Tools

^{* indicates a promoted tool, if any}

SOCIAL SIGNALS

What’s trending on socials today

🧑‍💻 Looks Can Be Deceiving: Someone made a deepfake video featuring a teenage Elon Musk, Robert Downey Jr., and other celebrities snapping selfies. It’s going viral over just how believable it looks.

🔮 Buried the Lede: OpenAI researcher Rohan Pandey says he’s leaving to teach AI how to read Sanskrit “so we can immortalize the classical Indian canon.” But just as intriguing is the claim on his website that he “helped train GPT-5 and future models.”

🪩 Shiny Object Syndrome: An art director just shared his handy prompt to turn any emoji “into shiny chrome pins you’d see in a design store” with GPT-4o.

🎨 Food For Thought: ML engineer Peter Schmidt-Nielsen kicked off a lively debate about why many of us value AI-generated art differently than human-made creations.

💥 Startup Spark: Jenni AI CEO David Park explains exactly how to come up with your next startup idea in the era of AI.

PROMPT OF THE DAY

Find your Ikigai

Prompt: Act as a purpose-driven business coach. Help me discover my Ikigai — the intersection of what I love, what I’m good at, what the world needs, and what I can be paid for — and guide me in turning it into a business or career path. Start by asking me reflective questions in each of the four Ikigai dimensions to uncover my passions, strengths, marketable skills, and potential value to others. Once we’ve mapped those, suggest business ideas or career directions that align with my Ikigai. For each suggestion, explain how it connects to the four elements and provide examples of real-world businesses or roles that reflect similar paths. Include prompts for journaling, self-assessment tools, and small experiments I can run to test alignment. End with a one-page Ikigai roadmap summarizing my core themes, possible paths, and first action steps toward building a purpose-driven life or business.

🤓 Want more? Check out our Top 1,000 Prompts

AI-GENERATED IMAGES

Threadscape

Midjourney Prompt: A three-dimensional triangle made of carpet material. the pattern depicts a 2023 LEXUS NX and a young couple having a picnic in triangle shape carpet, A child flying a kite, green Asia carpet pattern, Gabbeh, composition --ar 9:16 --v 7 --stylize 250 --profile sss5f49

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Until next time!

Zain & the Superhuman AI team