Inside Google I/O & more (May 21, 2025)

👋 Good morning!

It was Google I/O day and damn were there updates. Google dropped the AI equivalent of a Beyoncé album. It’s big, it’s flashy, it’s expensive, and yes, it’s redefining search, creativity, and the agent wars.

Let’s dive in.

🔥 Google's AI Power Play

Gemini 2.5 & the Ultra Price Tag

Gemini 2.5 Pro now tops all benchmarks with its new “Deep Think” reasoning model. But if you want the real VIP experience? Google Ultra drops at $250/month (intro price: $124.99). It comes with early access to Google’s most advanced models and features.

AI Mode Takes Over Search

Search is now AI-first. Google’s new AI Mode is live for all US users, powered by Gemini. Expect smart results, deep research, live multimodal queries, and even auto-completing your shopping checkout. It can literally find and buy your Cubs tickets for you.

Creative Suite Goes Wild

Veo 3 hits the stage. It can generate synced audio, Imagen 4 improves text-in-image generation, and Flow lets you build entire films from text prompts. Google’s saying: you don’t need to be a filmmaker, coder, or designer—just describe it and hit enter.

Google Beam: 3D Video Calls Are Here

Google Beam, formerly Project Starline, is launching with HP to bring 3D avatars to your video calls. It captures facial detail, eye contact, and presence like never before. Powered by AI, Beam feels more like teleportation than Zoom—though you’ll likely need high-end hardware to use it (for now).

Jules & The Agent Invasion

Jules, Google’s new code agent, is now in public beta. Like OpenAI’s Codex, but Google-flavored. Pair that with Agent Mode across Chrome and Gemini, and you can automate 10 tasks at once—from filling forms to editing your site.

🤖 Agents, Fails & Frontier Moments

AI Fails IRL: Chicago Sun-Times Prints Fake Books

A “Summer Reading List” featuring AI hallucinated books made it to print—no one checked before publication. The lesson? Don’t vibe check with AI, actually check. How many more AI boo-boos will we see? Probably many more.

FutureHouse AI Makes First Discovery

FutureHouse’s agent system “Robin” discovered a new treatment for a major cause of blindness. It ran the hypothesis, analysis, and visualizations—all humans did was run the lab test. Wild times.

🧰 Tools of the Day

• CodeRabbit – AI code reviews in VS Code, Cursor, and Windsurf
• Overlap – Turns long-form videos into short clips
• Emergent – Draft, code, and deploy AI apps with agents
• eSelf AI – Create lifelike multilingual AI agents for customer support

🧠 Prompt of the Day

Tim Ferriss’ Fear-Setting Technique
“Act as a mindset coach trained in Tim Ferriss’s fear-setting technique. I’m considering taking a bold step — [insert goal] — but fear is holding me back…”

⚡ Quick Hits

• Nvidia launches Isaac GR00T, a new foundation model for robotics
• Trump signs deepfake law, criminalizing nonconsensual AI-generated images
• Apple to open its LLMs to third-party app developers

🧾 TLDR

Google just rewrote the playbook at I/O: new models, AI-infused search, and a creative suite that can shoot synced video and audio from a prompt. If you’re willing to pay, Ultra is now the luxury lane of consumer AI. Meanwhile, the agent wars are heating up—Jules, Codex, II-Agent—and AI is even helping make medical discoveries. But don't forget: always, always verify your AI.

Catch you tomorrow,
David