Once again, Big Tech went AI bonkers this week.

Microsoft’s bringing agentic features to the browser. 

Google is updating … like everything. 

OpenAI might delay its GPT-5 launch as it warns of ‘capacity crunches.’ 

And Apple? 

They swear they’re ready to compete in the AI chatbot race. 

For real, real this time. Lolz. 

Don’t spend hours a week trying to figure out what the heck is happening in the AI world and how it impacts you. 

That’s our job, as we bring you the AI News That Matters on Monday. 

Let’s dig in shorties. 👇

OpenAI just released Study Mode in ChatGPT to stop students from turning into mindless copy-paste zombies. It's available to everyone right now.

It’s available to all users, even those on the free plan. Just go to ChatGPT, click tools, then "study and learn."

Instead of giving ready-made answers, Study Mode nicely interrogates you about your grade level and existing knowledge, then guides you through solving problems step by step. It forces back-and-forth conversations instead of just giving copy-and-paste ready essays that will instantly deliver students a B+. 

OpenAI plans to add features like locking the mode so students can't switch back to easy-answer mode when learning gets tough.

What it means:

OpenAI basically just admitted that their own product has been making people intellectually lazy. 

Study mode is damage control for the zombie-brain epidemic that ChatGPT helped create. 

But here's the business opportunity that most people are missing: this isn't just for students. 

Smart companies will start requiring their teams to use study mode for training and skill development instead of letting employees mindlessly copy-paste AI outputs.

Google just dropped Gemini 2.5 DeepThink mode, but there's a catch. It's only available to Ultra subscribers who can afford to drop $250 per month on Google's premium AI plan.

(Or you can just send us your request here.) 

Think of DeepThink as a "think harder" button for Google's AI. When you toggle it on, the system uses what Google calls "parallel thinking" to consider multiple approaches, revise its ideas, and combine the best parts before giving you an answer. The responses take longer to generate, but they're much more detailed and thoughtful.

The results speak for themselves. DeepThink scored 87.6 on live code bench competition coding benchmarks, jumping up from the previous score of 80.4. The system integrates with Google's Code Execution and Google Search tools to give you more comprehensive responses. This is the same version of the model that Google used to achieve bronze-level performance on the International Mathematical Olympiad benchmarks.

The downside? 

You need to be on that expensive Google Gemini Ultra plan. They still have the $125 per month introductory pricing for 3 months if you were quick enough. 

What it means:

Google just created a two-tier AI system and it's a brilliant business move.

 They're giving basic AI to the masses while reserving premium thinking capabilities for people willing to pay enterprise prices. 

This completely kills the narrative that "all AI models are becoming equal." For developers and consultants who bill clients $200+ per hour, paying $250 monthly for significantly better code generation is a no-brainer business decision. 

While OpenAI warns about delays and capacity issues, Google is shipping premium features that actually work. 

Google is enhancing what they call "AI mode" in search, which their CEO has said will eventually become the default search experience. 

If you haven't tried Google's AI mode yet, now's the time, especially with these new updates. We’re big fans. 

Desktop users can now ask questions about images they upload, and PDF upload support is rolling out in the coming weeks. You'll be able to query lecture slides, study guides, industry white papers, or any document, and AI mode will analyze your files while cross-referencing current web sources to give you detailed answers.

They're also bringing Canvas mode to AI mode. Canvas mode lets you build and continuously refine study plans, coding projects, or business strategies in a side panel while adding context from your uploaded files.  

What it means:

Traditional SEO is dying faster than most marketing professionals realize. 

Why would anyone scroll through 10 blue links when AI Mode gives you the answer with sources cited? AND you can keep chatting with it iteratively? 

Prepare accordingly for the eventual demise of the 10 blue links. 

NotebookLM continues to bring AI bangers. 

Google updated NotebookLM with video overviews with AI narration from your uploaded documents. It even pulls visuals from PDFs and adds custom graphics to create actual video presentations.

You can customize by profession, audience, and tone. The killer feature? 

Generate multiple versions from the same content - Spanish for marketing, Mandarin for HR, English for executives, all from identical source documents.

What it means:

Google just killed the corporate training video industry overnight. 

90% of companies paying tens of thousands of dollars for booooooring training videos are wasting their money. NotebookLM now creates dynamic and highly personalized professional presentations on repeat. 

This is a cheat code. 

Every business has piles of documentation sitting around that could become engaging video content automatically. 

HR departments will use this for onboarding, sales teams for product training, and marketing teams for educational content. 

The multiple version capability is genius because one set of source documents becomes unlimited customized presentations for different audiences. 

If you’re not using NotebookLM already….. It’s gonna get kinda awkward between us. Lolz. 

Microsoft just rolled out an experimental Copilot mode in their Edge browser that represents a major step toward AI-powered web browsing. 

This new feature lets Copilot search across all your open browser tabs and assist with tasks in ways that are more advanced than what ChatGPT currently offers.

Here's how it works. Copilot mode brings the AI chatbot directly to your Edge new tab page and can access all your open tabs with your permission. 

You can ask it to compare different hotels across multiple booking sites, summarize product choices from various shopping tabs, or find specific information scattered across different websites you have open.

The system also supports voice navigation, so you can ask Copilot to find information on specific websites or open particular tabs for comparison. 

What it means:

Microsoft just took a giant leap in the agentic browser race before most people realized there was a race happening. 

Even though Google’s got the good, Microsoft beat them to the bunch. (Using their own browser, Chromium, obviously.) 

The timing couldn't be better since OpenAI is reportedly planning their own AI browser and Perplexity has released its popular Comet Agent Browser. 

This space is BOOOOOMING. We covered it more here. 

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned users about "hiccups and capacity crunches" right after closing an $8.3 billion funding round at a $300 billion valuation. 

The round was 5x oversubscribed.

Altman tweeted they have "a ton of stuff to launch" over the next couple months but asked users to bear with service disruptions. He also posted GPT-5 production screenshots, though his first tweet hinted at possible delays.

The company is targeting $40 billion total raised by year-end.

What it means:

OpenAI's infrastructure can't handle their explosive growth and it could become a serious competitive liability.

While Google ships new premium features left and right, OpenAI is pre-apologizing for service problems. 

But the capacity crunch excuse doesn't hold water when you just raised billions specifically to scale infrastructure. 

This situation gives Google and Anthropic a massive opportunity to steal from ChatGPT’s massive market share lead by promising reliable service while OpenAI is hiccuping. 

(Kidding. We know Anthropic can’t ship anything that allows you to prompt it more than once without hitting rate limits.) 

According to reports from Bloomberg, Apple has formed a new team called "Answers Knowledge and Information" to develop their own AI chatbot that could compete with ChatGPT. 

This marks a major shift from Apple's previous strategy of partnering with OpenAI and integrating ChatGPT with Siri.

The backstory here is important. 

Apple originally failed to build their own capable large language model or make Siri actually smart, so they just partnered with OpenAI instead. 

Apple’s new AI goal is creating a stripped-down ChatGPT rival that can crawl the web and answer questions, potentially as both a standalone app and upgrades to Siri, Mac Spotlight, and Safari.

CEO Tim Cook recently told employees that the company "must win in AI" and announced significant increases in AI spending to investors.

What it means:

Apple saying they "must win in AI" is like a high school basketball team declaring they'll win the NBA championship. 

It's completely unrealistic given their current position. 

They've lost their best AI engineers to companies like Meta, they lack visionary AI leadership, and they're not paying the competitive salaries needed to attract top talent.

(Oh, and they haven't shipped an actually useful AI feature to customers yet. Ouch.) 

 Building a "stripped-down" ChatGPT competitor shows they still don't understand that users want more AI capability, not less.

This announcement is mostly PR theater to calm investor concerns about falling behind in AI. Don't expect anything substantial from Apple in the AI space for years.

According to industry reports, Microsoft is in advanced negotiations with OpenAI to renegotiate their partnership terms before some crucial deadlines hit. 

Microsoft currently owns a 49% equity stake in OpenAI after investing over $13 billion, but their access to OpenAI's technology is set to expire in 2030 or if OpenAI declares they've achieved artificial general intelligence (AGI).

The two companies are reportedly discussing Microsoft taking a reduced equity stake in the low-to-mid 30% range in exchange for extended partnership terms. This would give Microsoft formal shares and potential for greater financial returns while ensuring continued access to OpenAI's technology.

This partnership has been crucial for Microsoft's AI success. Products like Azure OpenAI Services, AI Foundry, and Copilot are all built around OpenAI's models. We've also seen reports that Microsoft has been testing GPT-5 in limited capacity, so they know Copilot is about to get significantly better.

The challenge is that OpenAI wants to pay Microsoft a lower share of revenue as they grow and approach AGI, while ensuring Microsoft uses their technology safely.

What it means:

Microsoft is negotiating from a position of need and OpenAI knows it. 

The 2030 expiration deadline gives OpenAI enormous leverage in these discussions. 

Microsoft (smartly) built their initial AI strategy around OpenAI's teaching and they might not be able to afford to lose access without a viable alternative. 

This renegotiation will cost Microsoft billions more, but they have no choice because losing OpenAI access would destroy their competitive position against Google.