BB Digest: Google's new agents

PLUS: Devin is finally available.

December 12, 2024

Digest #518 → Subscribe | Upgrade to Pro

Hey folks,

quick reminder, our new website went live earlier this week with new features for teams, improved performance and exclusive member deals.

TLDR; inside today’s newsletter

  • Google cooked with Gemini 2.0, OpenAI’s letdown and Midjourney’s Patchwork.

  • ICYMI: a special blog for leaders and new tutorials

  • snack n skill - learn to analyze marketing emails and improve your campaigns

  • 5 of the best new AI tools

  • I took Gemini’s Deep Research for a ride.

  • 6 posts looking at AI in 2025

  • to-do’s

Alright, let’s get to it!

  • Google kicked off the Gemini 2.0 series yesterday and it’s full of bangers. Here are the highlights:

    • The new Gemini 2.0 Flash model - It’s fast and matches 1.5 Pro's performance. It’s available in Gemini Advanced as an experimental model.

    • Deep Research mode - Another wild update to Gemini Advanced. Feed it a complex query and it'll scan hundreds of websites to compile a report. (more on this below).

    • Gemini 2.0 Flash has multimodal output, i.e. it can generate audio (available now) and images (yet to come) in real-time. Plus the X factor, this model has native tool use and is perfect for agents. Right now, it’s free with some limits but it’ll likely be dirt cheap. It’s a feast for developers.

    • Google’s future is all about agents (set to come in 2025). We have updated Project Astra - a live voice companion, Project Mariner - an agent that can use your browser, Jules - a bug-fixing agent plus Agents in Games, Colab and more.

  • Day 4 & 5 of OpenAI's "12 Days of Ship-mas" (but it's just a tangerine in a sock)

    • Canvas is now part of the default ChatGPT experience. It also works with Custom GPTs now. Canvas can also run Python now (Yay!) but it can’t access files from your chat (Boo!)

    • ChatGPT x Apple Intelligence - Siri can call ChatGPT for help, use it to write, and lend your phone’s camera to it. Siri be like: “Hey Chatty, I’ll give you a piggyback for distribution, lemme plug into your brains?” Looks like it worked, coz OpenAI crashed for multiple hours yesterday.

    Again, more at our daily updated blog. Let’s see if day 6 is worth it.

  • Join the new series of Imagine This… BCG’s podcast, where host Patricia Sabga and her AI co-host, GENE, team up to tackle the biggest questions in tech and business. From AI’s role in upskilling to how CEOs will lead in 2030—don’t miss the trends that matter! Listen to the podcast here.*

  • Midjourney quietly launches "Patchwork" - a multiplayer worldbuilding tool that mixes AI image gen with storytelling.

  • Devin - the AI software engineer is now generally available starting at $500/month.

    *sponsored

👀 ICYMI: New stuff we’ve launched

Our new blog for sales leaders - Encouraging your sales team to use generative AI. It’s short and easy to get started. Let us know what you think.

Tutorials:

🍽️ Snack ‘n’ skill

Learn how to use AI to analyze marketing emails

Marketing emails in your inbox are valuable learning resources, but manually studying them is time-consuming. What if AI could automatically analyze these emails and help you create better campaigns?

Step 1. Set up your email monitoring system

Create a new workflow in Lindy AI that connects to your Gmail account. This will allow the AI to access and monitor incoming marketing emails automatically. Configure the workflow to trigger whenever new emails arrive in your inbox.

Step 2. Create an AI-powered analysis system

  • Configure AI to identify and label marketing emails based on content and structure

  • Set up Gmail filters to organize identified marketing emails into dedicated folders

  • Create an AI query system that analyzes email sequences from specific senders

  • Develop prompts for AI to extract campaign strategies and patterns

  • Build a recommendation engine that suggests improvements for your own campaigns

Tip: When setting up your AI analysis prompts, include specific parameters about your target audience and business goals. This helps the AI provide more relevant and actionable recommendations.

This walkthrough is a condensed version of this tutorial. Check out our category for marketing and growth using AI for more such tutorials.

⚙️ Top new tools

  • AssemblyAI: Advanced speech-to-text API that captures the complexity of human speech.*

  • Gitingest - Turn codebases into prompt-friendly text.

  • TLDR by Every - Catch up on missed meetings at your company with a 3-5 min AI podcast.

  • Happenstance Directory - AI-search the professional profiles of a list of people you provide.

  • Powerdrill - Leverage LLMs to simplify data analysis.

  • Remention - Place your product in billions of online discussions with AI.

🗣️ Not everyone’s talking about...Gemini's research superpowers

Gemini 2.0 Flash’s real-time demo on AI Studio is amazing (and many are talking about it). I tested voice-to-voice chat in a noisy room with kids around, and it handled context like a champ. But not many are talking about the new mode in Gemini Advanced: Deep Research.

I took it for a ride this morning and TBH I am impressed.

What's going on here?

Google just gave Gemini a serious research upgrade. The new Deep Research mode can digest hundreds of websites at once and compile everything from market trends to technical analyses.

What does this mean?

I started with a complex query about enterprise AI adoption. It gave me a research plan, which I could edit, but I wanted to test the default vibe. After scanning 580+ sites! it gave me a 2000-word report.

The impressive bits:

  • Can handle nuanced questions about implementation costs and ROI

  • Pulls data from multiple sources to validate claims

  • Organizes findings into actionable insights

And here’s where it lacks:

  • Many resources were landing pages for PDfs (we writers know the pain). it can’t refer to those yet.

  • It's still working with what's available online, so some info might be outdated and might not offer critical expertise.

How & why to use Deep Research?

I am going to test it more but from initial impressions, it’ll work great if you break questions into specific chunks. The generated report is not immediately usable. But the first draft + researched links (you can narrow them down to few a dozen with smaller queries) help like a research intern.

You can create that in 20-30 minutes (5-10 minutes per query) and then use your subject matter expertise to take it beyond the finish line. So if your working month has more than a few days dedicated to research and writing, the $20 for Gemini Advanced is worth it.

 📜 Interesting posts

📌 To-dos

  1. Let us know if you have any tutorials or courses you want us to create—we’re always open to ideas.

That wraps things up for today! See you again next week. 👋

Ben

Enjoy this newsletter? Please forward to a friend.

Want more education on AI? Become a Ben’s Bites member and access our courses & tutorials.

Want to advertise in this newsletter? Click here.

Reply

or to participate.