hi bud buds,
noticed a few releases this week were big accessibility updates from major tech companies. the one that stuck out most: xai’s grok chatbot can now “see” through your phone camera in real time. users can ask grok questions about whatever the camera is pointed at (for example, “what am I looking at”, and grok will voice an answer immediately.
this feels like a massive paradigm shift for people with vision impairments: extending your phone to guide yourself. It’s almost like a seeing eye dog, except that the dog can talk, and also has the world’s knowledge in its brain.
as i’ve written about ad nauseam in past issues, ai will obviously create lot of disruption: massive job losses, kids disassociating with reality, even more difficulty making a living as an artist. but with every wave of tech, there are moments of real good. i’m really excited about this one — helping folks with vision disabilities navigate just a little more easily in this world.
tty next week!
xxo,
dj
last week’s product launches
FINALLY
airbnb released airbnb total price display, showing full stay costs by default
cool!
spotify released ai playlists, expanding its ai playlist generator to 40+ new markets. this feels like a solid discovery feature with real user value, but low key another way for them to cram more low-royalty ai-generated music down our throats (← linked article is one of my favorite reads of 2025 btw)
openai released chatgpt’s responses will now include washington post articles, part of a bigger push for media partnerships. i wonder if exclusive licensing deals like this could be a potential savior for the journalism industry’s plight over the last decade
meta released edits, a new video editing app for reels and stories. bullish on long-term instagram + youtube catching up to tiktok
openai released lightweight version of chatgpt deep research tool. i barely use deep research; does anyone reliably use this feature?
bluesky released blue check verification, letting trusted verifiers authenticate notable accounts
yay for accessibility!
xai released grok vision, enabling grok chatbot to analyze objects through your phone camera
tiktok released alt text for photos, allowing creators to add descriptive text for accessibility purposes
netflix released dialogue-only subtitles, letting viewers see only spoken words without audio cues
other nice ai workflow features
character.ai released avatarfx, an ai video model that animates characters with different styles and voices. this feels… dangerous considering kids were already falling in love with character[.]ai characters…
dropbox upgraded dash, their ai-powered search tool, to understand and search audio, video, and images
fireflies.ai released mini apps, designed to pull specific insights from meeting transcripts for sales, marketing, and other cross-functional personas
$$$
meta opening access to threads ads to advertisers globally. curious if they’ll have more success monetizing than twitter, which famously struggled to monetize via advertisements (due to primary use case being low intent scrolling)
linktree released monetization features, letting creators build + sell courses directly on linktree. not fully sure about this one; but go off linktree, get your bag!
bye bye, love you,
dj