Weekly AI Highlights: October 17-23, 2026
What Small Business Owners Need to Know Right Now
Hey Reader,
Lately, I've been talking about AI agents and how Muse and Instinct have been helping me.
These agents don't wait for me to ask. Just the other day, my Instinct agent texted me out of the blue. I had accidentally booked two sets of flights for me and my daughter.
I canceled with about 4 hours to spare and got a full refund. That one text saved me about $1,200.
Now Claude has one too. Anthropic announced Claude Duet this week, an agent that brings you a morning brief and keeps working after you put your phone down.
Also this week: ChatGPT can now use your Chrome tabs, and both ChatGPT and Gemini Notebook made it easier to build slides, and you can now lock private chats behind a PIN.
Let's go...
1. Claude Duet Is All the Buzz Right Now
Anthropic announced Claude Duet, a new app where Claude works as your agent. An agent is AI that doesn't just answer you. It goes and does the work.
You message it the way you'd message a person, typed or by voice. It runs on Claude Opus 5.5, which Anthropic says gives it the judgment to decide what needs you, what can wait, and when to check with you first.
What’s notable:
- Morning brief: Each morning, if you want it to, it will look across your email and calendar, pick what needs you most, and start the first steps, like drafting replies.
- Bigger jobs by message: Describe what you need. It figures out which apps to use and sends back finished work, like a slide deck, a financial model, or a dashboard.
- Keeps working: It runs on its own computer in the cloud, so it keeps going after you close the app.
- Asks first: It checks with you before it sends a message, makes a payment, signs a document, or deletes anything.
- Almost no setup: It uses the memory, skills, and connected apps already in your Claude account.
What it can do for your business
Anthropic's examples: find unpaid invoices in Stripe and draft the reminder emails, prepare payroll for you to review, and get contracts ready to send.
How to get on the waitlist
- Who can join: Claude Pro and Max plans in the US.
- Sign up: Go to the Claude Duet page and select Join the waitlist.
- Use your Claude email: Enter the email on your Claude account. Your access is tied to that address.
- Tell them your first task: The form asks what you'd hand off to Duet first. Answer it.
- Watch your inbox: Invites go out in waves. You'll get an email when it's your turn.
- Cost: Included with Pro and Max. It uses your plan's usage limits, including the work it does in the background.
Source Link: https://claude.com/product/claude-duet
MY TAKE
Since I have been knee deep in agents the last couple of weeks, I'm eager to see how this compares to Muse, Instinct, and Manus’s Cue agents.
Because it pulls in the skills and connectors I’ve already set up in Claude, it starts out knowing how I work, which is a definite plus.
2. ChatGPT Can Now Use Your Chrome Tabs
OpenAI upgraded its ChatGPT extension for Chrome. ChatGPT can now see the tabs you have open, and in Work mode, it can do things inside them.
Two modes
- Chat: ChatGPT reads across your open tabs and pulls the information together. No more copying and pasting between pages.
- Work: ChatGPT can control your tabs. It can send messages, fill out forms, download files, and group that pile of tabs you have open.
Prompts OpenAI suggests
- "Compare these pricing pages against our requirements. Which plan includes everything we need?"
- "Use the details in this event brief to fill out the registration form, and stop before submitting."
- "Put the vendors in these tabs into my comparison sheet, with pricing, key features, and source links."
How to set it up
- Install it: Get the ChatGPT extension from the Chrome Web Store. It also works in Edge, Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi.
- Turn on Work mode: In the ChatGPT desktop app (Mac or Windows), go to Settings → Computer Use and connect Chrome.
- Call it in: Start a Work chat and type @Chrome.
- Who gets it: OpenAI says the extension is available on all ChatGPT plans.
Source Link: https://learn.chatgpt.com/docs/chrome-extension
MY TAKE
Start with Chat mode. Comparing three vendors without copying a single thing is worth the install.
Before you let it fill out forms, close your banking tabs. Better yet, set up a separate Chrome profile just for ChatGPT work.
3. ChatGPT Slides Now Lets Your Team Build the Deck Together
OpenAI added new ways to build and edit decks in ChatGPT Slides. Slides lives inside ChatGPT Space, the shared workspace where you, your team, and ChatGPT work on the same files.
What's new
- Work together: Share a deck and choose who can view, comment, or edit. Tag ChatGPT in a comment and it makes the change. If you have a dot, OpenAI's background agent, you can ask it too.
- Edit right on the slide: Click to change text, update charts, and move or resize images.
- Start from your own template: Share an example deck and ChatGPT matches its style and layout.
- Take it with you: Present in ChatGPT, or export to PowerPoint or Google Slides.
How to start
Ask ChatGPT to "create ChatGPT slides" from a conversation or a file you've shared.
Who gets it
- Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans. Not Plus.
Source Link: https://chatgpt.com/features/slides/
MY TAKE
I haven’t tried it yet. If you’re on Pro or Business, build your next client proposal here, export it to PowerPoint, and hit reply to tell me how it went.
4. Gemini Notebook Now Shows You the Plan Before It Builds Your Slides
Gemini Notebook, the tool formerly called NotebookLM, changed how it makes Slide Decks and Video Overviews.
Before, you clicked a button and got whatever it made. Now it walks you through a plan first, based on your sources.
How it works
- Ask in the chat: Request slides or a Video Overview.
- Pick a focus: Choose a topic it suggests from your sources, or type your own.
- Set the details: Choose the format, length, language, and visual style.
- Review the plan: Turn on the Review toggle. Select "Review outline notes" for slides or "Review producer notes" for video, then ask for changes, like adding an executive summary or swapping two scenes.
- Generate: Select Proceed when it looks right.
- In a hurry: Skip the toggle and generate the way you always have.
Who gets it
- Google says it's rolling out globally over the coming week.
Source Link: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/products/gemini-notebook/co-create-slides-videos/
MY TAKE
Always turn on the Review toggle. Fixing the order in an outline takes ten seconds. Fixing it after the slides render means starting over.
5. ChatGPT Now Lets You Lock Private Chats Behind a PIN
OpenAI is rolling out locked chats, a way to hide selected conversations from your regular chat history, pinned chats, and conversation search. Locked chats live under Projects > Locked chats, and opening them requires a 4-digit account PIN. On mobile, you can also use Face ID, Touch ID, or your device unlock.
What to know
- Hides, not encrypts: Locking a chat removes it from view, but it does not create encryption or change how long OpenAI keeps it.
- Files are covered: Files uploaded or created in a locked chat are protected with it.
- Shared links stay live: Locking a chat that already has a shared link does not delete the link. Delete it separately if you need to.
- Careful with resets: Resetting a forgotten PIN permanently deletes all your locked chats. OpenAI support cannot recover them.
Who gets it
- All plans: Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu, rolling out gradually. If you don't see Lock chat in a chat's more options menu yet, it's coming.
- Where it works: Web, mobile, and the new ChatGPT desktop app for Mac or Windows. Voice works in locked chats on web and mobile, but not on desktop.
Source Link: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001411-using-locked-chats-in-chatgpt
MY TAKE
If you ever share your screen on Zoom with your chat list showing, this is for you. Lock the client pricing chat, the payroll chat, anything you wouldn’t want flashing by.
Raw to Reels
My last two reels took off. More comments and DMs than I’ve had in a long time.
Here’s the part you didn’t see. I didn’t edit either one. Claude did.
The cuts. The captions. The zooms. The sound effects. Even the text on screen. I filmed one take, flubs and all, and at one point told the camera “cut that out.” Claude cut it out.
If you have talking videos stuck in your drafts because editing feels like a second job, this is the part you can finally hand off.
I turned the whole system into a short program I’m calling “Raw to Reels”:
- The Master Prompt that turns Claude into your personal reel editor, in your colors and fonts
- The Playbook with every click and every prompt, in order
- A walkthrough video where I set it up and edit a real reel, start to finish
- 3 bonuses: 50 hooks, a filming guide, and a prompt pack that turns one reel into a week of posts
Set it up once. After that, you drop in a raw video, type “Edit this into a reel,” and go answer email.
It’s $47, one time. You’ll need a paid Claude plan on your computer.
Get Raw to Reels
PROMPT OF THE WEEK
The Hand-Off List: Find What Your AI Agent Should Do First
Use this before you join the Claude Duet waitlist, or the first day you set up Muse, Instinct, or ChatGPT Work. The waitlist form asks what you’d hand off first. This gives you the answer.
What it does: It reads your last two weeks of email and calendar and finds the chores you keep doing by hand that an agent could take over.
What you get back: A ranked list of 10 tasks. Each one shows how often it came up, how much time it eats, whether the agent needs your OK, and the exact message to send your agent to start.
Before you paste it: Connect your email and calendar in Claude or ChatGPT. If you haven’t connected them, paste a list of what you did last week instead.
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COPY THIS PROMPT
(scroll to see it all ↓)
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You are helping me decide what to hand off to an AI agent.
Look through my connected email and calendar from the last 14 days. Find the tasks I keep doing by hand: follow-ups, scheduling back-and-forth, invoice reminders, answering the same questions, pulling reports, bookings, returns, and renewals.
Give me the 10 best tasks to hand to an agent, ranked by time saved. For each one:
1. Task. A short, plain name.
2. How often. How many times it came up in the last 14 days.
3. Time it takes me. A realistic estimate per week.
4. Hands-off or check with me. Mark it "Check with me" if it sends a message, spends money, signs anything, or deletes anything.
5. Message to my agent. The exact one- or two-sentence request I would text my agent to take it over.
End with the one task I should hand off first, and why.
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Hit reply and tell me what landed at number one.
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Comments
If any of this made you think differently about how you want to work with AI, hit reply and let me know. I read every message. Your questions shape what I cover next.
Have a great weekend,
Founder, Front Row AI Club
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