Weekly AI Highlights: June 20 - 26, 2026
What Small Business Owners Need to Know Right Now
Last week I was in New York City, and I spent way too long inside Meta's pop-up lab testing their newest display glasses. These are the ones where your phone screen seems to float in the air in front of you, and you control it by pinching and rubbing your fingers together. I was sold enough to buy a pair on the spot, then I returned them four days later. They cannot do progressive lenses yet, and keeping both the glasses and the wristband charged got old fast. I will buy them again the day they fix the lenses, because the future is clearly something you wear, not something you hold.
A few genuinely useful updates landed this week: OpenAI's Codex can now watch you do a task one time and repeat it on its own. Google will turn your quick selfie into an avatar. And Claude is moving into Slack so it can work alongside your team.
1. OpenAI Just Rolled Out Record & Replay for Codex
Codex is OpenAI's AI coding tool. This week it got a feature called Record & Replay.
It lets you record yourself doing a task one time on your Mac, then turn that recording into a reusable skill Codex can run again later. Instead of memorizing your exact clicks and screen positions, it captures the intent behind what you did, so it still works when the layout or buttons change. Once it finishes recording, it creates a SKILL.md file, which is a plain text file that stores the steps it learned. You can open that file, see what it understood, and edit the steps so the task runs the way you want.
Source Link: https://developers.openai.com/codex/record-and-replay
MY TAKE
Do not let the word coding scare you off this one. You do not actually have to write code to use it. You record yourself doing a task, the same clicking and typing you already do, and Codex turns that into something it can repeat for you later. The file it creates is plain text you can read and adjust. So if there is a fiddly task you run the same way every week, this is worth a look even if you have never touched code.
2. Google Now Lets You Create Your Own AI Avatar From a Selfie Video
An avatar here means a digital version of you, built from a short selfie video and a voice recording you provide. Google records you once, then creates a version of you that looks and sounds like you.
Once your avatar exists, you can use it to make AI videos inside Gemini, Google Flow, and YouTube. The practical payoff is creating explainer videos, training content, and narrated slide decks without setting up a camera and filming yourself every single time. You stay in control of where it gets used, and you can delete your recordings from your Google account whenever you want.
Source Link: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/17100665
MY TAKE
I just submitted mine, so now I am waiting to see what comes back. We already use HeyGen for our avatars. HeyGen is a tool that creates a realistic video version of you that can talk on camera, and we lean on it a lot for our social posts when we are sharing the latest AI news. So the real test for me is how Google's version stacks up against HeyGen. If it is just as good and it is built right into the Google tools we already use, that is one less subscription and one less app to juggle. HeyGen is pretty expensive so I’d love to be able to let that go.
3. Claude Can Now Work Inside Slack With Your Team
Claude is Anthropic's AI assistant, the one I use every day. This week it got a new way to work, called @Claude.
You tag it into a Slack thread the same way you would tag a coworker, and it reads the full conversation, understands the context, and helps move the work along. You can ask it to catch you up on a long thread, pull numbers from your data, prep you for a call, watch a channel, and flag what actually needs your attention. You can also give it a standing instruction, like sending you a weekly digest of a busy channel, so it keeps going without being asked each time. For now it is in beta and only on the Claude Team and Enterprise plans inside Slack.
Source Link: https://claude.com/product/tag
MY TAKE
I live in Claude and Slack all day, so I want this badly. The honest problem is we are not on a Team account, so I can’t test it yet. For now, Manus is the tool that does this kind of thing for us. Manus is an AI agent that can read a thread and carry the work forward on its own, and it has been amazing for us. I am just hoping we can hand the same job to Claude before long.
PROMPT OF THE WEEK
Your Five-Hours-a-Week Automation Plan
Use this when you know AI could be saving you time but you are not sure where to start. It hands you a ranked, specific list of automations built around the tools you already have and the tasks that eat your week.
Here is what it does. You paste it into Claude or ChatGPT, fill in three blanks about your tools, your time-wasters, and how comfortable you are with tech, and it gives back ten automation ideas made for your situation. Not generic tips. Actual workflows you could set up this week, sorted so the easiest and most useful ones sit at the top.
What you get back is a clean list where each idea includes a plain-English description, the exact tools to use, how long setup takes, how many hours a week it saves, a difficulty rating matched to your skill level, and the first step to take. It ends with a total of how many hours you could win back.
How to run it: open Claude or ChatGPT, paste the prompt below, and replace the three bracketed sections with your own details. The more specific you are, the better the list.
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You are an automation strategist for a small business owner. Suggest 10 AI automations I can set up this week that together save me at least 5 hours a week.
Here is my situation:
- Tools I already use: [LIST YOUR TOOLS, for example Gmail, Google Sheets, Canva, ChatGPT]
- My biggest time-wasters right now: [LIST 2 OR 3, for example answering the same customer emails, writing social captions, scheduling posts]
- My comfort with tech: [PICK ONE: not technical / somewhat technical / very technical]
For each of the 10 automations, give me:
1. Name. A short, plain title.
2. What it does. One or two sentences in plain English.
3. Tools used. The exact tools, sticking to ones I already have where possible.
4. Setup time. A realistic estimate in minutes.
5. Time saved. Estimated hours saved per week.
6. Difficulty. Low, medium, or high, matched to my comfort level above.
7. First step. The very first thing I should click or do to get started.
Then:
- Sort the list so the easiest, highest-impact automations are at the top.
- Mark which ones need zero technical skill.
- End with a one-line summary: total estimated hours saved per week across all 10.
Only suggest automations that are practical and that I can actually finish setting up this week. No theory, no enterprise-only tools, and nothing that needs code unless I told you I am very technical.
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Source: superhuman.ai
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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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