Weekly AI Highlights: May 23–29, 2026

What Small Business Owners Need to Know Right Now

by Jen Lehner

Reader,

Quick story before the news. My Ring doorbell chime stopped working this week. No sound at all. I called the guy who normally handles that kind of thing for us, and he was no help. So I called the company directly, and the “person” who answered turned out to be a bot. I had to stop and ask, because he sounded that real. He said, yes, I am an AI assistant.

What followed was one of the best support calls I have ever had. When he started repeating himself or walking me through something I had already tried, I just jumped in and said so, and we moved on. I did not have to sit there politely waiting or worry about coming across as rude. We got straight to the fix. It felt like working with a person, except he was faster, smarter, and a lot easier to deal with than most tech support calls go.

A year ago that same call would have been a maze of menus and hold music. This week it took a few minutes, and the thing that made it work was simple. The AI was capable, and it was straight with me.

That is the same story playing out in the news this week. Claude's new Opus 4.8 update is both sharper and more willing to admit when it is not sure. Google is giving business teams a shared workspace inside Gemini. And YouTube will now build you a video feed from a single sentence. Here is what caught my eye.

1. Claude Opus 4.8 Is Here, and So Is a New "Effort" Dial You Can Use Today

Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.8 this week. Opus is the most capable version of Claude, the one built for heavier thinking and longer tasks. The new version is sharper than the last across the board, and the price did not change.

Two things here matter for you even if you never look at a benchmark.

First, there is a new effort control. On claude.ai, and in Cowork, the desktop work app, you now get a simple setting next to where you pick the model that lets you tell Claude how hard to work on a task. Turn it up and Claude thinks longer and gives you a more careful answer. Turn it down and it answers faster. It is on every plan, including the free one.

Second, Anthropic says this version is more honest. Older AI models have a habit of sounding confident even when they are guessing or have not really finished the job. Anthropic reports Opus 4.8 is far less likely to do that, and more likely to flag when it is unsure. In their own testing it was about four times less likely than the previous version to let a mistake in its own work slip by unmentioned.

Source Link: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-opus-4-8

2. Google Expands Gemini for Business With Shareable Projects

Google is expanding Gemini for Business with shared Projects, a way for a team to work together in one place instead of everyone keeping separate, private chats. A Project is a workspace that holds your chats and your uploaded files together in one folder. You can set instructions that apply to every chat inside it, give it a color, and invite teammates in. More than one person can work inside the same chat, like a group conversation with the AI.

Google is also bringing workflow agents to the Business tier. In plain terms, that means you can set up automated tasks that run on a schedule and connect to your Gmail, Drive, Calendar, and outside tools, so routine work happens without you kicking it off each time.

It is rolling out in stages, so some accounts will see it before others.

Source Link: https://www.testingcatalog.com/google-expands-gemini-for-business-with-shareable-projects/​

3. YouTube Will Now Build You a Custom Feed From a Simple Prompt

YouTube is rolling out a feature that lets you describe the feed you want in plain words and builds it for you. You tap a new chip labeled "Your custom feed" at the top of your YouTube home page, type something like "short videos on small business marketing" or "calming content for the end of the day," and YouTube assembles a feed to match. You can pin it to the top of your homepage and change the prompt whenever you want.

For now it is rolling out to people in the US who are signed in, using YouTube in English, and have watch and search history turned on. It works on both phone and desktop.

This is part of a bigger shift. Instead of letting an algorithm guess what you want, more tools are letting you just say it. X and Threads are testing the same idea.

Source Link: https://www.theverge.com/streaming/938759/youtube-custom-ai-feed-prompt-availability​

DID YOU KNOW?

You Can Call ChatGPT on the Phone

Funny enough, after my Ring call this week I found out you can do this on purpose. Dial 1-800-CHATGPT (1-800-242-8478) from any phone in the US or Canada and you can have a spoken conversation with ChatGPT, the same way you would talk to it in the app. No account, no app, no setup. It works from your cell, your landline, even an old flip phone.

It is free for 15 minutes a month. Useful for the times your hands are busy but your brain is not, like driving, walking, or cooking, when you want to talk something through or get a quick answer without stopping to type.

Kajabi’s biggest offer of the year is here

Kajabi just cut every plan in half, and if you sign up through my link, you get 50% off for 12 full months instead of the 6 months Kajabi is offering directly.

During this promo window, Kajabi is also rolling out five new products, including AI business planning, client portals, sponsored email opportunities, AI integrations, and AI agents trained on your offers and content.

When you join through my link, you’ll also get special bonuses from Team Jen:

• Two 45-minute setup calls with us, so we can help you get your Kajabi account set up around your specific business goals.
• Our custom sales page template, the same framework that has generated more than $500k in our business.
• Access to Kajabi Kamp, our members-only library of Kajabi trainings, from your first course setup to advanced automations.

This is a great fit if you already have an offer idea and you’re ready to start building. The promo ends June 2 at 11:59pm PST.

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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