TWP: Back to the Feature

Hi friend,

Two of this week's releases hand back something an earlier update took away. The third one turns up inside software you may already pay for.

Temporary chat stopped being amnesia. ChatGPT's temporary chat used to be all or nothing. Nothing saved, and nothing of yours applied either: no memory, no custom instructions, no plugins. You got a stranger. Since 27 August you can switch personalisation on inside a temporary chat, so the model still knows how you write and what you do while the conversation stays out of your history (OpenAI). There is also a save button now, so a temporary chat that turns out to be worth keeping can be pulled into your history rather than lost when you close the tab. Free tier included, no rollout to wait for.

Make temporary chat your default for anything you do not want shaping future answers. The client you are unsure about. A salary question. A half-formed thought about someone you work with. That used to cost you all your context. It no longer does.

Google put an image editor inside Docs and Slides. Google Pics started rolling out on 1 September. It generates images from a description, edits objects inside an existing image rather than regenerating the whole thing, changes text elements, upscales to 4K and keeps version history (Google). It runs as its own app and also inside Docs and Slides, so the picture in your proposal gets fixed without leaving the proposal.

The fine print does the work here. You need Business Standard or Plus, Enterprise Standard or Plus, or a Google AI Pro or Ultra subscription. Rapid release domains started on 1 September over about a fortnight, everyone else from 15 September. Google also says the current generous usage runs until 28 February 2027 and limits apply after that, which is worth knowing before you build a weekly workflow on it.

ChatGPT will hold more than one Google account. From 28 August you can connect several Gmail, Calendar and Contacts accounts at once and ask about all of them in the same conversation, on Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise, across web, desktop and both mobile apps (OpenAI). If you run a business off one address and your life off another, the switching stops.

Worth a pause before you connect both. One assistant reading your work inbox and your personal one is convenient right up until you ask it to summarise your week and it does.

Elsewhere: Anthropic made Claude for Teachers free for US K-12 schools and districts, with a full free year for anyone who signs up by 30 June 2027, and nothing equivalent for New Zealand schools yet (Anthropic). ChatGPT's browser extension now works in Edge, Brave, Opera and Vivaldi instead of Chrome alone, though it still needs Work or Codex access to do anything (OpenAI). And Gemini in Google Meet will suggest a co-presenter and add them in one click when it hears you hand over, on Business and Enterprise Standard and Plus (Google).

The Google Pics launch is a good reason to run this over your own subscriptions:

"Here are the software subscriptions my business pays for, with the tier we are on for each: [list them]. For each one, tell me which AI features are included at that tier, which need an upgrade, and which of them duplicate a separate tool I also pay for. Flag anything you are unsure about and tell me exactly what to check."

See you next week,

Shantanu

P.S. Forward this to whoever on your team is about to expense an image generator. They can subscribe at auracle.co.nz. (Or don't, and stay the only person in the office who read the fine print.)