This update, which uses Gemini 3 technology, includes “Find the Look” to help people discover fashion and decor directly on their screens without leaving their current app.

Since it launched, people have used Circle to Search billions of times every month to get information. This update changes the tool from single searches to a sophisticated experience that can break down complex images into several results.

Find the Look for Fashion For the fashion community in Nigeria, “Find the Look” allows people to circle a whole outfit they see online. Google’s AI identifies every part, such as tops, jackets, and shoes, and provides links for each item at the same time.

Harsh Kharbanda, Director of Product Management for Google Search, noted that sometimes people are looking for a whole vibe rather than just one thing. Whether someone is building an outfit or a mood board, Circle to Search is now more helpful by identifying unique items and explaining the context behind them.

Advanced Technology The new experience uses the reasoning capabilities of Gemini 3. By using a “visual query fan-out” technique, the model identifies the important parts of an image, runs several searches at once, and compiles a final response.

Device Availability These features are rolling out today on premium Android devices.

This includes the Samsung Galaxy S26, S26 Plus, and S26 Ultra. It also includes the Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, Pixel 10 Pro XL, Pixel 10 Pro Fold, and Pixel 10a).

The focus is tougher this time because Alphabet’s recent surge has challenged long-held beliefs about first mover advantage.

Across Big Tech, spending plans are expanding at a rate the sector has never seen. Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Alphabet are expected to raise their combined investment in AI by about 30% this year, pushing total outlay beyond $500 billion. 

This explains the unease on Wall Street. Investors are no longer impressed by scale; they want results from these Big Tech earnings.

Microsoft, once viewed as the early winner after backing OpenAI, is now being questioned. Its shares and Meta’s have both fallen more than 6% over the past three months of 2025. 

Amazon, helped by its November deal with OpenAI, edged up 5.1%, while Alphabet’s stock climbed nearly 29%, driven by strong feedback on Google’s Gemini 3 model and its deal to power Apple’s revamped Siri.

“Alphabet has the upper hand in the AI race as investors recognize that proprietary ecosystems, such as Apple and Search in Google, are tough to penetrate,” said David Wagner, head of equities at Aptus Capital Advisors. “Like in the internet boom, the first-mover advantage doesn’t always win the marathon.”

Microsoft and Meta will report their earnings on Wednesday, with other Big Tech companies like Alphabet and Amazon following next week.

Forecasts note Google Cloud growth picked up to about 35% in the last quarter of 2025, while Microsoft’s Azure is expected to slow slightly to 38.8%. Amazon Web Services is seen growing just over 21%, still modest by historical standards.

The concern is whether companies using this technology are actually seeing benefits. A recent PwC survey of 4,454 chief executives found that more than half reported no revenue gains or cost savings from their investments so far.

“For this not to be a bubble by definition, it requires that the benefits of this are much more evenly spread,” Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella said at Davos.

Microsoft’s own challenges are increasing. Analysts at Morgan Stanley describe sentiment around the company as a “wall of worry,” noting stronger competition in cloud services and its reliance on OpenAI, where it holds a 27% stake. 

The company has also warned that shortages in AI capacity will last until at least June, while high memory chip prices are weighing on the wider PC market, a key part of its Windows and Xbox business. 

Revenue growth for the quarter is expected to slow to about 15.3%, the weakest in three quarters.

Alphabet, by contrast, is benefiting from tighter links between AI and its core search business, alongside a steadier advertising market. It is also opening new ground by supplying its Tensor Processing Units to Anthropic, a move worth tens of billions of dollars and a break from its long-standing policy of keeping those chips for internal use.

Stronger ad targeting and recommendations are expected to lift Meta’s revenue by more than 20%, but heavy spending on elite AI hires is set to drag profits to their lowest level in almost three years. 

Meanwhile, growth in Amazon’s North American retail arm is slowing, but AWS is showing gradual improvement, helped by renewed confidence in its AI strategy.

The feature brings task summaries, reminders, and AI-assisted overviews to make email management faster and smarter.

The Gmail AI Inbox is divided into two main sections: “Suggested to-dos” and “Topics to catch up on.” The first shows emails that need immediate action, such as a reminder about an upcoming bill or confirming a prescription shipment. 

The second group updates like delivery notifications and financial statements under categories like “Purchases” and “Finances,” making it easier to catch up at a glance.

“This is us delivering on Gmail proactively having your back, showing you what you need to do and when you need to do it,” said Blake Barnes, VP, Product at Google, in a briefing with reporters.

“Don’t worry, the traditional inbox will remain available. This is simply a new view you can toggle in and out of as you please to cut through the noise of your incoming mail.”

Google is initially releasing AI Inbox to trusted testers, with a wider rollout expected in the coming months.

Gmail is also adding AI Overviews to search. Users can now ask natural language questions like “Who was the plumber that gave me a quote for the bathroom renovation last year?” and receive answers summarised from emails. 

“We scour every email in your inbox, and we give you the answer to your questions right at the top,” Barnes explained. “So just like AI Overviews in Google Search, you can ask natural language questions to get an AI-powered response. However, in Gmail, the model relies solely on your email, your personal memory brain, to generate the response.”

This feature is available for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers.

Gmail is also launching Proofread, a tool that refines writing by providing one-click suggestions for clarity, conciseness, and correct word use. For example, it may suggest changing “might inflict disturbance” to “might disturb” or flag a misuse of “weather” versus “whether.”

Proofread is designed to reduce reliance on third-party tools like Grammarly and is rolling out to Pro and Ultra subscribers.

Other previously paid features are now accessible to all users. Help Me Write can draft emails from a single prompt, Suggested Replies offer context-based one-click responses, and AI Overviews summarise long email threads. Together, these tools aim to make composing, reading, and responding faster and more efficient.

Google emphasises that all AI features are optional, personal data is processed in isolated environments, and content isn’t used to train foundational models. The rollout begins in the U.S. for English-language users, with plans to expand to more regions and languages in the coming months.

With over 3 billion monthly users, Gmail is the world’s most widely used email service. Google’s AI upgrades, powered by Gemini 3, show how email has evolved since 2004, turning the inbox into a proactive assistant capable of helping users cut through information overload and get things done faster.

This follows reports that CEO Sam Altman declared a “code red” inside the company in early December, halting side projects and pulling teams into a faster development sprint. 

The urgency was linked to Google’s latest innovations, which had placed Gemini 3 at the top of key performance rankings across reasoning, coding and multimodal tasks.

OpenAI says GPT-5.2 brings stronger general intelligence, better coding results, and far longer context handling. The company believes these improvements will help users complete more demanding work, particularly tasks that involve spreadsheets, complex documents, and project-heavy workflows. 

Interestingly, the new model stretches to handle up to a million tokens, a big difference from the previous model.

Google has been keen to highlight what Gemini 3 is capable of across text, audio, images and video, and analysts say its tight integration with Workspace and Android gives it an advantage with corporate users. 

Even with that, Altman played down the internal panic when he spoke on CNBC, saying: “Gemini 3 has had less of an impact on our metrics than we feared.” Google has not responded to requests for comment.

OpenAI is rolling out GPT-5.2 in three versions: Instant for quick responses, Thinking for slower but more reasoned answers, and Pro for enterprise-level performance. Paid ChatGPT users will receive them first. The company also states it will continue to support GPT-5.1, GPT-5 and GPT-4.1 on its API, giving developers more flexibility.

Away from the technical competition, OpenAI is also moving into entertainment. Disney has confirmed a $1 billion investment in the company and will allow its Sora video generator to use characters and worlds from Star Wars, Pixar and Marvel. 

This is one of the largest licensing deals yet between Hollywood and an AI firm, and it sets up OpenAI as a direct partner in digital content production. Microsoft, still OpenAI’s biggest backer with about $13 billion committed since 2019, continues to host the company’s models on Azure.

Industry forecasts show spending on cloud-based AI services is expected to rise sharply, with Gartner estimating it will exceed $723 billion next year. Many companies are already relying on GPT models for coding assistance, document processing and data insights. According to OpenAI, enterprise usage has climbed roughly 40% in the past year.

However, regulators in the US and Europe are examining safety standards, competition risks and copyright issues, with Disney’s licensing deal likely to draw even closer attention.

The company confirmed that Opus 4.5 provides leading results in software engineering tests, becoming the first model to clear the 80% mark on the SWE-Bench Verified assessment. 

It also recorded success in problem-solving tasks and computer-based performance, areas Anthropic has pushed aggressively in recent months.

Alongside the launch, the company is enhancing access to several products built around the model’s capabilities. Claude for Chrome will now be open to all Max users, while Claude for Excel is expanding to Max, Team and Enterprise customers. These tools were previously restricted to pilot testing.

Opus 4.5 introduces a redesigned memory system intended to improve long-running tasks and reduce disruptions during extended conversations. Users with paid plans will now be able to continue chats without being cut off when the system reaches its context limit, as the model compresses earlier exchanges quietly in the background.

Dianne Na Penn, Anthropic’s head of product management for research, noted the change in how the system handles information, saying: “There are improvements we made on general long context quality in training with Opus 4.5, but context windows are not going to be sufficient by themselves. Knowing the right details to remember is really important in complement to just having a longer context window.”

Anthropic has also framed the update as preparation for more advanced agent-style tasks, where Opus directs smaller models to complete complex work across documents and codebases. 

Penn noted the need for stability in those scenarios, adding: “This is where fundamentals like memory become really important, because Claude needs to be able to explore code bases and large documents, and also know when to backtrack and recheck something.”

The release arrives during a crowded period in the sector, coming less than two weeks after OpenAI launched GPT 5.1 and shortly after Google rolled out Gemini 3 on November 18. All three companies are competing for enterprise customers seeking systems capable of specialised technical work.

Opus 4.5 is available through Anthropic’s apps, API and major cloud platforms. The company has also increased usage allowances for Max and Team Premium customers to support daily adoption.

Anthropic says more details on performance and safety testing are outlined in its system documentation, which states that Opus 4.5 is the most secure model the firm has produced so far.