It feels like Google is in the middle of a transition between running an array of experimental AI-powered projects and launching features for users. Maybe by next year’s I/O it will be more settled.
This week there are also
(non-AI) updates for YouTube, AdSense, Bluesky, TikTok and more.
📨 Subscribe to get Creator Weekly by email.
In May 2015 Google started showing real-time updates from Twitter in the search results. This was a rekindling of a partnership that had previously ended in 2011, probably not coincidentally Google was working to integrate Google+ into Search.
Today you can not only find X (formerly Twitter) posts on breaking news events, but also Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and other platforms.
My take is that it’s good to get different points of view from real humans, rather than just rely on AI overviews and summaries.
Join me live or watch the recording.
What do you know about Google’s new AI filmmaking tool? Take this week’s quiz. Bonus quiz: How well do you know Google I/O announcements? (Read this week’s post and you will find the answers)
For access to the most advanced AI tools and higher generation limits (plus 30 TB storage and YouTube Premium), the new AI Ultra plan at a whopping $250 per month. You can try it at a 50% discount for 3 months.
If you have a personal Google Account, you may get early access (without a subscription) to some AI features by signing up for Google Workspace Labs and Google Search Labs.
Gemini and AI features are included in the cost of Google Workspace Business and Enterprise accounts. In some cases Workspace accounts get access to features after personal accounts with an AI subscription.
A carefully worded post from Google Search Central explained how to "ensure your content performs well in Google AI experiences on Search".
It’s pretty much the same advice Google always gives. Create unique valuable content for people, add images and videos, ensure a good experience on your site, and don't block the Google bot.
But once people read a summary of the information on your web page, do they click?
Google says AI overviews "show a wider range of sources" and "when people click to a website from search results pages with AI Overviews, these clicks are higher quality".
But how do you get people to click your link if Google has already extracted and summarized all the information from the web page? I don’t have high hopes.
Google will soon start showing AI Mode as a referrer in Search Console, so you can at least see if you are getting traffic from those search features.
YouTube is rolling out an update to the Shorts editor. When you add text or a sticker, and position that, guides will appear on the side or bottom to indicate the areas that may not be visible when watching the Short. YouTube began testing this in March.
TikTok has added SoundCloud to its Add to Music App, designed to let you save music discovered on TikTok to your usual music streaming service. SoundCloud also launched a new feature that lets you transfer your music library from Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or other platforms to the service.
TikTok added the option to add external links to Stories.
The math isn’t mathing: Creators accuse Twitch of "double-taxing" their income with supposed community-centered feature
Lindsey Gamble reports that TED is adding a new AI-powered short-form video feed to its app.
AdSense Ad Intents ads place links, anchors or chips in your content. The links open a search dialog with ads, and if one of those ads is clicked you can earn. You can now choose to show search ads or display ads (like what is shown on a website). Those have different revenue shares.
Bluesky is now verifying “noteable and authentic accounts”. You can apply for verification or to become a Trusted Verifier. Notability depends on context and public interest value, and “may include professional recognition, media coverage in established publications, presence on credible reference platforms, or other evidence of public interest.” Bluesky notes that they can take away your badge: “verification status may be revoked for accounts that violate our community guidelines or cease to meet our eligibility criteria.”
Bluesky is testing a new feature that lets you add a live stream link to YouTube or Twitch, then shows a special “Live” ring around your profile image when you are livestreaming. They want user feedback! No word on when it might be more widely available.
Bridging your Bluesky, Mastodon and Pixelfed accounts is now easier. A New Social launched a new Bridgy Fed Config settings page that lets you easily turn on and off bridging. And soon they will be adding Threads. Bridging lets you follow people on other networks that use a different protocol from your primary profile. (They also launched a Patreon if you want to support them.)
Mastodon is adding the option for servers to add a legal Terms of Service and set age requirements.
Business Insider: Instagram head Adam Mosseri on the 'paradigm shift' from posting in public to sharing in private
Mozilla is also shutting down Fakespot, an extension to spot fake reviews. Going forward they will focus on new Firefox features.
Creator-owned streaming service Nebula needed a new font for their site. They created Nebula Sans, which is available for anyone to use under the SIL Open Font License. It’s “a versatile, modern, humanist sans-serif with a neutral aesthetic, designed for legibility in both digital and print applications.”
They also posted a making-of video, where "Along the way, they met a font designer who had a personal story reflective of the company’s own values, a champion of diversity and inclusion whose work can be found on the device you’re using right now." Watch the video.
The Internet Archive now has an organized collection of movie scripts. Currently the most popular include “The Sound of Music”, “The Dark Knight”, “Nosferatu” and “9 to 5”.
Adobe Stock has introduced new submission limits for Adobe Stock Contributors “to help maintain the strength and quality of our growing collection.” There’s no fixed number, and it varies by user. Speculation is that it’s related to the huge flood of AI-generated images.
Thanks for reading! 🌼
✉ Subscribe to get the Weekly Update in your email inbox or favorite feed reader every week. Miss last week’s update? Get the May 17 edition.
📨 Subscribe to get Creator Weekly by email.
Top news and updates this week
- Google I/O was all about AI. I’ll note a few updates in this list, but there are lots more.
- NotebookLM will be adding AI Video Overviews to go with the podcast-like Audio Overviews. It also has a mobile app.
- Google AI Ultra gets you all of Google’s latest AI tools, but it’s $249 per month.
- Sparkify is a new Lab that turns questions into short animated videos.
- Google Meet has real-time translation, starting with English to and from Spanish.
- Google’s latest video model, Veo 3, can generate audio to match the video.
- Flow is a new Veo-powered filmmaking tool from Google.
- Google Vids will soon be able to turn slide decks into videos and will offer AI-generated avatars.
- Google is testing a SynthID Detector portal. Synth ID is their invisible watermark on AI-generated videos, images and audio.
- AI Mode in Google Search is rolling out to all US users, and is getting new advanced capabilities.
- Google Search Central explained how to make sure your content is available to AI Overviews and AI Mode.
- YouTube is adding Quiz stickers to Shorts, and now shows when your sticker or text may not be visible in the player.
- TikTok now lets you add external links to stories.
- TED is adding a short vertical video feed to its app.
- AdSense now lets you choose the position of anchor and side rail ads, and show Display ads with Ad Intent ads.
- Bluesky is verifying notable accounts.
- Bluesky is testing showing a live badge when you’re livestreaming on YouTube or Twitch.
- Mozilla is shutting down Pocket and Fakespot to focus on Firefox.
- And more from Mastodon, TikTok, Nebula, Internet Archive and Adobe Stock.
🗓 Ten Years Ago This Week: Twitter Firehose in Google Search
To celebrate 10 years of Creator Weekly, I’m sharing highlights from 2015.In May 2015 Google started showing real-time updates from Twitter in the search results. This was a rekindling of a partnership that had previously ended in 2011, probably not coincidentally Google was working to integrate Google+ into Search.
Today you can not only find X (formerly Twitter) posts on breaking news events, but also Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and other platforms.
My take is that it’s good to get different points of view from real humans, rather than just rely on AI overviews and summaries.
🔴 Creator Weekly Live
Join Creator Weekly Live on Sunday, 10:30AM Pacific time (6:30PM UTC).Join me live or watch the recording.
✅ Take this week’s quiz
What do you know about Google’s new AI filmmaking tool? Take this week’s quiz. Bonus quiz: How well do you know Google I/O announcements? (Read this week’s post and you will find the answers)
Google I/O: All about the AI
This week was Google I/O, their annual developer conference, where new products and features are announced. The focus, not surprisingly, was Google’s AI-powered advancements.- For a general overview, watch the 10 minute highlight video and read CEO Sundar Pichai’s keynote remarks. There’s also a Google I/O 2025 Notebook you can explore.
- Gemini 2.5 is Google’s latest AI model series, and it’s getting new capabilities. For example you can add your own sources to Deep Research. It is now also built in to Chrome for paying AI subscribers.
- Learn about new Gemini features in Workspace.
- Have AI work for you: Learn about Google’s plan for a universal AI assistant. Multitasking Project Mariner is available to AI Ultra subscribers in the US (get a glimpse with Agent Mode in the Gemini app). The capabilities of Project Astra, used to identify what your camera “sees”, are gradually being integrated into Gemini Live (free on mobile), and is coming to glasses.
- Android XR is Google’s OS for smart glasses. Watch a demo.
- NotebookLM has a mobile app where you can “Join” the AI Overview “hosts” to ask questions, listen offline or share your source materials from anywhere on your device.
- NotebookLM’s podcast-like Audio Overviews are a hit. The next phase: Video overviews, with animated graphics, text and other visuals to go along with the audio.
AI Access
There are now two AI subscription plans. There’s Google AI Pro (formerly Google One AI Premium), at $20 per month. University students in Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, UK and the US can get AI Pro free for a school year.For access to the most advanced AI tools and higher generation limits (plus 30 TB storage and YouTube Premium), the new AI Ultra plan at a whopping $250 per month. You can try it at a 50% discount for 3 months.
If you have a personal Google Account, you may get early access (without a subscription) to some AI features by signing up for Google Workspace Labs and Google Search Labs.
Gemini and AI features are included in the cost of Google Workspace Business and Enterprise accounts. In some cases Workspace accounts get access to features after personal accounts with an AI subscription.
Communication
- Google Meet now offers near real time translation, preserving the speaker’s voice and tone.Initially this is available with English-Spanish translation, but more languages are coming soon. This is available in beta to Google One AI Premium (AI Pro) subscribers. Watch the demo.
- Project Starline, announced at Google I/O 2021, is now Google Beam. It’s 3D immersive video calling, almost like being together (OK, not really). It includes Google Meet’s new live real-time translation/dubbing. This is aimed at enterprise customers and requires special hardware. Watch the demo.
- Google Docs will soon have “source-grounded writing help”, based only on the docs, data, and report sources you select. Watch the demo.
- In Gmail, Gemini will be able to help you with inbox cleanup (available in a few months) and offer personalized smart replies (available later this year). Watch the demo.
- You can use the Canvas feature in the Gemini app to generate quizzes, code, web pages or audio overviews.
Video creation
- Veo 3, Google’s latest text-to-video model can generate video with audio. It has improved real-world physics and accurate lip syncing. See it in action: This fake pharma ad was supposedly made in just a day with $500 in credits. More info about Veo.
- Veo 2 was updated to let you upload images for reference, camera controls, outpainting (adding content to expand the frame), and object add and remove.
- Flow (formerly VideoFX) is a new filmmaking tool “built with and for creatives” and powered by Veo. Requires an AI subscription. Watch the demo.
- Google Vids will soon be able to convert Google Slides decks into videos. It is also getting “transcript trim” to remove pauses and filler words (like um and ah). There is also “balance sound” to adjust audio across your entire video. And if you don’t want to hire talent you can use new AI avatars. Some features will be available soon in Workspace Labs, others are Workspace subscription only. Watch the demo of slides into video and AI Avatars.
- The latest experiment in Google Labs is Sparkify.It turns your question or idea into a short animated video, using Gemini, MusicLM, AudioLM and Veo. Sign up for the waitlist to try it.
Image creation
- Imagen 4 is Google’s latest text-to-image model. It can create high resolution images, and is “significantly better at spelling and typography.” It is now available in Gemini app, Whisk, Google Slides, Vids and Docs.
- Google is testing a SynthID Detector portal. Synth ID is Google's invisible watermark on AI generated images, video and audio. Learn more.
AI Mode in Search
- This week, AI Overviews and AI Mode are getting a custom version of Gemini 2.5.
- People apparently really like AI Overviews and are doing more searches than ever. They are now available in more than.200 countries, in 40 languages.
- AI Mode is out of Labs and rolling out to everyone in the US. How does it differ from AI Overviews? AI Mode uses “a query fan-out technique, breaking down your question into subtopics and issuing a multitude of queries simultaneously on your behalf.” And you can ask follow-up questions.
- Deep Search in AI Mode is AI Mode on steroids. It “can issue hundreds of searches, reason across disparate pieces of information, and create an expert-level fully-cited report in just minutes”
- AI Mode is also getting Project Mariner agentic capabilities, like the ability to buy tickets; AI shopping virtually try on clothes, generate charts and graphs and (soon) use your personal information from Gmail for personalized results.
A carefully worded post from Google Search Central explained how to "ensure your content performs well in Google AI experiences on Search".
It’s pretty much the same advice Google always gives. Create unique valuable content for people, add images and videos, ensure a good experience on your site, and don't block the Google bot.
But once people read a summary of the information on your web page, do they click?
Google says AI overviews "show a wider range of sources" and "when people click to a website from search results pages with AI Overviews, these clicks are higher quality".
But how do you get people to click your link if Google has already extracted and summarized all the information from the web page? I don’t have high hopes.
Google will soon start showing AI Mode as a referrer in Search Console, so you can at least see if you are getting traffic from those search features.
Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates
YouTube is adding Quiz stickers to Shorts. Now you can add a Quiz with two answer options, or choose a Q&A, Poll or Add Yours sticker instead. Creators can see the total number of responses to the quiz and the percentage of viewers that selected each answer. Learn how to add stickers to a Short.YouTube is rolling out an update to the Shorts editor. When you add text or a sticker, and position that, guides will appear on the side or bottom to indicate the areas that may not be visible when watching the Short. YouTube began testing this in March.
TikTok has added SoundCloud to its Add to Music App, designed to let you save music discovered on TikTok to your usual music streaming service. SoundCloud also launched a new feature that lets you transfer your music library from Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or other platforms to the service.
TikTok added the option to add external links to Stories.
The math isn’t mathing: Creators accuse Twitch of "double-taxing" their income with supposed community-centered feature
Lindsey Gamble reports that TED is adding a new AI-powered short-form video feed to its app.
Web Publishers and Search
AdSense now lets you choose the position of anchor ads (top, bottom or both) and side rail ads (left, right, both).AdSense Ad Intents ads place links, anchors or chips in your content. The links open a search dialog with ads, and if one of those ads is clicked you can earn. You can now choose to show search ads or display ads (like what is shown on a website). Those have different revenue shares.
Social Media
Kate Knibbs @ Wired interviewed Bluesky CEO Jay Graber reports: Bluesky Is Plotting a Total Takeover of the Social InternetBluesky is now verifying “noteable and authentic accounts”. You can apply for verification or to become a Trusted Verifier. Notability depends on context and public interest value, and “may include professional recognition, media coverage in established publications, presence on credible reference platforms, or other evidence of public interest.” Bluesky notes that they can take away your badge: “verification status may be revoked for accounts that violate our community guidelines or cease to meet our eligibility criteria.”
Bluesky is testing a new feature that lets you add a live stream link to YouTube or Twitch, then shows a special “Live” ring around your profile image when you are livestreaming. They want user feedback! No word on when it might be more widely available.
Bridging your Bluesky, Mastodon and Pixelfed accounts is now easier. A New Social launched a new Bridgy Fed Config settings page that lets you easily turn on and off bridging. And soon they will be adding Threads. Bridging lets you follow people on other networks that use a different protocol from your primary profile. (They also launched a Patreon if you want to support them.)
Mastodon is adding the option for servers to add a legal Terms of Service and set age requirements.
Business Insider: Instagram head Adam Mosseri on the 'paradigm shift' from posting in public to sharing in private
More Reading (and watching)
Mozilla is shutting down Pocket, its bookmarking/read it later and content discovery platform on July 8. You can export your saved links until October 8. Why? Because "the way people save and consume content on the web has evolved, so we’re channeling our resources into projects that better match browsing habits today."Mozilla is also shutting down Fakespot, an extension to spot fake reviews. Going forward they will focus on new Firefox features.
Creator-owned streaming service Nebula needed a new font for their site. They created Nebula Sans, which is available for anyone to use under the SIL Open Font License. It’s “a versatile, modern, humanist sans-serif with a neutral aesthetic, designed for legibility in both digital and print applications.”
They also posted a making-of video, where "Along the way, they met a font designer who had a personal story reflective of the company’s own values, a champion of diversity and inclusion whose work can be found on the device you’re using right now." Watch the video.
The Internet Archive now has an organized collection of movie scripts. Currently the most popular include “The Sound of Music”, “The Dark Knight”, “Nosferatu” and “9 to 5”.
Adobe Stock has introduced new submission limits for Adobe Stock Contributors “to help maintain the strength and quality of our growing collection.” There’s no fixed number, and it varies by user. Speculation is that it’s related to the huge flood of AI-generated images.
Thanks for reading! 🌼
✉ Subscribe to get the Weekly Update in your email inbox or favorite feed reader every week. Miss last week’s update? Get the May 17 edition.
> how do you get people to click your link if Google has already extracted and summarized all the information from the web page
ReplyDeleteIn my own experience, I visit the sites only when I absolutely need to verify what the AI is telling me, which honestly is about 5% of the time. On the plus side, I'm hopeful that lame attempts at gaming the AI system with garbage (likely AI generated content) will force Google to extract content from more "high quality" sources and end up rewarding authentic blogs more, at least with preferential inclusion in AI-generated answers that could in theory lead to more clickthroughs than a basic Google search where an authentic (but smaller) blog might have been drowned out in a sea of AI slop posts currently.