AI Pulse – February 2026

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AI Unlocked: Supercharge Your Promo Business with These Game-Changers!
OpenAI Launches Prism: A New Scientific Research Workspace
OpenAI has officially unveiled ‘Prism’, an AI-native workspace designed to streamline scientific research. Powered by GPT-5.2, it integrates tools for LaTeX editing, literature retrieval, formula management, and collaborative review, aiming to simplify complex writing processes.
Exploring New Revenue Streams: OpenAI Begins Advertising Trials
OpenAI has started testing advertisements within its free and paid Large Language Model tiers for US users. The company states ads will be clearly labelled and will not appear alongside sensitive topics, marking a strategic shift towards new business models.

While Prism focuses on scientific research, the underlying power of GPT-5.2 demonstrates OpenAI’s continuous advancement in sophisticated language understanding and generation, which is directly applicable to creating compelling marketing content and client communications. The move into advertising highlights OpenAI’s commercial maturity, potentially leading to more diversified and accessible AI offerings for businesses, including better-supported enterprise features in the future. Their overall focus on ‘practical adoption’ for 2026 means we can expect more user-friendly applications to emerge, simplifying AI integration for promo businesses.

  • Generate highly personalised marketing campaign copy and creative briefs, leveraging advanced language models for nuanced tone and messaging that resonates with specific client segments. This moves beyond basic content generation to truly tailored communication.
  • Automate the drafting of sophisticated initial client outreach emails or follow-up communications, saving sales teams valuable time while ensuring professionalism and relevance. The AI can adapt its writing style to match your brand’s voice.
Gemini 3 Becomes Default for AI Overviews in Google Search
Google has made its advanced Gemini 3 model the default for AI Overviews globally. This means users will now see AI-powered responses directly within their search results and can engage in more conversational follow-up questions to explore topics deeper.
Introducing Personal Intelligence and Deeper App Integrations
Gemini has rolled out ‘Personal Intelligence,’ allowing users to connect their Google apps like Gmail, Photos, YouTube, and Search. This creates a more proactive and personalised AI experience, with users having full control over their privacy settings and connected apps.

The deeper integration of Gemini 3 into Google Search and the introduction of Personal Intelligence are massive for gathering insights and streamlining workflows. For promo businesses, this means Gemini can become an even more powerful, context-aware assistant. It can leverage your existing data (with your permission, of course) to provide highly relevant suggestions for client engagement and market analysis, helping you stay ahead in a competitive landscape. The conversational search will also make market research quicker and more intuitive.

  • Leverage Gemini’s Personal Intelligence to draft highly contextualised client emails or proposals, drawing insights from past email threads or shared documents (if connected) to ensure communication is always relevant and timely. This could include summarising past orders or client preferences for a new pitch.
  • Utilise Gemini’s enhanced search and conversational capabilities to quickly research industry trends, competitor activities, or even niche market demands for promotional products, helping sales teams tailor their pitches with the most up-to-date market insights.
Niji V7 is Live with Enhanced Coherence and Text Rendering
Midjourney has launched Niji V7, an update to its anime-focused model, which brings significant improvements to image coherence, prompt understanding, text rendering within images, and ‘sref’ performance (style referencing). These improvements indicate a general leap in image generation quality.
Continued Refinement of Midjourney V7 for Web-Based Creation
Ongoing developments with Midjourney V7 continue to optimise the platform for web interface usage, making advanced image generation more accessible outside of Discord. This includes improvements in prompt formulation and overall result quality when generating images directly on their website.

Midjourney’s continuous advancements in image generation, particularly with Niji V7’s improved coherence and text rendering, are a huge win for creative visualisation in the promo industry. Better quality and more accurate mockups mean you can impress clients with photorealistic representations of branded merchandise faster and more effectively. The push for a more robust web interface also means easier access for your team, even if they aren’t Discord power users. This directly enhances your ability to present creative designs.

  • Generate stunning, photorealistic mockups of promotional products (e.g., apparel, tech gadgets) with specific client branding, colour schemes, and even environmental contexts for impactful client presentations. Imagine showing a T-shirt on a model in a specific event setting!
  • Quickly create unique visual content for social media campaigns or website banners featuring lifestyle shots of promotional items. This allows you to produce diverse marketing visuals that are tailored to different target demographics without expensive photoshoots.
Google Gemini to Power Next Generation of Siri and Apple Intelligence
Apple has officially confirmed a multi-year partnership with Google, announcing that Google’s Gemini models and cloud technology will form the foundation for the next generation of Apple Foundation Models. This collaboration is set to power future Apple Intelligence features, including a more personalised Siri, expected later this year.
Reports Indicate February Unveiling for Upgraded, Gemini-Backed Siri
Recent reports suggest that Apple plans to unveil the significantly upgraded, Gemini-backed version of Siri, complete with demonstrations, in the second half of February. This will be part of the iOS 26.4 update, signalling deeper AI integration across core Apple applications.

This groundbreaking partnership signifies a major shift in how AI will integrate into Apple devices, bringing Google’s powerful Gemini models directly to the user experience. For promo businesses, an enhanced Siri and Apple Intelligence, powered by Gemini, could dramatically improve how your team interacts with their devices for work. The focus on ‘personalised’ AI means greater context awareness, potentially leading to smarter assistance for everything from managing calendars to drafting communications, all while maintaining Apple’s commitment to privacy.

  • Use the enhanced, Gemini-powered Siri on Apple devices to quickly dictate and refine personalised messages, reminders, or brief reports for clients, leveraging Siri’s improved understanding of context and conversational abilities. Imagine updating a client on an order status just by speaking to your iPhone.
  • Ask Siri (now with Gemini’s intelligence) for quick summaries of news related to a client’s industry or recent company announcements directly from an iPhone or iPad, helping sales teams stay informed and prepared before crucial client meetings.

Gemini Sidepanel in Chrome

https://gemini.google.com/in-chrome
Chrome Gains Persistent Gemini Side Panel and ‘Auto Browse’ Capability
Google has rolled out significant updates to Gemini in Chrome, introducing a persistent side panel for the chatbot and an ‘auto browse’ feature. The side panel allows for seamless multitasking, while ‘auto browse’ (for AI Pro/Ultra subscribers) can handle complex, multi-step web tasks like comparing products or filling out forms on your behalf.
Nano Banana Image Generation and Deeper App Connections within Chrome
The Gemini side panel now integrates Google’s AI image generator, Nano Banana, allowing users to edit or transform images directly within the browser without switching tabs. Additionally, Chrome’s Gemini capabilities now offer deeper integration with connected apps like Gmail, Calendar, and YouTube.

The new Gemini Sidepanel and ‘auto browse’ features transform Google Chrome into a seriously powerful AI-assisted browser, streamlining your research, content creation, and overall workflow. For promo businesses, this means faster and more integrated access to AI tools directly within your daily browsing experience. Imagine instantly generating product variations or summarising competitor analysis without ever leaving your browser tab. This is all about boosting productivity and creative output right where you work.

  • While browsing a supplier’s website for new merchandise, use the Gemini side panel to quickly generate variations of a product image with different brand colours or logo placements, or even create lifestyle images using Nano Banana for immediate visual concepts.
  • Ask the Gemini side panel to summarise information from multiple open tabs about a new product line or industry trend. Then, use that summary to rapidly draft a compelling social media post, a short email snippet for a client update, or key bullet points for an internal sales meeting, all without leaving your browser.

Claude Cowork (Anthropic)

https://www.anthropic.com/
Claude Cowork Launches for Desktop Productivity
Anthropic officially launched ‘Claude Cowork’ as a research preview in January, extending Claude’s powerful ‘agentic capabilities’ to everyday desktop work beyond coding. Available on macOS for paid plans, Cowork runs locally on your computer, allowing Claude to access and manage your local files and integrate with other applications to tackle complex, multi-step tasks.
New Plugins Tailor Cowork to Specific Job Functions
Further enhancing its utility, Anthropic has added support for plugins within Cowork. These plugins allow Claude to be tailored for specific job roles like marketing, data analysis, or customer support, enabling powerful automation across various desktop applications and workflows. This makes Claude a versatile, hands-on collaborator for diverse business needs.

Claude Cowork offers an exciting prospect for ANZ promo businesses looking to automate and streamline their internal operations, particularly in client communication and marketing content generation. Its ability to work directly with local files and integrate with other apps means it can help manage creative briefs, organise project documents, and even draft more personalised client responses or campaign content more efficiently. The new plugins will allow for even more bespoke automation tailored to the specific needs of marketing or sales teams.

  • Use Case 1: Automate the collation and organisation of client feedback and project assets. By giving Claude Cowork access to project folders, it can sort, rename, and summarise files, ensuring all team members have access to up-to-date and organised information for creative briefs.
  • Use Case 2: Enhance marketing content creation by using Cowork to draft personalised email campaign sequences or social media posts based on a set of brand guidelines and product information stored locally, leveraging its plugin support for marketing functions to integrate with existing tools.