In this newsletter:

• Google AI Mode now tracks flights, checks reward rates, and books hotels
• Anthropic makes Claude free for US K-12 schools and districts
• Midjourney opens its first AI image editor for prompt-based edits

Plus, you’ll find new AI tools and this week’s top AI news headlines!

✈️ Google AI Mode Now Tracks Flights, Checks Reward Rates, and Books Hotels

Google added travel planning and booking capabilities to AI Mode, letting users track flight prices, book hotels through conversation, and see costs in airline miles or credit card points without leaving Search.

Flight price tracking:

• Available now in over 180 countries and territories
• Describe when and where you want to fly; AI Mode shows best options from over 300 partner airlines and travel sites
• Ask "track these flight prices for me" and get email alerts the moment prices change
• Ready to book: build full itinerary in AI Mode and buy tickets through the airline's website or preferred booking platform

Points and miles display:

• Available now globally
• Ask "I want to travel from Atlanta to Miami using my AA miles, help me find nonstop flights departing Oct 9 returning Oct 12" and see exactly how many miles you need
• Works for hotels too - ask to see the cost in points for your rewards program
• Currently supports Alaska Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, American Airlines, Choice Hotels, Hilton, and Wyndham
• Coming soon: Accor, Flying Blue, Hyatt, LATAM Airlines, and Lufthansa Group

Hotel booking:

• Rolling out now in the US in English
• Tell AI Mode your trip details and hotel preferences; get a visual list with guest reviews and key factors
• Ask AI Mode to complete booking, select "Continue on Google" alongside integrated partners
• Pick room type, review cancellation policy, complete booking via Google Pay
• Partners: Booking .com, Choice Hotels, Expedia, Hilton, Hotels.com, IHG, Marriott, Priceline, Trip .com, Wyndham

Why it matters:

Travel booking has always been fragmented - one tab for flights, another for hotels, a separate app for rewards points, and a spreadsheet to compare it all.

Google collapsing that entire process into a single conversation is less about adding features and more about owning the moment people decide where to spend their money, which is exactly the territory Expedia, Kayak, and Booking .com have built billion-dollar businesses on.

👀 Read more about Google AI Mode's travel features!

🎓 Anthropic Offers Claude for Teachers Free to All US K-12 Schools and Districts

Anthropic expanded Claude for Teachers to US K-12 schools and districts as a free Enterprise offering, giving administrators centralized control over teacher accounts with enterprise-grade privacy and security.

What's new:

• Available now for US K-12 schools and districts; qualifying organizations that sign up by June 30, 2027 get a full year of free access
• School or district administrator gets verified, accepts K-12 terms, connects email domain and single sign-on
• Educators and staff get free access to Claude for Teachers, including teaching skills, state standards, and high-quality curricula across all 50 states
• Usage limits match individual Claude for Teachers accounts with overage billing turned off by default
• Administrators manage accounts, add and remove staff, set policies, and see adoption across schools
• Teachers already verified on the school domain automatically move into a centrally managed account
• Claude for Teachers data not used for model training, student information protected by K-12 Data Processing Agreement
• FERPA-aligned commitments apply across entire organization under one set of terms

New back-to-school features:

• Two new teaching skills co-developed with Learning Commons
• Lesson preparation: Claude helps plan key moments of an upcoming lesson
• Check for understanding: builds short standards-aligned checks to surface what students are thinking, available for math at launch
• Accessibility upgrades to student-facing materials
• Updated Claude for K-12 Academy with free courses, guides, and classroom workflows for teachers, coaches, and district teams
• Piloting evaluation of Claude for Teachers in Detroit Public Schools Community District this fall

Why it matters:

Anthropic is taking the same approach OpenAI used with ChatGPT Edu - going through district administrators rather than individual teachers because one approval reaches an entire school system at once.

The free Enterprise tier, with FERPA compliance and built-in student data protections, removes the legal hurdle that has kept most AI tools out of classrooms, making it easier for district leaders to approve than to keep blocking them.

👀 Read more about Claude for Teachers!

🎨 Midjourney Launches its First AI Image Edit Model With Prompt-Based Editing

Midjourney released its first V8.2 image-editing model for open testing, allowing users to edit images with text prompts, combine up to four image references, and make targeted edits to specific areas.

What it supports:

• Edit images using written instructions
• Generate images using up to four image references at once, replacing the previous omni-reference feature
• Inpainting: change specific areas of an image
• Outpainting: expand your canvas beyond original image boundaries
• Personalization, moodboards, and style references (srefs) supported, though may work best with extra prompt direction in this version

How to access:

• Drag images into the prompt bar under "attach to prompt"
• Click "edit" in the lower right of the lightbox
• Click the "edit" tab on the left and upload an image
• Type --edit url... on Discord
• Available on both the main Midjourney website and the alpha version, with the alpha changing rapidly with interface experiments

Why it matters:

Midjourney has long been known primarily for generating images, while image editing has been a weaker part of its features compared with tools such as Adobe Firefly and Runway.

V8.2 closes that gap by combining text-based editing, multi-reference generation, and targeted inpainting in one model, which shifts Midjourney from a generation tool into a full creative production environment where you can both create and refine images without switching platforms.

👀 Read more about Midjourney's V8.2 edit model!

My Latest LinkedIn & X/Twitter Posts:

• 3 ways you can use AI to automate your workflows (view post)
• 8 ChatGPT prompts for planning and strategic thinking (view post)
• Top 15 Perplexity prompts to supercharge your workflow (view post)
• 9 ChatGPT prompts to extract strategies and find insights (view post)
• How to use NotebookLM to boost your research (view post)

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New AI Tools to Boost Your Productivity:

• ​Content Studio: Dubs, translates & voice-clones content across languages.
• ​Press Prep: Prepares communications teams for media interviews.
• ​Voice Cloner: Clones voices and generates speech from text.
• ​DetectGPT: Detects AI-generated text.
• ​UltraHumanizer: Humanizes AI-generated text.
• ​Neogenio SEO: Generates and optimizes SEO content.
• ​SlideRebuild: Converts slides into editable PowerPoint files.
• ​Riverflow: Creates campaign visuals from prompts.
• ​UGC Maker: Generates UGC-style video ads with avatars.
• ​Dokie: Creates presentation slides from text.
• ​Devoice: Transcribes audio and video into text.
• ​Hugo: Automates customer support chats and ticket handling.
• ​ShortFast: Creates short-form videos from long content.
• ​Team9: Builds custom AI agents for business workflows.
• ​Loamly: Tracks ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity website traffic.
• ​Intuo: Helps AI agents create maps from public data.
• ​Supernormal: Records meetings and generates notes and summaries.

This Week's Top AI News Headlines:

• OpenAI Expands its Support for AI Startups in Thailand, Launching a New Initiative to Help Local Founders Build AI-Powered Companies and Connect with OpenAI’s Technology, Resources, and Global Ecosystem (View Article)
• Google Expands Gemini Notebook With Expert Intelligence, Letting Users Ground AI Research in High-Quality Sources and Get More Authoritative, In-Depth Answers from Trusted Experts and Leading Publications (View Article)
• Anthropic Proposes a New Hardware Standard for AI Models, Giving Developers a Common Way to Measure How Different Models Perform Across Chips and Computing Systems (View Article)
• OpenAI Launches Collective Cyber Defense, Bringing AI Companies, Security Researchers, and Cybersecurity Organizations Together to Share Threat Intelligence and Strengthen Defenses Against AI-Enabled Cyberattacks (View Article)
• OpenAI Finds that ChatGPT-Based Critical Thinking Training Helps Students Better Evaluate Information, Challenge Assumptions, and Develop Stronger Reasoning Skills When Using AI for Learning (View Article)
• Google Expands Gemini Notebook with Flexible Usage Limits, Giving Users More Control Over How they Use AI Features Across Different Tasks and Helping them Manage their Available Usage More Effectively (View Article)
• ChatGPT Now Lets Users Save Temporary Chats, Giving People the Option to Keep Conversations that would Normally Disappear After a Temporary Chat Session Ends (View Article)
• Anthropic Uses Automated AI Researchers to Find and Mitigate Alignment Failures, Showing How AI Agents Can Help Identify and Fix Behaviors that Could Make Future Models Less Reliable or Aligned with Human Intent (View Article)
• Microsoft Faces Scrutiny Over an AI Data Center’s Unpermitted Gas Generators and Pollution Concerns, Raising Questions About the Environmental Costs of Powering its Expanding AI Infrastructure (View Article)
• Chinese-Linked Bot Accounts are Reportedly Fueling U.S. Opposition to AI Data Centers, Using Social Media Posts About Rising Power Costs and Grid Strain to Influence the Debate Over America’s AI Infrastructure Buildout (View Article)

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• Paid Partnerships: I’ll promote your product on my LinkedIn, X/Twitter or newsletter. Fill out form to get more info.
• Consulting: I’ll help you grow on LinkedIn & X/Twitter or use AI to boost marketing and sales. ​Book consulting call​.

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Have a wonderful week!

Andrew Bolis