Google is pushing forward with a new wave of Gemini-powered updates, adding more versatility to its AI products and broadening access to its Search and research tools.

The company on Monday rolled out three key improvements: audio file compatibility for the Gemini app, five new languages for Search’s AI Mode, and expanded report formats for NotebookLM.

Josh Woodward, vice president of Google Labs and Gemini, announced the changes in a post on X, highlighting that audio uploads were the “#1 request” from users of the Gemini app.

Audio comes to Gemini

The addition marks a significant step for the app. Free users will be able to upload audio up to 10 minutes in length and are capped at five prompts each day. Those subscribed to AI Pro or AI Ultra plans can upload audio recordings up to three hours. Gemini now accepts up to 10 files per prompt across multiple formats, including compressed ZIP folders.

NotebookLM, Google’s research-oriented tool, already supported audio, but the Gemini app’s adoption widens its reach to users who want transcription, analysis, or conversation with audio content on the go.

Search expands with new languages

Google Search’s AI Mode is also extending its reach globally. With the integration of Gemini 2.5, the service now supports Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, and Brazilian Portuguese.

A company blog post described the move as a major step toward inclusivity: “With this expansion, more people can now use AI Mode to ask complex questions in their preferred language, while exploring the web more deeply.”

The update signals Google’s intent to make Search’s AI features more accessible outside English-speaking markets, a push likely aimed at strengthening its footprint in Asia and Latin America, where rival platforms have been growing.

NotebookLM becomes a content generator

Meanwhile, NotebookLM is moving from a research companion into a content generator. The tool can now create structured reports in a variety of styles—study guides, briefing documents, blog posts, flashcards, and quizzes—drawing directly from a user’s uploaded files.

Reports are available in more than 80 languages and can be customized in tone, structure, and format. According to Google, the new features “should be 100%” rolled out by the end of this week.

This makes NotebookLM more competitive with general-purpose AI writing tools, while maintaining its edge as a research platform that can detect themes, patterns, and connections across diverse file types.

A month of rapid releases

The updates cap a whirlwind stretch for Google’s AI division. In August, Gemini began automatically recalling user details and preferences from prior conversations, while free users gained access to Workspace’s video generator, Vids. In September, Photos upgraded to the latest video model, Veo 3, and introduced the ability for free users to generate short, four-second silent videos from their still images.

The steady drumbeat of updates underscores Google’s urgency in the AI race, as it tries to match and outpace rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic. By layering audio, languages, and flexible content creation into its products, Google is signaling that Gemini is not just a conversational AI—but an ecosystem designed to permeate everyday work, study, and online exploration.

How Google’s updates compare in the AI race

Google’s recent spree comes as competitors are consolidating their own AI bets. OpenAI, backed by Microsoft, has been integrating its models more deeply into Office, Windows, and Azure while experimenting with memory features for ChatGPT. Meta, meanwhile, has doubled down on Llama and struck a high-profile partnership with Midjourney to strengthen its image-generation capabilities. Anthropic has been refining its Claude assistant to attract enterprise clients.

Against this backdrop, Google’s Gemini upgrades stand out for their consumer focus—rolling advanced features like audio uploads, multi-language Search, and structured reports directly into apps used by students, workers, and casual users. While OpenAI and Meta emphasize ecosystems tethered to enterprise and social platforms, Google appears intent on embedding Gemini in everyday digital habits, from search to note-taking to personal research.

When the 2008 financial crisis reshaped global markets, companies elevated the Chief Financial Officer into a strategic powerhouse, transforming the role from number-cruncher to boardroom heavyweight.

A decade later, the digital revolution gave rise to Chief Digital Officers, reflecting corporate urgency to harness new technology. Now, according to futurist Michael Tchong, artificial intelligence is on track to trigger the next seismic shift: the arrival of the AI co-CEO — or even a stand-alone machine at the top.

Tchong, who has spent decades studying the interplay between technology and business, believes that the efficiency gains from AI are beginning to challenge the very foundations of executive work. He told Business Insider that decision-making, forecasting, and risk modeling — functions long reserved for human leaders — are increasingly being optimized by machines. With investors constantly demanding higher returns, he predicts that AI’s promotion into the corner office is only a matter of time.

“It becomes inevitable,” he said.

Competitive pressure building

Tchong foresees a domino effect once early adopters embrace AI leadership. “If you don’t have an AI co-CEO,” he warned, “you’re going to be seen as being corporately deficient in the way you’re handling your affairs.”

The comment reflects an emerging tension. While AI conversations in the workplace often center on fears of mass layoffs, at the executive level, they increasingly focus on how leaders themselves will use the technology. For Tchong, that conversation is shifting from AI as a tool to AI as a peer.

Pressure to perform

Tchong predicts that AI bosses won’t just answer queries or draft reports — they will act as tireless executives, capable of sending emails at any hour and continuously fine-tuning operations. This outlook aligns with broader investor pressure for companies to showcase AI adoption.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently revealed that AI had enabled the company to cut around 4,000 customer-support roles, underlining the technology’s disruptive potential. Already, some executives delegate tasks like quarterly reporting to AI systems, while a handful of firms outside the US have formally named AI executives.

Leaders are also entertaining the idea openly. Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski has said AI could take over his job. Mechanize cofounder Tamay Besiroglu aspires to automate every role, including his own. Sam Liang, CEO of Otter, has predicted that avatars will soon represent executives in meetings.

Look out, CEOs

Investor influence could accelerate the shift, Tchong argues. If an AI co-CEO proves capable of boosting profitability, Wall Street may push others to follow suit.

“The inevitable conclusion that everyone will reach is that, ‘Hey, your co-CEO is already doing a fabulous job at optimizing your profits. Why can’t it also run the whole company?’” he said.

The economic logic is hard to ignore. “The AI CEO does not demand a $29 billion salary,” Tchong quipped — a clear nod to the massive executive pay packages that dominate headlines in Silicon Valley.

Not everyone’s convinced

Skeptics like Tom Gimbel, founder of staffing firm LaSalle Network and incoming chairman of the American Staffing Association, see limits to this vision.

“I think the CEO always remains a human,” he told Business Insider, emphasizing that leadership is fundamentally about judgment and decision-making, supported by advisors, attorneys, and boards.

For Gimbel, the real risk lies in lower- and mid-level jobs where AI can easily replicate tasks, not in leadership positions that require “100% decision-making.”

AI chief and “chief empathy officer”

Tchong imagines a hybrid model: humans taking on vision, crisis management, and emotional intelligence — effectively serving as “chief empathy officers” — while AI handles optimization and tedious tasks.

He acknowledges concerns about accountability, particularly if AI makes a mistake, but counters that human leaders also stumble. Bots, he said, simply have “bouts of fantasy.”

A lesson from history

What Tchong describes fits a broader historical arc: the steady elevation of specialized roles in response to economic and technological upheavals. Just as CFOs rose after the 2008 financial crisis and Chief Digital Officers emerged during the smartphone and cloud boom, AI leaders may soon become a fixture of the C-suite.

The difference, however, is scale. Whereas CFOs and CDOs were human specialists brought in to master new challenges, AI co-CEOs would represent a handover of authority to technology itself — a leap from augmentation to delegation of leadership.

If investors begin rewarding companies that embrace AI co-leadership, competitive pressure could force others to follow. That would create a new divide between “AI-led” firms and those maintaining traditional hierarchies.

For now, most AI deployments are operational, aimed at boosting efficiency and reducing headcount. But with executives increasingly using AI as a proxy in meetings and strategy discussions, the groundwork is being laid.

Should Tchong’s forecast materialize, the corporate corner office may soon look less like a seat of solitary human power and more like a shared command center — where one half is a human leader, and the other a machine running tirelessly in the background.

California’s push to regulate frontier artificial intelligence gained momentum Monday after Anthropic publicly endorsed SB 53, a bill authored by state senator Scott Wiener that would impose transparency and safety requirements on the largest AI model developers.

The endorsement, a rare win for Wiener, comes as some of the tech industry’s most powerful lobbying groups — including the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) and Chamber for Progress — intensify efforts to sink the bill.

“While we believe that frontier AI safety is best addressed at the federal level instead of a patchwork of state regulations, powerful AI advancements won’t wait for consensus in Washington,” Anthropic said in a blog post. “The question isn’t whether we need AI governance — it’s whether we’ll develop it thoughtfully today or reactively tomorrow. SB 53 offers a solid path toward the former.”

If passed, SB 53 would require companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and xAI to adopt formal safety frameworks and publish safety and security reports before releasing powerful AI systems. The legislation also introduces whistleblower protections for employees raising alarms over unsafe deployments.

A Bill Focused on Extreme Risks

Unlike bills targeting everyday AI harms such as deepfakes or algorithmic bias, SB 53 is narrowly designed to address what it calls “catastrophic risks.” That includes preventing AI models from being misused to design biological weapons or orchestrate sophisticated cyberattacks — scenarios defined as ones that could cause at least 50 deaths or more than $1 billion in damages.

California’s Senate has already approved an earlier version of SB 53, but the bill must clear a final vote before reaching Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk. Newsom has so far remained silent on SB 53, though he vetoed Wiener’s earlier AI bill, SB 1047, last year.

Pushback from Silicon Valley and Washington

The road to this moment has been marked by fierce resistance from both industry and government. Venture capital giants such as Andreessen Horowitz and Y Combinator spearheaded opposition to SB 1047, arguing that sweeping state-level AI rules would cripple innovation.

The Trump administration had also moved to block state-level AI regulations, insisting they undermine America’s race against China in developing advanced AI. Several Republican lawmakers have echoed that position, pushing legislation in Congress that would explicitly preempt states from passing their own AI rules — a move aimed at preventing what they call a “patchwork of conflicting regulations.” SB 53, therefore, is not only a challenge to Silicon Valley lobbying power but also a direct defiance of Republican-led efforts in Washington to keep AI governance centralized at the federal level.

Anthropic’s co-founder, Jack Clark, has pushed back on the idea of waiting for Washington to act, writing on X that the industry is on track to release increasingly powerful systems and needs clear governance now.

“We have long said we would prefer a federal standard,” Clark wrote. “But in the absence of that this creates a solid blueprint for AI governance that cannot be ignored.”

That view contrasts with OpenAI’s position. In August, its chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, wrote to Governor Newsom, urging him not to pass AI regulation that could push startups out of California — without naming SB 53 directly. The letter drew public criticism from OpenAI’s former head of policy research, Miles Brundage, who called Lehane’s note “filled with misleading garbage about SB 53 and AI policy generally.”

SB 53 applies only to the very largest players, specifically targeting AI companies generating more than $500 million in annual revenue.

Building on Illinois’ Example

California is not the first state to test the waters of AI regulation. Earlier this year, Illinois advanced its own AI legislation, building on its long-standing biometric privacy law, the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), which has become one of the country’s most consequential tech laws. That statute has already forced companies like Facebook to pay hundreds of millions in settlements over the misuse of facial recognition technology. Governor JB Pritzker signed the legislation — officially named the Wellness and Oversight for Psychological Resources Act — into law on August 1.

California’s SB 53, while focused on catastrophic AI risks rather than biometric data, follows Illinois’ example by showing that states are willing to act even when Washington stalls.

Policy experts suggest that SB 53 may fare better than SB 1047 precisely because it is narrower in scope. Dean Ball, a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation and former White House AI policy adviser, wrote in August that SB 53 shows “respect for technical reality” and “a measure of legislative restraint,” making it more likely to become law.

Part of that restraint comes from amendments made earlier this month. Lawmakers dropped provisions requiring AI developers to undergo third-party audits, after tech firms argued such measures would be too burdensome.

Most leading AI companies already issue voluntary safety reports — including OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic itself — but compliance depends on internal priorities and resources. SB 53 would convert those voluntary commitments into enforceable obligations, with penalties for failure to comply.

Senator Wiener has emphasized that the bill was shaped by an expert panel convened by Governor Newsom, co-chaired by Stanford researcher and World Labs co-founder Fei-Fei Li.