We track Product so you don't have to. Top Podcasts summarised, the latest AI tools, plus research and news in a 5 min digest.

Hey Product Fans!

Welcome to this week’s 🌮 Product Tapas!

If you’ve been forwarded this or someone was kind enough to forward this your way, you’re in for a treat. For the best reading experience, check out the web version and sign up for future editions here.

What’s cooking this week? 🥘 

📰 Not Boring – OpenAI continues to dominate the AI stage with updates galore: Sora for video generation, new app-building tools, and hints at futuristic vision features. Meanwhile, TikTok breaks records, Google bends time with Willow, and Amazon's latest collab is taking car shopping to the next level. Plus much more.

⌚ Time-Saving Tools & GPTs – This week’s picks include smarter ways to organise, humanise, and market with AI. Plus, a powerful tool for creating demo videos with ease and the BEST WAY I’ve found yet to compare vendor products side by side.

And don’t forget, subscribers can access the full database of 300+ tools for even more inspiration. 🔥

🍔 Blog Bites – From UX Easter eggs to bold product strategies, we’re diving into how to create purposeful progress, delight users, and embrace innovative decision-making. Plenty of actionable takeaways in this week’s must reads for product teams.

🎙️ Pod Shots – AI, AI, AI, AI. It’s all AI. No change in this can’t-miss conversation with OpenAI’s Kevin Weil and Anthropic’s Mike Krieger, unpacking how product managers can thrive in AI’s fast-changing landscape. From designing with imperfection to mastering evaluations, plenty of tips for staying ahead of the game.

Loads to get stuck into - off we go! 🚀

📰 Not boring

• In OpenAI news

  • OpenAI releases Sora, its buzzy AI video-generation tool (not in UK/EU)

  • Plus come the new year developers will be able to build their own apps based on the o1 reasoning model

  • Not to mention they launched “full” o1 and ChatGPT Pro (for $200 pcm)

  • Finally, OpenAI president Greg Brockman teased Advanced Voice Mode’s upcoming vision feature, allowing ChatGPT to see like you

• Over in Google land, they’re not to be outdone

  • Google unveiled Gemini 2.0 - a model for “the agentic era” (agents are systems that get something done on your behalf by being able to reason, plan, and have memory.)

  • Plus Google announces Willow, and performs a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion (that is, 10²⁵ ) years — a number that vastly exceeds the age of the Universe. Probably nothing…

    • More info on this for those interested

  • Oh and Google Docs has rolled out 40 new templates for better visual designs in Docs. Huzzah!

• Reddit launches Reddit Answers a new AI conversational interface to dig through the wealth of information found on the platform

• X gives Grok a new photorealistic AI image generator - Aurora

• Apple Pay’s first competitor on the iPhone has arrived in Norway [Vipps]

• Gradually, then suddenly…Y Combinator, a16z to Double Down on Crypto, Stablecoins, and AI Startups in 2025

• On TikTok

  • Appeals Court upholds U.S. TikTok ban

  • Whilst separately TikTok casually did $100m of revenue on Black Friday

• You can buy your next Hyundai car on Amazon in these 48 US cities

• Yelp releases new AI-powered discovery and connection features allowing filtering on sentiment (e.g. how nice the food is)

• Instagram rolls out ‘trial reels’ that aren’t shown to a creator’s followers

• It’s that time of year, here’s another batch of Tech predictions for 2025 and beyond from All Things Distributed

  • The workforce of tomorrow is mission-driven

  • A new era of energy efficiency drives innovation

  • Technology tips the scales in the discovery of truth

  • Open data drives decentralized disaster preparedness

  • Intention-driven consumer technology takes hold

• Trump names David Sacks as White House AI & Crypto Czar

• And Uber will need to fingerprint drivers in California to transport teens

⌚️ Time-Saving Tools & GPTs

• Stackfix: Compare software in seconds side by side. Great way to assess new tools or vendors

• Craft: another productivity app to “help organise your life”. It looks to combine top features from Notion, Google Calendar and Docs

• Rewritify: Humanise AI Content to Make it More Undetectable and human

• Lica: create demo videos from screenshots and recordings then edit using chat

• CommentScope: Analyze YouTube comments with AI to uncover valuable insights, trends, and sentiment patterns

• Arcane: always-on Content Marketing Feed for startups- working 24/7 to suggest new Social & Blog Posts relevant to your Business.

Remember, as a subscriber you can access the full time saving tools database for fast approaching 300 time-saving tools relevant for product managers and founders 🔥. Check the link below to access 👇️ .

🍔 Blog Bites - Essential Reads for Product Teams

Design: More Built for Mars UX Bites

Back with another one from Built For Mars. I should be on commission. 🙂 

So what’s interesting in Peter’s UX Bites this week? Small, thoughtful features can make a big impact on user engagement.

From playful Easter eggs to incentivising meaningful goals, his lates examples show how product teams keep users coming back.

“Runna automatically tracks the "running miles" of your shoes. This gives you an incentive (new shoes) and an overarching trackable goal.”

Counting down the remaining miles of a pair of shoes isn't just tracking—it’s goal-setting with purpose. By aligning the goal with a tangible milestone, it becomes more motivating than an arbitrary number. This insight highlights the Goal Gradient Effect—people are more motivated as they approach a meaningful endpoint. Features like Runna’s shoe lifecycle tracker excel because they tie progress to context, offering users a compelling reason to keep going.

🫰 Why it Matters: Incentivising behaviour isn't just about rewards—it’s about creating meaningful, context-driven goals. Features that offer delight, clarity, or purpose resonate more with users, fostering loyalty and engagement.

Here’s more from this week’s bites

Strategy: “It's a Balance” isn't always the answer

“It’s a balance”, or “it depends” is often a PM’s go-to answer. This article from “a Smart Bear” suggests in product strategy, decision-making requires bold choices or synthesising innovative solutions—not just compromise.

Trying to find a ‘balance’ often means failing to decide. While balance may apply when both extremes are undesirable, transformative strategies often emerge from decisive choices or reimagined solutions that break the mould.

🫰 Why it Matters: When product decisions lean on compromise, they risk mediocrity. Whether targeting niche markets, balancing growth and profit, or creating innovative offerings, clarity of purpose leads to stronger outcomes.

Retail UX/CX: Generative AI’s Potential to Improve Customer Experience

To help retailers think about deploying generative AI in a customer-centric way, Bain surveyed more than 700 online shoppers in the United States about their knowledge of and experience with generative AI.

The key findings? As with pretty much every industry on the planet, generative AI is reshaping how retailers interact with customers, offering tools that streamline shopping experiences, personalise recommendations, and enhance customer service.

Bain & Company’s research identifies five key principles for deploying generative AI effectively, emphasising trust, seamless integration, and customer-centric design:

🎙️ Pod Shots - Bitesized Podcast Summaries

Remember, subscribers get access to an ever growing database of all the top Podcast summaries we’ve ever created. Check it out below 👇️ 

🤖 A Conversation with OpenAI's CPO Kevin Weil, Anthropic's CPO Mike Krieger, and Sarah Guo

Given the topic of the year (and the trends for next) is firmly AI, Today’s Pod Shot covers the recent Lenny and Friends interview with two leaders shaping the future of AI products—Kevin Weil from OpenAI and Mike Krieger from Anthropic. They were joined on stage by investor Sarah Guo, and the trio shared lessons on leadership, product management, and AI's extraordinary potential. Here's the story of what they revealed, packed with practical insights for founders and product managers.

🎥Watch the full episode here

📆 Published: November 12th, 2024

🕒 Estimated Reading Time: 3 mins. Time saved: 37 mins🔥

🚀 The Leap into AI Leadership

When Kevin and Mike took on their roles, reactions ranged from excitement to surprise. Kevin described his role as "challenging, interesting, and sleepless," grappling with AI's rapid development. Unlike many other product roles, AI product management involves navigating ever-evolving capabilities, creating an ongoing cycle of discovery and adaptation.

Mike's decision to join Anthropic sparked curiosity, given his high-profile background at Instagram. His reasoning? A vow to ensure each year of his life is different—and AI offered that dynamic change. His biggest adjustment? Adapting to enterprise timelines and the delightfully direct feedback loops that come with customer interactions.

Key Takeaways for Founders & PMs:

• Be ready to embrace new challenges; dynamic fields like AI push boundaries.

• Enterprise work requires patience—longer feedback loops can yield deeper insights.

• Constantly seek fresh perspectives and roles that challenge your comfort zone.

🔄 Redefining Product Instincts in AI

Both Kevin and Mike discussed how product instincts evolved in their roles. Kevin highlighted the dual nature of AI product management: on one hand, it feels like traditional product work when fine-tuning a near-ready feature; on the other, it's a stochastic, emergent process where possibilities evolve unpredictably. Mike likened AI's impact to Apple's WWDC announcements—game-changing but disruptive to roadmaps.

Key Takeaways for Founders & PMs:

• Traditional instincts may guide some decisions, but flexibility is critical.

• Expect disruption; an AI capability can emerge unexpectedly and alter plans.

• Collaborative alignment between product and research teams is essential.

📈 60% Success: Designing for Imperfection

The conversation tackled a pivotal question: how to design products when AI capabilities might only be 60% accurate. Kevin cited GitHub Copilot as an example—it launched with imperfect models but delivered immense value by saving developers time. Mike added that success often depends on lumpy outcomes—where one client finds immense value, another may experience challenges.

Key Takeaways for Founders & PMs:

• Embrace imperfection; a 60% accurate AI can still deliver value with human-in-the-loop design.

• Evaluate feedback iteratively to adapt and improve models in real-world settings.

• Pilot programs with diverse customers can uncover nuanced use cases and limitations.

🛠️ The Art of Evals: A Core PM Skill

Evaluations—or "evals"—emerged as a cornerstone skill for AI product managers. Both leaders stressed that building successful AI features depends on creating effective evaluation frameworks. These frameworks determine how well AI models perform and guide iterative improvement.

Kevin explained how OpenAI conducts PM bootcamps to teach eval-writing, while Mike shared Anthropic's strategy of embedding PMs early in the design and fine-tuning process.

Key Takeaways for Founders & PMs:

• Learn to write and refine evaluation metrics—this skill will shape AI product quality.

• Integrate PMs deeply into research and design workflows for maximum impact.

• Use models themselves to iterate on eval creation and grading.

🧠 Prototyping and Intuition with AI

One standout insight: prototyping with AI isn't just useful—it’s transformative. Mike praised Anthropic’s best PMs for rapidly using AI to compare UI concepts, enabling faster iterations. Kevin added that gaining technical depth in AI accelerates innovation and enhances product decision-making.

Key Takeaways for Founders & PMs:

• Leverage AI to prototype solutions quickly and explore possibilities.

• Build technical intuition about AI capabilities to strengthen product design.

• Experimentation isn’t about perfection—it’s about learning fast.

🗣️ AI as a Universal Translator—and Beyond

Kevin shared an inspiring story about using ChatGPT’s advanced voice mode as a translator during his travels in Korea and Japan. The experience demonstrated AI’s potential to break down language barriers and expand opportunities globally.

Mike highlighted the future of AI-powered assistants that proactively generate solutions—like creating project drafts or adapting product roadmaps to market conditions. These capabilities could revolutionise workflows by automating repetitive tasks and allowing humans to focus on creativity.

Key Takeaways for Founders & PMs:

• Explore AI as a tool for accessibility and inclusion in global markets.

• Look for opportunities to automate repetitive tasks, freeing up time for strategic work.

• Encourage proactive AI usage in generating ideas and adapting processes.

🤖 Personality, Empathy, and the Next Evolution of AI

AI models are more than tools—they’re evolving into entities with distinct "personalities." Kevin discussed user attachment to model behaviour, such as users preferring specific interactions. Mike described a growing empathy toward models, likening their evolution to relationships with people.

Key Takeaways for Founders & PMs:

• Consider how model "personalities" impact user experience and brand loyalty.

• Align model behaviour with user expectations to build trust and engagement.

• Design AI systems with empathy, focusing on how users interpret their interactions.

✨ The Magic and Speed of AI Innovation

Closing the discussion, the trio reflected on the rapid pace of AI advancements. Kevin observed how features that felt magical one year ago now seem primitive. Mike predicted a future where AI becomes proactive, asynchronous, and deeply integrated into our daily workflows.

Key Takeaways for Founders & PMs:

• Stay agile and adaptive; the pace of AI innovation is accelerating.

• Anticipate user needs as they evolve alongside advancing technologies.

• Look for opportunities to pioneer new behaviours and experiences in AI.

Wrapping Up

This conversation painted a pretty comprehensive picture of AI’s present and future and how how PMs operating in the space need to adapt. From embracing imperfection to mastering evals and prototyping, the advice shared give plenty of food for thought for help PMs and founders trying to harness AI’s potential while staying in line with its breakneck speed of innovation.

Want to know more quickly? Just ask the episode below [web only]👇️🤯
or if you prefer, 🎥Watch the full episode here

📅Timestamps:

• 00:00:00 - Introduction and Roles

• 00:01:19 - Excitement and Challenges

• 00:03:03 - Learning About Enterprise

• 00:04:56 - Instincts and Product Development

• 00:08:03 - Planning in Uncertainty

• 00:10:14 - Evaluating Model Performance

• 00:12:09 - Human-Machine Collaboration

• 00:14:42 - The Role of Evaluations

• 00:16:05 - Prototyping with AI

• 00:19:03 - Understanding the Tech Stack

• 00:21:05 - Adapting to Non-Deterministic Systems

• 00:22:57 - Educating End Users

• 00:26:00 - Change Management in Enterprises

• 00:27:28 - Internal Use Cases of AI

• 00:30:07 - Reasoning in AI Models

• 00:33:14 - Future Experiences with AI

• 00:36:57 - Surprising User Interactions 

That’s a wrap.

As always, the journey doesn't end here!

Please share and let us know what you would like to see more or less of so we can continue to improve your Product Tapas. 🚀👋

Alastair 🍽️.