Gemini 3 Beats ChatGPT

This Week

I spent last week enjoying Thanksgiving with family, completely unplugged and blissfully unaware of the tech world.

Then I came back.

My inbox? Overflowing with AI announcements. 

Google dropped Gemini 3. Perplexity launched shopping features. NotebookLM added deep research. And that's just scratching the surface.

So, I've spent the past few days digging myself out of that pile of updates. The good news? I've sorted through it all and pulled out the most useful bits for you.

Want to find out what they are? 

Read on.

Google Drops World’s Most Powerful AI

Google just launched Gemini 3, and it's officially the world's most powerful AI model. It's currently leading the LMArena leaderboard for text, image, and video generation. 

ChatGPT? Trailing behind in 5th place.

Here are the key features you should know about:

A major leap in multimodal reasoning: Gemini 3 outperforms leading AI models across major benchmarks (except coding). It processes information seamlessly across text, images, video, audio, and code.

Better results with less precise prompting: Gemini 3 excels at understanding the intent behind your prompts and delivering relevant information even when your prompts are brief or vague. Translation? You don't need to be a prompt engineer to get good results.

Custom visualizations in AI Mode: AI Mode now generates custom images, tables, interactive tools, and "on-the-fly" simulations to answer queries visually. It's pretty impressive when you see it in action.

Nano Banana Pro for image generation: The real star of the show? Nano Banana Pro, Google's new image generation and editing model that's baked into Gemini 3 Pro. It's built for high-quality visual content creation and is already integrated into Google Slides, the Gemini app, and even Adobe Firefly and Photoshop. 

Why Everyone’s Talking About Nano Banana Pro

Nano Banana Pro can now handle complex visual projects that other AI models struggle with.

Need an infographic for a presentation? You can now prompt it to create multi-layered visuals with charts, icons, and text labels that render correctly. No more garbled letters or nonsensical words scattered across your image.

Working on social media graphics? The model understands layout, composition, and brand consistency well enough to generate professional-looking assets that don't scream "AI-generated."

The real breakthrough is in the details.

Previous image models would nail the overall concept but fail on specifics like readable text, accurate data visualization, or maintaining consistent styling across multiple elements. Nano Banana Pro handles these nuances, which makes it much more useful for marketing and business applications.

You can see the demo video here and download this handy prompt guide here.

Gmail Can Now Schedule Your Meetings

Google also launched a new Gemini-powered "Help Me Schedule" feature in Gmail that automatically pulls your available time slots from Google Calendar directly into email threads.

It's pretty nifty if you want to send individual times when you're available and it's easy to adjust the times the AI selects.

That said, I find sending folks a link to my online Google Calendar far more efficient. What I really need is the ability to click a button and add that link, as opposed to cutting and pasting it from my calendar every single time.

But hey, it's a step in the right direction.

Google’s Latest Travel Features

You can now ask Gemini open-ended questions from within Maps, either while driving or out walking. The system combines Maps' geographical data with local insights about the surrounding community to provide answers about businesses or possible destinations.

You can ask, "Where's a good spot for coffee with WiFi?" and Maps will show you nearby options. 

Google also launched a new feature that lets you create travel itineraries using AI Mode with a visual Canvas interface. 

I tested it out, and honestly? It's a mixed bag. 

The feature only triggered on my personal account, and even then, not for every itinerary I requested. The best I can say is that the layout is clean and easy to read. It includes images for restaurants and activities and a handy reference map for each day.

That said, it's definitely not ready for prime time.

You can't share the itinerary or print it out, and good luck finding it on your phone when you're actually in location. It might be helpful for inspiration or getting a sense of where things are, but it doesn't hold a candle to the other trip planning tools (like MindTrip) out there.

NotebookLM Adds Deep Research

NotebookLM just got a major upgrade.

The popular AI-powered research assistant now offers "Deep Research," a feature that takes your question, browses websites on your behalf, and then delivers a sourced report.

The tool also now supports multiple file types, including Sheets, Drive files as URLs, PDFs from Drive, Microsoft Word Documents, and even images of handwritten notes.

If you're doing any kind of research work, this is worth checking out.

AI Powered Shopping is Here

You're probably all shopped out from the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. But if you still have some holiday shopping on your list, there are a lot of new AI-powered features to help you out with the task.

Here's a quick rundown:

Google's AI shopping features: Google launched new shopping tools that help you research products, compare prices, and even complete checkout faster. The features are rolling out now across Google Search and Shopping.

Perplexity's shopping suite: Not to be outdone, Perplexity rolled out shopping, virtual try-on, and enhanced memory. The AI search engine can now help you research and buy products directly in-app.

ChatGPT’s shopping research: And finally ChatGPT had to get in on the act. They launched their own shopping feature that asks you clarifying questions and then builds a comparison chart. Access is still limited on this one, so I've yet to test it out.

Both updates reflect a broader trend towards AI-powered shopping. Adobe found that AI-driven traffic to US retail websites jumped 805% compared to last year, helping push Black Friday sales to a record $11.8 billion

That's a massive shift in how people are shopping online.

One-Click Campaigns (Sort Of)

Google's latest experiment is called Pomelli, and it promises to create marketing campaigns with one click.

I tested it out, and while it's fun to play with, it didn't create anything I would actually publish. The output needs a lot of human guidance and refinement.

That said, it could be useful for ideation or mock-ups when you're trying to get a campaign off the ground quickly. Just don't expect to use it as-is.

Head over to Google Labs if you want to take it for a spin.

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