Lab Weekly - 11/14/2025

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New rules may trim fees and expand surcharges, with merchants testing which card categories they accept and consumers adjusting habits

The rise of the DIY Health Optimizer, along with a new class of AI Health Advisors

Why people are betting on just about everything, and how brands can respond

And what it says about the current sports media landscape and future brand opportunities

Starting Thursday in the US, Google is rolling out AI shopping in Search’s AI Mode and Gemini: conversational product searches over 50B listings, side-by-side comparisons, price history/tracking, and ad-supported results, plus streamlined checkout. New “agentic” tools include Let Google Call to phone local stores about stock/sales, and automatic checkout that watches your target price and, with user permission, completes purchases via Google Pay with partners like Wayfair, Chewy, Quince, and select Shopify sellers.

This is obviously Google’s response to OpenAI launching agentic commerce and Instant Checkout last month. Because most people still begin their searches on Google, that distribution advantage remains Google’s biggest competitive edge on OpenAI. To change user habits, ChatGPT will have to overdeliver, especially when Google can match or surpass the search experience.

Related: Amazon sues Perplexity over ‘agentic’ shopping tool [Reuters]; Google sued over its Gemini AI allegedly spying on users [Quartz]

OpenAI has rolled out GPT-5.1, an upgrade to its flagship GPT-5 model that speeds up reasoning, adopts a more conversational style, and adds eight personality presets, plus experimental tunings, including emoji use, warmth, and response scalability, all accessible via new Personalization Settings.

Overall, analysts say the release feels unusually rushed for OpenAI, with less hype, benchmarking, and fanfare than past model launches. Either that signals a push to preempt an imminent rival drop (looking at you, Gemini 3), or a broader shift toward smaller, incremental updates between major reveals, remains to be seen.

Related: Microsoft recruits popular US influencers to promote its Copilot chatbot [Bloomberg]; OpenAI launches its Sora app on Android [The Verge]

TikTok and iHeartMedia announced a “first-of-its-kind” partnership that includes a TikTok Podcast Network featuring up to 25 creator-hosted shows. iHeart is opening co-branded podcast studios in Los Angeles, New York, and Atlanta with audio/video infrastructure to support creator shows. Shows will be distributed by iHeartPodcasts, available in the iHeartRadio app and “everywhere podcasts are heard,” with highlights shared on TikTok.

Compared with the recent Netflix–Spotify deal on video podcast content, TikTok’s iHeart deal looks like a broader land-grab to formalize creator pipelines and diversify podcast distribution. Taken together, both deals will normalize “windowing” for talk formats, releasing short-form clips on social as lures for full episodes on streamers and podcast apps, expanding premium inventory and intensifying competition for creator talent and ad dollars.

Related: Spotify’s new audiobook recap feature uses AI to remind you of the story so far [The Verge]; TikTok launches its own version of Instagram’s broadcast channels [TechCrunch]

Airbnb says it will launch a three-month pilot on January 5 that lets guests order groceries via Instacart within its app in Phoenix, Orlando, and Los Angeles, as part of its ongoing push to integrate more local services on top of its vacation rental business. There could be an opportunity here for grocery and CPG brands to test if this service integration moves the needle for travel-size or family-size products.

Valve has unveiled Steam Frame, a VR headset that can stream games from a PC or run Windows and Android titles locally, with a sub-$999 launch targeted for 2026. After a period when Meta more or less dominated consumer VR, the competitive landscape is finally widening again, with Meta, Apple, Google, and now Valve all vying for consumer attention. Hopefully, this renewed rivalry bodes well for innovation, pricing, and content, putting the industry in a much healthier place than just a few years ago.

Marble, a freemium/paid world model that turns text, photos, videos, 3D layouts, or panoramas into editable, downloadable 3D environments, could be an accessible model to popularize AI creative tools in 3D digital environments. Unlike existing peer models like Decart, Odyssey, or Google’s Genie, Marble creates persistent worlds you can export and edit with AI-native tools and a hybrid 3D editor, which could be a big boon for creator-led, open-world games like Roblox.

FanDuel and CME Group partner to launch prediction markets platform FanDuel Predicts in December, bypassing restrictions in US states where gambling is illegal. Consider it a real-time experiment in turning forecasts into tradable prices, and seeing whether that framing can make prediction markets fully legit in the U.S.

• Amazon says ads on Prime Video reach 315M viewers across its series and films, live sports and events, and free, ad-supported live channels, Deadline reports.

• TikTok Shop is now as large as eBay, Wired reports. But it’s also facing a wave of AI scammers and has rejected 70 million products for violations.

• 97% of music listeners across eight countries can’t distinguish AI-generated music, 73% support clear labelling of AI tracks, per a new Deezer–Ipsos survey cited by Reuters.

• An analysis of 47K publicly shared ChatGPT chats shows that around 10% were related to emotional support, and ChatGPT’s responses started with “yes” 10 times more than “no”, the Washington Post reports.

If you find our insights valuable and would like to have a deeper conversation on technology and media innovations, or need to sound smarter in a client meeting or a pitch, please feel free to reach out to Ryan Miller, our Director of Partnerships, at ryan.miller@ipglab.com.

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