Master negotiators? Or do they know something we don't? open.substack.com/pub/handyai/...
OpenAI rushes out GPT 5.2 while somehow convincing Disney to pay them $1B
AI Weekly Update - December 15, 2025
open.substack.com
Jake Handy
@jakehandy.com
navigating tech and its unholy masters 💼 r&d at pex.com 👨🏻 dad at home
GPT-5.2 is here and, while it’s cool to see an incremental release like this have such wild leaps on benches, I’m starting to get more concerned about corps rushing through safety checks to outpace each other.
Yesterday, Suno announced a $250M raise and Udio announced (another) settlement, this time with Warner Music Group. Why the divergence? open.substack.com/pub/soundmac...
The saga of Suno and Udio
What the companies’ choices signal for the future of music
open.substack.com
Google‘s new image model is their Sora moment. Nano Banana Pro seemingly allows any copyrighted content and the image outputs are scary realistic with incredible details around fidelity (up to 4K!) and crisp text generation.
Sora 2’s separate feed solves some problems, but the model itself (namely the Cameo feature, which allows you to insert real people into AI videos) is going to create some new, hard-to-solve problems. More: handyai.substack.com/p/sora-2-and...
Sora 2 and the messy future of AI-generated video
OpenAI just dropped Sora 2, and if you thought AI-generated images were disruptive, you haven’t seen anything yet
handyai.substack.com
Suno is teasing its next generative music model (v5). Their short comings have been vocal quality and general fidelity and this sample seems to indicate some solid progress on both. Take a listen:
Poke is a marvel. The bot went from insulting me, to gaslighting me, to haggling with me over setting a price for its services. In the end, I got access to the entire service for free. Here’s how it went down. open.substack.com/pub/handyai/...
Getting free access to Poke's AI agent
Is haggling with bots the future of product onboarding?
open.substack.com
Modern product manager must be moving beyond simple wireframes and into building full, functional prototypes with AI coding tools. No excuses. Read how: open.substack.com/pub/handyai/...
Using Codex CLI to build a web app
OpenAI's terminal-based agent is the best AI coding tool yet
open.substack.com
Interesting tidbit: ChatGPT’s study mode defaults to a 10th grade level. Does OpenAI consider this the statistical middle in terms of Chat users?
The spread of intelligence between the various GPT-5 models is pretty wild.
In response to user complaints last week, ChatGPT now has three modes for users: - Auto - Fast - Thinking Always use the Thinking mode. OpenAI increased the limits from 100/wk to 3,000/wk so there’s no real reason not to, and this is the version of the model that’s topping all the benchmarks.
YouTube link is live for GPT-5 livestream (starting in an hour-ish) www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Uu_...
Introducing GPT-5
YouTube video by OpenAI
youtube.com
Grok 2 and 3 will be open sourced... any day now... I'm sure it's coming...
it appears as though ElevenLabs has created an Udio-quality competitor with licensed training data and some pretty solid commercial terms more: soundmachines.substack.com/p/the-first-...
The first ethical AI music model?
How ElevenMusic's approach to licensing could push the generative music industry in the right direction
soundmachines.substack.com
o3 still the king of cost-per-intelligence, generally. Good showing by Grok 4 but it was overhyped (who expected anything different?)
DON'T: Ditch #AI tools entirely. You’ll be at a detriment. DO: Set limits and be mindful about usage. Protect your brain! More: open.substack.com/pub/handyai/...
Your brain on ChatGPT
Cognitive debt in the age of AI and how to stay solvent
open.substack.com
thanks Music Ally for featuring me here. lots to chew on in terms of how hackathons are going to look in the future musically.com/2025/06/13/v...
Vibe coding made a big impact at OpenPlay’s first hackathon
The hype around music-industry hackathons may ebb and flow, but they remain an enduring source of good ideas.
musically.com
ChatGPT doesn’t care about you (or its 400 million active users) how can we mitigate the dangers of this architectural reality? read: open.substack.com/pub/handyai/...
ChatGPT can’t pronounce my kid's name
The very human side effects of our non-human tech
open.substack.com