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Published on 29.01.2026
TLDR: Google Chrome is getting Gemini 3-powered "auto browse" that can understand images, find products, add to cart, and apply discount codes automatically. Meta is planning agentic commerce tools for 2026. YouTube removed channels with millions of subscribers for AI-generated low-quality content.
Summary:
The browser is about to become a lot more autonomous. Google Chrome is rolling out "auto browse" powered by Gemini 3, and the capabilities are genuinely interesting. It can understand images you're looking at, find matching products across the web, add items to your shopping cart, and even apply discount codes - all hands-free. This isn't just a chatbot bolted onto the browser; it's browser automation that understands intent and can execute multi-step tasks.
Meta is telegraphing something similar but for commerce. Zuckerberg is teasing "agentic commerce tools" as part of a major AI rollout planned for 2026. The implication is that AI agents will transform how businesses sell on Facebook and Instagram - not just recommendations, but actual autonomous selling assistance. If you're building commerce experiences, this is worth watching closely.
On the content side, YouTube is finally cracking down on AI-generated slop. They removed top channels including one with 5.9 million subscribers for producing low-quality AI content. This signals that platform tolerance for mass-produced AI content is hitting limits - quality standards are being enforced, not just at the margin but at scale.
In the tooling space, LM Studio 0.4.0 dropped with significant improvements: server deployment capabilities, REST API support, parallel request handling, and a completely refreshed UI. For teams running local models, this makes LM Studio considerably more production-ready.
For architects and teams, the Chrome auto-browse feature points toward a future where browser automation becomes mainstream and AI-native. If you're building web applications, consider how they'll interact with autonomous browsing agents - not just humans clicking through interfaces. The meta-commerce tools hint at a similar shift for e-commerce: AI agents as first-class participants in the buying process, not just recommendation engines. And the YouTube enforcement suggests that AI content strategies need to prioritize quality over volume - mass production without quality control is becoming a liability rather than an advantage.
The investment landscape remains aggressive: Humans& raised $480M for AI centered on people and relationships, Ricursive Intelligence raised $300M for frontier AI technologies, and Merge Labs raised $252M for brain-computer interfaces integrated with AI.
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