Gen AI: 8 takeaways from the past three months

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Last week we hosted our 3rd annual HOLID-AI generative AI update, where we shared recent updates in the world of generative AI. If you missed the event, you can view the slides and the replay.

We asked two survey questions at each of our three HOLID-AI events. Here are how the results have changed over time. You can see that the percentage of people using AI chat tools such as ChatGPT and Copilot frequently had a big jump from 2023 to 2024 but stayed the same from 2024 to 2025.

On the image side, we are not seeing much growth in the number of people using AI image tools, despite huge improvements from new models like Nano Banana Pro (more on that below).

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8 takeaways from the past three months in Gen AI

LLM Updates

Since August of this year, we’ve seen the release of a number of new LLMs from the big players:

• GPT-5.1 (released November 12) and GPT-5.2 (released December 11)

• Gemini 3 Pro (released November 18) and Gemini 3 Flash (released December 17)

• Claude 4.5 (Sonnet 4.5 released September 29, Haiku 4.5 released October 15, Opus 4.5 released November 24)

• Grok 4.1 (released November 17)

Google Takes the Lead in the GenAI Race

In the wake of the launch of Gemini 3 Pro and the success of Google’s image generation tool Nano Banana (more on that below), OpenAI issued a “code red” to boost ChatGPT. As further evidence of Google’s recent rise in the GenAI race, Google AI tools held the top spot in 7 of the 8 categories on the LMArena Leaderboard at the beginning of the week. However, just a few days later (after our update), that has dropped to just 5 out of 8 due to the launch of the new ChatGPT Images on Tuesday.

AI IP Lawsuits Continue to Develop

We’ve seen significant updates in a number of lawsuits against AI companies. Here are a few:

• Anthropic agrees to a $1.5 billion settlement with authors

• George R.R. Martin’s lawsuit against Open AI proceeds while OpenAI loses a key discovery battle

• Getty Images largely loses landmark UK lawsuit over AI image generator

Licensing Deals Aplenty

In the midst of many lawsuits, we’re seeing AI companies form licensing deals with various media companies:

• Disney makes a $1 billion investment in OpenAI’s video generator Sora

• Universal Music Group partners with AI music platform Udio

• Warner Music Group partners with AI music platform Suno

• Getty Images and AI-search platform Perplexity form a licensing deal

AI Music Enters The Mainstream

AI artist Breaking Rust's song "Walk My Walk" topped the Country Digital Song Sales chart during November. Breaking Rust debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard Emerging Artists chart dated November 1, 2025, driven by "Walk My Walk" and "Livin' on Borrowed Time."

An Ipsos survey found that 97% of people can’t tell the difference between fully AI-generated and human made music

AI Browser Wars Heat Up

A new wave of AI‑native browsers is emerging, powered by agentic and assistant-first models. The one that made the biggest splash was ChatGPT's Atlas browser, which launched in October of this year.

Perplexity's Comet browser became widely available in October as well.

If you're not interested in switching browsers, Copilot launched in Microsoft Edge in July. And the most-used browser in the world, Chrome, added Gemini tools in September.

Video Tools Blur Line Between Real and AI

AI video is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from real video. The past few months brought us a number of AI video updates:

• OpenAI Sora 2 - Sept. 2025

• Gemini Veo 3.1 - Oct. 2025

• KlingAI 2.6 - Dec. 2025

• Runway Gen 4.5 - Dec. 2025

Meta Vibes, while not a new model, is a feed of AI videos in the Meta AI app that launched in Sept. 2025.

AI Images Go Bananas

Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, aka Nano Banana, was released in late August and impressed us with its photo editing ability. But the recently released Nano Banana Pro was released took it to whole new levels.

Pro can help you visualize any idea and design anything … from prototypes, to representing data as infographics, to turning handwritten notes into diagrams.

We made this journey map summary of the movie Elf from a simple prompt.

See you Tuesday: The AI news doesn’t seem to slow down for the holidays. So watch for our regular generative AI news update in your inbox this Tuesday.