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- China Overtakes America's AI Layer
China Overtakes America's AI Layer
Plus, 🎨 How to Build a Visual Brand System in Minutes Using Gemini, Chatbots are becoming the new internet layer, and more!
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Hello there! Ready to dive into another upgrading, Mind-boggling, and Value-filled Shift?
Today we have:
🚨 China Overtakes the U.S. in Open AI Models
🎨 How to Build a Visual Brand System in Minutes Using Gemini
🤖 Chatbots Are Becoming the New Internet Layer
🔨Tools and Shifts you cannot miss
🚨 China Overtakes the U.S. in Open AI Models
MIT and Hugging Face just analyzed 2.2B global model downloads, revealing China has officially surpassed the U.S. in the open-model ecosystem. Chinese developers now hold 17% of global downloads versus America’s 15.8%.
The Shift:
1. China Takes Lead - DeepSeek and Alibaba’s Qwen drive China’s surge, capturing 14.2% of global downloads as U.S. giants, once above 40% vanish from the top rankings due to their pivot to closed models.
2. Open Strategy Diverges - China aggressively ships small, efficient, fully open models, while U.S. labs lock frontier systems behind APIs and enterprise plans, creating a structural split between open innovation and closed commercial control.
3. Efficiency Becomes an Edge - Chip restrictions pushed Chinese labs into distillation, compression, and hardware-light architectures, enabling widespread adoption across Asia, Africa, and LATAM, where consumer hardware dominates development.
4. Transparency Declines - Open-source integrity is collapsing, with models revealing training data plunging from 79% in 2022 to 39% in 2025, and Chinese releases embedding political narratives aligned with state positions.
China now dominates the AI layer, where adoption, experimentation, and global influence compounding occur, the open-weight ecosystem powering thousands of apps. The U.S. still leads in frontier research, but risks surrendering the infrastructure layer entirely if it continues prioritizing closed systems.
TOGETHER WITH DEEPGRAM
Voice AI Goes Mainstream in 2025
Human-like voice agents are moving from pilot to production. In Deepgram’s 2025 State of Voice AI Report, created with Opus Research, we surveyed 400 senior leaders across North America - many from $100M+ enterprises - to map what’s real and what’s next.
The data is clear:
97% already use voice technology; 84% plan to increase budgets this year.
80% still rely on traditional voice agents.
Only 21% are very satisfied.
Customer service tops the list of near-term wins, from task automation to order taking.
See where you stand against your peers, learn what separates leaders from laggards, and get practical guidance for deploying human-like agents in 2025.
🎨 How to Build a Visual Brand System in Minutes Using Gemini
Gemini can take one reference image and instantly create an entire branded visual world around it, perfect for marketers who want consistent creative without hiring a studio.
1. Upload a single brand image: Use a product shot, mood reference, or lifestyle photo that captures your desired vibe.
2. Use a style-cloning prompt:
“Match this reference image’s visual style. Generate a new scene with identical color logic, lighting, and aesthetic rules.”
3. Expand the universe: Ask Gemini to create variations: ad backgrounds, product scenes, lifestyle frames, seasonal themes, all in the same aesthetic system.
✨ Fastest way to build a cohesive visual identity for campaigns, landing pages, and ads.
🤖 Chatbots Are Becoming the New Internet Layer
Similarweb’s new 2025 report shows chatbots are no longer tools; they’re becoming core internet infrastructure, rivaling social networks in traffic. At the same time, a new leak confirms OpenAI is preparing to introduce ads directly inside ChatGPT.
The Shift:
1. AI Traffic Now Rivals Social Platforms - AI services reached 7B monthly visits, rising 76% YoY, with mobile downloads jumping 778%. ChatGPT alone climbed to 5.9B visits, placing it among the world’s top 5 websites. Despite rising competition, it still commands nearly 80% of GenAI traffic.
2. Search + Chat Are Converging, Not Competing - Similarweb found 95% of ChatGPT visitors also use Google, proving chatbots aren’t replacing search yet. ChatGPT drives stronger daily engagement than alternatives, with 33% of U.S. app users opening it daily.
3. AI Adoption Is Broadening Across Platforms - Google’s new “AI Mode” hit 100M U.S. visits faster than any GenAI feature, though half of users interacted only once. Chatbots have become cross-generational, with 45–54 and 55+ groups climbing sharply.
4. OpenAI Prepares to Launch Ads Inside ChatGPT - A leaked Android beta shows references to search ads, ads carousel, and bazaar content, signaling an upcoming ad layer. With 800M weekly users, 2.5B daily prompts, and India as its largest market, ChatGPT already has the scale of a global ad platform.
AI is no longer an app category; it’s becoming the backbone of how people search, learn, and make decisions online. And as ChatGPT moves toward an ad-supported model, marketers will soon face an entirely new performance channel where intent, personalization, and conversation blend into one.
TOGETHER WITH THE HUSTLE DAILY
200+ AI Side Hustles to Start Right Now
While you were debating if AI would take your job, other people started using it to print money. Seriously.
That's not hyperbole. People are literally using ChatGPT to write Etsy descriptions that convert 3x better. Claude to build entire SaaS products without coding. Midjourney to create designs clients pay thousands for.
The Hustle found 200+ ways regular humans are turning AI into income. Subscribe to The Hustle for the full guide and unlock daily business intel that's actually interesting.
🔨AI Tools for the Shift
🗺️ RapidMap – Map and optimise business processes instantly with an AI tool built for independent consultants.
🎙️ Discord DiscMeet – Turn Discord voice calls into organised, searchable notes with AI.
📄 PDFClean.ai – Convert bank statements, invoices, and PDF tables into clean CSV or XLSX files instantly with AI.
🎨 Vibe3D – Render 3D models into stunning, accurate visuals in seconds while saving hours of manual work.
📹 OverseerOS – Reverse engineer any YouTube channel and clone winning strategies using 26+ AI-powered tools.
🚀Quick Shifts
⚠️ A new report links Amazon data centers in Oregon to rising nitrate contamination, with experts warning the polluted water may be driving higher cancer and miscarriage rates, a claim Amazon disputes.
🔥 Sora and Nano Banana Pro were throttled as demand surged, with OpenAI and Google cutting free-tier generation limits while encouraging paid upgrades. Both companies say GPU strain is driving the new restrictions.
🎬 Director James Cameron, known for “Avatar” and “Titanic,” called generative AI “horrifying,” saying it invents actors and performances from scratch, the opposite of his actor-driven performance-capture approach.
💰According to CNBC. Elon Musk’s xAI is reportedly preparing to raise a massive $15B round at a $230B pre-money valuation next month.
🤝 HSBC has signed a multi-year deal with French startup Mistral AI to accelerate its generative-AI rollout, boosting automation, productivity, and client services across the bank.
That’s all for today’s edition see you tomorrow as we track down and get you all that matters in the daily AI Shift!
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