Sent to 16 readers
Race to AGI Daily Digest - Thursday, December 18, 2025
Share:
TLDR
Google made Gemini 3 Flash the default brain across its major products, raising the stakes in the model war.
Ai2’s Molmo 2 open video models are taking direct aim at frontier multimodal systems like Gemini and Qwen.
The FTC’s Instacart probe turns AI pricing into a frontline safety and fairness issue for everyday shoppers.
A new EU code for labelling AI‑generated content pushes watermarking and disclosure from idea to rulebook.
Hardware and infra names like ASML, Palantir, Oracle, ARM, and AMD sold off again as investors press for AI discipline.
The Full Story
Building on Monday’s “real usage vs investor nerves” and Tuesday’s NVIDIA stack push, today Google shows what it looks like when a model war reaches the default setting.
Gemini 3 Flash is now the default AI engine across Google’s products full rundown ->. So when you type, talk, or click “help me write” in a Google surface, you’re hitting one stack: Google -> plus Google Cloud ->. That’s the prompt-layer battleground we’ve been talking about all week, now hard-coded into everyday tools. At the same time, Ai2’s Molmo 2 open video models are coming straight at Gemini and Qwen on multimodal quality see Molmo 2 ->. The stack war is no longer just GPUs and schedulers; it’s whose brain runs your cursor.
Now put that next to the regulators. The FTC is probing Instacart’s AI pricing tool for creating unfair grocery price gaps FTC probe summary ->. That’s our “AI safety and misuse” storyline landing right at checkout. You can see the link to behavioral targeting too: if algorithms can nudge prices per user, where’s the line between personalization and abuse?
Europe is drawing another line with a new code for labelling AI‑generated content read the EU code ->. After a week of talking about digital twins, hyper-personal ads, and Sora-style characters, this is the first serious attempt to say: synthetic media needs a flag by default.
Markets are again sending their own message. ASML, Palantir, Oracle, ARM, and AMD all dropped around 5%. That reinforces the “Investors Demand Discipline in AI Spending” narrative we’ve been tracking follow that narrative ->. The tech is racing ahead—Gemini 3 Flash everywhere, open video models chasing—but money and regulators are now asking the same question: show us value, and don’t break people’s trust on the way there.
Get This Delivered Daily
Join thousands of AI professionals who start their day with Race to AGI.