Happy Sunday,

‘AI Weekly Insights’ 85 is serving four real moves this week: Meta borrows Midjourney’s eye for visuals, Apple trials Gemini for a smarter Siri, OpenAI rolls out a budget plan in India, and South Korea commits $71B to national AI. The signal is clear: less sizzle, more strategy across products and policy.

Ready? Let’s dive in.

The Insights

For the Week of 08/10/25 - 08/16/25 (P.S. Click the story’s title for more information 😊):

Meta Taps Midjourney for “Aesthetic” AI Boost

• What’s New: Meta struck a deal with Midjourney to license its “aesthetic technology,” the system behind the company’s text-to-image tools. The plan is to fold it into Meta’s next wave of models and features, from Instagram filters to AR effects.

• Aesthetics on Demand: Midjourney is still independent with no outside funding but reportedly made $200M in 2023, showing strong demand for its style-first approach. Now Meta’s researchers will work alongside them, part of a pivot under “Superintelligence Labs” after a mixed reception for Llama 4. The partnership gives Meta a faster route to polished visuals without building a competing tool from scratch. It also shows how Meta wants to mix its internal scale with outside creativity, the same way it has approached music, AR, and gaming deals. Expect Instagram, Messenger, and ads to quietly gain smarter, better-looking image features.

• Why It Matters: The AI race is moving from raw horsepower to quality of experience. Meta is not just training bigger models, it is licensing taste. For builders, this matters because you do not need to create every piece in-house to deliver standout AI features. Hybrid stacks that combine internal models with licensed tech are quickly becoming the norm. For everyday users, the benefit is simple: filters that look professional, video backgrounds that do not glitch, and AR effects that feel designed rather than canned. The challenge is trust. When social platforms blend high-quality AI images into feeds, questions of provenance and disclosure come back fast. If your timeline is full of photos that look professional but are AI-made, will you believe what you see? Meta is betting delight outweighs doubt, but history suggests that labels and clear disclosure will matter as much as the visuals.

OpenAI Goes Low Cost and Local in India

• What's New: OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Go in India at ₹399 per month, about $4.50, its lowest-priced subscription to date. The company also confirmed plans to open its first India office in New Delhi.

• Pricing and Local Playbook: ChatGPT Go multiplies message, image, and file-upload limits by ten compared to the free tier and doubles memory for more personalized chats. It feels close to the $20 ChatGPT Plus plan that lots of people know, but costs less than a quarter of the price. The plan also accepts India’s popular UPI payment system, which removes a barrier to subscriptions in a country where credit cards are far less common. India is already OpenAI’s second-largest user base, so creating a local office signals that the company wants to grow by embedding itself directly in the region. At the same time, competition from Google’s Gemini and Perplexity is heating up with free advanced plans available to Indian users.

• Why it Matters: For India’s massive base of students, freelancers, and startups, this plan removes a cost wall and gives access to premium features that can scale daily workflows. It also shows how AI adoption depends on regional tailoring, not just global product launches. Go is an example of pricing strategy as much as product strategy, and other markets will watch to see if it drives explosive uptake. If it works, the pressure mounts on rivals to either cut prices or differentiate in new ways. The New Delhi office matters too, because it places OpenAI closer to regulators, universities, and local partners in one of the world’s fastest-growing tech hubs. More broadly, the move highlights how emerging markets are becoming central battlegrounds for AI companies, with accessibility and infrastructure as decisive as model quality.

Apple Eyes Google’s Gemini for a Siri Reboot

• What's New: Bloomberg reports that Apple is testing whether to stick with its own AI models or license Google’s Gemini for a revamped Siri, a sign of how tough catching up in generative AI has been.

• Two Tracks for Siri: The company has explored a custom Gemini model that would run on Apple’s servers to keep privacy in-house. Internally, an ongoing bake off pits “Linwood,” powered by Apple’s models, against “Glenwood,” powered by outside tech. Siri’s promised 2024 refresh has already slipped to 2026 after engineering setbacks, which is why outside options are on the table. Apple has also held talks with Anthropic and OpenAI, suggesting it is willing to license wherever the results are best. Since Gemini already powers Android and Samsung devices, using it in Siri would be a rare case of deep collaboration between the two rivals.

• Why it Matters: This shows that even Apple, a company known for building everything itself, is willing to outsource if the performance gap is too wide. For builders, the lesson is clear: design for model flexibility, because your back end may change faster than your product does. For users, a Gemini powered Siri could finally handle multi step tasks more reliably, but it would also raise new privacy questions about how Apple shares data with a competitor. For the industry, a deal like this would blur platform lines, since the same model would sit behind both Android and iOS assistants. The bake off running inside Apple points to a pragmatic approach: whichever model proves best on quality and privacy will win. The target date remains 2026, so there is still time for the lineup to change, but the direction is unmistakable.

South Korea Bets $71 Billion on AI to Revive Growth

• What's New: South Korea’s bi-annual economic plan puts AI at the top of the agenda while trimming the growth forecast. The finance ministry outlined 30 major AI and innovation projects and a 100 trillion won fund, about $71.6 billion, to push development.

• National AI Playbook: Projects span robotics, autonomous vehicles, ships, home appliances, drones, smart factories, advanced chips, and cultural products like K-beauty and K-food. Officials called AI transformation the only path out of a slowdown driven by a record low birth rate and a shrinking population. The fund will be financed by government and private capital with tax incentives and lighter regulations to draw investment. The plan also targets domestic capability so Korean firms rely less on volatile global supply chains. Policymakers want South Korea ranked among the top three AI powers worldwide. The longer term goal is to lift the country’s potential growth above the current 2 percent.

• Why it Matters: For developers and startups, this points to real money and near term opportunities in grants, accelerators, pilots, and public procurement. For large teams, it is a clear signal that industrial policy is shifting the AI race from model demos to national scale deployments across factories, ports, cars, and consumer devices. The focus on chips and automation could strengthen local supply chains and reduce exposure to trade friction. Consumers may see faster upgrades in everyday products, from smarter appliances to driver assistance that works better on local roads. The demographic angle is the boldest part, since the policy is betting that automation can offset a shrinking workforce. That will test whether productivity gains arrive fast enough to move a national growth rate. Execution risk is real, since a fund this large needs careful targeting and strong measurement to avoid waste. If Korea shows tangible wins, expect other countries to copy the mix of public money, tax credits, and targeted deregulation.

That wraps up the week. Thanks for reading and giving me a few minutes of your Sunday. The goal is always to keep things clear and practical so you can walk away with insights worth sharing at work or with friends.

See you next Sunday with more!

Warm regards,
Kharee