Good morning out there,
Canva just made its professional design suite, Affinity, completely free. This bundles photo editing, vector, and publishing tools into a serious, no-cost Adobe competitor.
For operators, this removes a major budget hurdle for creating high-quality marketing assets. When you pair these tools with Canva's AI features, the workflow for getting from idea to published content gets a lot faster.
Topics of the day:
Canva makes its professional design suite free
Sora's video generator launches on Android
A new ChatGPT feature to edit queries mid-answer
How AI cover letters are breaking the hiring process
The Shortlist: Apple’s $1B deal to bring Gemini into Siri, Google’s AI-powered finance search, Cursor’s faster multi-agent code editor, and Edison’s AI researcher that finishes months of work in a day.
Canva makes pro design suite for free
What’s happening: Big news for creators: Canva just relaunched its professional Affinity design suite as a completely free app. This move bundles photo editing, vector illustration, and publishing tools into a serious Adobe competitor.
In practice:
Small businesses and marketing teams can now access professional-grade design tools without paying for an expensive Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.
If you have Canva Pro, you can use AI features like Generative Fill inside Affinity, automating tedious edits and speeding up asset creation.
You can create high-fidelity designs in Affinity and then export them directly to Canva, streamlining the workflow from professional design to marketing and social media publishing.
Bottom line: This move drastically lowers the barrier for creating high-quality marketing assets in-house. It gives every business, regardless of size, access to tools that were once exclusively for professional designers.
OpenAI's Sora video generator debuts on Android
What’s happening: OpenAI’s viral text-to-video generator, Sora, is now live on Android after hitting one million downloads on iOS. This makes high-quality AI video creation accessible to a massive new audience of creators and professionals.
In practice:
You can now generate social media video ads or marketing content in seconds, cutting down on expensive production costs.
Use it to quickly prototype visual concepts for new products or campaigns without needing a design team to get started.
The "Cameo" feature lets you create a recurring AI avatar, making it easier to build a consistent personal brand across video content.
Bottom line: Professional video creation is no longer limited by big budgets or technical skills. This shift puts powerful storytelling tools directly into the hands of marketers and founders.
You can now update ChatGPT mid-answer
What’s happening: OpenAI rolled out a new feature for ChatGPT that lets you interrupt and edit your query mid-answer, saving you from having to restart a long generation.
In practice:
Instantly course-correct complex requests like market research or code generation without waiting for the complete response, saving you minutes on every query.
Refine automated content workflows by adding new keywords or data points on the fly, making your first draft closer to the final version.
Guide brainstorming sessions for growth strategies in real time, steering the model toward more relevant tactics as it generates ideas.
Bottom line: This isn’t a headline feature, but it removes a major point of friction. It makes using ChatGPT for complex work feel faster and more collaborative.
AI is breaking the hiring process
What’s happening: AI-generated cover letters are flooding recruiters, and a recent study shows this is making the hiring process less meritocratic by making it harder to spot top candidates.
In practice:
Your hiring team can no longer rely on the cover letter as a quality filter, meaning manual screening is less effective at surfacing top talent.
Businesses must now lean on AI-proof filters like practical skills tests, case studies, or interviews that validate real-world ability over writing.
For applicants, this shifts the focus to a portfolio of verifiable work and networking to bypass resume piles, since your AI-polished application looks like everyone else’s.
Bottom line: The game has changed for both hiring managers and job seekers. Trust in traditional application materials is eroding, putting a new premium on tangible skills and direct proof of work.
The Shortlist
Apple inked a reported $1B annual deal to use a custom version of Google's Gemini model to power its upcoming Siri overhaul.
Google integrated its Gemini Deep Search feature into Google Finance, adding advanced financial insights and AI-powered market analysis directly into search.
Cursor released version 2.0 of its AI code editor, featuring a model that runs four times faster and lets developers launch up to eight agents at once to test and fix code.
Edison Scientific launched Kosmos, an autonomous AI system that can coordinate literature reviews and data analysis to complete months of scientific research in a single day.
This newsletter is where I (Kwadwo) share products, articles, and links that I find useful and interesting, mostly around AI. I focus on tools and solutions that bring real value to people in everyday jobs, not just tech insiders.
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