Welcome, humans.

In case you didn’t know, Google Labs is where Google tests its wildest AI experiments before they go mainstream… and they just gave us an exclusive look under the hood of three of their newest tools.

In our latest podcast episode, we sat down with three product leads from Google Labs who showed us tools that can turn your random ideas into polished presentations, generate Hollywood-quality video from a single image, and let anyone build custom AI apps without writing a single line of code.

The best part? All three are available to try right now.

Here’s some of our favorite parts:

• (1:44) Mixboard can take a messy mood board and transform it into a polished presentation—powered entirely by Google’s Nano Banana Pro.

• (8:37) You can combine completely unrelated images (like a jello dragon + gingerbread castle) and the AI makes them look like they belong together.

• (43:54) Flow generates video with realistic audio, dialog, and ambient sounds—all from a single text prompt.

• (53:43) The "doodling" feature lets you scribble annotations on a frame and Flow will animate your changes (add a window, change someone's pants, move a bus behind a building).

• (54:02) You can insert a cat wearing shiny metal armor into any video, and Flow matches the lighting and physics automatically; actually wild.

• (1:21:43) Opal is now inside Gemini Gems so you can build custom AI workflows without ever leaving the chat interface.

• (1:24:01) We walk through how to build an app that turns a photo of your fridge into personalized recipes in under a minute.

• (1:45:23) Google's own team uses Opal to summarize GitHub commits and generate changelogs for their Discord community

Why watch this? Because these demos show you exactly how these tools work and how you can use them.

For example, Opal just made it possible for anyone to build custom AI apps—no API keys, or technical background required. At (1:21:43) we show you how it works inside Gemini, and by (1:24:01) you'll watch us build a working app from scratch.

Watch and/or Listen now: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

P.S. All three tools are free to use right now. Mixboard, Flow, and Opal are live at labs.google—so you can try everything we showed before you even finish your coffee.

We’d also like to thank and acknowledge the sponsor of today’s video, MIT xPRO! Go check out their Explore Deploying AI for Strategic Impact course today.

Keep scrolling for an update on this week’s livestream, some more details about each of the tools, and four of our other recent videos we think you’ll love.

🔴 LATER THIS WEEK: OpenClaw Demo and Q&A on Thursday, Feb 5

OpenClaw is barely a few weeks old in the public’s eye, and it's already gone through three names (Clawdbot → Moltbot → OpenClaw). But the bigger story isn't the branding chaos. It's what this tool represents: an open-source AI agent that can actually take actions on your behalf.

On Thursday, Feb 5 @ 12pm PT | 2pm CT | 3pm ET | 8pm GMT: We’re going to talk all thinks Molt and Claws and get into the weeds on how to run this thing, and more importantly, do it safely.

To do that well, we’ll be joined by Ken Underhill, cybersecurity expert and editor at Cybersecurity Insider, to break down what OpenClaw can do, where the security landmines are, and whether this represents a genuine step-change in AI agents… or an early, risky prototype.

Join LIVE on: YouTube, LinkedIn, or X.

TOOL SPOTLIGHT: MIXBOARD

🎨 Mixboard – AI-Powered Visual Ideation

So what is Mixboard? It’s an open-ended canvas where you can dump images, text, and ideas—then let AI help you explore, expand, and refine them. Think Pinterest meets Figma, but with AI that actually understands what you're trying to create.

Why you should care:

• Transform feature: Turn any messy board into a polished presentation with one click. The AI picks styles, layouts, and even uses pine cones as bullet points if that fits your theme.

• Style transfers: Take any image and turn it into a charcoal sketch, anime cartoon, or jello version (yes, really).

• Image combining: Circle two completely different images, tell it what you want, and Mixboard will blend them naturally—matching lighting, physics, and style.

• No design skills needed: The whole point is making creativity accessible to people who wouldn't call themselves "designers."

Real use cases mentioned: Logo design for merchandise businesses, home redecorating visualization, children's storybook creation, bachelorette party planning, and creating family memory presentations from photos.

TOOL SPOTLIGHT: FLOW

🎬 Flow – AI Filmmaking Tool

Flow is Google's AI filmmaking tool built around a "show and tell" philosophy. Instead of just typing prompts, you can upload images, doodle annotations, and condition videos on first/last frames—giving you real creative control over AI-generated video.

Why you should care:

• Audio is built-in: Videos now generate with realistic dialog, ambient sounds, and sound effects (you can hear footsteps on gravel).

• Doodling: Draw directly on a frame to specify changes—add a window here, make her pants baggier, change the bus. Flow animates your annotations.

• Object insertion: Add anything to existing videos. We watched a cat in shiny armor get inserted into a leopard video, and Flow matched the lighting and made it bounce with the leopard's movement.

• First + last frame control: Specify where a shot starts and ends, and Flow fills in the motion between them.

• Image mode is ahead: The image side uses Nano Banana Pro and offers even more precise control—perfect for storyboarding before animating.

The bigger vision: Thomas described these models as "little simulators"—they understand physics, reflections, and context. The future? Build entire worlds and shoot inside them, controlling camera angles and time like a real film set.

TOOL SPOTLIGHT: OPAL

⚙️ Opal – No-Code AI App Builder (Now in Gemini Gems)

Opal lets you chain together multiple AI calls—text generation, image generation, video, web search, deep research—into custom workflows. And as of last week, it's now available inside Gemini through the Gems tab.

Why you should care:

• No API keys, no coding: Google hosts everything. You just describe what you want in plain language, and Opal builds the workflow.

• Visual editing: See exactly what's happening at each step. Edit any step with natural language or manual tweaks.

• Built-in tools: Web search, Maps, weather, YouTube—all available as building blocks.

• Gemini integration: The new "Gems from Google Labs" brings a lighter version of Opal directly into the Gemini app for people who want to start simple.

• Real outputs: Save results directly to Google Docs, Slides, or Sheets.

Use cases from the episode:

• Recipe generator from fridge photos

• Branded "exploding box" video ads for small businesses (no more hallucinated products)

• Pet comic strip creator

• GitHub commit summarizer for team updates

Google's own team uses Opal to build Opal: They prototype prompt changes, test edge cases, and generate changelogs—all without touching code.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT…

Four recent interviews you'll definitely want to check out:

1. The Coding Agent That Outperformed OpenAI & Anthropic (Factory AI) Factory AI's "Droids" are fully autonomous agents that take tickets, modify real codebases, run tests, and work inside existing dev workflows. Their context compression research actually beat OpenAI and Anthropic—and Stanford found that codebase quality is the ONLY predictor of AI coding success. → YouTube | Spotify | Apple

2. Inside OpenAI's Battle to Monitor AI Reasoning OpenAI researcher Bowen Baker walks us through real examples of AI reward hacking, explains why monitoring chain-of-thought is more effective than checking outputs, and introduces the “monitorability tax”—trading raw performance for safety and transparency. → YouTube | Spotify | Apple

3. Everyone's Building AI Agents. Most Companies Are About to Break Their Systems. Darin Patterson from Make explains why agentic AI only works if your automation foundation is solid first. Real demos inside Make, plus how Model Context Protocol (MCP) fits into modern workflows. → YouTube | Spotify | Apple

4. Why IBM Wants AI to Be "Boring" (Granite 4.0 Deep Dive) IBM's David Cox explains why they treat AI models as tools rather than entities, how hybrid architectures reduce memory and cost, and why openness, transparency, and external audits matter more than ever. → YouTube | Spotify | Apple

And if you haven’t subscribed yet, please do! Click the image below to go to our channel and hit “subscribe” to get notified right when new videos go live.

We have a goal to hit 50K subscribers by the end of the year (if not 100K), and we’re only 36K away! If you like learning about AI, and already watch some of our videos, do us a favor and click here to subscribe today.

Dive deeper with these resources:

• Mixboard – AI-powered visual ideation canvas

• Flow – AI filmmaking tool with video, image, and audio generation

• Opal – No-code AI app builder

• Google Labs – All Google AI experiments in one place

• Gemini Gems – Where Opal now lives inside Gemini

• Google’s AI Studio - Test Gemini models and build test apps for free!

Stay curious,

The Neuron Team

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