Google Pays AI Staff to Do Nothing

Welcome to another edition of AI PlanetX.

To keep AI talent away from competitors, Google allegedly pays them to do nothing; meanwhile, Shopify's CEO won’t hire unless AI is proven incapable.

• Hottest AI News

• Top AI & SaaS Tools

• Top AI & Tech News

• Interesting Uses of AI: Prompt to Generate the Exact Image You're Envisioning

• AI Video Tutorial

• Course of the Day: Building Towards Computer Use with Anthropic

Hottest AI News

DeepMind

Google Allegedly Pays Some AI Staff To Do Nothing Rather Than Join Rivals

Google DeepMind is using year-long noncompete agreements to prevent employees from joining competitors, a move that has sparked criticism, including from a former director, as AI professionals face limited career mobility during the industry's boom.

Details:

• DeepMind UK employees face noncompete periods of up to 12 months, depending on seniority and work focus. Six-month restrictions are common for those on Google's Gemini AI models, while senior researchers may face year-long clauses

• Departing employees may be placed on "garden leave," receiving full pay without work during the noncompete, effectively giving them a paid vacation

• Noncompetes are unenforceable in California but valid in the UK, where DeepMind is based, prompting some employees to consider relocating to California to avoid the restrictions

Former DeepMind director Nando de Freitas called these agreements an "abuse of power," advising against signing. With employers unwilling to wait a year, affected talent faces tough choices in the fast-paced industry.

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Shopify

Shopify CEO Wants Evidence AI Cannot Handle Work Before Hiring

Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke has mandated that teams prove AI can't handle tasks before requesting more hires, emphasizing AI use as a core expectation in the workplace.

Details:

• Lütke's memo explicitly states teams must prove AI limitations before resource requests will be considered, asking employees to imagine scenarios where "autonomous AI agents were already part of the team"

• AI proficiency is incorporated into Shopify's performance review process, with specific questions added to peer review questionnaires, making effective AI usage a formal evaluation metric

• CEO describes AI as causing "the most rapid shift to how work is done" in his career, emphasizing that using AI effectively is a skill requiring extensive practice and becoming "a fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify"

Lütke views AI as the default solution, with hiring considered only if AI can't handle tasks. He states Shopify's success relies on "collective skill, ambition, and AI for the benefit of merchants."

Top AI & SaaS Tools

• Mazaal (Life-time Deal): Automate workflows and repetitive tasks with custom AI agents and Mazaal Copilot, tailored to your business needs without building from scratch

• ElevenLabs MCP Server: Enables MCP clients to generate speech, clone voices, transcribe audio, and more via Text to Speech and audio processing APIs [F-R-E-E]

• HiDream: Open-source image generation model with 17 billion parameters that excels in text accuracy [F-R-E-E]

• Amurex: Integrates your tools to search knowledge, automate meeting notes, and organize emails—no downloads needed [F-R-E-E]

• Vapi: Develop AI-powered voice agents to manage your phone calls seamlessly while integrating with your current tools [F-R-E-E]

Top AI & Tech News

• Meta's recent release, Llama 4, has faced criticism from community due to mixed performance reports and allegations of manipulated benchmarks

• White House orders federal agencies to name chief AI officers and boost AI use, rolling back Biden-era safeguards

• OpenAI may acquire AI hardware startup io Products, led by Jony Ive and backed by Sam Altman, in a deal worth over $500M

• Google expands Gemini Live's “Project Astra,” adding real-time visual AI and video/screen sharing features to more Android devices

• Runway released Gen-4 Turbo, a faster version of its latest AI video model, capable of generating 10-second videos in just 30 seconds

Interesting Uses of AI

AI Art Spotlight

Model: Midjourney V7

Prompt:

Alphonse Mucha-inspired painting of a lion in nature, with floral and foliage elements, gold foil accents, and a modern color palette. --ar 85:128 --profile upsz6il --stylize 250 --v 7

AI Prompt Tip of the Day

Top AI Video Tutorial

9 AI Tools You Won’t Believe Are F-R-E-E

Complimentary AI Course of the Day

Building Towards Computer Use with Anthropic

This course covers Anthropic’s models, prompting techniques, multimodal use cases, and building AI tools. Learn to create assistants that interact with interfaces and perform tasks like web searches.