AI news: ChatGPT ads reach 26 more countries, Mistral Voxtral 3, Gemini chats in Vault

This week AI was less about new models and more about money and control. ChatGPT is becoming an ad channel in more markets, voice agents are getting cheaper, and Google is giving companies tools to see how staff use Gemini.

OpenAI: ChatGPT ads in 26 more countries

On 21 October OpenAI said it is expanding ChatGPT ads to 26 more countries, for 89 markets in total. According to Reuters, the list includes 14 Latin American countries such as Argentina, Chile and Colombia, plus Serbia, Ukraine, Nigeria, South Africa and Pakistan, among others.

Ads are shown only to users on the Free and Go plans. Plus, Pro and Enterprise stay ad-free. Advertisers buy through technology partners or self-serve in Ads Manager. OpenAI says more than 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns so far, and that ads are clearly labelled and kept separate from answers. A more visual format with larger images is being tested in the US.

Mistral: Voxtral 3 for voice agents

On 20 October French company Mistral launched Voxtral 3, a speech recognition and text-to-speech package. Transcription covers more than 50 languages, including all 24 official EU languages, and speech output covers more than 35. It comes with a voice agent SDK that runs listening, reasoning, tool calls and spoken replies in one stream, with SIP telephony support.

Pricing: batch transcription from $0.0035 per minute, real-time transcription at $0.008 per minute, and a ready-made voice agent with Mistral Small 4 at $0.04 per minute. It is available through an EU-hosted API or for deployment on your own infrastructure.

On 21 October Mistral also announced a partnership with NVIDIA on AI for engineering, and said it plans to release the Mistral Large 4 weights at the end of October.

Google: Gemini chats in Vault, meeting recaps in Chat

Since 22 October admins can use Google Vault to export employees' Gemini conversations from Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides and Meet, filtered by user, organisational unit and date range. The JSON export includes prompts, responses, generated attachments and links to the files used. It is available on Business Plus, Enterprise Standard and Plus, and with the Vault add-on.

Google Chat now posts a short recap after a Meet call, with takeaways, decisions and action items with owners. It requires "Take notes for me" to be on. Scheduled Release domains get it from 27 October, on Business Standard and Plus, Enterprise Standard and Plus, and Frontline Plus.

What it means for your business

1. Treat ChatGPT as a new ad channel. If you already advertise on Google or Meta, start with a small test budget where ChatGPT ads are available and measure results before spending more.
2. Try a voice agent for phone calls. At a few cents per minute, an agent that takes orders or books appointments becomes affordable for smaller firms, and EU hosting makes handling customer data easier.
3. Set rules for AI at work. If you use Google Workspace, configure how long Gemini conversations are kept and write short internal rules on what may be shared with AI tools.

If you want to bring AI into your processes, see our AI automation service or get in touch.