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MACHINE AGE CARTOON

THE ROBOT GETS LAID OFF

By Zimbo · October 30, 2026

AI cartoon by Zimbo: Satirical cartoon: a dejected small robot labelled JULES carries a cardboard box of coding tasks with a 'DEC 31' notice out of a Google office, while a gigantic robot labelled ANTIGRAVITY takes the box beside a 'READ ONLY NOV 11' switch.
Jules packed its background tasks into a box marked Dec 31 — and Antigravity, very large and very new, carried it inside.Zimbo for AI News Page

The story behind the cartoon

Google announced October 29 it is winding down Jules, the autonomous coding agent it launched in December 2024 for jobs developers 'don't want to do': sessions turn read-only November 11 ahead of a full wind-down December 31, 2026, with what Google learned about background task execution folding into Antigravity, its agent-first coding platform.

Antigravity launched a Plugin Marketplace the same day, and users can export settings, repositories and full session history — with Google's own export guide naming Claude Code as the example agent for the job.

The wind-down closes a two-year experiment in handing the boring jobs to an agent, and hands what it learned to the platform meant to do the same work bigger.

The joke is the layoff with a box: Jules doesn't rage or malfunction, it just carries its plant, its mug and its background tasks out the door — while the much larger replacement holds the door and takes the box.

READ THE FULL REPORT — ChromeGeek ↗

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