For our Halloween episode, Episode 19 (October 31, 2025), Jordan built a talking magic mirror. You stand in front of the camera, ask "Mirror mirror on the wall…", and it answers out loud in a spooky voice. He built it in Google AI Studio with Gemini behind every step. He didn't say how long it took; Sam called it "a fun, quick build."
The week before, we had made some Halloween treats for Episode 18, including the AI costume builder. Since this episode dropped on Halloween itself, Jordan wanted to escalate. It was also a way to show off Google's new Build tool inside AI Studio, which we covered as news the week before and then used all week.
It worked live. Jordan asked who was the smartest of them all, and then asked the mirror which company was the most valuable on the stock market that day. That week's news was Nvidia crossing a $5 trillion valuation, and the mirror missed it:
It said it was Microsoft here. It looks like it says that it's Microsoft instead of Nvidia.
— Jordan Metzner, Episode 19
He also admitted it was "a little slow and laggy." The pause between the question and the spoken answer was noticeable, which matters for something meant to feel like magic.
Sam's idea: Jordan lives on a street with a lot of Halloween traffic, so set up a monitor, webcam and microphone and let kids talk to the mirror. Jordan thought it was feasible with a monitor, a camera and some speakers. We did not report back on trying it.
Later in the same episode, Jordan used AI Studio again to live-build the Guess My Costume app and the Trick-or-Treat route planner. To see how AI Studio stacks up against other builders, read Claude Code vs Google AI Studio.
Jordan built it in Google AI Studio's Build mode. The app uses the camera, turns your spoken question into text in real time, sends it to Gemini, and reads Gemini's answer back with text-to-speech in a spooky voice.
It worked on the show but was a little slow and laggy between the question and the spoken answer.
Sam suggested putting it on a monitor with a webcam and microphone for kids on Halloween. Jordan thought a monitor, a camera and some speakers would be enough to pull it off, but we did not try it on the show.
