#1 is just Siri/Google Assistant with extra steps (and expense).
#2 could be a scheduled task (cron job or something higher level) that calls a plain old AI provider API. IIRC most providers can even do those natively now.
#2: Gemini also has scheduled actions. You can just ask it to give you daily digests about developments in some area, or you could even be in the middle of chatting about some current events, and tell it to notify you when there is new data, etc.
#2 also provides an opinion on why a certain development is significant and how it relates so something else I am working on for that client.
The process is definitely more pleasant to me than setting up cron jobs and scripting things. I have a business to run.