The Instagram Close Friends Story for @miles.sumrall shows an affable-looking guy with curly dark hair and an expertly groomed mustache beaming as he floats on the water. “You’re receiving this because you’re exactly the type of person we’re building this for,” the caption reads, accompanied by a code for an invite to a “members only … Read more
Hundreds of contractors working on a project for Meta were instructed to pose as minors online and probe how competitor chatbots responded to prompts involving suicide, sex, eating disorders, and other high-risk subjects, according to internal documents and five people familiar with the project. The effort, which was managed by Meta contractor Covalen, was active … Read more
This is because AI models don’t just need text data to improve; they need diverse inputs in other forms, like audio or video. If Google can gather more data, and more types of data, from its vast array of users, then maybe it could innovate faster than its competitors. Google’s massive user base is spread … Read more
I quickly found that Siri AI’s bite-sized replies don’t drone on endlessly like many contemporary AI assistants, often sticking to a single paragraph. When I verbally asked for a nice beach hike route to see the sunrise near the Golden Gate Bridge, it succinctly recommended a popular trail in the Presidio neighborhood as well as … Read more
The last time Google released a smart speaker, the world was in the throes of a pandemic. Yes, it’s been six years since the company trotted out a dedicated speaker. However, this newest Google Home Speaker brings a big change with it: The device has been redesigned to showcase the new Gemini assistant instead of … Read more
Apple’s drastic overhaul of Siri, announced Monday at WWDC 2026, attempts to make the smartphone voice assistant more helpful, attuned to iPhone users’ personal data, and action-oriented. A major aspect of this Siri revamp is a partnership with Google Gemini to help power the AI tool’s underlying model as part of Apple Intelligence. After extended … Read more
It’s a beautiful, balmy afternoon at Dolores Park in San Francisco, and I’m singing a birthday song to a prehistoric dinosaur. A cupcake with a pink candle magically appears in my empty hand as I finish my serenade. When I blow out the flame, a calm look of contentment washes over the CGI-esque creature. While … Read more
One of the most immediately noticeable changes to Flow is the new video-generation model powering the experience: Omni Flash, succeeding Veo. Similar to how Google’s Nano Banana model brought more context about the world into the AI image-creation process, the Omni Flash model overhauls video generation with richer detail throughout clips. Flow users can generate … Read more
Gemini Spark is Google’s take on a steroided-out assistant agent that knows everything about you, announced as part of the company’s updates to its Gemini chatbot app at this year’s I/O developer conference. Software companies have been talking up AI agents for some time now, but I wasn’t impressed until I tried Anthropic’s Claude Cowork … Read more
Much weirder is voice editing in Google Docs, in a new feature called Docs Live. By describing with your voice what you want to write, an agent will dictate your words, generate text, pull in citations from the web, and aim to turn your stream-of-consciousness wishes into a coherent document. (Reminder: All this stuff may … Read more