There Aren’t a Lot of Reasons to Get Excited About a New Amazon Smartphone

“This is not a consumer device company that takes privacy very seriously,” Gamero-Garrido says. Since people use smartphones far more than Alexa or a Kindle, he says an Amazon smartphone today would “significantly increase the scale of the potential privacy harms.” Gamero-Garrido thinks Amazon could use Transformer as a data-gathering tool to glean how people … Read more

This AI Agent Is Ready to Serve, Mid-Phone Call

Deutsche Telekom, the German mobile provider that is also the majority stakeholder of T-Mobile in the US, is introducing an AI assistant into its phone line. The result of a partnership with the AI-audio company ElevenLabs, the feature is called Magenta AI Call Assistant. It will be available in Germany only, for now, and doesn’t … Read more

Gemini Can Now Book You an Uber or Order a DoorDash Meal on Your Phone. Here’s How It Works

You might be feeling déjà vu. A decade ago, companies like Google and Apple made promises that their respective voice assistants could complete tasks on your behalf. Apple said Siri could request an Uber—try it today, and Siri just opens the Uber app. Google claimed you’d be able to “Order my usual” at Starbucks with … Read more