As you've no doubt noticed, tech companies are pushing artificial intelligence into as many of their products as they can at a ferocious rate. One of the newest AI-powered features to make its way to Android phones is called Circle to Search. Here's the idea: There's something on your phone …
Read More »Google Search Is Growing Up
Google held its annual I/O developer event this week. The company gathered software developers, business partners, and folks from the technology press at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California, just down the road from Google corporate headquarters, for a two-hour presentation. There were Android announcements. There were chatbot announcements. Somebody …
Read More »How Google’s AI Overviews Work, and How to Turn Them Off (You Can’t)
Let’s say you just searched Google to learn more about this new AI Overview feature that everyone’s talking about. If your query triggers an AI Overview—and not every query will—then you might see an AI-generated summary of this very article at the top of your results. These new AI Overviews …
Read More »OpenAI’s Chief AI Wizard, Ilya Sutskever, Is Leaving the Company
Ilya Sutskever, cofounder and chief scientist at OpenAI, has left the company. The former Google AI researcher was one of the four board members who voted in November to fire OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, triggering days of chaos that saw staff threaten to quit en masse and Altman ultimately restored. …
Read More »Prepare to Get Manipulated by Emotionally Expressive Chatbots
It’s nothing new for computers to mimic human social etiquette, emotion, or humor. We just aren’t used to them doing it very well. OpenAI’s presentation of an all-new version of ChatGPT on Monday suggests that’s about to change. It’s built around an updated AI model called GPT-4o, which OpenAI says …
Read More »Android Can Now Detect When Your Phone Is Stolen
Billions of Android phones are getting new tools to stop phone thieves from accessing your information and to slow down their criminal behavior, Google announced today at its I/O developer conference. Android phones will soon use artificial intelligence to automatically detect when they have been snatched from your hand and …
Read More »The 21 Top New Android 15 Features
The next version of Google’s mobile operating system—Android 15—is finally here with a host of new features and improvements. Google promises productivity enhancements, better privacy and security, and smoother performance. There are also upgrades for foldable and larger-screen devices. Android 15 is rolling out to supported devices starting today. We …
Read More »All the New Features Coming to Android Phones, Watches, and TVs This Year
Google’s second day of its I/O developer conference focuses on updates to its Android ecosystem. The company recently consolidated all of its hardware teams—Pixel devices—with its Android platforms, which include anything and everything powered by Android (plus Chrome OS). Naturally, today’s announcements touch on every part of that ecosystem, from …
Read More »With Gemini on Android, Google Points to Mobile Computing’s Future—and Past
Nearly a decade ago, Google showed off a feature called Now on Tap in Android Marshmallow—tap and hold the home button and Google will surface helpful contextual information related to what’s on the screen. Talking about a movie with a friend over text? Now on Tap could get you details …
Read More »Astra Is Google’s Answer to the New ChatGPT
ChatGPT is not yet two years old, but the idea of communicating with artificial intelligence by typing into a box is already starting to seem quaint. At Google’s I/O developer conference today, Demis Hassabis, the executive leading the company’s effort to reestablish leadership in AI, introduced a “next-generation AI assistant” …
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