Google just upgraded its AI chatbot. Access to the new Gemini Advanced chatbot is available right now through a monthly subscription to Google One, the company’s cloud backup service. With today’s release, there’s a new tier of Google One service called the AI Premium plan, which costs $20 per month; subscribe and you’ll get the … Read more
Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai still loves the web. He wakes up every morning and reads Techmeme, a news aggregator resplendent with links, accessible only via the web. The web is dynamic and resilient, he says, and can still—with help from a search engine—provide whatever information a person is looking for. Yet the web and its … Read more
When OpenAI’s ChatGPT opened a new era in tech, the industry’s former AI champ, Google, responded by reorganizing its labs and launching a profusion of sometimes overlapping AI services. This included the Bard chatbot, workplace helper Duet AI, and a chatbot-style version of search. Now Google is consolidating many of its generative AI products under … Read more
“I’m not a fan of AI,” Nebojša Vujinović Vujo says. The admission surprises me: He has built a bustling business by snapping up abandoned news outlets and other websites and stuffing them full of algorithmically generated articles. Although he accepts that his model rankles writers and readers alike, he says he’s simply embracing an unstoppable … Read more
Google is calling on the government to provide more action when it comes to combatting spyware sales and the misuse of surveillance software, according to a new report. “The harm is not hypothetical,” Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) said Tuesday in its report, which is titled “Buying Spying,” adding that “spyware vendors point to their … Read more
Meta, like other leading tech companies, has spent the past year promising to speed up deployment of generative artificial intelligence. Today it acknowledged it must also respond to the technology’s hazards, announcing an expanded policy of tagging AI-generated images posted to Facebook, Instagram, and Threads with warning labels to inform people of their artificial origins. … Read more
Pennies were pinched in Mountain View last year. For much of its existence as a public company, Google had made a headline-grabbing acquisition at least once a year as it used the profits from its surging ads business to bet on new frontiers. Billions of dollars went to scooping up Motorola, Nest, HTC, and Fitbit … Read more
When Google CEO Sundar Pichai emailed his workers the company priorities for 2024 this month, developing AI responsibly was top of the list. Some employees now wonder if Google can live up to that goal. The small team that has served as its primary internal AI ethics watchdog has lost its leader and is being … Read more
Photo: Buena Vista Pictures Last weekend, a woman allegedly stole a horse and buggy from outside a Walmart in Michigan. It turns out, legally, she would’ve been much better off stealing a car — not only would the getaway be a lot easier, but the charges against her would be far, far lower. Michael Mann’s … Read more
Last week, I twice found myself standing at a gas pump, in single digit temperatures waiting for what must have been individual droplets of gasoline to drip into my car’s tank. The digits slowly ticked over and, as my hands grew colder, I thought about going into the car for my coat, maybe some gloves. … Read more
