Google just appointed former Character.AI CEO Noam Shazeer as co-technical lead for Gemini, joining heavyweights Jeff Dean and Oriol Vinyals. Shazeer recently returned to Google following a massive $2.7 billion licensing and talent deal to turbocharge its fight against OpenAI.
Google just updated Gmail's "Help me write" feature with a new "Polish" option across web and mobile. Users can jot down rough notes, and Gemini will instantly turn them into a formal draft ready for review with one click. The rollout also adds convenient mobile shortcuts on Android and iOS for Gemini Workspace and Google One AI Premium subscribers.
Google is rolling out its Gemini-powered "Take notes for me" feature to Meet over the coming weeks, letting workers stop scrambling to write minutes. Workspace admins can configure access in the Admin console right now. The tool is tied to Gemini Enterprise, Education Premium, or the $10/month AI add-on.
Google just introduced the Google TV Streamer, a faster 4K streaming box that officially replaces the Chromecast. The device doubles as a smart home hub and leans on Gemini technology to curate recommendations, write season breakdowns, and generate ambient screensaver art.
Google just pulled its "Dear Sydney" Olympic commercial following days of intense backlash. The ad showed a father using Gemini to write a fan letter for his young daughter to her track idol, sparking outrage over AI replacing authentic human emotion. Google claimed it was only meant to illustrate early drafting, but viewers felt it completely missed the point.
Google just rolled out three AI-powered features for Chrome built on its Gemini models. Desktop users can now tap Google Lens directly from the address bar to select and query web content, while an upcoming Tab compare tool compiles product comparison tables across tabs, alongside natural-language history search.
Google just faced intense backlash over its new Olympics ad for Gemini, titled "Dear Sydney." In the commercial, a father asks the chatbot to write a fan letter to a track star on behalf of his young daughter, prompting viewers to criticize it for outsourcing heartfelt human expression. The outrage highlights a growing public discomfort when tech companies suggest AI should replace authentic creativity and emotion.
Google just upgraded the free version of Gemini to its speedier 1.5 Flash model, bringing noticeable latency drops, stronger reasoning, and a 4x context boost to 32K tokens. Responses now include clickable source chips to tackle hallucinations, with file uploads and chart visualization rolling out soon. Why it matters: Google is making its fastest frontier capabilities accessible to everyone without a paywall.
The Verge's Decoder podcast just dug into the uncomfortable reality of AI's massive power appetite. While tech giants like Microsoft and Google blow past their emissions targets to pack data centers with GPUs, high energy use is already standard across video streaming and gaming. The real debate is how we decide if AI is actually worth the juice.
A deep dive by The Markup found that widely cited benchmarks like MMLU and HellaSwag—heavily touted by Google and Meta—are fundamentally broken. Many tests rely on outdated datasets or amateur trivia that fail to test actual reasoning or safety. Why it matters: Bragging rights on leaderboards don't equal real-world reliability, especially in sensitive areas like medicine.
Google just updated Gemini on Android to answer general questions—like checking the weather—straight from the lockscreen without requiring an unlock. Previously, asking anything beyond basic alarms or media controls prompted an annoying biometric check. A new toggle in preferences makes the hands-free voice experience actually usable.
Apple is gearing up to announce a deal bringing Google Gemini to its devices as soon as this fall, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. The move adds another heavyweight alongside ChatGPT, with Anthropic also in the mix. Why it matters: bringing in third-party chatbots buys Apple time to build Apple Intelligence while taking a cut of partner subscription sign-ups.
Google just opened up Gemini to teen students using Google Workspace for Education accounts across more than 100 countries, completely free of charge. The teen experience comes with built-in guardrails, automatic fact-checking, and zero chat data used for model training, while teachers get new AI lesson-planning tools in Classroom. Schools finally get a secure, supervised way to introduce GenAI to minors.
Google just rolled out Gemini directly into the Gmail side panel on the web. The assistant can summarize messy email threads, draft replies, and answer specific questions by digging through your inbox and Google Drive files without leaving the page. It is rolling out to Workspace add-on and Google One AI Premium subscribers.
Google is aggressively pushing DeepMind to shift from an academic research lab into a commercial AI product factory, but the transition is causing serious growing pains. Insiders told Bloomberg that researchers are increasingly frustrated and burned out by top-down corporate mandates, a strain worsened by Gemini's rocky public rollouts.
Google just rolled out a suite of AI features for its Chromebook Plus lineup, including system-wide writing help, AI-generated wallpapers, and the Magic Editor in Google Photos. Even better: buying a new device gets you a full year of the Google One AI Premium plan for free, unlocking Gemini Advanced.
Anthropic just hired Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger as its very first Chief Product Officer. Krieger will oversee product engineering, management, and design, tasked with taking Claude beyond the enterprise and deeper into the consumer market. With OpenAI and Google rolling out slicker interfaces by the day, Anthropic is bringing in a veteran builder to sharpen its product chops.
Google just overhauled Android with a suite of new AI capabilities powered by Gemini and Circle to Search. Students can now circle math and physics problems for step-by-step explanations, while Gemini's new overlay can answer questions about YouTube videos. Even better, multimodal Gemini Nano will run on-device to spot phone scams in real time.
Google just introduced LearnLM, a new family of models fine-tuned from Gemini designed to turn AI from an answer generator into an active tutor. Grounded in learning science, it powers features like interactive "raise your hand" prompts on YouTube, step-by-step guidance in Gemini, and simplified Search overviews. Why it matters: generative AI is shifting from an easy cheating shortcut to structured pedagogy.
Google just unveiled Ask Photos, an experimental Gemini-powered feature that turns your photo library into an intelligent memory bank. You can search your gallery using natural language, ask questions about specific life details hidden in your snapshots, and even have it curate trip highlights with ready-to-post captions. It rolls out in the coming months.
