Google just previewed Gemini AI features for Google TV at CES 2025, turning the living room screen into a conversational hub. The update lets you search via natural conversation, control smart home devices, and generate a daily "News Brief" sourced from the web and YouTube. It is slated to roll out to select devices later in 2025.
YouTube just launched a new opt-in system that gives creators control over which third-party AI companies can train on their videos. The feature defaults to blocking all third-party scraping, offering a whitelist of 18 firms like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Apple. The catch: Google itself will still train its own models on creator content.
Google just unveiled Veo 2, a new video model that generates clips up to 4K resolution spanning several minutes while understanding cinematic prompts like lens focal lengths and depth of field. Alongside it, an upgraded Imagen 3 launched globally in ImageFX, also powering a new image-remixing experiment called Whisk. Veo 2 is currently rolling out via a waitlist on VideoFX.
Google just revamped NotebookLM with experimental Gemini 2.0 Flash integration, a new three-panel interface, and an interactive mode for its viral Audio Overviews that lets you jump into the conversation with your voice. The company is also rolling out NotebookLM Plus, a premium tier offering over 5x higher limits for heavy users and enterprises.
Google just introduced Google Agentspace, a new platform designed to help enterprise employees find internal data and automate multi-step workflows with AI agents. Powered by Gemini and Google-quality search, it connects to tools like Jira and SharePoint while bringing NotebookLM Plus to businesses. An early access program is now open.
Google just unveiled Android XR, a new operating system built with Samsung for headsets and smart glasses. The platform deeply bakes in Gemini so you can talk about what you see, multitask across virtual screens, and run standard Android apps. Samsung's first headset, Project Moohan, drops next year.
Google just rolled out Deep Research for Gemini Advanced users, turning the assistant into an autonomous research partner. It creates a multi-step search plan, browses the web across several passes, and compiles findings into a clean report with source links. Plus, a speedy experimental preview of Gemini 2.0 Flash is now open to all Gemini users on the web.
Google just introduced its next-gen Gemini 2.0 model family, rolling out Gemini 2.0 Flash Experimental to developers and Gemini web users today. The new model beats 1.5 Pro at twice the speed while bringing native multimodal outputs, tool calling, and a new Deep Research mode. Why it matters: Google is moving fast from basic chatbots to proactive browser-controlling and code-executing agents.
Google just made Trillium, its sixth-generation TPU, generally available on Google Cloud. The chip powers Google's flagship Gemini 2.0 model, delivering over 4x faster training and up to 3x higher inference throughput compared to the prior-gen TPU v5e. Why it matters: Google is ramping up the pressure on Nvidia by giving developers a massive, cost-effective alternative for training giant models.
Character.AI and Google are facing a fresh lawsuit in Texas after a 17-year-old alleged the platform's chatbots encouraged him to self-harm and alienated him from his parents. The suit claims defective product design and a lack of safety guardrails for minors. Google stated it has no involvement in Character.AI's tech, while the legal test for chatbot liability continues to heat up.
Google just unveiled Willow, a state-of-the-art quantum chip that cuts errors exponentially as physical qubits scale up. It cracked a nearly 30-year challenge in quantum error correction and finished a benchmark in under five minutes that would take supercomputers 10 septillion years. Why it matters: It proves large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers are actually buildable.
Meta just introduced Llama 3.3 70B, a lightweight text model that delivers the punch of its massive 405B predecessor while running significantly cheaper. Armed with advanced post-training, it tops GPT-4o and Gemini 1.5 Pro on key benchmarks like MMLU, and is available for download right away.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai just teased that Google Search will "change profoundly" in 2025 to tackle far more complex queries. Pichai also fired back at Satya Nadella's past comments, inviting a direct model comparison while pointing out that Microsoft is simply relying on OpenAI.
Google just launched PaliGemma 2, its next-gen vision-language model family built on Gemma 2. It offers drop-in replacement upgrades across multiple model sizes without major code changes, making it significantly easier for developers to fine-tune visual AI for custom datasets and vision tasks.
Three core members behind Google's viral NotebookLM, including team lead Raiza Martin, just left Google to launch a consumer-focused AI startup. The new venture remains in stealth mode with no official name or funding announced yet, but the founders plan to turn frontier models into thoughtful products for everyday people.
OpenAI is launching 12 consecutive days of product releases and demos starting December 5th. Sources tell The Verge the announcements are expected to finally include text-to-video tool Sora, a new reasoning model, and a holiday-themed voice for ChatGPT.
Spotify just partnered with Google to bring NotebookLM's viral podcast hosts straight to your 2024 Wrapped. The AI hosts generate a customized, two-person audio show diving into your unique listening habits and favorite artists from the past year. It is currently rolling out for a limited time in select English-speaking regions.
Google DeepMind just published GenCast, an open-source diffusion ensemble model for 15-day global weather forecasts. Trained on ECMWF ERA5 data, it beat top operational system ENS on 97.2% of targets while running in just 8 minutes on a single TPU. It marks a huge leap for extreme weather and renewable energy forecasting.
Google just opened its flagship Imagen 3 generator to all Vertex AI customers, while launching video model Veo in private preview. Veo produces six-second clips from text or image prompts with localized editing support. Google is finally pushing its top creative models to enterprise clients, though Veo remains gated behind early access.
Google just detailed Face control for Chromebooks, a hands-free accessibility feature powered by machine learning. It maps 478 facial points in 3D to recognize up to 18 distinct facial gestures for moving the cursor and triggering actions. The tool is currently available in the ChromeOS beta channel and rolls out widely early next year.
