Google just dropped a teaser for an unreleased multimodal AI interface running on Android, right after OpenAI launched GPT-4o. The video shows the assistant using a phone's camera to understand its surroundings in real time and answer questions about the Google I/O stage setup. OpenAI may have had the spotlight for only 24 hours, though real-world performance remains to be seen at the keynote.
Google just unveiled the Pixel 8a, packing its Tensor G3 chip and signature AI features into a $499 device. It brings onboard Gemini, Circle to Search, and camera tools like Best Take and Audio Magic Eraser. Why it matters: Google is democratizing its mobile AI suite without forcing buyers into pricey flagship territory.
Microsoft is reportedly developing an in-house AI language model called MAI-1, packing roughly 500 billion parameters. Headed by recently hired Inflection co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, it marks Microsoft's first massive internal frontier model since investing over $10 billion in OpenAI. Owning its own heavyweight model gives the tech giant crucial leverage and a strong hedge against OpenAI.
YouTube just expanded testing for its AI-powered "Jump ahead" button to Premium subscribers on Android. When you double-tap to skip, the app pairs viewer drop-off data with AI to guess the next best point in the video, letting you leap straight over the fluff. It is currently limited to high-view English videos in the U.S.
Apple is reportedly preparing a suite of AI features for iOS 18 powered by its Ajax LLM, including text summarization in Messages and Safari. Simple tasks will run on-device with strict privacy warnings, while complex queries could tap server-side power from Google or OpenAI. Details are expected at WWDC on June 10th.
OpenAI just sparked speculation about a direct challenge to Google after registering the search.chatgpt.com domain. Reports indicate an official announcement could arrive as early as May 9. Rather than relying on clunky Bing add-ons, the new tool aims to deeply integrate real-time web retrieval directly into ChatGPT to rethink the traditional search experience.
Microsoft initially poured $1 billion into OpenAI in 2019 largely because it was worried about falling behind Google's machine learning scale, according to unsealed internal emails. CTO Kevin Scott warned Satya Nadella and Bill Gates that Microsoft took six months just to replicate Google's BERT model due to lagging infrastructure, prompting Nadella to push for the deal.
Google is reportedly shelling out $5 million to $6 million a year to News Corp to develop AI-related content and products. While tech giants scramble to secure media partnerships to feed their models, News Corp quickly pushed back, stating it has absolutely no AI licensing deal in place with Google.
Apple has reopened talks with OpenAI to power new generative AI features on iPhones later this year. The discussions focus on integrating a ChatGPT-like bot into iOS 18 alongside Apple's own models. Apple is still in active talks with Google over Gemini licensing as well, with no final decision made.
Google just announced a $3 billion investment to build and expand data centers across Virginia and Indiana to power its AI workload. Alongside the infrastructure boost, Google.org is launching a $75 million fund and the Google AI Essentials course to train one million Americans in basic AI skills for free.
Google just released a new research report with fellow Andrew McAfee exploring how generative AI will shape the economy. The research argues that fears of mass technological unemployment are likely overblown, predicting AI will diffuse much faster than electricity or the steam engine and help boost entry-level workers' performance.
AI coding startup Augment just emerged from stealth with a massive $252M funding round at a near-unicorn $977M valuation. Backed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and top venture firms, the company is founded by ex-Microsoft and Google veterans aiming to fix code quality and developer burnout. Why it matters: Coding assistants are a brutal, cash-burning market, but Augment now has the runway to take a real shot at Microsoft's GitHub Copilot.
Alphabet’s X lab just teamed up with the U.S. National Guard to speed up emergency response with AI. Built by its Bellwether team, the system analyzes aerial photos of disaster zones in seconds to pinpoint damaged critical infrastructure, replacing a slow manual triage process ahead of this June's wildfire season.
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis just revealed that Google will eventually invest more than $100 billion into AI over time, topping the rumored cost of Microsoft and OpenAI's Stargate supercomputer. Hassabis insisted Google's processing power already outstrips rivals, with capital expected to flow into Axion chips and massive data center buildouts.
Apple is reportedly planning to run its initial batch of iOS 18 AI features entirely on-device without cloud servers. Basic capabilities like smart text generation in Messages, Safari, and Siri will work offline to ensure privacy, while heavier tools may tap cloud partners. Apple is expected to detail the plans at WWDC on June 10.
Hugging Face just released Idefics2, an open-source 8B vision-language model licensed under Apache 2.0. It preserves native image resolutions, significantly upgrades OCR, and punches way above its weight class on visual QA benchmarks against 30B+ rivals. Why it matters: Developers get an efficient multimodal base model ready to fine-tune directly in Transformers.
Google just announced that starting May 15, its Magic Editor tools in Google Photos will be free for all iOS and Android users. That includes features like Photo Unblur and Magic Eraser, though non-Pixel users will be capped at 10 free saves per month unless they pay for Google One.
Google just released CodeGemma in collaboration with Hugging Face, bringing a family of open-access code specialists built on Gemma. Trained on an extra 500 billion tokens, the lineup includes an infilling-focused 2B model that runs on consumer hardware alongside 7B base and instruct variants. Why it matters: It offers developers fast, private code completion without needing massive cloud infrastructure.
Google just rolled out Gemini for Google Cloud, infusing its flagship AI across developer, security, and data tools. Duet AI is now Gemini Code Assist, powered by Gemini 1.5 Pro to analyze entire codebases across GitHub and GitLab, while new assistants streamline cloud architecture and BigQuery workflows.
OpenAI reportedly transcribed over a million hours of YouTube videos using Whisper to train GPT-4 after burning through high-quality text data. The New York Times reports leadership knew it was legally risky but bet on fair use, while Google and Meta are similarly scrambling in legal gray zones.
