Google just dropped its biggest Bard update yet, expanding the AI chatbot across Europe and Brazil with support for over 40 languages, including Chinese and Spanish. Users can now upload images alongside prompts using Google Lens, listen to spoken responses, adjust reply styles, and export code directly to Replit.
Llion Jones, the last remaining author of the groundbreaking 2017 Transformer paper 'Attention is All You Need', just confirmed he is leaving Google to start his own company. All eight researchers behind the architecture powering ChatGPT and Midjourney have departed, launching startups like Cohere and Character.ai now valued at over $4.1 billion combined.
Google just launched NotebookLM, an experimental tool from Google Labs that grounds language models in your personal documents. By pairing directly with selected Google Docs, it summarizes content, answers questions with inline citations, and helps brainstorm ideas while curbing hallucinations. It is currently rolling out to a waitlist for U.S. users.
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis just confirmed that the viral leaked memo claiming tech giants have "no moat" against open-source AI is genuine. But he pushed back on the gloomy forecast, arguing that the newly united Google Brain and DeepMind teams are poised to lead the next decade of breakthroughs.
Google is now testing its specialized Med-PaLM 2 chatbot at research hospitals like the Mayo Clinic, racing Microsoft to dominate healthcare AI. Trained on medical licensing exams, the model can answer clinical questions and summarize records, though Google researchers admit it still hallucinates and isn't ready for real-world clinical decisions.
Google just updated its privacy policy to explicitly state that it may train AI models like Bard and Cloud AI on publicly available web data. While the company previously cited this practice for tools like Google Translate, the expanded wording effectively turns the open web into training fuel—without explaining how it handles copyrighted material.
AI godfather Geoffrey Hinton just cast doubt on the industry's optimism at the Collision conference, warning he isn't convinced good AI can control bad AI. From killer combat robots to AI widening wealth gaps, he argues ethical adoption will come at a steep societal cost, standing in stark contrast to sunny outlooks from DeepMind and Roblox.
OpenAI just announced plans to open its first international outpost in London, expanding beyond its San Francisco base for the first time since 2015. The new hub will focus on engineering, research, and local policy collaboration. Setting up in DeepMind's backyard gives OpenAI direct access to world-class talent while bolstering its European lobbying efforts.
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis revealed that the team is building Gemini, a flagship model designed to surpass OpenAI's GPT-4. By integrating AlphaGo-style reinforcement learning and tree search, DeepMind aims to equip the system with advanced planning and problem-solving skills, taking on ChatGPT directly.
YouTube is integrating Aloud, an AI-powered dubbing tool incubated inside Google's Area 120. The system automatically transcribes, translates, and generates dubbed audio tracks, currently rolling out in testing with hundreds of creators across English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Voice cloning and lip-sync capabilities are slated to follow next year.
Google just started rolling out its Duet AI-powered "Help me organize" feature to Google Sheets for Workspace Labs testers. A new side panel lets you enter a natural language prompt—such as a sales event agenda or client roster—and instantly generates a customized table template. It takes the dread out of starting from a blank spreadsheet, though it's currently limited to trusted testers.
Google just launched a new virtual try-on feature that generates photorealistic images of clothing on diverse real models. Moving away from awkward image warping, the new diffusion-based model generates garments from scratch to accurately capture wrinkles, drape, and stretch. It is rolling out first for women's tops from brands like H&M and Everlane.
Google just announced two new AI-powered ad solutions designed to boost engagement and conversions across its platforms: Demand Gen and Video View campaigns. Demand Gen combines top image and video creative across YouTube, Shorts, Discover, and Gmail with lookalike targeting, while Video View drives up to 40% more views by blending multiple video formats into one campaign. The new campaign types will open for public beta in August.
Google just introduced SAIF, a comprehensive security framework designed to protect AI systems from unique threats like prompt injection, model theft, and data poisoning. Drawing from its zero-trust experience, the tech giant outlines six core principles to help enterprises secure deployments by default. Why it matters: As generative AI scales, standardizing guardrails will be critical to keeping rogue prompts from breaking enterprise systems.
Google just upgraded Bard with "implicit code execution," enabling it to write and run code in the background to solve math, coding, and string manipulation prompts. The new approach boosts reasoning accuracy by around 30% on internal tests, and users can now export generated tables straight to Google Sheets.
Apple CEO Tim Cook just revealed he personally uses ChatGPT and confirmed Apple is looking at the tech closely. While excited about its promise, Cook warned about bias and misinformation, arguing that because AI moves too fast for regulation, companies must step up and police themselves.
The EU just urged tech giants including Google and Facebook to immediately start labeling AI-generated text and images to combat online disinformation. Regulators want tags noticeable enough that users scrolling by instantly know "the robot is talking," while also warning Twitter that defying incoming digital laws could trigger fines up to 6% of global turnover.
Google just introduced StyleDrop, a style transfer technique for its Muse text-to-image model that learns any visual style from a single reference image in under three minutes. It captures tricky shading, textures, and color schemes significantly better than LoRA or DreamBooth.
Google just started rolling out access to Search Labs, giving waitlisted US users their first taste of its Search Generative Experience (SGE). The feature serves up AI-generated snapshots for complex queries, shopping decisions, and troubleshooting, along with conversational follow-up prompts. It is Google's clearest move yet toward turning web search into synthesized answers.
Google just added image responses to Bard, pulling relevant visuals straight from Google Search alongside links to their sources. Users can now explicitly ask for pictures to back up recommendations, though it is currently limited to English prompts. Google plans to follow up with image generation and Google Lens inputs soon.
