AI News

DeepMind’s safety framework is based on so-called “critical capability levels” (CCLs). These are essentially risk assessment rubrics that aim to measure an AI model’s capabilities and define the point at which its behavior becomes dangerous in areas like cybersecurity or biosciences. The document also details the ways developers can address the CCLs DeepMind identifies in their own models. Google and other firms that have delved deeply into generative AI e

Generative AI systems that create text, images, audio, and even video are becoming commonplace. In the same way AI models output those data types, they can also be used to output robot actions. That’s the foundation of Google DeepMind’s Gemini Robotics project, which has announced a pair of new models that work together to create the first robots that “think” before acting. Traditional LLMs have their own set of problems, but the introduction of simulated

The new AI music hosts are supposed to provide a richer listening experience, according to YouTube. As you’re listening to tunes, the AI will generate audio snippets similar to, but shorter than, the fake podcasts you can create in NotebookLM. The “Beyond the Beat” host will break in every so often with relevant stories, trivia, and commentary about your musical tastes. YouTube says this feature will appear when you are listening to mixes and radio station

Google’s products and services have been flooded with AI features over the past couple of years, but smart home has been largely spared until now. The company’s plans to replace Assistant are moving forward with a big Google Home reset. We’ve been told over and over that generative AI will do incredible things when given enough data, and here’s the test. There’s a new Home app with Gemini intelligence throughout the experience, updated subscriptions, and e

“AI doesn’t care,” a vandal scrawled on a New York subway ad promoting a wearable AI pendant called Friend, which was designed to monitor a user’s everyday conversations and serve as a companion “who listens, responds, and supports you.” “Human connection is sacred,” the vandal wrote, emphasizing, “AI is not your friend.” This act of vandalism is now part of a huge online archive collecting defaced ads that the Friend campaign inspired, as many New Yorkers

The AI image editor is coming to search via Lens and AI Mode. For Lens, you can simply open the app (iOS and Android) and snap a photo to get started. When the rollout is complete, you’ll see a “Create” button at the bottom, with a banana icon. Tap that to enter a prompt, telling the AI how you’d like the photo changed. When you begin an edit in Lens, the Google app will display the results and offer the chance for follow-up edits in the AI Mode interface.

Meetings can be a real drain on productivity, but a new Gmail feature might at least cut down on the time you spend scheduling them. The company has announced “Help Me Schedule” is coming to Gmail, leveraging Gemini AI to recognize when you want to schedule a meeting and offering possible meeting times for the email recipient to choose. The new meeting feature is reminiscent of Magic Cue on Google’s latest Pixel phones. As you type emails, Gmail will be ab

Google previously said it would bring Veo video tools to YouTube Shorts, which use a vertical video format like TikTok. The release of Veo 3.1 probably opens the door to fulfilling that promise. You can bet Veo videos will show up more frequently on TikTok as well now that it fits the format. This release also keeps Google in its race with OpenAI, which recently released a Sora iPhone app with an impressive new version of its video-generating AI.

Credit: Seagate Credit: Seagate After dipping to historical lows earlier in the decade, storage pricing per TB has exploded amid the AI boom. According to data collected by Tom’s Hardware, some solid-state drives now cost two to three times their historic lows, and it’s not just SSDs. Mechanical drives haven’t been immune either. According to PCServerParts, a Seagate Exos 24TB drive that sold for $298.99 in the summer of 2025 was priced at $699.99 by Augus

Over the past week, OpenAI has faced backlash over subpoenas it sent to nonprofits accused of conspiring with Elon Musk to amplify public criticism of OpenAI as it sought to shift from a nonprofit to for-profit structure. The subpoenas are supposed to support OpenAI’s defense in a lawsuit Musk’s X Corp filed to block the for-profit transition. Seeking a “wide variety of documents”—including a sweeping request for all communications regarding Musk and all i

OnePlus is expected to take the wraps off the OnePlus 15 in the next few weeks, but before that, it’s giving us a look at the software that will run on it. OxygenOS 16, which is based on Android 16, will also come to the company’s other supported phones, and it’s going to include a heaping helping of AI features. OnePlus was slower than most smartphone makers to embrace AI, but it’s full-steam ahead now with new Gemini integrations. OxygenOS 16 is describe

For more than a decade, researchers have wondered whether artificial intelligence could help predict what incapacitated patients might want when doctors must make life-or-death decisions on their behalf. It remains one of the most high-stakes questions in health care AI today. But as AI improves, some experts increasingly see it as inevitable that digital “clones” of patients could one day aid family members, doctors, and ethics boards in making end-of-lif

As part of this update, a new Gemini-powered chatbot will soon be turned loose on your billing statements. The idea is that you can get bill summaries and ask specific questions of the robot without waiting for a real person. Google claims that testers have had positive experiences with the AI billing bot, so it’s rolling the feature out widely. Next month, Google also plans to flip the switch on an AI audio enhancement. The new “optimized audio” will use

AI content has proliferated across the Internet over the past few years, but those early confabulations with mutated hands have evolved into synthetic images and videos that can be hard to differentiate from reality. Having helped to create this problem, Google has some responsibility to keep AI video in check on YouTube. To that end, the company has started rolling out its promised likeness detection system for creators. Google’s powerful and freely avail

This week, tech content creators began to suspect that AI was making it harder to share some of the most highly sought-after tech tutorials on YouTube, but now YouTube is denying that odd removals were due to automation. Creators grew alarmed when educational videos that YouTube had allowed for years were suddenly being bizarrely flagged as “dangerous” or “harmful,” with no clear way to trigger human review to overturn removals. AI seemed to be running the

You may be disappointed if you go looking for Google’s open Gemma AI model in AI Studio today. Google announced late on Friday that it was pulling Gemma from the platform, but it was vague about the reasoning. The abrupt change appears to be tied to a letter from Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who claims the Gemma model generated false accusations of sexual misconduct against her. Blackburn published her letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Friday, just

The space around Earth has changed a lot in the last few years. A new generation of satellite constellations like Starlink has shown it’s feasible to relay Internet communication via orbital systems. Deploying high-performance AI accelerators in space along similar lines would be a boon to the industry’s never-ending build-out. Google notes that space may be “the best place to scale AI compute.” Google’s vision for scalable orbiting data centers relies on