Blackmagic Design is releasing its Blackmagic Camera for Android 1.3 update, which adds support for recording timecode and adds anamorphic lens de-squeeze functionality and lens correction settings as well as support for off-speed and time lapse recording. Available at Google Play free of charge, it supports Google’s latest OS, Android 14, which means it should offer some interesting creative possibilities with Gemini, the new Pixel 9 series’ native AI. Some features are backward compatible. Customers with Pixel 6, 7, 8 and 9 phones can record at frames rates of 120fps and 240fps at 720p, and 120fps at 1080p. Read more

Snap is rolling out its fifth generation of Spectacles — standalone AR glasses that enable use of Lenses to “experience the world together with friends.” The firm is also launching a Spectacles Developer Program, and at a rental fee of $99 per month, that’s who the devices are aimed at, for now. Spectacles are powered by Snap OS, optimized to leverage people’s natural responses to interacting with their environment. They work seamlessly with mobile devices, turning smartphones into custom game controllers with Lenses. There’s even a Spectator Mode, “so friends without Spectacles can follow along, mirror your phone screen, and more.” Read more

Amazon is transferring its OpenSearch platform to the Linux Foundation’s new OpenSearch Software Foundation. By handing a third-party the open-source project it has developed internally since 2021, Amazon hopes to accelerate collaboration in data-driven search and analytics, an area of focus due to the proliferation of model training. Not to be confused with commercial search (Google, Bing), engines like OpenSearch are geared toward enterprise and academia. Because it is licensed under Apache 2.0, OpenSearch is a viable starting point for organizations that customize internal platforms for searching, monitoring and analyzing large volumes of data. Read more

The OpenAI board’s Safety and Security Committee will become an independent board oversight committee, chaired by Zico Kolter, machine learning department chair at Carnegie Mellon University. The committee will be responsible for “the safety and security processes guiding OpenAI’s model deployment and development.” Three OpenAI board members segue from their current SSC roles to the new committee: Quora founder Adam D’Angelo, former Sony Corporation EVP Nicole Seligman and erstwhile NSA chief Paul Nakasone. OpenAI is currently putting together a new funding round that reportedly aims to value the company at $150 billion. Read more

Google announced the company is making its new AI assistant Gemini Live available free to all Android users. The move follows the feature’s release last month to Gemini Advanced subscribers. This general release will occur gradually, and only in English for the time being. Gemini Live lets users have a more natural, free-flowing conversation with their phones than was available through Google Assistant via the “Hey, Google” prompt. Gemini inquiries are meant to be conversational, eliciting a back and forth that queriers can interrupt, adding more detail or veering to another topic entirely. Read more