Square has introduced Square Bitcoin, an integrated bitcoin payments and wallet solution catering to businesses of all sizes. Consisting of bitcoin payments and bitcoin conversions, Square Bitcoin allows sellers to accept bitcoin payments “with zero processing fees,” the company says. Card sales can be automatically converted to bitcoin, and managed alongside traditional business finances — all within the ecosystem of Square, Block’s merchant payments platform. The news was announced at Square Releases, a biannual showcase for new products and features. Square also introduced AI-powered voice ordering for restaurants, and local insights from LLMs. Continue reading Square Launches Bitcoin Wallet System for Local Businesses

Anthropic and IBM have formed a strategic alliance that will see Anthropic’s Claude models integrated into select IBM software products, the first of which is a new AI-first integrated development environment (IDE) called Project Bob, now in private preview, which aims to help enterprise clients do things like modernize software. At its TechXchange 2025 conference in Orlando, IBM also debuted a new capability for AgentOps. The AgentOps practices unveiled at IBM Think in May was showcased here as a real-time governance and observability integration to help ensure autonomous agents don’t run amok. Continue reading IBM Previews Its Project Bob IDE, Intros Real-Time AgentOps

Word out of OpenAI’s first DevDay event in almost two years is that the company wants to make its generative AI chatbot ChatGPT more like an “operating system.” A demo by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman showed apps including Spotify, Canva, Figma and Zillow responding to typed commands inside a chat. The company also released a new Apps SDK in preview so developers can start building for the ChatGPT platform. “Building with the Apps SDK makes it possible to reach over 800 million ChatGPT users at just the right time,” according to OpenAI. Other pilot partners include Booking.com, Coursera and Expedia. Continue reading OpenAI Debuts Features That Make ChatGPT More Like an OS

Google is bolstering its AI-powered coding agent Jules with the introduction of Jules Tools — a lightweight, Command Line Interface (CLI) that is rolling out with a preview look at a new Jules public API. The features allow you to integrate Jules more directly into systems and workflows by plugging into the Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline as well enabling real-time collaboration by integrating with third-party applications like Slack. The move comes as competition among companies building AI coding assistants intensifies, becoming a key component of the future of software development. Continue reading Google Polishes Jules with New CLI and Preview of Public API

Meta Platforms is launching new AI features including Business AI, a new sales concierge service that aims to guide customers “from discovery to purchase” with AI-powered messaging agents appearing on Meta ads, threads and your company’s website. Meta is launching the Meta AI business assistant, an AI chat experience that will help optimize campaign targeting and resolve account issues, via Ads Manager and Business Support Home. There are also new generative video tools and expanded access to Meta’s creator discovery APIs to matchmake businesses with influencers and other grassroots partners. The news was shared as marketers convene for Advertising Week New York. Continue reading Meta Boosts AI Ad Tools: Adds Brand Chatbots, Creator APIs

YouTube is introducing YouTube Labs, an experimental hub where users can test the company’s latest artificial intelligence tools and prototypes, starting with AI hosts for YouTube Music. “As you listen to radio and mixes, AI hosts will chime in with relevant stories and insights,” YouTube explains. A brand-specific version of its parent company’s Google Labs, YouTube Labs is positioned as the place “to discover the next generation of YouTube,” and the streaming video giant says that like its predecessor, “feedback and interactions may be used to improve Google products and services.” Continue reading YouTube Labs Invites Users to Test Experimental AI Features

Nvidia has made its Audio2Face open source, a potential boon for game developers and other 3D uses such as customer service. The generative AI facial animation system brings lifelike speech and expression to avatars on an accelerated basis using real-time facial animation and lip-sync. It works by analyzing acoustic features to create a stream of animation data that is then mapped onto a character’s facial poses. The data translates to “accurate lip-sync and emotional expressions,” says Nvidia, noting the imagery can be rendered offline for pre-scripted content or streamed in real time for dynamic characters with accurate lip-sync and emotional expressions. Continue reading Nvidia Audio2Face AI Avatar-Generator Is Now Open Source

Artificial intelligence has proven to be a creative enabler, though also a headache when it comes to protecting intellectual property rights. And for some, like Spotify, it is both. Even as the platform takes pains to accommodate AI-powered bands like The Velvet Sundown it is simultaneously “waging war” against content-farmed AI tunes. In the past 12 months Spotify says it has removed over 75 million spammy tracks. Now it is rolling out an even more robust spam filtering system while stepping up enforcement of impersonations and mandating AI disclosures for music with industry-standard credits. Continue reading Spotify Is Allowing for Creative AI Use While Filtering Out Slop

Nvidia is investing up to $100 billion in a partnership with OpenAI that will result in what Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang predicts will be “the biggest AI infrastructure deployment in history.” The project will use about 10 gigawatts worth of Nvidia systems — including the upcoming Vera Rubin platform — power equivalent to 4 million to 5 million GPUs. “This partnership is about building an AI infrastructure that enables AI to go from the labs into the world,” Huang said on CNBC’s “Halftime Report,” explaining the $100 billion will be invested in stages as each gigawatt is deployed. The investment will be all-cash with Nvidia receiving an undisclosed amount of OpenAI equity. Continue reading Nvidia Investing $100 Billion in OpenAI Data Center Build-Out

EBay has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Norway-based consumer-to-consumer (C2C) social marketplace Tise, which specializes in secondhand fashion and home furnishing goods and is popular with Gen Z and Millennial shoppers. Founded in 2014, Tise currently has about 2.5 million registered users in the Nordic region and has raised $45 million over three funding rounds. EBay says Tise’s community engagement features, including the ability to follow sellers and receive personalized product recommendations by ‘liking’ and commenting on listings, will enrich the eBay C2C experience. Financial terms for the acquisition were not disclosed. Continue reading eBay Set to Purchase Norway’s Social Shopping Platform Tise

After five years of spadework, ATSC 3.0 NextGen TV is ready for its close-up with the fall football season and growing HDR interest across the sports world. The August 23 NFL preseason game between New Orleans Saints and Denver Broncos was an inflection point, the first time a local U.S. broadcaster delivered an over-the-air show in native HDR from “glass to glass” — camera lenses to NextGen TV home screens. Now the NextGen coalition Pearl TV is gearing up for a marketing push to promote the benefits of HDR in the lead-up to the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Continue reading Sports Helping Propel ATSC 3.0 NextGen TV to New Heights

Google is rolling out “Gemini in Chrome” to U.S. Mac and Windows desktop users. Business users will get it in the weeks to come, as will Android and iOS mobile devices. The immediate change integrates “Google AI into Chrome across multiple levels so it can better anticipate your needs, help you understand more complex information, and make you more productive when you browse the web.” There are a number of safety features that leverage AI to combat scams and handle things like automatic password resets. And Gemini in Chrome will soon be able to recall websites previously visited without requiring you to scroll through your browsing history. An agentic browsing assistant is also in the works. Continue reading Google Adds Gemini AI Assistant to Chrome Browser in U.S.

Sci-fi short “Europa,” written and directed by Jacqueline Elyse Rosenthal, is the Entertainment Technology Center’s latest project to test the expanding possibilities of virtual production and remote collaboration. To call “Europa” a cloud-first production is to rethink filmmaking from the ground up. This wasn’t just a distributed team working online — it was an ecosystem where every workflow, from previs to final VFX, operated entirely in the cloud. It wasn’t a workaround; it was the foundation. And powering that foundation — every tool, every task, every decision — was AWS. Continue reading ‘Europa’: ETC Teams Up with AWS on Cloud-First Production

Microsoft is in the final phases of building the $3.3 billion Wisconsin facility it says will be the most powerful AI data center in the world when it comes online in early 2026 to train the next decade of artificial intelligence models. The software giant has already begun staffing the operation and is already planning further expansion, with another $4 billion to be spent in the next three years to build a second data center of similar size and scale — bringing the total investment in Wisconsin to more than $7 billion. Located in Mount Pleasant, the nearly completed facility will be the first in what Microsoft is calling its Fairwater family of hyperscale data centers. Continue reading Microsoft Details $7 Billion Future of Wisconsin AI Data Center

Roku has partnered with German projector maker Aurzen on the first smart projector that runs on the Roku OS. The Aurzen Roku TV Smart Projector D1R Cube can display a native 1080p image with 330 ANSI lumens brightness sized from 40 to 150 diagonal inches with the projector placed 3.6 to 10.8 feet from the screen. The device is currently available from Amazon for $250. The D1R Cube can display indoors or outdoors on a screen or a wall. The Roku OS capabilities include voice control and one-click access to premium streaming channels including Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Hulu, YouTube and Apple TV. Continue reading Roku and Aurzen Launch D1R Cube Portable Smart Projector