Amazon has introduced Lens Live, an AI-powered update to the Amazon Lens shopping tool. The app, which works in concert with Amazon’s Rufus shopping assistant, uses smartphone cameras much like Google Lens does with visual search. Pinterest Lens is another such app. But the purpose-built Rufus ties it even more closely to the shopping experience with instant scanning, real-time product matches and insights from Rufus. Lens Live is already available to tens of millions of U.S. users on iOS in the Amazon Shopping app with plans to roll out to all U.S. customers in the coming months. Continue reading Amazon’s Lens Live Brings Real-Time AI Shopping to Mobile

Two new Google infrastructure projects will benefit from a nearly $20 billion Alphabet cash infusion. Reported in recent weeks: a $9 billion cloud and AI server facility expansion in Virginia and $9 billion to be spent on new construction and an existing plant upgrade in Oklahoma. Google has also committed $1 billion to AI training and support from the community college to university levels in both states. Such ambitions do not stop at U.S. shores. AWS has earmarked $4.4 billion to construct and operate cloud centers in New Zealand while OpenAI seeks investors for an India build-out. Continue reading Google, AWS Rack Up $23 Billion in New Data Center Growth

OpenAI is releasing two lower-cost, open-weight reasoning models in an effort to be more competitive with Meta, Mistral and DeepSeek and they will be the first OpenAI models available from Amazon. The new offerings — gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b — will be among the model choices on AWS’s Bedrock and SageMaker AI services. Both models are said to be well-suited for agentic use. The gpt-oss-120b model performs comparably to OpenAI o4-mini on core reasoning and can run on a single 80GB GPU. The gpt-oss-20b model is compared to OpenAI o3‑mini and can run on edge devices with just 16GB of memory. Continue reading Open-Weight Models Are a First from OpenAI in AWS Catalog

Amazon Q2 earnings outperformed analyst expectations, but a strong performance wasn’t enough to quell market fears in light of a gloomy forecast and Amazon Web Services growth seen as anemic, at +17.5 percent, which was slower than the expansion of its competitors Microsoft Azure (+39 percent) and Google Cloud (+32 percent). Amazon’s Q2 profit was $18.2 billion, up nearly 30 percent on revenue of $167.7 billion, a 13 percent gain year-over-year. Advertising income of $15.7 billion was almost $1 billion more than StreetAccount’s estimate of $14.9 billion. But for the current quarter, Amazon estimated operating income between $15.5 billion and $20.5 billion. Continue reading Amazon Profit Is Up 30 Percent, but Forecast Spooks Market

Amazon’s Alexa Fund VC has made an investment in San Francisco-based startup Fable, which this week launched Showrunner, a generative AI model with an app that lets people create animated TV shows using text prompts. Showrunner has been in a closed alpha test involving about 10,000 users. Initially, Fable is making Showrunner available for free, but plans to eventually price it at $10-$20 monthly for credits enabling creation of TV-style content on Discord. The Showrunner-generated content will be shareable on social media sites including YouTube. Specific terms of Amazon’s investment have yet to be disclosed. Continue reading Amazon Invests in Fable, Creator of the ‘Showrunner’ AI App

According to PwC’s latest Global Entertainment & Media Outlook, M&E revenues are expected to hit $3.5 trillion by 2029, led by advertising, live events and video games. The report also offers a positive outlook for streaming video, OTT, subscription VOD, theatrical box office, with numerous M&E areas impacted by the adoption of artificial intelligence. Streaming video is expected to jump 33 percent to more than $112 billion by 2029, while global revenue for video games is forecast to reach $300 billion in 2029, up 29 percent from $224 billion in 2024. Of three major categories analyzed — connectivity, advertising and consumer — advertising is expected to grow the fastest. Continue reading PwC Eyes Growth for Ads, Events, Gaming, Streaming Video

Amazon has agreed to purchase AI wearables firm Bee, it was announced via a LinkedIn post by the San Francisco-based startup. Bee’s principal product is a $50 wrist device called the Pioneer that records all audio within range unless manually muted. Combined with a $19 per month subscription the device records and transcribes “daily memories” to create to-do lists and reminders based on what it hears. It can also answer questions. Bee’s website says the product is backordered due to “high demand” with shipments resuming in September. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Continue reading Amazon Buying Startup Bee, Maker of the Pioneer AI Bracelet

Amazon Web Services has created the AI Agents and Tools virtual store within the AWS Marketplace, which has added Anthropic’s Claude for Enterprise as a full-featured software-as-a-service solution. In addition to deepening ties between Anthropic and investor Amazon, the move marks a significant expansion of accessibility to a powerful LLM previously available only through Anthropic or via API through Amazon’s Bedrock developer platform. As part of its agentic push, AWS unveiled AgentCore, a developer tool that helps enterprise developers create, deploy and implement AI agents using any framework or model, and announced a $100 million investment in agent development. Continue reading AWS on Agent Push, Adds Claude Enterprise in Marketplace

Xumo, the streaming joint venture formed by Comcast and Charter, has teamed with Westinghouse to launch a new U.S. line of Xumo smart TVs that will initially be sold through Walmart and Amazon. Initial models offer 4K UHD (in 43- and 50-inch versions) that support HDR10, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, and 2K HD (in 24-, 32-, 40- and 43-inch models). Prices range from $120 to $290. Expected later this year are 55-, 58- and 65-inch 4K models. The new televisions run Xumo OS, featuring a tiled menu interface, voice search and more than 250 built-in streaming apps. Continue reading Streamer Xumo Launching Smart TV Line from Westinghouse

The OnePlus summer launch event featured five product launches, led by two Nord 5 series smartphones. The game-focused Nord 5 features a 144Hz OLED display that measures 6.83 inches and has three sensors, including a 50-megapixel selfie camera, all powered by Qualcomm’s tier two Snapdragon 8S Gen 3. Slightly smaller, the budget-built Nord CE5 has a slower MediaTek Dimensity 8350 Apex chipset and lesser specs all around. There are also three new products designed to enhance the OnePlus connected experience, including the OnePlus Watch 3 43mm, OnePlus Buds 4 and the OnePlus Pad Lite. Currently, only the Buds 4 and Watch 3 43mm are planned for release in the U.S. Continue reading OnePlus Reveals New Phones, Watch, Buds, Android Tablet

Amazon warehouses and fulfillment centers will soon have as many robots as human employees reading destination labels, packing orders and loading conveyor belts. Amazon serves 310 million customers worldwide, using various robot configurations to aid 1.56 million employees to process and deliver inventory and handle other businesses. Now the company has delivered its one millionth robot, to a facility in Japan. With artificial intelligence making a beeline toward white-collar work and warehouse robots poised to elbow aside manual laborers, global economics could shift on the practices of this company alone. Continue reading Amazon Deploys Millionth Factory Robot, Workforce Shrinks

Anthropic has updated its Claude AI chatbot with the ability to build, host and share AI-powered apps directly in Claude. Launching in beta, the new function builds upon the Artifacts feature Anthropic introduced last year, allowing users to see and interact with what they asked Claude to create. “Now developers can iterate faster on their AI apps without worrying about the complexity and cost of scaling for a growing audience,” according to Anthropic. The San Francisco-based AI startup adds that millions people have already used Claude to create more than 500 million artifacts — from productivity tools to educational games. Continue reading Anthropic’s Claude Chatbot Is Now a No-Code App Developer

TikTok is reporting that TikTok Shop’s U.S. sales have increased 120 percent in 2025 compared to the same period last year. However, this announcement was made as reports surfaced that TikTok owner ByteDance is disappointed that the U.S. performance of TikTok Shop is falling far short of its original tenfold growth goal to $17.5 billion in 2025. The company reportedly moved to “drastically lower that objective” prior to touting its performance this month. Meanwhile, President Trump recently extended the deadline for ByteDance to sell the U.S. operations of TikTok, pushing the cutoff to September 17. Continue reading TikTok Shop’s U.S. Sales Improve but Still Fall Short of Goals

U.S. streaming viewership exceeded cable and broadcast audiences combined in May, an industry first. Streaming amassed a record 44.8 percent of total U.S. television usage, inching past cable and broadcast’s combined 44.2 percent of audience according to Nielsen. In the four years since Nielsen launched The Gauge measurement report in May 2021, U.S. streaming viewership grew by 71 percent while cable and broadcast viewing declined by 39 percent and 21 percent, respectively, with traditional TV showing “surprising resilience,” the current report notes. During those four years, “Netflix has gone wire-to-wire as the leading SVOD provider,” according to The Gauge. Continue reading Streaming Viewership Tops Cable & Broadcast for First Time

Amazon Ads has entered into an exclusive deal with Roku that will provide “advertisers access to the largest authenticated CTV footprint in the U.S.” The offering will be powered by Amazon DSP — the company’s omnichannel marketing solution. The integration combines Amazon Fire TV users with Roku’s customers for logged-in reach to what Amazon estimates is 80 million Connected TV households, which equals just over 80 percent of CTV households, according to Comscore data. Addressability will also be enhanced across top streaming services integrated with the two operating systems. The deal was announced during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Continue reading Amazon Teams with Roku for Exclusive CTV Advertising Deal