The new Pixel 10 series of smartphones were formally debuted this week at the Made by Google event. The four new models — the Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, Pixel 10 XL and Pixel 10 Pro Fold — all run on the new Tensor G5 chipset, which is 34 percent faster than the G4 used with the Pixel 9s and integrates the first image processor designed by Google. Gemini Nano powers on-device AI features including Magic Cue, a contextual suggestion system underpinning native apps. The Pixel 10s are the first to have magnetic Qi2 fast wireless charging. Sales begin August 28. The company also unveiled the Pixel Watch 4 and Pixel Buds 2a, both shipping October 9. Continue reading Google’s Pixel 10 Smartphone Line Packs AI-Driven Features

The ESPN mobile app has been revamped to coincide with today’s debut of the ESPN DTC streaming service, which offers the sports network’s 12 program outlets together for the first time. The ESPN app has added a vertical feed of video shorts accessible through a “Verts” tab and the homepage carousel. The Verts feed includes game highlights and analytics as well as user-generated content. A vertically delivered “SportsCenter” called “SC for You” delivers daily updates personalized for favorite teams, leagues and sports, available on the app, ESPN.com and some smart TVs. Continue reading ESPN Updates Mobile App with Vertical Video for DTC Launch

Netflix says it has more than doubled overall Upfront ad sales commitments, with year-over-year growth across all categories including retail, CPG, telco, health and wellness, entertainment and tech. It marks a strong showing for the streaming company, which launched its ad-supported tier in November 2022. For the 2025-2026 season, Netflix has once again sold out its Christmas Day NFL double-header, including sponsorships with Accenture, FanDuel, Google and Verizon for in-game and broadcast inventory. Netflix also reports robust response to the final season of “Stranger Things” and returning series “Bridgerton” and “Emily in Paris.” Continue reading Latest Netflix Upfront Ad Commitments Double from Last Year

Google has introduced a new ultra-light model called Gemma 3 270M ideal for smartphones and other on-device use cases. The open-source model is power-efficient and small enough to run locally in the absence of an Internet connection, as Google demonstrated in internal tests using a Pixel 9 Pro SoC. With just 270 million parameters, Gemma 3 270M is a fraction of the size of flagship LLMs, which typically have billions of parameters. While Google’s new model was not made for complex conversational use, it is “designed from the ground up for task-specific fine-tuning with strong instruction-following.” Continue reading Google Says New Gemma 3 Is Ideal for Mobile, Edge Devices

Google DeepMind has unveiled Genie 3, a world-building model that uses text and image prompts to generate 3D environments in real time. Still in research preview, Genie 3 can output “several minutes” of video that can be navigated in real time at 24fps and a resolution of 720p. Because it remembers the rules of the world it creates, Genie 3 allows agents to predict how the environment evolves and how actions affect it. Google says world models are “a key steppingstone” to artificial general intelligence, or AGI, since they can train AI agents in “an unlimited curriculum of rich simulation.” Continue reading Genie 3 World Model Produces Minutes of Video in Real Time

Elon Musk’s xAI has made Grok 4 available on its free tiers as it seeks to take advantage of initial user dissatisfaction with OpenAI’s new GPT-5. The company has positioned Grok as freewheeling and uncensored, a contrast to GPT-5, which has been criticized on Reddit and other social platforms as a “corporate beige zombie” with too many guardrails. After its February debut, Grok 3 was reined-in with checks including removal of its native image generator in March. Grok 4 was released in July with integrated image and video features as well as a “Spicy” mode for creating risqué content. Continue reading Grok 4 Offered Free in xAI Move on ChatGPT-5 Market Share

Anthropic has released Claude Opus 4.1, an upgrade to Opus 4 that reportedly improves on agentic tasks, computer coding and reasoning. Pricing has not increased from what customers were paying for Opus 4, and the company promises “substantially larger improvements to our models in the coming weeks.” The move comes as Anthropic nears a new funding round targeting $3 to $5 billion, which could place a valuation of up to $170 billion on the startup. Recurring revenue hit $5 billion as of late July, which could increase to $9 billion by the end of the year. Claude Opus 4.1 was released two days before OpenAI unleashed GPT-5, and performs comparably in coding benchmarks. Continue reading Anthropic Seeks to Raise $5 Billion, Debuts Claude Opus 4.1

Grok Imagine is xAI’s new video and image generator, which is currently available via the X social platform, the Grok mobile app, and Grok web interface. Imagine replaces AI image generator Aurora, which was retired in May following a string of offensive posts that led to media criticism and user concerns. Despite the backlash, Elon Musk’s xAI seems determined to have Imagine push conventional limits, with a “spicy” mode that outputs imagery including adult content. Its text-to-image capabilities work with text or voice prompts, while the video tool relies on image prompts to make short clips using images from a user’s gallery or generated by Grok. Continue reading Grok Imagine from xAI Offers Video Generation, ‘Spicy’ Mode

YouTube is testing a new collaboration feature that allows creators to link other users’ content to their videos, enabling recommendations to followers of each account as a means of driving visibility and engagement. Creators can tag collaborators, who must approve before their name and audience reach is added to the clip. In addition to a collective graphic, a designation along the lines of “and three more” appears next to the name of the host account holder. When clicked, the “more” opens to display the hot-linked channels that are collaborating. Instagram and TikTok already have similar features in place. Continue reading YouTube Collaboration Tool Helps Creators Expand Audience

Google has upgraded Gemini 2.5 with a feature called Deep Think that “could be a powerful tool in creative problem solving,” according to the company. Deep Think uses parallel thinking techniques, letting Gemini “generate many ideas at once and consider them simultaneously, even revising or combining different ideas over time, before arriving at the best answer.” Its ability to reason through highly complex problems makes Deep Think mode a powerful tool for researchers, Google says, adding that it also excels at coding. Deep Think is available in the Gemini app to subscribers of Google AI Ultra, priced at $250 per month. Continue reading Google Intros Deep Think Reasoning Model for AI Ultra Subs

The $88 billion Microsoft invested in building data centers for artificial intelligence and cloud computing over the past year seems to be paying off with the company reporting profit of $101 billion for fiscal year 2025, which ended June 30. Quarterly revenue for the April through June period was $76.4 billion, up 18 percent year-over-year, with profit of $27.2 billion, a 24 percent increase. “Cloud and AI is the driving force of business transformation across every industry and sector,” said Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella, noting Azure passed $75 billion in revenue for the year, up 34 percent. Continue reading Driven by AI and Cloud, Microsoft Profit Exceeds $100 Billion

Google’s YouTube is adding new age-verification methods designed to protect teens. The streaming video platform is using AI to interpret “a variety of signals” to identify users under 18, regardless of the birthdate used to create the account. If the system identifies a user as a teen, age-appropriate protections will automatically take effect. These include disabling personalized advertising, restricted recommendations, limits on repetitive viewing of certain content and screen-time reminders. If the system incorrectly categorizes a user as under 18, they will have the option to correct the situation with a credit card or a government ID. Continue reading YouTube Deploying AI to Identify and Safeguard U.S. Minors

At the World AI Conference that opened in Shanghai on Saturday, Huawei emerged as China’s best hope for driving a domestic hardware sector for advanced artificial intelligence workloads. There, Huawei debuted its CloudMatrix 384 AI system, powered by 384 of its high-performance processors, the Ascend 910C GPUs. The setup has drawn favorable comparisons to Nvidia’s flagship supercomputing platform, the GB200 NVL72, a rack-scale solution for on-site AI and HPC tasks. Huawei’s new hardware reportedly drew large crowds to its booth, but the company declined to share detailed comments or live benchmarks, suggesting a tightly controlled public presentation. Continue reading Huawei May Challenge Nvidia with Its CloudMatrix AI System

Google has added new AI features to Google Photos and YouTube Shorts. Having previously introduced generative backgrounds, YouTube Shorts now has a photo-to-video feature, as well as a variety of menu-driven effects accessible via the Shorts camera that aim to advance social media or arts project creativity — things like turning line drawings into watercolors, putting a selfie “underwater” or adding a digital twin. And Google Photos, available on just about every Android phone, now also has the ability to turn stills to video. For now, both rely on the Veo 2 video model rather than Veo 3, launched in May. Continue reading Google Photos, YouTube Shorts Offer New AI Creation Tools

Google has added a new AI search tool called Web Guide. A Google Search Labs experiment, Web Guide will “intelligently organize” results pages according to specific aspects of the user’s query. Web Guide implements a custom version of Gemini AI “to better understand both a search query and content on the web” for what Google calls a “more powerful” search that enhances discovery of more on-point but obscure pages. Like AI Mode, a Google Labs experiment launched in March, Web Guide uses a query fan-out technique, “issuing multiple related searches to identify the most relevant results.” Continue reading Web Guide Is Google Search Labs Latest Gemini Experiment