Among the many tech advancements unveiled at Google Cloud Next include a major generative media upgrade to Vertex AI, Google Cloud’s managed AI development platform. The new Vertex AI Media Studio lets enterprise users generate complete videos from scratch using text prompts. Lyria, Google’s text-to-music model is now available on Vertex in private preview. Both are subject to an “allowlist.” Chirp 3 now creates custom voices with just 10 seconds of audio input, while Imagen 3 has gained improved abilities for reconstructing missing or damaged portions of an image. Continue reading Vertex AI Movie Studio Can Create Videos from Start to Score

Google has debuted a new accelerator chip, Ironwood, a tensor processing unit designed specifically for inference — the ability of AI to predict things. Ironwood will power Google Cloud’s AI Hypercomputer, which runs the company’s Gemini models and is gearing up for the next generation of artificial intelligence workloads. Google’s TPUs are similar to the accelerator GPUs sold by Nvidia, but unlike the GPUs they’re designed for AI and geared toward speeding neural network tasks and mathematical operations. Google says when deployed at scale Ironwood is more than 24 times more powerful than the world’s fastest supercomputer. Continue reading Google Ironwood TPU is Made for Inference and ‘Thinking’ AI

YouTube is rolling out a new tool called Music Assistant to its Creator Music marketplace. Music Assistant uses generative AI to automatically add royalty-free instrumental background music to long-form videos. Accessed via a dedicated tab in Creator Music, Music Assistant provides more control over things like the style, mood and instruments of the desired music, which is requested via text prompts. Creator Music is available in the U.S. to creators enrolled in the YouTube Partner Program. YouTube is also experimenting with a Shorts feature that automatically synchronizes audio for short-form video creators. Continue reading YouTube Brings Generative Music Assistant to Video Creation

Google has turned its Firebase backend-as-a-service (BaaS) platform into a full-stack AI workspace called Firebase Studio that builds custom apps in a browser-based environment. Available to anyone with a Google account during its preview phase, Google says Firebase Studio will be useful to beginners and pros alike, with Gemini-powered AI agents that can be used to automate the process of building, launching and monitoring mobile and web apps and related infrastructure. Firebase Studio “includes everything developers need to create and publish production-quality AI apps quickly, all in one place,” the company announced at Google Cloud Next 2025. Continue reading Google Firebase Now Full-Stack App Developer in a Browser

Google’s Gemini coding assistant has gained agentic capabilities, available as part of Gemini in Android Studio, a subscription service for businesses designed to make app development for the Android ecosystem easier and more secure. This agent-centric “AI-powered cloud for developers and operators” is designed to infuse AI into all stages of application development, laying the groundwork for more rapid software creation cycles. The service is available to those who subscribe to Gemini Code Assist Standard or Enterprise editions. The new offering was unveiled at the Google Cloud Next 2025 developer conference in Las Vegas. Continue reading Google Pushes Gemini in Android Studio for App Developers

A bipartisan Congressional group has reintroduced the NO FAKES Act, a bicameral bill that aims to protect creative rights by safeguarding artist voices and likenesses from unauthorized use by AI and other digital replication. The announcement culminated the Recording Academy’s Grammys on the Hill Advocacy Day with a Wednesday press conference led by Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) and Chris Coons (D-Delaware) and Representatives Madeleine Dean (D-Pennsylvania) and Maria Salazar (R-Florida). Simultaneously, the TAKE IT DOWN Act — which aims to tackle unauthorized images of people — moved with Senate support to near approval in the House. Continue reading Proposed Federal Bills Aim to Curb Unauthorized Replication

Google’s YouTube is rolling out new tools to make YouTube Shorts even more competitive with social-video platform TikTok. The new publishing suite includes an improved video editor, a tool for generating AI stickers, enhanced templates, and a feature that can synchronize content to a musical beat. YouTube says the upgraded editing feature will provide users with the ability to make more precise adjustments, fine-tuning the timing of each clip. Users can “move or remove clips to create a rough version, add music or timed text, and preview their Short to make sure it tells the story the way they want it to,” according to YouTube. Continue reading YouTube Shorts Updates Video Tools to Compete with TikTok

Roblox is working with Google to scale-up advertising, adding the search giant’s immersive ads and allowing users to opt-in to watch full-screen spots of up to 30-seconds to earn in-game perks. The program, known as Rewarded Video, was announced at the IAB PlayFronts where Roblox also touted new partnerships with measurement and brand lift firms including Nielsen, Kantar, IAS, Cint and DoubleVerify “to enable brands to better understand the impact of their investment.” Rewarded Video will be implemented by Google Ad Manager, which offers its own metrics. Gamers will be able to accrue benefits including virtual currency and power-ups. Continue reading Roblox Teams with Google Offering Immersive Ads in Games

Just prior to the start of the weekend, Elon Musk announced that his artificial intelligence company xAI is acquiring his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) “in an all-stock transaction,” valuing xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45 billion less $12 billion in debt). The merger has the potential to create a powerful GenAI-powered content platform. The billionaire purchased Twitter in late 2022 for $44 billion, following months of legal skirmishes. According to Musk, X currently touts more than 600 million active users, while “xAI has rapidly become one of the leading AI labs in the world, building models and data centers at unprecedented speed and scale.” Continue reading Elon Musk Announces xAI Corporation Will Purchase X Social

China’s Ant Group is using local semiconductors to train AI at a cost that is 20 percent less than companies typically spend, according to reports. Ant used domestic chips — from companies including Alibaba, an investor in Ant, and Huawei — to launch a unique Mixture of Experts (MoE) training approach that produced results commensurate to training with Nvidia H800 chips. Ant is the latest Chinese company to focus on low cost training, joining a competition triggered by DeepSeek, which in January announced it could build AI comparable to the models released by U.S. companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and Google for billions less. Continue reading Ant Group Stacks Chips to Reduce Development Costs for AI

Utah has become the first state to make app stores responsible for verifying users’ ages. The Utah App Store Accountability Act shifts the burden of proving one’s age from social platforms like Snapchat, Instagram and X to digital storefronts, namely Google Play and Apple’s App Store. Those who create accounts in the state will have to prove they’re over 18 or, if underage, link their account to a parent or guardian’s. Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed the bill into law on Wednesday and it begins taking effect May 7. Google opposed the legislation and lobbied the governor to veto it. Meta, X and Snap applauded the measure and are encouraging other states to follow suit. Continue reading Utah Law Is First in Nation Making App Stores Verify User Age

Google has released what it calls its most intelligent AI model yet, Gemini 2.5. The first 2.5 model release, an experimental version of Gemini 2.5 Pro, is a next-gen reasoning model that Google says outperformed OpenAI o3-mini and Claude 3.7 Sonnet from Anthropic on common benchmarks “by meaningful margins.” Gemini 2.5 models “are thinking models, capable of reasoning through their thoughts before responding, resulting in enhanced performance and improved accuracy,” according to Google. The new model comes just three months after Google released Gemini 2.0 with reasoning and agentic capabilities. Continue reading Google Debuts Next-Gen Reasoning Models with Gemini 2.5

The Entertainment Software Association is rolling out the Accessible Games Initiative, a cross-industry reference resource that provides information about accessibility features in video games. The effort launches with a set of 24 “tags” advising of the features. The ESA announced the effort at the Game Developers Conference with representatives from five founding member companies: Electronic Arts, Google, Microsoft, Nintendo and Ubisoft. The goal is to have participating companies include the tags with their game product info in digital storefronts, on product pages and elsewhere to help provide players, parents and teachers details about accessibility features. Continue reading ESA Initiative Provides Accessibility Transparency for Games

Google has added a Canvas feature to its Gemini AI chatbot that provides users with a real-time collaborative space where writing and coding projects can be refined and other ideas iterated and shared. “Canvas is designed for seamless collaboration with Gemini,” according to Gemini Product Director Dave Citron, who notes that Canvas makes it “an even more effective collaborator” in helping bring ideas to life. The move marks a trend whereby AI companies are trying to turn chatbot platforms into turnkey productivity suites. Google is launching a limited release of Gemini Live Video in addition to bringing its Audio Overview feature of NotebookLM to Gemini. Continue reading Canvas and Live Video Add Productivity Features to Gemini AI

Anthropic’s Claude can now search the Internet in real time, allowing it to provide timely and relevant responses that are also more accurate than what the chatbot previously offered, according to the company. Claude incorporates direct citations for its Web-retrieved material, so users can fact-check its sources. “Instead of finding search results yourself, Claude processes and delivers relevant sources in a conversational format.” While this is not exactly groundbreaking — ChatGPT, Grok 3, Copilot, Perplexity and Gemini all have real-time Web retrieval and most include citations — Claude takes a slightly different approach. Continue reading Real-Time Web Access Informs Claude 3.7 Sonnet Responses