Google

Google kicks off $20B renewable energy building spree to power AI

Nuclear power may have received the lion’s share of attention from energy hungry tech companies over the past few months, with Google among them. But it appears that those new reactors won’t be enough for their AI ambitions: Google is now working with partners to build gigawatts of renewable power, battery storage, and grid upgrades […]

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YouTube is testing multiplayer mini-games

YouTube is experimenting with multiplayer mini-games under its collection of lightweight, free games dubbed “Playables.” Currently, Ludo Club and Magic Tiles 3 support multiplayer mode. “We’re beginning to test a new multiplayer feature for a few select games on YouTube Playables. Multiplayer on Playables lets you play games in real-time with other users,” the company

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Google says its new AI model outperforms the top weather forecast system

Google’s DeepMind team unveiled an AI model for weather prediction this week called GenCast. In a paper published in Nature, DeepMind researchers said they found that GenCast outperforms the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts’ ENS — apparently the world’s top operational forecasting system. And in a blog post, the DeepMind team offered a more

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Google pushes back against federal supervision of its payment arm

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced Friday that it was placing Google’s payment arm under federal supervision. In response, Google filed a lawsuit seeking to block the move. Such supervision would subject Google to the same inspections that the bureau conducts with major banks and other financial institutions for potential violations of the law. The

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Google Photos launches a ‘2024 Recap’ for a look back at this year’s memories

Spotify Wrapped isn’t the only service offering a year-end recap these days. In addition to the year-end reviews from other streamers and social apps, Google Photos is among the apps providing users with a look back at key moments throughout the past year. “2024 Recap,” as the feature is called, introduces a collection of memories,

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Google says its new AI models can identify emotions — and that has experts worried

Google says its new AI model family has a curious feature: the ability to “identify” emotions. Announced on Thursday, the PaliGemma 2 family of models can analyze images, enabling the AI to generate captions and answer questions about people it “sees” in photos. “PaliGemma 2 generates detailed, contextually relevant captions for images,” Google wrote in

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Google’s latest feature drop includes new Gemini extensions and accessibility features

Google said Thursday it is introducing multiple updates for Pixel and Android devices as part of the December feature drop. These features include new Gemini extensions, an updated Pixel Screenshots app, expressive captions, and accessibility enhancements. Android Google is introducing new Gemini extensions, including Spotify, Messaging, Calling, and Smart Home. This will enable users to

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Google’s Gradient backs Cake, a managed open-source AI infrastructure platform

A new company is emerging from stealth today with backing from Google’s AI-focused venture fund to help businesses compile their open-source AI infrastructure and reduce their engineering overheads. Cake integrates and secures more than 100 components for enterprises, including data source adapters (e.g. Apache Hadoop), data ingestion (e.g. Apache Kafka), data labelling (e.g. Label Studio),

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