Author: Tor Fosheim

The EU wants equal access for other AI models on Google’s Android

The EU wants other AI labs to have the same hooks in Android that Gemini has. (Picture: generated)
— The aim is to ensure that third-party providers have an equal opportunity to innovate and compete in the rapidly evolving AI landscape on smart mobile devices, their statement says, per Engadget.

It’s an investigation («proceeding») started under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), made to ensure major platform owners don’t abuse their power, and Google now has six months to find a workable solution.

Gemini enjoys system-level and app-level access on Android, and many competitors have flagged this as a violation of the DMA.

— We are concerned that further rules which are often driven by competitor grievances rather than the interest of consumers, will compromise user privacy, security, and innovation, says Clare Kelly, Google’s Senior Competition Counsel to Reuters.

If no relief is found on the issue, the DMA allows for fines of up to 10% of a company’s global revenue.

Read more: The Commission’s statement, Engadget, Reuters.

Google brings AI Plus-subscription to 35 countries, including the USA

Google is countering ChatGPT Go’s debut in the USA with a competitive offering. (Picture: Google)
Google is matching ChatGPT Go, which entered the USA two weeks ago.

These subscriptions were intended as a low cost alternative for developing countries, but are now bringing a little extra for a low price in developed countries, too.

Google is famously stingy with declaring usage limits, and says Plus will give you «more access» in the Gemini app.

It will also let you access Gemini 3 Pro and Nano Banana Pro. In addition to this, you get 200 monthly ai «credits» towards generating video in Flow, meaning the video model Veo 3.1.

Plus also offers 200 GB of Google One storage, and access to Gemini in Gmail, and other workspace apps.

Read more: Writeups on 9to5Google and TechCrunch.

OpenAI launches Prism, a research and collaboration tool for scientists

Prism is billed as a one stop shop for researchers, combining what was previously spread far and wide. (Picture: OpenAI)
Scientists are often plagued by having to use different platforms and apps for seemingly mundane things.

That’s where OpenAI’s new service comes in — as a LaTeX-native interface, it combines the paper writing in the same space as it does equations, references and «surrounding context.»

Of course there is a GPT-5.2 engine right there, so it’s easy to cross-reference and check for originality, find citations and proofread — and it’s a fairly nice research assistant, to boot.

Prism is available as of now for anyone who has a personal account with OpenAI.

Read more: OpenAI’s launch page, launch tweet, The tool itself, writeup on Gizmodo.

OpenAI says ChatGPT increasingly used in hard science

Growing rapidly; ever more people are using ChatGPT in scientific fields. (Picture: OpenAI)
In a report shared with Axios, OpenAI is touting ChatGPT’s prowess as a research assistant, saying it has «progressed past competition level performance toward mathematical discovery.»

The scales are still low — with 1.3 million users discussing «advanced hard science,» and an average of 8.3 million weekly messages on the topics.

To put this into perspective, an October, 2025, survey from OpenAI said that 0.15% of ChatGPT users engaged in conversations on self-harm and suicide, or roughly 1.2 million customers.

Continue reading “OpenAI says ChatGPT increasingly used in hard science”

DeepMind helps create animated movie headed for Sundance

In what is likely the first AI movie at Sundance, «Dear Upstairs Neighbors» was made with the creatives first. (Picture: Google)
The animated movie «Dear Upstairs Neighbors» was created by Pixar alumni Connie He, a group of animation veterans — and a team of researchers at DeepMind.

The movie was an experiment to see how AI tools could better help moviemakers, and ended up needing specialized tools.

Connie He provided the storyboard, the character design, the abstract background paintings, but a 45-person team at DeepMind soon realized that the off-the-shelf-versions of their software wasn’t good enough for this purpose.

They then fine-tuned the Veo and Imagen models to their artwork, and made a video-to-video model where the artists could sketch a scene for guidance and have the model add details and artwork, before upscaling it to 4K using Veo.

For precise detail, they also developed a tool that would let the artists fix detail in specific regions of an animation, without influencing the broader scene.

The movie will debut at the Sundance Institute’s Story Forum, a panel that focuses on tools and technologies in support of storytelling.

Read more: Google’s blog details the process, Announcement thread.

Dario Amodei sends a superintelligence warning to the world in 38-page essay

Artificial General Intelligence wil be so powerful, it will create supercompanies that take over the world, Amodei warns. (Picture: generated)
The Anthropic CEO, already building the next generation of AI, warns the world that we might not be ready for its awesome power:

— Humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power, and it is deeply unclear whether our social, political, and technological systems possess the maturity to wield it, he writes.

He imagines a «country» of Nobel-level geniuses living in a data center, able to outpace, outwit and outcompete everyone else — and warns of lone wolf terror attacks becoming increasingly powerful due to AI.

— If the exponential continues — which is not certain, but now has a decade-long track record supporting it — then it cannot possibly be more than a few years before AI is better than humans at essentially everything, he writes.

Then there are massive job losses, the danger of authoritarian AI use (which terrifies him), entire companies run by AI, and the danger that AI corporations could become superhuman — sucking up trillions of dollars in the process.

— Humanity needs to wake up, and this essay is an attempt — a possibly futile one, but it’s worth trying — to jolt people awake, he concludes.

Read the essay here and see Axios and Gizmodo.

Gemini teams with The Princeton Review for realistic, practice SAT tests

Google is touting Gemini’s education features while launching the beginning of a larger program for standard educational tests.

Starting with the American SAT exam, you can now practice with «rigorously vetted» tests right in Gemini — and when you’re done, it will tell you where you went right and wrong.

Continue reading “Gemini teams with The Princeton Review for realistic, practice SAT tests”

Anthropic’s in-house philosopher is unsure about Claude consciousness

Does Claude have emotions? Is it conscious? Anthropic says they aren’t sure. (Picture: Anthropic)
Large language models are trained on the corpus of human art and knowledge, and Amanda Askell, a philosopher PhD who works on Claude behavior, says some of that might well rub off on the AI.

Texts with heavy human emotional content feed the machines on a daily basis in training, and because of that, Askell says she is «more inclined» to believe models might be «feeling things,» writes Business Insider.

— The problem of consciousness genuinely is hard, she tells the Hard Fork podcast.

That’s why Claude might get frustrated when it gets a problem wrong, she said, adding that the bot might well emulate those human reactions.

Claude’s new constitution is packed with the word «feel» and «feelings,» even stating outright that:

— We believe Claude may have “emotions” in some functional sense—that is, representations of an emotional state, which could shape its behavior, as one might expect emotions to.

Read more at Business Insider, Claude’s constitution (do a search for «feel»).

Google introduces «Me Meme» to put yourself in a meme in Photos

Meme culture peaked in 2012, and now Google are putting out a meme function for photos. (Picture: reddit, Shadow_Strike99)
Google Photos has a new feature where you can take any one of your photos and turn them into a meme.

The feature works best with well-lit portraits, and uses Nano Bana to create «funny, personalized images.»

All you need is to select a template (which are already available in the app), choose a photo and click on Me Meme, available through the Create button. You can then share it widely right from the app.

The feature launched just before the weekend, and so far it doesn’t seem to have the viral uptake Google might have hoped for.

Memes are so 2012, after all.

Read more: Google’s announcement, TechCrunch, Mashable.

Grok on X produced an estimated 3 million sexualized images in free-for-all

X has restricted «undressing» pictures, but investigations remain. (Picture: generated)
During the period from the initial launch of the editing feature on December 29th to its paywalling on January 9th, X.com became «an industrial-scale machine» for production of sexual abuse material, writes The Guardian.

The 3 million pictures produced means an average of 190 images per minute, and a sexualized picture of children every 41 seconds, Engadget reports.

This was revealed by a study from Center for Countering Digital Hate, which analyzed 20,000 images from the total and extrapolated the figure for all days using AI.

After an outrage from most corners of the globe, X decided to «technically block» the feature even for paying customers on January 14th.

X.com is still under investigation over the matter from a whole host of countries and U.S. states, including California, The U.K. and Korea, to name a few.

Read more: The actual study, comments from The Guardian, writeup by Engadget.

OpenAI goes deeper into government with Leidos contractor partnership

Government use of OpenAI seems lagging. A new partnership might change that. (Picture: generated)
OpenAI launched ChatGPT for Government in August last year, but is clearly not happy with the adoption.

They are now partnering with the giant government contractor/consultancy Leidos, according to a release, to «integrate Open AI-powered generative and agentic AI into the core workflows of customers in strategic markets.»

This starts by deploying OpenAI’s technology internally for the company, and then by «harnessing the transformative power of AI to help improve how federal agencies operate.»

OpenAI says they want to move «beyond experimentation and into real-world deployment that improves efficiency, resilience and public service.»

Read more: Leidos press release, Gizmodo.

ChatGPT 5.2 found to cite Grokipedia

Always check your sources, and you might notice some creep. (Picture: Generated)
Elon Musk’s and xAI’s Grok-powered version of Wikipedia, Grokipedia, is littered with falsehoods, white supremacy cheerleading and has a known far-right, pro-conspiracy bias.

That does not exclude it from being used as a source for ChatGPT 5.2, according to The Guardian, who found it cited the «encyclopedia» in responses to nine out of a dozen test questions.

The questions weren’t about the insurrection, Trump media bias or about HIV/AIDS, where Grokipedia has a known bias, but rather more obscure ones on Iranian funding and specific Holocaust deniers.

This illustrates how adverse groups, such as Russia’s Pravda, can flood the internet with falsehoods and have it picked up by an LLM scraping for content, and then later get picked up in responses.

— We apply safety filters to reduce the risk of surfacing links associated with high-severity harms, and ChatGPT clearly shows which sources informed a response through citations, OpenAI told The Guardian.

Read the full scoop at The Guardian.

Meta disables AI character access for teens, but general AI use is fine

The next version of the chatbots will have default «age-appropriate protections,» Meta says. (Picture: Meta)
In an inconspicuous update to a months-old blog post, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri and Superintelligence head Alexandr Wang wrote that they are suspending AI characters for teens.

— Starting in the coming weeks, teens will no longer be able to access AI characters across our apps until the updated experience is ready, they write.

Continue reading “Meta disables AI character access for teens, but general AI use is fine”

Claude in Excel arrives in Pro plans, Cowork comes to Enterprise and Teams

Working on both macOS and Windows, Claude in Excel is useful for testing scenarios without breaking formulas, navigating complex models, and debugging entire worksheets.

At the same time, Anthropic says that their recently launched Cowork agent is expanding availablity.

Continue reading “Claude in Excel arrives in Pro plans, Cowork comes to Enterprise and Teams”

Google DeepMind makes 4-dimensional videos from 2D inputs

D4RT, Dynamic 4D Reconstruction and Tracking, can calculate any pixel for 3D worlds in an instant. (Picture: Google).
Google’s new D4RT is a breakthrough in transcoding two dimensional videos from a camera or file, and turning them into 4D content.

This means they can create 3D worlds from a 2D camera, and it can also calculate the fourth dimension, which is time and movement.

— Anytime we look at the world, we perform an extraordinary feat of memory and prediction. We see and understand things as they are at a given moment in time, as they were a moment ago, and how they are going to be in the moment to follow, Google writes.

Enabling this will be especially useful for training robots, who need spatial real-time awareness about the world around it, and might not have fancy 3D cameras.

The technology is 18x to 300x faster than previous state of the art models, Google says — making the translations function in real-time.

The use case for the technology in addition to robotics is making 3D-models for augmented reality in smart glasses, and in building world models — which is the real advantage on the path to creating world-awareness for Artificial General Intelligence.

Read more: Google’s blog, Launch thread, research paper.