OpenAI announced on Saturday that it had won the prestigious gold medal, and now, Google is claiming the same.
For their part, they used an «advanced version» of the DeepThink reasoning model, not a specially tuned model, that included parallel thinking — which can «explore and combine multiple possible solutions before giving a final answer.»
Continue reading “Google also won gold in the International Mathematical Olympiad”
But here’s the truth: None of these numbers are easy to verify — and each company counts differently.
Continue reading “So, who really has the most GPUs in the AI race?”
The deal will see Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen and a small team join Google’s DeepMind division.
Also licensing key tech
Further, Google will invest $2.4 billion in a non-exclusive deal to license Windsurf’s technology, reports Reuters, among others.
OpenAI had been in long-winding talks to buy the company, in its biggest deal yet, and many said it was just around the corner, as late as in May, 2025.
Continue reading “Google hires top execs, team from Windsurf — upending OpenAIs deal”
Veo 3 is also now available in India, Indonesia and all of Europe, Google’s Josh Woodward tweets:
Continue reading “Google rolls out Veo 3 for Gemini Pro users globally”
The complaints on the initial launch were that the Gemini-powered AI search was sluggish and took much longer than users had patience for, Mashable writes.
Complex queries for the photo library
The idea of the AI-powered search feature was to let people search in natural language with complex queries, like «what did I eat in Barcelona?» and finding photos that would make great backgrounds, according to 9to5Google.
Continue reading “Google’s improved Ask Photos in Android goes live for US users”
Google’s new AI app lets you try on clothes virtually
The new experimental Doppl App lets you do virtual try-ons of clothes to see how they look on you. It can take literally any picture as input, and merges it with a full-frame picture of yourself. It can take pictures of friends’ clothes or racks at the store, or use pictures from traditional web stores. It can even animate its outputs and show you with the clothing from different angles. «Doppl is in its early days,» says Google, and «Fit, appearance and clothing details might not always be accurate.»
The app is available on iOS and Android in the USA only, for now.
More at Google’s launch post, a short video here, and a writeup at TechCrunch.
AI doing 30-50% of the work at Salesforce
As tech companies are hunting for new ways to cut costs and boost efficiency, they are turning to AI in droves. We «have to get our head round that AI could do things we were doing… and we can move on to higher value work,» says CEO Mark Benioff. He calls it a «digital labor revolution,» and estimates that they have reached 93% accuracy with the tech. The company recently fired more than 1,000 people from its ranks, and is pushing its corporate customers to use their own, in-house AI model.
More at CNBC and Business Insider. Teknotum has also written extensively on this.
Google tries micropayments where others have failed
In what seems like a new full-page ad displayed at the first visit, Google’s new Offerwall ad tool offers different ways to access web content, through watching an ad, paying a small amount for limited access, or simple micropayments — the once holy grail of web publishing that everyone has tried and failed at. Micropayments have actually never worked, but that doesn’t stop Google from trying. Also, with cookie banners in Europe, focus stealing newsletter banners — and now yet another full-page ad, the web is about to get cramped, fast. Users of Offerwall saw up 9% in increased revenue, and it’s available to every AdSense user starting today.
More at Google’s blog, a Q&A at Google and a writeup heavy on micropayments at TechCrunch.
Anthropic warns on AI safety at Congress
«You don’t want an AI model that would occasionally blackmail you into designing its successor,» said Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark at a congressional hearing yesterday. «Extremely powerful systems are going to be built in the coming 18 months» he said, asking for a coherent federal legal framework, and says otherwise there would be a vacuum for AIs to exploit. «You need to work on the safety issues of AI and R&D, otherwise you will lose the race» he added. Anthropic has recently revealed that any AI model would resort to blackmail or even murder in simulations where it might be shut off. «We have a very short window of time,» he warns.
More at: x.com post with video, more video and discussion at r/singularity, and Anthropic’s blackmail study.
Mohan said the Veo3 integration «will open new creative lanes for everyone to explore,» hailing the other AI functions on the platform.
Users can already use AI to translate across 9 different languages, expanding with 11 more «soon.»
Continue reading “YouTube Shorts to get Veo3 integration «later this summer»”
It’s the weekend film festival you didn’t know you needed, running 24/7 in your browser.
Internet awash in short AI videos
Ever since Google launched Veo3 at I/O 2025, the internet has been awash in hundreds of thousands — maybe even millions — of photorealistic video clips made with the tool, of varying quality.
Continue reading “Yes, there’s an AI ad out there — but the tech can do so much more”
Starting June 12th, Google’s Workspace customers will get summaries in the sidebar every time they open a PDF from Drive, according to Google’s blog.
The idea is that you won’t have read the whole thing, of course, but the feature also adds a couple of handy commands in the sidebar.
Performs actions
You can then perform actions, like «Draft a sample proposal,» or «List interview questions based on this resume.»
The PDF summary will open automatically, and there is a way to opt out in the Drive settings, if you think AI is getting a bit too intrusive in your life.
The feature is available in 20 languages, and should be available for many already — but Google says it might take as many as 15 days to fully roll out.
Read more: Google’s launch blog, and a writeup on The Verge
The feature, only available for Labs users in the US in English, lets you generate «quick, conversational audio overviews» for «certain» search queries.
That should let the audio play for you while you are multitasking or turning attention elsewhere.
«It gives a lay of the land», Google says, and The Verge notes it can also be set to a feature known to many NotebookLM users — with two simulated «podcast hosts» enthusiastically debating the results for you.
You can opt into the feature on Google Labs, and the feature will then pop up as an alternative under Google’s AI overviews on the results page.
Read more: Google’s blog announcement, and a summary at The Verge
The AI chip maker announced at the GTC Paris conference that they are working with partners in European countries to build both infrastructure and factories, marking probably the largest AI investment so far on the continent.
More at Investor’s Business Daily, and Nvidia’s press release.
A novel approach to the AI embargo in China
Chinese AI companies have found a route around the embargo of advanced AI chip sales to the country. Much like the early days of desktop publishing, they have taken to flying suitcases full of high density hard drives to neighboring Malaysia, to hook them up to a nicely unrestricted supercomputer and process the data.
More at The Wall Street Journal. See also: Sneakernet.
Massive Google Cloud outage affects just about everyone
Google’s cloud service went down from 11:46 until 14:23 PST yesterday, affecting a lot of internet services, like Spotify, Cloudflare, Discord and Snapchat. It also affected certain login features at OpenAI, impacted most services at Anthropic and, of course Google’s own Gemini, listing the entire time span as «full outage.»
More at: TechCrunch, and r/singularity.
Google AI with high precision hurricane forecasts
Google DeepMind & Google Research have launched a model that simulates 50 storm scenarios up to 15 days out, now being trialed with the U.S. National Hurricane Center. Early results show forecasts are ~87 miles more accurate than Europe’s ECMWF model. It’s a smarter, data-rich companion to traditional physics systems—and a potentially big step forward in saving lives.
More at The Verge and check it out at Google’s weather lab.
They say this can be useful for frequently occurring tasks, like getting a morning news summary or providing ideas «for your blog.»
Works with Google apps
Gemini does of course also work with your Google Calendar and Gmail, and can provide you with a list of unread emails and your daily schedule.
Continue reading “Google rolls out scheduled tasks for Gemini subscribers”
It should be available in the Gemini app, and also for free users, who get between three to ten questions per session. This is the model Google plans to take out of Preview as a stable, full model at a later time.
Google has started testing «talk to search» on Android and iOS. The feature lets you discuss and refine search results by clicking under the search bar in the Google app, by text or voice — and you can keep talking after leaving the app.
Anthropic blocks Windsurf access to Claude. Windsurf is an AI coding application that lets you choose which models to use, and the block comes «just weeks after Bloomberg reported that OpenAI was acquiring Windsurf.» «It would be odd for us to be selling Claude to OpenAI,» says Anthropic.
Anthropic opposes 10-year moratorium on state AI laws. In a New York Times op-ed, CEO Dario Amodei argues that AI is developing so fast that new laws might be needed well ahead of the ten-year mark currently being considered in the US Senate. «I believe that these systems could change the world, fundamentally, within two years; in 10 years, all bets are off,» he writes.
The shared service lets other users interact with your stored notebooks, to ask questions and make podcasts of your research. You can restrict access to only chats, if you like.
Continue reading “NotebookLM now lets you easily share projects”
Both sides argued they weren’t, as it could interfere with long standing DOJ arguments that Google is a search monopoly, and for Google looking to avoid scrutiny of its recent behavior.
Continue reading “Final day of Google’s antitrust trial hinges on AI”