The latest video game to be getting the TV show treatment is a pair of hugely popular mobile titles. Developer Supercell is partnering with Netflix for an animated series based on the world of its games Clash of Clans and Clash Royale. Fletcher Moules, who directed the original Clash of Clans animated videos on YouTube, will be the showrunner for the Netflix project and Ron Weiner, who has worked on Silicon Valley, 30 Rock, Futurama and Arrested Development, will be the head writer.

Clash of Clans debuted in 2012 and the casual strategy game got a deck battler sequel in Clash Royale, which launched in 2016. According to the show announcement, the pair of games have more than 4 billion downloads and more than 180 billion gameplay hours logged by players. The Netflix show will center on the Barbarian character from this game universe as he tries to “rally a band of misfits to defend their village and navigate the comically absurd politics of war.” The series is in pre-production, and no additional casting or release info has been shared at this stage.

Netflix has hosted several animated shows based on video games, from Arcane to Devil May Cry. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/an-animated-clash-of-clans-series-is-coming-to-netflix-204104822.html?src=rss

In sparking his global trade war, Donald Trump seems to have maintained a glaring blind spot when it comes to protecting one of America’s greatest trade advantages: the export of digital services.

Experts have warned that the consequences for Silicon Valley could be far-reaching.

In a report released Tuesday, an intelligence firm that tracks global trade risks, Allianz Trade, shared results of a survey of 4,500 firms worldwide, designed “to capture the impact of the escalation of trade tensions.” Amid other key findings, the group warned that the US’s fixation on the country’s trillion-dollar goods deficit risks rocking “the fastest-growing segment of global trade,” America’s “invisible exports” of financial and digital services.

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Whether you’re traveling for a vacation or just relaxing in the sunshine, a tablet is one of the easiest ways for you and your family to stay entertained while out and about during the summer. If you’re looking for a new tablet, Amazon is selling the most recent Apple iPad (A16) for $50 off. It’s an 11-inch model powered by the A16 chip. You can buy the 128GB tablet in any of the four available colors — silver, blue, pink or yellow — of the tablet for $299. If you need more storage, you can opt for the 256GB model for $399 or the 512GB version for $595. All of these discounts are for the WiFi only models and do not include any time under the Apple Care protection plan.

Apple has a bunch of different iPads for sale these days, and the A16 one is our favorite budget option for this brand. That’s because although the A16 chip is notably less powerful than the M3 or M4 you’ll find in higher-end tablets, this model still performs well on the basic tasks that you’d use an iPad for. This iPad has a liquid Retina display with a resolution of 2360×1640. Again, it’s not flashy, but plenty serviceable. 

One additional caveat for the A16 is that it can’t run Apple Intelligence, so this isn’t the iPad for you if you’re looking to experiment with lots of AI tools. But for about $300, it’s a great starter option if you want to have an easy way to play games, watch shows or read on a larger screen.

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/apples-latest-ipad-is-on-sale-for-50-off-ahead-of-memorial-day-195749473.html?src=rss

Google originally launched SynthID, its digital watermark for AI-generated content, as a way to detect whether an image was created using the company’s Imagen model in 2023. Now, at Google I/O 2025, the company is introducing a public-facing tool called SynthID Detector that claims to detect those watermarks in just about anything you upload.

SynthID Detector will be available as a web portal where you can upload images, video, audio and text to be scanned. Once uploaded, SynthID Detector Google claims the portal can tell you whether your upload contains AI-generated material and even “highlight specific portions of the content most likely to be watermarked.” For audio, the tool is supposed to be able to identify a specific portion of a track that contains the watermark, too.

Google

SynthID was designed to mark content from Google’s models but Google hopes other companies will adopt the watermark for their own AI output. An open source version of SynthID is already available for text watermarking, and as part of the rollout of SynthID Detector, Google is partnering with NVIDIA to mark media its NVIDIA Cosmos model generates. SynthID Detector won’t be the only tool that can spot Google’s watermark, either. The company says GetReal Security will also be able to verify if media contains SynthID. 

Considering the sheer number of ways Google hopes people will using AI to create images, video, text and audio, from the Audio Overviews in NotebookLM to short films made with its new Flow tool, it makes sense that it would offer a way to know if any of those things are real. Until models from one company produces the vast majority of content or a digital watermark reaches widespread adoption, though, a tool like SynthID Detector can only be so useful.

Journalists, researchers and developers can join a waitlist to try SynthID Detector through Google’s online form.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/synthid-detector-can-check-media-to-see-if-it-was-generated-with-googles-ai-tools-194002070.html?src=rss

Google I/O’s 2025 keynote could have more reasonably been called The Google AI Show. Almost everything the company talked about was AI-powered, some of which is promised to arrive in the future, and some of which is available today. Features were spread across Google’s whole range of products, but here are some of the ones you’re actually likely to see.

It’s tough to talk about Gemini because it simultaneously refers to a set of models (like Gemini Flash, Gemini Pro, and Gemini Pro Deep Research), different versions of those models (the latest seems to be 2.5 for most of these), and different apps that these models are available through. There’s the dedicated Gemini app, the voice assistant in things like Pixel phones and watches, as well as Gemini tools built into apps like Google Docs, Gmail, or Search.

I’ll do my best to specify which features are coming to what products, but keep in mind that sometimes Google tends to announce the same thing a few times.

Agent Mode is coming to Gemini, Search, and more

The Gemini app is getting a new Agent Mode that can perform tasks for you while you do something else. Google showed off an example of asking Gemini to find apartments in a city. The app then searches listings online, filters them by the criteria you set, and can offer to set up apartment tours for you.

The most interesting aspect of this is that Google pitches this as a task you can have Gemini repeat regularly. So, for example, if you want Gemini to search for new apartments every week, the app can repeat the process, continuing with the information in previous iterations of the search.

Agent Mode is similarly coming to Google Search for certain requests. Google uses the example of asking for tickets to an upcoming event. Google scours ticket listing sites, cross-references against your preferences, and presents the results.

Gmail will pretend to be you when it replies to your emails

Gmail has had smart replies for a while, but they can sound pretty generic (without intervention, anyway). It’s a dead giveaway to your recipient that you’re not really paying attention. To help you get away with quietly ghosting your friends, Gmail will soon be able to tailor its responses to you by referring to your past emails and even Drive documents.

Google uses the example of a friend asking how you planned your recent vacation, a common thing we all email each other all the time. In this case, Gmail can draft a response based on your email history, with the advice you would be likely to give, and even write it how the AI thinks you would write it.

Thought summaries will summarize how AI summarizes its thought process

Yes, you read that right. AI “reasoning” models typically work by taking your query, generating text that breaks it down into smaller parts, sending those parts to the AI again, then carrying out each step. That’s a lot of instructions happening behind the scenes on your behalf. Usually, reasoning models (including Gemini) will have a little drop down to show you the steps it took in the interim.

If even that is too much reading for you, Gemini will now summarize the summary of the thought process. In theory, this is to make it easier to understand why Gemini arrived at the answers it gives you.

Native audio output will whisper to you (in your nightmares)

This is technically a new feature of the Gemini API, which means developers can build on these tools in their apps. Native audio output will let developers generate natural-sounding speech. In its demo, Google showed off voices that could switch between multiple languages, which was pretty cool.

What isn’t so cool, however, is the model can also whisper. I do not yet know what the practical use-cases are for an AI-generated voice that can whisper, but I do know I won’t be able to get it out of my head for a week. At best.

Jules will fix your code’s bugs in the background while you work

Last year, Google announced Jules, a coding agent that can help you with your code, similar to Github’s Copilot. Now, the public beta of Jules is available. Google says Jules can fix bugs while you’re working on other tasks, bump dependency versions, and even provide an audio summary of the changes that it’s made to your code.

Google Search will let you virtually try on clothes while shopping online

I’m not great at visualizing what a piece of clothing will look like on my particular body, so this new try-on feature might actually be useful. Google is launching a Search Labs experiment that lets you upload a full-length photo of yourself that Google will alter to show what the clothing will look like on you.

The company is also integrating shopping tools that can buy items for you and even track for the best price. It will then be able to buy stuff for you via Google Pay, using your saved payment and shipping info. This one isn’t available quite yet, and frankly we’d want to learn a little more about how the process works and how to prevent purchases you don’t want before we’d recommend using it.

New Veo and Imagen models will generate audio and video

Video is, definitionally, a series of images played at a fast enough speed to convey a sense of motion. With that definition, I can confidently say that the demos of Google’s new Veo 3 model does, in fact, show video. Whether that video is any good is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.

Google seems to be betting on users finding the video generated by Veo 3 (and, by association, the images from Imagen 4) to be worthwhile, because the company is also building a video editing suite around it. Flow is a video editing tool that ostensibly lets editors extend and re-generate clips to get the right look.

Google also says that Veo 3 can generate sounds to go along with its video. For example, in the owl scene linked above, Veo also generates forest sound effects. We’ll have to see how it generates these elements (can you edit individual sounds distinctly, for example?) but for now the demos speak for themselves. Veo 3 is now available in the Gemini app for Ultra subscribers.

Sometimes you need to quickly convert an image, audio file, or video, so you search for an online tool. The problem: many online conversion tools aren’t safe to use, putting you at risk from malware or mining your data.

Vert isn’t like that. This is an open source, browser-based tool that can convert the most common image, audio, video, and document formats. It isn’t clogged with ads and you don’t need to create an account to use it. More importantly: the tool works (almost)entirely in your browser, meaning your files are never actually uploaded anywhere (save for video files, as I’ll explain below). I tested this by opening the website, turning off my WiFi, and converting a large batch of images and documents. It worked.

Converting files without uploading them is great from a privacy perspective, but it’s also faster—you’re not waiting for files to transfer back and forth from your machine to a server.

To get started with Vert, head to the website and add the files you need to covert by dragging them from your file manager or using the upload button. (The homepage lists all of the supported file types, if you’re curious—there are more than five dozen of them.) Next, you can choose a format and run the conversion, then click the download button to grab the converted file.

Credit: Justin Pot

You can alternatively convert all of your files to a single format and grab them all in a single ZIP file. Note that this will only work if all files dropped into the tool are of the same type—that is, video, image, document, or audio files. A mix of images and videos can’t all be converted at once, for example, because there’s no one format you could convert them to.

It’s also worth noting that video files cannot be converted without uploading them to a server, mostly because of how resource intensive doing so in a browser would be. The tool will warn you before uploading anything. According to the website, videos are deleted from the server after you download your file or an hour after you upload them, whichever comes first. It’s possible to set up your own server, if this really concerns you.

I think Vert is a very easy to use tool. I tested it with an EPUB file and was able to make both a Word document and a website. I also tested it with various images, audio files, and videos—it all worked well, and quickly. There are a few caveats. PDF files are not supported, for importing or exporting. And some of my older Word documents resulted in error messages, which was odd but not entirely unexpected (the files in question were over 20 years old). Overall, though, this is a very handy tool—one well worth bookmarking.

Google has dug back into its past and introduced its latest take on smart glasses during I/O 2025. Glasses with Android XR brings Gemini AI to smart glasses thanks to an expanded partnership between Google and Samsung. These smart glasses can sync with a smartphone to access apps, and they’re equipped with speakers and an optional in-lens display for privately viewing information.

And for those that remember the less-than-stylish old Google Glass frames, this iteration seems more focused on real world wearability and style. Google is also working with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker as inaugural partners for providing the frames.

The highlight of the I/O presentation of the glasses attempted to do a live translation. Shahram Izadi and Nishtha Bhatia spoke Farsi and Hindi to each other as the XR frames provided real-time translation into English. The demo fell victim to the curse of AI misbehaving during a live show, but there was a brief moment where each of their glasses did successfully work as hoped.

In addition to that demo, Bhatia also showcased how the Gemini assistant could work with the XR glasses, asking it questions about images she was seeing backstage at the theater and calling up information about the cafe where she got coffee before the show.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/google-demos-android-xr-glasses-at-io-live-translation-191510280.html?src=rss

Google today unveiled significant upgrades to its Gemini 2.5 AI models, introducing an experimental “Deep Think” reasoning mode for 2.5 Pro that allows the model to consider multiple hypotheses before responding. The new capability has achieved impressive results on complex benchmarks, scoring highly on the 2025 USA Mathematical Olympiad and leading on LiveCodeBench, a competition-level coding benchmark. Gemini 2.5 Pro also tops the WebDev Arena leaderboard with an ELO score of 1420.

“Based on Google’s experience with AlphaGo, AI model responses improve when they’re given more time to think,” said Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind. The enhanced Gemini 2.5 Flash, Google’s efficiency-focused model, has improved across reasoning, multimodality, and code benchmarks while using 20-30% fewer tokens. Both models now feature native audio capabilities with support for 24+ languages, thought summaries, and “thinking budgets” that let developers control token usage. Gemini 2.5 Flash is currently available in preview with general availability expected in early June, while Deep Think remains limited to trusted testers during safety evaluations.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There are some real-world use cases out there where AI could genuinely be a useful tool that doesn’t just act as a shortcut to something you could do on your own. Case in point: Google’s new ‘try it on’ feature, which allows you to see how various outfits look on your body over your phone or computer. The company announced the feature at Google I/O 2025, and it uses a photo you upload to generate images of you in different clothes. This feature is available via Google Search Labs starting today.

How to use Google’s ‘try it on’ feature

To try out this new feature, go to Google’s Search Labs page, sign in to your account, and opt in to the “try on” experiment. The next time you’re using Google to shop, you’ll see a ‘try it on’ icon next to different product listings. Tap this to get started.

Google will ask you to upload a full-length photo of yourself, and once you do, the AI will generate images of you wearing the outfits you’re checking out. It’s worth noting that this will work best if you upload a photo of you that’s been shot in good lighting and while you’re wearing fitted clothing. Otherwise, Google’s AI’s will have a hard time mapping out your body’s proportions, which may distort the final results. Once you’ve seen how you look in various outfits, you can share those photos with others for their opinions, or go right ahead and buy the clothes you liked.

The catch here is that you’re relying on the product photos themselves to be accurate. No matter how good Google’s AI is, it can’t really show you how something will look on you if the listing has misleading or inaccurate photos. 

Ask Google’s AI to track prices and buy products for you

During a demo at Google I/O 2025 showing off the “try it on” feature, the company also revealed that you” eventually be able to ask Google’s AI to buy products for you. Once you’ve selected an outfit you like, you can ask Google’s shopping AI to track its price. When it hits the price you’re looking for, Google will send you an alert, and you can ask the AI to buy it for you using information in your Google Wallet (or you can buy it manually).

Google is calling this feature “agentic checkout,” and the company said it’ll roll out in the coming months. 

The last time we talked about 23andMe’s bankruptcy sale, we suggested you might want to delete your genetic data from the site, since we didn’t know who would end up owning it. Now, a buyer has been announced, and they’re promising to “prioritize the privacy, security and ethical use” of customer data and to keep offering the company’s services uninterrupted. This is all—probably—good news. I’m feeling cautiously optimistic, anyway.

Regeneron will be 23andMe’s new owner

23andMe’s new buyer, paying $256 million for the company’s assets, is Regeneron. Regeneron is a biotech company perhaps best known for developing an antibody treatment for COVID early in the pandemic. (Donald Trump was given a dose when he first came down with the virus.) That treatment never made it all the way to market, but the company does market other antibody- and protein-based treatments for conditions like Ebola virus, genetic disorders, and cancers. 

Regeneron’s website states that they “are shaping the next frontier of medicine with data-powered insights from the Regeneron Genetics Center® and pioneering genetic medicine platforms, enabling us to identify innovative targets and complementary approaches to potentially treat or cure diseases.” 

That explains why they’re interested in 23andMe, since it provides a trove of genetic data. Many 23andMe users had also signed up to provide more of their personal medical information for research purposes (this was a separate thing that you would have had to opt in to provide). 

Regeneron says they plan to “continue all consumer genome services uninterrupted,” rather than shut down the company. Lemonaid health, also owned by 23andMe, is not included in the sale.

What this means for your data and privacy

Importantly, Regeneron says they will respect the company’s privacy policy (“and applicable laws”) and the 23andMe press release also says that Regeneron will not be making any changes to the privacy policy. 

The sale, which still needs to be approved by a bankruptcy court, will also include a court-appointed “consumer privacy ombudsman” whose job is to make sure that everyone’s data is treated appropriately. Regeneron says that they’re ready to work with this ombudsman and will detail all their privacy-related plans. 

While we don’t yet know what the future holds, this all has me tentatively optimistic. Yes, a corporation has your data and intends to profit from it; but that was also true of 23andMe in its heyday. The policies about privacy and consent that you agreed to when contributing your data will still be in effect. 

The 23andMe community seems to be cautiously optimistic. In a r/23andme Reddit thread about the sale, one redditor, who identifies themselves as an academic biomedical researcher, says “I would rather [Regeneron] have my data than an insurance provider or just random [venture capitalist].” Another redditor says, “So there really is not [a] best case scenario here, there’s just ‘wait and see’ and bad. And this is more of a ‘wait and see’ than a bad.” And another says “I know people side eye big pharma (rightfully in most circumstances) but this is a much better outcome than many other situations.” 

The popular Amazon Fire Stick HD is on sale for $20 as part of a Memorial Day promotion. This is a discount of 43 percent, as the usual price is $35.

This particular stick made our list of the best streaming devices, and we particularly recommend it for the budget-conscious. The Fire Stick HD supports 1080p streaming at 60 FPS and includes an Amazon remote that can control the power and volume on the actual TV. This is something the previous iteration, the Fire TV Stick Lite, couldn’t do. The days of having to navigate multiple remotes are over.

The remote also integrates with Alexa for voice control. Amazon’s Fire TV interface supports all of the major streaming services, including Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu and all the rest. The Fire TV Stick HD ships with the updated interface that includes user profiles and a simpler UI.

On the downside, this is a streaming stick for HD content. It cannot stream stuff in 4K. Also, Amazon’s interface is heavy on the ads, especially when compared to rival platforms. Still, the price is right. We enjoyed this streaming stick at the original cost, so we definitely recommend it at $20. Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K Max is also on sale for $40, which is a discount of 33 percent. 

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/our-favorite-budget-streaming-stick-drops-to-only-20-for-memorial-day-185649504.html?src=rss

Microsoft is updating Windows 11 with a set of new encryption algorithms that can withstand future attacks from quantum computers in an attempt to jump-start what’s likely to be the most formidable and important technology transition in modern history.

Computers that are based on the physics of quantum mechanics don’t yet exist outside of sophisticated labs, but it’s well-established science that they eventually will. Instead of processing data in the binary state of zeros and ones, quantum computers run on qubits, which encompass myriad states all at once. This new capability promises to bring about new discoveries of unprecedented scale in a host of fields, including metallurgy, chemistry, drug discovery, and financial modeling.

Averting the cryptopocalypse

One of the most disruptive changes quantum computing will bring is the breaking of some of the most common forms of encryption, specifically, the RSA cryptosystem and those based on elliptic curves. These systems are the workhorses that banks, governments, and online services around the world have relied on for more than four decades to keep their most sensitive data confidential. RSA and elliptic curve encryption keys securing web connections would require millions of years to be cracked using today’s computers. A quantum computer could crack the same keys in a matter of hours or minutes.

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Google has begun rolling out AI Mode to every Search user in the US. The company announced the expansion during its I/O 2025 conference. Google first began previewing AI Mode with testers in its Labs program at the start of March. Since then, it has been gradually rolling out the feature to more people, including in recent weeks regular Search users. At its keynote today, Google shared a number of updates coming to AI Mode as well, including some new tools for shopping, as well as the ability to compare ticket prices for you and create custom charts and graphs for queries on finance and sports. 

For the uninitiated, AI Mode is a chatbot built directly into Google Search. It lives in a separate tab, and was designed by the company to tackle more complicated queries than people have historically used its search engine to answer. For instance, you can use AI Mode to generate a comparison between different fitness trackers. Before today, the chatbot was powered by Gemini 2.0. Now it’s running a custom version of Gemini 2.5. What’s more, Google plans to bring many of AI Mode’s capabilities to other parts of the Search experience.

“AI Mode is where we’ll first bring Gemini’s frontier capabilities, and it’s also a glimpse of what’s to come,” the company wrote in a blog post published during the event. “As we get feedback, we’ll graduate many features and capabilities from AI Mode right into the core search experience in AI Overviews.”

Looking to the future, Google plans to bring Deep Search, an offshoot of its Deep Research mode, to AI Mode. Google was among the first companies to debut the tool in December. Since then, most AI companies, including OpenAI, have gone on to offer their take on Deep Research, which you can use to prompt Gemini and other chatbots to take extra time to create a comprehensive report on a subject. With today’s announcement, Google is making the tool available in a place where more of its users are likely to encounter it.

Another new feature that’s coming to AI Mode builds on the work Google did with Project Mariner, the web-surfing AI agent the company began previewing with “trusted testers” at the end of last year. This addition gives AI Mode the ability to complete tasks for you on the web. For example, you can ask it to find two affordable tickets for the next MLB game in your city. AI Mode will compare “hundreds of potential” tickets for you and return with a few of the best options. From there, you can complete a purchase without having done the comparison work yourself.

“This will start with event tickets, restaurant reservations and local appointments,” says Google. “And we’ll be working with companies like Ticketmaster, StubHub, Resy and Vagaro to create a seamless and helpful experience.”

AI Mode will also soon include the ability to generate custom charts and graphics tailored to your specific queries. At the same time, AI Mode will be more personalized in the near future, with Google introducing an optional feature allowing the tool to draw their past searches. The company will also give people the option to connect their other Google apps to AI Mode, starting with Gmail, for even more granular recommendations.

As mentioned above, Google is adding a suite of shopping features to AI Mode. Engadget has a separate post dedicated to the Shopping features Google announced today, but the short of it is that AI Mode will be able to narrow down products for you and complete purchases on your behalf – with your permission, of course.

All of the new AI Mode features Google previewed today will be available to Labs users first before they roll out more broadly.

Update, May 20 2025, 2:45PM ET: This story has been updated to preview in the intro some of the updates coming to AI Mode.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/google-is-rolling-out-ai-mode-to-everyone-in-the-us-174917628.html?src=rss

At Google I/O 2025, the company announced that Gemini Live Camera and Screen Sharing is rolling out to iPhone starting today. This means that you’ll be able to use your phone’s camera to live stream a feed to Gemini, and have a conversation about with the AI agent about what it sees. This feature has been available on Android for some time, but it’s coming to iPhone for the first time starting today.

This could be useful for many things, such as showing Gemini a video of something in your neighborhood and asking it to identify the item. In theory, you could ask it to identify cars, trees, or important landmarks in your neighborhood, or ask it general knowledge questions about historical landmarks while you’re on holiday. Unfortunately though, Google chose an unbelievably cringey video to demonstrate what the Gemini Live Camera can do. 

It featured a person being deliberately obtuse and asking exceptionally…dumb…questions to the AI, presumably to demonstrate that Gemini isn’t a complete idiot (or, as Google said, that it’s not afraid to tell you when you’re wrong). They pointed the camera at a garbage truck while calling it a “convertible,” but Gemini was able to clarify that it was indeed, a garbage truck. They repeated the same routine by calling a light pole a “tall skinny building” and a shadow “someone following” them. If you were to only go by the demo to figure out the extent of Gemini Live’s Camera Sharing capabilities, it’d be pretty hard to know how it holds up to stress testing.

Fortunately, there are much better examples of what you can do with Gemini Live Camera on the Android blog. You can ask Gemini Live for advice on a color palette for your home, gift ideas, and much more. As long as the AI doesn’t hallucinate, this could a genuinely useful tool, since it also works with screen sharing, too. Just… don’t ask it if your shadow is a real person. 

Recently rediscovered in Mattel’s archives and remastered, this is the original 5-minute pilot episode ‘Down The Mineshaft’ for Thomas The Tank Engine and Friends. The pilot, narrated by Ringo Starr and filmed in 1983, was later remade for use as the show’s 25th episode after executives confirmed that yes, this Thomas The Tank Engine thing is, in fact, a gold mine. Since then there have been “more than 500 episodes, 207 books and 20 movies.” Damn, talk about the little engine that could! Thomas is hauling money straight to the bank. Now, are you thinking what I’m thinking? “Does it involve a train robbery?” I’ll get some bandanas, you start practicing riding a horse and poking a train in the eyes with a stick.

Google’s Smart Replies are getting an AI-themed, and to me, slightly creepy update. At its Google I/O 2025 keynote, Google announced a new feature called Personalized Smart Replies. This feature uses Gemini AI, alongside the data in your Gmail and Google Drive, to reply to emails in a way that sounds like you. Google promises is can write like you would, using your tone and writing style, as learned by your Gmail history.

With this new update, the Smart Replies option that shows up when you reply to an email will be a lot more powerful and a lot more contextual. On stage, Google CEO Sundar Pichai used planning a trip as an example. Let’s say a friend emails you asking for details about a trip you two are going on. To manually collate everything you need to send, like your hotel stays, driving plans, rest stops, and restaurant recommendations would take a lot of time.

Instead, you can use the Personalized Smart Replies feature, which has access to all your emails, your Google Maps location history, and your photos and files in Google Drive, to do the work for you. It can collate hotel bookings from your email, locations from Google Drive history, and present it all in an email that matches your writing style.

According to an interview with The Verge, Google Workspace’s VP of product, Blake Barnes, says that the new Smart Replies feature will be available in English at first, on the web, Android, and iOS. It will roll out in Alpha in Google Labs in July, and will be available for public use in Q3 of this year. Unfortunately, it will be only available for paid subscribers at first. Barnes sees the feature eventually rolling out to all Gmail users, but there’s no timeline for that yet.

Of course, like with all AI, there’s a risk that what Gemini generates might have elements of hallucination, so I’d recommend checking your replies before sending them. Plus, the feature will definitely need access to a lot of personal data to work. I’ll keep an eye out for how to protect your data as the feature comes out, and update accordingly.

Google has just announced a new $250 per month AI Ultra plan for people who want unlimited access to its most advanced machine learning features. Yes, you read that right. It means the new subscription is $50 more expensive than the already pricey ChatGPT Pro and Claude Max plans from OpenAI and Anthropic.

For $250, you’re getting early access to new models like Veo 3, and unlimited usage of features like Flow (the new AI film-making app the company announced today) and the compute-intensive Deep Research. In the coming weeks, Google will also roll out Deep Think to AI Ultra users, which is the new enhanced reasoning mode that is part of its Gemini 2.5 Pro model. Subscribers can also look forward to access to Project Mariner, Google’s web-surfing agent, and Gemini within Chrome, plus all the usual places where you can find the chatbot like Gmail and Docs.

Google is partly justifying the high cost of AI Ultra by touting the inclusion of YouTube Premium and 30TB of cloud storage across Google Photos, Drive and Gmail. On its own, a YouTube Premium subscription would cost you $14 per month, and Google doesn’t offer 30TB of cloud storage separately. The closest comparison would be Google One, which includes a Premium tier that comes with 2TB of storage for $10 per month. As another incentive to sign up for AI Ultra, Google is giving new subscribers 50 percent off their first three months.

As of today, Google is also revamping its existing AI Premium plan. The subscription, which will be known as Google AI Pro moving forward, now includes the Flow app and early access to Gemini in Chrome. Google says the new benefits will come to US subscribers first, with availability in other countries to follow.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/google-wants-250-per-month-in-return-for-its-new-ai-ultra-plan-180248513.html?src=rss

It’s that time again, for Google to announce that real-time translation has come to one of its communication apps. This time, it’s Google Meet, which can translate between English and Spanish as you speak in a video call. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s not the first time Google has announced something like this.

Google Translate has had features that let you speak to someone in another language in real time for a while. For example, back in 2019, there was a real-time translation feature called Interpreter Mode built into Google Assistant. It’s also been possible on Pixel phones for a while (and even Samsung phones). Most of these, however, have been either text-to-text, or speech-to-text. You can use the Google Translate app for a speech-to-speech experience, but like with Google Assistant’s Interpreter Mode, that only works in person.

So, what’s different here? Well, during its I/O keynote, Google demoed two users in a video chat speaking in their native languages. Google Meet then translates and speaks the translation back in a relatively human-sounding voice. This new feature is available now for Google Workspace subscribers (plans start at $7/month), but unfortunately, it’s not in the free version. On the plus side, additional languages are promised to start coming out in just a few weeks.

While I haven’t tested it out yet, it does seem to be a more convenient way to access a feature that you might otherwise have to hack together with another tab, or by opening your phone and holding it up to a speaker. Plus, it can be a bit more natural to hear translations spoken out for you, rather than having to rely on translated captions. I do wonder whether it can keep up with the natural speed and flow of a conversation, though—nobody likes to feel interrupted.

Google is adding AI-powered live translation to Meet, enabling participants to converse in their native languages while the system automatically translates in real time with the speaker’s original vocal characteristics intact. Initially launching with English-Spanish translation this week, the technology processes speech with minimal delay, preserving tone, cadence, and expressions — creating an effect similar to professional dubbing but with the speaker’s own voice, the company announced at its developer conference Tuesday.

In some testings, WSJ found occasional limitations: initial sentences sometimes appear garbled before smoothing out, context-dependent words like “match” might translate imperfectly (rendered as “fight” in Spanish), and the slight delay can create confusing crosstalk with multiple participants. Google plans to extend support to Italian, German, and Portuguese in the coming weeks. The feature is rolling out to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers now, with enterprise availability planned later this year. The company says that no meeting data is stored when translation is active, and conversation audio isn’t used to train AI models.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.