Google co-founders may be leaving California

Sergey Brin and Larry Page appear to be reducing their presence in California, the state where they co-founded Google. According to The New York Times, in December, 15 limited liability companies overseeing Brin’s investments and interests were terminated or converted…

Google removes AI Overviews for certain medical queries

Following an investigation that found Google AI Overviews offering misleading information in response to certain health-related queries, the company appears to have removed the AI Overviews for some of those specific searches. The investigation initially reported that when users asked…

Indonesia and Malaysia block Grok over non-consensual, sexualized deepfakes

Officials from Indonesia and Malaysia have announced they are temporarily blocking access to xAI’s chatbot Grok. These are the most aggressive moves so far from government officials responding to a flood of sexualized, AI-generated imagery. The problematic content often depicts…

Google announces a new protocol to facilitate commerce using AI agents

Google has announced a new open standard called the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) for AI agent-based shopping. The announcement was made at the National Retail Federation conference. Developed in collaboration with companies like Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart, the…

Wing to expand drone delivery to another 150 Walmart stores

Wing, the company owned by Alphabet that delivers groceries, over-the-counter medicine, and hot lattes, is expanding its partnership with Walmart for the second time in less than a year. The two companies announced plans on Sunday to bring the on-demand…

SpaceX gets FCC approval to launch 7,500 more Starlink satellites

The Federal Communications Commission announced Friday that it has given SpaceX approval to launch another 7,500 of its second-generation Starlink satellites. This brings the total number of approved satellites worldwide to 15,000. Beyond simply allowing SpaceX to launch more satellites…

Indonesia blocks Grok over non-consensual, sexualized deepfakes

Indonesian officials announced on Saturday that they are temporarily blocking access to xAI’s chatbot, Grok. This move represents one of the most aggressive government responses yet to a flood of AI-generated sexualized imagery. These images, often depicting real women and…

I met a lot of weird robots at CES — here are the most memorable

CES has always been a robot extravaganza, and this year’s event saw the announcement of several important robotics developments. This included the new production-ready debut of Atlas, the humanoid from Boston Dynamics. The showroom floor was also filled with robots,…