Author: News Room

It was really easy getting Google’s Gemini app to make an image of a second shooter at Dealey Plaza, the White House ablaze, and Mickey Mouse flying a plane into the Twin Towers. We asked and it complied. There were few filters or guardrails, another sign that the battle over generative AI content moderation and copyright enforcement is not even close to being over.Gemini, which powers the newly enhanced Nano Banana Pro image generator and editor, is ordinarily heavily filtered to prevent exactly this kind of thing from happening. While there’s no official list of banned content, requests for sexually…

Two years ago, “BBL Drizzy” was the AI music shot heard around the world: a song with vocals that sounded like Drake bubbled up from nowhere and launched what was shaping up to be a battle of artistry, likeness, and of course, copyright. The big three labels — Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Records — sued AI companies Udio and Suno for copyright infringement “en masse”; they staged public spats with TikTok over issues including AI content on the platform; and they began spinning up AI detection tools to keep tabs on how their music moved…

Google set the bar high for Gemini 3. It’s promising a bunch of upgraded features in its shiny new AI model, from generating code that produces interactive 3D visualizations to “agentic” capabilities that complete tasks. But as we’ve seen in the past, what’s advertised doesn’t always match up to reality. So we put some of Google’s claims to the test and found that Gemini 3 delivers reasonably well — with caveats.Google announced the Gemini 3 family of models earlier this week, with the flagship Gemini 3 Pro rolling out to users first. Gemini 3 Pro is supposed to come with…

Federal prosecutors have charged four people with illegally smuggling Nvidia GPUs and HP supercomputers with Nvidia GPUs from the US to China, according to a court filing spotted by Court Watch. The US government has placed restrictions that prevent Nvidia from selling its most powerful chips for AI training to China, but Chinese companies like DeepSeek have still created competitive AI models. After DeepSeek released its R1 model earlier this year, Scale CEO Alexander Wang said he thinks China has far more of Nvidia’s H100 AI chips than people may think, despite the export controls, and operations like this may…

Meta’s impressive, photorealistic digital replicas of real places built using its “Hyperscape” capture tech, which uses the cameras on a Quest 3 or Quest 3S VR headset to scan a room, have so far been solitary spaces. If you wanted to visit a virtual version of a room in your house (or of Gordon Ramsay’s home kitchen), you could only do it on your own. But beginning this week, Meta is rolling out the ability to share links that will let other people visit Hyperscape rooms with you in a Quest 3 or 3S VR headset or via the Meta…

I gave Google’s new Nano Banana Pro a try, and it immediately took my clothes off. I didn’t ask it to, but the AI model evidently decided my greetings card would look better with more skin.Nano Banana Pro is, as the name suggests, aimed at professionals. Powered by Gemini 3, it’s effectively an upgrade of the company’s popular image generation and editing tool that went viral in a social media trend that turned selfies into hyperrealistic 3D figurines. Google says it lets you create higher quality images that you can print, render legible text onto pictures, and blend multiple images…

Microsoft is upgrading its Advanced Paste tool in PowerToys for Windows 11, allowing you to use an on-device AI model to power some of its features. With the 0.96 update, you can route requests through Microsoft’s Foundry Local tool or the open-source Ollama, both of which run AI models on your device’s neural processing unit (NPU) instead of connecting to the cloud.That means you won’t need to purchase API credits to perform certain actions, like having AI translate or summarize the text copied to your clipboard. Plus, you can keep your data on your device.Along with support for on-device AI,…

OpenAI is widely rolling out group chats inside ChatGPT, allowing you to invite up to 20 other people to your conversation with the AI chatbot. The feature is now available globally to all logged-in users, following a short pilot earlier this month.OpenAI positions the feature as a way to collaborate with friends, family members, or coworkers when doing things like organizing a dinner, creating travel plans, and drafting an outline — all with ChatGPT on board.You create a group chat by selecting the “people” icon in the top-right corner of the ChatGPT app. ChatGPT will then copy your existing chat…

If you’ve been waiting for some relief after Sonos raised its prices earlier this year in response to US tariffs, Black Friday presents a rare opportunity. With many products on sale for their lowest price to date for Black Friday, and the Sonos app being in far better shape than it was a year ago, it’s a great time to pick up a Sonos gadget.If you’re looking to upgrade your home theater setup ahead of the holidays, Sonos’ entire soundbar lineup is heavily discounted through December 1st, as are smart speakers like the Sonos Era 100 and portable Roam 2.…

Microsoft will start rolling out its new Xbox Full Screen Experience (FSE) to Windows-based handhelds on November 21st. The full screen mode for the Xbox app originally shipped on the Xbox Ally devices last month, providing a more console-like navigation experience on top of Windows 11.While Microsoft released a preview to MSI Claw models last month, it’s now making the Xbox Full Screen Experience generally available to all Windows-based handhelds. Microsoft is also expanding Xbox FSE “to more Windows 11 PC form factors through the Xbox and Windows Insider programs.”The Xbox FSE doesn’t load the full Windows desktop or a…

Amazon Prime Video is testing another new generative AI-powered feature to help catch you up on a show you’ve been watching before starting a new season. Video Recaps uses AI to identify a show’s important plot points and create a short but “theatrical-quality” summary video that combines a selection of clips with music, dialogue, and narration.The Video Recaps feature is being rolled out starting this week in beta on some English-language Prime Original series including Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, Upload, Bosch, The Rig, and Fallout (ahead of season two’s premiere on December 17th, 2025). Amazon says available recaps, including the…

Suno, the AI music startup being sued by the big three major labels, the RIAA, and even some indie acts for illegally training its model on copyrighted material, just raised $250 million (which might help pay its legal bills). What caught my eye in the Wall Street Journal article about the funding round and the company’s insane $2.45 billion valuation, however, was Suno co-founder and Chief Executive Mikey Shulman being quoted as saying:“There is a really big future for music where way more people are doing it in a really active way, and where it has a much more valuable…