Amazon is rolling out Matter Casting, which lets customers cast directly from supported streaming apps on iOS and Android to Fire TV and Echo Show 15 devices. Viewers can begin watching a movie or browse for a Prime Video show on their phone, then cast it to a compatible Fire TV or Echo Show screen. Amazon called the CES announcement “an industry-first demonstration of implementing Matter Casting,” referring to the open-source Matter standard protocol for connectivity between smart home and IoT devices. Amazon is a founding member and active contributor to the Matter standard. Continue reading CES: Amazon Offers Casting from Prime Video App to Devices

Santa Monica-based AI startup Rabbit Inc. is offering a virtual assistant in the form of a pocket device that the company says can improve upon mobile phones by learning to use your apps and running them for you. Heavily publicized at CES 2024 in Las Vegas this week, the initial run of the company’s r-1 units had as of Tuesday sold out at $199 each. The retro-looking device with a 2.88-inch touchscreen is continuing to take preorders; shipments are scheduled to begin in late March. The company says its proprietary Rabbit OS is the first operating system built on a Large Action Model (LAM) foundation. LAMs are LLMs trained on datasets of actions and consequences. Continue reading CES: Rabbit Launches AI-Powered Pocket Controller for Apps

Xreal, the Chinese XR company formerly known as Nreal, debuted its Air 2 Ultra AR glasses at CES 2024 this week in Las Vegas, with the $699 item scheduled to ship to U.S. buyers in March, crowding the February 2 release date Apple just announced for its $3,500 Vision Pro mixed reality headset. Though currently aimed at developers, who can preorder now, the Air 2 Ultra will be available for purchase online from Xreal to anyone in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and the UK, in addition to China and the United States. Continue reading CES: Xreal Offers Spatial Computing with Air 2 Ultra for $699

Apple has set a February 2 release date for the much-anticipated Vision Pro mixed reality headset, with preorders to begin January 19. The $3,500 device (plus $149 for prescription lenses) will be available to U.S. buyers at all Apple Store locations and through the Apple Store online. News of the company’s first new product since the Apple Watch in 2015 sent Apple shares up 7.74 percent by market close, even though the device is at this point (and price) aimed at enterprise customers. The headset has 256 GB of storage and runs on Apple’s new visionOS, the company’s first spatial operating system. Continue reading Apple Vision Pro Headset Available to U.S. Market February 2

Meta Platforms has reportedly been investing billions of dollars each quarter in developing the metaverse, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg has described as the future of the company. Although sales of VR headsets and AR glasses dropped nearly 40 percent in the U.S. (according to research firm Circana), Meta continues to tout the intersection between AI and the metaverse. “The progress we made in 2023 means generative AI is making its way into the heart of the world’s most popular apps, mixed reality is now at the core of a mass market headset, and Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses will let AI see the world from our perspective for the first time,” explained Andrew Bosworth, CTO and head of Meta’s Reality Labs. Continue reading Meta Platforms Continues Its Pursuit of AI and the Metaverse

The Federal Trade Commission has proposed new rules to strengthen the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), further limiting the collection of children’s data, particularly those who seek to monetize the information through targeted advertising. FTC Chair Lina Khan says the proposed changes aim to prevent tech firms “from outsourcing their responsibilities to parents” when it comes to ensuring privacy for children’s data. The FTC says it has issued fines totaling hundreds of millions of dollars to Google’s YouTube, and to a lesser extent, ByteDance’s TikTok, for mishandling the data of children 13-years-old and younger. Continue reading FTC Seeks to Bolster COPPA So Firms Can’t Surveil Children

Microsoft has added generative music capabilities to its Copilot chatbot by integrating a plugin from Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup Suno AI. Microsoft calls Suno “a leader in AI music technology, pioneering the ability to generate complete songs — lyrics, instrumentals, and singing voices — from a single sentence.” Suno offers a generative tool on Discord. The Copilot plugin is specific to Microsoft, though the biggest difference is it will only generate one song per prompt as opposed to the app offered directly by Suno, which provides two. The songs are generally a minute or two in length, and come with lyric sheets. Continue reading Suno Plugin Gives Microsoft Copilot a Music Creation Feature

Crypto ID project Worldcoin, co-founded by Sam Altman, is integrating with Microsoft’s “Minecraft,” as well as Reddit, Telegram, Shopify and Mercado Libre. Concurrently, the company is debuting World ID 2.0 in Mexico and Singapore. World ID 2.0 enhances the privacy features of Worldcoin’s “digital passport for humanness.” Rolled out in July, World ID provides identify verification, claiming to allow easy distinction between bots and humans online. “Retailers are losing an estimated $100 billion per year from return fraud, bots and coupon stacking,” the Worldcoin Foundation said in making the announcement. Continue reading Worldcoin Brings Privacy to Shopify, Reddit, Telegram, Others

In the wake of increasing pressure from European regulators, Adobe and Figma announced they are terminating their proposed merger agreement. California-based Adobe had planned to purchase Figma’s cloud-based product design platform for $20 billion, a proposal that was 15 months into the regulatory review process. However, the two companies eventually agreed there was no possibility of obtaining regulatory approval from the European Commission and the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). According to a regulatory filing, the decision to cancel the deal will require Adobe to pay Figma a reverse termination fee of $1 billion in cash. Continue reading Adobe and Figma Call Off Their Proposed $20 Billion Merger

Comcast is now making Xumo Stream Boxes available to its Xfinity broadband customers. New customers can get one Xumo Box for a $15 activation fee and no monthly charge. Additional units will be billed at $5 per month, the company says. The Xumo Stream Box comes preloaded with hundreds of streaming apps. In addition to NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service, popular favorites like Disney+, Hulu, Max, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube are on the menu. Free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels are also packaged in, with 20 options from Xfinity Stream and more than 300 from Xumo Play. Continue reading Comcast Makes Its Xumo Boxes Available for One-Time Fee

Snapchat+ is rolling out new artificial intelligence features that let subscribers use text prompts to create generative AI images to share with friends. In addition, the Dreams feature, which creates generative AI selfies, is now able to add your friends to those photos. Snapchat+ subscribers get one pack of 8 Dreams per month as part of their $3.99 monthly fee. An onscreen button labeled “AI” lets subscribers access the AI image generator to choose from a menu of prompts (including “sunny day at the beach” and “planet made of cheese”) or they can enter their own descriptions. Continue reading GenAI Lets Snapchat+ Subscribers Create and Share Images

Google is rolling out Gemini to developers, enticing them with tools including AI Studio, an easy-to-navigate Web-based platform that will serve as a portal to the multi-tiered Gemini ecosystem, beginning with Gemini Pro, with Gemini Ultra to come next year. The service aims to allow developers to quickly create prompts and Gemini-powered chatbots, providing access to API keys to integrate them into apps. They’ll also be able to access code, should projects require a full featured IDE. The site is essentially a revamped version of what was formerly Google’s MakerSuite. Continue reading Google Debuts Turnkey Gemini AI Studio for Developing Apps

Teenagers in the U.S. are finding it hard to tear themselves away from YouTube and TikTok, according to a new study of 13- to 17-year-olds by the Pew Research Center. Pew found that “nearly 1 in 5 saying they use the video-streaming apps ‘almost constantly.’” YouTube topped the chart for the second consecutive year, with 93 percent, “roughly 9 in 10 teens” saying they regularly use YouTube. That far outstrips TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram, which manage to creep to about 70 percent among a subset of teens 15 to 17. Among the total teen sample, that falls to 63 percent for TikTok, 60 percent for Snapchat and 59 percent for Instagram, according to Pew. Continue reading Pew: U.S. Teens Fixated on Video Apps YouTube and TikTok

Apple has released the iOS 17.2 update for newer iPhones. New features include spatial video recording and a Journal app that generates prompts designed to get users writing about their lives based on data running through the phone. The 3D spatial video can also playback on 2D on any device but is optimized for dimensional viewing on Apple’s Vision Pro headset, due for release in 2024, starting at $3,500. The Journal app, unveiled at June’s WWDC, is described as a health and wellness feature (that oddly does not yet integrate with the Apple Watch). Continue reading Apple Intros Spatial Video Recording with Latest iOS Update

Epic Games has prevailed against Google in U.S. District Court, scoring a victory in the 2020 lawsuit filed against the search giant over antitrust behavior related to its Google Play store. Epic claims that Google leverages control over the Android mobile operating system to require content creators who want a presence on an estimated 71 percent of the world’s smartphones to sell through the Play Store. The verdict “proves Google’s app store practices are illegal and they abuse their monopoly to extract exorbitant fees, stifle competition and reduce innovation,” Epic wrote of the win. Google disagrees with the ruling and says it plans to appeal. Continue reading Court Rules in Favor of Epic Games in Google Antitrust Case