Samsung has made a tradition of opening CES with a “First Look” event the night before exhibits open in Las Vegas. This year, that January 6 event introduced the theme “AI for All: Everyday, Everywhere,” with artificial intelligence allowing devices like TVs to intuitively (and sometimes autonomously) make choices that enhance our lifestyle. Samsung sees TV as “no longer just a screen, but a companion that enriches your home.” In addition to displays, Samsung also plans to introduce its “Vision AI” technology across various home appliance and mobile devices in 2025. Continue reading CES: Samsung Aims to Bring Its ‘Vision AI’ to TVs and Homes

Deloitte Consulting Chief Technology Officer Bill Briggs opened a CES panel discussion on Tech Trends 2025 with the declaration that, “the pace of change in technical has never been faster and the magnitude has never been greater.” “How do we translate that into the investments we need to be making and how we think about products and customer experiences?” he asked. Much of what faces us, he stressed, is “more knowable than we feel it is.” In Deloitte’s 16th annual Tech Trends report, the company lists six tech trends, with artificial intelligence as the common thread. Continue reading CES: Deloitte CTO on Tech Trends 2025 from AI to Quantum

At CES 2025 in Las Vegas this week, the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) unveiled transformative trends and expected highlights of the massive trade show during a media preview on Sunday. CTA Senior Director of Innovation and Trends Brian Comiskey led a discussion on the rise of Gen Z, the increasing influence of artificial intelligence, and predicted a “Quantum Decade” for the 2030s. Sustainability, energy transitions, and human security, especially around food, also emerged as critical themes. “Innovation is never just one thing — it’s the convergence of technology and human-centric values that drives progress,” Comiskey noted. Continue reading CES: Tech Trends Focus on Gen Z, AI, the ‘Quantum Decade’

Twelve Labs has raised $30 million in funding for its efforts to train video-analyzing models. The San Francisco-based company has received strategic investments from notable enterprise infrastructure providers Databricks and SK Telecom as well as Snowflake Ventures and HubSpot Ventures. Twelve Labs targets customers using video across a variety of fields including media and entertainment, professional sports leagues, content creators and business users. The funding coincides with the release of Twelve Labs’ new video foundation model, Marengo 2.7, which applies a multi-vector approach to video understanding. Continue reading Twelve Labs Creating AI That Can Search and Analyze Video

Elon Musk’s xAI has been rolling out an updated Grok-2 model that is now available free to all users of the X social platform. Prior to last week, the “unfiltered” chatbot — which debuted in November 2023 — was available only by paid subscription. Now Grok is coming to X’s masses, but those on the free tier can only ask the chatbot 10 questions in two hours, while Premium and Premium+ users will “get higher usage limits and will be the first to access any new capabilities.” There is also now a Grok button featured on X that aims to encourage exploration. Continue reading Grok-2 Chatbot Is Now Available Free to All Users of X Social

Reddit has launched a new AI-powered search tool called Reddit Answers. Reddit is already appearing regularly in Google Search returns. The new interface provides a way users can utilize a conversational model to get answers directly from the social platform. “Once a question is asked, curated summaries of relevant conversations and details across Reddit will appear, including links to related communities and posts,” according to Reddit. Whether users will want to skip their usual go-to search engines in favor of querying Reddit alone could have long term ramifications for the 19-year old social platform, which went public in 2023. Continue reading ‘Reddit Answers’ Wants to Gain More Users Searching In-App

Perplexity is expanding the publisher program associated with its AI-powered search engine. Added to the list of participants who will share ad revenue and access performance data are Adweek, LA Times, Mexico News Daily, The Independent, Germany’s Stern, the World Encyclopedia and about 10 other media brands. They join existing partners including Time, Fortune and Der Spiegel. Emphasizing its ongoing investment in publishers, Perplexity named Jessica Chan, formerly with LinkedIn and its content partner program, as head of publisher partnerships. News of Perplexity’s content deals appears to be generating mixed feelings in newsrooms. Continue reading Perplexity Expands Publisher Program Despite AI Controversy

“AI won’t exist as an app, or a button… it’ll be an entirely new environment built on top of a web browser.” That is the pitch from The Browser Company, the New York-based firm behind the Arc browser that is now developing an AI-first web interface called Dia, expected to debut early next year. Dia aims to leverage AI tools to simplify common Internet tasks. The repertoire is now a familiar one, with things like writing assists and inspirational prompts becoming AI givens in a competitive field where Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini are already established. The Browser Company is trying to distinguish Dia with a simple, user-friendly interface. Continue reading The Browser Company is Building Dia, an AI-First Web Browser

Google has added a Gemini extension that lets users link their Spotify accounts and leverage the AI for music search and discovery. Currently only for Android in English, the app accepts spoken and text prompts to select music by song, album, artist or playlist using “Play & Search.” Only Spotify Premium subscribers will be able to request and play specific tunes on demand. And while users will be able to use Gemini to activate existing playlists or pipe music themed to an activity or mood (like workouts or romantic meals), it cannot create a Spotify playlist or radio. Continue reading Google Offers Spotify Extension for Gemini Mobile Ecosystem

Ernie, the foundation model for Baidu’s generative AI, has been updated with iRAG technology to mitigate visual hallucinations and a no-code tool called Miaoda that creates apps using natural language. The company behind China’s largest search engine says Ernie now handles 1.5 billion daily user queries, up from 50 million circa its March 2023 launch (a 30x increase). Baidu also debuted Ernie-powered smart glasses from its Xiaodu Technology hardware unit. The Xiaodu AI Glasses features built-in voice activation and cameras for taking photos and video. The news was shared at this week’s Baidu World 2024 in Shanghai. Continue reading Baidu’s Ernie AI Gets Improved Text-to-Image and App Builder

Nvidia’s growing AI arsenal now includes video search and summarization tool AI Blueprint, which helps developers build visual AI agents that analyze video and image content. The agents can answer user questions, generate summaries and even enable alerts for specific scenarios. The new feature is part of Metropolis, Nvidia’s developer toolkit for building computer vision applications using generative AI. Globally, enterprises and public organizations increasingly rely on visual information. Cameras, IoT sensors and autonomous vehicles are ingesting visual data at high rates, and visual agents can help monitor and make sense of that workflow. Continue reading Nvidia’s AI Blueprint Develops Agents to Analyze Visual Data

The AI search wars are officially on, with Google giving Gemini access to its online answer engine just hours before OpenAI launched ChatGPT Search. Google is primarily targeting developers with its new feature, “Grounding with Google Search,” though the Alphabet company used the occasion to also tout its new search return template, AI Overviews. Launched last week, ChatGPT Search offers responses in real time using a conversational format. Initially, it is available only to ChatGPT Plus and Teams subscribers as well as those on the SearchGPT waitlist as part of ChatGPT’s existing interface. Continue reading AI Search Wars Heat Up as OpenAI and Google Add Features

Alphabet’s revenue increased by 15 percent during the latest quarter, topping $88.3 billion. Powered by advertising and cloud services, profits surged 34 percent to $26.3 billion, exceeding Wall Street expectations of $22.9 billion. The company experienced continued growth in the online marketplace with popular consumer services such as Google Search and YouTube while also expanding in B2B with cloud offerings. All this as the government explores dismantling its business while competitors such as TikTok and Amazon come after its market share. Advertising growth slowed in Q3, yet still notched a healthy year-over-year increase of 10.4 percent. Continue reading Alphabet Profits Climb 34 Percent, Powered by Cloud and Ads

Just in time for the holiday season, Google Shopping is launching an AI-powered personalized feed that recommends items customers might like. The redesign is coming to desktop and mobile devices in the U.S. in the coming weeks. Suggested items are based on search and YouTube histories as well as AI inference. Shoppers will get “an AI-generated brief with top things to consider” in finding the right item, plus a curated feed of products. For now, the brief will be labeled “experimental,” and Google is encouraging feedback for the times AI doesn’t get it 100 percent right. Continue reading Google Shopping Redesigned with Gemini Feed, Infinite Scroll

Hailuo, the free text-to-video generator released last month by the Alibaba-backed company MiniMax, has delivered its promised image-to-video feature. Founded by AI researcher Yan Junjie, the Shanghai-based MiniMax also has backing from Tencent. The model earned high marks for what has been called “ultra realistic” video, and MiniMax says the new image-to-video feature will improve output across the board as a result of “text-and-image joint instruction following,” which means Hailuo now “seamlessly integrates both text and image command inputs, enhancing your visuals while precisely adhering to your prompts.” Continue reading MiniMax’s Hailuo AI Rolls Out New Image-to-Video Capability