All posts tagged: Googles

Google’s Gemini AI hacks 3 companies in security test, then stops | Cybersecurity News

Google’s Gemini AI hacks 3 companies in security test, then stops | Cybersecurity News

Published by Sam Flores

Google discloses first breakout by Gemini following similar incidents by Meta, Anthropic and OpenAI. Published On 19 Sep 202619 Sep 2026 Google’s Gemini model hacked three companies in a test of its cybersecurity capabilities, the tech giant has confirmed to Al Jazeera. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Friday that the first known breakout by Gemini occurred in May as part of a test run by the company Irregular. It was the latest breach in a number of incidents in which AI models escaped testing environments and hacked other companies. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list The model had improper access to the internet when it was tasked with retrieving information from a fictional company. In the first incident, the model accessed a real company’s service after guessing a password. Google’s vice president of security engineering, Heather Adkins, told Al Jazeera’s John Hendren that in the other instances “the model found public information online and guessed credentials to access websites it thought were part of the test”. The company also said this …

Pixel 11 Pro review: Google’s best pocket camera goes customisable | Pixel

Pixel 11 Pro review: Google’s best pocket camera goes customisable | Pixel

Published by Sam Flores

Google’s latest Pro phone is out to prove it has the best camera on a smartphone while embracing customisation, allowing you to change the look and feel of your photos far beyond simple filters even if that means making them technically worse. The Pixel 11 Pro packs the best of Google’s hardware and software into a still-pocketable and easy to handle frame, instantly making it a contender for best smaller phone of the year. Being smaller doesn’t make it cheap. The 11 Pro sits above the regular £879 Pixel 11 and costs from £1,079 (€1,199/$1,099/A$1,849) – £80 (€100/$100/A$150) more than last year, with double the storage but less memory owing to the cost of RAMageddon. Little has changed on the outside for the Pro Pixels in several years. The new model is 0.1mm smaller in all directions and 3g lighter but has the same size 6.3in OLED screen, same polished aluminium and glass body and a large camera bar sticking out the back. It is an attractive design that has aged well. The temperature sensor …

Google’s Gemini Spark can now manage your Google Photos library

Google’s Gemini Spark can now manage your Google Photos library

Published by skeptic

Google is integrating more of its services with AI, as the company announced that its personal agent, Gemini Spark, can now manage your Google Photos library. That means you can ask Gemini Spark to execute tasks in Google Photos, like editing images, curating albums, automatically creating shared albums with your favorite shots, turning concert flyer photos into calendar appointments, running workflows, and more. On Thursday evening, Google Photos lead Shimrit Ben-Yair shared the new capabilities in a post on X, noting that the new capabilities would roll out over the next few weeks to eligible Gemini AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in the U.S. in English. The company didn’t say if or when it would roll out more broadly to international markets. For a while now, I’ve relied on @GeminiApp and @antigravity agents across a wide range of use cases—spanning creativity, productivity, and analysis. But I’ve always dreamed of having a power agent to help me get the most out of my 143,206 photos and videos. And that day has come!… pic.twitter.com/WbnkYpattQ — shimrit ben-yair …

Google’s latest AI weather model gives you no excuse to forget your umbrella

Google’s latest AI weather model gives you no excuse to forget your umbrella

Published by skeptic

Scientists at Google Deepmind and Google Research released a new artificial intelligence model for weather forecasting today that sees our changing atmosphere more clearly and predicts its behavior more often. WeatherNext 3 is the latest wave of a sea change in meteorology brought out by deep learning techniques, and Google says it will start feeding into weather information users see in search, Google Maps, and Gemini, as well as being available to users and researchers on Google’s cloud platforms. “This is going to be the first time that some of the core variables feed and power a lot of the Google products,” Samier Merchant, a Google senior staff engineer, told TechCrunch. The new model has already proven to be the most accurate among leading contenders tested on Operational WeatherBench, a utility for comparing AI forecasts built by the startup Brightband. It looks at metrics like temperature, windspeed, and humidity. As well as beating out other deep-learning models built by Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting, it also beats traditional forecasts …

Google’s Gemini 3.8 Flash is built for agents, while its Cyber twin hunts vulnerabilities

Google’s Gemini 3.8 Flash is built for agents, while its Cyber twin hunts vulnerabilities

Published by skeptic

Google keeps cranking out Flash models: the company on Wednesday announced two versions of a new 3.8 Flash.  The variants include a standard Flash, a “workhorse” model for agentic tasks, software development, and multi-step reasoning, and Flash Cyber optimized for vulnerability detection and mitigation. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in an X post that 3.8 Flash delivers “significant leaps” from 3.7 Flash across software engineering, agentic tasks, and multi-step reasoning. For instance, it outperformed many large frontier models on the DeepSWE coding benchmark, at far lower cost.  Meanwhile, Flash Cyber is the company’s “most capable” cybersecurity model, Pichai said; it also matches frontier-level performance when it comes to discovering vulnerabilities and patching them at scale. The model achieved 86.2% on the CyberGym cybersecurity benchmark and 47.2% on CWE-Bench, which evaluates AI patching abilities. In an internal Google benchmark, the model achieved a more than 70% success rate discovering vulnerabilities across 20 programming languages, Pichai said.  3.8 is Google’s third Flash release in six weeks and comes quickly on the heels of version 3.7.  3.8 working …

US judge rejects bid to break up Google’s ad business | Business and Economy News

US judge rejects bid to break up Google’s ad business | Business and Economy News

Published by Sam Flores

Justice Department had argued Google could not be trusted to run the online advertising exchange. Published On 2 Sep 20262 Sep 2026 Alphabet’s Google has escaped a breakup of its advertising technology business, marking the third time in recent years that United States antitrust enforcers have tried to force a Big Tech breakup and lost. US Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, on Wednesday declined to make Google sell AdX, where publishers pay Google a 20 percent fee to sell ads in auctions that happen instantly when users load websites. Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list The US Department of Justice (DOJ) had argued Google could not be trusted to run the online advertising exchange after Brinkema ruled that Google had illegally quashed competition. The judge accepted behavioural remedies. The reasoning behind today’s decision was not immediately made public. Brinkema filed her opinion under seal for 14 days, leaving the details of how Google must change its ad business unknown for now. She gave the two sides 30 days to submit a joint …

Google’s Android update tackles motion sickness, accessibility, and more

Google’s Android update tackles motion sickness, accessibility, and more

Published by skeptic

On Tuesday, Google announced it’s rolling out five new updates designed to make Android phones more accessible, useful, and personalized. Announced in a blog post, the features include those aimed at reducing motion sickness, helping blind and low-vision users navigate their surroundings, remembering where users leave important items, and another that adds new ways to personalize Google Messages. While some of the features see Google playing catch-up to Apple, which already offers similar features for iPhone users, others specifically leverage Gemini to provide various improvements. The most interesting update is “Motion Assist,” a feature designed to help people who experience motion sickness while using their phones in a moving vehicle. It adds a bubble overlay to the screen that moves in response to the vehicle’s motion, helping reduce the disconnect between what users see on their screens and what their bodies feel. The concept isn’t entirely new, however. Apple introduced “Vehicle Motion Cues” in 2024, which uses animated dots around the edges of the display that move in response to a vehicle’s motion. Users can …

Man charged after setting himself ablaze in Google’s NYC office building

Man charged after setting himself ablaze in Google’s NYC office building

Published by Sam Flores

A 63-year-old man set himself on fire Friday afternoon in the lobby of a lower Manhattan building that houses Google’s New York offices — in an incident police say appears to have no clear motive. John Butch, of Brooklyn, walked into the lobby of 315 Hudson Street at around 3 p.m. and set himself ablaze, according to police. He was taken to a nearby hospital with a burn unit in stable condition. No one else at the scene was injured. Butch was charged with criminal mischief, arson and reckless endangerment. Police have not disclosed a motive, and it remains unclear whether Butch intended to target Google specifically. In a statement, Google suggested it did not believe it was the intended target. “While the individual appeared to be seeking access to another tenant’s space in the building, we remain in close contact with local authorities,” the statement said. “We are grateful to first responders.” The recently renovated Hudson Square building also houses a Sweetgreen and a Joe & The Juice on its ground floor. Source link

Google’s Gemini has a branding problem, and so does the rest of AI

Google’s Gemini has a branding problem, and so does the rest of AI

Published by skeptic

Google gets something right in its Wednesday announcement about new Gemini Live voice features when it says, “You shouldn’t have to guess whether a task requires Spark, a Daily Brief, or a quick inbox search.” Google means that as a promise — that the updated Gemini app can handle a variety of tasks via voice commands. But there’s a ridiculousness here: Google has given every Gemini AI feature under the sun its own branding, which undercuts that very message. In the Gemini app, users can switch between chat, Spark, and Daily Brief — three separate features, each with its own icon and place in the app’s navigation. This clutters up what could otherwise be a more straightforward consumer experience, and it suggests that Gemini is still struggling to find a killer feature. Take Daily Brief, for example. The feature comes across as the kind of thing an AI engineer, not an everyday user, would think is clever. It’s essentially an AI-enabled agenda that offers “proactive, personalized updates” using data pulled from Google’s apps, like Gmail …

Google’s Sergey Brin and “MAGA Girlfriend” Gerelyn Soto Are Part of Silicon Valley’s Move to the Right

Google’s Sergey Brin and “MAGA Girlfriend” Gerelyn Soto Are Part of Silicon Valley’s Move to the Right

Published by Sam Flores

In the years that followed, Shanahan transformed her public image, emerging as a vocal supporter and wealthy booster for the “Make America Healthy Again” movement. She donated millions of dollars to the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a critic of vaccines, and joined his ticket as his vice presidential running mate. Soto is also a supporter of MAHA, a movement that has found currency with wellness influencers whose views overlap on issues around food, motherhood, and pharmaceuticals. “I support it because I feel like women are especially gaslit about their health,” Soto told The Free Press. On TikTok, Instagram, and X, Soto’s content mixes MAGA politics with wellness tips and photos of home gyms, lux vacations, and parties. She advocates for eating meat to stave off depression, taking magnesium over getting therapy, and ridding your home of things like scented candles and sunscreen, which, she claims, without evidence, cause cancer. It’s unclear who her posts are geared toward: She has low follower counts, by influencer standards, and recently made her Instagram and X …