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May 21, 2025, 6:15 AM
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Igor Bonifacic / Engadget:
Google rolls out AI Mode, its chatbot for Search, to everyone in the US, including features like Deep Search, agentic capabilities, and chart generation  —  Google has begun rolling out AI Mode to every Search user in the US.  The company announced the expansion during its I/O 2025 conference.
Casey Newton / Platformer:
Google's I/O keynote was both scary and chill, a fever dream of sizzle reels selling how AI changes everything, even search, and can give users superpowers  —  At its annual developer conference, the company seeks to reassure everyone that AI is for everyday utility — but the great disruption to the web continues
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Google says Project Astra will power new capabilities in Search, including a new Search Live feature, as well as in the Gemini AI app and third-party products
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Google rolls out Project Mariner, its web-browsing AI agent, to Google's AI Ultra plan, and brings its capabilities to the Gemini API and Vertex AI
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Google unveils Gemini in Chrome, which initially works across just two tabs but will eventually support many and be agentic, for Google AI Pro and Ultra users
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Google will soon let users shop in AI Mode, unveils agentic checkout, and updates its virtual try-on feature in Search Labs for clothes shoppers in the US
CNBC:
Google announces new video and image generation models Veo 3 and Imagen 4, alongside a new AI filmmaking tool Flow and expanded access to Lyria 2  —  Google on Tuesday announced Veo 3, an AI video generator that can also create and incorporate audio.  —  The artificial intelligence tool competes …
Taryn Plumb / VentureBeat:
Google debuts Deep Think, an enhanced reasoning mode in Gemini 2.5 Pro that it says excels at math and coding, available to “trusted testers” via the Gemini API  —  Google is moving closer to its goal of a “universal AI assistant” that can understand context, plan and take action.
Emilia David / VentureBeat:
Google rolls out Jules, its asynchronous, agentic coding assistant unveiled in December 2024, in public beta and expects to announce pricing after the beta
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Google unveils Stitch, which lets users turn prompt and image inputs into complex UI designs and frontend code, available in Labs and powered by Gemini 2.5 Pro
Michael L Hicks / Android Central:
Google's Android XR Gemini-powered prototype glasses hands-on: they are light and comfortable to wear, and the single display in the right lens works well  —  Google's Android XR glasses prototype worked surprisingly well in my quick press demo.  —  I got hands-on time with Google's prototype AR glasses at Google I/O 2025.
Victoria Song / The Verge:
Google says it is partnering with Samsung, Gentle Monster, Xreal, and Warby Parker to create Android XR smart glasses, offering AI assistance via Gemini  —  With smart glasses, Google seems to be taking a page out of Meta and Ray-Ban's book. … Google's second era of smart glasses is off to a chic start.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Xreal unveils Project Aura, expected to be the first Android XR glasses, powered by a separate puck with a Qualcomm chip, slated to launch by early 2026  —  Alphabet Inc.'s Google has entered the glasses race by partnering with Xreal Inc. on the first spectacles to run an augmented-reality version of its operating system.
Samantha Subin / CNBC:
Google commits up to $150M, including $75M for product development and commercialization, as part of its partnership with Warby Parker to make smart glasses
Amanda Kooser / CNET:
Google previews Beam, an evolution of its Starline 3D video calling tech it developed with HP, that uses a six-camera array for more immersive video chats
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Epic Games says Fortnite is back on the App Store in the US for iPhone and iPad users, and on the Epic Games Store and AltStore in the EU  —  After a nearly five-year hiatus, Fortnite is back on the App Store for iPhone and iPad users in the United States.  Epic Games announced the return …
Eleanor Olcott / Financial Times:
Jensen Huang calls US AI chip export controls a “failure” that sped up China's efforts, cutting Nvidia's market share in China from 95% to 50% in four years  —  World's top AI semiconductor maker says export controls have accelerated Chinese rivals' advances
MIT Technology Review:
Analysis: AI energy consumption is exploding, with data centers doubling electricity use between 2017 and 2023, accounting for 4.4% of all US energy consumption  —  The emissions from individual AI text, image, and video queries seem small—until you add up what the industry isn't tracking and consider where it's heading next.
CoinDesk:
The US SEC sues Unicoin and its executives, alleging they broke securities laws by raising $100M+ for tokens falsely claimed to be backed by real estate  —  The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued crypto company Unicoin and three executives on Tuesday night on fraud charges …
Billy Steele / Engadget:
Google brings live translation to Google Meet, matching the user's tone and cadence, first in beta for Spanish and English on Google AI Pro and Ultra plans
Keach Hagey / Wired:
Book excerpt: a profile of AI-obsessed autodidact Eliezer Yudkowsky, who introduced the DeepMind founders to Peter Thiel and inspired DeepMind's Shane Legg  —  The AI doomer and the AI boomer both created each other's monsters. … Like Sam Altman, Peter Thiel had long been obsessed …
Forums: r/artificial
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: at WWDC, Apple plans to unveil an SDK and frameworks to let third-party developers build AI features based on LLMs it uses for Apple Intelligence  —  Apple Inc. is preparing to allow third-party developers to write software using its artificial intelligence models …
CNBC:
Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana says Waymo has reached 10M paid trips, doubling in the past five months, and that the company is not yet profitable  —  Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana told CNBC on Tuesday that the Alphabet-owned ride-hailing company has reached 10 million trips, doubling in the past five months.
Paige Smith / Bloomberg:
Kalshi withdrew announcements about a collaboration with xAI just hours after CEO Tarek Mansour said the deal would “further take prediction markets mainstream”  —  Kalshi had announced on Tuesday morning that xAI would provide tailored information to offer guidance for bets made by the site's users.
More: Bloomberg
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Google says Gmail's smart replies will use AI to pull context from a user's inbox and Drive, launching in Google Labs in July 2025, available first in English  —  Smart replies are getting smarter. … Gmail's smart replies, which suggest potential replies to your emails …
Omar El Chmouri / Bloomberg:
Abu Dhabi's TII releases Falcon Arabic, an AI model that it claims can match the performance of models up to 10 times its size, and smaller model Falcon H1  —  A research arm of the Abu Dhabi government has released a powerful new Arabic-language artificial intelligence model in a bid …
Colin Lecher / The Markup:
New York City's AI tool, launched in 2018 to score families at risk for child abuse using factors like their neighborhood, is raising racial bias concerns  —  How a family's neighborhood, age, and mental health might get their case a deeper look … Karlena Hamblin was sitting on a stool …

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:15 AM ET, May 21, 2025.

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From Mediagazer

Isabella Simonetti / Wall Street Journal:
A profile of Fortune editor Nick Lichtenberg, who uses AI to research and write articles; AI-assisted stories made up ~20% of Fortune's web traffic in H2 2025

New York Times:
Sources: Versant is one of multiple suitors in talks to buy Vox Media's podcast network as it seeks to diversify its revenue; NBCU invested $200M in Vox in 2015

Pew Research Center:
Religious radio stations make up ~25% of the US' 17K stations; 98% of adults live in range of at least one; 45% say they ever listen to religious audio shows

More News

Tobias Mann / The Register:
AMD unveils Zen 5-based Threadripper 9000 CPUs with up to 96 cores, and an RDNA 4-based Radeon AI Pro R9700 workstation GPU, both slated to launch in July 2025

Earlier Picks

Charles Szumski / Euractiv:
Sweden passes a law criminalizing the purchase of live online sexual performances, including cam shows and sex chats; buying pre-recorded content remains legal
Jonathan Vanian / CNBC:
Palo Alto Networks reports Q3 revenue up 15% YoY to $2.29B, vs. $2.28B est., net income down 6% to $262.1M, and non-GAAP gross margin of 76%, vs. 77.2% est.
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
The ad-supported web is dying, and the next development to accelerate this may be the agentic web, which Microsoft is pushing via NLWeb and MCP support
Ryan S. Gladwin / Decrypt:
Michael Arrington says Coinbase's recent data breach “will lead to people dying”, calls for KYC rules reassessment and prison for execs failing to protect users
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