Techmeme
May 19, 2026, 11:20 PM

Top News

The Keyword:
Google rolls out Gemini 3.5 Flash, its “strongest agentic and coding model yet”, for tackling long-horizon agentic tasks, in the Gemini app and Search's AI Mode  —  Gemini 3.5 is built to help you execute complex, agentic workflows.  —  Today, we're introducing Gemini 3.5 …
Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
Gemini 3.5 Flash costs $1.50 per 1M input tokens and $9 per 1M output tokens, 3x the price of Gemini 3 Flash Preview and 6x the price of Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite  —  Today at Google I/O, Google released Gemini 3.5 Flash.  This one skipped the -preview modifier and went straight to general availability …
New York Times:
Google overhauls its search box, letting users ask longer queries, upload photos and videos, and use Gemini 3.5 Flash-powered agents to automate searches  —  Powered by a new Gemini A.I. model, the tech giant is overhauling its search box to answer longer queries, introducing a video-generation …
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:
Google launches the Gemini Omni multimodal model, saying it can “create anything from any input”, starting with video generation, for Google AI subscribers  —  Although it was already discovered by intrepid AI power users weeks ahead of the official unveiling today at Google's annual …
Sanuj Bhatia / Android Central:
Google adds a conversational search feature to YouTube and rolls out the new Gemini Omni model in YouTube Shorts Remix and the Create app  —  Seriously, who is asking for all these tools? … What you need to know  — Ask YouTube now supports conversational searches instead of relying only on simple keywords.
Macy Meyer / CNET:
Google announces updates to Flow and Flow Music: Gemini Omni support, mobile apps, the ability to create custom tools like a video resizer or shaders, and more  —  Google Flow's family of products gets agentic updates, mobile apps and the Omni Flash treatment.
Mariella Moon / Engadget:
Google announces Gemini Spark, a “24/7 personal AI agent” that is powered by Gemini 3.5 and supports integrations with Google Workspace apps, including Gmail  —  The AI agent is rolling out to testers this week.  —  Google has announced a “24/7 personal AI agent” …
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Google unveils Universal Cart, a shopping assistant that works “across merchants”, built on the Universal Commerce Protocol, rolling out in the US today  —  At I/O on Tuesday, Google introduced Universal Cart, its so-called agentic hub for managing shopping in one place.
Daniel Cooper / Engadget:
Madison Mills / Axios:
Andrej Karpathy joins Anthropic to help launch a team focused on using Claude to accelerate pretraining research; he helped found OpenAI and worked at Tesla  —  Andrej Karpathy, one of the best-known AI researchers in the world and a founding member of OpenAI, announced Tuesday that he's joining rival AI lab Anthropic.
Jackson Chen / Engadget:
Jessica Conditt / Engadget:
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Josh Woodward / The Keyword:
Ina Fried / Axios:
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Google introduces Antigravity 2.0, featuring an updated desktop app that lets users orchestrate multiple agents, alongside an Antigravity CLI tool and SDK  —  Google is introducing a new version of its agentic coding app, Google Antigravity 2.0, with an updated desktop app, a CLI tool, and an SDK for custom workflows.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Google's web-based AI Studio now lets users build native Android apps; Google says the apps are for personal use only for now and publishing is on the roadmap  —  The AI coding boom is now coming directly for Android app development.  On Tuesday, Google announced new native Android app creation capabilities …
Wired:
Hands-on with Google and Samsung's Android XR smart glasses from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster, and with XReal's Project Aura, all set to arrive this fall  —  Here's your first look at smart glasses coming from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster, powered by Google and Samsung's XR platform.
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Threat actors published 600+ malicious versions to npm as part of the Shai-Hulud supply chain campaign; most of the affected packages are in the @antv ecosystem  —  Threat actors earlier today published more than 600 malicious packages to the Node Package Manager (npm) index as part of a new Shai-Hulud supply-chain campaign.
New York Times:
Meta begins laying off 8,000 employees, or 10% of staff, in a push to become an AI-first company; another 7,000 workers will be reassigned to AI initiatives  —  Meta told employees last month that it would carry out mass layoffs on May 20, as the Silicon Valley giant tries to transform into an A.I.-first company.
Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
The Take It Down Act, a law requiring social networks to remove nonconsensual intimate images within 48 hours of reporting or face fines, took effect on May 19  —  The Take It Down Act is in full force, but it could be a gift to government censors — not victims of image-based sexual abuse.
@github:
GitHub says it's investigating “unauthorized access” to its internal repositories, and there's no proof of customer data outside its repositories being impacted  —  We are investigating unauthorized access to GitHub's internal repositories. While we currently have no evidence of impact to customer information stored outside of GitHub's internal repositories (such as our customers' enterprises, organizations, and repositories), we are closely
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Plex says the price for the Lifetime tier of its Plex Pass plan will increase from $249.99 to $749.99 in July  —  Plex has announced a massive price increase for the Lifetime tier of its Plex Pass plan.  Starting in July, Plex says that the Lifetime Plex Pass price will increase from $249.99 to a whopping $749.99.
OpenAI:
OpenAI introduces Guaranteed Capacity, a new offering that lets customers guarantee access to OpenAI's compute through one- to three-year commitments  —  Guarantee long-term access to OpenAI compute for the products, agents, and customer workflows that matter most.  —  Plan for capacity Contact sales
Bobby Allyn / NPR:
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has signed the nation's first law banning prediction market sites from operating in the state; the CFTC has sued Minnesota in response  —  Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has signed the nation's first law banning prediction market sites from operating in the state …

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