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The California-based company, founded by former Google engineers, is among several firms offering AI companions — chatbots designed to provide conversation, entertainment and emotional support through human-like interactions. In a Florida lawsuit filed in October, a mother claimed the platform bears responsibility for her 14-year-old son's suicide.

Gemini 1.0, Google has announced the latest version Gemini 2.0, which it calls its «most capable model yet», made for the agentic AI era. ET explains what's new, who can access Gemini 2.0, and where it is being applied and integrated. How is Gemini 2.0 different? Google seeks to unlock a new class of agentic experiences with the Gemini 2.0 family. The first model being launched is the experimental Gemini 2.0 Flash.

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Cyber officials are advising people to use encryption in their communications after a sprawling hacking campaign

The Australian government says it will tax large digital platforms and search engines unless they agree to share revenue with Australian news media organizations

AI companies, once Reddit's biggest frustrations, now are a key source of growth for the social-media platform. These companies have an insatiable appetite for online data to train their models and display content in easy-to-digest format, reports The Wall Street Journal. ALSO READ:Inside Boeing's struggle to make its best-selling plane again

Gukesh Dommaraju made history on Thursday by becoming the youngest chess world champion, defeating defending champion Ding Liren of China in a dramatic final game of a 14-game match held in Singapore. At just 18 years old, Gukesh is now the 18th world chess champion, surpassing Garry Kasparov, who held the record as the youngest champion since 1985 when he defeated Anatoly Karpov at the age of 22. In the decisive game, Gukesh, playing with the black pieces, capitalized on a blunder by Ding, who faltered under pressure in what was considered a favorable position. The win gave Gukesh a 7.5-6.5 victory in the match, sealing his historic triumph.

Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem — gathered at the diner, now the heart of Silicon Valley, to discuss building a computer chip that would make graphics for video games faster and more realistic. That conversation, and the ones that followed, led to the founding of Nvidia, the tech company that soared through the ranks of the stock market to briefly top Microsoft as the most valuable company in the S&P 500 this year. Nvidia has a market cap or net worth of $3.41 trillion as of December 11, 2024, now worth as much as Apple and Microsoft. The poster child of the artificial intelligence boom, Nvidia, whose hardware is now found in all Tesla vehicles, may bring the next industrial revolution in the tech world. It is successful than anybody could have ever imagined because of its charismatic leader. ALSO READ: What is Willow? Google's quantum computing chip explained in 10 points

Apple is pumping more artificial intelligence into the latest iPhones during the holiday shopping season

Google on Wednesday unleashed another wave of artificial intelligence designed to tackle more of the work and thinking done by humans as it tries to stay on technology’s cutting edge while also trying to fend off regulatory threats to it internet empire

Google on Wednesday announced the launch of Gemini 2.0, its most advanced artificial intelligence model to date, as the world's tech giants race to take the lead in the fast-developing technology. CEO Sundar Pichai said the new model would be marking what the company calls «a new agentic era» in AI development, with AI models designed to understand and make decisions about the world around you. «Gemini 2.0 is about making information much more useful,» Pichai said in the announcement, emphasizing the model's enhanced ability to understand context, think multiple steps ahead, and take supervised actions on behalf of users.

N Chandrababu Naidu on Wednesday said global tech giant Google and Andhra Pradesh are eyeing a big artificial intelligence (AI) opportunity in Visakhapatnam. Addressing a district collectors conference at the secretariat, the CM said Google and the southern state have signed an agreement, which would catapult the port city's development. «Recently when IT Minister (Nara Lokesh) went to America, he went to Google campus and requested them. And the result of that is today Google has (agreed to come to Vizag). We signed an MoU (agreement) before coming here. We are looking at a big opportunity in AI,» said Naidu. After proposing Vizag as a prospective location, the CM said Google executives visited Andhra Pradesh's largest city for a firsthand survey and were totally impressed. «If big firms like Google come to Visakhapatnam under strategic investment, that is a game changer,» he said, adding that data centres, AI, machine learning (ML) and deep tech, along with internet sea cables will transform the coastal city into a service hub for the globe. Further, the TDP supremo highlighted that Vizag will become a strategic location.

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under US-President elect Donald Trump's administration is already making waves. Headed by tech billionaire Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, DOGE aims to cut wasteful government spending and eliminate excessive regulations by the 250th anniversary of the United States. Musk, now Trump's closest ally, has warned Republicans against standing in Donald Trump’s way – or his, reports news agency AP. Musk, who recently visited Capitol Hill with Ramaswamy, the two issued a warning to Republicans who do not go along with their plans to slash spending as part of the president-elect’s proposed DOGE. ALSO READ: What is Willow? Google's quantum computing chip explained in 10 points

The conversation happened after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission asked Google about Microsoft's business practices as part of a broader investigation, the report said, citing a person directly involved in the discussion. Tech companies that compete with Microsoft in renting out cloud servers, such as Google and Amazon, also want to host OpenAI's models so that their cloud customers don't need to access Microsoft servers to get access to the startup's technology, the report said.

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quantum computing. Here’s what you need to know about this development and its implications for Google and the tech industry. Following the announcement of Willow, Alphabet Inc.'s stock saw a notable increase, reflecting investor optimism about the company's future prospects in quantum computing and artificial intelligence (AI). As of Tuesday, Google stock was trading around $182.64, up approximately 7.27% from previous levels. The launch of Willow has sparked excitement among investors, as advancements in quantum computing are expected to drive growth across multiple tech sectors. Analysts believe that if Google can successfully leverage this technology, it could lead to substantial financial returns and market leadership in AI and computing technologies.

holiday shopping scams that one should watch out for this December. The social media giant has launched a worldwide anti-scam awareness campaign aimed at protecting users from fraudulent schemes during the holiday shopping season. The company, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, revealed it has taken down over two million accounts linked to scam centers in Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, the UAE, and the Philippines this year. In another instance, Meta said its enforcement efforts have removed 15,000 phishing URLs in Vietnam and 9,000 in Singapore this year to save people from holiday shopping scams. Meta in a blog post said it has partnered with a top internet safety expert and ethical hacker, Rachel Tobac, to share how scammers might be targeting people online this holiday season and how to avoid scams. Meta disrupted scam campaigns targeting holiday shoppers outside of our platforms and took thousands of malicious URLs that impersonated Meta’s apps off the internet, it said in a statement.

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