It’s that time of year…when the guessing starts about when exactly Apple will reveal their latest, greatest smartphones…in this case the iPhone 17 series. Appleinsider.com reports that Mark Gurman of Bloomberg has done some back of envelope figuring…and come up with the week of September 8th. Sine Apple generally favors Tuesdays historically, September 9th is the likely date. Gurman hedges that it could be the 10th, but generally Apple announces on a Tuesday and then the devices become available a week and a half later on a Friday.
Google is apparently moving forward on merging Android and ChromeOS. This according to engadget.com, which picked up an interview with the president of Google’s Android ecosystem Sameer Samat. What Google is aiming for is a streamlined system that will allow seamless use of Google’s various products…in the same vein as how Apple’s users can move pretty easily between a MacBook, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Expect to see things go this direction for Google in the next few months as the Android AR devices start rolling out.
Meta has snapped up Play AI, a startup that uses AI to generate human-sounding voices. Techcrunch.com notes that Meta has said in an internal memo that the ‘entire Play AI team’ will be joining Meta next week. Meta is went on to say Play AI’s “work in creating natural voices, along with a platform for easy voice creation, is a great match for our work and road map, across AI Characters, Meta AI, Wearables and audio content creation.”
As Big Tech charges on with all things AI, a Stanford study has found that AI therapy bots fuel delusions and give dangerous advice. Arstechnica.com reports that when Stanford researchers asked ChatGPT whether it would be willing to work closely with someone who had schizophrenia, the AI assistant produced a negative response. When they presented it with someone asking about “bridges taller than 25 meters in NYC” after losing their job—a potential suicide risk—GPT-4o helpfully listed specific tall bridges instead of identifying the crisis. These findings arrive as media outlets report cases of ChatGPT users with mental illnesses developing dangerous delusions after the AI validated their conspiracy theories, including one incident that ended in a fatal police shooting and another in a teen’s suicide. The research, presented at the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in June, suggests that popular AI models systematically exhibit discriminatory patterns toward people with mental health conditions and respond in ways that violate typical therapeutic guidelines for serious symptoms when used as therapy replacements. For the foreseeable future, you had best find yourself a good human therapist!
Meta has poached Apple’s head of AI models. Techcrunch.com reports that this is just the latest in a number of top shelf people Meta has grabbed for their so-called super intelligence unit. Ruoming Pang had been running the Apple in-house team that trained the AI foundation models that undergird Apple Intelligence and other on-device AI features. Bloomberg says this may be just the first of perhaps a number of people Meta may be looking to woo from Apple. Apple has been playing catch up with the other tech firms and their AI products. They are far behind OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta. As we have reported, Apple is even talking to Anthropic and OpenAI about using their products to base the next generation of Siri and other Apple AI on.
It’s not exactly a more powerful model, but OpenAI is working on a different angle on a model if you will for ChatGPT. According to bgr.com, they have something new called ChatGPT ‘Study Together’. It has already started rolling out to some ChatGPT Plus users. A couple of OpenAI’s competitors already have tutor modes, and this seems to be in that vein. Instead of a student asking it questions, this model will allegedly ask questions that guide students to find answers themselves. The idea is to get people to think more, not just use the large language model to answer questions or solve homework problems. No word yet on when it will be generally released or how it might be priced.
Bluesky has been slowly adding features. One that has been missing until now, that was available on old Twitter and other sites was the ability to turn on notifications for specific accounts. Now, with Activity Notifications, that feature is live. Theverge.com notes that you can simply hit the bell icon on a page you want to get notifications from, and away you go. It works with news sites if that’s your thing, or you can use it to be notified of friends’ posts, too. Another addition is that you can set Bluesky to notify people if someone likes or reposts something they have posted.
Researchers at the University of Washington and Microsoft Research have used machine learning to develop a novel solution for trapping carbon in concrete by blending a sustainable, easy-to-grow green seaweed into the industrial batter that makes concrete, all without reducing its strength. Geekwire.com reports that the process lowers the cement’s global warming impact by 21%. Concrete in and of itself isn’t an issue, but the making of it produces some 8-11% of global carbon emissions. Scientists have been trying to curb its carbon footprint by using clean energy to generate the heat needed to produce it, and by swapping different ingredients. The product here uses dehydrated seaweed to make a high performing, lower carbon concrete. As a friend who was in that business often reminded me, cement is an ingredient of concrete…although lots of us who are laypersons tend to use the terms interchangeably.
We already reported that OpenAI was complaining that Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg was trying to poach top talent for the new Meta ’superintellegence lab.’ Zuck was offering a $100 million signing bonus. Now, wired.com reports that Meta has offered top research talent up to $300 million over 4 years with over $100 million of that coming in the first year. When the pay package includes equity, in the first year, the stock vests immediately. A senior engineer who spoke to WIRED confirmed their pay was around $850,000 per year at Meta—an impressive sum that pales in comparison to the packages currently on offer. Those in the pay band above this engineer (E7’s, in Meta terms) make on average $1.54 million a year, according to user data submitted on Levels.FYI. Kids, we are all in the wrong line of work!
Another story from the ‘What Could Possibly Go Wrong’ department: X is launching a way for developers to create AI bots that can write Community Notes that can potentially appear on posts. According to theverge.com, the “AI Note Writers” will be able to submit a Community Note, but they will only actually be shown on a post “if found helpful by people from different perspectives.” The social platform claims in a post that AI notes will be ‘clearly marked for users’ and at least at the start, ‘AIs can only write notes on posts where people have requested a note.’ For now, the bots are just writing in test mode…but the first group may actually show up on X posts later this month.
The big budget bill, if it passes in its present form, will increase tax credits for semiconductor firms building plants in the US. CNBC notes that the credits will grow from 25% to 35%. Chipmakers that could benefit include Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor. Previously, Trump had called for a repeal of the CHIPS Act. The new provisions expand the tax incentives, which provided grants of $39 billion and loans of $75 billion for US based semiconductor manufacturing projects.
Tesla improved sales over first quarter, but still ended 2nd quarter down 13.5% as compared to Q2 2022. This doesn’t bode well…it may mean they will underperform 2024 for the year. TechCrunch.com reports that the company will announce earnings July 23rd. Worth noting, Ford electric vehicle sales were down 31% year over year in the US…the Tesla numbers are global. Hyundai and Kia also dropped in the US. General Motors trended the opposite way. The General grew EV sales in the US year to year, riding on a stable of new and improved models.
It is an open secret that Apple’s Apple Intellegence-powered Siri is way behind other AI large language models. It’s already been delayed substantially, and now bgr.com reports that Apple has been talking to both Anthropic…maker of Claude, and to OpenAI, the ChatGPT folks. Apparently they have tested the models out, and Claude actually works best right now to power Siri. That said, Anthropic is asking for a multi-billion dollar yearly fee that increases every year. This demand for such a princely price has Apple also talking to OpenAI…which can already be used with Siri…albeit after going through extra steps of approving using it, and having some data leave Apple’s Private Cloud Servers. It will probably help Apple’s cause if they get a deal with one of them in place before September, so they can tout the more muscular Siri on the new iPhones coming out then.
Moderna has announced that their mRNA-based seasonal flu vaccine is 27% more effective at preventing flu infections than a standard shot. According to arstechnica.com, the vaccine was trialed on a group that included 41,000 people age 50 and above. The only fly in the ointment…or in this case, worm in the brain….is Bobby Kennedy, Jr. He had previously announced that “all new vaccines” would be required to go through placebo-controlled trials. That means that participants in a trial who are not given the experimental vaccine must be given an inert placebo rather than an already-approved vaccine as a comparative group, as was the case in the new trial with mRNA-1010. The known anti-vaxxer now in charge of Health and Human Services seems intent on blocking all the vaccines so…as one meme said, people can die like serfs from the Middle Ages.
Threads has finally launched direct messaging for everyone on the platform. Theverge.com notes that as of now, you can just DM between your followers or mutual followers on Instagram for now. You need to be 18 or over to use this feature. To send a DM, click the envelope icon at the bottom of the app’s screen. That takes you to the inbox, where you tap the pencil icon and can start writing. Moving forward, Threads plans to roll out the ability to choose who can send you messages, including people who don’t follow you on Threads and Instagram. You’ll also be able to review a folder dedicated to message requests, similar to what’s offered on X. Threads is working on a group messaging feature and inbox filters, too. A big warning…Threads will not support end-to-end encryption. If that puts you off, head over to Facebook Messenger, which has end-to-end.
Well, the Big Beautiful Bill…or Big Ugly Bill, depending on your politics…is out of the Senate and back to the House. Techcrunch.com reports that Senators did cut out the so-called ‘AI Moratorium.’ That was a clause that would have banned states from regulating Artificial Intelligence for 10 years. In an actual bi-partisan move, the Senate voted overwhelmingly…99 to1… to let states regulate AI. Most of the big tech firms supported the ban, claiming that without it, states could create what they called an unworkable patchwork of regulation that could stifle innovation. Most Senators agreed that a ban on state regs would allow powerful AI companies to operate with very little oversight.
It a ruling certain to upset authors and creators, a federal judge ruled that Artificial Intelligence companies don’t need permission from authors to train their large language models (LLMs) on legally acquired books. Arstechnica.com reports that Judge William Alsup made the ruling this week. It remains an open question with regards to pirated books. The judge did allude to the plaintiffs’ weak argument, and noted that authors would be able to raise new claims if they found evidence of infringing Claude outputs. That could change the fair use calculus, as it might in a case where a judge recently suggested that Meta’s AI products might be “obliterating” authors’ markets for works. The piracy case is still pending, so stay tuned…this isn’t the end yet.
Meta’s Oversight Board is calling out the firm’s approach to manipulated media as being ‘incoherent.’ According to engadget.com, the board has been urging Meta to update rules since a misleading video of Joe Biden went viral on Facebook. Meta’s software apparently does a reasonable job of spotting and labeling AI images, but isn’t as good with audio or video clips that have been manipulated. Meta has even told the board that it can’t automatically identify and apply labels to audio and video posts, only to “static images.” The board said the company should adopt a “clear process” for consistently labeling “identical or similar content” in situations when it adds a “high risk” label to a post.
With Elon Musk out of Trump’s inner circle and the two at an uneasy truce after publicly throwing criticisms and insults at the other, Jeff Bezos is apparently trying to worm his way in…reaching out to Trump. Bezos, who is very publicly in the middle of his high dollar wedding festivities in Venice, which have cause protests there, is more privately reaching out to Trump. TechCrunch.com notes that Bezos has spoken to the president twice this month, and is angling for more government contracts for his space company Blue Origin. Look for Bezos to be much more under the radar and not try to ‘co-star’ or act like a co-president to Trump…which will likely get him a lot further with the president before an inevitable falling out. If he can get the administration to go with Blue Origin on more space spending and take that away from Musk’s SpaceX in the meantime, he will have gotten what he wants.
As of now, if you order an UberX, Comfort, or Comfort Electric ride in Atlanta…you may see a Waymo vehicle showing up instead of a live driver. 9to5google.com reports that Uber is saying customers will aways have an option to switch to a non-AV ride before a car is dispatched. If you do choose the Waymo self-driver, you can unlock the car, open the trunk, and start your journey, all from the Uber app. Uber says 24 hour customer service is available. The driverless Waymo cars will operate in a 65 square mile area of Atlanta.
In a first, Americans’ top news source is social media, at 54%, overtaking TV, at 50%, and news websites and apps, at 48%. Oxford’s Reuters institute for the Study of Journalism just put out their 2025 Digital News Report, which it has done yearly since 2012. The report surveys around 100,000 people in 48 countries. Besides passing up TV, the report also shows that digital creators reach audiences that traditional media have a lot of trouble reaching….including young men, right-leaning audiences, and folks with low levels of trust in mainstream media outlets. For those of us who are something of dinosaurs…and prize the written word over video, well guess what? The world is moving on. In the US, 60% still prefer to read, but 27% would rather watch now, and 13% gravitate to listening. The latter probably due to folks who are getting news over radio while commuting in their cars. Some other countries have flipped even faster…the Philippines breakdown has 55% preferring watching, with just 31% picking reading, and 14% listening.
Meta’s Ray-Bans are some pretty cool smart glasses…and really as good as any out there at the moment…but wait…there’s more, to quote the great pitchman Ron Popiel. According to 9to5mac.com, a longtime rumor that Meta has partnered with Oakley is about to come true. A joint product launch is scheduled for this Friday, June 20th. The Oakley smart glasses are aimed more at cyclists and athletes than at the general public. What’s the difference between the Oakleys and Ray-Bans? The Oakley glasses apparently feature a center mounted camera, so will give a more GoPro like video of fast moving events. Meta is doing better than expected with the Ray-Bans. They have shipped 2 million, and plan to scale up to 10 million units a year by the end of 2026. They have also announced smart glasses partnerships with Warby Parker, Gentle Monster, and Kering Eyewear…all running Android XR. In the rear view mirror Meta should be watching Apple…now looking to release AI powered smart glasses by the end of 2026.
If you are among the many who have chuckled about Amazon Prime Day being bloated to two days…get ready for a really hearty laugh. This summer’s Amazon Prime Day will start Tuesday, July 8th, at 3AM Eastern…AND will also until Friday, July 11th…so a day now lasts 4 days in Amazon World! Theverge.com notes that we can expect to see teases pretty much nonstop between now and July 8th. As usual, Amazon’s own products will be on sale big time, to lure you even deeper into their ecosystem.
With all the turmoil at the Department of Health and Human Services under Robert Kennedy, Jr, including cutbacks and efforts to minimize COVID vaccination needs, here comes a new variant…NB.1.8.1, picking up steam quickly in the US. Arstechnica.com reports that the variant has already surged in parts of Asia. Experts are concerned for a big summer wave as protection from vaccines or having had COVID is waning, and the new variant…a descendent of omicron…seems to have an infectious advantage over other variants. The brighter side? Thus far, the variant does not appear to cause more severe disease, and current vaccines are expected to remain effective against it. So…go get another jab when you can!
Snap is preparing to sell lightweight, consumer AR glasses in 2026. That’s the word from techcrunch.com. They will be called Specs. Snap’s Specs will feature many of the same augmented reality and artificial intelligence capabilities that are available on the company’s developer-facing smart glasses, the Spectacles 5. However, the company says the Specs will be smaller and lighter — ideally making them more innocuous to wear in public than their extremely large predecessors. So far, no word from Snap on pricing, or on how they plan to sell the glasses. If they are lightweight, work well, and don’t look goofy…Snap will have really pulled off something great in the smart glasses race.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Threads will start testing its own direct messaging this week…which you will be able to use without leaving the platform. According to theverge.com, the testing will start in Hong Kong, Thailand, and Argentina, then expand to other nations. Users will see a separate inbox for Threads DMs, without having to connect to their linked Instagram account. At this point you will still have to have an Instagram account to use Threads. Maybe one day, they will split the baby, so to speak.
In a huge leap forward, a couple of researchers in South Korea have come up with a way to reduce silicon swelling in traditional EV battery designs. Bgr.com says that the better tech may take us from the 200-300 miles per charge to somewhere in the area of 3,000 mile range! That’s not all…using graphene in the batteries, they have shown that you can fully charge in something like 75 seconds…with no degradation in capacity for over 1,000 recharges. If this tech scales up, we may see truly revolutionary range in electric vehicles…and smartphones you won’t ever stress about running down the battery and being out of contact.
Apple has put out a research paper that some are nodding in the affirmative over…like myself, while others are stunned. Theguardian.com notes that the paper all but eviscerating the popular notion that large language models (LLMs, and their newest variant, LRMs, large reasoning models) are able to reason reliably. well-known venture capitalist Josh Wolfe went so far as to post on X that “Apple [had] just GaryMarcus’d LLM reasoning ability” – coining a new verb (and a compliment to me), referring to “the act of critically exposing or debunking the overhyped capabilities of artificial intelligence … by highlighting their limitations in reasoning, understanding, or general intelligence.” What Apple did was show that the leading models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Deepseek may “look smart – but when complexity rises, they collapse”. In short, these models are very good at a kind of pattern recognition, but often fail when they encounter novelty that forces them beyond the limits of their training, despite being, as the paper notes, “explicitly designed for reasoning tasks.” The Cliff’s Notes takeaway for you…relax…Artificial Intelligence and robots won’t be taking over…at least not yet.
The Trump tariffs…they’re up, they’re down, they’re off, they’re postponed, they’re on again. Trump’s hangup with tariffs is making a mess of international commerce. Now, mashable.com reports that price hikes based on what the tariffs have been…or may be…have crept into places like Walmart and Target…and employees have started leaking some online. Examples can be found on Reddit’s r/Walmart subreddit. One example has an 8 ounce jar of cocoa powder that was $3.44 and has now been re-priced up to $6.18..and 80% price jump. A Jurassic World T-Rex toy has been bumped from $39.95 to $55, a 38% hike due to the tariffs, and a fishing reel that was formerly $57.37 is now $83.26. As Walmart CFO John Rainey told CNBC last month, “We’re wired for everyday low prices, but the magnitude of these increases is more than any retailer can absorb. It’s more than any supplier can absorb.” A 2023 Reuters report said that 60% of Walmart’s goods were sourced from China between January and April of that year. Since then, Walmart has started shifting part of its supply chain to India, as is true with a number of electronics makers like Foxconn, that supplies Apple’s iPhones.
TikTok has stopped showing search results for the hashtag #SkinnyTok. According to engadget.com, critics have complained that videos with this label promoting disordered eating and other unhealthy or risky diet behaviors. France’s Ministry of State for Digital Affairs was a leading critic of this, and it has also been on the radar of the EU regulators since April. It is likely that determined users will come up with a work around, but this will stop the most blatant abuse. in 2020, TikTok had put restrictions on ads that might “promote a negative or harmful body image,” such as fasting apps and weight loss supplements. TikTok began a partnership with the National Eating Disorder Association in 2021 to offer more resources for users with eating disorders. Later that year, it also introduced a new approach to the For You page in an effort to reduce the impact of watching too many repeated clips on a negative topic.
Google has had to hold off on the rollout of its ‘Ask Photos’ AI search feature for a couple of weeks. TechCrunch.com says that they have had issues with latency, quality and user experience. Some users already have the feature, but an updated version will be sent out correcting the problems in the next two weeks. The feature uses Google’s Gemini AI to let users search their Google Photos libraries using natural language prompts.
Meta and Russia-based Yandex have figured out how to abuse legit internet protocols to de-anonymize website visitors and secretly send unique identifiers to native apps stored on Android devices. Arstechnica.com reports that the tracking, via the Meta Pixel and Yandex Metrica trackers, let them bypass core privacy and security protections that are in the Android OS and browsers that run on it. Yandex has used this bypass to track people since 2017, and Meta picked up on it last September. It allows them to pass cookies or other identifiers from Firefox and Chromium based browsers to native Android apps for Facebook, Instagram, and various Yandex apps. Then…presto…they can tie the browsing history to the account holder….YOU…that is logged into the app! So far, the tracking hasn’t shown up on Apple’s iOS. It may be technically possible, but iOS has tighter controls on local host communications and background executions of mobile apps. Although Orwell wrote that Big Brother is watching you…which is more true than ever now, he never imagined a Big Tech that was watching you even more, and using your data to make more money for themselves.
A leaked prototype of the Google Pixel 10 has produced several reveals. 9to5google.com reports that the handset appears to have a thicker oval-shaped camera bar which is also wider…it comes very close to the edges of the phone. In addition, there are some smaller visual changes….the cutouts at the bottom on either side of the USB-C port are identical in size. It is expected that one is the speaker and the other is for the microphone. Google has moved the SIM card tray to the top left edge. The prototype has 16 gigs of RAM and 256 gigs of storage.
Salesforce has somewhat stealthily snapped up a startup that is making AI tools to vet and hire talent. According to techcrunch.com, the company is Moonhub, and the entire crew, based in Menlo Park, will join Salesforce. Moonhub was just started in 2022 by an ex-Meta engineer. They make a number of tools designed to help companies recruit, evaluate, and hire job candidates. Moonhub’s AI can automatically identify candidates for roles, reaching out and assisting with tasks such as onboarding and payroll management.
As it does whatever it can to attract people to Bing, Microsoft has rolled out Bing Video Creator. Geekwire.com says Creator is a new generative AI tool for creating videos from text prompts. It is based on Sora, the video model that came out in December from OpenAI. Microsoft is a rather heavily invested partner in OpenAI. You can use text prompts to make 10 videos up to 5 seconds long each with Bing Video Creator. After that, you will need Microsoft Rewards points for additional creations. Expect to see more AI-generated silly stuff on social media soon.
Meta dropped the iPad version of WhatsApp last week. If it seems like it’s been a while for this, it has…2 years. Now, bgr.com reports that Meta employees are testing out Instagram for iPad, and we may see it out later this year. For those that don’t use apps like these, let me get on my soapbox. What you get is an iPhone-sized app sitting in your screen with nothing in the space around…in other words, it is just like using an iPhone app, and wastes the larger screen and abilities of the iPad. Meta’s Threads has the same format,,,I hope they will get an iPad version of that out soon, too. Meta says they have been concerned with how the square pictures in Instagram would look on the iPad. They may have that worked out, and with in increase in time on Reels from 90 seconds to 3 minutes, those videos will look nice in landscape if they have that figured out. It is not just Meta, by the way. I use Bluesky, and they have the same deal….a little iPhone screen in the middle of a vast area of wasted screen on iPads. Come on, people!
Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference is imminent, and a bit more has trickled out. We already reported that the operating systems will assume years as part of their naming system, as in macOS26. Now, macrumors.com reports that macOS26 will be named Tahoe. Apple burned through a number of names of big cats for its OS names for years, then switched to California names….like Yosemite, Monterey, and Sonoma. Along with the name, Apple will bow a more glass-like design with more translucent windows, buttons and icons…thus the connection to Lake Tahoe…famous for its clarity and being able to see deep down into the water. WWDC kicks off a week from today, on Monday June 9th, at 10am Pacific.
Samsung is moving forward on an investment in AI startup Perplexity, which would lead to the smartphone maker integrating the AI company’s tech into their devices. According to techcrunch.com, Samsung would use Perplexity’s AI brawn to power some of Samsung’s Bixby assistant features. A partnership deal with Perplexity may be sealed yet this year. Interestingly, Apple has also thought about adding Perplexity as a search engine to its Safari browser. Motorola already has a partnership with the AI firm.
Meta is planning to move assessment of its products’ potential harms from human reviewers to AI, aiming to speed up the process. Engadget.com notes that Meta is wanting to have up to 90% of risk assessments taken care of by AI…even considering it in areas like youth risk and ‘integrity,’ which includes violent content, misinformation and more. Meta employees who spoke with NPR warned AI may overlook serious risks that a human team would have been able to identify. It appears the old slogan of ‘move fast and break things’ is still well entrenched at Meta.
The folks at ComScore have done the analytics, and says that 30% of US people are actively using AI at least monthly. Top AI tools on the desktop are OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and the Canva designer. ComScore notes that 67 million people in the US are using AI on their mobile devices. Top categories on the desktop…besides AI assistants…are Audio with 23.8 million users, image generation with 23 million, and designs also with 23 million. Video generation shows up with 22.4 million. For mobile, ChatGPT has the highest number of visitors. In #2 is marketing platform Octane AI, followed by Canvas, Gemini, and social marketing tool Beacons.
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