Google I/O Recap; Open AI’s New GPT-4o; Feds Investigate Waymo Driverless Cars; Apple & Google Bow Cross-Platform Anti-Tracking

Google made a flood of announcements today during the 2 hour I/O Keynote. Of course, it was all heavy on AI. 9to5google.com reports that Google Lens will now get the ability to search with a video. You can shoot a video, ask a question about something in it, and the AI will try to find appropriate answers on the web and serve them. The new Google AI model is Gemini 1.5 Flash. That’s supposed to be a reference to its quickness, not to the old Adobe Flash Player, or the comic book character, or someone running naked across a stage…although that might have gotten some shock value into the presentation today! Anyway, Flash is multimodal, and just as powerful as Gemini 1.5 Pro according to Google. They have also doubled 1.5 Pro’s context window to 2 million tokens. Gemini is being rolled out to the sidebar in Docs, Sheets, slides, Drive, and Gmail when it gets to paid subscribers next month. They claim it will be a general purpose assistant in Workspace that will fetch info from your drive, help you wrote, or give you reminders.

Google also touted Project Astra is a multimodal AI assistant that the company hopes will become a do-everything virtual assistant that can watch and understand what it sees through your device’s camera, remember where your things are, and do things for you. The Google answer to OpenAI’s Sora is a new generative AI model that can output 1080p video based on text, image, and video based prompts. Google is also bowing a custom chatbot creator called Gems that you can customize. Circle to search now can help solve math problems…it won’t do it for you, (so school kids can’t use it to cheat) but will break down problems into easier steps. Something that will affect everyone is AI Overviews…formerly the ‘Search Generative Experience.’ Yep, Google is dropping more AI into their bread and butter search engine. 

Yesterday, getting the drop on Google somewhat, OpenAI released GPT-4o, a new flagship AI model. According to techcrunch.com, it is a rolling release and will hit developer and consumer facing products over the next few weeks. What is it? Well, according to OpenAI, it provides GPT-4 level intelligence but improves on GPT-4’s capabilities across text and vision as well as audio. OpenAI stressed the importance of voice and vision as the large language model interacts more with people…so be sure to say and think nice things about our coming AI and robot overlords. One interesting wrinkle…you can interrupt it as it is giving you an answer, and ask more or clarify, and the chatbot will theoretically be able to handle that. 

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has been hot on the case of GM’s Cruise vehicles, which had to stop operation in San Francisco after a series of accidents. Now, the feds are looking into ‘unexpected behavior’ by Waymo self-driving cars. Arstechnica.com says that some of the incidents were reported to the government by Waymo, and others came from the public. The feds are looking into what they call  single-party crashes into “stationary and semi-stationary objects such as gates and chains” as well as instances in which Waymo cars “appeared to disobey traffic safety control devices.” This initial probe is the first step before the NHTSA can issue a potential recall. Earlier this year Waymo voluntarily recalled some 400 self drivers after back to back crashes in Arizona. 

As has been promised since last year, Apple and Google are finally rolling out cross-platform anti-tracking ability. Apple has had this feature for a couple years…it aims to prevent someone using one of their Air Tags to track or stalk someone else. Engadget.com notes that Apple and Google have been collaborating to make it possible to spot and end this kind of behavior across Apple and Android devices, to protect users from unwanted Bluetooth trackers snooping around on them. When an unknown Bluetooth device is seen moving with someone over a period of time, they’ll get an alert that reads “[Item] Found Moving With You,” no matter which platform the tracker is paired with. Apple and Google are rolling out the capability in iOS 17.5 and across Android 6.0 and later devices starting today.

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.

Rivian Smaller, Cheaper SUV Coming soon; More Efficient Solar Cell from Oxford Wizards; Google Rebranding Bard to Gemini; Underground Site Uses Neural Networks to Make Really Good Fake IDs

Rivian is getting set to unveil its smaller, cheaper SUV dubbed the R2. The drop date is March 7th. TechCrunch.com reports that it should retail for between $40-60,000, a much lower price than the R1S SUV and the R1T pickup. The reveal will happen in Laguna Beach, CA. Rivian has been operating at a loss, despite decent sales of the present SUV and pickup, as well as the vans it makes for Amazon. They believe at this lower price point, they will be able to scale up production enough to get into the black. Rivian built some 57,000 vehicles in 2023. 

A spinoff from Oxford University called Oxford PV has now made the most efficient solar panel ever built. According to thenextweb.com, compared to the average panels out there…which can convert about 15-20% of solar energy to electricity, this new one can convert 25% of the sun’s energy it receives. It uses a material that is better at absorbing light than previous cells. The spinoff claims that the panels have a theoretical efficiency of 43%…but this has yet to be shown in a real world setting. If they can show that, it would be a gigantic leap forward for solar power.

Google is getting ready to rebrand its Bard generative AI as ‘Gemini,’ likely as early as this week. 9to5google.com reports that Google has upgraded Bard with new features and capabilities. They are also powering the AI with what they call ‘Gemini Pro.’ A Gemini Advanced tier will be available on February 7th. It is a paid product, and includes  “expanded multi-modal capabilities,” better coding support, and “the ability to upload and more deeply analyze files, documents, data, and more.” After the rebranding, Google will be putting out an Android App. The app has a distinct similarity to the current Google Assistant app available in the Play Store, and they note will only run on ‘select devices.’ Most likely that means phones like Tensor-powered Pixels and the Galaxy S24 handsets.

In a flashback to my college days, when one guy I knew made fake out-of-state IDs so his pals could buy booze, a website called OnlyFake is claiming to use “neural networks” to generate realistic looking photos of fake IDs for just $15, radically disrupting the marketplace for fake identities and cybersecurity more generally. This technology, which 404 Media has verified produces fake IDs nearly instantly, could streamline everything from bank fraud to laundering stolen funds. These guys are pikers…the guy I knew charged $25 back decades ago. Ok, inappropriate, I know. At any rate, 404Media says OnlyFake created a highly convincing California driver’s license, complete with whatever arbitrary name, biographical information, address, expiration date, and signature. 404 Media used another fake ID generated by this site to successfully step through the identity verification process on OKX. OKX is a cryptocurrency exchange that has recently appeared in multiple court records because of its use by criminals. BTW, the alleged owner of OnlyFakes goes by John Wick. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.