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Look out, AI video could soon flood YouTube Shorts

Techradar - Fri, 02/14/2025 - 21:00

There are some unbelievably great, if abbreviated, films to watch on YouTube Shorts. A lot of them may soon be more literally unbelievable thanks to Google's AI video creation model Veo 2. YouTube has released Veo 2 to the Shorts platform, augmenting YouTube's Dream Screen AI tool and letting you produce AI-fueled flicks based on a text prompt.

Dream Screen has been using the original version of Veo to produce video backgrounds out of text prompts for Shorts since last year. Veo 2 ups the ante significantly by also making the characters and objects for the video along with the background. The upgrade also makes Dream Screen faster, better at understanding text prompts, and able to produce much more realistic results. The videos mimic real-world physics, and the characters move as realistically (or cartoonishly) as you might want.

You can try out the enhanced Dream Screen by opening the Shorts camera, selecting Green Screen, and typing in what you want to see. You can even add an AI-generated clip to an existing Short by tapping "Add," then "Create," then typing up the prompt. Veo 2 takes over, and within seconds, your giant Pomeranian ballerina is ready to perform.

AI visions

The upgrade to Dream Screen raises many questions and possible concerns. Will AI-generated content flood YouTube Shorts, making it harder to tell what’s real and what’s not? What will creativity look like when the barriers to high-quality visuals disappear? Will we simply get stuck in a loop of AI-generated influencers making AI-generated content for an audience of AI-powered recommendation algorithms?

Google does seem to get that hyper-realistic AI videos made in a few seconds might have some potential pitfalls. That's why YouTube is attaching a SynthID watermark and a label indicating the AI origins of any Dream Screen-produced video. How well these transparency and tracking attempts perform remains to be seen, but at least there's something.

The new feature is only coming to the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand for now, but others are in the pipeline, with more countries on the way. If you’re a YouTube content creator, this may be a huge boon, especially if the only thing standing between your video and viral fame is a slightly more perfect shot, better stock footage, or something truly outlandish. If you don't have an idea, you can always toss around ideas with YouTube's Brainstorm with Gemini tool.

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Prominent Cryptocurrency Investor Faces Senate Tax Inquiry

NYT Technology - Fri, 02/14/2025 - 20:02
The Finance Committee’s top Democrat sent a letter last month to Dan Morehead, the founder of Pantera Capital, about the investigation.

With Trump’s Help, Intel Could Hand Control of Chip Plants to TSMC

NYT Technology - Fri, 02/14/2025 - 19:34
The Silicon Valley giant is trying to cut a deal it hopes would help it pull out of a yearslong slump.

OpenAI Rejects Elon Musk’s $97.4 Billion Bid for Control of the Company

NYT Technology - Fri, 02/14/2025 - 18:49
Bret Taylor, the chairman of OpenAI’s board, said the artificial intelligence company was “not for sale.” Mr. Musk is separately raising money for his A.I. start-up, xAI.

Windows 11 fully streamlined in just two clicks? Talon utility promises to rip all the bloatware out of Microsoft’s OS in a hassle-free way

Techradar - Fri, 02/14/2025 - 18:30
  • Talon is a debloating tool designed for those who aren’t tech-savvy
  • It does everything for you in running a fully automated debloat of Windows
  • Bear in mind that third-party apps are used at your own risk, though the developer of Talon seems commendably transparent

Fed up with Windows 11’s bits of additional bloat, meaning all those unwanted bits of software and other elements that you’ll never use, clogging up the system?

You might not know where to start to do anything about fixing this, which is where a new utility comes in, allowing for a very easy method of debloating Windows 11 with a minimum of fuss required.

As TweakTown flagged up, this is Talon, a software tool developed by Raven with the aim of being an automated full debloat of Microsoft’s operating system that’s suitable for even novice computer users.

The promise is just two clicks – to choose the type of debloat you want and a dialog box to accept the changes being made to your PC – and you’re done. Well, you have to wait some time for the actual process to happen, but it’s all performed automatically, there’s no brain-ache or puzzling over options involved.

A barebones debloat is what many folks will run – just a straightforward stripping out of all the crud from Windows 11 – but other options can then add some (hopefully) useful apps back for you. For example, choosing ‘Gaming’ as the use of your PC will run the debloat and then install the likes of Discord and Steam.

You can find out more about Talon by watching the YouTube video below, and you can download the utility here (but have a quick read of my analysis underneath the video clip before you do so).

Analysis: An easy way to banish the bloat – but is it a sensible one?

I’ve got to say, I really like the philosophy of Talon, which is to take all the hassle out of debloating.

As Raven points out in the above video, a typical debloating tool will be a maze of check boxes and submenus, and it might even involve entering PowerShell commands. Tasks that less tech-savvy Windows 11 users will doubtless find difficult or even arcane.

So, taking all the pain out of that is a commendable goal. What Talon is really doing is bundling a bunch of these trickier utilities in a user-friendly, automated package. (For the curious, the tools drafted in under the bonnet of Talon include ChrisTitusTech’s WinUtil and Raphi’s Win11Debloat, which are the main engines of what’s happening here).

However, with any third-party app, you must be cautious. Ultimately, whether you want to install any piece of software is a decision that you must take yourself, especially when it comes to lesser-known developers.

However, Talon appears to be laudably transparent in the interview given to TweakTown, and one definite positive is that the code for the tool is open source and can be viewed and checked by anyone. (So, if there are flaws or anything amiss, hopefully they’ll be shouted about).

The developer Raven freely admits that as Talon relies on some third-party software, as mentioned, any vulnerabilities in those would also apply to the app itself (obviously).

I’ll leave the final words to the developer, as quoted from the TweakTown interview: “While it is possible for a supply chain attack to occur, where one of these [third-party] utilities gets compromised then Talon is inherently compromised as a result, they are very popular utilities with lots of eyes on their code, and with extremely talented and trusted maintainers."

“The rest of Talon is done through homemade scripts that we maintain. At the end of the day, the possibility of malware injection, a supply chain attack, or whatever else, is there for any software, no matter the size of the team or the popularity of a project. We will do our best to ensure that this day never comes, though, and if it does we will address it as fast as possible to ensure minimal impact.”

For those who aren’t convinced or would rather DIY the task of streamlining their operating system, make sure you check out TechRadar’s guide on how to find and remove bloatware from your Windows 11 PC.

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A.I. Accelerates in Paris + Can A.I. Fix Your Love Life?

NYT Technology - Fri, 02/14/2025 - 06:00
It’s a Valentine’s Day Special!

Gemini just added one of ChatGPT's best features and I'm finally excited to use it

Techradar - Fri, 02/14/2025 - 04:29
  • Google Gemini can now remember previous conversations
  • The memory functionality is rolling out now to Google One AI Premium subscribers
  • ChatGPT has had similar functionality for a year, and it's one of the best features of any AI chatbot

Google has just added an upgraded memory feature to Gemini that allows you to ask the AI chatbot questions based on past conversations.

The new "recall" feature is rolling out to all users who subscribe to Google One AI Premium, a paid monthly subscription that grants access to Gemini's best features. With recall, you'll be able to ask Gemini about previous conversations and pick up from where you left off, allowing the AI to feel more alive and aware of your history. Previously, Gemini had no recollection of previous chats, so you'd have to remind it of important details.

This huge upgrade to Google Gemini brings the AI chatbot up-to-speed with competitor ChatGPT, which has had a well-functioning memory feature for over a year now. The difference is, ChatGPT's offering is available for free and doesn't require a monthly subscription to access its functionality. That said, Google could be testing the recall feature before rolling it out to free Gemini users, although currently, we've had no information of that happening.

This new update comes off the back of Gemini's November update that added the ability for the chatbot to remember certain things about you based on your interests and personal preferences. Unlike this new update, you'd have to go to Gemini's "Saved Info" tab and pre-fill information for the AI to reference in conversations.

When ChatGPT introduced memory last year it completely changed the way I interacted with AI, allowing me to speak naturally with the chatbot and spot nuances where it was able to reference the past in very useful ways. Until now, I've been put off from using Gemini because of its lack of memory, but that's all changed. Gemini's recall feature is rolling out in English to Gemini One AI Premium users now (although I don't have access yet), and Google says the update will be available for other languages in the coming weeks.

The context we needed

Gemini's ability to remember previous conversations gives Google's AI chatbot a whole new level of usefulness. In the past, I've been frustrated by Gemini's lack of context to my prompts when I've asked similar questions in old chats. This was never an issue if you used one single chat with Gemini, but considering the range of models from Gemini 2.0 Flash to Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental, I can quickly rack up multiple discussions at once.

Now, Gemini will be able to take information from all of my chats and have the personal context to reference them in any way I need. Things like "Remember that time I talked to you about train travel? What was the route you told me to take?" can now be used in Gemini, and that's a huge step in making AI more conversational and more accessible.

Talking about accessibility, hopefully, Google plans to roll out this memory feature to free users, as I truly believe a memory function is one of the most important features for any AI chatbot. Until then, I'll still recommend ChatGPT to my friends and family, after all, OpenAI's model has the memory ofan elephant, and without paying for it.

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What’s Best, According to the Italian Mathematician Alessio Figalli

NYT Technology - Fri, 02/14/2025 - 04:00
Alessio Figalli studies optimal transport, a field of math that ranges from the movements of clouds to the workings of chatbots.

You can now talk to Microsoft Copilot Voice in 40 more languages

Techradar - Thu, 02/13/2025 - 22:30
  • Microsoft’s Copilot Voice has been upgraded with 40 new languages
  • The AI has also improved its real-time responses
  • Microsoft wants to encourage people to engage with Copilot in their everyday lives

Microsoft Copilot Voice has become a lot more cosmopolitan. The AI assistant has added support for 40 new languages and improved its real-time responses in a bid to make conversations feel more natural and comfortable for users.

Copilot Voice debuted in October, adding a vocal component to the AI, but with more power than the previous standard form of voice assistant. It can handle multi-turn conversations, recognize interruptions, and even adjust its tone based on emotional cues. It’s also free, which is a pretty big selling point in a world where AI subscriptions are becoming the norm. OpenAI has Advanced Voice Mode for ChatGPT, while Google’s Gemini Live offers its vocal interface.

The expanded language support is a big deal, especially for users outside of English-speaking markets. Whether you’re switching between languages or simply want an assistant who understands your native tongue better, this is a welcome change. This also points to Microsoft's strategy for making Copilot more of an international AI assistant through the Voice feature.

Speedy speech

You've got a lot *in* your hands, so let me help! Just get real-time updates with Copilot Voice pic.twitter.com/lF8B8UkQYJFebruary 13, 2025

Another key improvement is in real-time information retrieval. Voice assistants have always had a slight lag when pulling information from the web, often leaving users waiting while the AI “thinks.” With this update, Copilot Voice is now much faster and more responsive when answering questions, making interactions feel smoother and more natural. No more awkward pauses while you wait for an answer to a simple question.

The update also highlights Microsoft's efforts to enhance Copilot's place as a digital assistant, not just a glorified search engine. Copilot Voice might succeed after the failure of Cortana as Microsoft's AI voice assistant. The gap between what people expect from an AI assistant and what they actually get is closing, and voice AI tools will likely be a major facet.

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Banks Sell $4.7 Billion of X’s Debt, in a Sign of Investor Demand

NYT Technology - Thu, 02/13/2025 - 21:25
The social media company is attracting investor interest because of Elon Musk’s close ties to President Trump and a recent jump in revenue.

Apple and Google Restore TikTok to App Stores in the U.S.

NYT Technology - Thu, 02/13/2025 - 19:42
The popular social media app was removed to comply with a new law that banned it in the United States.

For Trump and Fox News, New Policies Are Simply ‘Common Sense’

NYT Technology - Thu, 02/13/2025 - 18:05
President Trump and the network have used the phrase to suggest that his policies are the right ones and popular, though polling suggests otherwise.

If you've bought an internal Seagate hard drive, beware of the growing refurbished Chia scandal - here's what you need to know

Techradar - Thu, 02/13/2025 - 16:24
  • Seagate denies involvement in fraudulent HDD resales.
  • Buyers can check Seagate HDD usage history using relevant tools.
  • Retailers are offering some sort of compensation.

Seagate hard drives that were previously used in Chinese Chia cryptocurrency mining farms have been resold as new by unsuspecting retailers.

An investigation by Heise indicates large quantities of high-mileage drives have surfaced in the market, particularly in Europe, Australia, Thailand, and Japan.

These drives, often datacenter-grade Seagate Exos models, have been found with thousands of operational hours despite being marketed as brand new.

Chia farms and the flood of second-hand drives

At the peak of the cryptocurrency boom, mining operations required vast storage capacity, leading to a surge in demand for high-end HDDs. However, as the profitability of Chia mining declined, many farms shut down and sold their hardware. These hard drives were then repackaged and reintroduced into the market, deceiving customers.

Concerned buyers can verify the true usage history of their Seagate HDDs using special diagnostic tools. While SMART parameters can be reset to hide prior use, the FARM (field-accessible reliability metrics) values provide a more accurate record.

Users can check these values by running the command smartctl -l farm /dev/sda in Smartmontools version 7.4 or higher or by using Seagate’s own Seatools software to inspect the drive’s operational history.

Seagate has stated it only distributes genuine hard drives through official channel, and it suspects these used HDDs entered the secondary market before reaching consumers.

Nevertheless, It has also launched a full-scale investigation and has urged affected buyers to report any suspicious purchases to fraud@seagate.com.

Affected retailers are firefighting the issue, with Galaxus creating online help pages for affected customers, while Proshop is offering free returns and replacements. Alternate, a German retailer, denies prior knowledge of the issue but has encouraged customers to report used drives. Wortmann, on the other hand, insists on verifying HDDs before offering compensation.

Via TomsHardware

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Blue Origin Cuts 10% of Its Employees

NYT Technology - Thu, 02/13/2025 - 15:32
In an email to employees, the company’s chief executive said the company had become bloated during its growth in recent years.

Meta purportedly trained its AI on more than 80TB of pirated content and then open-sourced Llama for the greater good

Techradar - Thu, 02/13/2025 - 15:05
  • Zuckerberg reportedly pushed for AI implementation despite employee objections
  • Employees allegedly discussed ways to conceal how the company acquired its AI training data
  • Court filings suggest Meta took steps to unsuccessfully mask its AI training activities

Meta is facing a class-action lawsuit alleging copyright infringement and unfair competition over the training of its AI model, Llama.

According to court documents released by vx-underground, Meta allegedly downloaded nearly 82TB of pirated books from shadow libraries such as Anna’s Archive, Z-Library, and LibGen to train its AI systems.

Internal discussions reveal that some employees raised ethical concerns as early as 2022, with one researcher explicitly stating, “I don’t think we should use pirated material” while another said, “Using pirated material should be beyond our ethical threshold.”

Meta made efforts to avoid detection

Despite these concerns, Meta appears to have not only ploughed on and taken steps to avoid detection. In April 2023, an employee warned against using corporate IP addresses to access pirated content, while another said that “torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn’t feel right,” adding a laughing emoji.

There are also reports that Meta employees allegedly discussed ways to prevent Meta’s infrastructure from being directly linked to the downloads, raising questions about whether the company knowingly bypassed copyright laws.

In January 2023, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly attended a meeting where he pushed for AI implementation at the company despite internal objections.

Meta isn't alone in facing legal challenges over AI training. OpenAI has been sued multiple times for allegedly using copyrighted books without permission, including a case filed by The New York Times in December 2023.

Nvidia is also under legal scrutiny for training its NeMo model on nearly 200,000 books, and a former employee had disclosed that the company scraped over 426,000 hours of video daily for AI development.

And in case you missed it, OpenAI recently claimed that DeepSeek unlawfully obtained data from its models, highlighting the ongoing ethical and legal dilemmas surrounding AI training practices.

Via Tom's Hardware

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Northeast Arkansas manufacturer Envirotech Vehicles to move headquarters to Texas

Memphis Business Journal - Thu, 02/13/2025 - 14:18
The publicly traded company is moving its headquarters from Arkansas to Houston — and it's already seeking additional manufacturing space.

Elon Musk Says He Will Drop OpenAI Bid if Company Keeps Corporate Structure

NYT Technology - Thu, 02/13/2025 - 13:20
In a court filing, Mr. Musk said he and other investors would pull their $97.4 billion bid if OpenAI withdrew its plan to change its structure.

Google Maps is ramping up its Waze-like incident reports – and that could split opinion among users

Techradar - Thu, 02/13/2025 - 12:30
  • Google Maps is testing the rollout of more incident reports
  • These are weather-related options such as ‘flooded road’ or ‘low visibility’
  • The growing library of incidents is a source of annoyance for some drivers

Google Maps is introducing new incident reporting options, fresh additions that pertain to weather-related conditions.

Android Police spotted these new kinds of report, and they include the likes of ‘flooded road’ for when there’s been a huge deluge of rain, or ‘low visibility’ for when it gets foggy. And indeed ‘unplowed road’ for when, well, you should probably turn around and find a plowed road that’s not wheel-deep in snow.

The site noticed these new options in Google Maps for Android Auto first off, and then in the iPhone app.

The not-so-great news for those keen on being able to benefit from a wider variety of untoward happenings being reported is that these new introductions have not yet made it to the Android version of Google Maps.

However, it surely won’t be long before the ability to report a flooded or snowed-up road arrives on Android.

Is an ever-growing library of incidents a good thing?

Google Maps on two iPhone 12 Pro devices sitting side by side.

(Image credit: Future)

This is a continued expansion of the reporting of incidents in Google Maps, on top of clearly-labeled Waze reports being piped through alongside native reports since last year. There’s already a wide range of incidents that can be flagged, such as road traffic accidents, stalled cars, lanes being closed, speed traps, and so on.

Sometimes, these kind of alerts can be very useful, of course, and plenty of folks are grateful to have been warned of an incoming thorny issue on the road ahead.

However, not everyone is keen on being subject to more and more of these reports being highlighted in Google Maps – with complaints about them being too frequent only likely to multiply, as Google further expands the library of incidents that can be reported.

The problem is compounded by errant reports – incidents that aren’t there, or were resolved some time back – and there being no easy way to switch off said reports.

It looks like this is a road Google is insisting on driving down, though, despite the ‘stop’ signs being waved by some of the drivers who use its navigation app.

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Microsoft makes another tweak to Windows 11’s taskbar – but it’s probably not the change you were hoping for

Techradar - Thu, 02/13/2025 - 09:25
  • Microsoft has added a new icon to the Windows 11 taskbar
  • It allows you to use Windows Studio Effects in compatible apps
  • Windows Studio Effects is exclusive to Copilot+ PCs

If you’ve downloaded the latest Windows 11 update, which was released as part of the monthly ‘Patch Tuesday’ batch of fixes, you might have noticed a new icon in the taskbar and wondered what it is. Well, wonder no more: it’s a shortcut for the AI-powered Windows Studio Effects feature.

Windows Studio Effects is a suite of effects that use artificial intelligence to improve the quality of your video calls. It can blur the background, make it look like you’re looking directly at the camera (rather than looking at the screen), improve the lighting, and make sure you’re always in frame (as well as applying more creative filters).

You might not have used Windows Studio Effects before – they are a relatively new batch of effects introduced as part of Microsoft’s AI push, and this change appears to be an attempt to introduce them to a wider audience. The icon will appear when you use an app that makes use of Windows Studio Effects – which will include pretty much any tool that uses your device’s webcam.

Clicking the icon brings up the effects for you to easily turn on – and if you hover over the icon, it will tell you which app is using the webcam. This is a handy privacy feature, as it means apps shouldn’t access your webcam without you knowing.

However, there are plenty of Windows 11 users (including myself) who are waiting for Microsoft to make changes to the taskbar that bring back some of the functionality that previous versions of Windows had – especially the ability to drag files onto app icons in the taskbar to open them in the app. Microsoft instead adding icons for features a lot of people don't use is disappointing, to say the least.

Easier access, but is it enough?

As I mentioned, Windows Studio Effects was introduced as part of Microsoft’s campaign to get more people to use AI features – something the company has invested heavily in. It was advertised as one of the big selling points of Copilot+ PCs – a new breed of Windows 11 devices that meet certain hardware requirements (16GB of RAM and a CPU with an NPU) to run AI tasks locally on the device, rather than via the internet.

Because of this, Windows Studio Effects is exclusive to Copilot+ PCs, so if you don’t see the new icon, then it’s likely due to your PC not meeting the requirements.

Therein lies part of the problem for Microsoft if it wants more people to use Windows Studio Effects. Making the feature more easily accessible by putting an icon in the Taskbar is a good first step, but by limiting the feature to certain PCs is going to reduce its reach.

Of course, what Microsoft would like in that case is for people who are desperate to use Windows Studio Effects to go out and buy a new Copilot+ laptop. But that’s the other problem – is this a feature that will get people excited about AI? And excited enough to buy a new laptop?

I just don’t think so. Some features, such as blurring the background and auto-focusing the camera, can be done by other apps without the need of an NPU (neural processing unit), while other features, such as the creative effects, are fun, but hardly essential. If you use your device for making video calls as part of your work, you’re unlikely to want to enable them. Worse, the eye contact feature ends up being a bit creepy, with unnatural-looking eye contact causing an uncanny valley effect.

So far, the Copilot+ PCs we’ve tested have been some of the best laptops you can buy thanks to their performance and battery life, but the AI features are the least impressive bits about them – which is a problem as Microsoft envisions these as key selling points – especially as other key Copilot+ PC features, such as the controversial Recall feature, either don’t work that well, or have yet to be released.

So, no matter how easy Microsoft makes it to launch these new AI features, people are going to continue to ignore them until the company gives us a good reason to – and so far, it’s been failing to do just that.

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Free Gemini Live update brings better conversation skills and understanding of accents

Techradar - Thu, 02/13/2025 - 06:50
  • Gemini Live is now more conversational and dynamic
  • It is better at translating languages and recognizing accents
  • Screen sharing and video streaming abilities coming soon

If you’re a Gemini user then you will have got an email from Google today explaining that the company is rolling out an upgrade to Gemini Live to “make your conversations even more dynamic and engaging”.

The new upgrade to Gemini Live (the conversational part of Gemini that you can access on your phone) means that conversations have been improved by an, as yet unnamed, new AI model. Google stated that “With our latest model, Live can better understand multiple languages, dialects or accents in a single Live chat and help with your translation needs.”

As well as the February improvements to Gemini Live, Google also shared its plans for Gemini Live updates in the future. “In the coming months, we'll also bring screen sharing and live video streaming capabilities to Live.”

These updates hint at a multimodal future for Gemini Live on all devices, where it has the ability to be aware of what is being shown on the screen so you can ask questions about it. Currently that’s something it can’t do unless you own a Pixel 9 phone, which has the ability to "Talk live about this". While you can upload a photo to standard Gemini, and ask the chatbot questions about it, or ask it to extract text from the photo, you can’t do this in Live mode yet unless you won a Pixel 9.

Privacy update

Along with this new ability, Google also issued a privacy update, stating that “As part of providing this improved experience, your audio, video and screenshares are stored in your Gemini Apps activity (if it's on). Your data in Gemini Apps activity is deleted per your auto-delete period in that setting, and you can manage and delete your Gemini Apps activity at any time.”

To access your Gemini Apps activity, on a mobile device, click on your profile picture in the Gemini app, then on ‘Gemini Apps Activity’. In a web browser, go to gemini.google.com and click on the menu icon, then Activity.

Gemini Live

(Image credit: Future, Lance Ulanoff) What I found

A conversation being more dynamic is pretty subjective, so I tried a conversation with the new update today and while it went smoothly it was hard to pinpoint what the differences were, if any, from my previous interactions with Gemini Live. Sure, Gemini sounded perky and eager to please, but it has always sounded like that.

The next thing I wanted to try was the translation abilities. I tried to get Gemini Live to translate words from Spanish to English, but more often than not it kept telling me that the word I was saying was the name of a town in California or Michigan, rather than translating it into English! However, that may have more to do with my Spanish pronunciation than Gemini’s ability to translate from Spanish to English. To be fair, I did manage to get it to understand some of my Spanish words and translate them eventually.

So, I’d say it was hard to pinpoint exactly what had changed in Live, however when I asked Gemini Live when it was last updated, it said February 2025, so I’m assuming it has been updated with the new abilities. Let me know in the comments if you’ve noticed that your Gemini chats feel more alive compared to before.

Gemini LIve is currently free to all Android users, but also available in the Gemini app to iPhone users who are subscribed to Gemini Advanced.

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