A few months ago, Google introduced a new way to search Gmail with the help of its Gemini AI. The feature, called Gmail Q&A, lets you find specific emails and information by asking the Gemini chatbot questions. You can ask things like "What time is our dinner reservation on Saturday?" to quickly find the information you need. It was only initially available on Android devices, but now Google has started rolling it out to iPhones.
In addition to being able to ask questions, you can also use the feature to find unread emails from a specific sender simply by telling Gemini to "Find unread emails by [the person's name]." You can ask the chatbot to summarize a topic you know you can find in your inbox, such as work projects that you've been on for months consisting of multiple conversations across several threads. And you can even use Gemini in Gmail to do general search queries without having to leave your inbox. To access Gemini, simply tap on the star icon at the top right corner of your Gmail app.
Google says the feature could take up to 15 days to reach your devices. Take note, however, that you do need to have access to Gemini Business, Enterprise, Education, Education Premium or Google One AI Premium to be able to use it.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/gmails-gemini-powered-qa-feature-comes-to-ios-120015661.html?src=rss
Square Enix’s multiplayer shooter Foamstars is moving to a free-to-play model. The four-player team multiplayer melee officially turned into a free game today on Sony’s PlayStation 4 and 5 meaning you also won’t need a PlayStation Plus subscription to play it, according to a posting on the studio’s support page.
If you purchased the game before Square Enix’s price change, the studio will send you a free “Legacy Gift” that includes 12 exclusive color-variant Bubble Beastie skins, an exclusive Slide Board design and a “Legacy” title. You’ll need to keep an eye on the game’s official website and X account to find out how to obtain your free “Legacy Gift.”
Foamstarsreleased earlier this year on Sony’s past and current gen consoles as a third-person multiplayer battle game. It’s basically a mix of the homebase building mechanic of Fortnite and Nintendo’s family friendly multiplayer shooter melee Splatoon. Teams use mounds of foam to build terrain for their shooters to traverse at high speeds or build higher vantage points to attack their enemies. You shouldn’t learn anymore about the game’s backstory and where the mounds of foam come from or at least not while you’re eating. Trust us on this one.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/foamstars-is-going-free-to-play-starting-today-231750186.html?src=rss
The past week hasn’t been the kindest to the electric vehicle industry. Now, it’s capped off with news that the EV startup Fisker is the subject of an investigation from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
TechCrunch reported that SEC officials sent several subpoenas to Fisker. The filing doesn’t specifically say what the subpoenas are asking for or looking into but it’s clear that the SEC has launched an investigation into the floundering EV maker that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June.
Fisker has been struggling to keep its head above water ever since last year’s disastrous rollout of its Ocean SUV that failed to score more than a few thousands sellers even though it produced well over 10,000 units. Following its Q4 earnings report last year that saw a gross margin loss of 35 percent, the car maker announced it would lay off 15 percent of its workforce the following March as it shifted to a direct-to-consumer sales strategy.
A Fisker spokesperson declined to comment on the matter to TechCrunch saying they could not “comment on the existence or nonexistence of a possible investigation.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/fisker-faces-more-bad-news-as-the-sec-starts-investigating-its-business-practices-222504280.html?src=rss
Why is it so satisfying to toss, drop, throw and fling ragdoll characters down steps, out of windows and into oncoming traffic in games like Human Fall Flat? Ragdoll games just know how to scratch the lizard part of our brain that enjoys being the destructive force of mayhem while also meeting the moral center of our frontal lobe by not causing any real world harm (or felony charges).
Now you’ll be able to see the fruits of your destruction in a virtual environment as Human Fall Flat and its hapless, ham-handed hero head to the Meta Quest headsets and Steam VR on Halloween. Curve Games and No Brakes Games are also working on a version for the PSVR2 for a date yet to be announced.
Human Fall Flat is a three-dimensional physics platformer that has you control a floppy, ragdoll human named Bob. Just like the other games, you’ll see Bob in a third-person perspective as you use his sinewy limbs to guide him through a series of bizarre obstacles like a train that somehow derailed through the top floor of a Victorian style mansion, a dysfunctional power plant in dire need of a OSHA review and the inevitable ice world level.
Owners of a Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3 or Meta Quest 3S headset can pre-order the game now on the Quest App Store for the discounted price of $9.99. The Steam port doesn’t have a price yet but you can add it to your wishlist.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/soon-youll-be-able-to-fling-around-the-klutzy-schlub-in-human-fall-flat-on-vr-212033104.html?src=rss
X has lost a legal fight in Australia in which the company tried to avoid a $400,000 fine by claiming that Twitter no longer exists. The creative legal argument, first spotted byArsTechnica, came amid a more than year-long dispute with Australia’s eSafety Commission.
The commission had asked the company, then known as Twitter, to provide details about its handling of child sexual exploitation on the platform last February. In its response, X failed to answer a number of questions and left “some sections entirely blank,” the commission said in a statement last year. As a result, the eSafety Commission slapped the company with a more than $415,000 fine for non-compliance.
It was an attempt to fight that fine that led to X’s claim that it shouldn’t be responsible since Twitter had “ceased to exist.” From the court filing:
X Corp submitted that, on and from 15 March 2023, Twitter Inc ceased to be a person, and therefore ceased to be a provider of a social media service. It was submitted that Twitter Inc therefore lacked capacity to comply with the notice, and that X Corp was not obliged to prepare any report in Twitter Inc’s place, as X Corp was not the same person as the provider to whom the notice was issued.
The argument isn’t exactly new for the Elon Musk-owned entity. CEO Linda Yaccarino has also repeatedly claimed that X is a “brand new company” in a bid to avoid scrutiny. She repeated the line multiple times earlier this year while testifying at a Senate hearing on child safety issues.
Australia federal Judge Michael Wheelahan, however, found the claim unconvincing, saying that X’s argument required “leaps in logic that were not supported by adequate explanation.” X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, eSafety Commissioner Inman Grant cheered the decision. “Had X Corp’s argument been accepted by the Court it could have set the concerning precedent that a foreign company’s merger with another foreign company might enable it to avoid regulatory obligations in Australia,” Grant said.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/x-lost-a-court-battle-after-trying-to-claim-twitter-ceased-to-exist-203030765.html?src=rss
Samsung will begin using the One UI name for all its consumer devices, now including TVs and home appliances. Executive Vice President Sally Hyesoon Jeong made the announcement at the company’s 2024 developer conference (via9to5Google). The One UI branding was previously exclusive to its Galaxy phones, tablets and wearables.
“One UI now goes beyond mobile as the software experience for all Samsung consumer devices,” Hyesoon Jeong said onstage at the San Jose keynote. It’s part of the company’s aim for more cohesive branding across its consumer ecosystem, especially as its AI approach evolves.
Samsung
Samsung also teased that its next software user experience, One UI 7, will arrive with the 2025 batch of Galaxy S phones. “One UI 7 will bring a fresh, new look to the entire interface,” Hyesoon Jeong said at the conference. She laid out three goals for the upcoming software: simple (with a purpose), impactful (leaving a “signature impression”), and emotive design that elicits a human reaction from the user.
The Samsung VP says the One UI 7 home screen grid represents the more focused design principles. “It’s sleeker and easier to use, giving you a neat home screen no matter which Galaxy device you’re using,” said Hyesoon Jeong.
Although you’ll have to wait until early next year for One UI 7, the company said a developer beta will be available to test-drive by the end of this year.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/samsungs-one-ui-now-covers-all-of-its-consumer-devices-including-tvs-and-appliances-201850799.html?src=rss
Once again, the European Union has issued a ruling preventing Meta from going too crazy with user information. The top court in the EU ruled that limits must be put in place for how long Meta and other social media networks can use people’s information for ad targeting strategies.
TechCrunch reported that the EU’s highest court sided with an earlier opinion published in April by a court adviser. The previous ruling also urged for limits on the amount of time companies could retain customers’ personal data for the purpose of targeting advertising.
The rulings referred its retention guidelines to the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) established by the EU in 2018. Recital 65 of the GDPR establishes a person’s “right to be forgotten” and the right to rectification and erasure of personal data. Failure to comply with the GDPR could result in a 4 percent global annual turnover penalty, a number that could reach into the billions for a social media mega-corporation like Meta. Last year, Meta had to pay a $414 million fine (or approximately €390 million) for illegally requiring users of its social media outlets like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to accept personalized ads.
The EU and Meta along with other big tech companies like Apple and Google have tangled over the use of personal data in relation to the Digital Markets Act. Meta is currently awaiting a fine ruling for violating the EU’s Digital Markets Act when it required users to pay to prohibit the company from collecting and sharing their personal data. Last year, the EU’s Court of Justice ruled that Meta needed to obtain consent before delivering personal ads to users in the region.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/eu-court-rules-social-networks-cant-use-personal-data-forever-193013206.html?src=rss
Amazon Prime Day is right around the corner, so the deals are already coming in hot. For instance, the Oura Ring is up to $100 off. The discount depends on which design you go for. The Stealth Horizon design is $350 in all sizes, while many standard colors are $300. The gold option, however, jumps up to $450. The prices also fluctuate depending on if you choose the rounded Horizon design or the more blocky Heritage design.
For the uninitiated, the Oura Ring is a smart wearable that tracks activity, sleep and more. The main benefit of choosing a smart ring over another type of fitness tracker is portability. It’s a lightweight ring, so after a few days you forget it’s even on. We called the Oura Ring the “perfect wearable for people who don't like wearables” in our official review. It even made our list of the best sleep apps and gadgets.
The device monitors over 20 biometric signals and is particularly precise when reading a pulse. The Oura Ring is also compatible with most of the most popular fitness-tracking apps, like Apple Health, Strava and Google Health Connect. Many of the designs are quite fetching and allow the device to easily pass as a regular non-techy ring.
On the downside, a bunch of the ring’s features are locked behind a subscription paywall. You get a month free with the initial purchase, but after that it’ll cost $6 per month. It’s also worth noting that this deal is for the third-gen Oura Ring. The fourth-gen device officially releases on October 15 and it’s smaller, with more tracking capabilities.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice, and stay tuned to Engadget.com for all of the best tech deals coming out of October Prime Day 2024.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-third-gen-oura-ring-is-up-to-100-off-in-this-early-prime-day-deal-184904718.html?src=rss
There’s a new fix available for certain iPhones and iPads that addresses issues with recording and password security. Apple released two new patches including iOS 18.0.1 for iPhones and iPadOS 18.0.1, according to the support website. The update also finally allows users with an M4-powered iPad to upgrade to iOS 18, after the initial version was pulled for bricking users’ devices.
The patch fixes recording issues with all of the iPhone 16 models in the Messages app. The iPhone’s microphone would accidentally start recording a few seconds before becoming activated with the orange microphone icon.
The password patch fixes an issue in which the VoiceOver function may read a saved password aloud. The patch works for iPhone XS and later as well as iPad Pro 13-inch, iPad Pro 12.9-inch (third generation and later), iPad Pro 11-inch (first generation and later), iPad Air (third generation and later), iPad (seventh generation and later) and iPad mini (fifth generation and later).
If you own one of these devices, you can download the new patches by going to the Software Updates tab in the General section of your Settings app.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/new-ios-update-fixes-microphone-and-password-problems-173339119.html?src=rss
At this point, you probably either love the idea of making realistic videos with generative AI, or you think it's a morally bankrupt endeavor that devalues artists and will usher in a disastrous era of deepfakes we'll never escape from. It's hard to find middle ground. Meta isn't going to change minds with Movie Gen, its latest video creation AI model, but no matter what you think of AI media creation, it could end up being a significant milestone for the industry.
Movie Gen can produce realistic videos alongside music and sound effects at 16 fps or 24 fps at up to 1080p (upscaled from 768 by 768 pixels). It can also generative personalized videos if you upload a photo, and crucially, it appears to be easy to edit videos using simple text commands. Notably, it can also edit normal, non-AI videos with text. It's easy to imagine how that could be useful for cleaning up something you've shot on your phone for Instagram. Movie Gen is just purely research at the moment —Meta won't be releasing it to the public, so we have a bit of time to think about what it all means.
The company describes Movie Gen as its "third wave" of generative AI research, following its initial media creation tools like Make-A-Scene, as well as more recent offerings using its Llama AI model. It's powered by a 30 billion parameter transformer model that can make 16 second-long 16 fps videos, or 10-second long 24 fps footage. It also has a 13 billion parameter audio model that can make 45 seconds of 48kHz of content like "ambient sound, sound effects (Foley), and instrumental background music" synchronized to video. There's no synchronized voice support yet "due to our design choices," the Movie Gen team wrote in their research paper.
Meta
Meta says Movie Gen was initially trained on "a combination of licensed and publicly available datasets," including around 100 million videos, a billion images and a million hours of audio. The company's language is a bit fuzzy when it comes to sourcing — Meta has already admitted to training its AI models on data from every Australian user's account, it's even less clear what the company is using outside of its own products.
As for the actual videos, Movie Gen certainly looks impressive at first glance. Meta says that in its own A/B testing, people have generally preferred its results compared to OpenAI's Sora and Runway's Gen3 model. Movie Gen's AI humans look surprisingly realistic, without many of the gross telltale signs of AI video (disturbing eyes and fingers, in particular).
Meta
"While there are many exciting use cases for these foundation models, it’s important to note that generative AI isn’t a replacement for the work of artists and animators," the Movie Gen team wrote in a blog post. "We’re sharing this research because we believe in the power of this technology to help people express themselves in new ways and to provide opportunities to people who might not otherwise have them."
It's still unclear what mainstream users will do with generative AI video, though. Are we going to fill our feeds with AI video, instead of taking our own photos and videos? Or will Movie Gen be deconstructed into individual tools that can help sharpen our own content? We can already easily remove objects from the backgrounds of photos on smartphones and computers, more sophisticated AI video editing seems like the next logical step.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/metas-movie-gen-looks-like-a-huge-leap-forward-for-ai-video-but-you-cant-use-it-yet-165717605.html?src=rss