Author: Geek Planet

Google has just announced a new AI model in the Gemini 3 series, one that is focused on speedy responses. Say hello to Gemini 3 Flash, which is claimed to offer “frontier intelligence” and aims to speed up the Google Search experience for users.  What’s the big shift? Gemini 3 will be integrated within the AI Mode in Search. In case you missed it, AI mode is the new conversational version of Search that is now available as its own mode, alongside the vanilla “blue link” mode, image, news, videos, and shopping, among others.   The whole idea behind AI mode…

L’Oréal is building a data layer beneath its creator economy push.The cosmetics giant is looking for partners to help make sense of the data from all its creator campaigns, according to two separate sources familiar with the plans.  Think of it as a search for creator-CRM specialists but with a layer of predictive analytics and measurement tools built in to better understand what’s working, what’s not and where to invest next.  Whoever gets the gig will work with L’Oréal’s marketers to knit together data on what the company is paying creators across brands, campaigns and platforms, and match it to…

New allegations against Meta, which operates Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, claim, with piles of evidence, that the company downplayed its products’ harmful side effects on children. Basically, Meta executives know that the social media apps they sustain hurt kids and yet did nothing to change. Charlotte Alter reports in Time, The following allegations against Meta come from the brief filed in an unprecedented multidistrict litigation. More than 1,800 plaintiffs — including children and parents, school districts, and state attorneys general — have joined together in a suit alleging that the parent companies behind Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube “relentlessly pursued…

This article by Casey Luskin is republished from Science and Culture Today. At COSM this week, author Louisa Gilder spoke about her book The Age of Entanglement (2009), about the bizarre quantum mechanics phenomenon where two particles become linked, such that they share the same quantum state. But it gets a lot weirder, because the distance between the two particles doesn’t affect their entangled behavior. Under entanglement, measuring a property of one particle determines the outcome of the measurement on the other particle. It’s been proposed that the correlation between entangled particles happens instantaneously — certainly faster than the speed of…

If you’ve been waiting for the moment to grab a modern AI-ready Windows laptop without spending four figures, this HP OmniBook X Flip deal hits the sweet spot. For $629.99, you’re getting a slim 2-in-1 with a 14-inch 2K touchscreen, Intel Core Ultra 7 256V, 16GB of memory, and a 1TB SSD, plenty of power for work, streaming, and everyday creation. What you’re getting The HP OmniBook X Flip 2-in-1 is built to be your do-everything daily driver. The 14-inch 2K touch display gives you more sharpness than a standard 1080p panel, which is great for reading, spreadsheets, and watching…

The traditional career playbook is being rewritten, one TikTok video at a time. While HR executives have long relied on performance reviews, mentorship programs and communications tools to guide employee development, Gen Z has found a new career coach: social media. And while it’s a trend that’s been taking shape for some time, giving way to terms like “QuitTok,” fresh research indicates it may be becoming more entrenched. A survey by Gateway Commercial Finance, a financial services firm catering to small and midsized B2B companies, reveals that most Gen Z workers (63%) have taken career advice directly from platforms like…

OpenAI’s launch of Sora 2, its video generation tool and would-be social network for the slop age, was the latest attempt by the generative AI developer to expand the copyright Overton Window.Sora 2 initially shipped with an “opt-out” policy for IP rightsholders. If an artist or advertiser didn’t want their work to be used in the tool’s model, they would need to get in touch. It wasn’t a popular move. “Early returns from rightsholders have suggested that they are not opting in,” said Glenn Pudelka, a copyright and privacy attorney at Troutman Pepper Locke, told Digiday. Related Insights Within days,…

Amazon has begun rolling out a web version of its next-generation Alexa+ assistant, giving users a new way to interact with the AI beyond Echo devices and the mobile app. For some users, Alexa.com now opens into a full chatbot-style interface where Alexa+ can be used through a browser. This move puts Alexa+ closer to how people already use tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini, making the assistant more useful beyond voice interactions and smart speakers. What Alexa+ can do on the web and what it still cannot According to The Verge, Alexa+ web interface will feel familiar if you…

Even with TikTok’s future in the U.S. seemingly secured, advertiser confidence hasn’t followed suit. Some marketers are already planning, they anecdotally told Digiday, to scale back their spending there next year.There’s still too much uncertainty around who will oversee the app and how it will be run for advertisers to justify bigger bets. And it will stay that way until there’s more clarity on what comes next. “A new, U.S.-based version of TikTok would need to be vetted and understood before advertisers feel confident investing large amounts of advertising dollars in the platform, even if it maintains TikTok’s core functionality,”…

Spotify started testing a new AI-powered feature late last year that lets users create personalized playlists using text prompts. The Prompted Playlist feature was initially rolled out in beta to Spotify Premium subscribers in New Zealand. Now, it’s making its way to users in the US and Canada. For those who missed the original announcement, the Prompted Playlist feature goes beyond the basic AI playlist creation option Spotify debuted back in 2024. It supports more complex prompts, allows users to refine generated playlists with follow-up inputs, and factors in listening history when creating playlists. Spotify explains that the feature generates…