In addition to a new gesture-powered search feature for Android devices, Google today also introduced an AI-powered addition to its visual search capabilities in Google Lens.
However, Google clarified that while the Lens multisearch feature is offering generative AI insights, it’s not the same product as Google’s experimental genAI search SGE (Search Generative Experience), which remains opt-in only.
The AI-powered overviews for multisearch in Lens are launching for everyone in the U.S. in English, starting today.
Google notes that its genAI products — like its Google Search Generative Experience, for example, will cite their sources, to allow users to fact-check its answers.
The AI overviews for multisearch in Lens arrive today, while the gesture-based Circle to Search arrives on Jan. 31.
Alongside Samsung’s launch event today, Google announced a new way to search on Android phones dubbed “Circle to Search.” The feature will allow users to search from anywhere on their phone by using gestures like circling, highlighting, scribbling, or tapping.
The search results users will see will differ based on their query and the Google Labs products they opt into.
For a simple text search, you may see traditional search results while a query that combines an image and text — or “multisearch” as Google calls it — uses generative AI.
The feature was one of several Google AI announcements across Gemini, Google Messages, and Android Auto announced at today’s event.
Over time, more Android smartphones will support the feature, Google says.
Google has pulled many crypto exchanges, including Binance and Kraken, from its Play Store in India, the latest blow to already dwindling India’s crypto exchange already dwindling India’s crypto exchange.
Apple pulled the apps earlier this week pulled the apps earlier this week and on Thursday evening ISPs in India began blocking the URLs of the crypto exchange websites.
This only impacts users who attempt to access the Indian iOS app store or the Binance website from India,” Binance said earlier Friday.
On Tuesday, CoinDCX announced that it would provide rewards to customers who transfer their crypto assets from global exchanges to its India-based platform.
Coinbase, another popular global crypto exchange, stopped onboarding new customers in India last year.
On Friday, the startup announced via a blog post it had made the decision to “wind down operations” of the app launched over a year ago, saying that the market opportunity wasn’t big enough to warrant continued investment.
It also employed several AI tools to summarize news, rewrite clickbait headlines, and surface the best content.
Existing posts will remain visible for the time being, and Artifact will continue to operate its “core news capability” through the end of February.
In part, the way users are finding news and information is changing with the arrival of AI.
The co-founder had spoken about AI’s role at Artifact at this past fall’s TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco.
Coast Runner, is a new entrant in the desktop CNC milling industry, promising to make the technology accessible to everyone, from professionals to hobbyists.
Coast Runner is breaking down the barriers of traditional CNC milling with a focus on power, compact size, and most importantly, education.
Moreover, Coast Runner is developing a bounty board system where users can pay others to create designs or mill parts if they lack the necessary skills.
The Coast Runner machine is aiming to be both affordable and powerful.
“We are making one of the most powerful desktop CNC machines you’ll find in the marketplace.
Threads’ roadmap for integrations with the fediverse, aka the network of decentralized apps that includes Twitter/X rival Mastodon and others, has been revealed.
In the meeting, which Coates characterized as a “good faith” effort by the Instagram team, the roadmap for Threads’ fediverse integration was laid out, starting with a December launch of a feature within the Threads app that would allow their posts to become visible to Mastodon clients.
Meta did, in fact, start testing ActivityPub integration in December, allowing Threads posts to appear on Mastodon.
In addition, this rule would potentially come into play when a user banned from Meta’s platform moved their content to another Mastodon server.
Other questions remained unresolved at this time — like whether Threads would surface third-party Mastodon content in its algorithmic feed, whether it would ultimately allow for algorithmic choice, whether Mastodon content would be made to appear visually differentiated from Threads’ content in some way, and more.
Snapchat is introducing new parental controls that will allow parents to restrict their teens from interacting with the app’s AI chatbot.
The changes will also allow parents to view their teens’ privacy settings, and get easier access to Family Center, which is the app’s dedicated place for parental controls.
Parents can now restrict My AI, Snapchat’s AI-powered chatbot, from responding to chats from their teen.
As for parents who may be unaware about the app’s parental controls, Snapchat is making Family Center easier to find.
Parents can now find Family Center right from their profile, or by heading to their settings.
CNDO (pronounced “condo”) enables content creators to create private social rooms for their followers to engage in a community-wide group chat, participate in challenges and get exclusive updates from their favorite influencers.
For instance, creators can encourage their followers to build healthy fitness habits and share daily updates about their workouts with each other.
The company also hopes the challenges incentivize users to keep coming back to the app, allowing for a healthy app retention rate.
However, the company says creators must pitch their “concept strategy,” and CNDO determines whether they are a right fit for the platform.
Schaecker developed CNDO with his two co-founders, Kian Seifert and Jordi Walder, who studied business and data science, respectively.
In an era where DIY culture and personal manufacturing are rising, Rownd Lathe is an exciting new player.
This compact CNC lathe is a fun gateway to creativity, enabling users to effortlessly shape and form a variety of materials, including wood, aluminum, and plastic.
For amateur machinists, entry-level CNC mills have been around for a hot minute (Bantam is the brand that immediately springs to mind), but CNC lathes have been conspicuously absent from the market.
Ease of use is central to the Rownd Lathe experience.
This touch interface also allows for manual machine control, or you can upload Gcode to run the machine like any other CNC lathe.
What then followed, last fall, was a claim from Meta that it would be switching to a consent basis for tracking.
Facebook and Instagram users who wish to continue to get free access to the services have to “consent” to its tracking — which Meta claims is valid consent under the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Withdrawing consent in the scenario Meta has devised requires users to sign up for a monthly subscription.
So noyb’s follow-up complaint targets the inherent friction in Meta charging users money to protect their privacy.
However, by then, Meta had already shifted its claimed basis to consent, meaning it could just sidestep the regulatory intervention.
