Welcome back to Week in Review! We’ve got a ton of stories for you this week, including a new AI-powered browser from Arc; not one but TWO hacks; Gemini email summaries; and much more. Have a great weekend!
Look out, Google: AI-powered search engine Perplexity released Perplexity Labs, which gives Pro subscribers a tool that can craft reports, spreadsheets, dashboards, and more. Perplexity Labs can conduct research and analysis using tools like web search, code execution, and chart and image creation to craft reports and visualizations. All in around 10 minutes. We haven’t had a chance to test it, and knowing the shortcomings of AI, I’m sure not everything will come out flawlessly. But it certainly sounds pretty awesome.
Luckey’s luck: The feud between Oculus founder Palmer Luckey and Mark Zuckerberg appears to be over: The pair announced a collaboration between Facebook and Luckey’s company Anduril to build extended reality (XR) devices for the U.S. military. The product family they’re building is called EagleEye, which will be an ecosystem of devices.
Not awesome: We don’t definitively know whether AI is beginning to take over roles previously done by humans. But a recent World Economic Forum survey found that 40% of employers plan to cut staff where AI can automate tasks. That can’t be good.
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Everyone’s making a browser: The Browser Company said this week that it’s considering selling or open sourcing its browser, Arc Browser, to focus on a new AI-powered browser called Dia. And it’s not the only one! Opera also said it’s building a new AI-focused browser, and Perplexity teased its browser, Comet, a few months ago.
At last: iPad users, rejoice! You can now talk to all your international friends with the new iPad-specific version of WhatsApp. Meta says that users will be able to take advantage of iPadOS multitasking features, such as Stage Manager, Split View, and Slide Over.
Oh, great: LexisNexis Risk Solutions, a data broker that uses personal information to help companies spot risks and fraud, reported a security breach affecting more than 364,000 people. A LexisNexis spokesperson told us that an unknown hacker accessed the company’s GitHub account, and the stolen data includes names, dates of birth, phone numbers, postal and email addresses, Social Security numbers, and driver’s license numbers.
And another one: Hackers reportedly accessed the personal phone of White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, obtaining contact information used to impersonate her and contact other high-ranking officials. It seems that AI was used to impersonate her voice.
Can it cook my meals? Gmail users no longer have to tap an option to summarize an email with AI. The AI will now automatically summarize the content when needed, without requiring user interaction. That means you have to opt out if you don’t want Gemini summarizing your stuff.
Billion with a B: General Catalyst has invested $1 billion into Grammarly, the 16-year-old writing assistant startup. Grammarly will use the new funds for its sales and marketing efforts, freeing up existing capital to make strategic acquisitions.
In the heights: Tinder is testing a new feature that will allow people to add a “height preference” in their search for love. This isn’t a hard filter, Tinder says, as it won’t actually block or exclude profiles but instead inform recommendations.
10 years in the making: Carma Technology, which was formed in 2007 by SOSV Ventures founder Sean O’Sullivan, filed a lawsuit earlier this year against Uber, alleging the company infringed on five of its patents. The lawsuit is fairly new, but the allegations go back almost a decade.
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Last week, Google quietly released an app that lets users run a range of openly available AI models from the AI dev platform Hugging Face on their phones.
Called Google AI Edge Gallery, the app is available for Android and will soon come to iOS. It allows users to find, download, and run compatible models that generate images, answer questions, write and edit code, and more. The models run offline, without needing an internet connection, tapping into supported phones’ processors.
AI models running in the cloud are often more powerful than their local counterparts, but they also have their downsides. Some users might be wary of sending personal or sensitive data to a remote data center, or want to have models available without needing to find a Wi-Fi or cellular connection.
Google AI Edge Gallery, which Google is calling an “experimental Alpha release,” can be downloaded from GitHub by following these instructions. The home screen shows shortcuts to AI tasks and capabilities like “Ask Image” and “AI Chat.” Tapping on a capability pulls up a list of models suited for the task, such as Google’s Gemma 3n.
Google AI Edge Gallery also provides a “Prompt Lab” users can use to kick off “single-turn” tasks powered by models, like summarizing and rewriting text. The Prompt Lab comes with several task templates and configurable settings to fine-tune the models’ behaviors.
Your mileage may vary in terms of performance, Google warns. Modern devices with more powerful hardware will predictably run models faster, but the model size also matters. Larger models will take more time to complete a task — say, answering a question about an image — than smaller models.
Google’s inviting members of the developer community to give feedback on the Google AI Edge Gallery experience. The app is under an Apache 2.0 license, meaning it can be used in most contexts — commercial or otherwise — without restriction.
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Google’s AI assistant, Gemini, is gaining a more prominent place in your inbox with the launch of email summary cards, which will appear at the top of your emails. The company announced Thursday that users would no longer have to tap an option to summarize an email with AI. Instead, the AI will now automatically summarize the content when needed, without requiring user interaction.
When Gemini launched in the side panel of Gmail last year, one of the features allowed users to summarize their long email threads, along with other tools like those to draft email messages or see suggested responses, among other things.
Now, Google is putting the AI to work on your inbox, whether or not it’s something you want to use.
The update is another example of how AI is quickly infiltrating the software and services people use the most, even though AI summaries aren’t always reliable. When Apple rolled out AI summaries for app push notifications, for example, the BBC found the feature made repeated mistakes when summarizing news headlines. Apple ended up pausing the AI summaries for news apps.
Google’s own AI Overviews feature for Search has also repeatedly made mistakes, offering poor quality and inaccurate information at times.
With the new email summary cards, Gemini will list a longer email’s key points and will then continue to update that synopsis as replies arrive.
The feature won’t replace the option to manually click a button to summarize an email, Google notes. That will still appear as a chip at the top of the email and in Gmail’s Gemini side panel.
The feature is initially available only for emails in English.
Depending on your region, the summary cards may be turned on or off by default. (For instance, smart features are turned off in the EU, the UK, Switzerland, and Japan, Google’s help documentation notes.) Others can choose to enable or disable the feature from Gmail’s Settings under “Smart features.” Workplace admins can also opt to disable the personalization settings for users from the Admin console.
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AI tools are touted as capable helpers that can easily help you research, code, summarize, write and bring you knowledge of any kind. But sometimes simple questions befuddle them. Google’s AI Overviews, for example, is confused what year it is.
Several users reported over the past few days that when they asked Google what year it is, AI Overviews said the current year is 2024.
This reporter got the same answer on Thursday morning when Google was asked if it’s 2025 right now.
Google finally fixed the bug late on Thursday.
When asked why this happened, Google didn’t provide a particular reason, only saying that it was working on an update to avoid such issues.
“As with all Search features, we rigorously make improvements and use examples like this to update our systems. The vast majority of AI Overviews provide helpful, factual information, and we’re actively working on an update to address this type of issue,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement.
Google has been working on AI Overviews for a few years now, and the feature has so far made some notable blunders — to name just a couple, it has recommended users eat “one small rock per day,” saying rocks are a good source of vitamins and minerals, and even suggested adding glue in order to help cheese stick to a pizza. When the company rolled out the feature in Hindi in India, TechCrunch found that its answers were often inconsistent and confusing.
In recent weeks, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has touted usage numbers for AI Overviews, saying that the feature is now being used by 1.5 billion users in over 100 countries. He also added that in markets like the U.S. and India, the feature is driving over 10% usage of the search engine for related queries. The company is betting a lot on driving people to use its AI-powered search and Q&A features more.
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