Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Techpresso.
In today's Techpresso:
🤖 Gemini introduces 'Personal Intelligence'
📱 Apple to customize Gemini AI without Google branding
🚫 China blocks Nvidia H200 imports despite US approval
🚗 Tesla FSD will soon become subscription-only
🕶️ Meta considers doubling Ray-Ban smart glasses production
📹 Google’s Veo now turns portrait images into vertical AI videos
🎁 + 21 other news you might like
🧰 + 6 trending tools
📚 + 4 trending papers
🤖 Gemini introduces 'Personal Intelligence' LINK
Google is launching Personal Intelligence, a beta feature in the Gemini app that lets the AI assistant connect across Gmail, Photos, Search, and YouTube history to deliver tailored responses.
The feature can reason across your data without being told where to look, such as suggesting all-weather tires after spotting family road trip photos or pulling a license plate number from Pictures.
Personal Intelligence is off by default and rolling out to Google AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers in the U.S., with plans to expand to more countries and Gemini's free tier later.
📱 Apple to customize Gemini AI without Google branding LINK
Apple will customize its version of Google's Gemini AI model independently and may remove Google branding from the experience, according to a new report from The Information about the partnership.
The Gemini-powered Siri will run on Apple devices and Private Cloud Compute, meaning Google won't have access to user data, and Apple expects it to answer questions directly instead of listing links.
Apple also wants the new Siri to handle unclear requests by searching through messages to identify contacts, like figuring out which contact is your mother even if not labeled that way.
🚫 China blocks Nvidia H200 imports despite US approval LINK
China's customs officials blocked Nvidia H200 chip shipments on January 14, just one day after the US Commerce Department approved exports, leaving over $54 billion in orders stuck at checkpoints.
Chinese tech giants including Alibaba and ByteDance have ordered 2 million H200 chips, nearly three times Nvidia's current inventory, after three years of US export restrictions created massive pent-up demand.
The H200 outperforms Huawei's Ascend 910C by 32% in processing and 50% in memory bandwidth, forcing Chinese AI labs to choose between unreliable US supply chains or slower domestic chips.
🚗 Tesla FSD will soon become subscription-only LINK
Tesla will stop selling its Full Self-Driving package as a one-time purchase after February 14, switching to a monthly subscription model only, CEO Elon Musk announced on X Wednesday.
The FSD package currently costs $8,000 extra for Model 3, Model Y, and the All-Wheel Drive Cybertruck, while other models like the Model S include it in the base price.
Despite Musk's repeated promises that FSD would turn Teslas into fully autonomous vehicles, the feature still requires active driver supervision and remains unavailable in most of Europe due to regulations.
🕶️ Meta considers doubling Ray-Ban smart glasses production LINK
Meta and its manufacturing partner EssilorLuxottica are considering doubling production of Ray-Ban smart glasses to 20 million pairs by the end of 2026, responding to strong demand for the devices.
High demand in the US has forced Meta to delay the international launch of its Meta Ray-Ban Display smartglasses to fulfill existing orders, while the company also plans to cut 10% of Reality Labs staff.
Warby Parker stock rose 10% after the news, likely because the company is partnering with Google on incoming smartglasses, showing strong market interest in the overall smartglasses category this year.
📹 Google’s Veo now turns portrait images into vertical AI videos LINK
Google's Veo 3.1 AI video tool can now turn portrait images into vertical videos, letting users create clips ready for TikTok and YouTube Shorts without needing to crop them manually afterward.
The Ingredients to Video feature, which generates clips from up to three reference images, now keeps characters looking the same across different scenes and lets users reuse objects and backgrounds consistently.
Google is also adding 4K upscaling for generated videos, up from the previous 1080p limit, and bringing these updated tools to the Gemini app, YouTube Shorts, and the YouTube Create app.
Other news you might like
- Report: SpaceX Makes Starlink Free for Users In IranLINK
- UK government rolls back key part of digital ID plansLINK
- Exclusive-Beijing tells Chinese firms to stop using US, Israeli cybersecurity software, sources sayLINK
- Introducing Anthropic LabsLINK
- Roblox's New Age-Verification System Is Reportedly Off to a Chaotic StartLINK
- Airbnb poaches former Meta GenAI leader to be new technology chiefLINK
- Meta has closed three VR studios as part of its metaverse cutsLINK
- Palantir is trying to 'destroy' Percepta through legal action, startup's execs say in filingLINK
- Apple reportedly faces critical chip component shortage as AI boom strains supply chainLINK
- Chinese AI firm trains state-of-the-art model entirely on Huawei chipsLINK
- Matthew McConaughey tries a new approach to fighting AI misuse: trademarking himselfLINK
- Bandcamp prohibits music made ‘wholly or in substantial part’ by AILINK
- Never-before-seen Linux malware is “far more advanced than typical”LINK
- Almost 40 percent of AI time savings lost to fixing low-quality outputLINK
- Big Tech is poaching energy talent to fuel its AI ambitionsLINK
- Neo humanoid maker 1X releases world model to help bots learn what they seeLINK
- Marc Andreessen to Tech Founders: ‘Raise Prices, Raise Prices, Raise Prices’LINK
🧰 Trending tools
0xCal: a minimalist calorie tracking app that uses AI to log meals from natural language descriptions instead of manual database searches.LINK
Undiscord: bulk leave multiple Discord servers at once to declutter your sidebar without manually exiting each server individually.LINK
nia-epstein-ai: indexes and searches 100M words of Epstein files using natural language queries with source document references and semantic search.LINK
Redlight Greenlight for Claude Code: a keyboard shortcut overlay that lets you approve or reject Claude's terminal commands without switching windows, showing queued requests and execution context.LINK
Lyra Music: a subscription-free music app that lets you listen to tracks without recurring payments, offering a straightforward alternative to monthly streaming services.LINK
Nogic: a VS Code extension that visualizes codebase structure and relationships as an interactive graph for faster code exploration.LINK
📚 Trending papers & reports
Random game theory formula reveals structure: researchers proved that randomly generated competitive games have predictable average values, providing mathematical foundation for game analysis.LINK
HiGP speeds up Gaussian process calculations by 100x: researchers created a Python tool that makes statistical predictions run 100 times faster than existing methods on large datasets.LINK
Macaronic language tricks bypass AI image safety filters: researchers used mixed-language prompts to generate banned content, fooling safety systems 88% of the time across models.LINK
AI chatbots function as entertainment products: researchers argue that people use AI assistants primarily for enjoyment rather than productivity, similar to social media or games.LINK
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