After years of teasing, Samsung is finally gearing up to launch its Ballie robot “this Summer,” with the company teaming up with Google to leverage Gemini on the helpful home robot. Samsung first showed off Ballie in early 2020, but the project has been delayed and reimagined in the years since. At CES 2024, the company showed off the updated design of Ballie, and has now committed to a “Summer” 2025 release.
https://9to5google.com/2025/04/09/samsung-ballie-gemini-launch-date/
VR headsets are out, and AR glasses are in. Research from analysis firm Counterpoint shows that the global VR shipments trended down through 2024 despite proliferation cheap headsets like the Meta Quest 3s. Worse, VR sales numbers may not improve any time soon. The next step for these companies are glasses—with or without augmented reality capabilities. Big tech now needs to convince consumers thin glasses filled to the brim with AI are better than shoving a heavy piece of plastic on their noggins.
https://gizmodo.com/the-vr-hype-cycle-is-over-and-just-in-time-for-the-ar-hype-cycle-to-begin-2000578035
Generative Extend is completely free to use for a “limited time,” according to Adobe, after which the feature will require users to spend Firefly generative credits. Creative Cloud subscriptions provide a monthly allocation of credits ranging between 25 to 1,000 credits depending on the plan. An additional Firefly credit subscription is also available starting from $10, which grants 2,000 credits per month. Adobe has not specified how many credits the Generative Extend feature will eventually consume, but says that “price will vary based on the format, frame rate, and resolution of your video.”
https://www.theverge.com/news/641270/adobe-premiere-pro-generative-extend-generally-available
The writing has been on the wall since 2020, when Microsoft and Sony introduced their (at the time) next-generation Xbox and PlayStation consoles with versions that didn’t have a place to put your discs. Ultimately, they were responding to the emerging trend of people buying fewer physical games for consoles. Can you even remember the last time you bought a physical game for PC?
https://www.theverge.com/games/638535/physical-digital-video-games-nintendo-xbox-ps5-disc-cart
In a post on its Nest community forum, Google says it made the decision to ditch its popular smoke alarm and door lock as part of its move toward “building a platform that all device makers and developers can use to spur innovation in the home.” The company added that as the smart home evolves, it “must continue to refine our portfolio of devices to meet the needs of our customers.”
https://www.theverge.com/news/638171/google-discontinuing-nest-protect-smoke-alarm-nest-x-yale-smart-lock
On Tuesday, OpenAI announced new multimodal image-generation capabilities that are directly integrated into its GPT-4o AI language model, making it the default image generator within the ChatGPT interface. The integration, called "4o Image Generation" (which we'll call "4o IG" for short), allows the model to follow prompts more accurately (with better text rendering than DALL-E 3) and respond to chat context for image modification instructions. Some users on social media initially reported confusion since there's no UI indication of which image generator is active, but you'll know it's the new model if the generation is ultra slow and proceeds from top to bottom. The previous DALL-E model remains available through a dedicated "DALL-E GPT" interface, while API access to GPT-4o image generation is expected within weeks.
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/03/openais-new-ai-image-generator-is-potent-and-bound-to-provoke/
The defunct analytics company Flurry agreed to pay $3.5 million to resolve a class action lawsuit claiming it improperly harvested data from a widely used period tracking app. Plaintiffs in the lawsuit said data they provided to the app, Flo Health, was obtained by Flurry, the ad analytics company AppsFlyer, Meta and Google.
https://therecord.media/flurry-pays-harvesting-sexual-data