Author: GT

Nike shoes are seen in the King of Prussia Mall, as global markets brace for a hit to trade and growth caused by U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to impose import tariffs on dozens of countries, in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, U.S., April 3, 2025. Rachel Wisniewski | ReutersNike will resume selling its products directly to Amazon in the U.S. for the first time since 2019, CNBC has confirmed.The sneaker giant stopped selling its goods wholesale on Amazon six years ago as part of a push to distribute more directly to customers and have greater control over the shopping experience. At…

Spotify says its ability to direct its customers to external payment links in its iOS app has already had a positive impact on sales. In a newly filed amicus brief in support of Epic Games in its ongoing legal battle with Apple over external payments on the App Store, Spotify claims its internal data indicates that its recent update supporting web payments has resulted in “a significant increase in iOS users upgrading to a Premium subscription.” Shortly after the U.S. District Court in Northern California ruled in favor of Fortnite maker Epic Games on the matter of external payments, Apple…

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday rejected arguments made by an artificial intelligence company that its chatbots are protected by the First Amendment — at least for now. The developers behind Character.AI are seeking to dismiss a lawsuit alleging the company’s chatbots pushed a teenage boy to kill himself.The judge’s order will allow the wrongful death lawsuit to proceed, in what legal experts say is among the latest constitutional tests of artificial intelligence.The suit was filed by a mother from Florida, Megan Garcia, who alleges that her 14-year-old son Sewell Setzer III fell victim to a Character.AI…

“The only thing worse than being a public company CEO is being a private company CEO right now,” says Ali Kashani, co-founder and CEO of Serve Robotics. Access to capital, he argues, is everything in robotics. And in today’s “FOMO-driven” venture climate, securing funds is far from guaranteed. Backed by Nvidia and Uber, Serve recently raised $80 million to extend its runway through 2026. The company aims to scale from 100 sidewalk delivery robots in Los Angeles to 2,000 bots operating across U.S. cities by the end of this year and hit operational profitability once that fleet is fully deployed.…

NEW YORK (AP) — The recommended reading list contained some works of fiction. It also contained some works that were, in fact, actually fictional.The content distributor King Features says it has fired a writer who used artificial intelligence to produce a story on summer reading suggestions that contained books that didn’t exist.The list appeared in “Heat Index: Your Guide to the Best of Summer,” a special section distributed in Sunday’s Chicago Sun-Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer last week.More than half of the books listed were fake, according to the piece’s author, Marco Buscaglia, who admitted to using AI for help…

Google’s AI Mode, the experimental Google Search feature that lets users ask complex, multi-part questions via an AI interface, will roll out to everyone in the U.S. starting this week, the company announced at its annual developer conference, Google I/O 2025, on Tuesday. The feature builds on Google’s existing AI-powered search experience, AI Overviews, which display AI-generated summaries at the top of its search results page. Launched last year, AI Overviews saw mixed results as Google’s AI offered questionable answers and advice, like a suggestion to use glue on pizza, among other things. Image Credits:Google However, Google claims AI Overviews…

Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, speaks during an unveiling event in New York on Feb. 26, 2025.Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesAmazon CEO Andy Jassy said Wednesday that the company hasn’t seen any signs of consumers tightening their wallets in the face of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs.Jassy’s comments came during Amazon’s annual shareholder meeting, which was held virtually on Wednesday.”We have not seen any attenuation of demand at this point,” Jassy said during a question-and-answer portion of the meeting. “We also haven’t yet seen any meaningful average selling price increases.”Amazon and other retailers continue to digest the impact…

Google’s latest video-generating AI model, Veo 3, can create audio to go along with the clips that it generates. On Tuesday during the Google I/O 2025 developer conference, Google unveiled Veo 3, which the company claims can generate sound effects, background noises, and even dialogue to accompany the videos it creates. Veo 3 also improves upon its predecessor, Veo 2, in terms of the quality of footage it can generate, Google says. Veo 3 is available beginning Tuesday in Google’s Gemini chatbot app for subscribers to Google’s $249.99-per-month AI Ultra plan, where it can be prompted with text or an…

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — OpenAI has recruited Jony Ive, the designer behind Apple’s iPhone, to lead a new hardware project for the artificial intelligence company that makes ChatGPT.OpenAI said it is acquiring io, a product and engineering company co-founded by Ive, in a deal valued at nearly $6.5 billion. OpenAI said its CEO Sam Altman had been “quietly” collaborating since 2023 with Ive and his design firm, LoveFrom.Ive worked at Apple for over two decades and is known for his work on iconic iPhone, iMac and iPad designs. Ive was Apple’s chief design officer before leaving the company in 2019…

Android Studio, the integrated development environment (IDE) for Android app developers, is getting an AI upgrade, Google announced at its developer conference, Google I/O 2025, on Tuesday. In addition to the rollout of the latest Gemini 2.5 Pro model, Android Studio is gaining a new “agentic AI” capability called Journeys and will soon introduce an “Agent Mode” for more complex development tasks. Using Gemini, journeys will allow developers to test their app by describing the actions and assertions in natural language for the user journeys across the app. Gemini will then perform the tests for you. Image Credits:Google The feature,…