Google — AI News & Coverage
Google is one of the largest AI companies in the world, building Gemini, DeepMind, TensorFlow, and integrating AI across Search, Cloud, and Android.
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Meta raises Quest VR headset prices citing AI data-center chip demand
Meta will raise U.S. Quest VR prices starting April 19, with the Quest 3S jumping from $299.99 to $349.99. The company cited surging memory chip costs driven by massive AI data-center buildouts by OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft — a concrete consumer-facing sign of AI infrastructure competition.
Google DeepMind releases Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6 with spatial reasoning and instrument reading
Google DeepMind shipped Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6, an upgraded reasoning model for robotic applications available via the Gemini API. Key additions include multi-view camera understanding, 93% accuracy on analog/digital instrument reading, and autonomous task-completion detection.
Bluefish raises $43M Series B for agentic marketing across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Rufus
Bluefish closed a $43M Series B co-led by Threshold Ventures and NEA to help Fortune 500 brands manage visibility in AI platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini. The company counts Adidas, LVMH, and American Express among its customers and estimates the agentic marketing opportunity at $500B.
HN: Google launches Chrome Skills — turn AI prompts into one-click browser tools
Google announced Skills in Chrome, letting users convert their best AI prompts into reusable one-click tools within the browser. The feature trended on Hacker News with 186 points.
HN: Google Gemma 4 runs natively on iPhone with full offline inference
Google's open-source Gemma 4 model is now running natively on iPhones with full offline inference, according to a report that hit 199 points on Hacker News. This marks a significant milestone for on-device AI without cloud dependency.
Apple AI chief John Giannandrea officially exits this week after 'resting and vesting'
John Giannandrea, Apple's former AI and ML chief who joined from Google in 2018, officially departs this week ahead of the April 15 stock vesting date. He was stripped of Siri oversight in March 2025 after Tim Cook reportedly lost confidence in his execution.
HN: Gemma 4 running locally inside OpenAI Codex CLI draws 209 points
A developer blog post showing how to run Google's Gemma 4 as a local model inside OpenAI's Codex CLI hit 209 points on Hacker News. The post highlights growing interest in running open-weight models through proprietary agent interfaces.
Research: AI models confidently describe images that don't exist, benchmarks miss it
A new study finds all tested frontier models — GPT-5.x, Gemini 3 Pro, Claude Opus 4.5 — confidently fabricate visual descriptions for nonexistent images in over 60% of cases, jumping to 90-100% with common prompt scaffolding. Researchers call this 'mirage mode' and flag acute risks in medical imaging where models consistently hallucinate severe diagnoses.
Google Search AI Mode expands agentic restaurant booking to UK, India, and 6 more countries
Google expanded AI Mode's agentic restaurant booking capabilities beyond the US to the UK, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Africa. Users can describe what they want in natural language and AI Mode matches requests to real-time availability across partners like OpenTable, TheFork, and SevenRooms.
Anthropic weighs building custom AI chips as Claude revenue run-rate tops $30B
Reuters reports Anthropic is in early-stage exploration of designing custom AI chips to reduce reliance on Google TPUs and Amazon hardware. The move comes as Claude's annualized revenue run-rate has surpassed $30 billion, up from ~$9B at end of 2025.
Google integrates NotebookLM directly into Gemini app for all subscribers
Google is rolling out notebooks inside the Gemini app, synced with NotebookLM, letting users organize chats, PDFs, URLs, and videos in a shared knowledge base across both products. Available now for AI Ultra, Pro, and Plus subscribers on web, with mobile and free-tier rollout coming soon.
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