Author: News Room

Sony’s Xperia phones have rarely looked boring, but they’ve often felt too reserved for their own good. The latest Xperia 1 VIII leak changes that, with official-looking images showing Sony’s next premium phone in shades that actually want attention. In a crowded high-end Android market, the first impression now has to work harder. Sony’s next phone still needs the usual flagship strengths, but a sharper visual identity gives it a better chance of standing out. The leaked images, shared by Sumaho Digest, reportedly show the Xperia 1 VIII in Graphite Black, Iolite Silver, Garnet Red, and Native Gold. There’s still…

Google is officially entering the AI health coach race, and this one has been a long time coming. The company has announced the Google Health Coach, a Gemini-powered personal wellness assistant baked into a rebranded Google Health app. It will track your workouts, analyze your sleep, read your medical records, and adapt to your life in real time. Think of it as having a fitness trainer, a sleep expert, and a nutritionist on call 24/7 for just $9.99 a month. Here’s everything you need to know about Google’s play to become your go-to health companion. Same coach, new name The…

The $599 MacBook Neo has been flying off the shelves and online stores so fast that Apple has been forced to double its production target. Even now, when I’m writing this article, the shipping time on the official website is two to three weeks. Semiconductor analyst Tim Culpan of Culpium claims that Apple has asked its manufacturing partners, Quanta and Foxconn, to increase the production capacity to 10 million units, nearly double the initial estimate. However, increasing production could cause a price problem for buyers very soon.  How does increasing production cause a price problem? According to Culpan, Apple cleverly…

Nintendo is the latest company to bend its knee in the face of a pricing crisis triggered by AI. The company has just announced revised pricing for its Switch 2 console and online gaming services in multiple key markets, including the US.  Shoppers in the United States will soon have to pay a $50 premium for the handheld console. The effective date of price revisions in the US, Canada, and Europe is September 1, 2026 (via CNBC). If you’ve been eyeing the portable gaming console, you have less than four months to get it at the launch price. How much more…

OpenAI has launched three new audio models in its Realtime API, and they are a big deal for anyone building voice-powered apps. The three models are GPT-Realtime-2, GPT-Realtime-Translate, and GPT-Realtime-Whisper.  Together, they move voice AI beyond simple back-and-forth responses toward something that can understand you, take action, and keep up with a real conversation. If their demo is anything to go by, we have just seen the next evolution in how voice AI models work.  So what can these models actually do? GPT-Realtime-2 is the headline act. It brings GPT-5-class reasoning to live voice interactions, meaning it can handle harder…

A new study from researchers at Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Oxford, and UCLA suggests that using an AI chatbot for just 10 minutes could negatively impact your ability to think and problem-solve. And honestly, the findings are a little alarming. As reported by Wired, the researchers asked participants to solve problems, including simple fractions and reading comprehension tasks. Some participants were given access to an AI assistant that could solve the problem for them. When the AI was suddenly removed, those participants were far more likely to give up or get the answer wrong. In other words, the moment the AI…

Google Chrome VP and GM Parisa Tabriz has responded to criticism over Chrome’s practice of silently downloading a 4GB AI model onto users’ devices, saying on-device AI is central to the browser’s security and developer strategy. What triggered the backlash Privacy researcher Alexander Hanff recently documented the behavior, finding that Chrome automatically downloads Gemini Nano’s model, which is around 4GB in size, on devices without prompting users or offering a clear opt-out. Deleting the file manually triggers an automatic re-download on the next Chrome restart. We recently covered the story and offered instructions on how to turn it off. The…

Google has shut down Project Mariner, the autonomous web browsing agent it debuted at I/O last year. The tool, which could navigate Chrome, fill out forms, search listings, and book travel by taking screenshots and visually recognizing page elements, is no longer available. Its landing page now shows a notice with the shutdown date listed as May 4, 2026. A browser agent that saw what you saw Project Mariner was Google DeepMind’s attempt to build an AI agent that interacted with websites the way a person would. Rather than reading page data directly, it processed screenshots in real time to…

AI chatbots have made it surprisingly easy to talk about anything, and that includes some of the heaviest topics imaginable. That openness has always been a double-edged sword. OpenAI is now taking a step to address that, with a new feature that brings a trusted person into the picture when things get serious. The company is rolling out a new feature called Trusted Contact, and it is starting to appear in ChatGPT settings for adult users. It lets users name one person who can be alerted if ChatGPT detects a serious self-harm concern. How does Trusted Contact work? Setting up…

I’ve always thought of myself as a light AI user. I don’t have ChatGPT write my emails or draft my thoughts into a story. Mostly, I use it to quickly look things up or fill in something that’s on the tip of my tongue. It felt like the responsible way to approach things. As a journalist, I am well aware of AI’s hallucination problems and the “burden of truth verification” that comes with availing the services of an AI assistant. But a new study has me second-guessing whatever little utility I got from AI tools like Google’s Gemini for real-life…