Erin Woo

Google is investigating a breach of its security systems involving a contractor who took almost 2,000 screenshots and sensitive internal files, including information related to Google’s Play store systems and guardrails, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. The contractor sent ...

Meta Platforms staffers have had discussions with Google Cloud about the possibility of using Google’s artificial intelligence models to improve Meta’s ad business, according to people with knowledge of the conversations. The discussions are the latest sign of how Meta’s stumbles with its own AI ...

Cloudflare, which says it powers 20% of the world’s internet traffic, on Wednesday announced a new feature that it said will enable website owners to block Google’s AI Overviews search product without having to opt out of being included in Google search. The feature, if effective, could alleviate a major concern for publishers, who have complained that AI Overviews—an AI-generated summary that

YouTube said on Tuesday that it would allow accounts banned for violating its policies on Covid-19 and election integrity to rejoin the platform, following pressure from Republican legislators led by Rep. Jim Jordan. In a letter to Jordan, a lawyer representing YouTube’s parent company Alphabet also said that the Biden Administration had “press[ed] the Company to remove non-violative

YouTube announced new video creation features for creators, using its Veo 3 video generation model, integrating generative AI deeper into the massive video platform. YouTube creators are now able to use Veo 3 to generate YouTube Shorts videos from a text prompt in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. YouTube executives said at the company’s annual Made on

Just over a week after a federal judge ordered Google to share its search data with rivals, the limitations of the judge’s order have become more clear—as have the doubts about whether rivals will be able to take advantage of it. The order was designed to weaken Google’s monopoly in search by ...

An antitrust judge rejected the Justice Department’s most drastic proposals for how Google’s search business should be overhauled to make up for its illegal monopoly, saying in a decision Tuesday afternoon he wouldn’t require the company to sell either its Chrome browser or its Android operating ...

When Google’s billionaire co-founder, Sergey Brin, needs something done at the company’s artificial intelligence unit—AI chips allocated to a team, a researcher hired, an employee moved to a new department—there’s one person he messages: Koray Kavukcuoglu. Kavukcuoglu isn’t Google’s flashiest AI ...

Meta Platforms has hired three more artificial intelligence researchers from Google DeepMind as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg continues his aggressive efforts to recover from stumbles earlier this year with an unprecedented AI recruiting push. The latest hires—Tianhe Yu, Cosmo Du and Weiyue Wang— ...

OpenAI’s discussions to buy Windsurf, the maker of a popular artificial intelligence coding assistant formerly known as Codeium, have ended. Instead, Google will hire Windsurf’s CEO, Varun Mohan, and some of the startup’s staff, both Google and Windsurf said. The monthslong talks between OpenAI ...

Cloudflare, which powers many of the world’s most prominent websites, made waves last week by introducing a default setting for new customers that would block bots that artificial intelligence firms such as OpenAI and Anthropic use to scrape sites to train artificial intelligence.What Cloudflare ...

Say you’re at the top of your field. Say you’ve been promoted to be a senior researcher at OpenAI, watching the paper value of your equity swell as your company’s valuation goes from less than $20 billion to $260 billion in just four years. Say Mark Zuckerberg—yes, Zuck, personally—comes texting ...

The thinking behind Thinking Machines Lab, a high-profile but mysterious artificial intelligence startup led by former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, is becoming clearer. After raising an astonishing $2 billion at a $10 billion valuation from investors including Andreessen Horowitz ...

The head of engineering for Google’s Gemini chatbot, Amar Subramanya, is leaving the company, employees were told in a reorganization announced last week. Separately, Mat Velloso, the head of product for Google DeepMind’s AI developer platform, has also left Google, a Google spokesperson confirmed. Some teams that previously reported to Subramanya, including model training, data and evaluation

Google is starting to experiment with showing ads in its chatbot-style AI Mode search tab, ads chief Vidhya Srinivasan announced on Wednesday at the company’s Google Marketing Live conference. AI Mode, which has been in preview for people who opted in, launched to everyone in the U.S. who uses Google search on Tuesday. Ads in the format look like sponsored links below chatbot answers. Google

Google on Tuesday unveiled a partnership with Warby Parker to introduce smart glasses, posing a major threat to Meta Platforms’ market lead in smart glasses. The glasseswere among a slew of new products and features announced at its I/O developer conference on Tuesday. Much of Tuesday’s ...

After weeks of news about Google’s antitrust travails, the tech giant will try to reset the narrative next week by highlighting advances it is making in artificial intelligence, cloud and Android technology at its annual I/O developer conference. Ahead of I/O, Google has been demonstrating to ...

Google on Tuesday cut around 200 employees across its global business organization, the unit responsible for sales and partnerships, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation. A Google spokesperson said that the company was “making a small number of changes across our teams to drive greater collaboration and expand our ability to quickly and effectively serve our customers.”

As the latest phase of the antitrust legal battle that could reshape Google’s business nears a conclusion, the tech giant seems likely to emerge battered but not broken up. Two weeks into a three-week trial meant to decide how Google should be overhauled to curb its search monopoly—which a judge ...

Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Apple CEO Tim Cook had at least a “couple” of phone calls last year where Pichai made the case for Apple integrating Google’s Gemini AI chatbot app into iPhones, Pichai testified in court on Wednesday. Cook wanted to understand Google’s AI roadmap, Pichai testified, and as part of that the two discussed Google’s plans for distributing Gemini’s app. Teams on each