Eliana Willis

ZDNETPerplexity AI is going mobile with a new digital assistant for your Android phone. The company announced the feature this week, explaining that it lets you use Perplexity as usual, but takes things a step further by integrating with other apps on your phone and chaining commands — meaning you can play media, set reminders, send texts and emails, book rides, learn about things using your camera, and more. Also: Operator isn’t worth its $200-per-month ChatGPT Pro subscription yet – here’s whyPerplexity’s phone assistant is free and doesn’t require a Pro subscription. It’s not available for iOS just yet.I decided to give it a try for a while and made it my default phone assistant. Just one thing is keeping me from sticking with it for good: its current lack of integration with my calendar. What Perplexity could do on my Android phoneI started simple. I asked Perplexity to make a list of the best local date-night restaurants and text them to my wife (I used her name). At first, it made a list of restaurants in Orlando, Fla., over 500 miles away. I asked Perplexity if it knew my location, just to make sure I had all the proper permissions turned on, and it identified where I was. A second attempt, asking the same query, produced a much better list of restaurants in Charlotte, NC — all swanky options perfect for a date night.To push things a little further, I replied that all of those were too far away and asked for restaurants specifically in my city, just outside Charlotte. It populated another list of nice restaurants limited to my city and asked if it could text the list. When I approved, it sent the list as a text message.Also: I changed these 12 settings on my Android phone to instantly improve battery lifePlaying around with examples I had seen other people use, I was able to get Perplexity to connect with quite a few apps. When I asked for a ride, Perplexity asked where I wanted to go and then fired up Uber with my destination set. Asking it to “Play the most popular songs from the 1960s” brought up Spotify and started playing songs. After a request to “Send an email saying I’m running 10 minutes late,” the assistant asked where it should be sent, asked my preferred email client (Gmail), and sent the message.To test out the Google Lens-style capabilities, I pointed it at my TV and asked what movies this actor was in (it was Steve Martin in an episode of Only Murders in the Building). Perplexity told me it couldn’t identify people. I asked what TV show I was watching, though, and Perplexity not only identified all three actors on screen, but also identified and summarized the specific episode I was watching. More

ZDNETAs TikTok went dark briefly for the app’s 170 million US users last Saturday, tech giants began rolling out various incentives to attract TikTok creators to their platforms. Snapchat launched a new public marketing campaign featuring trendy influencers known for posting on TikTok. Substack, meanwhile, used a 25,000 cash prize and expanded live-streaming capabilities to TikTok users on its platform. However, one of TikTok’s biggest social media rivals, Meta, is further capitalizing off the legal uncertainty around the ban with a multifaceted, more aggressive approach to lure creators and their followers. Also: No, RedNote is not the new TikTok – and here’s whyMeta’s Breakthrough Bonus program will award TikTok creators — who have larger digital presences on TikTok, but not Meta-owned platforms — up to $5,000 in bonuses for posting short-form content on Facebook and Instagram. If a creator meets all the eligibility requirements, including being US-based and 18 or older, Meta will award the bonus based on an “evaluation of your social presence.”  More

Sabrina Ortiz/ZDNETArguably Samsung’s biggest event of the year is here, with the company announcing new smartphones in the Galaxy S25 series More

Like past January Unpacked events, Samsung released three new Galaxy S models, with the base models getting some subtle but meaningful upgrades, including a thinner and lighter design. Other changes include the introduction of new colors, including Icyblue, Navy, Mint, Silver Shadow, as well as online-only exclusive colors like Blueblack, Coralred, and Pinkgold. The vibrance of the Coralred colorway stands out amongst the rest of the lineup’s more muted finishes, and made a splash among reporters at Unpacked. Also: I went hands-on with the Samsung Galaxy S25 – and the AI features were surprisingly polishedAt the heart of the devices is the newly launched Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy. According to Samsung, the chipset will be dramatically different than the variants found on competing Android phones.For example, Samsung claims it delivers a performance boost of 40% in NPU, 37% in CPU, and 30% in GPU compared to the Galaxy S24 Ultra. Beyond AI, the chipset will help provide a smoother experience when gaming, equipped with Vulkan Engine, a high-performing graphics platform, and improved Ray Tracing.  Other specs remain the same as last year’s model, such as its 6.2-inch and 6.7-inch display, 4,000mAh and 4,900mAh batteries,120Hz Adaptive Refresh Rate, 50 MP main lens, a 12MP ultrawide, a 10 MP telephoto, and a 12MP selfie camera. Also: Best One UI 7 features coming to Samsung Galaxy S25 models (and older phones, too)Despite the camera hardware remaining the same, the software upgrades should significantly improve the experience. For example, 10-bit HDR recording is now applied by default, allowing users to capture better detail, and a new Galaxy Virtual Aperture, integrated into the Expert RAW app, gives users better depth-of-field control, similar to when using a DSLR.  Galaxy S25+ and S25 Ultra also feature advanced AI image processing with ProScaler, which, like Samsung TVs, uses AI to digitally enhance the resolution of videos. Just know that the phones need to be set to QHD+ resolution to take advantage of the feature.Pricing for the Galaxy S25 and S25 Plus starts at $799 and $999, respectively. That’s the same as past years’ retail price, which is good to see, provided you’re getting improvements — some in hardware and more in software.  More

ZDNETImagine an AI bot that can fill out online forms, book airline flights, order groceries, and more. That’s the intent of OpenAI’s new Operator, an AI that acts as an independent agent to carry out your commands all on its own.Also: Operator isn’t worth its $200-per-month ChatGPT Pro subscription yet – here’s whyReleased as a research preview on Thursday, Operator is able to interact directly with a web browser. That means it can navigate web pages by typing, scrolling, and clicking in all the right spots, just as you would yourself. The difference here is that Operator aims to do all that without any intervention on your part.Sounds cool, but Operator is starting off slowly. How to try ChatGPT ProBeyond its initial research preview status, the tool is now accessible only with ChatGPT Pro subscriptions in the US, which cost $200 a month. As the AI evolves and learns from its mistakes, OpenAI plans to expand its reach to Plus, Team, and Enterprise users and eventually integrate its skills directly into ChatGPT.ChatGPT Pro users who want to take Operator for a spin should browse to its dedicated web page. Make sure you’re signed in with your OpenAI account. From there, type a request at the prompt just as you normally would with ChatGPT. Only you’ll want to fashion that request as one that asks Operator to carry out tasks on the web independently.Also: ChatGPT vs. ChatGPT Plus: Is a paid subscription still worth it?For example, you could ask Operator to find and book a tour of Rome through Tripadvisor, order more bananas and apples from Instacart, or purchase Apple’s AirPods Pro 2 from Amazon. You can even tell the bot to handle several tasks simultaneously. To help Operator carry out actions with specific vendors and websites, OpenAI is working with companies such as DoorDash, Instacart, OpenTable, Priceline, StubHub, Thumbtack, and Uber. More

ZDNETThis week, OpenAI is introducing a research preview called Operator. I initially wanted to do a hands-on, but once I found out that you need a Pro account (which costs $200 per month), I decided to watch the various OpenAI demos, share them with you, and then share my thoughts. Altman did say that users of the $20-per-month Plus plan would eventually be able to use Operator.Operator is an AI agent. Fundamentally, it simulates keyboard and mouse clicks in a browser, reading the screen, and performing actions.Also: Have a genealogy mystery? How I used AI to solve a family puzzleI have a fairly long history of building this kind of app, using mostly algorithmic programming along with a little machine learning to identify the location of certain images on the screen.My most recent project was an auto-posting tool that would make my social media posts for me. Yes, there are a plethora of subscription services that will do that for you, but I decided to see what it would take to build my own.My code used a combination of the DOM (document object model) for individual social media service pages, along with image recognizers that were able to find buttons (like the + or Post buttons). I used the tool I built for about a year but ran into a very annoying snag.About every two weeks, one of the six sites I was navigating made a small change to the screen interface, which proceeded to break my code. So every two weeks, instead of posting my social media posts normally, I had to spend a few hours fixing whatever had broken.The fact that the web is constantly changing (for example, a blue “Post” button might turn into a red “Post / Subscribe at 30% off” button during a promotion) might knock the AI off its game. Computer-using agent The model OpenAI is using is called CUA, or computing-using agent. This model dictates how Operator talks to the websites it’s supposed to navigate.[embedded content]In their introduction video, Sam Altman and OpenAI team members Yash Kumar, Casey Chu, and Reiichiro Nakano explained that Operator doesn’t use APIs and isn’t working off of extracted text pulled from the DOM. Instead, it’s “viewing” an actual web page in a live browser running in the cloud, reading the context directly off the screen.Also: How ChatGPT scanned 170k lines of code in seconds, saving me hours of workThey were very clear that the control mechanism for the web pages was mouse and keyboard simulation, and the input that the AI reads is the visual representation of the actual web page that we see as humans.The OpenAI team did say that Operator will work just like a human using a web browser — searching, clicking, and visiting websites. But there is a contradiction that I haven’t fully figured out yet, which is that OpenAI has partnered with a bunch of sites (Instacart, DoorDash, Etsy, OpenTable, Tripadvisor, AP, Priceline, StubHub, Thumbtack, Target, Uber, and more). More

<!–> ZDNET’s key takeaways The Insta360 Connect is available now starting at $1,999, but the touch panel and other mounts can increase the price by up to $700. It’s an advanced speaker bar that sports 14 microphones, dual 4K cameras, simple connectivity, and AI enhancements for small room conferencing. A desktop stand is supplied, but […] More