Robotics

Kerry Wan/ZDNETOne of generative AI’s most useful (and needed) applications is enhancing voice assistants, which have remained relatively unchanged for years. Now, Google is making several upgrades to its voice assistant experience with the help of Gemini. At the company’s Made by Google event on Tuesday, Google made Gemini its default voice assistant, replacing Google Assistant with a smarter alternative that can be interrupted, is aware of your Google apps, and can even help answer questions about the contents of your screen. Also: Google tops the Index with Gemini Live and Pixel’s AI featuresArguably the biggest Gemini announcement is that Google made Gemini Live available three months after announcing it at Google I/O. Gemini Live is an advanced voice assistant that can have human-like, multi-turn (or exchanges), verbal conversations on complex topics and even give you advice. For example, when speaking to the assistant, you can interrupt it mid-sentence, and the assistant will still understand you. You can also pick from multiple voices to enhance your conversation experience.However, there’s a catch: only Gemini Advanced subscribers on Android devices can access it. The feature is already being rolled out to both Samsung and Pixel devices. As a bonus, Pixel Pro 9 users get access to the Google One AI Premium Plan, which includes access to Gemini Advanced — and, therefore, Gemini Live — at no additional cost for the first year. But for all other Android users, it’s hard to say whether Gemini Live is worth paying $20 per month for a Google One AI Premium Plan. If you want to see whether the plan is worth it, you can try it for free via a one-month trial. Also: How to try Google’s new Gemini Live AI assistant for freeWhen announced at Google I/O, Gemini Live also had multimodal capabilities, which allowed it to use the camera to see the world around you and ingest that as context for answers. That feature, however, has not been released yet.  More

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET ZDNET’s key takeaways The Blackview Mega 1 is available directly from Blackview More

Artie Beaty/ZDNETIf you’re a California resident, your digital wallet just got a little thicker.Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that support for digital IDs will be rolling out in the coming weeks, meaning California residents can add their state IDs or California driver’s licenses to Apple Wallet and Google Wallet.Also: Nvidia will train 100,000 California residents on AI in a first-of-its-kind partnershipSelect Circle K locations will take the mobile version of your driver’s license, as will select apps and TSA screenings at San Francisco International Airport, San Jose Mineta International Airport, and Los Angeles International Airport.You’re still required to carry your physical license as required by law, but the digital version should make age of identity verification a lot faster. A digital driver’s license copy isn’t exactly new territory for California, as it has its own CA DMV Wallet app that essentially does the same thing (500,000 of the state’s 39 million residents have enrolled in this app). What’s new is having your license in the same app you might use for, say, storing a boarding pass at the airport and a payment card to grab a coffee once you’re inside or for age verification when buying alcohol and then a card to pay. Also: California digitizes car titles, putting 42 million vehicles on the blockchainIf you’re concerned about security, the DMV has said it does not permanently retain any of your personal data other than your phone number and an encrypted photo of your license or ID card. The DMV also says that how you use your mobile license isn’t tracked and no data will leave your device without your consent. More

Google Just a few days after announcing that Google Meet was getting some new AI-powered features, including the ability to summarize meetings and take notes for you, Google is rolling out even more additions to its video conference software. First up is a new UI. Google says it’ll be similar to Meet’s existing mobile interface, and […] More

Grammarly In this age of artificial intelligence (AI), determining whether text was written by a bot or a person has become increasingly difficult. Several detection products have already popped up — but with decidedly mixed results. Now, Grammarly is kicking off its tool, which it believes will better detect which parts of a document were created […] More

joegolby/Getty Images So, you’ve finally installed Linux, and you’re ready to make it your go-to operating system (or at least explore it to find out if it’s a worthy replacement). You might find the OS pretty easy to use out of the gate. Depending on the desktop environment you’ve chosen (such as GNOME, Plasma, Budgie, […] More

This tiny tower offers plenty of power and ports to keep your devices charged. Jack Wallen/ZDNETZDNET’s key takeawaysThe Baseus 35W More

NurPhoto/Getty Images Power users who get a thrill from maximizing the performance of their hardware may be in for a surprise if they use a 13th- or 14th-generation Raptor Lake CPU. Even patched systems can send damaging voltages to the processor when settings other than the defaults are selected. Also: Intel chip bug FAQ: Which […] More