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These days, rather than showing you the traditional list of links when you run a search query, Google is intent on throwing up AI Overviews instead: synthesized summaries of information scraped off the web, with some word-prediction magic added, and packaged together in a way to sound as accurate and reliable as possible.We’ve written before about some of the problems with these AI Overviews, which regularly contain mistakes or nonsense, and of course rip off the work of the human writers who actually know the answers to the questions you’re putting into Google. There’s another problem though—these AI answers can…

Airbnb says its custom-built AI agent is now handling roughly a third of its customer support issues in North America, and it’s preparing to roll out the feature globally. If successful, the company believes that in a year’s time, more than 30% of its total customer support tickets will be handled by AI voice and chat in all the languages where it also employs a human customer service agent. “We think this is going to be massive because not only does this reduce the cost base of Airbnb customer service, but the quality of service is going to be a…

The Galaxy S26 series launch is officially happening on February 25. There will be three models as usual – we already had a close look at all the Galaxy S26 Ultra leaks, now it’s time to do the same for the other two models. Here is what we think we know about Samsung’s upcoming flagships. No Pro, No Edge Samsung never officially confirmed it, but it was reportedly developing a Galaxy S26 Pro to replace the vanilla model and a Galaxy S26 Edge to replace the Plus model. Poor sales of the S25 Edge made sure that the latter isn’t…

Something strange happened at University of California campuses this fall. For the first time since the dot-com crash, computer science enrollment dropped. System-wide, it fell 6% this year after declining 3% in 2024, according to reporting this past week by the San Francisco Chronicle. Even as overall college enrollment climbed 2% nationally — according to January data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center — students are bailing on traditional CS degrees. The one exception is UC San Diego — the only UC campus that added a dedicated AI major this fall. This all might look like a temporary blip…

This week, two smartphone families are on sale – the Poco F8 duo and three Pixel 10 phones. The Pocos offer faster chipsets and bigger batteries, while the Pixels are first in line for new Android features. A couple of weeks ago, a 16/512GB Poco F8 Ultra was selling for €750. Now it costs the same, but Amazon also restocked the 12/256GB variant, which goes for €680. The Ultra has a large 6.9” 12-bit 120Hz OLED display, is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and boasts a 6,500mAh battery (18:52h Active Use Score) with 100W wired and 50W…

Airbnb has taken its time to launch AI features within the app, but CEO Brian Chesky on Friday said the company is now planning to bake in features powered by large language models that would help users search for listings, plan their trips, and aid hosts in managing their properties. Speaking at the company’s fourth-quarter conference call, Chesky said the company wants to increase its use of large language models for customer discovery, support and engineering. “We are building an AI-native experience where the app does not just search for you. It knows you. It will help guests plan their…

Apple is obviously facing significant hurdles with the development of its own AI-powered Apple Intelligence and the upgraded virtual assistant Siri. The company first announced Apple Intelligence during WWDC 2024, but failed to deliver. On top of that, Mark Gurman reported that the upgraded Siri won’t make it into the iOS 26.4 update later this year, due to issues that came out during internal testing. However, that story was based on an internal report by one of Apple’s employees. A company executive was asked about this by CNBC and the answer was simple yet reassuring: “Still on track to launch…

Hidden code reveals that Google has big plans for a unique Pixel feature. Source link

On Saturday, designer Kate Barton will unveil her latest collection at New York Fashion Week — with a twist, of course. Barton teamed up with Fiducia AI to create a multilingual AI agent (built with IBM watsonx on IBM Cloud) to help guests identify pieces of the collection and try them on virtually.  TechCrunch caught up with Barton and Ganesh Harinath, the founder and CEO of Fiducia AI, before the show to learn more about the presentation.  For one, Barton said technology is baked into how she thinks. She likes playing with the real and the unreal, and found the…

The first public beta of Android 16 came out in January 2025, then the stable version started rolling out to Pixel phones in June. Other manufacturers released OS updates for their phones too, some faster than others and it varied from model to model too (flagships got priority). It’s almost time to go up to the next version – Google has officially confirmed that the first Android 17 beta will be out soon. But let’s rewind a bit – did your phone get Android 16? We’re asking because Google shared an Android version distribution chart a couple of weeks ago…