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DHS is using Google and Adobe AI to make videos

The US Department of Homeland Security is using AI video generators from Google and Adobe to make and edit content shared with the public, a new document reveals. It comes as immigration agencies have flooded social media with content to support President Trump’s mass deportation agenda—some of which appears to be made with AI—and as workers in tech have put pressure on their employers to denounce the agencies’ activities.  The document, released on Wednesday, provides an inventory of which commercial AI tools DHS uses for tasks ranging from generating drafts of documents to managing cybersecurity.  In a section about “editing images, videos or other public affairs materials using AI,” it reveals for the first time that DHS is using Google’s Veo 3 video generator and Adobe Firefly, estimating that the agency has between 100 and 1,000 licenses for the tools. It also discloses that DHS uses Microsoft Copilot Chat for generating first drafts of documents and summarizing long r...
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Apple acquires Q.ai, whose tech can analyze facial expressions and could enable non-verbal discussions with AI assistants; sources: the deal values Q.ai at ~$2B (Financial Times)

Financial Times : Apple acquires Q.ai, whose tech can analyze facial expressions and could enable non-verbal discussions with AI assistants; sources: the deal values Q.ai at ~$2B   —  iPhone-maker strikes deal for secretive group that creates technology that analyses facial expressions from Techmeme https://ift.tt/ZLN3FrP via IFTTT

Decagon, which offers AI-powered customer service agents, raised a $250M Series D led by Coatue and Index Ventures at a $4.5B valuation, up from $1.5B in June (Shirin Ghaffary/Bloomberg)

Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg : Decagon, which offers AI-powered customer service agents, raised a $250M Series D led by Coatue and Index Ventures at a $4.5B valuation, up from $1.5B in June   —  Decagon AI Inc., a customer support startup, has raised $250 million in a new round of funding that triples its valuation to $4.5 billion … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/ZkYGOyD via IFTTT

Google updates Gemini in Chrome with a new side panel, an auto browse feature that can navigate pages and take actions for AI Pro and AI Ultra users, and more (Kyle Kucharski/ZDNET)

Kyle Kucharski / ZDNET : Google updates Gemini in Chrome with a new side panel, an auto browse feature that can navigate pages and take actions for AI Pro and AI Ultra users, and more   —  ZDNET's key takeaways  — Google Chrome is being upgraded with Gemini 3 and a revamped sidepanel UX. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/cj2BGYC via IFTTT

DeepSeek launches DeepSeek-OCR 2, an upgraded optical character recognition model that replaces OpenAI-developed CLIP framework with Alibaba's Qwen2-0.5b (Ben Jiang/South China Morning Post)

Ben Jiang / South China Morning Post : DeepSeek launches DeepSeek-OCR 2, an upgraded optical character recognition model that replaces OpenAI-developed CLIP framework with Alibaba's Qwen2-0.5b   —  The Chinese AI start-up says its latest OCR model delivers stronger performance after adopting an Alibaba-developed open-source model from Techmeme https://ift.tt/9M2g3SB via IFTTT

OpenAI’s latest product lets you vibe code science

OpenAI just revealed what its new in-house team, OpenAI for Science , has been up to. The firm has released a free LLM-powered tool for scientists called Prism , which embeds ChatGPT in a text editor for writing scientific papers. The idea is to put ChatGPT front and center inside software that scientists use to write up their work in much the same way that chatbots are now embedded into popular programming editors. It’s vibe coding , but for science. Kevin Weil, head of OpenAI for Science, pushes that analogy himself. “I think 2026 will be for AI and science what 2025 was for AI in software engineering,” he said at a press briefing yesterday. “We’re starting to see that same kind of inflection.” OpenAI claims that around 1.3 million scientists around the world submit more than 8 million queries a week to ChatGPT on advanced topics in science and math. “That tells us that AI is moving from curiosity to core workflow for scientists,” Weil said. Prism is a response to that user behav...

UpScrolled, a platform for sharing photos, videos, and text that claims political impartiality, says user growth has surged since TikTok's US takeover (Emma Roth/The Verge)

Emma Roth / The Verge : UpScrolled, a platform for sharing photos, videos, and text that claims political impartiality, says user growth has surged since TikTok's US takeover   —  UpScrolled is a platform for sharing photos, videos, and text, and it aims to remain ‘impartial’ to political agendas. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/vsDw5BF via IFTTT