Google's NotebookLM was one of the company's first forays into generative AI technology, and in un-Googley fashion, it hasn't been shut down yet. In fact, NotebookLM is getting one of its biggest updates, ever, today, moving to the latest Gemini 3.5 model, support for more file types, and streamlined web source integration. Google also says NotebookLM will be able to do more with all those queries thanks to embedded support for Antigravity.
Gemini 3.5 Flash debuted at Google I/O this year, promising much faster and more efficient processing. Google has claimed that companies worried about token costs can save big by moving their projects to the new Flash model while also getting outputs that are of similar or better quality. Those improvements are now filtering down to other Google products. NotebookLM, which launched in 2023 at the very beginning of the AI boom, lets you analyze specific sources like documents and webpages with Google's latest AI models.
The upgraded NotebookLM beats the old version in all of Google's "core evaluation dimensions."
Credit:
Google
Google conducted side-by-side evaluations of NotebookLM on the old Gemini 3.1 branch and with the updated 3.5. The company is being somewhat vague about the nature of the tests, breaking things up into "top five core evaluation dimensions," which are Accuracy and Quality, Multilingual Support, Large Document Analysis, Document Creation, and Advanced Research. In these tests, Google says NotebookLM averaged a 65 percent win rate versus the older model.
Alphabet’s Google reportedly placed an order with Intel to manufacture more than 3 million of its specialised AI chips in 2028, a move which increases pressure on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC).
The Information reported Google plans to use Intel to manufacture some of its tensor processing units (TPUs) after months of testing the chipmaker’s manufacturing capabilities.
Google Cloud’s TPUs are custom chips purpose-built for AI and optimised for training and inference of advanced AI models.
The news agency’s sources state the move reflects mounting strain on TSMC, which is struggling to meet surging demand for its foundry capacity, pushing customers to seek alternatives.
The deal marks another significant win for Intel after CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who spent much of last year shoring up Intel’s balance sheet through major external investments, now appears to be delivering on operational improvements which seemed unlikely a year ago.
In April 2026, Google expanded its long‑running partnership with Intel, committing to use multiple generations of the chipmaker’s CPUs in its AI data centres.
The same month, Intel revealed a plan to join Elon Musk’s Terafab AI chip project to build processors which would power the billionaire’s orbital data centres and humanoid robots.
Last month, the tech giant struck a joint venture agreement with asset management company Blackstone to create a US-based AI cloud company, giving a boost to its TPU manufacturing.
The Information also said Nvidia is evaluating Intel’s manufacturing technology for a forthcoming processor which could combine four graphics chips into a single unit.
Google held at least 34 meetings with top German government officials – including the Chancellor – to discuss suppressing "hate speech" and "disinformation" online, reveals John Rosenthal.
Smartwatches can track your health stats, but they also do a lot of other things you might not always want or need. The $100 Fitbit Air tracker ditches the screens that have become common on people's wrists, leaving behind a tiny puck of health sensors you can often forget you're wearing. You will not, however, forget that Google's new health platform is built around AI.
The Air has no speaker, and there's only one LED on the side to indicate battery level. You can double-tap the tracker to check the level, and that's about the end of on-device features. The vibration motor is only for alarms—it can't sync with notifications on your phone. That makes sense, given there is no screen to tell you what that buzz was all about.
The Fitbit Air doesn't have a display or buttons—just a small LED on the side for battery status.
Credit:
Ryan Whitwam
The stock Performance Band is simple, consisting of a smooth polyester yarn with small velcro pads and a metal loop. It's durable but does seem to absorb a bit of moisture. For swimming or heavy workouts, you'll probably want the silicone active band. This one hides the Air puck a bit more effectively, and it looks good in a sporty way.
Google, attraverso la sussidiaria biotech Verily e l'iniziativa "Debug Project", ha richiesto all'EPA l'autorizzazione sperimentale per liberare fino a 32 milioni di zanzare maschio sterilizzate tramite il batterio Wolbachia in California e Florida nell'arco di due anni. Il piano punta ad azzerare le popolazioni della specie invasiva Aedes aegypti, responsabile di virus letali, sfruttando la tecnica dell'insetto sterile automatizzata da intelligenze artificiali e robotica di allevamento.
Segundo a Google, o Gemini Go é uma versão mais leve do assistente inteligente, concebida para os smartphones Android com especificações mais modestas. A substituição do Google Assistant nos modelos equipados com Android Go será disponibilizada de forma faseada.
Google is introducing a new Android security feature that will detect and flag phone calls in which scammers use artificial intelligence to impersonate a user's personal contacts. [...]
Google has released the June 2026 Android security patches to address 124 vulnerabilities, including one zero-day flaw exploited in targeted attacks. [...]
We're expecting Android 17 to begin rolling out later this month, but first, Google has a batch of updates for the wider Android device ecosystem. As usual, some of the new features are limited to specific devices, and others require using Google's apps. But if you don't mind the latter, you can get automated protection from the growing threat of deepfake phone scams.
According to Google, "impersonation fraud" is one of the most common types of financial scams. The FTC tracked almost $3 billion in losses from such scams during 2024, and the improvements in AI voice cloning tools more recently are making the schemes easier to pull off. The voice models are becoming so capable that it can be difficult to identify a fake caller even when an AI is imitating someone you talk to every day.
Google's solution is an expansion of the system it debuted last month for verified financial calls. Now, a similar feature will work with anyone in your contacts. Many of the most effective deepfake scams involve spoofing a contact's number, which makes the call look more legitimate when your phone lights up. Victims of these scams are then greeted by an accurate re-creation of the person's voice spinning a yarn that involves an urgent need for cash.
Integrada no Cloud and AI Development Act, que deverá ser apresentado esta quarta-feira, uma nova proposta da Comissão Europeia prevê um conjunto de critérios obrigatórios para a seleção de fornecedores de serviços na nuvem em contratos públicos considerados críticos.
A mais recente experiência do Google Arts & Culture usa o modelo de geração de vídeo Veo para ir além dos limites da tela e animar quatro das mais famosas pinturas de Henri Matisse.
Google’s shiny new Android 17 update may be on the brink of making its way out into world, but one of the most consequential Android notification upgrades I’ve seen in ages is actually available for anyone, on any device, this instant.
It’s one of those things you don’t even realize is missing — and awkwardly has been, all this time — until you have it in front of you and see just how helpful and at times even invaluable it is.
And that’s the ability to have any or all of your notifications saved and restored whenever you restart whatever Android device you’re using — so that nothing important gets awkwardly tossed aside, lost, and forgotten, likely without your ever even noticing or being aware of what you’ve missed.
How many potentially important pending alerts have you lost as a result of that reboot trash chute? I couldn’t even begin to count, myself, and am slightly terrified to think of the answer. But with this easy new improvement in place, it’ll never happen again.
And best of all? It’ll take you roughly two minutes, once, to set up and then forget about and just know it’s working on your behalf from that moment forward.
Lemme show ya how.
[Keep the off-the-beaten-path knowledge coming with my free Android Intelligence newsletter — three new things to try every Friday and my Android Notification Power-Pack as a special welcome bonus!]
Your new Android notification safety net
The secret sauce that makes this sorcery possible comes not from Google itself but from a crafty independent developer who’s been expanding our Android notification smarts for many a moon now.
Whether you already have BuzzKill on your device or this is your first time encountering it, though, it’s well worth your while to take note of this new capability that snuck into the app not long ago.
First, a quick primer/refresher on what BuzzKill is, in case you aren’t already familiar: BuzzKill is essentially a way to create Gmail-like filters for your Android notifications. You use it to create simple custom rules for what happens when different types of notifications arrive — in an intuitive “if this, then that”-style form — with all kinds of interesting and advanced options for making your alerts more effective.
The latest addition to the app is an experimental option called, appropriately enough, “Restore after reboot.” And it does exactly what you’d expect: Anytime your device restarts, it automatically swoops in to save any active notifications that fit the parameters you select and then instantly restores ’em back into active status once your phone is back up and running.
Without such a system in place, any notifications that you either hadn’t yet looked at or maybe had glanced at and left pending as a reminder to deal with later would more often than not just vanish entirely — and you’d have no easily visible record of their presence or any real indication that they’d been there at all. That’s a dangerous recipe for forgetting something important, whether it’s an email you intended to engage with, a Slack message you needed to acknowledge, or even a task of some sort that had popped up for you to ponder.
The beauty of the BuzzKill approach to fixing this is that it really is a “set it and forget it” sort of system: You just create whatever rule you want now, get it up and running, and then rest easy knowing it’ll always find and restore any active notifications anytime your device restarts — as Android itself should but for whatever reason does not.
2 minutes to auto-restored Android notifications
All right — here are the specific steps to getting your new notification safety net in place:
The app costs four bucks as a one-time purchase, which — believe me — is nothing compared to the ongoing value it’ll give you with this and its many other notification-enhancing possibilities.
It doesn’t require any unusual permissions, doesn’t collect any form of data from your phone, and doesn’t have any manner of access to the internet — meaning it’d have no way of sharing your information even if it wanted to.
Once you’ve gone through the app’s initial setup and made your way to its main screen, tap on the circular button in the lower-right corner of the screen to create a new rule.
On the screen that comes up next, consider which specific sorts of notifications you want to have restored whenever your device restarts.
You could always start with any and all notifications and then go back in to refine and limit the rule more once you see how it works. You might eventually want to ask it to avoid restoring alerts from certain low-priority apps — like, say, Google Photos — so that it doesn’t bother bringing back stuff that you don’t actually need.
If/when you want to create any such restrictions, tap the text that says “any app” to change which apps will be included and/or tap the text that says “contains anything” if you want to restrict based on what specific text a notification does or doesn’t include.
If you don’t want to create any limitations and just want all of your active notifications to be restored, at least to start, leave those lines alone and mosey on down to our next step.
BuzzKill’s simple “if this, then that” formatting gives you lots of flexibility with how and when your rule works.
JR Raphael, Foundry
Tap the line that says “do nothing” and scroll down to find the “Restore after reboot” option. It’ll be toward the bottom of the list, within the “System actions” section.
The “Restore after reboot” action is described as experimental, but it seems to work quite well in my experience so far.
JR Raphael, Foundry
Tap that, then tap “Pick action” to confirm.
And last but not least, tap “Save rule” to, y’know, save your rule and set it into action.
The BuzzKill notification restoration equation, in its simplest possible form.
JR Raphael, Foundry
You should then see the rule showing up as active and running on the main BuzzKill screen.
Notification restoration — active and ready to spring into action whenever your phone restarts.
JR Raphael, Foundry
And that really is all there is to it: Whenever your phone next restarts, any notifications that were visible and active at the time of the restart should just show back up via BuzzKill as soon as things boot back up. If you want to get fancy, you could even make certain especially important notifications “sticky” in general, so that if you inadvertently swipe ’em away while your phone is running normally, they’ll automatically come right back even in that scenario.
It’s not the flashiest feature you’ll see this year, and it doesn’t have any whizbang AI shenanigans to make it seem headline-worthy by current-day standards. But it will work and quite possibly be one of the most practical, actually helpful additions you make to your phone all year — even if and arguably especially if you only think about it once in a great while, when you notice it working its magic and saving you from losing something significant.
Discover even more life-enhancing Android treasures with my free Android Intelligence newsletter— three new things to try every Friday and my free Android Notification Power-Pack today.
AI content creation tools like Google's new Omni model threaten to make reality even harder to discern from AI fantasy, but YouTube is taking an important step toward verifying video origins. After debuting wishy-washy AI content labeling in 2024, Google will begin using more prominent labeling for AI videos, and the site will no longer rely entirely on uploaders to divulge when they use AI tools to create a video.
When YouTube first attempted to tackle the identification of AI videos in 2024, it was almost gratuitous. AI videos at the time nearly always outed themselves by looking bizarre or disjointed. In just a few years, AI models like Seedance, Runway, and Google's own Veo have raised the bar for realism and consistency in AI video—the spaghetti is more accurate than ever.
Recognizing that, YouTube is making the AI labels more prominent and automating part of the process. Creators are still required to indicate when uploading videos if they were created with the help of AI tools. However, uploaders didn't have any incentive to be honest about that before. Starting this month, YouTube will use "new internal signals" to flag AI content. This will apparently apply to videos that show "significant photorealistic AI use."
Google’s first Chromecast was a hit. With 10 million units sold in 2014, it excelled as an easy solution for streaming TV and movies from the Internet to a TV. Released at a time when dumb TVs were more common, the first-generation Chromecast has a simplicity you don’t find in streaming devices these days. Press "Cast" in an app, select a TV with a Chromecast, and start watching. Foregoing extras like a UI or ads, the device remains active in some homes today, despite Google ending support for the $35 device in 2023.
However, this week it seemed like those days were over. Numerous people reported that their original Chromecast had suddenly stopped casting from popular apps, including Chrome, YouTube, and Paramount+. This brought concern that the original Chromecast was really dead now. A Reddit thread started by someone who claimed to have two first-gen Chromecasts suddenly stop working at the same time includes various responses from people who suspected that Google bricked the devices in order to force upgrades.
But Sahana Mysore, senior product manager for Google Home, told Ars Technica today that Google didn’t kill the devices, saying:
Login
The upgraded NotebookLM beats the old version in all of Google's "core evaluation dimensions."
Credit:
Google
