Google began experimenting with conversational image editing earlier this year in the dev-focused AI studio, but the feature didn’t remain experimental for long. Over the summer, Google rolled out the “Nano Banana” image-editing model in Gemini 2.5 Flash. You can use this feature to modify images with just a prompt, and now you don’t even need to go to Gemini to use it. Google says Nano Banana is now coming…

Apple has lightly rebranded its video-on-demand streaming service. The Netflix rival that has brought us critically acclaimed shows and movies like Slow Horses and The Lost Bus has gone from Apple TV+ to Apple TV. Apple announced the name change today in a press release that was primarily about the film F1: The Movie coming to its streaming service on December 12. Unlike previous announcements, however, today’s release referred to…

The encryption protecting communications against criminal and nation-state snooping is under threat. As private industry and governments get closer to building useful quantum computers, the algorithms protecting Bitcoin wallets, encrypted web visits, and other sensitive secrets will be useless. No one doubts the day will come, but as the now-common joke in cryptography circles observes, experts have been forecasting this cryptocalypse will arrive in the next 15 to 30 years…

Amazon Echo Show owners are reporting an uptick in advertisements on their smart displays. The company’s Echo Show smart displays have previously shown ads through the company’s Shopping Lists feature, as well as advertising for Alexa skills. Additionally, Echo Shows may play audio ads when users listen to Amazon Music on Alexa. However, reports on Reddit (examples here, here, and here) and from The Verge’s Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, who owns more…

Bose will brick key features of its SoundTouch Wi-Fi speakers and soundbars soon. On Thursday, Bose informed customers that as of February 18, 2026, it will stop supporting the devices, and the devices’ cloud-based features, including the companion app, will stop working. The SoundTouch app enabled numerous capabilities, including integrating music services, like Spotify and TuneIn, and the ability to program multiple speakers in different rooms to play the same…

Microsoft is warning of an active scam that diverts employees’ paycheck payments to attacker-controlled accounts after first taking over their profiles on Workday or other cloud-based HR services. Payroll Pirate, as Microsoft says the campaign has been dubbed, gains access to victims’ HR portals by sending them phishing emails that trick the recipients into providing their credentials for logging in to the cloud account. The scammers are able to recover…

Scraping the open web for AI training data can have its drawbacks. On Thursday, researchers from Anthropic, the UK AI Security Institute, and the Alan Turing Institute released a preprint research paper suggesting that large language models like the ones that power ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude can develop backdoor vulnerabilities from as few as 250 corrupted documents inserted into their training data. That means someone tucking certain documents away inside…

A few weeks ago, Google told US Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) that it would allow creators banned for COVID and election misinformation to rejoin the platform. It didn’t offer many details in the letter, but now YouTube has explained the restoration process. YouTube’s “second chances” are actually more expansive than the letter made it seem. Going forward, almost anyone banned from YouTube will have an opportunity to request a new…

Discord says that hackers made off with images of 70,000 users’ government IDs that they were required to provide in order to use the site. Like an increasing number of sites, Discord requires certain users to provide a photo or scan of their driver’s license or other government ID that shows they meet the minimum age requirements in their country. In some cases, Discord allows users to prove their age…

They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but the press that Intel has generated in the last year has certainly been testing the boundaries of the aphorism. Is it good when your company posts an annual loss for the first time in almost 40 years? When you’re doing multiple rounds of mass layoffs? When your board pushes your CEO into leaving, and starts arguing with the new CEO…