Google testers now have the chance to check out another new Duet AI feature in Google Workspace. Starting today, they'll see a new sidebar for Google Sheets. They can describe what they want to do and Duet AI can create a custom template to help them get the ball rolling.

According to Google, this could come in useful for those looking to carry out tasks that involve complex organization and tracking. The company suggests product roadmaps, company retreats and team budgets as potential use cases. If the feature works as intended, it could help save users a ton of time. It's available in Workspace Labs for the time being.

Google

Google has been quickly expanding the AI's toolset since it announced Duet for Workspace at its I/O conference last month. When testers enter a prompt in the web version of Docs, Duet can generate text for them. It can automatically insert smart chips too.

In Gmail, the AI can draft emails on both the web and mobile. It can offer contextual suggestions for replies as well. As for Slides, testers can generate images from text prompts.

Google plans to bring more generative AI features to Workspace Labs in the coming months. Meanwhile, Google's Bard AI can now export the data that it creates to Sheets, where users can organize and modify it.

Twitch just announced a chat-pinning feature similar to those found on YouTube and other platforms. Hype Chat, beyond sounding like something from 2006, offers a new revenue stream for both streamers and the platform itself. Here’s how it works. You pay $1 to $500 and compose a message that rests atop the chat until someone with deeper pockets comes along and knocks you from the spotlight.

The more you pay, the longer the message stays up top and the more characters you can use to compose the missive. Big spenders also get access to various design options to help that “notice me senpai” message garner the attention of your favorite streamer.

Streamers set the price here and Twitch takes 30 percent of the cut, leaving the remaining 70 percent for the creator. At launch, only high-profile streamers, aka Partners, will have access to the feature. Twitch says this is because pinned chats are meant to allow messages to stand out during fast-moving conversations with plenty of participants. Oddly, these Twitch partners are unable to opt out of the service, according to The Verge.

Of course, whenever you mention pinned messages you must contend with the reality of hateful and discriminatory language. This is the Internet, after all. To that end, Twitch is beefing this feature up with safety tools. Just like regular Twitch chat, there’s a host of banned words and phrases at the sitewide level and set by individual creators. Also, if you say something nasty and get banned from a chat, your pinned message flies away with you. All messages sent via this feature are screened by the company’s AutoMod system and human moderators can delete messages whenever they want.

The feature is rolling out right now, but only for approved partners and only on the web app. It’ll launch for smartphone and tablet apps in the near future.

The next version of the prompt-based AI image generator, Stable Diffusion, will produce more photorealistic images and be better at making hands. SDXL 0.9, a follow-up to Stable Diffusion XL, “produces massively improved image and composition detail over its predecessor” according to Stability AI. The announcement appeared in a since-deleted blog post and was reported byBloomberg.

Stability AI describes the new model as providing “a leap in creative use cases for generative AI imagery.” Sample images included in the blog post revealed advancements when using the same prompts in Stable Diffusion XL beta and SDXL 0.9. The images generated with the newer model — including aliens, a wolf and a person holding a coffee cup — appear to show finer detail and more convincing hands. Hands were an easy “tell” to spot AI-generated art — at least until Midjourney v5, a rival platform that runs on Discord, launched in March.

Stability AI

“Despite its ability to be run on a standard home computer, SDXL 0.9 presents a leap in creative use cases for generative AI imagery,” Stability AI said. “The ability to generate hyper-realistic creations for films, television, music, and instructional videos, as well as offering advancements for design and industrial use, places SDXL at the forefront of real world applications for AI imagery.”

Stability AI writes that the new model’s “significant increase in parameter count (the sum of all the weights and biases in the neural network that the model is trained on)” allows for the improved results. Running SDXL 0.9 locally on a PC will require a minimum of 16GB of RAM and a GeForce RTX 20 (or higher) graphics card with 8GB of VRAM. It supports Windows 11 / 10 and Linux.

Stability AI

According to the deleted blog post, the model will soon be available on Stability AI’s Clipdrop web tool and will be added to the startup’s DreamStudio app. The startup says the open-source version of SDXL 1.0 will arrive in mid-July.

Over 100 music artists, including Tom Morello and Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine, have banded together to announce they are boycotting concert venues that use facial recognition technology, as originally reported by Rolling Stone. The artists cite a number of concerns, including privacy infringement and increased discrimination.

The boycott was organized by a digital rights advocacy group called Fight for the Future and its ultimate goal is the elimination of face-scanning technology at all live events. Beyond the two founding members of Rage Against the Machine, other participating artists include Speedy Ortiz, Anti-Flag, Boots Riley and Deerhoof, among more than 80 others. The full list is available right here.

In addition to artists, some venues are getting in on the action, pledging to not use this type of technology for their events. These include House of Yes in Brooklyn, the Lyric Hyperion in Los Angeles and the infamous Black Cat in Washington D.C. In recent months, over 40 big-time music festivals, like Coachella and SXSW, also vowed to stop using facial recognition technology.

Fight for the Future said in a statement that facial scanning companies are “morally corrupt” and that facial recognition tools are “so inaccurate” that they “actually create more harm and problems than they solve.” While the organization says this tech is rife with inaccuracies, for now, it dreads a future world “in which privacy is non-existent, where we are identified, watched and surveilled everywhere we go.”

Nobody wants a Minority Report-esque police state, but proponents of facial recognition tech tout some of the positives. For instance, Taylor Swift recently employed this technology to root out potential stalkers during concerts. However, it’s already being used to do some pretty foul stuff. Madison Square Garden has begun employing the technology to identify and ban lawyers involved with suits against the venue and affiliated companies.

Several attorneys have been forcibly removed from both MSG and Radio City Music Hall in recent months, prompting New York Attorney General Letitia James to issue a formal inquiry. The New York State Liquor Authority also recently initiated proceedings to strip the parent company, Madison Square Garden Entertainment, of its liquor licenses, as reported by the New York Post. MSG sued the state over this decision and doubled down, saying “we understand this policy is disappointing to some, but we cannot ignore the fact that litigation creates an inherently adversarial environment.”

MSG has received the lion’s share of scrutiny here, but other large venues throughout the country have also gotten their Orwell on, from New York’s Citi Field to Cleveland’s FirstEnergy Stadium and Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium, among many others. So this is definitely a thing.

Fight for the Future, along with Morello and artists like Speedy Ortiz, have found success with similar boycotts in the past. In 2022, Denver’s Red Rocks Amphitheater in Denver stopped using Amazon’s palm-reading technology following a protest from the organization.

If you think your kids should have a smart display of their very own, this might be a good time to grab two of them from Amazon. In advance of Prime Day, you can get two Echo Show 5 Kids for the price of one. The displays came out in 2023 and typically go for $100 each. By using the code SHOW5KIDS at checkout, you'll get two for a total of $99.98. You can also press the "Redeem" button on the product page and the discount will automatically show up. 

We covered the standard version of the Echo Show 5 in our smart display guide. We said it would work well on a nightstand as a display-enabled alarm clock, given that the 5-inch screen is on the smaller side. That diminutive size might work well for kids. The kid version of the display has a space-themed exterior and includes a number of software differences that makes it more kid-friendly, particularly with the offered parental controls. 

Like other Alexa-enabled devices, kids can use their Echo Show to control connected smart home devices, like smart bulbs or plugs in their room. Kids can also ask Alexa questions and get audio and visual answers or play music from Spotify, Amazon Music or Apple Music just by asking. Unlike a regular smart display, however, this one is designed to give kid-friendly responses and filter out explicit lyrics. The connected parent dashboard gives you control over time limits and which contacts can be called, while letting you see what your kids are up to by reviewing their activity. If you, understandably, don't feel comfortable sticking a live camera in your kids' rooms, the physical camera shutter on the device can be shut off whenever they're not actively video calling grandma.   

Recently, Amazon and Disney partnered up to bring character voices such as Olaf from Frozen or C3PO from Star Wars to Echo devices. Saying, "hey, Disney" can do things like having Mickey read the weather or launching interactive trivia games. The feature comes with an Amazon Kids+ subscription, which also grants access to kid-focused shows, movies, audiobooks, games and ebooks that kids can access from their display. A year of the subscription comes with the purchase of the kid's Echo Show, after that it's $8 per month or $5 monthly if you're a Prime member.

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Apple, Samsung, OnePlus, Google, Xiaomi... Those are names that likely spring to mind when you think about smartphones. Sony perhaps won't be the first company that most people consider in that regard. However, the company is still beavering away on its own phones and it plans to keep doing so for the foreseeable future.

Sony has struck a multi-year deal with Qualcomm to use Snapdragon platforms to power its handsets. This is an extension of an existing agreement between the two sides. Qualcomm chipsets will be used in Sony's upcoming premium devices, along with high- and mid-tier smartphones.

Sony revealed the awkwardly named Xperia 1 V just last month. The smartphone runs on the Snapdragon 8 Gen2 Mobile Platform and it's geared toward photographers and vloggers. Those are relatively niche use cases, though Sony is able to tap into its camera technology in the aim of helping users capture high-quality photos and video. The Xperia 1 V can be used as a monitor for compatible Sony Alpha cameras, for one thing. Still, Sony continues to command a premium for its high-end Xperia smartphones — the 1 V starts at $1,400.

The company also showed off the mid-range Xperia 10 V for the first time in May. It boasts a Snapdragon 695 chipset and a 60Hz, 1080p OLED display. Sony started selling the phone in Europe this month for £399 or €449 (around $500).

Google will soon make it easier to interact with PDFs if you have low vision. The company is adding OCR (optical character recognition) technology to Chrome that can convert PDFs to text that makes them more accessible, particularly if you want a screen reader to read them aloud. The tool will also provide image descriptions.

The feature will be available in the "coming months," Google says. The company also plans to expand the functionality beyond Chrome later this year, although it hasn't said which platforms might receive the upgrade. We've asked Google for more details and will let you know if we hear back.

Google

The introduction comes as part of a broader education push that includes app licensing for school Chromebooks and free access to Adobe Express in the US. Administrators will also have tighter control over what students and faculty can access on their Chromebooks — they can ban students from copying and pasting text from certain websites, such as generative AI tools that could help them cheat on tests. Users, meanwhile, will have an easier time turning off their camera or microphone regardless of where they are in Chrome OS.

The read-aloud PDF feature is mainly intended for classrooms, where students with vision issues will have an easier time reading scanned class material or necessary research articles. However, this will also make the internet more accessible for the public at large. It's not uncommon for websites to put terms of service or other important information into PDFs. The upgrade puts that info within reach of more people.

This is a good time to buy a tablet for summer reading or road trip entertainment. Amazon is once more selling Apple's 10.2-inch iPad at a record low price of $250 (normally $329) after an instant $20 discount at checkout. You'll need to buy a 64GB WiFi model to get the full savings, but there are also price drops for some 256GB and cellular variants.

The 10.2-inch iPad may be nearing two years old at this point, but it's still our pick for the best budget Apple tablet even at its official price. It's still reasonably speedy for games and casual tasks, and it's the device to get if you still want a headphone jack or a physical home button. On sale, it's an easy choice — you're getting the core iPad experience at a much lower cost. That could make it a great option for reading in bed, and you might not worry quite so much if your kids are less than gentle with it.

There are reasons you might want to spend more, of course. The 10.9-inch iPad from 2022 offers more screen real estate, brisker performance and a USB-C port, not to mention a front camera better-suited to video calls. With a price gap as large as $200, though, it's harder to justify the newer version unless you absolutely insist on its updated design.

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Bandai Namco knows what to do when it turns anime or manga series into video games. Revealed at Summer Game Fest last week, Sand Land is the latest addition, with a big punchy poster on the show floor in Los Angeles, conveniently right next to an established hitmaker for the publisher, its Naruto (now Boruto) Ultimate Storm fighting series.

Sand Land, though? You may never have heard of it, but don’t let that put you off, because it’s a 2000s comic penned by legendary manga artist, Akira Toriyama. Yes, Dragon Ball creator, Akira Toriyama. The man who created the character designs for Chrono Trigger, Blue Dragon and the Dragon Quest series. And Toriyama’s creations have never looked better.

Sand Land is an action-adventure game where you’ll play as the rambunctious prince of the Devil, capital ‘d’, Beelzebub, as he explores a desert-themed world where water is a rare and costly resource. Demons and humans coexist in this world, with the human Sheriff Rao and the demon Thief accompanying Beelzebub on his adventure to solve the water crisis.

At SGF 2023 last week, I played a 15-minute demo that showcased a few parts of the game, including melee combat, exploration and two vehicles: a tank and, er, a golf cart. The demo kicked off with the trio fleeing a desert dragon, and after having steered the cart away from relentless attacks, the gang eventually had to cast off their supplies of water to escape.

Apparently, this is a beat-for-beat replication of how Sand Land plays out in the manga, and you can expect the game to follow the same storyline beats. That’s sometimes frustrating for games where you already know the story. For example, I know who dies in Dragon Ball’s Frieza saga, so it’s not a surprise when it happens in one of the several Dragon Ball video games. With Sand Land, however, many of us will be hearing the tale for the first time.

During my demo, the game split into two play styles. You’ll explore the desert, outposts, and towns with your vehicles but also set out on foot when you need to brawl with someone or interact with things appropriately. Bandai Namco has teased that you can customize vehicles within the game, adding different weaponry and components to improve performance or offer tactical advantages. I loved using the armor-piercing rounds. Sure, they had a low fire rate, but they obliterated almost anything. Vehicle controls are simple enough but vary depending on the type and whether they feature weapons or not. Don’t forget: my first Sand Land vehicle was a golf cart. There was no artillery option.

Bandai Namco

When not rolling around in a tank (which can be repaired if it takes damage), Beelzebub himself can go toe-to-toe with enemies in melee combat. He has a mix of weak attacks, dodge rolls and super attacks that will charge up as you battle enemies. If it sounds a bit… simple, well, it is. Bandai Namco isn’t reinventing the wheel here. More moves and support characters could help deepen the combat sections, so I’ll hold judgment for now, but it’s also worth remembering that this game is likely aimed at gamers younger than I. You will only ever control Beelzebub himself, but both of his aforementioned companions will eventually be able to assist in fights, although this wasn’t apparent in my demo.

The highlight of this early demo was confronting a gang of bandits. They gave off a mild Ginew Force vibe, which I wasn’t mad about. Each wielded different weapons and attacked differently, offering a nice opportunity to test out little devil’s combos, sending enemies high with a punch, only to jump up and slam them back to the ground.

Ensuring even these secondary characters are interesting is proof that, hopefully, the developers are ensuring Toriyama’s characters, and his offbeat humor and charm, make it onto consoles.

While there are some questionable lip-sync moments (at this point, all the voiceovers are Japanese), this generation of consoles and PCs offer more than enough power to replicate Toriyama’s detailed drawings. I gawped at the tank during my playthrough just because it looked so good. Imagine how long I’d stare at a tank I customized myself.

Sand Land will launch on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest right here!

Owlet and its baby monitoring devices are back in the good graces of the FDA. The company received clearance from the US regulator for its product BabySat, a medical-grade pulse-ox monitor designed as a wireless “sock” for newborns and babies. The win comes after the FDA ordered the Utah-based biotech company to stop selling its smart sock almost 18 months ago.

The FDA objection was based on the fact that the wearable had the capacity to relay a live display of a baby’s heart rate and oxygen levels, which is critical data that a doctor should interpret, especially in vulnerable populations. The tumultuous approval demonstrates “our technology is medical-grade,” Kurt Workman, Owlet CEO and co-founder said of the company's path to getting FDA approval. “We conducted several side-by-side accuracy comparisons to hospital monitors and that demonstrated Owlet is accurate." The device can alert a provider if any metrics are out of range, which can help to diagnose and prevent complications.

Owlet stripped out the blood oxygen and pulse tracking features and returned to the market just a few months later with the Dream Sock. The $299 wearable is available direct from the company and through a number of other retailers without a prescription, but it lacks the advanced features that set it apart from the rest of its rivals. Instead, it’s a pretty straightforward sleep tracker.

BabySat, on the other hand, is a prescription device. It integrates medical-grade pulse oximetry technology into a discreet wearable. It’s a noninvasive tool to measure how well oxygen is circulating to extremities in babies from 1 to 18 months.

Without a prescription, a rival medical-grade device can not be readily found on the market, given that BabySat is the first device of its kind to receive FDA approval. Creating a treatment plan with a doctor is especially valuable and useful to the parents of babies that have been diagnosed with heart defects or chronic conditions. If a newborn or baby does present with persistent low oxygen levels, quick intervention by medical professionals is needed to prevent life-threatening complications.

Owlet anticipates the product will be available in the US by the end of this year. The company declined to disclose pricing information for BabySat but did say that insurance options, including reimbursements and HSA/FSA eligibility, will likely be available at launch.