Google knows where you went on vacation, what you bought, and who you email. Now that knowledge is supposed to make your AI assistant smarter. The new “Personal Intelligence” feature connects Gemini with Gmail, Google Photos, and YouTube—an advantage competitors can’t match, if it works as intended.
Deutsche Telekom is soon using AI voice agents from Elevenlabs in its customer service. Customers can talk to realistic-sounding AI voices around the clock through the app or by phone. The partnership between Europe's largest telecom company and the AI audio startup goes back a while. Since October 2025, Magenta customers have been able to convert text into podcasts up to 25 times a month for free in the MeinMagenta app. Deutsche Telekom also invested in Elevenlabs' Series C funding round.
According to Elevenlabs' internal data, the AI support agent successfully resolves about 80 percent of user queries, particularly when it comes to specific documentation questions. For more complex issues like troubleshooting or pricing inquiries, though, the system still hits its limits and needs to hand off to human support.
Elevenlabs recently launched a marketplace for licensed voices of famous people like John Wayne and Judy Garland. Last year, the company introduced the Eleven v3 voice model with expanded expression options.
Google Deepmind has updated Veo 3.1 with new features for generating video from reference images. The update enables more dynamic and expressive videos, even with simple text prompts, according to Google. Users can now keep characters consistent across multiple scenes and seamlessly combine different elements like textures, objects, and backgrounds.
The update also adds native support for vertical videos in 9:16 format, optimized for YouTube Shorts and the YouTube Create app along with other mobile platforms. Veo 3.1 now offers upscaling to 1080p and 4K resolution for professional productions. This likely means even more AI-generated content flooding YouTube, especially in the Shorts format.
The updates are available now in the Gemini app, YouTube, Flow, Google Vids, and through the Gemini API and Vertex AI. All generated videos include the invisible SynthID watermark to identify AI-generated content. Users can check in the Gemini app whether a video was created with Google AI.
The AI race between the US and China enters a new phase: Washington loosens Nvidia export rules, but Beijing reportedly halts purchases. China wants to shield its chip industry and may require buyers to also purchase domestic chips.
Salesforce has launched a new Slackbot built on Anthropic's Claude AI model. According to co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Parker Harris, the company is also testing alternatives. The AI assistant lives directly inside Slack and can search data across Slack, Salesforce, Google Drive, Box, and Atlassian's Confluence. It uses context from conversations, files, and channels to answer questions, create content, and prepare meetings, while respecting existing access rights and permissions.
Slackbot is now available for Business+ and Enterprise+ customers, with a gradual rollout running through February. Down the road, Slackbot will also be able to work with Agentforce and other AI agents.
A new leak reveals details about OpenAI's planned hardware, an audio device designed to compete with Apple's Airpods. X and Weibo leaker "Smart Pikachu" claims OpenAI is developing a device codenamed "Sweetpea" with designer Jony Ive reportedly involved. The alleged September launch targets 40 to 50 million units in year one.
The device supposedly features an oval metal housing with two capsule-shaped components worn behind the ear, running on a 2nm chip with Samsung Exynos as the frontrunner. A separate chip would enable iPhone control through Siri. Material costs are reportedly close to smartphone level.
If the leak proves accurate, Foxconn could produce up to five OpenAI devices by 2028, including a pen codenamed "Gumdrop." The manufacturer reportedly sees this as a chance to recover after losing all Airpods programs to Luxshare. OpenAI allegedly favored Luxshare initially but switched to Foxconn to enable production outside China.
Anthropic's Claude Code inventor says his tool wrote almost all the code for Claude Cowork. Claude Cowork is a newly launched AI tool from Anthropic that builds on Claude Code but adds a user-friendly interface for non-programmers. According to Claude Code inventor Boris Cherny, "pretty much" all the code was generated using Claude Code.
Product Manager Felix Rieseberg says the app came together in just a sprint and a half, roughly one and a half weeks. The team had already built some prototypes and explored ideas beforehand, though, and the current release is still a research preview with a few rough edges, Rieseberg says. Claude Code also provided an extensive foundation to build on; Rieseberg is likely referring mainly to the front-end work.
OpenAI is buying health app Torch for around 100 million dollars. The deal includes 60 million upfront and the rest in retention shares, The Information reports. Torch unifies scattered health records into what the founders call a "medical memory for AI", "a context engine that helps you see the full picture, connect the dots, and make sure nothing important gets lost." The app runs on OpenAI models. All four employees, including CEO Ilya Abyzov, are joining OpenAI.
The deal signals OpenAI's push toward a personalized health assistant in ChatGPT. Last week, the company launched a ChatGPT Health section and an offering for healthcare companies. Anthropic recently added health features to Claude as well. The moves reflect a shared bet on a massive market: hundreds of millions of weekly chatbot conversations already focus on health.
Apple will use Google's Gemini models for its AI features, including a revamped version of Siri. The multi-year partnership means Apple will rely on Google's Gemini and cloud technology for its upcoming products, according to CNBC. The new features are expected to roll out later this year.
In a statement, Apple said that after careful evaluation, Google's technology offers the most capable foundation for its applications. Rumors about talks between the two tech giants first surfaced in March of last year. Later reports suggested the switch would cost Apple more than one billion dollars annually.
The move comes as Apple continues to struggle with Siri's underlying architecture. Internal reports describe Siri as a technically fragmented system built from old rule-based components and newer generative models - a combination that makes updates difficult and leads to frequent errors. Apple is also working on an entirely new in-house LLM architecture and a model with roughly one trillion parameters, aiming to eventually break free from external providers. Google faced similar challenges early on keeping pace with OpenAI's rapid progress but managed to catch up.
