Kalakshar US

Vodafone made a commercial starring an AI avatar posing as a real lady. This is interesting because Vodafone is a major global brand and not a fly-by-night TikTok company using a ridiculous deepfake of Jackson Galaxy to sell cat toys.

The tells in the commercial are obvious and what one would expect. The AI avatar’s hair is a bit off, which ruins the charade that this is a real person. The physical mannerisms and speaking tone are also wonky. A facial mole moves around at one point. It’s AI. You know the drill.

The company responded to a question on a message board as to why it couldn’t put “a real person in front of the camera” by saying this is simply an experiment. It said it was “testing different styles of advertising — this time with AI,” and that “AI is so much a part of everyday life these days that we also try it out in advertising.”

This isn’t the first Vodafone ad to feature generative AI. It released a fully AI-generated commercial last year that spurred a bit of controversy, despite looking absolutely awful. Social media platforms are also becoming increasingly littered with AI-generated virtual influencers. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/vodafone-is-testing-an-ai-actor-to-sell-its-products-instead-of-paying-a-human-to-do-it-185301360.html?src=rss 

Google is opening up AI Mode to more languages. Starting today, the AI chatbot the company is integrating into Google Search is available in Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean and Brazilian Portuguese. 

The company has been rapidly expanding access to the search experience. In May, Google started offering it to everyone in the US (and later the UK and India) after starting public tests just two months earlier. 

Google added more features to AI Mode in July, including support for the Gemini 2.5 Pro model and Deep Search. As of last month, AI Mode has been present in more than 180 countries. But until now, AI Mode had only been available in English. This is the first language support expansion for the chatbot. 

“Building a truly global Search goes far beyond translation — it requires a nuanced understanding of local information,” Hema Budaraju, Google’s vice president of search product management wrote in a blog post. “With the advanced multimodal and reasoning capabilities of our custom version of Gemini 2.5 in Search, we’ve made huge strides in language understanding, so our most advanced AI search capabilities are locally relevant and useful in each new language we support.”

Google has been claiming recently that traffic to websites from Search is “relatively stable” since the rollout of AI Overviews and that “the web is thriving.” However, the company admitted something very different in a court filing last week. Its lawyers stated that “the open web is already in rapid decline.” That, plus the expansion of AI Mode, will surely be welcomed with open arms by publishers who are seriously feeling the pinch of declining web traffic.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/google-expands-ai-mode-beyond-english-for-the-first-time-192245955.html?src=rss 

OpenAI is throwing its resources behind a mostly AI-generated animated film that was the brainchild of one of the company’s employees. As first reported by the Wall Street Journal, the film will be called Critterz and will follow forest creatures who go on an adventure after their village is disrupted by a stranger. Chad Nelson, a creative specialist at OpenAI, started designing the characters three years ago with the intention of making a short film using OpenAI’s DALL-E image-generation tool.

The goal of the film is, in part, to show that animated films can be made for less money and in less time with AI. The team behind the film has set a budget of less than $30 million and a production schedule of only nine months. Both are a fraction of what it takes to produce a typical Hollywood animated picture. According to Nelson, OpenAI is hoping that if Critterz is successful, it might pave the way for adoption of more AI in the industry.

London-based Vertigo Films will produce the film along with Native Foreign, a studio in Los Angeles that specializes in using AI alongside more traditional video production methods. Native Foreign previously produced a faux Planet Earth-style short film, also titled Critterz, written and directed by Nelson. It used DALL-E to create all the visuals for the short, which Native Foreign then brought to life with (limited) animation.

The production team will hire human voice actors for the film’s characters and will hire artists to draw sketches that will then be fed into OpenAI’s chat and image-generating tools. The script for Critterz was penned by some of the same writers behind Paddington in Peru. The team aims to premiere the film at next year’s Cannes Film Festival in May.

Over the last few years, many Hollywood workers have fought to protect their livelihoods against AI encroachment. In 2023, after a protracted strike, SAG-AFTRA reached an agreement that would require “informed consent and compensation” should a studio wish to use AI-generated likenesses of any current or deceased SAG-AFTRA members. All of this comes against the backdrop of enormous lawsuits against AI companies by creatives and studios alike.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-tech-to-be-used-to-in-a-full-length-animated-film-155921502.html?src=rss 

Meta allegedly suppressed research that suggested kids were exposed to certain dangers when using its VR headsets, according to a report by The Washington Post. Current and former employees have presented documents to Congress that describe incidents in which children were groomed by adult predators in VR, but allege that internal reports were edited to omit the worst of these offenses. Meta has denied these allegations.

Two of these researchers claim they met with a German family in which a child younger than ten had been approached by strangers online while using a Meta VR headset. Some of these strangers allegedly sexually propositioned the child. When the employees issued the harrowing report, their boss allegedly ordered that the aforementioned claims be deleted. When the internal report was eventually published, it spoke of some parents being scared of this type of thing but didn’t mention the above incident.

The trove of documents presented to Congress reportedly indicate guidance from Meta’s legal team instructing researchers to avoid collecting data about children using VR devices. The memo suggests this is “due to regulatory concerns,” likely referring to fallout from congressional hearings that took place in 2021.

The documents also include warnings from employees that children younger than 13 were bypassing age restrictions to use VR headsets. However, Meta has since lowered the minimum age down to ten.

Meta spokeswoman Dani Lever told The Post that the documents were “stitched together to fit a predetermined and false narrative” and that the company doesn’t prohibit research about children under 13. “We stand by our research team’s excellent work and are dismayed by these mischaracterizations of the team’s efforts,” she said.

The company didn’t confirm or deny the events regarding the family in Germany, but said that if the anecdote was deleted from the official record it was to ensure compliance with a US federal law governing the handling of children’s personal data or the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) from the EU.

That one prohibits companies from collecting personal information without consent, but the researchers maintain they received consent from the child’s mother. They also say they received a signed contract from the mother at the start of the interview.

A Senate Judiciary subcommittee is scheduled to discuss these allegations at a hearing later in the week. This particular subcommittee examines laws and regulations regarding online safety.

It was recently revealed that Meta is opening up its Horizon Worlds VR hangout app to preteens, so long as they get parental approval. This led the Senate Judiciary Committee to pen a letter demanding information as to the presence of minors on the app and the company’s alleged failures to protect the privacy and safety of children.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/meta-reportedly-suppressed-research-about-how-dangerous-its-vr-headsets-are-for-kids-162509006.html?src=rss 

You don’t necessarily have to break the bank to pick up a cordless vacuum and avoid the scourge of cables while you’re cleaning up debris from your floors. Our favorite budget cordless vacuum already delivered good value for money, and now it’s on sale, making it an even more enticing proposition. The Levoit LVAC-300 has dropped down to $270.

This cordless vacuum’s list price is $350, meaning that you’re getting a discount of $80 or 23 percent. It’s not quite a record-low price (we’ve seen it drop to $250 in the past), but it’s still a good deal.

The Levoit LVAC-300 is our pick for the best budget cordless vacuum. It offers good suction power for a model in this price range, and it has easier handling and a more polished design compared with our previous recommendation in that subcategory. It feels fairly smooth when you move it across your floors as well.

It’s easy to assemble and take apart the LVAC-300. Removing the battery is a cinch too (alas, there’s no charging dock for this one). You can turn on this vacuum with a single button press. Another button switches between Eco, Mid and Turbo modes. The latter of those can drain your battery quite rapidly if you use it a lot, though you can keep an eye on the battery level using the digital display. Levoit says the battery will run for up to 60 minutes on a single charge in Eco mode but just 12 minutes in Turbo mode.

At 0.75 liters, the bin size is pretty decent. The LVAC-300 has a HEPA filter and Levoit says it can capture “99.99 percent of particles as small as 0.3μm with air purifier-level efficiency.” In our testing, we felt that it did a solid job of vacuuming up dirt, dust bunnies, pet hair and coffee grounds. Overall, we reckon the LVAC-300 is a good, budget-friendly cordless vacuum that might be best suited for apartment dwellers and those with small- to medium-sized homes (or if you just want such a device on hand to take care of a quick clean up).

Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/one-of-our-favorite-cordless-vacuums-is-23-percent-off-right-now-144255672.html?src=rss 

In 2020, I bought an iPhone 12 to replace my aging Pixel 3, and nearly five years later, I’m still using that same device because it works fine and Apple has yet to bring the feature I want most on a regular iPhone: a ProMotion display. If you’re not familiar with the company’s marketing lingo, ProMotion is its way of describing a high-refresh rate display.

Apple introduced ProMotion with the iPhone 13 Pro. Since then, every Pro model has offered a 120Hz refresh rate display with the ability to scale down to 1Hz for always-on functionality. That’s great for gaming and day-to-day use; higher refresh rates make every interaction on the iPhone’s touchscreen look and feel smoother. In fact, high refresh rate displays are such a well-liked feature that most Android manufacturers have begun offering them on their entry-level devices, but it’s still something you need to spend $1,000 to get on an iPhone..

If you ask me, that’s a problem for Apple. The closest I got to upgrading was in 2023 when it released the iPhone 15, which was the first regular model to include the company’s Dynamic Island display cutout after it debuted on the iPhone 14 Pro. In the end, even the iPhone 15, with its better display, camera and USB-C charging, wasn’t enough to convince me to part with the iPhone 12, because the new model didn’t include a ProMotion screen. I imagine I’m not the only person who kept their old iPhone for the same reason.

At this point, Apple’s trickle-down strategy is painfully behind its competitors. In 2022, when display analyst Ross Young correctly predicted the entire iPhone 15 would offer Dynamic Island displays, he said the company likely wouldn’t bring ProMotion to its regular iPhones until 2024 at the earliest. He blamed the timing on a supply chain that “[couldn’t] support” the feature on Apple’s more affordable handsets. Whether or not that was true, I don’t know. In 2020, the same year Apple released the $799 iPhone 12, Google came out with the $700 Pixel 5, which came with a 90Hz OLED.

Either way, it appears my long wait is about to come to an end, with all four 2025 iPhone models — the iPhone 17, 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max and new iPhone 17 Air — reportedly set to offer 120Hz displays. For me, this is the year I upgrade, but I do wonder what it means for the future of the iPhone line.

If I had to guess, Apple’s decision to hold off on bringing ProMotion to the regular iPhone had more to do with the company wanting to give people a reason to spend extra on a Pro model than the limits of one of the largest and most efficient supply chains on the planet. If the pre-release rumors turn out to be true, the iPhone 17 will leave the iPhone Pro in an awkward place. With ProMotion gone as a differentiating feature and the Pro and Pro Max rumored to be made from aluminum again, there aren’t many reasons to go for the more expensive models other than if you want a telephoto camera or a bigger display in the case of the Pro Max.

I suspect this may be the last year we see an iPhone Pro, at least in the format we know it as now. When Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar and I got a chance to talk to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman during a recent episode of the Engadget podcast, he mentioned that Apple plans to go all in on the iPhone Air. At first, it may offer only a single camera and worse battery life than its siblings, but Gurman said Apple was confident it could further shrink those components over time and make the Air the equal of its current devices.

In other words, the iPhone Air might be a side project now, but it’s easy to envision a future where it becomes the company’s flagship. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I’m hopeful Apple plans for a future where the Air and regular iPhone offer similar features, but the company charges a premium for getting those in a sleeker package.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/if-the-iphone-17-doesnt-get-promotion-i-wont-be-upgrading-my-iphone-12-120030630.html?src=rss