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Google’s Chrome browser is the latest major product from the company to get its own built-in Gemini features. Today at Google I/O, the company detailed its plans to bring its AI assistant to Chrome.

While Gemini can already distill information from websites, having the assistant baked into Chrome allows it to provide insights and answer questions about your open tabs without ever having to move to a different window or application. Instead, Gemini lives in a new menu at the top of your browser window as well as in the taskbar.

The company envisions its assistant as being able to help out with tasks that may normally require switching between several open tabs or scrolling around to different parts of a web page. For example, Google showed off how Gemini can give advice about potential modifications for dietary restrictions while looking at a recipe blog. Gemini in the browser could also come in handy while shopping as it can answer specific questions about products or even summarize reviews.

To start, Gemini will only be able to answer queries about a single open tab, but the company plans to add multi-tab capabilities in a future update. This would allow the assistant to synthesize info across multiple open tabs and answer even more complex questions. Gemini in Chrome will also have Gemini Live capabilities, for anyone more comfortable conversing with the assistant using their voice. The company also teased a future update that will allow Gemini to actually scroll through web pages on your behalf, like asking it to jump to a specific step in a recipe. (Notably, all this is separate from Google’s other web-browsing AI, Project Mariner, which is still a research prototype.)

Gemini is starting to roll out to Chrome users on Mac and Windows today, beginning with AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers in the United States. The company hasn’t indicated whether it plans to bring similar features to Chromebooks or Chrome’s mobile app.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/google-is-bringing-gemini-to-chrome-so-it-can-answer-questions-about-your-open-tabs-174903787.html?src=rss 

Google has begun rolling out AI Mode to every Search user in the US. The company announced the expansion during its I/O 2025 conference. Google first began previewing AI Mode with testers in its Labs program at the start of March. Since then, it has been gradually rolling out the feature to more people, including in recent weeks regular Search users.

For the uninitiated, AI Mode is a chatbot built directly into Google Search. It lives in a separate tab, and was designed by the company to tackle more complicated queries than people have historically used its search engine to answer. For instance, you can use AI Mode to generate a comparison between different fitness trackers. Before today, the chatbot was powered by Gemini 2.0. Now it’s running a custom version of Gemini 2.5. What’s more, Google plans to bring many of AI Mode’s capabilities to other parts of the Search experience.

“AI Mode is where we’ll first bring Gemini’s frontier capabilities, and it’s also a glimpse of what’s to come,” the company wrote in a blog post published during the event. “As we get feedback, we’ll graduate many features and capabilities from AI Mode right into the core search experience in AI Overviews.”

Looking to the future, Google plans to bring Deep Search, an offshoot of its Deep Research mode, to AI Mode. Google was among the first companies to debut the tool in December. Since then, most AI companies, including OpenAI, have gone on to offer their take on Deep Research, which you can use to prompt Gemini and other chatbots to take extra time to create a comprehensive report on a subject. With today’s announcement, Google is making the tool available in a place where more of its users are likely to encounter it.

Another new feature that’s coming to AI Mode builds on the work Google did with Project Mariner, the web-surfing AI agent the company began previewing with “trusted testers” at the end of last year. This addition gives AI Mode the ability to complete tasks for you on the web. For example, you can ask it to find two affordable tickets for the next MLB game in your city. AI Mode will compare “hundreds of potential” tickets for you and return with a few of the best options. From there, you can complete a purchase without having done the comparison work yourself.

“This will start with event tickets, restaurant reservations and local appointments,” says Google. “And we’ll be working with companies like Ticketmaster, StubHub, Resy and Vagaro to create a seamless and helpful experience.”

AI Mode will also soon include the ability to generate custom charts and graphics tailored to your specific queries. At the same time, AI Mode will be more personalized in the near future, with Google introducing an optional feature allowing the tool to draw their past searches. The company will also give people the option to connect their other Google apps to AI Mode, starting with Gmail, for even more granular recommendations.

Separately, Google is adding a suite of shopping features to AI Mode. Engadget has a separate post dedicated to the Shopping features Google announced today, but the short of it is that AI Mode will be able to narrow down products for you and complete purchases on your behalf – with your permission, of course.

All of the new AI Mode features Google previewed today will be available to Labs users first before they roll out more broadly.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/ai-mode-is-now-rolling-out-to-everyone-in-the-us-174917212.html?src=rss 

Google Chrome has announced a feature for its built-in password manager that it claims will let users instantly change passwords compromised in data breaches. Google Password Manager already alerts you when your credentials have appeared in a data breach, and partially automates the process of changing your password, but — until now — you still had to go through the steps manually for each of your online accounts.

The Automated Password Change feature, announced at today’s Google I/O keynote presentation, goes a step farther. It will apparently let you generate a new password and substitute it for the old one with a single click, without ever seeing a “Create New Password” page. The feature only works on participating websites. Google is currently in talks with developers to expand the range of sites that will support one-click password changes, with plans for a full rollout later in 2025.

Automated Password Change was discovered as far back as February by eagle-eyed software diggers, but was limited to the early developer-only builds made public as Chrome Canary. At that time, it was located in the “AI Innovations” settings menu, though it’s not yet clear how AI figures in the process.

This feature builds on password health functionality that Google has been steadily incorporating into Chrome since it released the Password Checkup extension in 2019, recognizing that compromised credentials are a common vector for cybercrime. People often reuse the same short, memorable password on multiple websites. If hackers steal a credential database from one weakly defended site and dump it on the dark web, other cybercriminals can try the leaked usernames and passwords on more secure sites — like online banks and cash apps — until one fits.

The best way to prevent this is to use a password manager to generate and save a different strong password for every account you make, even ones you don’t think will handle sensitive information. If you haven’t done this, the second-best prevention is to monitor password data breaches and immediately change any password that gets leaked. If Automated Password Change works as advertised, it’ll make that crisis response a lot more convenient.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/google-chrome-previews-feature-to-instantly-change-compromised-passwords-175051933.html?src=rss 

At I/O today, Google pitched creators on a new app for “AI filmmaking”: Flow. Combining all of Google’s recent announcements and developments across AI-powered services, including Veo (video), Imagen (images) and Gemini, the company bills Flow as a storytelling aid ‘built with creatives.” If it sounds familiar, this is the advanced version of VideoFX, previously a Google Labs experiment.

It says it’s aimed at helping storytellers to explore ideas and create clips and scenes, almost like storyboards and sketches in motion. Google’s generally impressive Veo 2 model seems to form the core of Flow, able to extend footage and create video that “excel(s) at physics and realism”, although I’m not sure many agree with that..

You can use Gemini’s natural language skills to construct and tweak the video output, and creatives can pull in their own assets or create things with Imagen through simple text input. What’s notable is the ability to integrate your creations and scenes into different clips and scenes with consistency. While the early demo footage we saw was impressive, it still had a not-so-faint AI-slop aroma.

There are further film-making tools, too. Flow will also feature direct control over the movement of your ‘camera’, and even choose camera angles. You can also edit and extend shots, adding different transitions between AI-generated videos. Creating video with Veo is often a piecemeal process, but Flow will have its own asset management system to organize assets and even your prompts. These richer controls and editing abilities could make for more compelling creations in time. Let’s not forget: It’s been less than a year since that very weird Toys R’Us ad.

Google buddied up with several notable filmmakers to attempt to legitimize collaborate on these still-early steps into AI video creation, including Dave Clark, Henry Daubrez and Junie Lau. It says it offered creatives early access to the tools, and folded in their insights and feedback into what is now called Flow.

Flow is now available to AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers in the US, and will roll out to other countries soon. Pro users will get Flow tools outlined so far and 100 generations each month. With the Ultra sub, you’ll get unlimited generation and early access to Veo 3, with native audio generation.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/google-filmmaking-tool-flow-ai-generated-video-175212520.html?src=rss 

Google has just announced a new $250 per month AI Ultra plan for people who want unlimited access to its most advanced machine learning features. Yes, you read that right. It means the new subscription is $50 more expensive than the already pricey ChatGPT Pro and Claude Max plans from OpenAI and Anthropic.

For $250, you’re getting early access to new models like Veo 3, and unlimited usage of features like Flow (the new AI film-making app the company announced today) and the compute-intensive Deep Research. In the coming weeks, Google will also roll out Deep Think to AI Ultra users, which is the new enhanced reasoning mode that is part of its Gemini 2.5 Pro model. Subscribers can also look forward to access to Project Mariner, Google’s web-surfing agent, and Gemini within Chrome, plus all the usual places where you can find the chatbot like Gmail and Docs.

Google is partly justifying the high cost of AI Ultra by touting the inclusion of YouTube Premium and 30TB of cloud storage across Google Photos, Drive and Gmail. On its own, a YouTube Premium subscription would cost you $14 per month, and Google doesn’t offer 30TB of cloud storage separately. The closest comparison would be Google One, which includes a Premium tier that comes with 2TB of storage for $10 per month. As another incentive to sign up for AI Ultra, Google is giving new subscribers 50 percent off their first three months.

As of today, Google is also revamping its existing AI Premium plan. The subscription, which will be known as Google AI Pro moving forward, now includes the Flow app and early access to Gemini in Chrome. Google says the new benefits will come to US subscribers first, with availability in other countries to follow.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/google-wants-250-per-month-in-return-for-its-new-ai-ultra-plan-180248513.html?src=rss 

Amazon will now deliver a bunch of new products via drone, as mentioned in a company blog post. This includes stuff like smartphones, video doorbells and food thermometers. This is thanks to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) giving approval to several new item categories.

Newly-available items include Apple iPhones, AirTags and AirPods, in addition to Samsung Galaxy smartphones, Ring doorbells and Alpha Grillers Instant Read Food Thermometers. All told, customers can now choose from more than 60,000 items for drone delivery.

These deliveries will typically arrive within an hour, assuming the package is under five pounds and the customer lives in a drone service area. Unfortunately, these areas are extremely limited. As of this writing, Amazon only offers drone deliveries to parts of Texas and Arizona. The company plans on expanding to the UK and Italy in the near future.

Weather also plays a part when determining the availability of a drone delivery. Amazon won’t offer the service “during heavy winds, or during heavy rain,” the company wrote in another blog post. It isn’t being overly cautious here. The drones can get into serious trouble when trying to navigate foul weather, as shown by recent crashes that forced the company to put the platform on hold for a while.

Last year, the FAA gave Amazon permission for its drones to fly beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS). This has allowed the company to use its newest MK30 model to make deliveries within an hour.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/amazon-drones-can-now-deliver-smartphones-airtags-and-more-164413100.html?src=rss 

Google first teased Project Starline in 2021, billing it at the time as a “magic window” that uses special hardware, computer vision and machine learning to create an almost holographic video call experience. Since then, we’ve checked out an early version of the experiment for ourselves and learned last year that the company is teaming up with HP to bring a scaled-down version of the product to enterprise clients. At I/O 2025 today, Google announced that Project Starline “is evolving into an AI-first 3D video communication platform” called Beam. CEO Sundar Pichai said onstage that the first devices will be available later this year to “select customers,” though there’s no word on pricing just yet.

Adding to the computer vision and machine learning that already go into Project Starline (now Beam), Google says the platform will “use AI to enable a new generation of devices that help people make meaningful connections, no matter where they are.”

Part of this is a “state-of-the-art AI volumetric video model” and that, plus some power via Google Cloud, combined with the light field display from before, is what makes the calls “appear fully 3D from any perspective.” There are six cameras built into the Beam system to capture you from various angles, and the system uses AI to merge the streams and render you and your caller on the light field display. It’ll track your head movement to make sure it’s delivering the data to your eyes at the right angles, and do so at 60 frames per second.

Though we don’t know yet how much a unit of Google Beam might cost, it might be worth pointing out that Logitech made a different version called Project Ghost, and estimated that it will cost between $15,000 and $20,000 per booth depending on the configuration. To be clear, though, Project Ghost is not holographic or rendering 3D, it’s just a large TV streaming 2D video that’s so big it makes your callers seem life-sized.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/goodbye-project-starline-hello-google-beam-3d-video-conferencing-171056302.html?src=rss 

If you find Google’s live translation tools useful, you’ll soon be able to use them more naturally during video calls and meetings. The company announced today that it’s bringing the feature to Google Meet. Starting this week, AI-powered, real-time Spanish translation will be available in the app. Google says more languages are on the way and that the technology is “very, very close to having a natural and free-flowing conversation.” 

During a brief demo, live translation in Meet matched the speaker’s tone and cadence, and was even able to channel expressions. There’s no doubt this will be useful for many people, especially on work calls with colleagues in other countries. Live translation will allow everyone to speak in the language they’re most comfortable with, and the technology will do the heavy lifting. Before now, you had to rely on live captions in Google Meet to do any translation, so not having to read those will allow users to be more in-tune with the conversation. 

Starting today, live translation in Google Meet will be available to Google AI Pro and Ultra plans in beta. The company says the new features will be available for enterprise users later this year as part of an “early testing” phase. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/google-brings-live-translation-to-meet-starting-with-spanish-174549788.html?src=rss 

Last month, Gemini Live camera and screen sharing became available on Pixel phones as part of Google’s April feature drop. But today, at Google I/O 2025, the company announced that it’s bringing that capability to all compatible Android and iOS devices as part of a free update.

Available inside the Gemini app, the ability to share your phone’s camera or content from your screen with Google’s AI is meant to make it easier and more natural to get answers about complex topics. For example, instead of describing a situation only using your voice, you could simply point your handset’s camera at something while Gemini uses object recognition to analyze the scene and do things like identify a particular species of animal or tell you want kind of screw or bolt you might need to perform a repair.

While Google doesn’t have a concrete timeline for when these features will land on your device, the company says that “in the coming weeks,” Gemini Live will get deeper integration with some of its other apps including Google Maps, Calendar, Tasks, Keep and more. The idea is that when you ask a question, Gemini will have more pertinent info to pull from so it can come up with more relevant and useful replies. Thankfully, for anyone concerned about data privacy, Google says these app connections can be easily managed inside the Gemini app and that users can adjust their settings at any time.

With Google’s continued push into AI and the expansion of Gemini’s abilities, it was only a matter of time before camera and screen sharing arrived on non-Pixel devices. That said, with the feature having just become available on first-party phones last month, it’s nice to see that there won’t be a huge wait for more folks to get access to these features.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/screen-and-camera-sharing-in-gemini-live-is-heading-to-all-android-and-ios-devices-174547592.html?src=rss