Apple is in early discussions with Google to potentially use Google’s Gemini AI as the core technology to power a redesigned, next-generation Siri voice assistant. The company approached Google with the idea of creating a customized AI model that would run on Apple’s servers and serve as the foundation for the revamped Siri expected to launch in 2026.

Currently, Apple is exploring multiple options for Siri’s AI “brain.” It is developing two versions simultaneously: one using its own internal AI models (codenamed Linwood) and another based on external technology (codenamed Glenwood), which could be Google’s Gemini or others like Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Apple has not yet finalized any agreements or decided whether to fully adopt an external partner or rely on its own AI models. The talks with Google are still preliminary, and Google is training a customized Gemini model for potential use on Apple infrastructure.

This move aims to catch up with competitors like Google and Samsung, who have integrated generative AI capabilities into their assistants. Apple’s revamped Siri has faced delays and challenges, but the new architecture promises more advanced and personalized AI features.

In summary, Apple is considering licensing and integrating Google’s Gemini AI to power next-gen Siri but is still weighing its options among several AI providers and has not yet made a final decision.

Meta has entered into a partnership with Midjourney, an AI startup known for its advanced image and video generation technology, to license Midjourney’s “aesthetic technology” for integration into Meta’s future AI models and products. This collaboration involves a technical partnership between the research teams of both companies and aims to help Meta develop AI-powered creative tools that can compete with industry rivals like OpenAI and Google.

Meta’s Chief AI Officer, Alexandr Wang, described the partnership as part of a comprehensive strategy to deliver the best AI products by combining top talent, ambitious computing resources, and collaborations with leading industry players. Midjourney’s technology, which includes highly advanced models for generating images from text prompts and recently released video models, will enhance Meta’s offerings in AI-generated imagery and video.

Midjourney remains an independent, community-supported lab with no external investors. The licensing deal signifies a major step in Meta’s AI ambitions, complementing its existing in-house tools such as the AI image generator “Imagine” and AI video editor “Movie Gen.” Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has heavily invested in AI, acquiring talent and companies to boost its capabilities.

The partnership could lead to new AI creative tools integrated across Meta’s platforms, potentially improving functionalities in apps like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp by leveraging Midjourney’s unique aesthetic AI technology. The terms and timeline of the partnership’s full rollout have not been disclosed yet, but the collaboration marks a significant move for Meta in the competitive AI space.

Elon Musk has teased that his company’s upcoming AI model, Grok 5, could be “a real shot at being a true AGI” (Artificial General Intelligence) and is scheduled to launch before the end of 2025. Musk describes Grok 5 as potentially “crushingly good,” hinting it may surpass previous models and even outperform OpenAI’s GPT-5 according to recent comparisons.

AGI refers to a type of AI that matches or surpasses human cognitive abilities across virtually all tasks, a milestone that AI companies such as OpenAI and Google are still striving to achieve. Musk’s bold claims about Grok 5 signify a strong belief that it could represent the first genuine step toward AGI, which would be a pivotal moment in AI development.

Grok-4, the predecessor, has already received praise for faster response times, advanced multimodal support, and strong performance in mathematics and physics. Musk suggests Grok 5 will take this further, enhancing xAI’s position in the competitive AI landscape. So far, detailed capabilities of Grok 5 remain undisclosed, but anticipation is high that it will significantly raise the bar in AI intelligence and functionality.

In summary, Musk claims Grok 5 AI could be true AGI by year-end 2025, marking a possible breakthrough in AI technology and competition with other leading AI models.

The 2025 study by OneLittleWeb, titled “The AI ‘Big Bang’ Study 2025,” provides a comprehensive analysis of the top 10 AI chatbots based on web traffic, media citations, and user engagement from August 2024 to July 2025. The study, utilizing data from sources like Semrush, aitools.xyz, MuckRack, and app stores, ranks chatbots across eight key performance indicators, offering insights into their market presence, growth, and user experience. The AI tools market, encompassing over 10,500 tools, recorded nearly 100 billion web visits, with the top 10 chatbots capturing 55.88 billion visits, or 58.8% of the total, highlighting significant market consolidation.

ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, dominates with 46.59 billion visits and a 48.36% market share, maintaining its position as the most popular chatbot due to its robust performance in language tasks, accessibility, and free availability. Grok, created by xAI, emerges as a surprising second-place contender with 686.91 million visits and a 1.17% market share, driven by its integration into the X platform and rapid user base growth. Other notable chatbots include DeepSeek, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, Blackbox AI, Monica, and Meta AI, with DeepSeek and Grok showing the fastest growth rates, the former with a 113,007% year-over-year increase.

The study reveals a 123.35% year-over-year traffic growth for these top chatbots, adding 30.9 billion visits compared to the previous year, underscoring the rising popularity of conversational AI. Media coverage significantly influences traffic, with peaks in January and February 2025 (817.6K and 1.1M citations) correlating with traffic surges to 4.3 billion and 4.4 billion visits, respectively, and a high of 5.8 billion in March. However, some chatbots like DeepSeek experienced a 39.5% traffic drop over five months, reflecting volatility tied to media attention.

The methodology emphasizes transparency, using weighted scores across visibility, growth, and user experience metrics to ensure a balanced ranking. This approach helps identify trusted and high-performing chatbots, offering actionable insights for users and businesses. For instance, chatbots like Poe attract users by providing access to multiple AI models, while Meta AI benefits from integration into platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp, likely underrepresenting its true usage.

For businesses, the study suggests a dual strategy: optimizing for traditional search engines, which still dominate with 1.86 trillion visits, while adapting content for AI-driven platforms through structured data and high-quality, concise answers. The findings dispel the notion that chatbots are replacing search engines, showing they complement them by serving distinct user needs, such as creative tasks versus navigational searches. As AI chatbots continue to evolve, their role in reshaping online discovery is undeniable, but search engines remain dominant for now.

Details here

Google has launched a new journaling app called Pixel Journal, introduced at the Pixel 10 launch event in August 2025. Pixel Journal uses on-device AI, specifically the Gemini Nano models running on the Pixel 10’s Tensor G5 chip, to provide writing prompts that help users fill out journal entries. These prompts are personalized based on memories, past entries, and user goals to assist in processing thoughts and maintaining journaling habits.

The app allows users to add photos, locations, activities, and mood entries to their journal. It also provides insights about writing patterns such as when users commonly write, the longest entry by word count in a given period, and the total number of entries per week or month. For privacy, Pixel Journal supports locking the app with a PIN to keep entries secure and all data processing is done offline on the device.

Currently, Pixel Journal is available exclusively for the Pixel 10 series, with potential plans to expand support to older Pixel devices in the future. The app is currently offered in English only.

This launch positions Google’s Pixel Journal as a private and AI-enhanced journaling tool, comparable to Apple’s Journal app introduced in 2023 but with a unique approach focusing on on-device AI and data privacy.

Meta has introduced an AI-powered video translation feature on Facebook and Instagram that automatically dubs videos, especially Reels, into another language while preserving the creator’s original voice tone and style. This translation tool also offers lip-syncing that matches the translated audio with the creators’ mouth movements, making it seem as if they are naturally speaking the translated language.

Key features of the Meta video translation tool include:

• Automatic audio translations between English and Spanish at launch, with plans to add more languages.
• A toggle option called “Translate your voice with Meta AI” available before posting a Reel, allowing creators to enable translation and optionally add lip-syncing.
• Creators can preview and approve translations before publishing, with the ability to turn off the feature without affecting the original video.
• Translated Reels are shown to viewers in their preferred language, with a label indicating the use of Meta AI for translation.
• Creator tips for best results include speaking clearly, minimizing background noise, facing the camera, and avoiding overlapping speech between two speakers.
• Facebook creators with more than 1,000 followers and Instagram public accounts can access the feature where Meta AI is available.
• Meta recently added the ability for Facebook creators to upload up to 20 manual dubbed audio tracks to a single Reel to connect with audiences beyond AI-supported languages.
• The tool also provides new analytics in the Insights panel, showing views by language to help creators gauge their expanded reach.

This feature aims to break down language barriers, helping creators reach a broader global audience by making their video content accessible in multiple languages with natural-sounding translations and synced lip movements.

A new graphics driver from Intel introduces a groundbreaking feature for laptops equipped with its latest Core Ultra (“Meteor Lake”) processors: the ability to manually override and drastically increase the amount of system RAM allocated to the integrated GPU (iGPU) as dedicated video memory (VRAM).

Traditionally, operating systems like Windows dynamically manage how much system memory is shared with the integrated graphics. This “shared GPU memory” is usually capped at half of the total system RAM. For a common laptop with 16GB of RAM, this means the iGPU might only access a maximum of 8GB for graphics tasks, even if more would be beneficial.

Intel’s new driver, version 31.0.101.5370 beta (and later), shatters this limitation. It adds a manual override slider within the Intel Graphics Command Center, allowing users to directly specify how much system memory is dedicated to the GPU. The most striking aspect is the upper limit: users can allocate up to 87% of their total system memory to the iGPU. On a 16GB laptop, this translates to a potential allocation of approximately 14GB of VRAM, a massive increase over the previous default.

This feature is targeted squarely at enhancing performance for memory-intensive workloads. The primary beneficiaries are:

1. Gamers: Modern games, especially those with high-resolution textures, are increasingly VRAM-hungry. An insufficient VRAM buffer can cause significant stuttering, frame rate drops, and lower texture quality. By allowing a much larger VRAM pool, this feature can prevent these bottlenecks, leading to a smoother gaming experience on Intel Arc-powered Ultra laptops.
2. Content Creators: Applications for video editing, 3D rendering, and AI processing heavily utilize GPU memory. A larger dedicated VRAM allocation can significantly speed up rendering times and allow for work on more complex projects that were previously hampered by memory constraints.

However, the article highlights crucial caveats. This memory is not additional; it is reallocated from the same pool used by the CPU and the rest of the system. Allocating 14GB of 16GB to the GPU leaves only 2GB for Windows and other applications, which would cripple overall system performance. Therefore, this tool is not a “set and forget” solution but a powerful option for advanced users to optimize their system for specific tasks. It is most effectively used on systems with a larger amount of RAM (e.g., 32GB or more) where a significant portion can be dedicated to the GPU without starving the operating system.

Intel’s new shared GPU memory override is a significant and welcome advancement for on-the-go gaming and content creation. It provides users with unprecedented control over their hardware resources, empowering them to tailor their laptop’s performance to their immediate needs, ultimately extracting more potential from the integrated Intel Arc graphics within Core Ultra processors.

Adobe Studio product is the launch of Acrobat Studio on August 19, 2025. Acrobat Studio is a transformative platform that unites Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Express, and AI agents into a single productivity and creativity home. It turns PDFs and other file collections into dynamic conversational knowledge hubs called PDF Spaces, where customizable AI Assistants help users uncover insights, generate ideas, and collaborate. Acrobat Studio integrates Adobe Express content creation tools with trusted PDF features, enabling seamless creation, editing, sharing, and learning from documents and visual content all in one place.

Here is the key features of Acrobat Studio include:

• PDF Spaces that convert file collections into interactive, AI-powered environments.
• AI Assistants with roles like “instructor,” “analyst,” or “entertainer” to synthesize information and answer questions.
• Integration of Adobe Express Premium tools and Adobe Firefly-powered image and video generation.
• Support for scanning, e-signing, editing, combining documents, and AI-powered summarization.
• Application for business professionals, consumers, students, and travelers to work smarter and faster with AI.

The product is available as a subscription service at $29.95/month for businesses and $25/month for individuals, also including premium Adobe Express features.

Acrobat Studio is positioned as a next-level evolution of Adobe Acrobat, originally the inventor of PDF, aiming to enhance productivity and creativity with AI and advanced tools.

Additionally, Adobe has expanded its GenStudio product with AI-powered innovations for video and display ad campaign creation, enhancing marketing workflows with AI across multiple platforms.

There have also been monthly security updates for Adobe products released in July 2025 with medium risk mitigations.

This news showcases Adobe’s strong focus on AI integration into its suite to transform productivity, creativity, and marketing workflows effectively.

Google is preparing a major AI-powered update for its Translate app, version 9.15.114, which introduces a new AI model picker feature. This will allow users, for the first time, to choose between translation modes optimized for speed or accuracy. The two options available will be:

• Fast mode: Optimized for speed and efficiency, providing quicker translations using on-device processing.
• Advanced mode: Powered by Google’s Gemini AI model, focusing on accuracy with more computationally intensive, cloud-based translations.

Currently, the advanced mode is limited to English-Spanish and English-French language pairs. The model picker will be accessible both on the main screen and on the translation results page.

This update includes reorganizing the UI for better accessibility, moving buttons for microphone, handwriting, and paste functions to a lower toolbar for easier one-handed use. The update aligns with broader AI trends of letting users balance speed and accuracy according to their needs, improving user control over translations from casual chats to professional documents.

This evolution in Google Translate builds on its Gemini AI capabilities and addresses user feedback for more reliable and context-aware translations, while also considering privacy by enabling some processing on-device. The rollout date for this feature to all users is not yet announced.