Author: Anthony Ha
After reporting in January that Apple is adding an “Air” option to its iPhone lineup, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman is offering more details about the upcoming slimmer iPhone. The iPhone 17 Air will launch this fall, Gurman says — and like the MacBook Air, it will be thinner than standard models, while combining high-end and low-end features. It apparently took a “herculean effort” for Apple engineers to create a skinnier phone with thinner batteries without sacrificing battery life. Gurman also reports that Apple considered making this the first “completely port-free iPhone,” with all charging done wirelessly and all data syncing accomplished…
Chinese search engine Baidu has launched two new AI models — Ernie 4.5, the latest version of the company’s foundational model first released two years ago, as well as a new reasoning model, Ernie X1. According to Reuters, Baidu claims that Ernie X1’s performance is “on par with DeepSeek R1 at only half the price,”, and it touts Ernie 4.5’s “high EQ,” allowing the model to understand memes and satire. Both models have multimodal capabilities, allowing them to process video, images, and audio, as well as text. While Baidu was one of the first Chinese companies to launch a competitor…
Amazon Echo users will no longer have the option to process their Alexa requests locally, which means all of their voice recordings will be sent to the company’s cloud. Ars Technica reports that on Friday, Amazon sent an email to customers who have “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” enabled on their Echo smart speakers and displays, stating the company would stop supporting the privacy-enhancing feature on March 28. “As we continue to expand Alexa’s capabilities with generative AI features that rely on the processing power of Amazon’s secure cloud, we have decided to no longer support this feature,” the email…