Apps

Strava on Thursday announced a slew of new features and updates at its annual Camp Strava event, as the San Francisco-headquartered company doubles down on efforts to make its social fitness app stickier both for free and premium subscribers — with artificial intelligence (AI) playing a central role. One of the perennial complaints emanating from the

X is rolling out a revamped version of its Communities feature, which lets users network around topics of interest, each with its own dedicated space and timeline. The company on Thursday announced a number of changes to Communities, including improved discovery tools, recommendations, search, and sorting options, with other updates on the way. The broader

Reddit announced on Wednesday that it is reintroducing its awards system after shutting down the program last year. The company said that most of the mechanisms related to awards will remain the same, with some new additions. For instance, there’s a new design for awards, a new award button under eligible posts, and a leaderboard

Poshmark, the social commerce site that lets people buy and sell new and used items to each other, launched a paid marketing tool on Thursday, giving sellers the ability to promote their entire shop at once. Poshmark’s new feature, called “Promoted Closet,” uses machine learning to automatically promote individual product listings from a seller’s entire

At its Google I/O 2024 developer conference on Wednesday, Google announced Private Space, a new Android feature that lets users silo a portion of the operating system for sensitive information. It’s a bit like Incognito mode for the mobile operating system, sectioning designated apps into a “container.” The space is available from the launcher and

At its annual Google I/O 2024 conference, Google announced that users will soon be able to access geospatial augmented reality (AR) content directly on Google Maps on their phones. The feature will first appear in Singapore and Paris as part of a pilot program launching later this year. Users will be able to access the

Google is preparing to launch a new system to help address the problem of malware on Android. Its new live threat detection service leverages Google Play Protect’s on-device AI to analyze apps for malicious behavior. The service, announced following the Google I/O developer event on Tuesday, examines various signals related to an app’s use of

Back in February, Google paused its AI-powered chatbot Gemini’s ability to generate images of people after users complained of historical inaccuracies. Told to depict “a Roman legion,” for example, Gemini would show an anachronistic group of racially diverse soldiers while rendering “Zulu warriors” as stereotypically Black. Google CEO Sundar Pichai apologized, and Demis Hassabis, the co-founder of

Though overshadowed by AI news this year, Google’s I/O 2024 developer conference also focuses on what’s new for those building for Android. This year, it’s Google Play that’s getting attention, with a new discovery feature for apps, new ways to acquire users, updates to Play Points, and other enhancements to developer-facing tools like the Google

Google is adding more AI to its search, assuaging fears that the company is losing market share to competitors like ChatGPT and Perplexity. It is rolling out AI-powered overviews to users in the U.S., Google said at its Google IO 2024 developer event on Tuesday. Additionally, the company is also looking to use Gemini as

Google I/O 2024 kicked off today with a 10 a.m. PT keynote. As ever, the presentation offered glimpses into the latest versions of the company’s software platforms, including Android, Wear OS and Android TV. Also expect a lot of AI. Like, a lot a lot. Gemini, originally known as Bard, will be taking centerstage alongside

Meta’s newest social network, Threads is starting its own fact-checking program after piggybacking on Instagram and Facebook’s network for a few months. Instagram head Adam Mosseri noted that the company “recently” rolled out the ability for fact-checkers to rate and mark false content on Threads. However, Mosseri didn’t share any details about when exactly the

Google says it’s developed a new family of generative AI models “fine-tuned” for learning: LearnLM. A collaboration between Google’s DeepMind AI research division and Google Research, LearnLM models — built on top of Google’s Gemini models — are designed to “conversationally” tutor students on a range of subjects, Google says. LearnLM is already powering features

At its annual Google I/O 2024 developer conference, Google announced AI-generated quizzes, where a new conversational AI tool on YouTube will allow users to figuratively “raise their” hand when watching educational videos. Viewers can ask clarifying questions, get helpful explanations or take a quiz on the subject matter.  The company says the capability even works