Apple could unveil Gemini-powered Siri in Feb. Still needs a holster, though. Between the new Macs, iPhones and rumored AI gadgets, Apple surprised us with an upgraded, second-generation AirTag. It has Apple's latest Ultra Wideband chip -- the same one used in the iPhone 17 lineup and the Apple Watch Ultra 3. It also uses Precision Finding to reach items up to 50 percent further away than the previous AirTag model. This feature will now work with any Apple Watch Series 9, Ultra 2 or newer.

Apple could unveil Gemini-powered Siri in Feb. TikTok's US joint venture is off to a bumpy start. UpScrolled is seeing a surge in interest. TikTok's newly formed US entity is off to a very bumpy start. As the app continues to face technical issues affecting the recommendation algorithm, view counts and other features, TikTok is also seeing a wave of frustrated users uninstalling it, according to new data. Analytics firm Sensor Tower, which tracks downloads and other app store-related metrics, told CNBC that there has been a 150 percent rise in uninstalls of the TikTok app in the United States compared with the last three months.

Apple could unveil Gemini-powered Siri in Feb. Plaintiffs claimed they saw ads based on conversations Google Assistant shouldn't have heard. Google has agreed to a $68 million settlement regarding claims that its voice assistant inappropriately spied on smartphone users. Plaintiffs claimed that the company's Google Assistant platform began listening to them after it misheard conversations that sounded like its wake words. The suit argued that private information that Google Assistant shouldn't have heard was then used to deliver those individuals targeted ads. The preliminary class action settlement was filed on Friday and now awaits approval from U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman.

Google has agreed to pay $68m (£51m) to settle a lawsuit claiming it secretly listened to people's private conversations through their phones. Users accused Google Assistant - a virtual assistant present on many Android devices - of recording private conversations after it was inadvertently triggered on their devices. They claimed the recordings were then shared with advertisers in order to send them targeted advertising. The BBC has contacted Google for comment. But in a filing seeking to settle the case, it denied wrongdoing and said it was seeking to avoid litigation.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. I spent two months with the Echo Dot Max after many years with the Echo Dot. Here's who should trade up, and who should stand pat. Built for Alexa+ and packed with smart features, the Amazon Echo Dot Max makes for a solid smart-home foundation, but that doesn't mean every Echo Dot owner should automatically move up to it. The first wave of "made for Alexa+" devices has arrived, and among them is Amazon's flagship Echo speaker--the Echo Dot Max, the successor to the earlier, fourth-generation Amazon Echo speaker.

Alexa.com brings Amazon's voice assistant to web browsers with meal planning, smart home controls and cross-device continuity for typing-based interactions.

How to Do It I'm Trying to Be Discreet on a Dating Site. My partner and I (man and woman in our mid-30s) want to open profiles on an adult dating site (Feeld, probably?) to connect with couples and singles. We've had ethically non-monogamous encounters at adult resorts, but haven't tried a dating site to meet people closer to home in hopes of landing on more "social swinging" relationships. There are a wealth of swinging/lifestyle podcasts with episodes about dating profiles, and omitting your face from "public" photos on the site (that is, visible to all members) is uniform advice. Of course, most often this is to avoid being identified on the site.

Apple's Siri AI will be powered by Gemini The projector offers inky blacks, high color accuracy and anti-rainbow tech, but costs a lot more than its rivals. After a widely hyped and successful Kickstarter campaign, Valerion's 4K VisionMaster Max laser projector has finally arrived. However, it's quite expensive and has some stiff competition from Anker's Nebula X1 and XGIMI's Horizon 20 Max. I was eager to see how it compared to those models and if it delivers on Valerion's promise of "pure cinema." It does offer better image quality, but the difference isn't quite enough to justify the big jump in price for most users. Valerion's VisionMaster Max delivers outstanding image quality thanks to its triple-laser system and dynamic iris.

We study the multinomial logit (MNL) contextual bandit problem for sequential assortment selection. Although most existing research assumes utility functions to be linear in item features, this linearity assumption restricts the modeling of intricate interactions between items and user preferences. A recent work (Zhang & Luo, 2024) has investigated general utility function classes, yet its method faces fundamental trade-offs between computational tractability and statistical efficiency. To address this limitation, we propose a computationally efficient algorithm for MNL contextual bandits leveraging the upper confidence bound principle, specifically designed for non-linear parametric utility functions, including those modeled by neural networks. Under a realizability assumption and a mild geometric condition on the utility function class, our algorithm achieves a regret bound of $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{T})$, where $T$ denotes the total number of rounds. Our result establishes that sharp $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{T})$-regret is attainable even with neural network-based utilities, without relying on strong assumptions such as neural tangent kernel approximations. To the best of our knowledge, our proposed method is the first computationally tractable algorithm for MNL contextual bandits with non-linear utilities that provably attains $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{T})$ regret. Comprehensive numerical experiments validate the effectiveness of our approach, showing robust performance not only in realizable settings but also in scenarios with model misspecification.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. There's barely a mention in Samsung's press kit, but booth attendants assured us Music Studio 5 & 7 speakers support Alexa, Google Assistant, and Bixby. Samsung has dabbled in the smart speaker space before, but the company's all-new Music Studio 5 and Music Studio 7 Wi-Fi speakers pose serious competition for the likes of Amazon, Apple, Bose, and Sonos--at least at the higher-end of the market. Unveiled this week at CES and planned for a March release, both models present a distinctively modern, "dot-faced" industrial design by noted French artist Erwan Bouroullec, along with some equally interesting features destined to set them apart from the pack. Initial shipments will be in black or white only.)