On Tuesday, OpenAI released ChatGPT for Teens, an age-gated version of its chatbot designed for young users. The company first announced it was working on a system to automatically identify teens and restrict their usage of ChatGPT last September, following the death of 16-year-old Adam Raine, who, as alleged in a lawsuit filed by his parents, took his own life after ChatGPT acted as an enabler. "There's no need for a teen to create a new account or change anything; if we predict you're under 18, or you've told us so, this becomes your default experience," Lauren Jonas, OpenAI's head of youth and families, told Engadget. Make no mistake, kids are already using ChatGPT at an incredible scale. At the start of last year, the Pew Research Center found about a quarter of US teens were using the chatbot for their schoolwork.

Google is making it easier for people to support their favorite publications by introducing a new "Preferred Sources" button webmasters can add to their websites. "When readers click this button, it adds the site as a Preferred Source on Google and immediately directs them back to where they left off on the publisher's page," Google explains. After clicking the button, you'll see the publication appear more frequently Google Search, including in Top Stories, AI Overviews and AI Mode. The button formalizes something publishers, including Engadget, had been independently adding their websites for a while now. Even with referral traffic from Google declining in recent years due to products like AI Overviews and AI Mode, the company's search engine remains an important source of revenue for many media outlets.

Health care company Abbott has entered into a partnership to connect Google Health to its Lingo continuous glucose monitor (CGM). According to the press release, this multi-year collaboration will allow users of the over-the-counter Lingo device to see their metabolic data within the Google Health app, which could help a person "make better lifestyle and nutrition choices in the moment." The Lingo data can also be shared with the Google Health Coach, which offers AI-driven recommendations based on an individual's information. Lingo is explicitly intended for adults who are not using insulin. Engadget reported on the growing trend of non-diabetics using continuous glucose monitors back in 2023 and found little research that supported the benefits for that population to track blood sugar spikes so closely.

In the spring of 2022, Google began reaching out to a series of writers, including award-winning science-fiction authors and New York Times bestsellers, for feedback on an experimental writing tool. Four years later, their participation has corners of the literary world up in arms. Google researchers knew at the time that they were approaching a breakthrough point with large language models (LLMs). DeepMind, the company's AI division, was internally testing a natural language generation model called LaMDA which had demonstrated emergent writing capabilities. That model would eventually form the basis for Google Gemini.

The question is whether Gemini is a good enough smart home assistant. Somehow, it's been almost nine months since Google first revealed its latest smart speaker, the boringly-named Google Home Speaker. I don't understand why it took the company so long to get it to market, as there's nothing that particularly changes the game here hardware-wise. The $99 orb looks a lot like Apple's HomePod mini, with a speaker that fires audio in 360 degrees and microphones so you can chat with Google Assistant Gemini for Home. It's the definition of an expected, iterative piece of hardware -- but on the other hand, it's been almost six years since Google released the Nest Audio and seven since the Nest Home Mini.

Evan Spiegel doesn't want you to call Snap Specs AI glasses Evan Spiegel doesn't want you to call Snap Specs AI glasses Snap's CEO sat down with Engadget after his keynote at AWE. Snap's newly announced AR Specs might seem similar to other smartglasses, but Snap CEO Evan Spiegel says that's the wrong way to think about the product. Specs, he says, is a new type of computer, a see-through computer. Shortly after unveiling Specs at AWE, Spiegel sat down with Engadget to tell us more about the device we got a glimpse of onstage. The CEO repeatedly referred to Specs as a computer and that really is core to understanding how Snap is positioning the product (and justifying the price). Specs, Spiegel said, is able to overlay computing on the world around you and bring computing into the world, which is so important if you want to make computing feel more human. But Snap will have to do more than just persuade people to buy a computer for their face.

Cuneflow's e-paper writing tablet uses AI to record and transcribe meetings Cuneflow's e-paper writing tablet uses AI to record and transcribe meetings It's designed to automate the busywork of business. I recently reviewed reMarkable's Paper Pure, an e-paper writing tablet designed to be used in business meetings. The company markets itself as an almost analog space to think, pushing against the use of AI and the distractions of the digital age. Think of Cuneflow, then, as a rebuke of that philosophy, as its namesake e-paper writing slate has a built-in voice recorder to transcribe and extract insights from those very same business meetings. Is that a big enough draw for you to plonk down your money when it launches on Kickstarter?

Samsung's Bespoke update is big step towards a useful AI for your fridge Samsung's Bespoke update is big step towards a useful AI for your fridge The idea of installing a software update on your fridge already feels kind of weird, let alone one centered around improving its AI capabilities. But that's exactly what's happening to Samsung's line of Bespoke refrigerators this week, and to my surprise this patch is making major strides at providing truly useful machine learning in a modern day icebox. As a quick recap, Samsung has offered AI-powered features like automatic food recognition and meal planning on its Bespoke refrigerators for a couple years already. However, as I found out after reviewing its flagship model late last year, the company's AI capabilities are still very much a work in progress. Previously, the fridge could recognize around 60 different kinds of fresh foods (like fruits and veggies) alongside another 50 or so packaged goods like yogurt or popcorn.

You can currently use the Photos app across Apple's operating systems to adjust things like saturation and contrast, apply filters, crop photos or use AI to remove objects with the Clean Up tool . Clean Up will apparently be one of several Apple Intelligence Tools after these new updates roll out, writes. Along with Clean Up, users will be able to use Extend to expand the background of the photo with generative AI, Enhance to automatically improve things like lighting and image quality and Reframe to shift the perspective of a photo after it's taken, primarily for Apple's spatial photos. The new features, if released, will bring Apple's photo-editing tools more in line with competitors like Google and Samsung, though both companies still lap Apple in their willingness to create entirely generated images. Google's Magic Editor feature, which debuted in 2023, still takes the cake in terms of giving users leeway to radically add to and change their photos.

A source says the contract doesn't give the company any veto power over how the tech is used by the government. Google has signed a deal that allows the US Department of Defense to use its AI models for any lawful government purpose. This is according to a report by, which also notes that the full details of the contract are classified. An anonymous source within the company has suggested that the two entities have agreed that the search giant's AI tech shouldn't be used for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weapons without appropriate human oversight and control. However, the contract also reportedly doesn't give Google any right to control or veto anything the government decides to do.