Complainants claim that their works on Google Play Books were not licensed for use in training Gemini. Complainants claim that their works on Google Play Books were not licensed for use in training Gemini. The case, filed in federal court in New York, has been brought by three publishers - Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, and Elsevier - and bestselling American author Scott Turow. The publishers argue that Google repurposed books that had been supplied for limited services such as Google Books, Google Play Books and Google Scholar. Those services allowed Google to use the works in specific ways - for example, to display searchable snippets or sell ebooks - but not, the lawsuit claims, to copy them for training commercial AI products.

Google Assistant received more natural-sounding voice models again in October thanks to updated natural language processing and prosody models which use machine learning to understand and stitch together sentences with better intonation, rhythm, and stress. Now, they seem to be applying that same technology to Google Play Books in order to turn any book into an audiobook, and I totally saw it coming. The upcoming feature seeks to give an auto-generated narrator's voice to text-only books to make them more accessible and immersive. Google Play is working with publishers in the U.S. and the UK for the rollout and will make the publisher tool to create auto-narrated audiobooks available in early 2021 with a beta available now. Once set up for auto-narration, a user can choose between different machine learning and AI-created narrator voices like a cowboy named Tex, and more.

As an avid comic book reader, I know that the outside world falls into two categories … people who love comics and those who think that comic book fans don't know how to read a real book. I have had numerous discussions over the years with friends, family and significant others who tell me that comics are for kids or that there is no literary value in graphic novels. My standard response is to hand them a copy of Alan Moore's Watchmen and tell them to read it. If they still don't think that comic books have value, then I quietly point out that most blockbuster movies since 2008 have been based on characters from either the Marvel or DC universes (well, maybe not DC so much). And if they are remain unconvinced, then I make a mental note to not mention comics again.

At San Diego Comic-Con 2016, we announced Bubble Zoom: a new way to read digital comics on phones and tablets. It uses machine learning to zoom into the speech bubbles of a comic one-tap-at-a-time. Bubble Zoom is available on all Marvel and DC collected volumes with the latest version of Google Play Books app for Android.

What's more, when you're reading one-handed on your phone, you can use the volume buttons to navigate back and forth. Bubble Zoom is part of the most recent version of Google Play Books, and yes, only Android users are privy to the feature right now. If you're using Google's software, you can employ a technical preview of the reading tool while browsing DC and Marvel volumes that support it. Google will be collecting feedback on the update and plans to make it available on all digital comics and manga. The company says it has to teach its machine learning algorithms how to read more styles before expanding its supported library.