Google is helping robots accomplish tasks quickly and more efficiently, using technology like the systems powering AI chatbots Bard, ChatGPT, the Claude 2 and others, the company said in a blog post Friday.  Google’s Robotics Transformer 2, or RT-2, is a “first-of-its-kind vision-language-action (VLA) model,” Vincent Vanhoucke, the head of robotics... Read more

Barbenheimer—the one-two punch releases of Barbie and Oppenheimer—will go down in history as an astonishing success. Together, Variety reports, the films made more than $244 million in their opening weekend, the fourth-largest in US history. Barbie’s $162 million was the biggest ever for a female director, putting Greta Gerwig... Read more

Missed the GamesBeat Summit excitement? Don’t worry! Tune in now to catch all of the live and virtual sessions here. I’ve spent some time playing Diablo IV, initially with the intention of giving it a full review. But to be honest, I’m having too much fun muddling through it... Read more

Getty Images Security researchers have unearthed a rare malware find: malicious Android apps that use optical character recognition to steal credentials displayed on phone screens. The malware, dubbed CherryBlos by researchers from security firm Trend Micro, has been embedded into at least four Android apps available outside of Google... Read more

Smartphone shipments in the US in the second quarter of 2023 dropped by 24% compared with the same period last year, according to analyst firm Counterpoint Research. Counterpoint’s report, published Friday, said this is the third consecutive quarter of declining US phone shipments. “Despite inflation numbers falling through the... Read more

While Vasquez and Uber may find some closure in the plea deal, self-driving expert Bryant Walker Smith says the NTSB should revisit the Slack issue to find the truth. “I don’t want the story of the first automated vehicle fatality to be a lie. Or be a matter of... Read more

Missed the GamesBeat Summit excitement? Don’t worry! Tune in now to catch all of the live and virtual sessions here. It’s the end of an era. Xbox has revealed the two final games it plans to offer to Xbox Live Gold subscribers in August. The service transitions to the... Read more

Enlarge / A Google robot controlled by RT-2. Google On Friday, Google DeepMind announced Robotic Transformer 2 (RT-2), a “first-of-its-kind” vision-language-action (VLA) model that uses data scraped from the Internet to enable better robotic control through plain language commands. The ultimate goal is to create general-purpose robots that can... Read more

NASA will be launching its own streaming service later this year, the US space agency said Thursday.  The service, called NASA Plus, will feature live streaming of NASA missions, as well as original video series including new series being produced for the streaming service. “We’re putting space on demand... Read more

John Romero, cocreator of the popular first-person shooters Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein 3D is one of the video game industry’s best known designers. In his new book, Doom Guy: Life in First Person, Romero relates the many ups and downs of his life and career. “It’s kind of an Id Software... Read more