Spotify could soon get its own Gemini Extension

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1. Spotify could soon get its own Gemini Extension

Google is investing heavily in Gemini. The company is integrating other apps and services through Gemini Extensions, formerly known as Bard Extensions. The YouTube Music extension allows Gemini to find, play, and control music from YouTube Music, and it could soon extend the functionality to Spotify.

An APK teardown suggests that Google is working on a Spotify extension for YouTube Music. With Extensions, Google Gemini can access information from various Google apps and services to serve better AI results. The YouTube Music extension allows users to find and play music through Gemini by tapping into the audio streaming service. The Spotify Gemini Extension is not currently live within Gemini, but it is expected to be launched in the future once Google builds out the feature and conducts satisfactory beta tests.

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2. Hacker Tool Extracts All the Data Collected By Windows' New Recall AI

Microsoft's Windows AI tool, Recall, has been compared to spyware or stalkerware, with security experts warning that the data stored in preview versions of the tool could be easily accessed by an attacker. Cybersecurity strategist and ethical hacker Alex Hagenah has released a demo tool called TotalRecall, which can automatically extract and display all Recall records on a laptop.

TotalRecall can pull all the information that Recall saves into its main database on a Windows laptop, which is unencrypted and all plain text. Security researchers have compared Recall to spyware or stalkerware, and Hagenah believes TotalRecall is a Trojan 2.0 built in to show what is possible and encourage Microsoft to make changes before Recall fully launches. The tool can set a date range for extracting data, and it can generate a summary about the data and search for specific terms in the database.

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3. New AI technology can help decode dog barks

Researchers from the University of Michigan are using AI to decode different types of dog barks, which could help us understand our canine friends better. The researchers used existing AI models designed to analyze human speech patterns, such as language translation and voice-to-text, to analyze the tones of different dog sounds. They used vocalizations from 74 dogs of various breeds, sex, and ages to train the AI to analyze the tones of different dog sounds.

The AI was able to accurately determine the breed, sex, and age of different dogs by listening to the vocalizations and could also determine the contexts behind the barks, such as whether the sound was playful or aggressive. The researchers hope that further tech advances can help animal behaviorists, researchers, and pet parents learn how to interpret and respond to the emotional needs of the dogs in their lives.

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4. Amazon's robotaxi unit Zoox to begin testing in Austin, Miami

Amazon's robotaxi unit, Zoox, plans to start testing its autonomous vehicles in Austin, Texas, and Miami, marking its first trial sites outside the western United States. The company will deploy its test fleet of retrofitted Toyota Highlanders with human safety drivers in small areas near the business and entertainment districts of the two cities.

Zoox's autonomous vehicles are built without steering wheels and pedals and have room for four passengers. The announcement comes amid an investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration into 500 Zoox vehicles equipped with automated driving systems after two crashes.

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5. Google looks to AI to help save the coral reefs

Google has developed an AI tool called SurfPerch, which uses thousands of hours of audio reef recordings to help marine biologists understand coral reef ecosystems and their health. The tool, created with Google Research and DeepMind, allows scientists to track reef activity at night and deep or murky waters. The project began by inviting the public to listen to reef sounds via the web, creating a "bioacoustic" data set focused on reef health.

By crowdsourcing this activity, Google was able to create a library of new fish sounds that were used to fine-tune SurfPerch. The tool has been used to uncover differences between protected and unprotected reefs, track restoration outcomes in Indonesia, and understand relationships with the fish community on the Great Barrier Reef.

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