Stay up to date on the latest AI technology advancements and learn about the challenges and opportunities AI presents now and for the future.

According to a Thursday blog post, Google is beginning to roll out agentic capabilities to its AI Mode. For now, the only agentic capability available is restaurant reservations. Users will be able to ask AI mode to find them a reservation that matches their specific needs, including party size, date, time, location, and preferred food type.

Earlier this year, MIT Technology Review published a comprehensive series on AI and energy, at which time none of the major AI companies would reveal their per-prompt energy usage. Google’s new publication, at last, allows for a peek behind the curtain that researchers and analysts have long hoped for. Read the full story.

F or the climate concerned, the rise of the AI-reliant internet query is a cause for alarm. Many people have turned to ChatGPT and other services for simple questions. And even basic Google searches include an AI-derived result.

Google is ramping up the pressure on workers to use AI. Employees told BI how they feel about it.

For a while now, the tech industry has been shifting into the “agentic AI’ era. Simply put, it’s where an AI performs a multi-step task for you, like acting on a request such as “reserve a table for six at the nearest ramen shop with at least a 4-start rating on Wednesday.

Alphabet’s Google introduced on Wednesday a new lineup of Pixel smartphones and gadgets, intensifying its efforts to embed artificial intelligence across a wide ecosystem of products.

AI Mode can now display open slots at restaurants and guide you to the booking page. For other food and dining queries, it can curate responses based on your Search and Maps history.

But it's difficult to know for certain without access to the sorts of details that you'd only get by running a data center, such as how often the hardware is in use, and how often it's serving AI queries.