Allison Johnson / The Verge:
Hands-on with Gemini task automation on mobile: it's super impressive despite being very slow and failing at some tasks; it can order food, book Ubers, and more  —  It took nine minutes to order my dinner, but it still feels like the future. … I've been testing out Gemini's new task automation …

Greg Bensinger, reporting for Reuters:

The latest effort, known internally as “Transformer,” is being developed within its devices and services unit, according to four people familiar ​with the matter. The phone is seen as a potential mobile personalization device that can sync with home voice assistant Alexa and serve as a conduit to Amazon customers throughout the day, the people said. [...]

As envisioned, the new phone’s personalization features would make buying from Amazon.com, watching Prime Video, listening to Prime Music or ordering food from partners like Grubhub easier than ever, the people said. They asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal matters.

The problem with this pitch is that it’s not hard at all to buy from Amazon.com, watch Prime Video, listen to Prime Music, or order food from Grubhub using the phones we already have. All of those things are ridiculously easy. I mean, I get it. On an Amazon phone, your Amazon ID would be your primary ID for the system. So those Amazon services would all just work right out of the box. But you can’t get people to switch from the thing they’re used to (and, in the case of phones, especially iPhones, already enjoy) unless you’re pitching them on solving problems. No one has a problem buying stuff or using Amazon services on the phone they already own.

A key focus of the Transformer project has been integrating artificial intelligence capabilities into the device, the people said. That could eliminate the need for traditional app stores, which ​require downloading and registering for applications before they can be used.

This is just nonsense. No matter how good Amazon’s AI integration might be, it isn’t going to replace the apps people already use. If you use WhatsApp, you need the WhatsApp app. If you watching video on Netflix, you need the Netflix app. If you surf Instagram and TikTok, you need those apps. If Amazon tried shipping a phone without any of those apps — let alone without all of them — this new “Transformer” phone will be a bigger laughingstock than the Fire phone was a decade ago. And we’re all still laughing at the dumb Fire phone. Which means they can’t eliminate “traditional app stores”.

Shubham Agarwal / The Guardian:
How gig apps like Kled AI, Silencio, Neon Mobile, and Luel AI pay users for data that AI companies can use to train models, from phone calls to videos of places  —  Gig AI trainers worldwide are selling moments of their lives, including calls and texts, to AI companies for quick cash

Kevin Roose / New York Times:
A look at “tokenmaxxing”, a status game where employees at a number of companies compete on leaderboards to show how much AI they're using  —  An engineer at OpenAI processed 210 billion “tokens” — enough text to fill Wikipedia 33 times — through the company's artificial intelligence models …

Lux Optics co-founder Sebastiaan de With made headlines when he joined Apple in late January. The company was behind Halide, one of the most popular photography apps for the iPhone, which gained a cult following for its robust pro-level controls. Apple was apparently a big enough fan that it tried to acquire the developer last […]