Google is using its latest Android rollout to make Gemini less of a chatbot and more of an operating layer across the phone, browser, car and laptop, just weeks before Apple is expected to show its own Gemini-powered Apple Intelligence reboot at WWDC.

Ahead of its Google I/O developer conference next week, the company previewed a number of Android updates, including AI-powered app automation, a smarter version of Chrome on Android, new tools for creators, a redesigned Android Auto experience, and a sweeping set of new security features.

Alphabet is counting on Gemini to help Google compete directly with OpenAI and Anthropic in the market for artificial intelligence models and services, while also serving as the AI backbone across its expansive portfolio of products, including Android. Meanwhile, Gemini is powering part of Apple’s new AI strategy, giving Google a role in the iPhone maker’s reset even as it races to prove its own version of personal AI on the phone is further along.

Sameer Samat, who oversees Google’s Android ecosystem, told CNBC that Google is rebuilding parts of Android around Gemini Intelligence to help users complete everyday tasks more easily.

“We’re transitioning from an operating system to an intelligence system,” he said.

As part of Tuesday’s announcements. Google said Gemini Intelligence will be able to move across apps, understand what’s on the screen and complete tasks that would normally require a user to jump between multiple services. That means Android is moving beyond the traditional assistant model, where users ask a question and get an answer, and acting more like an agent.

For instance, Google says Gemini can pull relevant information from Gmail, build shopping carts and book reservations. Samat gave the example of asking Gemini to look at the guest list for a barbecue, build a menu, add ingredients to an Instacart list and return for approval before checkout.

A big concern surrounding agentic AI involves software taking action on a user’s behalf without permissions. Samat said Gemini will come back to the user before completing a transaction, adding, “the human is always in the loop.”

Four months after announcing its Gemini deal with Google, Apple is under pressure to show a more capable version of Apple Intelligence, which has been a relative laggard on the market. Apple has long framed privacy, hardware integration and control of the user experience as its advantages.

Google’s Android push is designed to show it can bring AI deeper into the device experience while still giving users control over what Gemini can see, where it can act and when it needs confirmation.

The app automation features will roll out in waves, starting with the latest Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel phones this summer, before expanding across more Android devices, including watches, cars, glasses and laptops later this year.

The company is also redesigning Android Auto around Gemini, turning the car into another major surface for its assistant. Android Auto is in more than 250 million cars, and Google says the new release includes its biggest maps update in a decade and Gemini-powered help with tasks like ordering dinner while driving.

Alphabet’s AI strategy has been embraced by Wall Street, which has pushed the company’s stock price up more than 140% in the past year, compared to Apple’s roughly 40% gain. Investors now want to see how Gemini can become more central to the products people use every day.

CNBC

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, has filed a lawsuit against the state of Colorado over a new AI law set to take effect in June.

The suit seeks to block the state from enforcing the law, which would impose new requirements on AI systems to protect state residents from “algorithmic discrimination” in sectors such as education, employment, healthcare, housing and financial services.

Colorado was the first state to pass a comprehensive bill to regulate AI.

The company claims the law infringes on its first amendment free-speech protections and would force xAI to “promote the state’s ideological views on various matters, racial justice in particular”, according to the Financial Times, which first reported the lawsuit. “Its provisions prohibit developers of AI systems from producing speech that the state of Colorado dislikes.”

The lawsuit, filed in US district court in Colorado, comes as battles have raged at the state and federal level over how to regulate the fast-growing technology. States such as California and New York have been working to rein in AI with regulations, while the Trump administration has been trying to loosen the rules and place a moratorium on state laws.

xAI, which makes the chatbot Grok, has been plagued with accusations of discrimination. The chatbot has consistently spewed racist, sexist and antisemitic content, put forth conspiracies of “white genocide” and referred to itself as “MechaHitler”.

Katie Miller, a former spokesperson for xAI and the wife of Trump adviser Stephen Miller, heralded the lawsuit in a post on X on Thursday: “Colorado wants to force Grok to follow its views on equity and race, instead of being maximally truth-seeking. Grok answers to evidence, not woke leftist government regulations.”

Jared Polis, Colorado’s Democratic governor, signed the bill into law in 2024 but said it was “with reservations”. He has called on state legislators to amend it. The legislation was intended to go into effect in February, but was pushed until 30 June.

xAI, which merged with Musk’s rocket business SpaceX earlier this year, is seeking an injunction to block the enforcement of the Colorado law and a court declaration saying the legislation is unconstitutional.

The Colorado attorney general’s office declined to comment on the lawsuit and xAI did not return a request for comment.

The Guardian

A new challenger in the global artificial intelligence race has entered the ring.

The Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), an AI-focused research university established by the United Arab Emirates, announced on Tuesday the release of a new, low-cost reasoning model to rival OpenAI and DeepSeek.

It comes after DeepSeek, a Chinese AI lab, earlier this year shocked the world with the release of a reasoning model called R1 which it said could outperform OpenAI but with far less training costs.

At just 32 billion parameters, MBZUAI’s model, dubbed K2 Think, is much smaller than competing systems from OpenAI and DeepSeek. It was built on top of Alibaba’s open-source Qwen 2.5 model and is run and tested on hardware provided by AI chipmaker Cerebas.

For context, DeepSeek’s R1 has a total of 671 billion parameters, which is essentially another term for the variables that an AI language model learns to understand and generate language. OpenAI doesn’t disclose the parameter counts of its AI models.

K2 Think was developed in partnership with G42, the buzzy UAE-based AI firm backed by U.S. tech giant Microsoft. The researchers behind it say it delivers performance on par with the flagship reasoning models of OpenAI and DeepSeek — despite being a fraction of the size.

They cited the benchmarks AIME24, AIME25, HMMT25 and OMNI-Math-HARD, which relate to math, coding benchmark LiveCodeBenchv5 and science benchmark GPQA-Diamond.

How did they do it?

Hector Liu, director of MBZUAI’s Institute of Foundation Models, told CNBC the team behind K2 Think were able to achieve such high levels of performance by using a number of methods.

They include long chain-of-thought (CoT) supervised fine-tuning — a method of step-by-step reasoning — as well as so-called test-time scaling, which is a technique for improving performance by allocating extra computing resources during “inferencing” — or, applying learned knowledge to data it’s never seen before.

“What was special about our model is we treat it more like a system than just a model,” Liu told CNBC. “So, unlike a regular open-source model where we can just release the model, we actually deploy the model and see how we can improve the model over time.”

“If you ask me which one of the single steps is the most important, it’s very hard to say. It’s more like a system method work where all these methods combined delivered the final result,” he added.

Why does it matter?

There are two countries on the world stage that stand out as the forerunners in the AI race: the U.S. and China.

America’s tech giants and startups like OpenAI led the early momentum with so-called foundation models, which aim to fulfill a wide range of tasks by relying on vast amounts of training data. However, DeepSeek’s breakthrough with R1 earlier this year reinforced China’s position as a formidable AI player in its own right.

More recently, the UAE has sought to position itself as a global leader in AI in a bid to enhance its geopolitical influence and diversify its economy beyond crude oil dependency.

The region can point to its AI development firm G42 as an example of how it’s gaining ground in the space. However, it faces fierce competition from neighboring Saudi Arabia, which is looking to develop full-stack AI capabilities via Humain, a company launched under the Public Investment Fund in May.

Beyond that, there are also geopolitical complexities that shroud the UAE’s AI ambitions. Microsoft’s investment and partnership with G42 last year attracted a great deal of scrutiny in the U.S. related to the company’s relationship with China.

More broadly, the UAE’s AI industry still has a long way to go to reach the scale of its U.S. and Chinese counterparts. OpenAI and the Big Tech players have enjoyed a good head start with their respective foundation AI models, while Beijing has long considered AI a strategic priority.

Focus on scientific breakthroughs

While K2 Think demonstrates performance on par with OpenAI, the system’s developers say the aim is not to build a chatbot like ChatGPT. Richard Morton, managing director for MBZUAI’s Institute of Foundation Models, explains the model is intended to serve specific uses in fields like math and science.

“The fact is that the fundamental reasoning of the human brain is the cornerstone of all the thinking process,” Morton told CNBC.

“With this particular application, instead of taking 1,000, 2,000 human beings five years to think through a particular question, or go through a particular set of clinical trials or something like that, this vastly condenses that period.”

It could also expand the reach of advanced AI technologies in regions that don’t have access to the kind of capital and infrastructure U.S. firms possess.

“What we’re discovering is that you can do a lot more with less,” Morton said.

CNBC