Category: AI

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Infinidat gets in on the RAG act with workflow architecture offer

Infinidat has launched a retrieval augmented generation (RAG) workflow architecture, deliverable as a consultancy service to its storage customers, which allows them to build in up-to-date, private data from multiple company data sources to artificial intelligence (AI) from any NFS storage in their organisation.

The move reflects a trend that has seen multiple storage companies address AI workloads, and RAG issues – in particular in generative AI (GenAI) – that result when data used for training is incomplete, out of date or lacks the type of information that can only be gained from private data, such as within an organisation or from expert knowledge.

When an organisation wants to develop GenAI, it puts a dataset through a training process in which the AI learns how to recognise particular attributes that can be used for information, or for triggers in applications.

Those training processes are often built around datasets that are very general, can go out of date or perhaps initially lack specialised or private data. This is often the case with AI projects inside organisations that need to stay up to date over time, said Infinidat chief marketing officer Eric Herzog.

“A lot of organisations are using generative AI as an internal project with private data,” said Herzog. “And as well as wanting to protect their IP, they have concerns about accuracy, avoiding hallucinations, etc.

“For example, a large enterprise that generates vast amounts of data – in sales, support, operations – would want to boost the performance of what it is doing, and that’s very much tied to its storage performance.

“The customer wants to see accurate data in near real time. It can use AI to understand the details – it might be screws in a component, the type, the supplier, any number of details – and be able to update that information on a continual basis.”

What Infinidat now offers is professional services consulting to allow its customers to access data for RAG purposes from its own and other suppliers’ storage, as long as it is in NFS file storage format.

According to Herzog, that comprises help with configuring the storage system to get at data and metadata rapidly for RAG purposes. He said Infinidat is well-positioned to do this because of the importance it places on metadata and the “neural cache” within its architecture and the InfuzeOS environment.

Infinidat arrays can be all-flash or hybrid spinning disk and solid state, and are mostly targeted at high-end enterprise and service provider customers. Their hardware products feature triple-active controllers and use of a so-called neural cache that marshals data to the most appropriate media, with the bulk of I/O requests going via very fast DRAM, with a cache hit rate of more than 90% claimed.

Infinidat’s focus here on RAG capabilities sees it join other storage suppliers that have recently made a push for customers embarking on AI projects.

Pure Storage CEO Charlie Giancarlo was keen to highlight his company’s AI push at its Accelerate event in June, with storage write speed and availability emphasised. Meanwhile, NetApp launched a push towards data management for AI with the announcement of data classification for AI via its OnTap operating system at its annual Insight shindig in September.

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Adventures in AI at Tripadvisor

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19 November 2024

Adventures in AI at Tripadvisor

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In this week’s Computer Weekly, we find out how travel site Tripadvisor is embracing AI to offer new products and services to its users. Gartner says the chance of a successful digital project is like ‘flipping a coin’ – we went to its annual IT leadership symposium to ask why. And we examine what companies must do to comply with the EU’s new NIS2 cyber security rules. Read the issue now.

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Intel Battlemage GPU spotted in benchmark – chill out, PC gamers, there’s no need to panic over that leaked B580 core count

  • Intel’s Arc B580 GPU has been leaked via a Geekbench result
  • The score itself is meaningless, but it provides key spec details
  • B580’s core count could be lower than A580, but other specs might balance that out

Intel’s Battlemage graphics cards are supposedly set to launch in December if the rumors are right, and we’ve got another nugget suggesting that – a glimpse of the purported spec of the B580.

That Arc Battlemage B580 GPU is purportedly going to be the first of Intel’s 2nd-gen desktop graphics cards out of the door, and VideoCardz noticed that Tomasz Gawroński flagged up a Geekbench result on X.

The benchmark result itself is pretty meaningless – it’s a sample B580 (in theory, we should add – sprinkle seasoning liberally), and the OpenCL score is hardly a useful metric for a gaming graphics card anyway.

The key point here is the specs shown for the B580, which is apparently set to be loaded with 12GB of VRAM and a boost clock running up to 2.85GHz. We also learn that this GPU has 160 Compute Units (CUs).

As VideoCardz points out, this should mean the B580 has 20 Xe2 cores (with 8 CUs per core in theory).

It’s also worth noting that the video memory spec aligns with a previous leak about an ASRock B580 graphics card, which was also shown with 12GB. And at 2.8GHz, the previous clock speed was in the same area as this new leak too.

A pair of Intel Arc Alchemist chips in front of a dark purple background

(Image credit: Intel)

Analysis: Don’t panic over those specs

So how do these specs seem to be shaping up? There’s some consternation from some of those commenting online about the drop in core count compared to the existing Arc A580 GPU – as the A580 has 24 cores versus 20 here.

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However, there’s give and take in these specs. If the core count is dropped to 20 (and it may not be), those are still next-gen Xe2 cores benefiting from a new, faster architecture. On top of that, the boost clock is much faster than the A580 (which is officially clocked at 1.7GHz, although third-party models ran at 2GHz or so – but 2.8GHz is a big leap over that).

Furthermore, you’ve got a more comfortable loadout of VRAM here at 12GB versus 8GB (even though, if the rumors are right, memory bandwidth will be a touch tighter with the B580 versus the A580).

All of this remains speculation, and we should bear in mind two points here. Firstly, the B580 will be appreciably faster than the A580, whatever happens. Intel would look foolish if it was otherwise, obviously enough. And secondly, no matter where the spec comes out, Intel can still attack at the low-end of the GPU market by pricing the B580 to undercut AMD and Nvidia’s budget offerings.

With all these leaks springing up around Battlemage in the past week or two, it seems fairly certain that we will see the B580 unveiled next month – but clearly, we can’t be sure of that (and even if it’s Intel’s intention right now, a last-minute delaying factor could still interfere).

It makes sense that Intel will want to grab the desktop GPU limelight for a while before AMD and Nvidia bring out their big guns (or medium-sized artillery, perhaps, in the case of RDNA 4) at CES 2025 in January as the grapevine insists.

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Your Apple ID was not suspended

With over 2 billion Apple devices in use worldwide, it’s likely that hundreds of millions of people receive scary emails telling them they need to act fast as their Apple ID is in some sort of danger. Maybe the Apple ID was suspended, or perhaps you need to refresh your Apple Pay information because it’s supposedly not up to date.

These emails look similar to what Apple might send. They try to convince you to click a button to help you rectify the problem. That button will lead to a website that looks like Apple’s, but it’s not. 

Whatever you do, don’t click the link, and do not fill in your information. Why? Well, your Apple ID was not suspended, and your Apple Pay cards still work. It’s not Apple contacting you; it’s hackers trying to steal access to your Apple Account.

I get these emails occasionally, and you probably do as well. They’ll even send scary Apple ID emails to email accounts that aren’t actually associated with my Apple Account. They have no way of knowing that, and that’s the first red flag you’re dealing with phishing attacks.

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By the way, Apple ID is no longer called that. It’s an Apple Account, and that’s another hint that you’ve received a phishing email trying to get access to your login credentials.

How do hackers target you?

With so many data breaches occurring in the past years, hackers have obtained a treasure trove of information about hundreds of millions of people. All they need is a valid email address to start sending phishing attacks in bulk. 

That explains why you’ll receive “Apple ID suspended” emails from email accounts not associated with your Apple Account. 

The hackers hope a percentage of the unsuspecting victims will click the links in the emails where they’d fill in passwords and/or credit card numbers. 

What do the hackers want?

Any phishing attack is looking for access first and foremost. You’ll be told to click a link that looks like something you’d get from Apple. From there, you might be prompted to log into your Apple ID on a website that looks like Apple’s, but it’s fraudulent. Just look at the URL you’re being directed to. It’ll have a strange address rather than something simple associated with Apple.com or iCloud.com.

The attackers might even try to obtain two-factor authentication (2FA) codes from you once you fill in your login details to bypass Apple’s security protections. Never accept that, either. 

Once they obtain your login data and 2FA data, they might try to purchase products and gift cards or just snoop around. Maybe you hold passwords in your iCloud Notes, which would become accessible to them once they get in. 

Or they might be after Apple Pay data so that they can use credit cards to buy things online, which they’ll then sell on the black market.

Logging into my Apple ID on iCloud.com.Logging into my Apple ID on iCloud.com. Image source: Chris Smith, BGR

What you should do

First of all, do not panic. Rather than acting in a rush, just inspect the email carefully. Email services usually catch some of these, sending them directly to the spam folder. But others make it to your inbox. 

The first thing you should do is look at the sender’s email address and compare it to emails you receive regularly from Apple. If your Apple ID is associated with the same email account, you can easily compare them.

Hackers might spoof their emails to make them look like they’re coming from Apple. Just hover over the “From” field to see what it says without clicking. Do the same for links and buttons in the phishing email.  They might say, “Go to Apple ID” or “Update Account,” but these are not official. 

Next, look at the text in the email. It often includes inconsistencies. Hackers might try to make it look like the real thing, using Apple logos and similar colors. The email might also include your name if the hackers obtained it from the data breach your email address came from and purported case IDs.

However, the text will often contain grammar and punctuation mistakes. It’ll be easy to spot them. 

After all of that, just go about your day. Send that scary email to the spam folder, and forget about it. 

What if…

I know what you’re thinking: maybe the email is from Apple after all.

In that case, continue to do nothing the sender tells you to do. Instead, inspect your Apple ID on your iPhone, Mac, or iPad and ensure it’s working properly. Go outside and use Apple Pay to make sure you can make payments. 

You’ll notice that your Apple ID has not been suspended, and Apple Pay still works. 

The email you’ve just received will often contain a deadline to pressure you into action. You have 24 or 48 hours to save your account. Wait it out. The hackers might reach out again or not. Your Apple ID will continue to work properly.

You should also contact Apple directly and ask for guidance. Apple actually has a detailed support document that explains some of the scams associated with Apple products, including Apple Accounts.

Finally, if these emails are increasingly frequent, you should change your Apple ID email address to a freshly minted email address. Then, use that email address only for your Apple account and nothing else.

While we’re at it, change your Apple ID passwords from time to time. Use password managers to create unique, strong passwords for each online service you might use.

Mind you, some hackers might also call you pretending to be Apple support staff. They’re looking to extract the same information. Whatever you do, don’t provide it. Hang up, and call Apple yourself. If you’re lucky, some scammers will talk to a Grandma AI instead of you, which will keep them on the line so they can’t target real people.

Apple will never ask you to provide critical account information over the phone or email. Here’s what Apple says in the support document above: 

Apple will never ask you to log in to any website, or to tap Accept in the two-factor authentication dialog, or to provide your password, device passcode, or two-factor authentication code or to enter it into any website.

Rinse and repeat every time you receive a scary email telling you your Apple ID has been suspended. 

Mind you, the same scam can apply to all sorts of online accounts. But hackers will target Apple users first. Treat those emails with the same circumspection and do nothing to fix the problem they instruct you to fix.

After your first shock when receiving such an email, you’ll soon get used to recognizing phishing attacks that warn you that your internet account has just been suspended because you’ll continue to get these emails time and again.

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UK government seeks AI innovators to support clean energy transition and pursuit of net zero by 2050

The government is seeking support from artificial intelligence (AI)-focused academics and entrepreneurs to help build clean energy systems and help the UK hit its net zero by 2050 goal.

Interested parties are invited to apply for funding to develop technologies that could decarbonise the UK energy grid, improve the nation’s energy security and help the government achieve its wider aim of positioning the country as a clean energy superpower.

The funding is being made available through the launch of the second round of the Manchester Prize, an initiative launched in 2023 by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) to support AI-led innovation in the UK over the coming decade.

The first round of the Manchester Prize is due to conclude in April 2025, and is focused on the role AI can play in the areas of energy, the environment and infrastructure.

The second round of the competition will see the government offer up to £100,000 to 10 applicants, and one winner will be chosen from them who will secure a £1m prize to support the further development of their AI offering. The closing date for applications is 17 January 2025.

“Over the next eight weeks, applicants can come forward to demonstrate how their innovations will boost low-cost energy, reduce energy demand and make energy use more efficient across the country,” said the government in a statement.

“These could include new avenues for boosting the power generated by wind and solar farms, using AI to increase energy efficiency in our homes and businesses, and tapping into the technology to build up a better understanding of future spikes in energy demand.”

Expanding on this theme, Feryal Clark, UK government minister for AI, said the second round of the Manchester Prize looks set to have a transformative impact on the UK.

“AI can transform our public services, make us more productive and tackle some of the biggest shared challenges in society. AI is already having a positive impact on so many aspects of our lives, but there’s much more waiting to be tapped into,” said Clark.

“The second round of the Manchester Prize will bring brilliant British innovation to bear to deliver a clean, secure energy future for the UK. Whether in energy, healthcare, or beyond, we’re backing AI innovations to deliver real and lasting change across the country.”

Paul Monks, chief scientific adviser at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, said the climate crisis is “the greatest long-term challenge” society is up against, and initiatives like this will play an important role in helping address it.

“The greatest long-term challenge we face is the climate and nature crisis. That’s why we have our world-leading targets to decarbonise the electricity grid by 2030 and to reach net zero by 2050,” he said.

“We need an ambitious approach to using artificial intelligence across the development, engineering and operation of our energy systems, so I am pleased to see the Manchester Prize recognising that with its dedicated new round on decarbonisation.”

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AMD pushes GPU advantage with HPC top spot

The AMD-powered El Capitan supercomputer, housed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), is now ranked as the world’s fastest supercomputer.

Built by HPE, the supercomputer uses AMD Instinct MI300A accelerated processing units (APUs). It achieved a High-Performance Linpack (HPL) score of 1.742 exaflops based on the latest Top500 list. 

The LLNL is using the supercomputer for nuclear security. El Capitan is the first exascale-class machine for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and will be used to advance scientific discovery and national security, providing what AMD says is “the computational power necessary to ensure the safety, security and reliability of the nation’s nuclear deterrent without testing”.

It is being used for modelling and simulation capabilities to support NNSA’s Stockpile Stewardship Programme, which certifies the ageing nuclear stockpile and other critical nuclear security missions, such as non-proliferation and counter terrorism. 

“El Capitan is crucial to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s core mission and significantly bolsters our ability to perform large ensembles of high-fidelity 3D simulations that address the intricate scientific challenges facing the mission,” said Rob Neely, director of LLNL’s advanced simulation and computing programme.  

LLNL and the other NNSA at Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories are also using El Capitan and its companion system, Tuolumne, to drive artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning-assisted data analysis. El Capitan will apply AI to high energy density problems such as inertial confinement fusion research, while Tuolumne will be used for unclassified open science applications including climate modelling, biosecurity/drug discovery and earthquake modelling.

Bronis R de Supinski, LLNL’s chief technology officer for Livermore Computing, said: “With AI becoming increasingly prevalent in our field, El Capitan allows us to integrate AI with our traditional simulation and modelling workloads, opening new avenues for discovery across various scientific disciplines.”

AMD said its Instinct MI300X and MI325X accelerators provide AI performance and memory capabilities, while the AMD Instinct MI300A APU puts central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) cores and stacked memory together into a single package, enabling “new levels of efficiency and performance” for high-performance computing (HPC) and AI workloads.  

Its EPYC processors and Instinct accelerators are also being used to power many new supercomputing and AI projects and deployments, including Italian energy company Eni, whose HPC 6 supercomputer is powered by AMD EPYC processors and AMD Instinct GPUs. The University of Paderborn is also set to take delivery of a new supercomputer powered by the latest fifth-generation AMD Epyc technology.
   
Separately, IBM and AMD have announced a collaboration to deploy AMD Instinct MI300X accelerators as a service on IBM Cloud. The new service, available in the first half of 2025, will target performance and power efficiency for generative AI models. Through the collaboration, support for AMD Instinct MI300X accelerators is being made available within IBM’s Watsonx AI and data platform, as well as through the Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI inferencing platform. 

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Interview: Raymond Boyle, vice-president of data and analytics, Hyatt Hotels

Raymond Boyle, vice-president of data and analytics at Hyatt Hotels, is an experienced executive who helps his business make the most of its information. He is responsible for Hyatt’s data strategy, governance, engineering, science and analytics capabilities. His team’s data-led insights boost customer and colleague experiences.

“I took the opportunity because I love the role,” says Boyle, who joined Hyatt at the start of 2020, having previously been vice-president for data and analytics at Walmart Labs.

“I was very excited about Hyatt as a company and its culture. It gives me everything I enjoyed doing within the data role, including leading the strategic insights and the governance areas.”

At Hyatt, Boyle reports to Amy Weinberg, senior vice-president for loyalty, brand marketing and consumer insights. He has spent his five years at the firm laying the foundations for a business strategy that puts data at the heart of organisational and operational processes.

“I love working in the travel industry,” he says. “It’s a complex business. As a data leader, you get all the stuff you would ever want in terms of delivering a customer and colleague experience and creating effective digital engagement.”

Boyle’s current role is the latest stop on a 30-year professional journey during which he has used data and analytics to fuel innovation and growth. He recognises the role of data chief has changed significantly during his time in the profession. The impact of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), brings even greater challenges.

“It has been a fascinating area for many years,” he says. “The field of data and AI is changing extremely quickly, including the types of things that we take on, the way technology is implemented, the way people engage with it and the cultures we build around it.”

Building data products

Boyle says much of his day-to-day leadership role at Hyatt involves ensuring people around the business are fluent in data and can engage with information assets. He says the work revolves around “the productisation of data” and developing self-service environments that make things easier for employees and customers.

“We think of data as a product, including all aspects around managing information, designing strategies and creating solutions,” he says. “That work covers the data engineering worlds that care for different parts of the business, the platform organisations that manage our foundations, and the data science and machine learning functions.”

Boyle says Hyatt’s data strategy centres on advancing care through insight-driven decisions and automation. The focal point of this strategy is cultivating the best people and evolving the organisation’s data culture.

“We’re working through how people lead in the organisation and thinking about data fluency and the stewardship of information within the business,” he says. “We focus a lot on customer personalisation and trust. We want to build the ability for the organisation to be perfect with every guest during every step of their journey and continue to personalise how we engage with our customers in a high-security, high-trust framework.”

Boyle is excited about some of the achievements so far. His team ensures the business has the right data capabilities and performance indicators. At the same time, they make sure people across Hyatt have a common understanding of data-led performance.

“That’s taken a lot of great work to automate and simplify the business from an operational perspective, and then a lot more work to ensure we’re growing with intent – that as we do new mergers and acquisitions as an enterprise, that we can connect data and the products into that system smoothly,” he says.

Innovating at pace

A key underlying technology for this approach is the Snowflake AI Data Cloud for Travel and Hospitality, a unified data platform that helps companies exploit their information. Boyle says Hyatt uses Snowflake technology to consolidate enterprise data into a single location.

The switch to Snowflake took two years to complete and was finished by the second quarter of 2024. Boyle says the move to the AI Data Cloud was an important transition. An ever-increasing number of people at Hyatt wanted to use information. However, the company’s legacy environment had capacity constraints.

“We needed to add a ton of compute to the system, and we had some hard decisions to make as we went through that work,” he says. “We had a massive growth in the amount of data people wanted to consume within the business.”

Raymond Boyle headshot

“We think of data as a product, including all aspects around managing information, designing strategies and creating solutions”

Raymond Boyle, Hyatt Hotels

Boyle’s data team approached the Snowflake implementation carefully and pushed components live incrementally. The switch to Snowflake involved some hard graft. Pipelines were refactored, and the security infrastructure was redesigned. He recognises the migration process was a significant technological and cultural challenge.

“You can’t stop running the business while you execute the migration,” he says. “We had to manage the delivery of many new products and capabilities during the migration. There were times when we had to manage duplicate pipelines. A lot of folks had to be engaged in the migration process.”

The data team decommissioned Hyatt’s legacy environments in August. Snowflake is now the company’s scalable data platform. He says the technology allows people across the business to access data for their projects. The AI Data Cloud also cuts the time his team spends on information management.

“Snowflake allows us to innovate faster and drive those outcomes cleanly over time,” he says. “We’re launching more services, so we have more data applications coming into the system fairly quickly, and we’re also benefiting from Snowflake’s work to ensure that other software organisations are building natively on the platform.”

Supporting business growth

Boyle leads a 100-strong data team at Hyatt, including full-time staff and contractors. He says insight and analytics are at the core of the company’s decision-making processes.

“Data is at the heart of how the company functions,” he says. “Our CEO is engaged in data and has led the strategic work around how we think about AI. Data is now a big part of every domain and a core element of how people plan, build and execute.”

Boyle says one of the company’s data priorities right now is personalisation. “We’re focused on following the customer journey and making sure that AI and data drive the properties that we recommend and the search experience and the content people see,” he says. “We want to ensure our customers have a deeper relationship with Hyatt.”

In addition to its work on personalisation, Boyle says the company is rolling out modern pricing-optimisation capabilities globally. His team is also exploring the potential for generative AI capabilities within analytics. He says there’s no straightforward answer as to whether it’s better to build or buy AI technologies and models.

“It’s likely to be a mix, and the result will depend on what we’re trying to achieve at any given time,” he says. “We’ll look at the outcomes, the initiatives, the strategic investments that the company wants to make, and we’ll make decisions based on the speed and the impact that we want to have, and the architectural standards that we want to see within the organisation.”

Boyle says the data organisation he’d like to lead two years from now will use digital innovation to boost customer experiences and business operations. From self-service behind the scenes to fresh services at the front end, he wants Hyatt to continue transforming with data.

“I want our guests to experience Hyatt in a personalised manner and for us to take full advantage of the relationship we have with our customers. I want to push innovations that ensure our relationship with guests is deeper, more meaningful and more trusted across all the different interaction points we have with them,” he says.

“I’d also want our operations to be more efficient and automated. I want to help our organisation grow with intent. I want to ensure that the types of development we want to do as a business, and the growth the organisation wants to see globally, are better, faster and more efficient due to the data we provide.”

Defining the data chief’s role

Boyle has built his career leading data initiatives at major organisations. He understands successful data chiefs will play a key role in helping businesses to thrive in the digital age. However, they shouldn’t fulfil this role in isolation. Boyle says successful data stewardship is a team game that starts at the top of the enterprise.

“The CEO or the executive team should dictate the direction of travel for AI within the organisation,” he says. “When I think about the operating model, it’s about making sure we have clarity around our purpose and the areas the executives believe are the most important things to invest in. The business leaders for the domains must be aligned to that strategy and work to drive value creation in their functions.”

Boyle says the role of digital leaders, whether CDOs, CTOs or CIOs, is to ensure the hardware and software stack helps business leaders achieve their transformational objectives. Internal and external partners must ensure data is published and consumed effectively and safely.

“The tech stack is critical to your success,” he says. “Enterprise architecture plays a huge role, as does cyber security and the privacy and data governance specialists. If you get those things right, you’ll build out your AI services and the back-end data infrastructure to drive your business outcomes. You’ll be able to scale your initiatives at a faster pace.”

Boyle’s best-practice advice for other data leaders is to think of digital change as a team game. “You need to have fluent, transformational thinkers at all levels. You must have technology partners who are a big part of what you’re trying to do and creating high-quality data tooling,” he says.

“You need to get your product management, engineering, architecture, machine learning and science community functioning together, knowing their roles and delivering joined-up processes quickly and cleanly.”

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We may now know when Apple Intelligence will get Google Gemini integration

iOS 18.2 will finally bring OpenAI’s wildly popular ChatGPT to Siri thanks to integration with Apple Intelligence. This partnership will make Apple’s AI platform even more clever by upgrading Writing Tools and beefing up Siri with ChatGPT’s most recent large language models.

While deeper integration isn’t expected until iOS 18.4, when Siri will be able to control people’s iPhones, there’s a lot of anticipation about this partnership between Apple and OpenAI. Here’s how Apple explains it:

With ChatGPT from OpenAI integrated into Siri and Writing Tools, you get even more expertise when it might be helpful for you — no need to jump between tools. Siri can tap into ChatGPT for certain requests, including questions about photos or documents. And with Compose in Writing Tools, you can create and illustrate original content from scratch.

You control when ChatGPT is used and will be asked before any of your information is shared. Anyone can access ChatGPT for free, without creating an account. ChatGPT subscribers can connect accounts to access paid features within these experiences.

iOS 18.2 ChatGPT integration with Apple IntelligenceiOS 18.2 ChatGPT integration with Apple Intelligence Image source: José Adorno for BGR

However, this isn’t the only LLM that will be available with its AI platform. Back in June, during the WWDC 2024 keynote, Apple announced that Apple Intelligence would work with third-party LLMs. While this partnership starts with ChatGPT, more companies will be able to join the party later.

So far, Bloomberg has reported that Antropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini were working on this integration. Apple’s Craig Federighi already stated that he would love to have Gemini integration with Apple Intelligence.

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Now in his latest Power On newsletter, Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman gave a tidbit on when to expect Google Gemini integration in Apple Intelligence. With an official app recently released for iPhone users, Gurman expects Google Gemini to be available with Apple Intelligence sometime next year. That’s obviously bad news if you’re eagerly awaiting the ability to use Gemini in place of ChatGPT within Apple Intelligence, though we’re not sure how many people out there fall into that category.

The supposed delay is probably due to Apple’s deal with OpenAI. Since Cupertino doesn’t pay OpenAI for this integration, the reporter thinks Apple gave it a “nice window of exclusivity,” which is why “I wouldn’t expect the Gemini chatbot to arrive in iOS until next year.”

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Samsung is developing Gemini AI-powered XR glasses, and we might’ve already seen them

Remember when Samsung invited Google and Qualcomm to announce the “next XR experience“? I know I do because it happened in early February 2023, during the Galaxy S23 event. At the time, the web was filled with rumors about Apple’s mixed reality device, which would launch as the Vision Pro. Apple’s spatial computer dropped a few months after that teaser from Samsung, Google, and Qualcomm. It was immediately clear that the Vision Pro was so sophisticated that Samsung couldn’t possibly launch a rival anytime soon. 

Nearly two years later, that Samsung XR headset still doesn’t exist. But Samsung has been teasing it again recently, saying the device should be unveiled at some point next year.

While Samsung never detailed the specs and features of the XR device, a new leak may give us an idea of what Samsung is working on. Unsurprisingly, Samsung isn’t building a Vision Pro rival. Instead, it’s doing something that might be more useful to most people. The first Samsung XR device will apparently be a pair of glasses with Gemini AI at the core. And it turns out that we might have seen it already during Google’s Project Astra demo at I/O 2024.

Samsung had this to say about the unnamed XR headset a few weeks ago during its most recent quarterly earnings report:

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We plan to contribute to the expansion of the Samsung Health ecosystem through the Galaxy Ring launched this year and to strengthen the connectivity experience between our products, such as the XR (eXtended Reality) device scheduled to be launched in the future.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Samsung brought the XR headset to the Galaxy S25 Unpacked launch event that’s supposed to happen in mid-January. Samsung could then keep teasing the XR glasses before giving them a summer 2025 launch. That’s what Samsung did with the Galaxy Ring last year.

A report from the Korean site Maeil Business Newspaper said a few days ago that Samsung will release smart glasses with built-in AI in the third quarter of 2025. Google and Qualcomm are named as Samsung’s partners. That means this is the “next XR experience” that Samsung teased nearly two years ago.

Meta Rayban SunglassesRay-Ban Meta smart glasses. Image source: Jonathan S. Geller

Samsung will manufacture some 500,000 units, according to a report from Chinese research company Wellsen XR.

In terms of specs, the Samsung XR headset will rely on Qualcomm’s AR1 chip as the main CPU and an auxiliary NXP chip. The headset will feature a 12-megapixel camera sporting a Sony IMX681 CMOS image sensor. The wearable will feature a 155 mAh battery and weigh 50 grams.

Gemini will be preinstalled, which is hardly a surprise. If Google is involved, that’s what Google can bring to the table. We’ve already seen Meta make great use of smart glasses for Meta AI features. Apple is also looking into creating smart glasses of its own.

The Samsung product will also support mobile payments via a QR code scanning feature. It’ll also recognize hand gestures.

As 9to5Google points out, the Samsung XR glasses feature an almost identical battery to the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, and they are almost similar in weight. This suggests that the Samsung XR device can’t possibly incorporate a screen. The reports from Asia make no mention of one.

All this suggests Samsung’s “next XR experience” device is more of a Ray-Ban Meta clone than a Vision Pro rival. That’s enough to give you an idea of what the glasses would look like. But I’ll also remind you of Google’s impressive Project Astra demo from I/O 2024.

OpenAI hosted an unexpected ChatGPT event in early May to introduce GPT-4o and Advanced Voice Mode. OpenAI’s demos showed the chatbot’s ability to handle multimodal inputs, including a new conversational voice mode that sounded like a real conversation between people.

Google used the smart glasses on the right to demo Project Astra (Gemini Live) at I/O 2024.Google used the smart glasses on the right to demo Project Astra (Gemini Live) at I/O 2024. Image source: Google

OpenAI stole Google’s thunder by a few days. Google’s Project Astra showed the same AI abilities for Gemini that OpenAI had just demoed for ChatGPT. Google used two devices to demo Project Astra: an unnamed Pixel device and an unnamed XR headset. The person talking to Gemini switched between them halfway through the demo.

The glasses are visible above, by the red apple. The clip at the end of this post will give you an even better look.

There’s no way to prove those are Samsung XR smart glasses. But I’d speculate that’s what it is. We’re looking at a prototype unit with Gemini preloaded.

Part of Project Astra became a reality rather quickly. That’s the Gemini Live conversational AI experience available on Pixel phones and other places. That’s all the more reason to indicate the smart glasses by the red apple are happening. Samsung is the likely partner in this endeavor.

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AMD’s Ryzen chips appear to be wiping the floor with Intel – but the best-selling CPUs right now might surprise you

  • Intel’s top-selling CPU is a lowly number 13 in Amazon rankings
  • Team Blue is doing better in the Newegg CPU chart, but still not well
  • This may reflect fallout from Intel’s recent fumbles with chip instability and the rocky Arrow Lake launch

AMD is totally cleaning up in the world of desktop processors, with Intel lagging way behind its rival now, at least going by Amazon’s rankings of the bestselling CPUs.

As you may be aware, Amazon keeps track of the bestsellers across its entire range of tech (and other) products, and the top processor list is currently dominated by AMD, with Team Red now holding the entire top 10.

In fact, the first Intel CPU you’ll see is the Intel Core i5-13600KF at number 13, so the top 12 processors are from AMD (at the time of writing, anyway). Granted, Intel does have numbers 14, 15, 17, and 18 as well, notably with older CPUs from the 13th-gen and 14th-gen ranges, with no Core Ultra 200S (Arrow Lake) chips to be seen in the top 20 – or indeed in the top 100.

Are those chips simply too fresh to the market, then? Well, AMD’s Ryzen 9800X3D is also very new on the scene and is ranked at the number four spot, in fact, it’s been so popular that at the time of writing it’s sold out of stock.

What are AMD’s top chips by sales, then? At number one we have the AMD Ryzen 5700X, the mainstay from two generations ago which is still selling strongly, followed by its more affordable sibling, the 5600X.

The AMD Ryzen 7800X3D is in third place, followed by the 9800X3D as mentioned, and then the Ryzen 7600X is in fifth. It makes sense to see the 7800X3D in a strong position; it’s now the cheaper alternative to the next-gen 9800X3D, while remaining a strong choice of CPU for serious PC gamers.

An AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D on top of its retail packaging

(Image credit: Future/John Loeffler)

Analysis: Processing advantage AMD

This represents a very clear picture of how AMD has pulled ahead in the CPU arena, albeit it is just one retailer – though a huge retail player, of course.

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If you look at Newegg, which also keeps a regularly updated CPU ranking, this isn’t quite as heavily weighted towards AMD, but Team Red is clearly winning. In this case, Intel does have chips at numbers five through to eight, and 14, plus 20, but the rest of the top 20 is entirely AMD (again, that’s correct at the time of writing, though the processors may have shuffled around a bit by the time you’re reading this).

It’s much the same story as Amazon with the bestselling Ryzen chips, though the top seller is actually the Ryzen 9800X3D in this case (even though it has sold out – stock is still a big issue for would-be buyers), followed by the Ryzen 7600X (with a nice discount as you might guess). For Intel, the 14700K and 14900K are the top offerings – you won’t find an Arrow Lake CPU until number 39, where the flagship 285K currently resides.

Are we particularly surprised at this development? Well, not really, although the grip AMD has on the market at Amazon is pretty eye-opening. But given recent history in the world of CPUs, with Intel having a nightmarish time with its 14th-gen and 13th-gen silicon suffering serious instability problems, and Arrow Lake having a wobbly launch too, it’s pretty much a given that AMD is going to capitalize on these missteps.

Even if Ryzen 9000 also received a rather lukewarm reception, albeit the Ryzen 9800X3D has turned that around as a gaming powerhouse chip – the problem with that new 3D V-Cache CPU is that it’s out of stock everywhere, as noted.

Via Tom’s Hardware

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