Connect with us

Published

on

Google chief executive Sundar Pichai speaks during the tech titan’s annual I/O developers conference on May 14, 2024, in Mountain View, California. 

Glenn Chapman | Afp | Getty Images

Google will start using artificial intelligence to determine whether users are age appropriate for its products, the company said Wednesday.

Google announced the new technique for determining users’ ages as part of a blog focused on “New digital protections for kids, teens and parents.” The automation will be used across Google products, including YouTube, a spokesperson confirmed. Google has billions of users across its properties and users designated as under the age of 18 have restrictions to some Google services.

“This year we’ll begin testing a machine learning-based age estimation model in the U.S.,” wrote Jenn Fitzpatrick, SVP of Google’s “Core” Technology team, in the blog post. The Core unit is responsible for building the technical foundation behind the company’s flagship products and for protecting users’ online safety. 

“This model helps us estimate whether a user is over or under 18 so that we can apply protections to help provide more age-appropriate experiences,” Fitzpatrick wrote.

The latest AI move also comes as lawmakers pressure online platforms to create more provisions around child safety. The company said it will bring its AI-based age estimations to more countries over time. Meta rolled out similar features that uses AI to determine that someone may be lying about their age in September.

Google, and others within the tech industry, have been ramping their reliance on AI for various tasks and products. Using AI for age-related content represents the latest AI front for Google.

The new initiative by Google’s “Core” team comes despite the company reorganization that unit last year, laying off hundreds of employees and moving some roles to India and Mexico, CNBC reported at the time. 

WATCH: Google kills diversity hiring targets, reviewing other DEI programs

Google kills diversity hiring targets, reviewing other DEI programs

Continue Reading

Technology

Nvidia says its GPUs are a ‘generation ahead’ of Google’s AI chips

Published

on

By

Nvidia says its GPUs are a 'generation ahead' of Google's AI chips

Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang looks on as US President Donald Trump speaks at the US-Saudi Investment Forum at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC on November 19, 2025.

Brendan Smialowski | Afp | Getty Images

Nvidia on Tuesday said its tech remains a generation ahead of the industry, in response to Wall Street’s concerns that the company’s dominance of AI infrastructure could be threatened by Google’s AI chips.

“We’re delighted by Google’s success — they’ve made great advances in AI and we continue to supply to Google,” Nvidia said in a post on X. “NVIDIA is a generation ahead of the industry — it’s the only platform that runs every AI model and does it everywhere computing is done.”

The post came after Nvidia saw its shares fall 3% on Tuesday after a report that Meta, one of its key customers, could strike a deal with Google to use its tensor processing units for its data centers.

In its post, Nvidia said its chips are more flexible and powerful compared with so-called ASIC chips — such as Google’s TPUs — which are designed for a single company or function. Nvidia’s latest generation of chips are known as Blackwell.

“NVIDIA offers greater performance, versatility, and fungibility than ASICs,” Nvidia said in its post.

Nvidia has more than 90% of the market for artificial intelligence chips with its graphics processors, analysts say, but Google’s in-house chips have gotten increased attention in recent weeks as a viable alternative to the Blackwell chips, which are expensive but powerful.

Unlike Nvidia, Google doesn’t sell its TPU chips to other companies, but it uses them for internal tasks and allows companies to rent them through Google Cloud.

Earlier this month, Google released Gemini 3, a well-reviewed state-of-the-art AI model that was trained on the company’s TPUs, not Nvidia GPUs.

“We are experiencing accelerating demand for both our custom TPUs and Nvidia GPUs,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. “We are committed to supporting both, as we have for years.”

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang addressed rising TPU competition on an earnings call earlier this month, noting that Google was a customer for his company’s GPU chips and that Gemini can run on Nvidia’s technology.

He also mentioned that he was in touch with Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind.

Huang said that Hassabis texted him to say that the tech industry theory that using more chips and data will create more powerful AI models — often called “scaling laws” by AI developers — is “intact.” Nvidia says that scaling laws will lead to even more demand for the company’s chips and systems.

WATCH: Meta reportedly in talks to use Google’s AI chips

Meta reportedly in talks to use Google's AI chips

Continue Reading

Technology

What Dick’s Sporting Goods’ earnings report tells us about Nike’s turnaround

Published

on

By

What Dick's Sporting Goods' earnings report tells us about Nike's turnaround

Continue Reading

Technology

Musk’s xAI to close $15 billion funding round in December: sources

Published

on

By

Musk's xAI to close  billion funding round in December: sources

Elon Musk attends the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington, D.C., U.S., November 19, 2025.

Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI is expected to close a $15 billion round at a $230 billion pre-money valuation next month, sources familiar with the matter told CNBC’s David Faber.

The deadline for allocation is the end of day on Tuesday, with the round expected to close on Dec. 19, the sources said.

This confirms earlier CNBC reporting that the company was raising $15 billion. The Tesla CEO later called the report on the round “False” in a post on the social media platform X.

At the time, sources told CNBC that xAI would use a large portion of the money for funding graphics processing units responsible for powering large language models.

CNBC had previously reported in September that the startup was looking to raise $10 billion at a $200 billion valuation.

The funding round is yet another sign of the insatiable demand for AI tools. Companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, have raised billions and reached sky-high valuations as investors pour more money into companies building foundational AI models.

Sam Altman‘s OpenAI finalized a $6.6 billion-share sale at a $500 billion valuation last month, and Reuters recently reported that the ChatGPT maker was eying a $1 trillion initial public offering.

Anthropic closed a $13 billion funding round in September that roughly tripled its valuation from March.

Musk’s xAI is responsible for creating the Grok chatbot that has come under fire for disseminating hate speech, including antisemitic content. The company recently debuted Grokipedia, an AI-powered competitor to Wikipedia.

In March, Musk announced the merger of xAI with X in a deal valuing the social media platform at $33 billion.

Continue Reading

Trending