Tech Roundup: Google Web Guide, OpenAI ChatGPT Agent & More

[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]

• Samsung agrees to acquire Seattle-based Xealth, which helps healthcare providers manage digital health tools and has raised over US $50 million, for an undisclosed sum.
• Google confirms its plans to merge ChromeOS with Android; launches AI-generated summaries of news articles in Discover, the main news feed inside the search app on iOS and Android.
• China approves Synopsys' acquisition of simulation software company Ansys, after the US lifted restrictions on chip design software sales to China.
• Microsoft begins testing a new adaptive energy saver mode feature in Windows 11 that will improve laptop battery life by automatically enabling or disabling energy saver mode based on the laptop workload.
• A new study undertaken by METR finds that using cutting-edge artificial intelligence tools slows down experienced software developers who are familiar with open-source codebases, demonstrating that productivity improvements don't apply to all software development scenarios.
• Grok's iOS app features two AI "Companions," or 3D animated avatars that interact with users via voice, including Ani, an anime character with an NSFW mode.
• Reddit says it has started verifying U.K. users' ages before letting them "view certain mature content," in order to comply with the country's Online Safety Act, as the country starts enforcing new online child safety laws, requiring websites that host porn, self-harm, suicide, and eating disorder content to verify users' age.
• Meta takes down around 10 million Facebook profiles so far this year that were found impersonating or repeatedly reusing content from large content producers; says it has taken action against 500,000 accounts that were engaged in "spammy behavior or fake engagement" and that it's testing a system that adds links on duplicate videos that point viewers to the original content.
• Global smartphone market grows 1% YoY in Q2 2025, despite economic uncertainty and weak demand in China; Samsung leads with 58 million shipments, up 7.9% YoY, followed by Apple at 46.4 million iPhones, up 1.5%.
• Google adds featured notebooks to NotebookLM from publications, including The Economist and The Atlantic, as well as professors, authors, and select works.
• The European Commission says France, Spain, Italy, Denmark and Greece will test an age verification method meant to protect kids online, adding it can be "integrated into a national app or remain a free-standing app."
• Anthropic enables Canva's MCP server to let Canva users create and edit designs in Claude, following Claude integrations with Figma, Notion, Stripe and Prisma; upgrades Claude for Education with the addition of integrations to three popular learning apps, Canvas, Panopto and Wiley.
• The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) announces OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and xAI have each won contracts with a $200M ceiling, aimed at enabling agentic AI national security workflows.
• Amazon launches Kiro, an IDE that aims to bridge the gap between rapidly vibe-coded prototypes and production-ready systems.
• Microsoft reveals that Personal and Family users of Windows 10 PCs will stop receiving new features for Microsoft 365 apps in August 2026, and users running the Enterprise versions will stop seeing new features in either October 2026 or January 2027.
• Google adds AI Mode and gaming features to Android's Circle to Search, and Gemini Live support for foldables and third-party apps, starting with Samsung devices.
• AI startup Cognition announces plans to buy vibe coding company Windsurf days after Google poached CEO and other senior employees in a US$ 2.4 billion licensing deal.
• Tesla's Model Y car debuts in India priced at a hefty US$ 70,000 as the EV maker "tests the waters."
• Neighborhood social app Nextdoor redesigns its platform with local news, real-time alerts, and an AI-powered feature called Faves” that's designed for discovering local businesses and spots.
• Mistral releases Voxtral, its first open source AI audio model family, and says its API transcription offerings are cheaper than models from OpenAI and Google.
• Meta acquires voice generator startup PlayAI for an undisclosed sum, as it continue to make big investments in AI; says Play AI's "work in creating natural voices, along with a platform for easy voice creation, is a great match for our work and road map, across AI Characters, Meta AI, Wearables and audio content creation."
• Microsoft begins testing a Windows 11 feature for sharing the entire desktop with Copilot Vision; requires first entering a special mode in the Copilot app.
• Dutch company WeTransfer ignites privacy fears after it updates its terms of service to let the company train AI models on users' uploaded files, including for "improving machine learning models that enhance content moderation"; backtracks and removes the controversial language, stating it doesn't "use machine learning or any form of AI to process content shared via WeTransfer" and that the "possibility of using AI to improve content moderation" and flag illegal content was "consideration for the future."
• Google doubles down on AI Mode in Search by adding Gemini 2.5 Pro model and the Deep Search capabilities to AI Pro and Google AI Ultra subscribers; rolls out an agentic AI-powered business-calling feature in the U.S. that uses AI to call local businesses on users' behalf to collect information about availability and pricing.
• Russian lawmakers passed sweeping new legislation allowing authorities to fine individuals simply for searching and accessing content labelled "extremist" via VPNs.
• The News/Media Alliance, a trade association behind major news publishers, says that it has "successfully secured" the takedown of 12ft.io, a website that helped users bypass paywalls online.
• OpenAI debuts ChatGPT Agent, which can control an entire computer and perform multi-step tasks, for paid users; uses a custom model and a virtual browser to do tasks such as filling online forms and calling public APIs, and generates downloadable PowerPoint and Excel files.
• Mistral adds new features to its Le Chat chatbot, including a new "deep research" mode, native multilingual reasoning and advanced image editing.
• A U.S. judge rules that three authors suing Anthropic can bring a class action on behalf of all U.S. writers whose books Anthropic allegedly pirated to train its AI.
• Spotify expands audiobook access to family plan members with two new plans, including Audiobooks+ that offers more listening hours, in the U.K. and 10 more countries.
• Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other senior executives settle a shareholder lawsuit that sought US$ 8 billion for the damage the executives caused the company by allowing repeated violations of Facebook users' privacy in relation to the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018.
• Roblox announces plans to use facial age estimation technology from Persona to verify the ages of users 13 and older who want to chat without having their conversations subject to filters in an effort to address child safety concerns; says teens aged between 13 and 17 can only add adult users (18+) they know in real life as Trusted Connections, using a QR code OR a Contact Importer tool.
• X says France has launched a criminal investigation over "the alleged manipulation of its algorithm" and "fraudulent" data extraction; X denies the allegations
• Microsoft's Recall faces resistance from app developers, with Brave and AdGuard joining Signal in blocking the controversial Windows AI tool and preventing the controversial screenshot-logging feature from capturing any information.
• Microsoft launches the 13.8-inch Surface Laptop 5G for business customers, featuring Intel Core Ultra series 2 processors.
• Chinese tech giant Alibaba debuts the Qwen3-Coder model for agentic coding, including a 480B-parameter MoE variant, and open sources Qwen Code, a CLI tool adapted from Gemini CLI.
• Amazon announces plans to acquire Bee, a startup that makes a US$ 49.99 AI-powered wearable that passively listens to conversations and generates personalised summaries and suggestions, to "bring truly personal, agentic AI to even more customers."
• Apple launches its online store in Saudi Arabia, allowing users to purchase its products through its website or its dedicated Apple Store app.
• Meta-owned Threads improves Threads Insights by "making it easier to see how posts perform and where your content was discovered."
• PayPal announces partnerships with global wallet companies to create a platform called PayPal World that is designed to make cross-border commerce easier; launch partners include PayPal, Venmo, India's NPCI International Payments Limited, which operates mobile payments framework UPI (Unified Payment Interface), China's Tenpay Global, which oversees WeChat payment ecosystem, and Mercado Pago.
• The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) proposes giving Apple and Google "strategic market status" for iOS and Android to "drive more competition on mobile platforms."
• Music streamer Spotify faces criticism after publishing AI-generated songs under the names of deceased musicians without approval from their labels. (The unauthorised tracks have since been removed.)
• Telegram pilots its own implementation of an age verification system that's likely to be used to grant users access to channels and groups that host 18+ materials.
• xAI reportedly recorded facial expressions of its own employees for AI training, and help its chatbot interpret human emotions and facial movements, causing some employees to raise concerns about how their likeness might be used.
• Google tests CapCut integration directly inside the Google Photos app for Android, allowing users to edit Memories in the ByteDance-owned video editing app.
• Privacy-focused productivity tools maker Proton releases an AI assistant, called Lumo, which it says prioritises protecting user data using zero-access encryption.
• OpenAI rolls out a new "personality" feature for ChatGPT that lets users choose between multiple personalities, such as Cynic (critical and sarcastic), Robot (efficient and blunt), Listener (thoughtful and supportive) and Sage (nerdy and enthusiastic).
• X tests using Community Notes to highlight posts that are liked by users with different perspectives.
• Google launches Web Guide, an AI-powered Search Labs experiment that organises Google Search results by grouping pages related to specific aspects of the query; tests a vibe-coding tool called Opal that lets users create mini web apps using text prompts or remix existing apps.
• Apple releases the first public betas of iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, watchOS 26 and tvOS 26 with its new Liquid Glass design language.
• Google plans to deprecate links generated with its goo.gl URL shortener on August 25, 2025. (It's worth noting that the company stopped generating goo.gl URLs in March 2019.)
• Google apologises for Assistant reliability issues on home devices and announces "major improvements" later this year; says it has a "long-term solution that provides better reliability and capability."
• Figma makes its prompt-to-app coding tool Figma Make available to all users, after initially launching it in beta for Full Seat users earlier in 2025.
• Meta-owned WhatsApp pilots a new feature that lets users set reminders for particular messages that they want to refer back to.
• Computer scientists with the University of Waterloo develop a way to remove watermarks embedded in AI-generated images using a software program called UnMarker.
• India bans 25 lesser-known streaming services for allegedly promoting "obscene" content, in one of the South Asian nation’s biggest digital crackdowns yet.
• Microsoft previews Copilot Appearance, a virtual character with real-time expressions, voice, and conversational memory, for some users in the U.S., U.K. and Canada.
• Meta says it will no longer accept political, election or social issue ads in the E.U. from October, like Google, with both citing incoming regulation on Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) that goes into effect in October 2025.