All articles tagged with #deepmind
Alphabet’s Dow debut rose about 4%, yet the stock remains under pressure as investors question the payoff from its AI capex amid compute shortages, cheaper Chinese models, and DeepMind talent exits; buybacks were paused, and the company has raised over $140 billion in debt and equity to fund AI spending, with reports it lacks enough compute capacity and is turning to rivals like SpaceX for infrastructure.
A24 explains its research partnership with Google’s DeepMind as a bid to have a seat at the table in Hollywood’s AI reckoning, granting A24 Labs access to DeepMind’s research and infrastructure while co-developing workflows and tools filmmakers may want. The deal does not give Google access to A24’s content or data, and there is no mandate for filmmakers to use the tools, reflecting a broader industry trend of studios collaborating with AI amid ongoing debates and fan backlash.
Google DeepMind has suffered a wave of high-profile departures (Noam Shazeer to OpenAI and John Jumper to Anthropic), fueling questions about whether the lab can stay at the AI forefront. With DeepMind’s Gemini models lagging on benchmarks and a slower release cadence compared with rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic, industry observers point to Alphabet’s size and risk-averse culture as possible hurdles. The exits come as Hassabis aims to reboot DeepMind’s path to leadership amid a rapidly evolving AI race across global labs and startups.
At Cannes Lions, Demis Hassabis says Google still attracts top AI researchers despite recent exits, citing the company’s large, diverse research bench and access to data, hardware and TPUs. He frames the talent market as ferociously competitive and argues Google’s diversified Gemini strategy will sustain its AI leadership, with departures not derailing the long-term trajectory.
A24 signed a roughly $75 million AI research partnership with Google DeepMind, giving it access to AI tools for production and distribution, including storyboarding; the move sparked backlash from fans who canceled AAA24 memberships and accused the indie studio of betraying its arthouse roots, while A24 says the tools will be used cautiously and not as generic AI generation.
Alphabet shares slid about 5% after Nobel Prize–winning DeepMind engineer John Jumper announced his departure from Google DeepMind to join Anthropic, a move that follows other leadership exits in Google’s AI division and underscores ongoing talent shifts as AI rivals intensify the competition.
A24 and Google’s DeepMind are forging a $75 million AI partnership to create AI-powered filmmaking tools and workflows, with DeepMind research/infrastructure access for A24 while Google won’t access the studio’s content library; the deal emphasizes creative control and signals a growing wave of AI collaborations in Hollywood.
John Jumper, Nobel Prize co-winner for AlphaFold with Demis Hassabis, is leaving Google DeepMind to join Anthropic in a move that underscores the ongoing talent shift toward AI startups. Jumper led AlphaFold, the protein-folding AI that now provides hundreds of millions of predicted structures and has accelerated biomedical research; Hassabis praised the lasting legacy of his work. Jumper says he’s taking time to recharge and has not yet disclosed his exact role at Anthropic amid a broader wave of top researchers moving to AI firms ahead of IPOs.
Noam Shazeer, a key Google DeepMind AI researcher who helped lead the Gemini project and previously co-founded Character.AI, is leaving Google to join OpenAI after a licensing deal involving his startup, underscoring ongoing competition and talent churn in leading AI labs.
DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis told Axios that AGI could arrive within the 2029–2030 window, framing the current era as a 'practice run' for a future of agentic AI and urging governments and industry to accelerate safety testing and governance as researchers pursue recursive self-improvement and more capable AI agents.
Google’s Magic Pointer, first shown with Googlebook, is rolling out to Chrome on desktop as Gemini in Chrome, letting you point at on-page elements and have AI infer context and act without lengthy prompts. DeepMind has published live AI Studio demos for image editing and map tasks to showcase the frictionless point-and-ask workflow, a stepping stone toward the OS-wide AI integration across desktop files and Android apps with Googlebook this fall.
London-based Google DeepMind employees have voted to form a union (with CWU and Unite) to represent staff and press Google to block or limit the use of its AI in military settings, including resisting deals with the US and Israeli militaries. The move follows Alphabet removing a pledge against weaponization from its ethics guidelines and comes amid broader concern about DoD use of AI. If recognized, the unions would push for more transparency and related protections (such as layoffs tied to automation) and, if Google does not engage, could pursue arbitration; the effort is part of a wider wave of labor action in frontier AI labs that could spur similar moves elsewhere.
UK-based DeepMind workers voted to unionize and seek recognition by the Communications Workers Union and Unite the Union, citing concerns over Google’s Pentagon AI deals and how the technology could be used—including potential involvement with the IDF—while urging independent ethics oversight and a right to refuse participation in morally objectionable projects.
UK workers at Google DeepMind have voted to recognize the Communication Workers Union and Unite the Union as joint representatives, citing concerns about Google’s Pentagon AI deal and the use of AI in military and surveillance contexts; they demand ethics oversight and the right to refuse projects on moral grounds and warn of protests if management resists. If recognized, about 1,000 UK employees could be represented.
Former Google engineer Steve Yegge publicly claimed Google’s internal AI adoption lags, alleging a two-tier system with DeepMind’s Claude usage while others rely on in-house tools; Demis Hassabis publicly dismissed the claim as false and clickbait, prompting further pushback from Google staff and fueling a heated debate over how broadly Google is actually using AI internally.