YouTube adds mobile phone controls for CTV
YouTube has introduced a new feature that allows viewers to use their smartphones as a companion controller when watching YouTube on a connected TV. The update makes it much easier to interact with videos, browse content and manage playback without relying on a traditional TV remote.
The new functionality is designed to improve the viewing experience as more users choose to watch YouTube on large-screen televisions.
Turn Your Phone into a YouTube TV Controller
With the latest update, users can connect their mobile device to YouTube running on a compatible smart TV or connected streaming device.
Once connected, the phone acts as a companion controller, allowing viewers to perform many actions that are often difficult using a standard remote control.
This creates a smoother experience without interrupting the video playing on the television.
Easier Access to Interactive Features
Using a smartphone makes it much simpler to interact with YouTube while watching content on TV.
Users can now:
- Read video descriptions.
- Like videos.
- Leave comments.
- Subscribe to channels.
- Browse recommended content.
- Search for new videos.
- Watch YouTube Shorts.
- Queue videos to play on the TV.
Typing comments and searching for videos becomes much faster using a phone keyboard compared to navigating with a remote.
Google rolls out new AI image and video tools
Pics offers advanced image generation, while the company’s latest Gemini-powered agentic feature provides analysis of video content.
Google has added new artificial intelligence-powered creation tools to its AI Pro subscription package with Pics, which provides advanced image generation, and agentic video understanding, which offers in-depth analysis of video content.
Google Pics is the latest advance in Google’s image generation tools. Powered by its Nano Banana image generation model, Pics provides next-level image generation capacity, including advanced editing and customization tools.
As shown in the video, Google Pics offers a range of advanced AI creation options, including language translation options and the capacity to add and edit elements within a generated image.
This could make it much easier to create promotional material for a range of purposes. It could also enable a higher level of customization to help avoid that sometimes tacky AI-generated look.
Meanwhile, Google’s agentic video understanding tool is able to process video inputs and provide information on what was presented and who presented it. It can also offer specific details on elements shown within the clip.
OpenAI Launches ChatGPT Ads in India; Start With Rs 725 Daily Budget
OpenAI on Thursday announced the launch of ChatGPT Ads in India, bringing its advertising programme to one of the company’s largest and most active markets. The ads will initially be available to logged-in adults using ChatGPT’s Free and Go tiers. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Education subscriptions will remain ad-free.
OpenAI will also open self-serve access to its ChatGPT Ads Manager in India on September 4. Businesses will be able to sign up and run campaigns with daily budgets starting at Rs 725.
WPP and Omnicom will be OpenAI’s first agency partners for ChatGPT Ads in India. More than 50 brands are expected to go live with advertisements on the platform in the country this week, the company said.
The agency partnerships will cover strategy, creative, measurement, brand safety and campaign execution. OpenAI said the model is non-exclusive and that it will continue to work with other agencies.
“India is one of the most dynamic markets in the world for how people use ChatGPT to learn, build, and discover. Our weekly active users have doubled year-on-year, with many of them going beyond simple searches and changing how they make decisions,” said Dave Dugan, Vice President and Head of Global Ads Solutions at OpenAI.
OpenAI rolls out ChatGPT Images 2.5 with Sketch, image comments and shareable prompts
OpenAI has rolled out ChatGPT Images 2.5, a new image generation model that brings improvements to image quality, editing, and generation speed.
The model offers more natural lighting and textures, improved preservation of subjects from reference photos, and more consistent editing across multiple turns. Image generation latency has been reduced by up to 50% compared with Images 2.0.
Alongside the model, ChatGPT is adding features including Sketch, which allows users to draw directly in ChatGPT and use the sketch as a reference for image generation. Templates for formats such as posters and merchandise are also being introduced.
Users can also add comments directly to images for targeted edits and share the prompts used to create images, allowing others to adapt them with their own photos and details.
Images 2.5 is available to ChatGPT, ChatGPT Work, and Codex users across desktop, mobile, and web.
Meta launches Muse AI personal agent
Meta has launched Muse, a personal AI agent built to go beyond answering questions and take action on users’ behalf. The company’s most significant consumer AI push yet, Muse is initially available to users aged 18 and above in the US through the web, dedicated iOS and Android apps and WhatsApp, with support for Meta’s AI glasses planned for a later rollout.
Rather than functioning as a conventional chatbot, Muse is designed to connect with everyday apps and services, including email, calendars, payments, shopping, health and fitness and smart-home tools. It can send emails, book travel, fill out forms and complete purchases through Link by Stripe. Powered by Meta’s proprietary Muse Spark model, the agent can also continue working in the background after users close the app. Users can personalise the experience by giving Muse a custom name and avatar.
Muse is free to use, with two paid tiers: Power at $20 a month and Maximum at $100 a month, both offering higher usage limits. Given the breadth of access required to perform these tasks, security and privacy are central to Meta’s positioning of the product. The company says Muse operates within a dedicated secure virtual environment and does not have access to users’ passwords or payment credentials.
Amazon Pay introduces Smart wallet for agentic UPI payments
Amazon Pay has introduced Smart wallet, a new offering that lets AI agents make UPI payments on behalf of users.
The company also rolled out biometric authentication via its Smart wallet to boost payment success rates, alongside offline tap-to-pay, which allows users to complete purchases without an internet connection.
While agentic UPI payments on Amazon Pay are currently live for flight ticket booking, the company aims to extend the capability to additional merchants and use cases over time.
Girish Krishnan, director of payments, rewards and merchant services at Amazon Pay India, said the company has partnered with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and online travel aggregator ixigo for the initiative.
“Today, AI agents have evolved quite a bit. They can look at different websites, compare product prices and recommend a purchase. An agent can also compare flight prices and tell the customer which option to buy. But, it can’t really buy the ticket for you. This is where I think agentic autonomous agents have yet to evolve. And this is precisely the problem we’re trying to solve,” Krishnan said at the Global Fintech Fest.
The core challenge: AI agents can compare prices and recommend products, but they cannot complete purchases because the payment ecosystem lacks an authorisation mechanism for non-human actors, according to Krishnan.
From BC Web Wise
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