The Made by Google event was earlier today. The Pixel phones all got some upgrades. The Pixel 10 gets a telephoto lens…that means all the phones in the series now have 3 cameras. 9to5google.com reports that the new lens is a 10.8 MB 5X telephoto with 20 times Super Res Zoom. There is also a new 48MP wide lens replacing the 50 MP one, which has ‘improved’ image stabilization. The ultra wide drops from 48 MP to 13, but records 10 bit HDR by default. The Pixel 10 runs on a Tensor G5 chip with 12 Gigs of RAM. The Wi-Fi drops back to 6E from 7, but the phones get Bluetooth 6 now. The 10 is available in Obsidian, Frost, Lemongrass, and Indigo starting at $799. The Pixel 10 Pro and Pro XL get some minor refinements. The 6.3 inch model gets a 4870 mAh battery and 15 Watt Qi2 charging. The 6.8 inch phone gets a whopping 5200 mAh battery and 25W Qi 2.2 charging. Both are supposed to run over 30 hours without a charge. The Pro starts at $999 and the Pro XL at $1199. The Pixel 10 Pro Fold gets an upgraded wide camera, and has 16 gigs of RAM…and you can get up to a terabyte of storage. The Fold starts at $1799.

We have heard rumors about the upcoming iPhone line getting a $50 price bump in September. Now, here’s a firm $50 price hike…this one to the Sony PlayStation 5. According to gizmodo.com, Sony posted that it was in  “a challenging economic environment,” which is common code for steering the ship around supply chain and manufacturing issues caused by Trump’s obsession with import taxes. The price raise kicks in tomorrow, August 21st. Rival Microsoft already boosted its digital Xbox Series X console prices up to $550 back in May…also in response to the Trump tariffs. 

Grok has published over 370,000 AI chats on its website to the public, without getting permission from the users first. 9to5mac.com notes that xAI, the Elon Musk company that makes Grok, also published photos, spreadsheets, and other uploaded documents. Grok has a share button which creates a unique URL, allowing users to share the conversation with someone else by sending them the link. However, those links were made available to search engines, meaning that anybody could be given access to chats rather than just those who were sent the link. Users were given no warning that the contents one their chats would be available to the public. 

Meta is at it again, with another revision of its so-called Superintellegence Labs. Techcrunch.com reports that this iteration will be helmed by Alexandr Wang, who joined Meta in June as Chief AI Officer. The main part of the AI organization is the TBD Labs, which will focus on Meta’s Llama large language model. As we have reported previously, Meta has dumped crazy money into attracting top AI talent in an effort to keep in the hunt with rivals Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic.

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.