Technology

• Natural Language Search is now available in HomePods
• Enhanced Dialog is here for Apple TV and HomePods 2 only
• The software should install automatically

iPhones aren't the only Apple devices to get an important software update this week. Your HomePods just got a new feature that'll enable them to ignore and/or disappoint you in new and exciting ways.

There are two new features in the HomePods Software Version 18.2, which is available now for your HomePod, HomePod 2 and HomePod mini.

The first is exclusive to HomePod 2 and gives you the new Enhance Dialog feature, which does exactly what you'd expect from its name when you use your HomePods as Apple TV speakers. And the second is Siri integration with natural language search in Apple Music. And that's potentially much more fun.

What can you do with natural language search in Apple Music?

Natural language search is designed to make your music app more useful by responding to natural queries – so for example you might ask for "songs like Espresso", or "big hits from the 80s".

According to Apple, the feature enables you to use "any combination of categories like genre, mood, decade or activity". So you can ask for upbeat dance tracks, songs about cats, moany-faced emo for rotting in your bedroom, or anything else you fancy. We haven't tested that latter one so we can't confirm if it works.

It's a clever feature but, for me at least, it's a slightly annoying one, because Siri on my HomePods and HomePods mini is still really bad at paying attention and understanding what I'm saying: asking something simple like "play new music by X artist" often produces a sullen silence or music by a completely different artist.

I don't have a particularly strong accent and I'm not mumbling to Siri while using a power drill, vacuuming the living room and poking a baby in the ribs to make it cry, but I still often find myself repeating things increasingly loudly like Siri's an old-time grandmother with an ear trumpet. Hopefully your experiences with the new natural language search are more delightful.

The new software should install automatically, but if you've disabled auto-updates for whatever reason you can manually update individual HomePods and HomePods mini via the Home app on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

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• Many IT leaders have to just believe vendors on security claims, report claims
• However security remains a top priority for leaders
• Not being able to properly clean devices is leading to waste

New research from HP Wolf Security has revealed many IT decision makers (ITDMs) feel at the mercy of vendors, with 45% admitting they don’t have the means to validate firmware and hardware security claims, so must trust supplier’s claims without question.

The study looks into the attitudes of ITDMs in regards to firmware and hardware, and the implications for cybersecurity concerns. The research shows that platform security is increasingly concerning leaders, with 81% of ITDMs agreeing hardware security must be a priority going forward in order to protect devices from exploitation.

Over half of ITDMs (52%) say they rarely collaborate with security and IT professionals to verify the claims of suppliers, and 48% say their procurement teams are like ‘lambs to the slaughter’, as they must believe vendors' security claims.

An E-waste epidemic

Security was found to be a significant concern for all respondents, which is perhaps no surprise, since more businesses are being hit with security threats than ever, but data security worries are also spurring an ‘e-waste epidemic’, 60% of leaders admit.

Almost a third (68%) say they have a ‘significant number of devices’ which could be donated or repurposed if they could sanitize them, but 59% admit it is too hard to give devices a second life, as data security concerns prevent them from reuse, with many devices destroyed.

“IT teams are hoarding end-of-life devices because they lack the assurance that all sensitive company or personal data has been fully wiped - which in itself can pose data security risks and negatively impact ESG goals.” said Grant Hoffman, SVP Operations and Portfolio, HP Solutions.

“Finding a reputable IT asset disposition vendor that uses the latest industry-standard erasure or media-destruction processes and provides a data sanitization certificate so you can meet compliance requirements, is key.”

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Creating smarter and better-looking documents on Google Docs is set to get a whole lot easier thanks to a host of new upgrades heading to the service.

The word processor tool has introduced new implementations with Google Gemini which look to make creating stand-out work simpler than ever.

But the Google Workspace tool has also revealed a collection of 40 new high-quality, visually modern designs in Google Docs, giving users a selection of new options to make your documents really shine.

Google Docs and Gemini

(Image credit: Google Workspace)

The introduction of Gemini's "help me create" tool follows similar launches in Gmail, and will give Google Docs users the opportunity to craft an entire document with a single prompt.

The tool will then pull the necessary information from a user's Google Drive files, creating, "a long-form document with cover images, in-line images, stylized text, tables, content from your Drive files, and more", the company said in a blog post announcing the news.

Users can click to create at the top of a new document, or go to File > New > Help me create, to start describing the document they want to create. You can also choose from a number of pre-set start prompts to make things quicker, with examples such as creating a meeting template for a daily catch-up, a checklist for planning an event, or a roadmap for a product launch.

"Help me create" in Google Docs is available for Google Workspace customers with Gemini Business, Enterprise, Education, Education Premium, and Google One AI Premium add-ons, and only in English for the moment.

(Image credit: Google Workspace)

To make your documents look even better, Google Docs has also launched 40 new templates which include a number of useful new features to ensure your work stands out.

This includes document tabs to keep your documents organized, placeholder chips to make it easy for users and collaborators to add data, and building blocks, pre-set layouts and styles give your document a premium look and feel.

"Docs templates help users save time since they don’t have to build documents from scratch, create more uniform, high-quality, visually-appealing documents, and enable them to be more productive with the latest Docs features in their daily processes," the company noted in a blog post announcing the news.

The new templates are available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual Subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts.

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• OpenAI demo ChatGPT integration in Apple Intelligence for day five of 12 Days of OpenAI
• The ChatGPT service then goes down, but it's back up now
• ChatGPT is ready to play a central role in Apple tech

OpenAI's 12 Days of OpenAI day five involved a demo of ChatGPT working with Apple Intelligence. The demo invoked the holiday season by sharing gifts with Apple and wearing holiday sweaters on the live stream. The announcement twined with Apple's release of iOS 18.2 and served to remind everyone that ChatGPT and Apple Intelligence have several deep links. OpenAI's models are making Siri smarter while powering several of the new features introduced by Apple on the same day.

Unfortunately, while OpenAI was celebrating its Apple integration, the fifth day was a bit marred as the ChatGPT service had a sizable outage. This meant that if you've been trying to use ChatGPT, Sora, APIs, or even Dall-E, right after the OpenAI announcement then you were hit with a currently unavailable screen or encountered errors when trying to do anything. The service is back up and running now.

Complex questions

Apple pitches Apple Intelligence as a way of making its devices more creative and intuitive to use. That includes many apps and tools on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Most notably, ChatGPT integration with Siri changes the voice assistant in remarkable ways.

The AI helps answer complex questions for Siri to match its more natural, fluid conversations. Instead of getting short, robotic answers, you can ask detailed questions and get thoughtful, context-aware responses.

The demonstration by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, product team member Miqdad Jaffer, and engineering manager Dave Cummings showcased how Siri could use ChatGPT to review documents and answer questions about it, with the answers coming from Apple's assistant.

They also showed how you can send information right to ChatGPT to dive deeper and how Siri can now open different ChatGPT tools like Canvas and DALL-E. The presenters then had Siri review the most recent ChatGPT model card, asking the voice assistant about the model's coding abilities, and then had Siri send the response to the ChatGPT app to code a program visualizing those abilities.

(Image credit: Apple) OpenAI x Apple

For OpenAI, this collaboration is a reminder that ChatGPT is ready to play a central role in mainstream tech. Apple Intelligence is making ChatGPT part of the daily experience for Apple users. And in return, Apple also gets a better shot at keeping pace with competitors like Google Gemini and other rivals.

The festive sweaters worn by the presenters served an additional demonstration purpose, too. Using Apple Visual Intelligence, they had Siri process a photo of them in their sweaters, then had ChatGPT, via Apple Visual Intelligence, award one of them with the best sweater. Altman won.

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• Creature Commandos episode 3 contains the fledgling DCU's first big death
• The character's voice actor can't say if their demise is permanent or not
• DCU co-chief James Gunn previously said that characters can appear in animated and live-action projects

Well, that didn't take long. Creature Commandos, the first project released as part of the new-look DC Cinematic Universe (DCU), has already killed off one of its main characters, and I'm not sure if I'll emotionally recover from this devastating moment.

The animated Max show's third episode, which is titled 'Cheers to the Tin Man' and aired earlier today (December 11), proved that nobody will be safe in James Gunn and Peter Safran's cinematic franchise reset. Full spoilers for episode 3 immediately follow, so go and watch it before you continue.

RIP, G.I. Robot (Image credit: DC Studios/Max)

Pore out a glass of oil, because everyone's favorite Nazi-killing android, aka G.I. Robot, is seemingly no more. The character – one of two voiced by Sean Gunn, the brother of DC Studios' co-head – was eviscerated by Circe, Creature Commandos' apparent Big Bad who's also one of three big ties to Wonder Woman ahead of her eventual DCU debut.

Frankly, G.I. Robot's death shouldn't have come as such a huge shock. For one, episode 3's title is a clear reference to the decades-old automaton, who was originally built to murder German soldiers during World War II. One of the best Max shows' latest chapter also explores G.I. Robot's tragic backstory – after the global conflict, he becomes a relic that serves little to no function in modern day society – too. Okay, that's not necessarily an indication that he'll meet his end in episode 3. But, with G.I. Robot finally being allowed to "kill Nazis" (really, he's murdered the Sons of Themyscira who attack Pokolistan, but that's not important) by Rick Flag Sr, and knowing how James Gunn likes to rip out our hearts after finally allowing a character in one of his projects to experience any form of joy, G.I's death was always on the cards.

Is G.I. Robot really dead in Creature Commandos?

Is there any way for Nina to be reunited with her bestie? (Image credit: DC Studios/Max)

That's the big question on everyone's minds. Nobody stays dead for too long in comic books and, while characters have been permanently bumped off in live-action and/or animated franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and the DCU's predecessor, aka the DC Extended Universe (DCEU), G.I. Robot isn't human. In short: he could be repaired and be given a new lease of life in another DCU Chapter One film or TV show, or even before Creature Commandos ends.

There's previous form for this happening, too. In DC Comics, there have been no fewer than six versions of G.I. Robot – those being Joe, Mac, J.A.K.E 1, J.A.K.E 2, J.A.K.E 6 (don't ask where versions 3 to 5 are), and Lord Job. As Daft Punk famously observed, he can be made "harder, better, faster, stronger".

I really hope this isn't the last we've seen of G.I. Robot (Image credit: DC Studios/Max)

So, what are the chances of G.I. Robot making a miraculous recovery after his death at Circe's hands? Whether he's reborn or not, Sean Gunn is giving nothing away. Indeed, speaking exclusively to TechRadar ahead of Creature Commandos' launch, the former Guardians of the Galaxy star stayed tight-lipped on such a prospect.

"No, I am not", he told me with a smile when I asked if he was allowed to say whether G.I. would return. "I don't mind you asking. I always say [to journalists] that they can ask me anything they like, but I might not be able to answer everything, including that."

I guess we'll have to hang tight and hope that G.I. is alive and well in a few weeks' time, then! For now, get some clues about whether the R-rated series will go next in my spoiler-light Creature Commandos review, or read more exclusive coverage on the DCU TV show below.

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