Volodymyr Zelenskyy is pitching his country as a global leader in robots for war and defense. Will the world listen?

<blockquote cite="https://daringfireball.net/2026/04/piece_android_iphone_apps"><p>The real goldmine isn’t that Apple gets a cut of every App Store transaction. It’s that Apple’s platforms have the best apps, and users who are drawn to the best apps are thus drawn to the iPhone, Mac, and iPad. That edge is waning. Not because software on other platforms is getting better, but because third-party software on iPhone, Mac, and iPad is regressing to the mean, <em>to some extent</em>, because fewer developers feel motivated — artistically, financially, or both — to create well-crafted idiomatic native apps exclusively for Apple’s platforms.</p></blockquote> <p class="cite">&mdash; <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2026/04/piece_android_iphone_apps">John Gruber</a></p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/apple">apple</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/john-gruber">john-gruber</a></p>

<p><strong><a href="https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/gemini-models/gemini-3-1-flash-tts/">Gemini 3.1 Flash TTS</a></strong></p> Google released Gemini 3.1 Flash TTS today, a new text-to-speech model that can be directed using prompts.</p> <p>It's presented via the standard Gemini API using <code>gemini-3.1-flash-tts-preview</code> as the model ID, but can only output audio files.</p> <p>The <a href="https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/speech-generation#transcript-tags">prompting guide</a> is surprising, to say the least. Here's their example prompt to generate just a few short sentences of audio:</p> <pre><code># AUDIO PROFILE: Jaz R. ## "The Morning Hype" ## THE SCENE: The London Studio It is 10:00 PM in a glass-walled studio overlooking the moonlit London skyline, but inside, it is blindingly bright. The red "ON AIR" tally light is blazing. Jaz is standing up, not sitting, bouncing on the balls of their heels to the rhythm of a thumping backing track. Their hands fly across the faders on a massive mixing desk. It is a chaotic, caffeine-fueled cockpit designed to wake up an entire nation. ### DIRECTOR'S NOTES Style: * The "Vocal Smile": You must hear the grin in the audio. The soft palate is always raised to keep the tone bright, sunny, and explicitly inviting. * Dynamics: High projection without shouting. Punchy consonants and elongated vowels on excitement words (e.g., "Beauuutiful morning"). Pace: Speaks at an energetic pace, keeping up with the fast music. Speaks with A "bouncing" cadence. High-speed delivery with fluid transitions — no dead air, no gaps. Accent: Jaz is from Brixton, London ### SAMPLE CONTEXT Jaz is the industry standard for Top 40 radio, high-octane event promos, or any script that requires a charismatic Estuary accent and 11/10 infectious energy. #### TRANSCRIPT [excitedly] Yes, massive vibes in the studio! You are locked in and it is absolutely popping off in London right now. If you're stuck on the tube, or just sat there pretending to work... stop it. Seriously, I see you. [shouting] Turn this up! We've got the project roadmap landing in three, two... let's go! </code></pre> <p>Here's what I got using that example prompt:</p> <p><audio controls style="width: 100%"> <source src="https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/gemini-flash-tts-london.wav" type="audio/wav"> Your browser does not support the audio element. </audio></p> <p>Then I modified it to say "Jaz is from Newcastle" and "... requires a charismatic Newcastle accent" and got this result:</p> <p><audio controls style="width: 100%"> <source src="https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/gemini-flash-tts-newcastle.wav" type="audio/wav"> Your browser does not support the audio element. </audio></p> <p>Here's Exeter, Devon for good measure:</p> <p><audio controls style="width: 100%"> <source src="https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/gemini-flash-tts-devon.wav" type="audio/wav"> Your browser does not support the audio element. </audio></p> <p>I <a href="https://gemini.google.com/share/dd0fba5a83c4">had Gemini 3.1 Pro</a> vibe code <a href="https://tools.simonwillison.net/gemini-flash-tts">this UI for trying it out</a>:</p> <p><img alt="Screenshot of a &quot;Gemini 3.1 Flash TTS&quot; web application interface. At the top is an &quot;API Key&quot; field with a masked password. Below is a &quot;TTS Mode&quot; section with a dropdown set to &quot;Multi-Speaker (Conversation)&quot;. &quot;Speaker 1 Name&quot; is set to &quot;Joe&quot; with &quot;Speaker 1 Voice&quot; set to &quot;Puck (Upbeat)&quot;. &quot;Speaker 2 Name&quot; is set to &quot;Jane&quot; with &quot;Speaker 2 Voice&quot; set to &quot;Kore (Firm)&quot;. Under &quot;Script / Prompt&quot; is a tip reading &quot;Tip: Format your text as a script using the Exact Speaker Names defined above.&quot; The script text area contains &quot;TTS the following conversation between Joe and Jane:\n\nJoe: How's it going today Jane?\nJane: [yawn] Not too bad, how about you?&quot; A blue &quot;Generate Audio&quot; button is below. At the bottom is a &quot;Success!&quot; message with an audio player showing 00:00 / 00:06 and a &quot;Download WAV&quot; link." src="https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/gemini-flash-tts.jpg" /> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/google">google</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/text-to-speech">text-to-speech</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/tools">tools</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai">ai</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/prompt-engineering">prompt-engineering</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/generative-ai">generative-ai</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/llms">llms</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/gemini">gemini</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/llm-release">llm-release</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/vibe-coding">vibe-coding</a></p>

This is a big step in a new strategic direction for Adobe.

<p><strong>Tool:</strong> <a href="https://tools.simonwillison.net/gemini-flash-tts">Gemini 3.1 Flash TTS</a></p> <p>See <a href="https://simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/15/gemini-31-flash-tts/">my notes</a> on Google's new Gemini 3.1 Flash TTS text-to-speech model.</p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/gemini">gemini</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/google">google</a></p>

Learn how to get the most out of Claude Cowork The post How to Maximize Claude Cowork appeared first on Towards Data Science.

Enterprise cloud environments now have access to an undo feature for AI agents following the deployment of Commvault AI Protect. Autonomous software now roams across infrastructure, potentially deleting files, reading databases, spinning up server clusters, and even rewriting access policies. Commvault identified this governance issue and the data protection vendor has launched AI Protect, a […] The post Commvault launches a ‘Ctrl-Z’ for cloud AI workloads appeared first on AI News.

The latest deal is one of many compute arrangements that major AI developers have made with chipmakers in recent months to reduce reliance on Nvidia.

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Our newest audio model introduces granular audio tags that give you precise control to direct AI speech for expressive audio generation.

As part of Week of Agents, customers can now manage models, MCP and tools through Databricks...

Today, we are announcing major enhancements to AI Gateway. As part of this release,...

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<blockquote cite="https://aphyr.com/posts/419-the-future-of-everything-is-lies-i-guess-new-jobs"><p>I think we will see some people employed (though perhaps not explicitly) as <em>meat shields</em>: people who are accountable for ML systems under their supervision. The accountability may be purely internal, as when Meta hires human beings to review the decisions of automated moderation systems. It may be external, as when lawyers are penalized for submitting LLM lies to the court. It may involve formalized responsibility, like a Data Protection Officer. It may be convenient for a company to have third-party subcontractors, like Buscaglia, who can be thrown under the bus when the system as a whole misbehaves.</p></blockquote> <p class="cite">&mdash; <a href="https://aphyr.com/posts/419-the-future-of-everything-is-lies-i-guess-new-jobs">Kyle Kingsbury</a>, The Future of Everything is Lies, I Guess: New Jobs</p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai-ethics">ai-ethics</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/careers">careers</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai">ai</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/kyle-kingsbury">kyle-kingsbury</a></p>

Tim Fernholz / TechCrunch: AI cloud infrastructure company Parasail raised a $32M Series A led by Touring Capital and Kindred Ventures, bringing its total funding to $42M  —  “Give me tokens.  Just give me tokens.  I want them fast.  I want them cheap.  I want them now."  —  That's the mantra for developers building software …

Bloomberg: Filings: Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz donated $25M to pro-AI super PAC Leading the Future, bringing the group's total cash on hand to over $51M  —  Venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz poured $25 million into a pro-artificial intelligence super political action committee …

Madison Mills / Axios: Hilbert, whose AI software connects data across teams to help companies make decisions from a single system, raised a $28M Series A led by a16z  —  Hilbert, an AI startup rethinking how companies drive growth, raised a $28 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, the startup told Axios exclusively.

Quantum computers are coming and may impact systems in unexpected ways, and it will "take years to be fully quantum-safe, if ever," cryptography expert warns.

According to the State of Analytics Engineering 2026, the modern data stack is scaling fast, but unevenly. It is also growing faster than the trust and governance mechanisms designed to […] The post dbt Labs Report: 72% of Data Teams Use AI. 71% Fear Bad Data. Data Systems Can’t Keep Up appeared first on BigDATAwire.

Inside disaggregated LLM inference — the architecture shift behind 2-4x cost reduction that most ML teams haven't adopted yet. The post Prefill Is Compute-Bound. Decode Is Memory-Bound. Why Your GPU Shouldn’t Do Both. appeared first on Towards Data Science.