The Download

Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Adobe Stock

TL;DR: Google’s reportedly cooking up a new kind of chip with Gemini’s skeleton baked right into the silicon, letting it run the model far more efficiently. The design could be game-changing for compute-strapped AI firms and the devices we use every day—but there’s still a lot we don’t know.

What happened: Let’s get the “Do you want to build an AI chip?” jokes out of the way… yes, the chip’s informal name is Frozen v2—and Google could deploy it as soon as 2028, according to the Information. (Though Google hasn’t yet confirmed the project exists.)

The killer feature: Frozen could be six to 10 times more efficient than Google’s latest line of custom AI chips—which could be a lifesaver for a company deep in a compute crunch.

The cold never bothered it anyway: While only part of Gemini will be permanently frozen into the chip, it’s still a sharp break from general-purpose processors that currently dominate the market, like Nvidia’s GPUs.

Current chips are built to run all sorts of models, which means they have to make more decisions. By hardwiring Gemini’s architecture (the underlying blueprint of how it processes information) into the chip, Frozen can skip those decisions and move less data around (making it a lot faster). The catch: These chips would be stuck with whatever version of Gemini’s architecture they’re built around—but Google could still push updates to the model itself (to a certain degree).

BYO silicon: Google’s been building inference chips for about a decade. Frozen’s just the latest example of the rush to build more efficient ones—which will make AI tasks cheaper to serve (and therefore cheaper for users). Chipmakers are already full steam ahead—and AI labs are starting to dip their toes into bespoke silicon. OpenAI unveiled its first custom chip with Broadcom in June, and Anthropic is working with Samsung, per an Information report earlier this month.

Pick a model and stick to it: If Frozen makes Gemini so much faster, it could eventually reshape how we use AI on our devices (like picking the built-in model versus switching between options). One thing Apple’s reportedly looking into is shrinking AI models so they can live directly on your iPhone—running faster and leaning less on memory.

Bottom line: There’s so much about Frozen and this style of chip design that’s still unproven—but Google is a big enough company that its experiment could shake up the tech industry if it proves feasible. —WK

      

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A simple trick to keep hackers away from your Gmail (and your life)

Scroll far enough back in your Gmail and you’ll likely find records of your entire life: mortgage docs, tax returns, medical results—even the receipt from a purchase you made in 2011. Hackers don’t even need to brute-force your bank password anymore. Now, they simply click “Forgot password?” and your inbox hands over access.

Here’s one of the simplest “set it and forget it” safety features: Google’s Advanced Protection Program. This changes your default sign-in method to a passkey or security key, which means a compromised password won’t open the floodgates to your life.

How to enroll: Go to the program’s website and click Get started in the top right-hand corner → Log in to your Google account. It will prompt you to set up a passkey (like a fingerprint or facial recognition), a recovery phone number, and a recovery email address. Do this carefully—if you lose your passkey, the recovery process is deliberately slow.

The program is free, and you can opt out at any time—so next time you’re digging up that receipt for a juicer, just know that it’s for your eyes only. —LC

If you have a tech tip or life hack you just can’t live without, fill out this form and you may see it featured in a future edition.

The Zeitbyte

You may now kiss the bookie

Morning Brew Inc.

Your friends request the pleasure of your company—and your wagers—at their wedding celebration. Prediction bets are no longer confined to sporting events, wars, or the president’s speeches. People are now folding them into their Big Day, handing guests a chance to bet on everything from the length of the first kiss to how many Taylor Swift songs the DJ spins, according to a New York Times report. Call it a marriage of two juggernauts: The wedding-industrial complex meets the prediction market leviathan.

The aim is to make weddings more “interactive” for attendees, in case celebrating the happy couple isn’t engaging enough. (Though not all of the bets run on actual prediction markets—at one featured wedding, predictions were tracked on a Google Doc, and the grand prize for nailing the most prop bets was a $20 Amazon gift card.) And, naturally, most matrimonial betting games skip the one question some guests actually have—whether the marriage will last. —WK

Chaos Brewing Meter: ☕☕☕☕/5

• Those AI talks between the US and China that didn’t happen in May are reportedly back on for September. And it could get awkward, given the latest escalation in the model distillation feud.
• A mathematician at Anthropic says he just disproved an 87-year-old math problem with help from Fable 5—one that multiple people have claimed to solve. One expert’s reaction? Not impressed.
• Apple’s latest macOS beta has a secret Siri AI feature. Here’s how to find it.
• A judge just approved Anthropic’s record $1.5 billion settlement over claims it illegally used authors’ books to train its AI, though not everyone considers it a win.
• Analysts say Nvidia is secretly buying up fiber-optic cables across the US, with enough capacity to theoretically carry several times the world’s entire internet traffic at once.
• If you were signed up for Amazon Prime without meaning to or struggled to cancel it, you have less than a week left to claim up to $51 from a $2.5 billion settlement.

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This time last week...

Readers’ most-clicked story was about the iOS 27 public beta release. You can download it for free to try out Siri AI before its launch in September (not all iPhones are eligible, though, so check if yours is compatible first).