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Android 17 launches with new multitasking tools as Google expands Gemini features
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Google on Tuesday released the final version of its Android 17 operating system, as well as its counterpart for smartwatches, Wear OS 7. The latest release, which arrives first on its own Pixel devices, is also accompanied by a Pixel Drop, bringing new features that include support for the latest AI models, like the music generation model Lyria 3, the multimodal Gemini Omni, and speech-to-translation tools for the Pixel 10a with AudioLM. The latest feature release underscores Google’s strategy of using its Android and Pixel devices to showcase its latest AI technology. While its rival Apple is focused on catching up in AI with September’s public launch of AI upgrades to Siri and iOS 27, Google’s Android 17 is focused on its newest AI models, Gemini’s role in creation, communication, and other device experiences. In today’s Pixel Drop, Android Quick Share’s file-sharing feature will become compatible with Apple’s AirDrop on older Pixel 8a and 9a devices. Plus, Gemini Omni will now let you edit videos in a conversation, while Lyria 3 lets users create music tracks with text prompts and/or images in the Gemini app. Pixel 10a devices will also get better speech-to-speech translation tools with AudioLM. Image Credits:Google Other phone features are arriving, too, such as the ability to record a personalized outgoing audio message for callers when you can’t answer. Plus, the “Take a Message” feature will arrive in more global markets. The Pixel Drop brings emergency detection features to the Google Pixel Watch, as well, meaning that if the watch detects a car crash, fall, or lack of pulse, it will automatically contacts emergency services and your selected emergency contacts. Beyond AI, Android 17’s larger update allows users to take advantage of features like a “bubble bar,” which is a new user interface element that lets you organize, move, and then quickly access recent apps that appear as bubbles at the bottom of your screen. The feature is designed to help speed up app interactions and aid in multi-app workflows. Image Credits:Googles (Bubbles UI) Social media users may like Android 17’s new feature that lets them record themselves with the selfie camera and phone screen simultaneously for screen reaction videos that can be shared on platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and others. Image Credits:Google Parental controls and security features were also improved in this latest release, adding a “Mark as Lost” feature in Find Hub, Live Threat Detection, and other threat defenses, alongside screen time limits and content filtering tools that can now be set with a PIN without linking a Google account. A new foldable gaming mode offers a 50/50 layout with a dynamic gamepad. Image Credits:Google Meanwhile, watch owners can now receive live updates from phone apps that mirror to the Pixel Watch. Smartwatches will also work better with Google’s upcoming AI glasses and other hardware, such as headphones. This summer, Wear OS will introduce more Gemini Intelligence features, like tools for making personalized widgets just by describing them, and it will be able to offer “Personal Intelligence” by connecting your Google apps and chat history with Gemini. Image Credits:Google Battery life improvements — up to 10%, Google claims — as well as multi-step automation will also arrive in the new Wear OS. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Sarah has worked as a reporter for TechCrunch since August 2011. She joined the company after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to her work as a reporter, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software. You can contact or verify outreach from Sarah by emailing or via encrypted message at sarahperez.01 on Signal. View Bio
A group made up of dozens of cybersecurity experts, including several well-known veterans of the industry, published an open letter to the U.S. government asking it to lift the export control order on Anthropic’s Fable and Mythos models. According to the open letter, “this action has taken the best models away from [cybersecurity] defenders” who now can’t use the models to find vulnerabilities and make their software and products more secure. “To pull the best capabilities away from defenders without a good reason when our adversaries are rapidly advancing is dangerous,” read the letter. On Friday, the U.S. government ordered Anthropic to limit the export of Fable and Mythos citing national security concerns, without explaining the specific reasons behind the order, according to Anthropic. In response, the company suspended access to the models to all users worldwide. As of this writing, the letter is signed by 76 cybersecurity experts, including: former Facebook chief of security Alex Stamos; Casey Ellis, the founder bug bounty platform Bugcrowd; famed cryptographer and former Apple security design and architecture manager Jon Callas; computer scientist Paul Vixie; Dino Dai Zovi, the former head of applied security engineering at Block; Katie Mossouris, the founder of Luta Security; and Rachel Tobac, the CEO of the security awareness training firm SocialProof Security. When Mythos launched as a preview in April, Anthropic claimed it was so powerful at finding security vulnerabilities that the company needed to tightly restrict access to prevent malicious hackers or foreign adversaries from using it to cause havoc on the internet. In practice, that meant Anthropic gave around 50 companies initial access to Mythos, recently expanding that group to include around 150 organizations in 15 countries. Last week, Anthropic released Fable, a public version of Mythos that the company said had strict guardrails to block its use in the fields of biology, chemistry, and cybersecurity, as well as to stop others from distilling the model in order to recreate it. The guardrails on Fable were so strict that many cybersecurity experts found that it stopped essentially any prompts related to cybersecurity. Anthropic said that the White House export control order may have been based on a report that there was a method to bypass — or so-called jailbreaking — Fable to unlock its powerful Mythos-level capabilities. Contact Us Do you have more information about the Amazon paper that prompted the ban? We’d love to hear from you. From a non-work device and network, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email. According to Katie Moussouris, one of the signatories of the open letter, the method was demonstrated by Amazon researchers in a paper that is not public, but that she has reviewed. But Moussouris said in a blog post that the paper did not actually demonstrate a real jailbreak. Instead, she wrote, the researchers simply asked Fable to fix open source code with public and known vulnerabilities along with “deliberately planted vulnerabilities,” after the model initially refused to “review the code for security issues.” “The behavior described in the paper cannot meaningfully be fixed, and any attempt would only weaken the model for defense,” Moussouris wrote. “Defenders need to be able to ask AI to fix the bugs in a file, explain why the fix matters, and write tests that confirm the patch works. That is not a guardrail bypass. It is the most valuable thing an AI model can do for defensive security: executing the find, fix, and test loop defenders run every day.” Moussouris’ critique was echoed in the open letter, which also said that the group of experts believe the method in the Amazon paper “can be replicated” on OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, on Anthropic’s own publicly-available Claude Opus 4.8 and Sonnet, “and even Chinese models like Kimi 2.7.” The lett
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