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- 🤯 Alexa+ now books, pays, and plans for you...
🤯 Alexa+ now books, pays, and plans for you...
Google One AI Pro drops over 50% in price
Saidul Islam
December 24, 2025
In partnership with
Welcome back to BrainBuzz
Today’s Recipes:
🤯 Alexa+ now books, pays, and plans for you...
🇮🇹 Italy orders Meta to freeze WhatsApp AI rules
🛡️ Grok set for US defense use
Samsung plans AI visuals for Calendar widget
Google One AI Pro drops over 50% in price
Deepfake AI fuels rise in online scams
AI Tutorial of the Day
And More….
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LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
Amazon’s Alexa+ will integrate Angi, Expedia, Square, and Yelp in 2026 to enable hotel booking, home-service quotes, and salon scheduling, expanding its app-platform model with early strong service engagement.
Details
New integrations: Alexa+ adds Angi, Expedia, Square, and Yelp, rolling out in 2026 to broaden real-world tasks through voice.
Travel via Expedia: Users can compare, book, and manage hotel stays with personalized preferences (e.g., pet‑friendly options).
Home services: Angi enables quotes and scheduling for home projects; early adopters show strong engagement in service categories.
Appointments and payments: Square supports booking salon appointments; Yelp powers local discovery and scheduling.
Existing partners: Alexa+ already works with Fodor, OpenTable, Suno, Ticketmaster, Thumbtack, and Uber.
Strategic shift: Positions Alexa as an app platform, requiring ease of use, breadth of services, and timely suggestions to change consumer habits.
Takeaway: Alexa+ is evolving into a voice-first app platform; success hinges on making tasks faster than web or mobile while covering enough services.
Italy’s antitrust watchdog ordered Meta to freeze WhatsApp business rules that exclude rival AI chatbots, citing potential abuse of dominance and EU coordination on the probe.
Details
Interim order: Italy’s AGCM directed Meta to suspend WhatsApp terms that bar general‑purpose AI chatbots from the platform while the investigation continues.
Competition concern: Regulators say Meta’s conduct may limit market access and technical development in AI chatbot services, harming consumers.
Meta’s stance: Meta argues WhatsApp’s API wasn’t designed for AI chatbots, but regulators see possible abuse of dominance requiring immediate measures.
EU involvement: The EU is already probing the policy for antitrust breaches; Italy is coordinating with EU officials on the case.
Broader context: Meta and other U.S. tech firms face multiple EU antitrust actions, with fines that can reach 10% of global revenue.
Timeline: No closure date is set; similar antitrust cases often take years to resolve.
Takeaway: Regulators are pushing back on platform gatekeeping: Meta must keep WhatsApp open to AI rivals while Europe tests antitrust limits.
The Pentagon intends to onboard xAI’s Grok into its AI service in early 2026, expanding model options for secure testing, analysis, and decision support across defense workflows.
Details
Planned onboarding: Grok is slated for early‑year inclusion in the Pentagon’s AI service to broaden available foundation models.
Use cases: Targeted for secure experimentation, data analysis, and decision support in classified and unclassified workflows.
Access model: Likely offered alongside other vendors in a multi‑model catalog so teams can choose fit‑for‑purpose tools.
Scope and limits: Pilot‑style integration first; performance, security, and compliance reviews will guide wider deployment.
Procurement path: No contract value disclosed; standard defense vetting and cybersecurity checks expected before scale‑up.
Strategic aim: Faster AI adoption while maintaining guardrails around sensitive data and mission reliability.
Takeaway: Defense AI is becoming model‑agnostic. If Grok meets security and performance bars, it could earn broader Pentagon use, but it’ll have to prove it fast.
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MORE AI & TECH UPDATES
Samsung has rolled out a new update to its Calendar app for Galaxy smartphones, introducing five notable upgrades designed to make scheduling more intuitive and visually engaging…
Google has announced a major New Year promotion for its AI Pro plan with 2TB storage, cutting the annual subscription price from $239.88 to $99.99—a discount of over 58%…
Artificial intelligence–generated deepfakes are rapidly becoming the primary tool for online scammers, with cybersecurity experts warning that by late 2026, most scams will rely on this technology…
OpenAI has acknowledged that AI-powered browsers like its Atlas browser may never be fully immune to prompt injection attacks, a form of manipulation where hidden instructions embedded in web pages, emails, or documents trick AI agents into executing unintended actions…
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THAT’S A WRAP
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