Nothing Introduces AI-Powered News Reporter Widget for Phone (2a)

Nothing's New AI Widget Is Trying to Make Its CFO a News Star

The company has bafflingly turned to its head of finance to be the unlikely voice of its irreverent news app -- now available on all Nothing and CMF handsets, including the new Phone (2a) Plus. Nothing has a new smartphone -- the Phone (2a) Plus -- nearly identical to the Phone (2a) it released earlier this year, but with slightly beefed-up specs. It costs $399 and is available in the US through the same beta program. But it isn't the new Android handset we find most interesting, it's the company's new widget. The "News Reporter" widget, available by default on all Nothing and CMF smartphones plus other Android and iOS devices via the Nothing X app, lets you quickly play a news bulletin summarized by artificial intelligence. It is read out by the synthesized voice of Tim Holbrow, the company's chief financial officer. (Nothing is using ElevenLabs' tech for sound synthesis and output.) As soon as you tap the widget, you're greeted by a soothing British voice: "Welcome to Nothing News, where the only thing we take seriously is not taking anything seriously. I'm Tim, your CFO and reluctant news reader. Today, we're making something out of nothing, because that's literally our job." The widget will start cycling through a selection of news stories -- you can press and hold the widget and tap Edit to add or remove categories you're interested in, such as business, entertainment, tech, and sports. These news stories are pulled from "trusted English-language news sources" through News API, using Meta's Llama large language models for the summarization. You can swipe down the notification bar and press the next button on the media playback notification to skip a story, to which Holbrow will add a quip. "Not feeling that one? Let's find another." After I skipped quite a few in a row, AI Holbrow asked, "Do you even like news?" The summaries are one minute each (roughly), and you get eight stories per day. Every morning, the widget will refresh with a fresh batch. Unfortunately, and frustratingly, the widget doesn't give you much to go on if you want to read more. There's no attribution to where it pulled the news from, and no links are provided to read directly from the source. Every smartphone company has been touting some kind of generative AI feature in new devices this year. Samsung has Galaxy AI; Google has its Gemini chatbot and a bevy of AI features in Pixel phones; Motorola introduced Moto AI recently; and even OnePlus has been teasing a few AI features in its phones, like AI Eraser, which lets you remove unwanted objects from photos. Nothing introduced a ChatGPT integration in its earbuds earlier this year, and this widget is the latest generative AI feature to land.

Nothing Unveils (2a) Plus Phone, Turns CFO Into AI 'News Reporter'

Nothing launches a news aggregation feature that uses its CFO's voice to read you AI-generated news summaries. Nothing revealed its latest phone, the (2a) Plus, on Wednesday. It's also launching its own AI-powered news aggregation widget. The Nothing (2a) Plus runs on Nothing OS 2.6, which is based on Android 14. The phone will have a three 50 megapixel camera options, including its front camera, main camera, and ultra-wide camera. It can also shoot 4K video at 30 frames per second. The (2a) Plus comes with 20GB of RAM and promises speeds 10% faster than its Nothing Phone (2a), which launched back in March. While the (2a) costs $349, the (2a) Plus is marked at $399 and comes in two shades of gray. Nothing says its (2a) Plus can be quickly charged for an entire day of use in about 20 minutes. The new phone's battery can handle nearly 18 hours of straight scrolling on socials, which equates to about eight hours of mobile gaming or just under 42 hours of non-stop phone calls, according to the company. Like so many other tech firms, Nothing is also leaning into AI-powered features for its latest device. The (2a) Plus comes with an AI "portrait optimizer" that can detect faces and automatically increase the photo resolution in response. It's also announced its own AI-powered version of Apple News or Google News, called "News Reporter," which will be available on all Nothing and CMF phones via the Nothing Widgets feature. Those without Nothing devices can also access the feature via the Nothing X app on Apple's App Store or Google Play. News Reporter aggregates top news stories from journalists covering business, entertainment, sports, tech, and other categories. It summarizes the articles and converts them to audio, but will only offer 8 one-minute audio summaries per day. An AI version of Nothing's CFO Tim Holbrow is voicing these news summaries, which are powered by ElevenLabs tech, Wired reports. It's unclear, however, how accurate these AI news summaries will be, considering generative AI models' tendency to hallucinate or misinterpret information (as Elon Musk's Grok has repeatedly done with the news, for example). The Nothing Phone (2a) Plus will be first available in London in the UK on August 3. On August 7, it will be available for those in Nothing's US Beta Program. Wider availability for the device has not yet been announced.

Nothing debuts AI-powered 'News Reporter' widget, coming soon to all Nothing phones

Alongside today's debut of the Nothing Phone (2a) Plus, the company is also showing off one of its first AI software upgrades, with the "News Reporter" widget coming to all Nothing and CMF smartphones soon. Rolling out as an update to the "Nothing Widgets" app on the Play Store to all Nothing and CMF smartphones, "News Reporter" is an AI-powered news roundup that sits on your homescreen. A tap on the widget will start playing the summary of a news story in one of the categories you've selected such as entertainment, technology, science, and more. Behind the scenes, Nothing says an "AI system" compiles articles from English language publishers and converts those summaries into audio using the voice of Nothing's CFO, Tim Holbrow. Each story summary lasts one minute and the widget can play up to eight summaries per day. Notably, these can just be replayed later, as they're not automatically generated each time you use the widget. Nothing explains: The widget provides curated news from eight selectable genres, including: business, entertainment, general, health, science, sports and technology. The AI system then summarises news articles from English language news sources based on category and converts them to audio. Each story summary lasts 1 minute with a total of 8 stories per day. Every morning (local time relative), the widget will automatically refresh with a new bank of stories. To skip a story, simply head to the Quick Settings Panel or Media Player widget. News Reporter works instantly with no sign-up required. There's no sign-up needed to use the widget either, and the audio can be controlled through the Quick Settings after it starts playing. This new widget is available as a part of Nothing OS 2.6 and the aforementioned app update. That new version ships on the new Nothing Phone (2a) Plus which will be available to customers starting next week.