Technologies

AI-Boosted Brave Browser Now Summarizes Search Engine Answers

Search engines are moving far beyond the early days of showing just a list of websites that might answer your questions.

Microsoft’s AI-boosted Bing and Google’s Bard have begun testing the latest type of AI technology, the large language models that packed such a big wow factor into OpenAI’s ChatGPT. But a much smaller player, Brave, on Thursday added some of those language-processing abilities directly into its web browser with a feature that summarizes search results.

The feature, called Summarizer, generates some abbreviated explanations for questions in some search results, combining that with footnoted links to its information sources. It’s also designed to offer richer snippets of text that you see in more ordinary search results.

It’s a new example of an overhaul that’s sweeping the search engine business. Google for years has been adding more direct answers to search queries, showing maps, business hours, song lyrics and product recommendations along with traditional links to others’ websites. The AI revolution is taking this utility to a new level, for example with Bing’s new AI-boosted search results and sometimes-fraught conversational abilities.

Large language models such as the one that powers ChatGPT are trained to recognize patterns from vast swaths of text from the internet. They can deliver impressive results, synthesizing coherent sentences and even writing essays about an immense variety of subjects. But LLM AIs don’t truly know anything and their authoritative tone can be misleading. Brave, which built its own LLM for Summarizer, offered cautions about its use.

«It’s crucial to remind users that one should not believe everything an AI system produces, in much the same way one should not believe everything that is published on the Web,» Brave said of Summarizer. «At the risk of stating the obvious, we should not suspend critical thinking for anything we consume, no matter how impressive the results of AI models can be.»

In my testing, it delivered useful results for some queries — for example, «What is pixel binning?» and «What do the numbers on tire sidewalls mean?» But it also struggled to coherently handle time elements for current-events questions like, «What happened with the Chinese spy balloon?» and «Will the EU approve Microsoft’s Activision acquisition?»

Brave offers a feedback button for comments on its Summarizer results, and the feature can be disabled in settings.

a screenshot showing Brave Summarizer's results for the search for "What do the numbers on tire sidewalls mean?" — Brave Summarizer tries to boil down website information in presentable terms, but it isn’t perfect.

Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET

Brave is an unusual example of an independent browser company that carved a niche for itself despite the dominance of Google’s Chrome and, to a lesser degree, Apple’s Safari. The company relies on Chromium, the Google-led software project that underpins Chrome, but has built its own search engine and ad system.

Brave got a foothold in the browser market by stripping ads and tracking technology out of websites by default, substituting its own privacy-first ad technology as an alternative. About 57 million people now use the browser each month, and the search engine that the company built into the browser now fields 22 million queries per day.

Summarizer is available now on desktop and mobile browsers.

Technologies

Ultrahuman Ring Pro Brings Better Battery Life, More Action and Analysis

The company’s new flagship smart ring stores more data, too. But that doesn’t really help Americans.

Sick of your smart ring’s battery not holding up? Ultrahuman’s new $479 Ring Pro smart ring, unveiled on Friday, offers up to 15 days of battery life on a single charge. The Ring Pro joins the company’s $349 Ring Air, which boosts health tracking, thanks to longer battery life, increased data storage, improved speed and accuracy and a new heart-rate sensing architecture. The ring works in conjunction with the latest Pro charging case.

Ultrahuman also launched its Jade AI, which can act as an agent based on analysis of current and historical health data. Jade can synthesize data from across the company’s products and is compatible with its Rings.

«With industry-leading hardware paired with Jade biointelligence AI, users can now take real-time actionable interventions towards their health than ever before,» said Mohit Kumar, CEO of Ultrahuman.

No US sales

That hardware isn’t available in the US, though, thanks to the ongoing ban on Ultrahuman’s Rings sales here, stemming from a patent dispute with its competitor, Oura Ring. It’s available for preorder now everywhere else and is slated to ship in March. Jade’s available globally.

Ultrahuman says the Ring Pro boosts battery life to about 15 days in Chill mode — up to 12 days in Turbo — compared to a maximum of six days for the Air. The Pro charger’s battery stores enough for another 45 days, which you top off with Qi-compatible wireless charging. In addition, the case incorporates locator technology via the app and a speaker, as well as usability features such as haptic notifications and a power LED.

The ring can also retain up to 250 days of data versus less than a week for the cheaper model. Ultrahuman redesigned the heart-rate sensor for better signal quality. An upgraded processor improves the accuracy of the local machine learning and overall speed.

It’s offered in gold, silver, black and titanium finishes, with available sizes ranging from 5 to 14.

Jade’s Deep Research Mode is the cross-ecosystem analysis feature, which aggregates data from Ring and Blood Vision and the company’s subscription services, Home and M1 CGM, to provide historical trends, offer current recommendations and flag potential issues, as well as trigger activities such as A-fib detection. Ultrahuman plans to expand its capabilities to include health-adjacent activities, such as ordering food.

Some new apps are also available for the company’s PowerPlug add-on platform, including capabilities such as tracking GLP-1 effects, snoring and respiratory analysis and migraine management tools.

Technologies

The FCC Just Approved Charter’s $34.5B Cox Purchase. Here’s What It Means for 37M Customers

Technologies

Spotify Expands Into Audiobook Rankings With Weekly Charts

The feature is available to both free users and Premium subscribers. Wuthering Heights is reaching the heights on both the US and UK charts.

If you’re a Spotify user, you may be familiar with features like the year-end summary Wrapped, as well as your daily usage stats. Now, the service has a new popularity chart tracking audiobooks.

Spotify’s audiobook charts are now available to free and Premium users within the service’s Audiobooks hub. While only Premium users receive 15 hours of audiobook listening per month, the company offers a larger selection of titles you can buy.

US charts and UK charts are both available now.

Read more: Best Music Streaming Services for 2026

Spotify says that the audiobook charts will help customers discover new and popular titles in real time.

«As we’ve proven with Music and Podcasts Charts, when content is easier to access, discover, and enjoy, the demand grows,» said Duncan Bruce, Spotify’s director of audiobook partnerships and licensing, in a statement on Friday.

Spotify launched audiobooks in 2022, and has since added features such as the AI catchup tool Recaps and PageMatch, which lets you swap more easily between a printed book and the audio version.

Spotify Premium currently costs $13 a month and includes more than 100 million songs, as well as audiobooks. Spotify Premium is currently CNET’s Editors’ Choice for best music streaming service.

The current US audiobooks chart lists Emily Brontë’s romantic classic Wuthering Heights as the top listen, followed by James Clear’s self-help book Atomic Habits and Freida McFadden’s psychological thriller The Housemaid. Audiobook popularity is also broken down by genre, with charts for romance, mystery and thriller books, self-help, science fiction and fantasy, biography and memoir, business and careers, teen and young adult, religion and spirituality, history, and parenting and relationships.

Powered by its blockbuster movie adaptation starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, Wuthering Heights also leads the overall chart for the UK.