Technologies

Google Takes Aim at Duolingo With AI Tools to Help You Learn New Languages

The tech giant is the latest company to adopt AI tools in order to teach foreign languages — but it isn’t the first.

Google is debuting three new AI experiments that are intended to help users learn foreign languages on the go. The tools utilize Google’s Gemini large language model to identify objects and situations in a user’s immediate environment and provide translations that could help users ask for help or spark a conversation.

If you want to give the new experiments a try, you can find them on the Google Labs webpage. Google experiments aren’t applications, which means you don’t have to download anything to get started. You can just click into the experiment you want to try and begin typing in your prompts.

Read more: Best AI Chatbots of 2025

In debuting these new features, Google is going head-to-head with other foreign language-learning services that are also focusing on AI tools. Duolingo’s CEO recently announced that the company «will be going AI-first,» and OpenAI’s ChatGPT has the ability to begin new foreign-language conversations at any time upon request.

Tiny Lesson: Describe a situation

Google’s new Tiny Lesson tool allows users to describe a situation they’re in to learn vocabulary and grammar that can help describe a problem to the locals. Using the provided context, the tool will provide suggestions that aid users in understanding how to ask for help if they haven’t learned specific phrases tailored to their current issue.

Slang Hang: Casual talk

The Slang Hang tool promotes casual conversation over rigid sentence structure and grammatical agreement, teaching users how to drop the formalities and adapt a more colloquial way of speaking a foreign language. Slang Hang simulates conversations between native speakers and lets users discover what any words or phrases in the series of messages mean. The AI model sometimes misidentifies or hallucinates words, so you’ll need to double-check with another source when using this feature.

Word Cam: Detect items in photographs

The third and final new tool, Word Cam, uses Gemini to detect objects in photographs you take — providing you translations for your surroundings in the foreign language you’re learning. This feature helps you describe the world around you, but it’s possible that Gemini may not accurately label every single object in a picture you take. It’s still worth double-checking the translations you’re provided against another source while using Word Cam.

The language-learning experiments were created as a way to «inspire developers using Gemini for building different use cases and experiences,» Google representative Maggie Shiels told CNET.

This particular set of experiments is meant to focus on using the multimodal LLM as a way to promote bite-sized lessons on the go.

Google’s new features aren’t launching for every language — at least, not yet. Tiny Lesson, Slang Hang and Word Cam currently support translations for the Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish languages.

Shiels said that Tiny Lesson, Slang Hang and Word Cam — like other Google Labs experiments — are not products and are not meant to be permanent features.

«This is a limited-time tool that will eventually sunset,» she told CNET. «We hope that developers have fun playing around.»

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Friday, Jan. 23

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Jan. 23.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? Hope you’re familiar with a certain blond actor (8-Across)! Read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Attach, as one plant to another
Answer: GRAFT

6A clue: Email button with a backward-facing arrow
Answer: REPLY

7A clue: Make very excited
Answer: AMPUP

8A clue: Two-time Best Actor nominee Nick
Answer: NOLTE

9A clue: Total dork
Answer: DWEEB

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Word that can precede piano, total or staircase
Answer: GRAND

2D clue: Cut again, as a lawn
Answer: REMOW

3D clue: Company whose logo has a bite taken out of it
Answer: APPLE

4D clue: Champagne glass
Answer: FLUTE

5D clue: Laid-back kind of personality
Answer: TYPEB

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

Technologies

‘Is Microsoft Down?’ Outlook and Teams Go Dark in Widespread Outage

It’s not just you: Numerous Microsoft services weren’t working most of Thursday, and the outage is continuing.

Thursday has been a tough work day for many — or maybe, a great one, depending on how eager you are to access work-related programs. Microsoft services, including Outlook, Teams and Microsoft 365 are experiencing a significant outage that’s still going on as of early evening, Pacific time. Microsoft hasn’t announced an expected time when everything will be back up and running.

You can follow the official Microsoft 365 Status account on the social-media platform X, which has been regularly posting updates about the outage.

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The first post there, from 11:37 a.m. PT, said that the company was «investigating a potential issue impacting multiple Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook, Microsoft Defender and Microsoft Purview. Further information can be found in the admin center under MO1221364.»

The admin center is the dashboard for IT admins managing Microsoft 365 services.

You can also monitor Microsoft’s Service Health Status page. That page is noting that «users may be seeing degraded service functionality or be unable to access multiple Microsoft 365 services.»

A representative for Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Technologies

Ring’s Latest Feature Lets You Verify Shared Security Videos

With so many fake videos out there, the home-security company is adding a level of protection.

Popular home security brand Ring announced that videos shared from its devices can now be verified, so customers know they’re watching an authentic, unaltered video. Ring says the new verification process is similar to a security seal on a package or medicine bottle, indicating that no one has tampered with it.

The new feature is available starting Thursday, and it doesn’t matter which Ring device recorded the video. All videos downloaded directly from the Ring app are automatically verified and include a security seal for authenticity.

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When someone sends you a Ring video, you can now visit Ring’s verification page, paste the video link, and determine immediately whether the video is verified. The website doesn’t send your video anywhere. It stays locally on your device, and all verification checks happen within your browser. The verification website only accepts MP4 files, the format Ring videos are saved.

Videos downloaded before December 2025 or edited videos cannot be verified. Ring says that even minor adjustments, such as shaving a couple of seconds off the beginning or end of a video, or even adjusting brightness levels, will render it unverifiable.