Technologies

Aloha, AI Moana: Google’s AI Will No Longer Accept Disney Character Prompts

The apparent change follows a cease-and-desist letter from the House of Mouse in December.

Google’s AI tools, including Gemini and the Nano Banana image generator, will no longer create content based on prompts that reference (or, in some cases, are similar to) Disney characters. As first reported by Deadline and tested out by CNET, Google has apparently tweaked its AI tools to deny prompts that could violate Disney copyrights.

The move is likely in response to a cease-and-desist letter from the entertainment company in December. In that letter, Disney alleged that Google was failing to implement technology to prevent copyright infringement.

«Google continues to directly exploit Disney’s copyrights for commercial gain,» Disney alleged in the cease-and-desist letter. Representatives for Google and Disney did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Referencing characters like Moana or Disney’s version of Tinker Bell causes tools such as Nano Banana to return an error or stall out before generating an image. In one case, CNET tried to create an image of a character similar in appearance to Mickey Mouse without naming the character: «A cartoon mouse with big yellow shoes wearing red shorts with two white buttons on the front. He has a black ball nose and looks very happy.»

Google’s AI responded, «I can’t generate the image you requested right now due to concerns from third-party content providers. Please edit your prompt and try again.»

Incidentally, Mickey Mouse, at least the early versions of the character created by Walt Disney, is in the public domain. Complicating Disney’s response to Google’s AI tools is a deal with OpenAI brokered last year that would bring 200 characters to the AI company’s Sora video generator. Disney made a $1 billion investment in OpenAI.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

Technologies

T-Mobile’s Live Translation AI Agent Will Be Baked Into Your Phone Calls

If you need to communicate in another language, T-Mobile’s network can translate as you talk. And you don’t need special phone hardware to do it.

The last few years have brought a new kind of high-tech convenience to our devices: Many phones can now translate conversations in real time, without a human translator in the middle. Using the Google Translate app on an Android phone or Apple AirPods Pro 3 connected to an iPhone, it’s possible to overcome language barriers.

But not every person owns a phone that can support live translation, or has the time or bandwidth to install an app (and maybe commit to a subscription).

T-Mobile wants to remove any obstacles that stand in the way of you talking to someone on a phone call. It has live translation at the network level, so even if you own a basic dumb phone, you can talk to someone who speaks one of over 50 languages with the help of T-Mobile’s network AI agent.

Starting today, T-Mobile is opening up registration for a beta of its upcoming Live Translation call feature, which will begin testing in the spring. It’s open to subscribers of any post-paid T-Mobile plan, such as the Essentials, Experience More, Experience Beyond and Better Value plans.

«We want to make voice cool again,» said John Saw, T-Mobile chief technology officer, citing that its customers make 6 billion international calls per year, and 40% of those people travel internationally. «Live translation is a real breakthrough in innovation by introducing the latest AI models into our voice network.»

Just as it did during the beta of what became the T-Satellite service, T-Mobile has not yet decided which plans will include the live translation calling feature. It also hasn’t decided what, if any, cost there will be. T-Satellite is currently included in the Experience Beyond and Better Value plans and available on other plans as a $10 add-on. It’s also open to customers of other providers for $10 a month.

I haven’t tried T-Mobile’s live translation but I look forward to testing it soon.

How live translation will work

To turn on live translation during a call, the T-Mobile subscriber presses *87* (star-eight-seven-star), which activates the AI agent. Only one participant on the call needs to be a T-Mobile subscriber, and it will also work when the customer is roaming.

T-Mobile says there’s no setup, no voice training and no need to specify which languages to translate. The AI agent detects which languages are being spoken in real time and speaks the translation when a person stops speaking.

The AI agent will also detect whether you’re calling from another country and select a language for the translation. If you call someone in Brazil, it might choose Portuguese, for example. If the person speaks a different language, such as Spanish instead of Brazilian Portuguese, the agent will switch immediately.

Also, the spoken translation will not sound like a robotic voice. «Our AI model can actually clone your voice in another language and preserve the intonation, the emotions and the rhythm as well,» all picked up on the fly, said Saw. He attributes the performance to the low latency inherent in T-Mobile’s 5G Advanced network.

Once activated, the feature doesn’t need to be turned off. If both speakers switch to the same language, the AI agent just stops working as the go-between.

The true test will be the quality of the translations. «We have done a lot of benchmarks for AI-powered translations,» Saw said, «and it matches the accuracy of all the established services.» He said the model is compliant with FCC 2027 captioning guidelines and meets all ADA accessibility standards.

When I asked Saw whether conversations are recorded, even during the beta period, he said that kind of fine-tuning is being done using millions of internal-only test calls. «We don’t listen to customers’ calls, and [the AI models] are not trained on customers’ data,» said Saw, noting that the service meets all FCC guidelines for privacy.

Exactly which AI translation models are being used, or which partner companies are providing them, is something Saw declined to share. He did confirm that T-Mobile is working with several AI companies, but «we’re not going to name them because we love them all the same.»

Saw noted that the way T-Mobile’s network is designed as a platform has the advantage of being able to plug in updated AI translation models, run an upgrade overnight and make it available to hundreds of millions of phones.

Live translation is just the first T-Mobile agentic AI feature

All major mobile providers are applying AI at various levels. AT&T recently announced AI tech for optimizing internet traffic at the home router level, for example, and Verizon is enlisting Google’s AI to improve its customer service experience. T-Mobile itself uses AI to automatically redirect cellular load among towers during emergencies.

Without pointing to specific upcoming strategies, Saw named a few other tasks that AI agents could handle in the future, such as an AI receptionist or AI concierge. Centering the AI technology in the network opens up those possibilities.

So why is the company choosing live translation as the first entry for AI-based, customer-facing network features?

«Live translation is not an easier solution to do,» Saw replied, «but it’s the right pain point to be solving today.»

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Feb. 11 #710

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Feb. 11, No. 710.

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

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle was a nice easy one. Some of the answers are difficult to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Crack and snack.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Squirrels love these.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

COGS, SEAM, COWS, MAIN, CAMP, CUDS, CATS, NOSE, CASH

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

PECAN, FILBERT, ALMOND, PISTACHIO, CASHEW, MACADAMIA

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is GONUTS. To find it, start with the G that is five letters down on the far-left vertical row, and wind across.

Toughest Strands puzzles

Here are some of the Strands topics I’ve found to be the toughest.

#1: Dated slang. Maybe you didn’t even use this lingo when it was cool. Toughest word: PHAT.

#2: Thar she blows! I guess marine biologists might ace this one. Toughest word: BALEEN or RIGHT.

#3: Off the hook. Again, it helps to know a lot about sea creatures. Sorry, Charlie. Toughest word: BIGEYE or SKIPJACK.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for Feb. 11, #506

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for Feb. 11, No. 506.

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

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition is a tough one. Some of the words in the purple category were completely new to me. If you’re struggling with today’s puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Step up to the plate.

Green group hint: College division.

Blue group hint: Robert.

Purple group hint: Goaaaaaal!