At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2025, Google unveiled a significant update to its TV operating system, featuring an AI-powered news brief capability. This innovative feature, dubbed "News Brief," utilizes Google's Gemini AI assistant to summarize the day's top news stories for users.

The News Brief feature is designed to provide users with a concise and convenient way to stay informed about current events. By asking Gemini to play their "News Brief," the AI assistant will scour the internet and YouTube video headlines from trusted news channels, generating a brief summary of the day's most important news.

Google plans to roll out this new Gemini capability to both new and existing Google TV devices towards the end of 2025. This move marks a notable step into AI news summaries, a space that has proven treacherous for tech companies in recent times.

Other tech giants, such as OpenAI, Microsoft, and Perplexity, are currently facing lawsuits from media companies alleging that their AI systems have failed to properly license and credit the news content used to create these summaries. Additionally, AI news summaries have been plagued by embarrassing hallucinations, as seen in Apple's recent AI-generated summaries that mistakenly reported on tennis world champion Rafael Nadal's sexuality. Google itself has experienced similar issues, with its Gemini AI overviews previously hallucinating and advising users to put glue on their pizza.

Despite these challenges, Google is now expanding Gemini's capabilities, moving beyond its initial approach of directing users towards Google Search for news. The News Brief feature appears to be Google's first dedicated AI news product, although it does not currently display the source of its information. Instead, it provides related YouTube videos, with a Google executive revealing that the information is pulled from across the web, not just YouTube video headlines.

In a demo with TechCrunch, Google showcased the News Brief feature's ability to summarize live news, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's resignation and events unfolding on Capitol Hill. The feature's potential to provide users with timely and accurate news updates is significant, particularly as Google aims to make the TV a more interactive experience.

Google's vision for Gemini extends beyond news summaries, with plans to incorporate sensors into new TVs that can detect when users enter the room. The company also intends to enable users to search for shows, movies, and YouTube videos using natural language, with Gemini generating AI summaries for this content as well.

As the tech industry continues to explore the possibilities of AI-driven news summaries, Google's News Brief feature is a notable development. While the company still needs to address concerns around sourcing and hallucinations, this update marks a significant step forward in the evolution of AI-powered news consumption.