Nothing

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

Ben Schoon | Jul 31 2024 - 2:31 am PT

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. Frustratingly, there’s absolutely no sourcing for the stories; no links, no names, nothing.

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.