Google expanding access to its Gemini Spark agentic AI assistant, Meta's pro-AI ad campaign is light on AI, and Universal secured the rights for film adaptations of 10 Atari games

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Google is expanding access to its Gemini Spark, agentic AI assistant.
Meta's pro AI ad campaign is conspicuously light on AI.
And Universal secured the rights for film adaptations of 10 Atari games. It's Friday, July 24th. And here's just a quick look at some of the news happening in the sphere of tech this morning from Engadget.
Google is making Gemini Spark, the agentic AI assistant it announced at this year's IO developer conference, available to more people. Unfortunately, that does not include free users. In the US., Spark is rolling out to everyone paying $20 a month for Google AI Pro. It's also rolling out globally to Google AI Ultra users, who are paying between $100 and $200 a month for their subscription, unless they're in the European Economic Area, Switzerland, the UK and Nigeria. Those who can now access Spark with this expansion may want to check if it also comes with local language support. Spark is powered by Gemini 3.5 and is deeply integrated into Google's Workspace apps. Users can assign tasks to it by going to the Spark page, either via the sidebar on a computer or by tapping on the option under the menu on mobile. From there, you can type in the tasks that you want Spark to do. You can tell Spark, for instance, to check your emails and calendar schedules. You can do this every morning and let you know what to prioritize. Spark can also automatically create draft responses for when emails from a particular person hit your inbox or summarize lengthy email threads. Users can use Spark to create detailed reports in Google Docs from meeting notes and emails as well. As these are only a few possible tasks for Spark, users can check out Google's support pages for more info.
Mark Zuckerberg really wants you to believe that AI is good, but the centerpiece of his company's new optimistic ad campaign, at least for now, is a one-minute commercial for Meta's AI efforts that features very little AI. According to a Meta spokesperson, the ad is the start of a broader effort from the company to present an alternative view to AI-doomers and those who have sketched out a dystopian vision for the future. Zuckerberg wrote in a post, As we enter this next wave with AI, we continue to believe the future is for everyone. We're focused on giving every person the tools to reach your full potential and making sure the benefits of technology are distributed to everyone. Notably, this is the same company which in recent months has used the supposed productivity benefits of AI as an excuse to lay off many thousands of its own staff. The same company that has been accused of using AI to justify cuts that disproportionately affected workers on medical leave. The same company that is being sued by publishers for allegedly training its AI on copyrighted material. The same company that once had an internal policy document that suggested it was permissible for AI chatbots to have sensual conversations with miners.
So, what are the benefits of AI? It's hard to say because the commercial makes very few references to any of Meta's AI features. Instead, it shows a bunch of nondescript footage, crowd walking, people smiling, a couple dancing. Are these people implied to be happily benefiting from AI? Who can say? It then cuts to someone scrolling Facebook, the Instagram logo and a WhatsApp chat. All of those apps have been flooded with AI features over the last year, but none are visible in the video.
Hollywood has been regularly turning to video games as inspiration for blockbusters and the latest deal to put pixels on the big screen features Atari. Deadline reported that the game brand has inked a partnership with Universal Pictures for the rights to adapt 10 of its properties for the big screen. The deal includes Asteroids, Adventure, Berzerk, Breakout, Centipede, Crystal Castles, Millipede, Missile Command, Pong and Yars' Revenge. Universal has already bought a screenplay centered on one of the Atari titles, although it did not specify which one, or if the proposed movie would be an Atari Cinematic Universe combining properties. Producer Guimon Cassidy of Entertainment 360 said, the best Atari games dropped you into a world and let your imagination do the rest. Atari chairman and CEO, Wade Rosen, told Deadline, for more than five decades, Atari has created games and worlds that have remained part of popular culture long after their original release. We're excited to work with Universal and Entertainment 360 to bring the spirit of our iconic brand and games to a new medium. Now, Universal had previously picked up the rights for an adaptation of Asteroids back in 2009, but nothing made it to the screen in the interim.