Google is sending a tiny AI data center to space, Revolut is piloting facial recognition at store checkouts in the UK, and Google added creepy avatars to Gemini 3.8 live's agents

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Google is sending a teensy-tiny AI data center to space.

Revolut is piloting facial recognition at store checkouts in the UK.

And Google added creepy avatars to Gemini 3.8 Live's agents. It's Friday, September 25th, and here's a quick look at some of the news happening in the sphere of tech this morning from Engadget.

Google's Project Suncatcher, which ultimately aims to put large AI installations into low Earth orbit, is preparing for a milestone event. The company will be sending a teensy-tiny AI data center into space to see how it reacts to the harsh conditions. That's according to a report by the New York Times. A satellite named MVP will be aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket set to launch on October 1st, where it will be placed into orbit. Now, this is not a full data center in the conventional sense. It's four specialized computer chips called Tensor Processing Units, which combined offer the power of a single server in a data center. Solar panels will supply just one kilowatt of power to juice the chips, which is equivalent to the energy needed to run a hair dryer. Google says this will be enough to test the hardware against the harsh conditions of space. The company plans to let the satellite answer simple AI queries for a year, though it will orbit Earth for six years before it burns up during a descent into the atmosphere. These chips have undergone a battery of tests to simulate the void of space, including getting blasted with large amounts of radiation at Crocker Nuclear Laboratory. Radiation can seriously mess with computer chips, causing something called bit flips. This essentially flips the binary code from a 1 to a 0, or vice versa. What's the solution to bit flips? Google is taking the tried and true PC method. It plans on restarting the chips when they act up. There's also a proprietary cooling system in place that uses layers of conductive material to expel heat into space, though it only works for around 15 minutes before the chips have to be turned off to cool down. The initial experiments at Crocker reportedly went well enough to take the next step, which is shooting the chips into the great beyond. But this does not mean that we are particularly close to having actual AI data centers in space. There are additional engineering problems to consider. There's the radiation and that whole bit flip thing, which seems extremely finicky with four chips, let alone thousands. Cosmic rays are an issue, as they are actual physical particles traveling quickly through space that could punch through and actually melt semiconductor junctions. Scaling up the cooling system looks to be incredibly difficult. Despite those challenges, though, Google plans on scaling this project up. It wants to launch two similar satellites next year with the eventual goal of launching 80 satellites that will fly in close formation to better process AI queries. It's also looking into building a much larger satellite around the size of a football field. The company has not indicated how much money it is pouring in to that endeavor.