The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has admitted it should not have sued crypto exchange Gemini, joining the company in a motion to vacate a 2025 consent order. The rare reversal signals regulatory self-reflection on enforcement overreach.

Anish Kattukaran, head of Google Home, confirmed on social media on May 3 that Gemini for Home upgrades will continue to accelerate across Europe and the Asia-Pacific region this week, building on significant expansions over the past two weeks. This announcement signals a notable acceleration in Google’s global rollout of its AI-powered smart home assistant.

Kattukaran stated that Google is clearing the early access queue daily, with users who opt in through the Home app being bumped to the top of the list. The expanded rollout covers 16 markets, including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, and New Zealand.

Gemini for Home is Google’s smart home AI assistant upgrade program that began rolling out in 2024, designed to integrate the capabilities of Google’s Gemini large language model into the Google Home ecosystem. Users can interact with a smarter, more contextually aware assistant through voice commands, enabling more complex smart home control, information queries, and daily task management.

Google has been continuously optimizing Gemini for Home’s performance over recent months, with the latest updates focusing on improved response speed and accuracy. At the same time, Google is expanding language support, allowing more non-English speakers to interact with Gemini naturally in their native languages.

Notably, Google has also been exploring Gemini integration with third-party smart speakers. Early product listings suggest that the upcoming Google Home Speaker will be the first new smart speaker device equipped with Gemini, indicating that Google is building a more open smart home AI ecosystem.

For users in Europe and the Asia-Pacific, this large-scale rollout means they will soon have access to the same AI-driven smart home features available in the United States, further narrowing the technology gap between markets.

Source: 9to5Google

More than 600 Google employees signed a letter on April 27, 2026, to CEO Sundar Pichai demanding that Google prevent the Pentagon from using its AI models for classified military purposes, according to The Washington Post.

The letter’s signatories include numerous employees from Google’s DeepMind AI lab, with more than 20 principals, directors, and vice presidents among them. According to the Post, the letter states: “The only way to guarantee that Google does not become associated with such harms is to reject any classified workloads. Otherwise, such uses may occur without our knowledge or the power to stop them.”

The protest follows a report by The Information that Google and the Pentagon are in discussions about a deal to deploy Google’s Gemini AI models in classified settings. Microsoft already has established agreements to provide AI services in classified environments, and OpenAI announced a renegotiated deal with the Pentagon in February.

The letter’s backdrop also involves Anthropic’s ongoing legal battle with the Pentagon. Anthropic was designated a “supply chain risk” after refusing to loosen guardrails on how the U.S. military can use its AI models — a stance that has drawn support across the tech industry, including from many Google employees.

Notably, this is not the first time Google employees have pushed back against military AI contracts. In 2018, Google planned to participate in the Pentagon’s Maven project (drone imagery analysis), but abandoned the contract after protests from thousands of employees and subsequently adopted AI ethics principles. The current protest involves more participants at higher organizational levels than the 2018 event, suggesting that concerns about AI militarization within the tech industry are intensifying.

Analysts note that as governments worldwide accelerate the integration of AI technology into defense systems, major tech companies will face increasingly difficult choices between commercial interests and ethical positions. Google’s internal resistance could have far-reaching implications for its government business strategy.

Source: The Verge, The Washington Post