Google is continuing its elemental AI naming scheme with the new Gemini 4 Hydrogen. These names are less descriptive than the Pro/Flash monikers of earlier releases, but Hydrogen’s purpose is clear: It replaces the faster, more economical Flash models most people in Google’s ecosystem use.

With Google’s recent Argon and Carbon releases, the rollout was staged and began with cybersecurity researchers. Even when general availability began, Google restricted access to users paying for its most expensive AI subscription. The limits for Hydrogen are much more relaxed, with access beginning immediately. This model has replaced Gemini 3.8 Flash across the company’s products.

Google claims that Hydrogen represents a major improvement versus the previous Flash model. It runs in one of four thinking levels (low, medium, high, and the new xhigh), and even in high mode, it’s 2.5 times faster than Flash 3.8. Plus, it reduces “fabricated claims” by more than 5x, according to Google’s analysis. Users will also see gains in code generation, with Hydrogen more than tripling 3.8 Flash’s score in Terminal-Bench. In some cases, Hydrogen even trades blows with Argon. It managed a score of 54 in the popular Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index with xhigh mode versus 50 for Argon.

https://arstechnica.com/google/2026/11/google-rolls-out-gemini-4-hydrogen-finally-replacing-3-8-flash/

Emma Doe’s lawsuit alleged that Google has taken advantage of a dominant position it has held in schools since 2007 to push AI on kids and seize their data without meaningfully protecting them from the worst potential harms of its chatbot’s sycophantic design. In Chicago, CPS signed a contract with Google in 2020, “long before Gemini was rolled out,” Creswell found. Over the next two extensions of that contract, no updates were introduced to protect students’ privacy as AI advanced.

To Creswell, it remained “totally unclear” in contracts how Google’s processing of student data may have changed, beyond updates to the privacy policy for Google Workspace for Education.

Currently, that policy specifies that “we receive customer data through the Core Services and process it according to the school’s (the customer’s) instructions. This customer data includes anything submitted, stored, sent, or received through Core Services by you or your school.” Google collects that data on that activity, as well as account information “like name, email address and password” and location information, the policy said.

The policy didn’t discuss Gemini but noted that data from using core services helps maintain services, improve personalization, and increase security. And “the data we collect in the Additional Services is used across our services to deliver, maintain, and improve our services; develop new services; provide personalized services; measure performance; communicate with you; and protect Google, our users, and the public.”

To parents, the policy provides no reassurance that their kids’ data isn’t part of Google’s plan to dominate the AI industry.

“We should not have any child data being collected in a school setting being used for commercial purposes,” Creswell said.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/11/families-fight-to-keep-googles-disturbing-ai-off-school-issued-chromebooks/

Smartglasses have always faced an uphill road to acceptance. Not only is propping a computer up on your nose an uncomfortable proposition, but the privacy aspect has been vexing people since the Google Glass days. Now, Google is ready to take another swing at “intelligent eyewear” for the Gemini era after previewing its plans a couple of times. The first glasses are up for preorder today from Gentle Monster and Warby Parker, but they’re no impulse buy.

These devices are a collaboration between Google, Samsung, and the aforementioned eyewear designers. Gentle Monster and Warby Parker have each designed a few different frames, with options for transparent and tinted lenses. Samsung is providing the computing hardware that fits inside them, and Google has the software covered.

Warby Parker has designed three frames for Google eyewear, called Alden, Reid, and Wren (see above). They are available with both standard optical and sun lenses in Pine, Saddle, and Jet Black colors at $395 and higher. Warby Parker is only selling devices in the US. Gentle Monster has gone a bit further with six styles, but Google hasn’t told us any names for those yet. They come in dark red, pink, gray, and yellow colors and are available with clear, tinted, blue, or brown lenses. The Gentle Monster styles start a little higher at $449, and they will be available in the US and South Korea.

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https://arstechnica.com/google/2026/11/google-pushes-privacy-angle-as-gemini-powered-smartglasses-debut-starting-at-395/

The attackers accessed chat transcripts for fewer than 1% of Notion workspaces. Most transcripts were unattributable.

The post Notion Customer Data Compromised in Fireworks AI Hack appeared first on SecurityWeek.

https://www.securityweek.com/notion-customer-data-compromised-in-fireworks-ai-hack/

Move follows reports Huang had an extramarital affair with a woman alleged to be a Chinese spy. https://www.adweek.com/media/jensen-huangs-33-year-reign-as-nvidia-ceo-ends-amid-affair-reports/

X’s new safety chief previewed AI moderation labels that explain themselves, pitching wary advertisers on transparency. https://www.adweek.com/media/x-previews-labels-that-tell-users-why-its-ai-system-flagged-their-posts/

Google on Tuesday expanded access to Gemini 4 Carbon and said agents built on the model helped formally verify core security guarantees in the code behind the Signal protocol.

Paying developers and businesses can now use Carbon via the Gemini API and Gemini for business, and Google AI Ultra subscribers are getting access. Introductory rates of $2/$10 per million input/output tokens apply until November 30, then double.

Until now, only select cyber defenders in Google’s Fairwind Program could use Carbon. They still need Fairwind membership for Carbon for cyber, which Google says tops key benchmarks for discovering, exploiting and fixing vulnerabilities.

According to Google, Wiz used Carbon for cyber to find zero-days at two major SaaS providers within two hours. Google’s Cloud Vulnerability Research (CVR) team used the model to confirm that two bugs in a popular open source project were exploitable, with severity comparable to PHP2Shell, a pair of PHP flaws that attackers have already exploited.

“By using Carbon to build a proof of concept, CVR helped maintainers re-classify the bug as critical and swiftly issue a patch,” Google said.

Separately, Google DeepMind introduced AlphaProof Code, which pairs human experts with AI agents to formally verify software, mathematically demonstrating that it meets defined requirements.

The team applied it to libsignal, the Signal protocol’s reference implementation. Versions of the protocol also run in WhatsApp and Google Messages.

Humans worked with agents running on Carbon and Claude Opus 5.5 to write the specifications defining what had to be proven. Carbon-based agents then generated all of the roughly 6.5 million lines of Lean proofs, with Lean rejecting any invalid ones.

The proven guarantees, including forward secrecy, post-compromise security, and authentication, hold for the compiled machine code, while most protocol verification examines only the design.

Five researchers did the proof work in four weeks, something Google says has traditionally taken specialists years.

To show the method catches real flaws, the team reinserted two old, already-patched libsignal bugs and proved that those builds break the security guarantees.

The results cover Google’s own build of the code, run through a small command-line wrapper, and “not Signal’s own applications.” Side channels were also excluded from parts of the analysis.

“The results suggest that AI can make formal verification, historically too expensive for most software, practical for real-world systems,” the researchers wrote.

“As AI-driven security threats grow, rigorously verifying the Signal protocol implementation gives us even greater confidence in our code’s privacy guarantees,” said Signal CTO Ehren Kret.

Google is publicly releasing the specifications and proofs.

Related: Anthropic Rolls Out Mythos 5.2 With Improved Bug Hunting, Fewer Sandbox Escapes

Related: OpenAI Says New GPT-6 Cyber Model Hunts Flaws Without Crossing the Line

Related: OpenAI Model Wrote Its Own Network Code to Get Around Sandbox Restrictions

https://www.securityweek.com/google-widens-gemini-4-carbon-access-after-ai-agents-verify-signal-code/

Anthropic says Mythos 5.2 improves vulnerability discovery while showing a lower tendency to escape sandboxes in controlled tests.

The post Anthropic Rolls Out Mythos 5.2 With Improved Bug Hunting, Fewer Sandbox Escapes appeared first on SecurityWeek.

https://www.securityweek.com/anthropic-rolls-out-mythos-5-2-with-improved-bug-hunting-fewer-sandbox-escapes/

On Tuesday (Nov. 10) at 12pm ET, we’re launching The Checkout, a newsletter that will keep you up-to-date with all the commerce and retail news you need to know. https://www.adweek.com/commerce/introducing-the-checkout-adweeks-new-commerce-newsletter/

Noteworthy stories that might have slipped under the radar: Synology warns about NAS ransomware attacks, Flowise ‘hello’ attacks, Chainalysis breach impact expands.

The post In Other News: Trezor Implant, LLMJacking Bills Hit $1M, SAP Flaws Weaponized Within Days appeared first on SecurityWeek.

https://www.securityweek.com/in-other-news-trezor-implant-llmjacking-bills-hit-1m-sap-flaws-weaponized-within-days/