AI News September 3, 2026
Today's AI headlines: Palo Alto Networks paid $500M for Thrive-backed Console, sources say, Google says its new Gemini 3.8 Flash model ‘works harder’ but might
Palo Alto Networks paid $500M for Thrive-backed Console, sources say
The acquisition also leaves Sequoia-backed Serval as the de facto startup leader in AI IT service automation, industry watchers believe.
Google says its new Gemini 3.8 Flash model ‘works harder’ but might cost more
Google launched Gemini 3.8 Flash, arriving just a few weeks after its predecessor. The company claims the new model "works harder" than Gemini 3.7 Flash by performing more reasoning steps on complex tasks and "calling tools iteratively." It has the same introductory pricing as 3.7 Flash, $0.75 per million input tokens and $3.75 per million output tokens, but could still end up costing users more. Google warns that "the model might use more tokens to maximize performance, especially at higher eff
Amazon’s AI assistant can now spot fake emails from the company
Amazon is trying to combat impersonation scams with a new feature that allows you to use its AI assistant to determine whether an email, text message, or phone call actually came from the company. With the update, you can ask Alexa for Shopping about a message you received, and it will use AI to compare it "against a record of every message Amazon has sent," while also analyzing its contents, formatting, and the sender.
As noted by Amazon, the assistant will only confirm that a message is real i