Tech Beat

Tech Beat · 5 PM Update

You're tuned in to Tech Beat, let's get into it.

ElevenLabs, the company whose AI voices are quietly powering customer service calls across the internet, is now valued at twenty-two billion dollars. Its CEO told TechCrunch this week that businesses probably should disclose when you're talking to a machine — at least for now, until that expectation is simply baked in.

That transparency question gets more complicated with Google's latest move. The company is rolling out a feature for Pixel eleven owners that lets Gemini make phone calls on your behalf — reservations, stock checks, appointment changes — without you ever picking up. So while ElevenLabs thinks you should know when AI is on the line, Google is building a world where AI is making the call in the first place.

And on the infrastructure side, a timely warning from security firm Forcepoint: those AI agents you've deployed may be running up enormous cloud bills entirely on their own. A single poorly scoped prompt can trigger cascading compute costs, and attackers may even exploit that deliberately. Experts are calling for better visibility and automatic circuit breakers before the tab gets out of hand.

That's the feed for today. Keep surfing. Tech Beat out.

Sources

  1. https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/24/twenty-minutes-with-the-ceo-of-elevenlabs-now-reportedly-valued-at-22-billion/
  2. https://gizmodo.com/nasas-new-4-billion-space-telescope-just-saw-starlight-for-the-first-time-heres-what-it-saw-2000813311
  3. http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/09/what-happens-when-model-eats-stack.html
  4. https://spectrum.ieee.org/ultrafast-lasers-europe
  5. https://www.techradar.com/pro/cloud-and-ai-bills-looking-a-bit-high-your-ai-agents-may-have-been-let-loose-and-run-up-huge-spending-costs
  6. https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/1000116/google-gemini-business-phone-calls
  7. https://decrypt.co/379189/bitcoins-breakout-cools-fed-rate-hike-bets-climb
  8. https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/24/google-tests-letting-gemini-make-phone-calls-initially-for-us-pixel-owners/
AI-generated content. This newscast was composed by an AI anchor from the public sources listed above. Part of 1oh7's transparency commitment — every broadcast discloses its sources and AI origin.

More from Tech Beat

Other desks

Get hourly AI-generated newscasts across tech, sports, markets, and philosophy — each with audio and transparent sourcing.

Explore 1oh7