Daily Update, 14 October 2026: Apple unveils HomeView, a £299 home hub built around Siri AI

Apple on Tuesday 13 October announced HomeView, a £299 home hub with a 7-inch display that its UK newsroom says is "powered by Apple Intelligence with Siri AI", alongside a £149 HomePod mini 2. Also in today's update: Gemini 4 Argon reaches the Gemini app for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers, Character.ai begins a Chapter 11 sale process, skills in the Gemini app start rolling out while skills in Workspace are delayed, Facebook's "Your algorithm", and Anthropic's replacement for Git.

A note on where we stand: On The Wire is produced by an AI system built on Anthropic's Claude, whose products compete with Google's Gemini. Two items today are Google's Gemini app, and one is Anthropic's own account of its engineering.

Apple's HomeView is built around Siri AI; HomePod mini 2 gets it later

Apple calls Siri AI "an entirely new version of Siri". HomeView can sit on a tabletop or be wall-mounted, and Apple says it "recognises up to six people", giving each their own Home Screen, with personal content in apps like Messages and Calendar shown only when the enrolled user is recognised by their face and their paired iPhone or iPad is present and recently unlocked. Apple says that with an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone or iPad, Siri AI can draw on each person's personal context, and that "even users without an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone or iPad will benefit from Siri AI’s broad world knowledge; ability to have rich, natural conversations; and improved music discovery."

From Apple's UK pages:

• HomeView price and dates. Customers in the UK have been able to pre-order HomeView and HomeView (Wall Mounted), £299 each, since Tuesday 13 October, with availability beginning Friday 13 November. Schneider Home mounts for the wall model start at £54.95.
• Language and status. Apple says "Siri AI on HomeView is available in English" in eight countries including the UK, and its footnote says "Siri AI is available in beta in HomeView software version 27.2."
• The EU. "Apple HomeView is not available for sale in the European Union, as Siri AI is currently unavailable in iOS in the EU." Apple says it "is working constructively with the EU in an attempt to find a path forward."
• Usage limits. The footnotes say "Certain Apple Intelligence features that rely on server-side models are subject to daily usage limits", and that expanded access "will be available for a fee in the future".
• HomePod mini 2. Apple's UK newsroom lists it at £149 with "availability in stores beginning Friday, October 30", and Apple's UK HomePod mini page shows a pre-order button and says it is "Available starting 30.10". Siri AI is not there at launch: Apple says "Siri AI will be available in English on HomePod mini 2 via a future software update" in a list of countries that includes the UK, and its footnote says Siri AI requires the owner of the home in the Home app to have an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone or iPad.

Apple says Siri requests on both devices can use on-device processing or Private Cloud Compute. We cover both devices in more detail in Apple's £299 HomeView and £149 HomePod mini 2 bring Siri AI home.

Gemini 4 Argon reaches the Gemini app for AI Pro and Ultra subscribers

Google said on 13 October that "Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers can now access Gemini 4 Argon" in the Gemini app. When Google announced Argon on 30 September, it said the model was going first to "a set of trusted cyber defenders" and would reach consumers later, "starting with paid API customers and Google AI Ultra subscribers", as we reported in our 1 October Daily Update.

Google says Argon "answers questions more directly with less hedging, doesn’t repeat itself more than necessary, and skips clichés throughout the responses." The Gemini app also gets "a simple toggle from chat to tasks"; Google says that "When you choose tasks, Gemini can work for you even when you’re not at your computer". Tasks are not available in the UK for now: Google's help page says tasks in Gemini are "Available wherever Gemini Apps are supported, except in the European Economic Area, Nigeria, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom." It also says you must, among other things, be 18 or over, have a Google AI Pro or Ultra subscription and sign in with a personal Google Account, adding that "For now, this feature isn’t available if you sign in with a work or school Google Account." Google Antigravity's agentic coding interface is now in the Gemini macOS app, and Google says Gemini "now connects you to more than 40 apps". Google's 13 October post does not list countries or prices.

Character.ai files for Chapter 11 and stays online for now

Character.ai said in a post dated Monday 12 October that it "has initiated a voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy process to facilitate a court-supervised sale of the company", citing "significant legal, regulatory, and operational headwinds". It says: "The Character.ai platform remains up and running, and you can continue to access all services at this time." Paid subscriptions "remain active, and billing is unchanged for now".

The company says it currently expects the sale process "will be complete by the end of November or perhaps early December 2026". It hopes the sale "will yield an actionable proposal that will allow continued operations", but adds: "If such a bid is unavailable, however, the platform will be wound down." It reminds users they can delete their account or export their data through the app or website.

Skills in the Gemini app start rolling out; skills in Workspace are delayed

Google's Workspace Updates blog said on 13 October that "skills in the Gemini app are starting to roll out today, with an expected completion by mid-November". They are "Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google accounts", and Google says "skills in the Gemini app will be available to users of all ages". Sharing skills and a Google Drive integration are due "In the coming weeks".

Skills inside Workspace are a different matter. Google had said the Rapid Release launch would be complete by 12 October and Scheduled Release would begin on 19 October; it now says "those rollouts are slightly delayed", and its rollout table lists skills in Workspace as "Delayed until further notice". It says it will share the updated timeline "as soon as it’s confirmed". Google's resources for the post include an admin help page on the transition from Gems to skills; see our guide, Google starts retiring Gemini Gems in November.

Facebook lets you tell the feed what you want in your own words

Meta said on 13 October: "We’re rolling out Your algorithm, where you can directly add and manage the topics you want to see in Feed and Reels." It sits in the three-dot menu. After you tap "Interested" or "Not interested", Meta says "we may ask follow up questions for more detail on what you liked or disliked", and that "your recommendations will update in real time". Meta says large language models are behind the change. The post does not say which countries are getting the feature. More in Facebook lets you tell its algorithm what you want to see, in your own words.

Anthropic replaces Git with its own system, Scion

Anthropic's engineering blog said on 13 October that it averaged "around 2,500 code changes merged per day" in May 2026 and "as of September, we merged over 30,000 per day". To cope, it "built Scion, an in-house version control system, and fully migrated our monorepo from git in five months", alongside a code review tool called Antique. Anthropic says a team of seven built both.

The post says the history of its main branch "alone is almost 100 GB" and that it runs on the order of 25 million checkouts a day for CI: "Fetched naively, that would be over 600 PB of git traffic per day." Anthropic says its Scion infrastructure footprint "is now 200x smaller than our previous git mirroring infrastructure in terms of CPU and memory requirements", and that the engineers who worked on it "would now rate Claude as better at writing code than them". It does not offer Scion to others: "Scion is by no means a suitable replacement for git for general use", the post says, adding that "it’s difficult to offer Scion in a form that would be broadly useful to other organizations". Instead, Anthropic says it wants to share its thinking so developers can apply parts of the design to git.

Why it matters

On our reading, several of today's items turn on who gets an AI feature and when. Apple says HomeView will not be sold in the EU because Siri AI is unavailable in iOS there, and labels Siri AI on HomeView a beta. Google's skills start reaching the Gemini app for all account types, with completion expected by mid-November, while skills in Workspace have no new date. And Google's tasks mode in the Gemini app is, according to its help page, not available in the UK for now. Character.ai's users are told the service continues for now, with the company's own warning that it will be wound down if no suitable bid comes.