# AI Cybersecurity, Audiobook Innovation, and Hardware Accessories

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-10-02

## Transcript

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A $34.99 remote call the Kindle Click caught our eye.
You see, the Kindle Click is a compact Bluetooth remote designed to let readers turn pages without even touching their Kindle.
Now, the idea here is simple, but it could solve a surprisingly common annoyance for e-reader owners who have to reach over and tap the screen every time they want to move to the next page.
As well, the small remote is designed for situations where touching the Kindle just isn't convenient.
Amazon specifically positions it for reading under the covers on a treadmill.
or with a Kindle resting on a tray table during a flight.
Instead of reaching for the e-reader, readers can simply press a button on the remote to turn the page.
Now, the new accessory is compatible with all new Kindle devices, as well as Kindle models released in 2024 and later.
The Kindle Click puts Amazon into a category that competitors have already started exploring.
Rakuten Kobo, for instance, launched its $29.99 Kobo remote last year.
There's also the Books Tappy, a $29.99 wireless page-turner designed for Books e-paper devices.
Now, while Amazon's Kindle Click is priced higher than these competing accessories, the company is likely betting that Kindle owners will shell out for an official accessory designed specifically for the lineup.
Speaking of which, this new Kindle lineup, one of the most significant physical redesigns in years, has a display that Amazon says is 30% faster at page turns than the previous generation.
Facing new competition in the audiobook market from Spotify, Audible is turning to AI and other technology to enhance the listening experience.
You see, on Thursday, the Amazon-owned company introduced three new features that'll allow listeners to explore a book's characters, engage in interactive stories, and view additional imagery and bonus information about landmarks or places mentioned in the book.
Now, if you're thinking that last one would be great for highlighting the different courts locations in Sarah J.
Mass's fairy realm of Prithian, I gotta disappoint you here.
You see, the feature will first arrive in just one title for now, The Culture Tutor, a modern guide to history, art, and philosophy in 49 short chapters by Sheehan Quirk, which...
focuses on making culture more accessible by teaching about poetry, art, architecture, geography, and more.
in short, easy lessons.
Now, the other new features, the character guide and interactive stories, well, they're also starting off fairly small.
You see, with Audible's October 1st release of its Audible original Dracula, the character guide will help listeners keep track of the cast of characters in the book, something that's harder to do when listening than when reading.
In Dracula, the character guide will display who's speaking in real time directly on the player page so listeners don't get lost.
It'll also provide spoiler-free character cards, which showcase the narrator behind the voice and their bio.
Audible says users will later be able to interact with the guide to ask questions about the story as it unfolds.
And for that third feature, Interactive Stories, it'll also come to Dracula and Exoplanet.
Now here, the idea is to bring the listener into the story through a bonus experience in which they interact with a book's character.
Powered by Generative AI, the feature lets listeners interact with Dracula's servant, Renfield, in the new Audible original.
The changes come as audiobook listenership and revenue grow, with U.S.
sales reaching $2.43 billion in 2025.
The company says the features are currently in a beta test, and the plan is to expand to more titles over time.
Well, well, well, Google parent company Alphabet has launched Gemini 4 Argon, a new AI model built to handle a variety of tasks such as coding, research, and writing.
But it's cybersecurity that Gemini 4 Argonne is supposed to have a particular knack for, according to Google.
Argonne is only being rolled out to a select group of the company's cyber partners through its Fairwind program, which is Google's security initiative.
You see, the model was trained specifically for defensive cyber work, and the company says it can autonomously find, validate, and patch critical software vulnerabilities.
Argonne's also said to be good at coding and engineering, with the company noting that its own staff have already been using the model for their daily work, including...
debugging and code-based migrations.
Google also touts Argon's ability to parse visuals, whether that's analyzing the contents of long videos or charts.
Built to sustain deep reasoning across complex, long-horizon workflows, Argon is fundamentally changing the way we work and build at Google, the company said in a blog post Wednesday.
Top AI labs have rushed to release increasingly powerful models, attempting to outdo each other even as those very same firms warn that AI could spin out of control.
Not long ago, OpenAI released Astra, which it hailed as its best model yet.
Earlier this year, Anthropics Fable was also released with similar rhetoric from the company.
Firms have done their best to market their services as superior to their competitors.
In its blog, Google claims that Argon scored significantly higher than OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra and Anthropics Fable and Opus models across a variety of AI benchmarks.
It cites VALS, an increasingly popular AI benchmarking startup, to show that Argon is currently the leading model on the company's AI model index.
Once considered behind in the AI race, Google has recently enjoyed success with Gemini.
The company announced in August that its app had over a billion users per month, a metric that makes it competitive with OpenAI, which also recently announced that ChatGPT had reached a billion monthly users.
And folks, that's your Daily Crunch.
Today's stories were reported by Lauren Forrestal, Sarah Perez, Lucas Ropec, and more awesome TechCrunch journalists.
We'll see you here tomorrow.
Same tech time, same Crunch channel.
And until then, find us at TechCrunch.com.