The Verge

Welcome to a "profound moment for humanity," according to Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, who closed out Google I/O's keynote presentation on Tuesday, saying: Google's cutting-edge research and products will help unlock AGI's incredible potential for the benefit of the entire world. When we look back at this time, I think we will realize that [...]

What better way to unwind from a two-hour-long keynote presentation than to pour over the weirdest and wildest details, from a Gmail bot you can converse with to DeepMind's leader saying the singularity is near. The Vergecast went live right after the show, with Senior AI Reporter Hayden Field joining me to discuss the highlights. [...]

Last year, after watching Google's I/O keynote, I wrote that it felt like Google's future was Google googling. After watching this year's I/O keynote on Tuesday, I don't think Google just wants to google for you - I think it wants to do everything for you, all from a search box. Take the trusty Google [...]

Nintendo recently teased the Choose Your Game" Switch 2 console and digital game bundle, coming in early June. However, multiple retailers (including Nintendo itself) are already offering the $499.99 bundle. The list currently includes GameStop, Amazon, Best Buy, and the Nintendo Store. It's a deal worth hopping on ahead of the holiday season, since Nintendo [...]

Google has big promises for its AI-powered future - and a lot of it depends on your trust. At I/O 2026, Google described a bunch of new tools that it claims will make your life easier. Gemini Spark, Google's always-on AI agent, can help organize an upcoming event, while Daily Brief can offer a rundown [...]

Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of summer, and the holiday's sales include plenty of deals on gadgets that can help you make the most of the season. If your plans involve beach days, pool parties, or backyard barbecues, now's a great time to pick up a portable Bluetooth speaker, as many of our favorite [...]

A handful of Democrats called an unofficial hearing on Capitol Hill Monday to slam the Department of Justice's "trivial" and "pathetic" settlement with Live Nation-Ticketmaster, previewing how they might go after Trump administration antitrust deals if they win back congressional power in November. While the DOJ settlement with Live Nation, which came one week into [...]

Ugreen has announced a new Apple Find My-compatible tracker with a novel design that limits where you can hide it, but greatly benefits battery life. Inspired by "major football tournaments" the company doesn't call out by name, the Ugreen FineTrack 2 is shaped like a soccer ball and is designed to be used hanging off [...]

Last week, we noted Kickstarter's new content guidelines, which had some pretty weird new additions, including a prohibition on "sexual wellness products that are not designed for insertion or penetration and are not marketed primarily for sexual gratification." Those rules have now been eliminated and the company has restored an earlier version of its guidelines. [...]

Gemini is gaining the power of sight and mobility. Today at the I/O conference, Google and Volvo announced that the AI-powered assistant will be able to access external cameras in the upcoming EX60 SUV to help explain and interpret its surroundings to vehicle owners. The upgrade is possible thanks to Volvo's use of Google's embedded [...]

Google's I/O 2026 keynote today was once again full of AI-related announcements including a new family of Gemini 3.5 AI models, new features for Search and Gmail, and updates about its Project Aura smart glasses. If you weren't able to tune into the event's livestream today or follow along with our live blog, you can [...]

Google is making a big push into cybersecurity. At I/O, the company announced that it was inviting select groups of experts to test the API for CodeMender, an "AI agent for code security" it debuted last October. The difference is that Google is now making the tool more widely available externally - and marketing it [...]

Google Search is entering the next phase of its AI evolution. During Google I/O 2026, the company showed off a reimagined search box that makes it easier to flow between AI Overviews, the AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of search results, and AI Mode, Google's chatbot-like search experience. Powered by the new Gemini [...]

Google is launching a big new feature for Gmail called Gmail Live, a new AI-powered voice mode that's basically the Gemini Live experience but built specifically for your inbox. To use Gmail Live, tap an icon that will appear in your search bar and just start talking. In a press briefing, a Google employee showed [...]

Google is launching its own take on OpenClaw, the buzzy AI agent platform that caused a stir in the tech industry earlier this year. Announced during Google I/O 2026, Gemini Spark is an always-on AI agent that can write emails for you, create continually updated study guides, monitor credit card statements for hidden subscription fees, [...]

Google is launching a new AI image generation app to Workspace that it's calling Pics, and it has a new feature to try and reduce the hassle of iterating on AI images: Instead of having to write an entire prompt just to change one small aspect of an image, you'll be able to click on [...]

We're back at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California, for this year's edition of Google I/O. These days, Silicon Valley is buzzing about the future of AI search, agents, vibe coding, and e-commerce, so you can bet we're expecting to hear tons of news on these fronts. And who knows, we might get a [...]

Ten years ago Sony introduced the MDR-1000X headphones. They combined noise canceling, good sound, design, and comfort in a way that we hadn't quite seen before in a set of wireless headphones. (At the time, the Bose QC35 were the closest competitor, but I wasn't a huge fan of their sound tuning.) The 1000X set [...]

Google I/O 2026 kicks off today, with the event's keynote presentation slated for 10AM PT / 1PM ET on May 19th. Gemini is expected to be front and center once again at this year's developer conference, with Google potentially introducing new versions of AI models and more agentic AI features. Google already showed off a [...]

The use of AI-powered tools to announce students as they walk on stage during graduation and commencement ceremonies has grown in popularity over the past few years, but it's not always succeeding at the one job it's there for. Many schools have switched to these systems as a way to ensure names are being pronounced [...]

A law requiring social networks to quickly remove sexual deepfakes and other nonconsensual imagery is now fully in force. But experts warn the policy could do little to help victims - and at worst could facilitate censorship online. Last May, President Donald Trump signed the Take It Down Act, a law addressing nonconsensual intimate imagery [...]

Apple's annual update about accessibility features on its platforms has new additions for the iPhone, Mac, and especially Vision Pro, with a focus on how on-device AI processing is being used in features like VoiceOver, Magnifier, Voice Control, and Accessibility Reader. One addition that jumped out to me is the ability to use on-device speech [...]

Anker's Solix S2000 solves two major pain points with power stations: idle power draw that can leave a battery unexpectedly dead, and the large footprint required to hold so much energy. Impressively, it achieves this at an incredibly low introductory price that works out to just $0.29 per Wh. Unlike most other power stations in [...]

In most platforming games, you're fighting against the world around you. You're trying to beat a level, nail a seemingly impossible series of jumps, or defeat a powerful boss. But even though Yoshi and the Mysterious Book uses familiar gameplay - you traverse the world by jumping, climbing, and, uh, eating - it reframes your [...]

Almost exactly two years ago, Microsoft introduced Arm-powered versions of the Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7, with Intel models not ready until more than six months later. This time around Microsoft is refreshing its Surface Pro and Surface Laptop models with Intel's latest Core Ultra Series 3 processors first, ahead of similar models [...]

When The Mandalorian first debuted on Disney Plus, it was a refreshing reminder of how fascinating Star Wars stories can be when they aren't focused on the same handful of well-established characters. Especially in its first season, the series felt like a sign that Disney was shifting gears after disappointing fans with its last trilogy [...]

Inviting a robot vacuum-mop into your life is a big decision. An autonomous floor-cleaning machine roaming your home is equal parts glorious and intrusive. But if it does its job well, you may forgive it for eating your rug tassel, running over your Apple Watch, smearing strawberry jam across your carpet, or chattering to you [...]

Marshall's first headphones with active noise canceling were the Marshall Mid A.N.C. first launched in 2018. Its current lineup only offers noise canceling on its larger over-ear Monitor III A.N.C. headphones, but its new Milton A.N.C. bring the feature back to Marshall's smaller and lighter on-ear options. The wireless headphones are available today for $229.99 [...]

Microsoft launched a new Xbox Player Voice portal yesterday, aiming to collect feedback from fans and "make it more visible." It certainly hasn't taken long for Xbox fans to make their feedback very clear. The most upvoted feedback on Xbox Player Voice demands exclusive games for Xbox consoles, more backward compatible games, and free online [...]

Google's annual developer conference has arrived. We're expecting plenty of updates to Gemini, Search, and every other product that Google has stuffed AI inside of. The keynote kicks off later today - here's what to expect. When Google I/O will happen and where you can watch it Google I/O starts at 10AM PT / 1PM [...]

Gemini has a creep problem. A few years ago, that little sparkle icon started showing up in all of our Google apps. Gemini in your inbox! Gemini in your Google Drive! It was slow at first, and easy enough to tune out, but something has changed in the past few months. Gemini is creeping. It's [...]

If you just can't choose between refresh rate and resolution, LG's next gaming monitor could solve your problem, as the UltraGear 25G590B monitor is the first one announced that will be capable of a native 1000Hz refresh rate at 1,920 x 1,080 resolution. So far, the 1,000Hz models we've seen have only been capable of [...]

Volvo's compact, quirky EX30 had a lot of problems when it was first released. Tariffs essentially erased its affordability, making it more expensive to own, and a battery recall made it dangerous to park indoors. But its discontinuation didn't spell the end of Volvo's efforts to sell more affordable electric models. In fact, the Swedish [...]

Sony reportedly won't release its major single-player PlayStation games on PC anymore. According to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, Hermen Hulst, who heads up PlayStation's studios business, informed employees in a town hall on Monday about the change in strategy. Schreier had previously reported on the shift in March, saying that Sony scrapped plans to launch PC [...]

The tech trial of the year, Musk v. Altman, was ultimately a fight for control. Elon Musk argued that Sam Altman, with whom he helped found the now-massive company OpenAI, shouldn't direct the future of AI. Altman's lawyers, in turn, poked at Musk's own credibility. A jury came to a verdict on Monday after just [...]

Walmart's Onn brand just launched a whole line of budget-friendly Android tablets that, all together, cost less in total than a single iPad Pro. As spotted by 9to5Google, the six new tablets ship with Android 16 and all but one cost less than $200. The little Onn Core 7 is the most affordable of the [...]

If Dyson's PencilVac Fluffycones made you wish the company had built something similarly slim for scrubbing the hard floors in your home, enter the recently released Dyson PencilWash. The cordless cleaner is designed to tackle spills and stains on tile and other surfaces, and right now, it's available for a new low price of $249.99 [...]

It's not just you - the Google Workspace apps are getting a new look. The redesigned app icons, leaked last month, are now rolling out widely, as we started noticing this morning. Users with the redesigned icons will notice they now have a gradient look that fades from lighter to darker shades, rather than being [...]

Sony is hiking the starting price of one-month and three-month PlayStation Plus subscriptions in "select regions," blaming "ongoing market conditions." Beginning May 20th, 1-month subscriptions will start at $10.99 USD / 9.99 EUR / 7.99 GBP, while 3-month subscriptions will start at $27.99 USD / 27.99 EUR / 21.99 GBP. In the US, the changes [...]

Graduating from college is exciting, but it can also feel slightly terrifying. Along with celebrating a huge accomplishment, many grads jump right into looking for a job. Some might be getting their first apartment, too, which brings on a whole new set of responsibilities. That's why getting the right graduation gift is so important: They [...]

Linux founder Linus Torvalds said in his most recent state of the kernel post that "the continued flood of AI reports has basically made the security list almost entirely unmanageable, with enormous duplication due to different people finding the same things with the same tools," as The Register reports. That probably doesn't apply to stuff [...]

Today, I'm talking with Jonah Peretti, who is, technically, the CEO of BuzzFeed - although that will be coming to an end very soon. Just days before we spoke, Jonah agreed to sell 52 percent of BuzzFeed for a total of $120 million to Byron Allen, who owns The Weather Channel, a number of broadcast [...]

Starlink is raising prices across its satellite internet plans in the US - including Standby Mode - with the cheapest 100Mbps Residential plan going from $50 to $55 / month, as reported earlier by PCMag. Meanwhile, Starlink's 200Mbps residential plan has jumped from $80 to $85 / month, while the Residential Max plan went from [...]

We now have a good idea of what Sony's upcoming 10th anniversary headphones will look like before their expected launch tomorrow. Leaked image renders of what appears to be Sony's 1000X "The ColleXion" Edition have been shared online by OnLeaks and HotEUDeals, showing thicker leatherette padding and "generously sized" earcups compared to Sony's current WH-1000XM6 [...]

The wildfires that would come to engulf Los Angeles had just begun to burn when Frankee Grove finally admitted to herself that she needed a roommate. It was January 2025, and Grove, then 42, had recently broken up with her boyfriend of six years. They had lived together in a two-bedroom Spanish bungalow on a [...]

Zero Parades: For Dead Spies wants you to question the price of forgiveness. After leading a crew of spies through a failed operation, protagonist Cascade is willing to pay whatever amount is needed to reestablish contact not just with fellow agents, but with the friends she let down. After being "frozen" for five years and [...]

Microsoft launched Teams' Together Mode during the pandemic to give the illusion of a bunch of people sitting in a conference room together, even if they were really sitting at home without pants on. But times have changed, and it's now being retired in favor of a more simplified Teams experience. The feature used AI [...]

Apple is hoping that its record on privacy can be the differentiator on the AI front and maybe even buy it a little slack as it continues to lag behind the competition. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the more chatbot-like Siri set to debut in iOS 27 will include the option to autodelete chat histories. [...]

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt delivered the commencement address at the University of Arizona on Friday. And, as his speech veered into talk of AI, he was repeatedly drowned out by boos. AI is already a contentious topic, and it's not surprising that those about to enter a ravaged job market feel particularly negative about [...]

Hokum recently hit theaters, and it's already outperforming box office expectations. If this Kubrick-referencing haunted hotel flick starring Adam Scott was your introduction to director Damian McCarthy, do yourself a favor and go watch his previous film, Oddity. If you prefer to go in blind - the ideal way to watch any movie - Oddity [...]