The Verge

Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge Microsoft launched a range of Copilot Plus PCs yesterday that includes new AI features built directly into Windows 11. Behind the scenes, the company now has more than 40 AI models running on Windows 11 thanks to a new Windows Copilot Runtime that will also allow developers to use these models for their apps.At Microsoft Build today, the company is providing a lot more details about exactly how this Windows Copilot Runtime works. The runtime includes a library of APIs that developers can tap into for their own apps, with AI frameworks and toolchains that are designed for developers to ship their own on-device models on Windows.Windows Copilot Library consists of ready-to-use AI APIs like Studio Effects, Live Captions Translations,... Continue reading...

The stylish Sonos Ace come in black and white. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge At long last, the eagerly anticipated Sonos Ace have arrived. On Tuesday, the company announced that its first pair of wireless headphones will be available on June 5th. Even better, you can already preorder them ahead of launch for $449.We're still testing the Sonos Ace, but in our limited time playing around with them during a recent demo session, we came away impressed. The plush noise-canceling headphones are exceptionally comfortable to wear, with magnetic ear pads made of vegan leather and a memory foam headband. Plus, if you own a Sonos soundbar, you can quickly transfer TV audio from the soundbar to the headphones with a push of a button, allowing for a more immersive audio experience nobody else can hear.Of course, we have... Continue reading...

Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images Like parent company Disney, Pixar is now laying off employees as part of Bob Iger's big plan to get the company's spending under control.According to Variety, Deadline, and The Hollywood Reporter, Pixar is laying off 175 staffers - 14 percent of its workforce - as it shifts its focus back to projects meant for theatrical rather than streaming releases. These layoffs come months after Disney began dismissing employees by the thousands in an effort to reduce spending by around $5.5 billion. Though Pixar was never guaranteed to be shielded from the layoffs, it was able to avoid them last year due to production schedules that were already in place at the time.In a memo sent to staff on Tuesday, Pixar president Jim Morris stressed that the... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google only just rolled out AI summaries in search results - and now they're getting ads. In an update on Tuesday, Google says it will soon start testing search and shopping ads within AI Overviews for users in the US.In the example shared by Google, the search engine's AI overview lists a response to the question: how do I get wrinkles out of clothes?" Beneath the AI-generated suggestions, there's a new Sponsored" section with a carousel showing wrinkle spray you can buy from places like Walmart and Instacart. GIF: Google Google says it will display ads in AI Overviews when they're relevant to both the query and the information in the AI Overview." Advertisers that already run certain campaigns through Google... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Expect a bunch of new developer tools to go along with Microsoft's fresh Copilot Plus PCs announcement. Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Microsoft Edge will soon offer real-time video translation on sites like YouTube, LinkedIn, Coursera, and more. As part of this year's Build event, Microsoft announced that the new AI-powered feature will be able to translate spoken content through both dubbing and subtitles live as you're watching it.So far, the feature supports the translation of Spanish into English as well as the translation of English to German, Hindi, Italian, Russian, and Spanish. In addition to offering a neat way to translate videos into a user's native tongue, Edge's new AI feature should also make videos more accessible to those who are deaf or hard of hearing.Edge will also support real-time translation for videos on news sites such as Reuters, CNBC, and B... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft announced a new version of its small language model, Phi-3, which can look at images and tell you what's in them.Phi-3-vision is a multimodal model - aka it can read both text and images - and is best used on mobile devices. Microsoft says Phi-3-vision, now available on preview, is a 4.2 billion parameter model (parameters refer to how complex a model is and how much of its training it understands) that can do general visual reasoning tasks like asking questions about charts or images.But Phi-3-vision is far smaller than other image-focused AI models like OpenAI's DALL-E or Stability AI's Stable Diffusion. Unlike those models, Phi-3-vision doesn't generate images, but it can understand what's in an image and analyze it for a... Continue reading...

Photo by Monica Schipper / Getty Images for IMDb To understand Jane Schoenbrun and their new film, I Saw the TV Glow, you have to appreciate how Buffy the Vampire Slayer evolved in its second season. Continue reading...

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge We've heard the story so many times, that this is the time that Windows on Arm will work and we'll get a revolution in powerful, portable, long-lasting PCs. For a decade, the story has been fiction. This time, though... I don't know. It sort of seems real.On this episode of The Vergecast, Tom Warren joins from Seattle to tell us all about Microsoft's latest event, what a Copilot Plus PC is, how the new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop feel, why Recall could be the AI killer app Microsoft needs, and more. If Microsoft is right about how good the Qualcomm X chips are, this could be one of the biggest weeks in Windows history. Don't forget to subscribe to Notepad!After that, Kylie Robison comes on the show to talk about all things OpenAI.... Continue reading...

Image: Sonos Sonos is refreshing its small portable speaker, the Roam, with a second-generation model that mostly adds some minor quality-of-life improvements. It's reasonable to think of the new Roam 2, available today for $199, as more of a Roam 1.5: this is really what Sonos should've released in the first place.As I reported earlier this month, the Roam 2 can be used right out of the box like any other Bluetooth speaker. That differs from the original, which awkwardly required an initial setup process with the Sonos app - on your home Wi-Fi network, no less - before you could use it on the go. Seems silly for a portable audio product, right? Thankfully Sonos now agrees.The Roam 2 also gains a dedicated Bluetooth pairing button on the back,... Continue reading...

The company's app redesign fumble threatens to steal the thunder from what otherwise looks (and feels) like a strong debut in a new category. Continue reading...

The Aqara Wall Outlet H2 can trigger scenes based upon real-time power usage. | Image: Aqara Aqara just announced the 39.99 Wall Outlet H2, which offers a one-for-one smart replacement for standard 16A wall sockets used in Europe. Its party trick is the ability to monitor the real-time power usage of connected devices and appliances to initiate automations around the home.For example, if you charge your phone when going to sleep you could automatically activate a nighttime scene - arm motion detectors, lock the door, close blinds, and turn off lights - just as soon as the H2 begins pulling more than 10W of power. Or, it can detect when the laundry cycle ends to shut the machine off and send you a notification - that way you don't have to listen to it beep incessantly until you finally walk upstairs with heavy regret for having... Continue reading...

Photo by Nathan Congleton / NBC via Getty Images Scarlett Johansson says that OpenAI asked her to be the voice behind ChatGPT - but that when she declined, the company went ahead and created a voice that sounded just like her. In a statement shared to NPR, Johansson says that she has now been forced to hire legal counsel" and has sent two letters to OpenAI inquiring how the soundalike ChatGPT voice, known as Sky, was made.Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current ChatGPT 4.0 system," Johansson writes. She says that Altman contacted her agent as recently as two days before the company first demoed the ChatGPT voice asking for her to reconsider.

Image: X / Belle Delphine Belle Delphine, the woman who went viral in 2019 for selling jars of her bathwater, revealed earlier this month that the stunt earned her $90K in profits. In a thread on X, the adult content creator and model also explained that because of PayPal, the payment processing system she used for the sale, she never saw a dime of that money.PayPal, without any warning closed my PayPal account and took the $90,000 that I earned from selling my bathwater," Belle Delphine wrote. Image: X / Belle Delphine Now, according to a report from Business Insider, PayPal has reversed this decision, with the company returning to Belle Delphine all the proceeds from the bathwater bonanza five years later.Mary-Belle Kirschner, known as... Continue reading...

Image: OpenAI OpenAI says it has been in touch with representatives for Scarlett Johansson after the company pulled one of the voices on ChatGPT for sounding too similar to the actress.We've been in conversations with ScarJo's team because there seems to be some confusion. We want to take the feedback seriously and hear out the concerns," says Joanne Jang, model behavior lead at OpenAI.Johansson has since responded with a statement of her own, saying, Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current ChatGPT 4.0 system... After much consideration and for personal reasons, I declined the offer. Nine months later, my friends, family and the general public all noted how much the newest system named Sky"... Continue reading...

Image: Intel Intel has revealed a release window for its Lunar Lake laptop processors. The new x86 chips will arrive in the third quarter of this year, and they're designed to enable the new AI experience in Copilot Plus PCs.Intel's announcement coincides with Microsoft's Surface and AI event, where Microsoft leaned on Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite and Plus chips for Copilot Plus PCs that promise high performance and longer battery life. However, Intel claims its Lunar Lake processors are capable of 1.4 times faster performance in Stable Diffusion 1.5 compared to the Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite.The Lunar Lake chips will feature a CPU, an integrated Xe2 GPU, and a neural processing unit (NPU). Intel says the Lunar Lake processor offers three times... Continue reading...

Image: Samsung Microsoft announced a whole passel of Copilot Plus PCs at its Surface event on Monday, and Samsung's entries are a 14-inch laptop and two 16-inch ones, known collectively as the Galaxy Book4 Edge. If you preorder them today, Samsung will throw in a free 50-inch TV! Come on down!The 14-inch Galaxy Book4 Edge starts at $1,349.99 with a 12-core 3.4GHz Snapdragon X Elite processor with 4.0GHz Dual Core Boost, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD (up to 1TB). It has a 14-inch, 120Hz 2880 x 1800 AMOLED touchscreen capable of up to 500 nits brightness, with HDR and VRR and 120 percent of the P3 gamut. It has two USB 4 Type-C ports, HDMI 2.1, and a combo audio jack. It weighs 2.6 pounds. Image: Samsung That's pan-Galactic... Continue reading...

Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge Microsoft has just announced a new Surface Pro, which is part of the new wave of Copilot Plus PCs. The new Pro, which is technically the 11th edition," starts at $999, comes in four colors, and is powered by Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X processors. The base model comes with a 13-inch LCD screen, but you can upgrade to an OLED in some of the higher-end models. The chip is the star of the show here: it's what enables a lot of the AI features Microsoft touted onstage, what makes possible the 14-hour battery life Microsoft promises, and more.The basic silhouette of the hardware hasn't changed much, save for the new Flex Keyboard attachment. The tablet with an integrated kickstand has been a Surface staple for years now, and Microsoft... Continue reading...

Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge The Surface Laptop for non-business types is here, and Microsoft hopes that after four years of Apple Silicon, its new Arm-based Copilot Plus PC" has a shot at MacBooks.The sapphire and slightly pink dune color options are fetching in person, and the 13.8-inch screen size feels generous for the machine's small footprint. I spent a few minutes playing around with the new Recall feature, which lets you search for things you were looking at on your computer - whether they were in an email, on a website, or in a slide deck. AI-powered search helps you find the right information and presents it in a kind of everything-timeline so you can (hopefully) find the info you're after and see it in its context. Honestly, it looks like a super... Continue reading...

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is confident that it finally nailed the transition to Arm chips - so confident that, this time around, the company spent an entire day pitting its new hardware against the MacBook Air.On a recent morning at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, Microsoft representatives set out new Surface devices equipped with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chips inside and compared them directly to Apple's category-leading laptop. I witnessed an hour of demos and benchmarks that started with Geekbench and Cinebench comparisons, then moved on to apps and compatibility.Benchmark tests usually aren't that exciting to watch. But a lot was at stake here: for years, the MacBook Air has been able to smoke Arm-powered PC chips - and Intel-based... Continue reading...

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images Google is pouncing on Microsoft's weathered enterprise security reputation by pitching its services to government institutions. Pointing to a recent report from the US Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB) that found that Microsoft's security woes are the result of the company deprioritizing" enterprise security, Google says it can help.The company's pitch isn't quite as direct as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella saying he made Google dance, but it's spicy all the same. Repeatedly referring to Microsoft as the vendor" throughout its blog post on Monday, Google says the CSRB showed that lack of a strong commitment to security creates preventable errors and serious breaches." Platforms, it added, have a responsibility" to hold to strong... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Microsoft's launching Recall for Windows 11, a new tool that keeps track of everything you see and do on your computer and, in return, gives you the ability to search and retrieve anything you've done on the device.The scope of Recall, which Microsoft has internally called AI Explorer, is incredibly vast - it includes logging things you do in apps, tracking communications in live meetings, remembering all websites you've visited for research, and more. All you need to do is perform a Recall" action, which is like an AI-powered search, and it'll present a snapshot of that period of time that gives you context of the memory.As a matter of fact, everything you do on the PC appears on an explorable timeline you can scroll through. You can... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge At Microsoft's big AI and Surface event on May 20th, the company takes another shot at Arm Windows PCs. Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Are you ready for Microsoft's latest Windows on Arm push? That's what we're expecting at today's Surface and Windows AI event.Rumors suggest Microsoft will unveil a new Arm-powered Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 devices and a host of new AI features for Windows. Microsoft has been building up to this moment for quite some time, so expect to hear a lot about its transition to Windows on Arm.Things kick off at 10AM PT / 1PM ET. Microsoft isn't livestreaming this event, so follow our live blog for all the very latest as it happens. Continue reading...

Photo illustration by The Verge The head of Google sat down with Decoder last week to talk about the biggest advancements in AI, the future of Google Search, and the fate of the web. Continue reading...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge You may not have even thought about replacing your AirTag yet, but Bloomberg reports that Apple is working on a new one that could arrive in mid-2025. The new AirTag will reportedly feature an updated chip with better location tracking - an improvement it might need as competition among tracking devices ramps up.By the time Apple rolls out its refreshed AirTag, the Bluetooth tracking landscape will look a lot different on both Android and iOS. Last month, Google revealed its new Find My Device network, which lets users locate their phones using signals from nearby Android devices. Even Life360, the safety service company that owns Tile, is creating its own location-tracking network that uses satellites to locate its Bluetooth tags.In... Continue reading...

OpenAI says AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice." | Photo: Warner Bros. OpenAI is pulling the ChatGPT voice that sounds remarkably similar to Scarlett Johansson after numerous headlines (and even Saturday Night Live) noted the similarity. The voice, known as Sky, is now being put on pause," the company says.We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice- Sky's voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice," OpenAI wrote this morning.OpenAI CTO Mira Murati denied that the imitation of Johansson was intentional in an interview with The Verge last week. Even if Johansson's voice wasn't directly referenced, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was seemingly already aware of the similarities,... Continue reading...

LG CEO William Cho and home entertainment company president Park Hyoung-sei met with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in February to discuss the collaboration. | Image: LG LG is reportedly pausing its partnership with Meta to develop an extended reality (XR) device that would take on Apple's Vision Pro headset, just three months after announcing the joint venture.While multiple Korean news outlets are reporting that the Meta partnership has broken down entirely due to a lack of synergy" between the companies, LG has denied terminating the deal. LG Electronics continues the XR partnership with Meta forged in February but is controlling its pace," LG said in a statement to Korea JoongAng Daily.Products from the collaboration, set to combine Meta's Horizon Worlds mixed reality platform with content and service capabilities from LG's TV business, were expected to hit the market next year. The potential... Continue reading...