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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A group of writers is suing OpenAI over claims the company illegally used their works to train its AI ChatGPT chatbot, as reported earlier by Reuters. In a lawsuit filed on Friday, Michael Chabon, David Henry Hwang, Rachel Louise Snyder, and Ayelet Waldman allege OpenAI benefits and profits from the unauthorized and illegal use" of their copyrighted content.The lawsuit is seeking class-action status and calls out ChatGPT's ability to summarize and analyze the content written by the authors, stating this is only possible" if OpenAI trained its GPT large language model on their works. It adds that these outputs are actually derivative" works that infringe on their copyrights.OpenAI's acts of copyright infringement have been... Continue reading...

Photo by Wan Shanchao / VCG via Getty Images We could soon see more lithium-ion batteries made with recycled materials thanks to a new partnership. BASF, a battery materials producer, has announced that it's teaming up with Nanotech Energy, a maker of graphene-based energy products, to produce lithium-ion batteries with recycled materials for customers in North America.While BASF will create the cathode active materials using recycled metals from a Battle Creek, Michigan facility, Nanotech will use those materials to create the lithium-ion battery cells. Making the batteries with recycled metals could decrease their CO2 footprint by around 25 percent, according to BASF.Additionally, BASF and Nanotech Energy will also work with the American Battery Technology Company (ABTC) and... Continue reading...

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge Apple is holding its next big event in September to take the wraps off the iPhone 15, new Apple Watches, and more.Here, we'll go over how and when you can watch the event, along with the new product announcements we're expecting to see from Apple.When is the iPhone 15 showcase?The iPhone 15 event will take place on September 12th, 2023, at 1PM ET / 10AM PT. As shown in the invite sent out by Apple, the company has named the event Wonderlust." It will take place live from Apple Park in Cupertino, California.How to watch Apple's iPhone 15 eventAs is the case with past events, Apple will likely stream the iPhone 15 showcase on its website and YouTube channel. You can also watch it from the livestream embedded at the top of this... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Epic Games has a new chief creative officer. Days after the role's previous owner, Donald Mustard, announced his retirement, Epic Games has revealed his replacement: Charlie Wen. Wen is a former concept artist and designer who's worked at Riot, Disney, Marvel, Sony, and more, and he's got some pretty sweet bonafides.From his LinkedIn:

The Dell XPS 13 is one of the best laptops for high school and college students. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Shopping for a laptop can be stressful - doubly stressful if you or your children will be learning online for the first time. Kids of different ages have a range of different laptop use cases and different needs. And as the choices for best laptop and best Chromebook evolve, so do students' needs. So I spoke to some experts on the subject: students themselves.My recommendations here are meant to accommodate a variety of preferences and price ranges. But they're a jumping-off point rather than an exhaustive list: every student is different. Before making a decision, you'll want to make sure you read reviews and try out devices yourself if you can. I'll do my best to keep this article up to date with items that are in stock.Best laptop... Continue reading...

By 2025, it'll be mandatory to use a Google account with Fitbit. | Illustration: Samar Haddad / The Verge The Fitbit to Google account migration has started. This isn't a big deal if you're new to Fitbit or are about to buy a new Fitbit / Google Pixel device. You'll be prompted at setup to log in with your Google account. But what does this mean if you're a legacy Fitbit user?Technically, you don't have to do anything until at least 2025." Google and Fitbit both say they'll give ample warning and a clear timeline before they start shutting down Fitbit account support. However, once Fitbit account support ends, using a Google account will be mandatory. That means if you don't ever want to merge your Fitbit and Google accounts, it's time to start shopping for an alternative fitness tracker.If you know that you're sticking with a Fitbit... Continue reading...

Logitech has announced the Logitech Reach, an articulating webcam intended to make for better, more interactive remote meetings, online tutoring, and livestreams. Logitech will crowdfund the camera through Indiegogo Enterprise at first, which it told The Verge in a briefing is how it will refine the design and decide on pricing. The company hasn't announced when the campaign will start, but it may price the Reach between a discounted" $299 and $399, per a survey on its site.While the articulating arm is new, the camera itself isn't; it's one of our favorites: the 1080p, 60fps $170 Logitech Streamcam. You can replace it, albeit only with another Streamcam, but at least you won't need to buy a whole new contraption if the camera breaks.... Continue reading...

The Xbox Mastercard. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft is launching an Xbox credit card later this month that will be available exclusively to Xbox testers in the US. The Xbox Mastercard is a no annual fee credit card issued by Barclays, and purchases made using the card will generate points that can be redeemed on Xbox games and add-ons.With the Xbox Mastercard credit card, players can earn card points with everyday purchases to redeem on games and add-ons at xbox.com," explains Dave McCarthy, CVP of Xbox player services. The Xbox Mastercard will be available exclusively to Xbox Insiders in the 50 United States beginning on September 21, with availability to all Xbox players in the 50 United States coming in 2024."The Xbox Mastercard isn't linked to Microsoft Rewards, so it's... Continue reading...

Image: Bethesda Starfield is one of the most demanding games on PC that we've seen recently, with even the RTX 4090 paired with AMD's latest Ryzen 7800X3D just about hitting 60fps on average at 4K with all the settings maxed out. As reviewers and testers scramble to figure out why Starfield is so heavy, the experts over at Digital Foundry have discovered some obvious differences between AMD and Intel / Nvidia systems.If you're on Intel and Nvidia you're getting a bizarrely worse experience here in comparison to AMD GPUs in a way that's completely out of the norm," explains Alexander Battaglia in a detailed 32-minute tech analysis of Starfield on PC.AMD is Starfield's exclusive PC partner," with Bethesda and AMD engineers working to optimize the game... Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge You may not think of it this way, but you probably hear AI voices all the time. When you're talking to Alexa or Siri, that's a model trained on human speech to be able to say almost anything. Did you ever have a celebrity give you directions on Waze? AI. And every time you watch TikTok and you hear that slightly too chipper voice speaking the captions aloud, that's AI all the way down. Heck, Apple's AI will even read you a romance novel before you go to bed.AI systems are getting good at turning text into believable speech in almost any language and almost any voice. And on this episode of The Vergecast, the first in our three-part miniseries on AI, that voice is mine. We trained a bunch of different AI bots with the sound of my voice -... Continue reading...

A screenshot from the game Borderlands 3. | Image: Gearbox Software Embracer Group is reportedly looking at selling off Gearbox Entertainment, the maker of Borderlands, as the gaming conglomerate searches for ways to make money following the collapse of a major funding deal earlier this year. Reuters reports that Embracer is already shopping the studio around but warned that a deal may not happen."This is the latest dip in the rollercoaster ride that has been Embracer's last few years. The company has pieced together an immense gaming and entertainment portfolio through a nonstop series of acquisitions, which has brought together the comics group Dark Horse, Tomb Raider maker Crystal Dynamics, and franchising rights to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, among other properties.Obviously, this cost a... Continue reading...

Note: This content is not displaying properly in Apple News. Please use this link instead.Apple's product events have always been more than sales pitches - they're essentially technology entertainment: presentations that run as long as feature films and make bold promises about how technology is changing and why Apple's new products are (supposedly) the ones leading the charge. The events are undeniably popular. Apple's last iPhone event, in September 2022, has 31 million views on YouTube alone.If you're here, you've certainly seen coverage of Apple's keynotes. Maybe you've tuned in live for a few of them (or a whole bunch, as all of us at The Verge have). We dug through our memories for some trivia questions to see just how well you... Continue reading...

RIP Lightning. You were proprietary, which was annoying, but you were so easy to plug in. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Lightning connector really only had two jobs: be tiny and be foolproof. Apple developed the new port for the iPhone 5, which at the time was simultaneously the largest, thinnest, and lightest iPhone the company had ever made. That made every millimeter of space and milligram of weight matter. For nearly a decade, Apple's go-to connector had been the 30-pin Dock Connector, which was positively gigantic - about four times the size of a standard Micro USB plug. The Dock Connector was also fragile and a bit fussy. You had to stick the cable in just so in order to get the little hooks on the end to attach to the port. After a decade of Dock Connector, Apple needed something better.When Apple introduced Lightning at its annual fall event... Continue reading...

A rehoming pound for preloved robot pups. | Image: Sony Sony is launching a new sustainability program to ensure that even robot dogs are for life, and not just for Christmas. Five years after releasing the ERS-1000 Aibo - a reboot of its popular line of autonomous entertainment" robot dogs from the late 90's - Sony Japan is now launching an Aibo foster parent program" to help ERS-1000 owners who have cancelled their Aibo Cloud Plan to donate the gadget to a worthy cause.According to a machine translation of the Japanese press announcement, Sony will test and repair ERS-1000 units donated to the program before providing them to medical facilities, nursing homes, and other organizations that could benefit from emotional support robots like Aibo. Sony says it plans to charge Aibo foster... Continue reading...

Surprise! More robot vacuums. iRobot launches its new j9 Plus robot vacuum line, featuring a new auto-empty dock that can refill the robot's water tank. | Image: iRobot iRobot's newest robot vacuums are smarter and more powerful, and the mopping bot can scrub your floors more deeply. At least, that's what the company is claiming as it launches its newest flagships: the $1,399 Roomba Combo j9 Plus vacuum / mop and the $899 j9 Plus vacuum. Both models are available to pre-order now at irobot.com in the US and Canada. iRobot also launched two midrange robot vacuums that can mop last week.iRobot is clearly feeling the pressure from its many, many competitors. These latest models focus on bringing more smarts, power, and scrubbing action to keep up with the likes of Ecovacs, Roborock, and Dreame, who are launching ever more fantastical home cleaning bots.The new Roomba Combo j9 Plus is the first robot... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge A WhatsApp for Android beta update (version 2.23.19.8) that came out today contains a new screen called Third-party chats, reports WABetaInfo. For now, the screen is neither functional nor accessible by users, according to WABetaInfo. But its title is a strong clue that this is likely the first step to opening Meta's encrypted messages app to cross-platform compatibility.The beta comes just days after the European Commission confirmed that WhatsApp owner Meta meets the definition of a gatekeeper" under the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA), which requires communication software like WhatsApp to interoperate with third-party messaging apps by March 2024. WABetaInfo tweeted a screenshot of the screen:

The Verge Disney is releasing a 100-film Blu-ray collection on November 14th called the Disney Legacy Animated Film Collection (via The Wrap). Preorders will start on September 18th at Walmart.com, and we regret to inform you it will cost $1,500, according to The Wrap.The collection includes movies from both Disney and Pixar, all crammed into three volumes of discs that span Disney's entire feature film history from 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves to this year's Elemental.What's really impressive is how little filler this package seems to have. Scrolling through the list that The Wrap published, it has every single movie I'd have wanted to see, like all of the Toy Story movies, both of The Incredibles, The Black Cauldron, Frankenweenie,... Continue reading...

The iPhone 14 Pro's Dynamic Island is expected to land on all iPhone 15 models this year. Exciting is overrated, anyway. Continue reading...

There are many like it, but this Breville Barista Express is mine. Zen and the art of espresso machine maintenance. Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Google Photos isn't just a place for storing and sorting your photos and videos - both the web interface and the mobile apps come with a slew of image editing tools so you can spruce up and enhance your pictures before sharing them with the wider world.Google regularly updates these editing tools, and a significant upgrade just arrived on the web. There are new features here (some of which were previously available only on the Android app), including preset color profiles and more granular control over existing features such as brightness and contrast adjustment.All you need to do to try them out is open your browser and navigate to Google Photos. Open an image, click the edit button in the top-right corner (it looks like a series of... Continue reading...

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 5, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, first of all, hi, hello, welcome, and second of all, you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I've been reading about the remarkable pettiness of Disney CEOs and the crypto world's most obvious scams, watching a whole lot of US Open tennis and this wild home-renovation show that's all about VR, drafting fantasy football teams, nodding vigorously at this story about the scourge that is Rotten Tomatoes, trying to figure out how to keep my car off the internet after reading this new Mozilla study, shouting from the rooftops that everyone needs to stop using LastPass and change all their... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Elon Musk's X Corp. is suing the state of California over AB 587, a state bill requiring social media platforms to report to the state attorney general, semiannually, how they're tackling moderation of certain categories of speech. The complaint alleges that the bill violates federal and state free speech laws because it compels companies like X Corp. to engage in speech against their will," as they're forced to settle on definitions for politically-charged" issues like hate speech or racism.X Corp.'s complaint explains that it's difficult to reliably define" hate speech, misinformation, political interference, and other content categories. It adds that defining them is often fraught with political bias" because there's no accepted... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Disney has announced that until October 11th, it will offer a three-month deal on Hulu plus Live TV for $49.99 per month. The $20-a-month discounted subscription, which includes ad-supported Hulu, Disney Plus, and ESPN Plus, comes right as the final weekend of the US Open championships gets underway and the first NFL games of the season happen.Disney's Hulu trial is well-timed, given its spat with Spectrum leaving cable customers with legally dubious options for watching some of the year's biggest sports events.That includes tennis player Daniil Medvedev, who last week said he had to use pirate streams to watch the US Open while playing in it since the hotel TVs were connected to Spectrum. Medvedev, who won the tournament in 2021,... Continue reading...

Finally, the kind of treatment Nintendo's 34-year-old handheld deserves. | Image: Grid Happy Saturday, dear readers! If you're anything like me, chances are you have a soft spot for older tech, specifically the kind of borderline-ancient gadgets and gizmos that often find their way to the landfill or the shoebox under your bed. If so, I'm here to tell you that Grid Studio is running an anniversary sale through Sunday, September 10th, offering discounts on an assortment of framed, nostalgia-inducing gadgets.In terms of what's available, you have some options. The original Game Boy and iPhone 4S - which are on sale for $169 ($130 off) and $99 ($70 off), respectively - are surely the star of the show at 40 percent off, but you can still save 15 percent on a range of other aging, oft-forgotten tech with offer code T15. This... Continue reading...

This one that I got off Amazon for $20 is alright. But it doesn't do everything I need it to. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge I like big phones, but I cannot lie. They come with tradeoffs. Namely, despite having large hands and piano fingers, my iPhone 14 Pro Max doesn't always feel secure in my grasp. That's fine when I'm in bed, surrounded by soft blankets and pillows. It's less fine when I'm trying to text one-handed on public transit or running errands.I first encountered this problem with my first Big Phone, the iPhone XS Max. Get a PopSocket, everyone said. So I did. I had to begrudgingly admit it worked, even if they were ugly as sin. I even upgraded to a PopWallet Plus. But like Icarus, I flew too close to the sun. I'd thought because my original PopSocket had never fallen off, the PopWallet Plus was safe.It was not. Photo by... Continue reading...

The University of Oklahoma blocked TikTok on its devices and networks in December 2022. | Photo by Tharaka Basnayaka / NurPhoto via Getty Images When he first read the email announcing that public universities in Texas had been asked to ban the use of TikTok on their campuses, UT Dallas student Eric Aaberg feared the worst. As a full-time content creator with over 10,000 followers on the platform, the app was central to his life. Would he be forced to delete it? Would he be punished if he were caught using it?I was like, Oh my gosh, are you serious?'" Aaberg recalls. That's so BS. There's no way."Then he learned the reality. UTD was making TikTok inaccessible on its campus-provided networks. For him, that was the extent of the ban.Aaberg immediately relaxed. I was like, Oh, that's nothing,'" he says.Texas is one of over thirty US states that have enacted restrictions... Continue reading...

Image: Wyze Some Wyze security camera owners reported Friday that they were unexpectedly able to see webcam feeds that weren't theirs, meaning that they were unintentionally able to see inside of other people's houses. A Wyze spokesperson tells The Verge that this was due to a web caching issue.Earlier on Friday, users on Reddit made posts about the issue. Went to check on my cameras and they are all gone be replaced with a new one... and this isn't mine!" wrote one user. Apologies if this is your house / dog... I don't want it showing up as much as you don't want it!"I am able to click the events tab and see ALL the events on this random person's camera INSIDE their house," wrote another.I don't know why, but I can see someone else's... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit can now translate posts into eight different languages when viewing them on Reddit's iOS or Android apps or on the web while logged out, according to a post from a Reddit admin (employee). To start, posts can be translated into English, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, and Swedish.I tried it out by looking at this post in r/France. It's in French, but when logged out on the web, I can translate it to English by clicking the Translate" link at the top left of the post. When logged in on the iOS app, I can see the Translate" link, too.Since I don't speak French, I can't speak to the quality of Reddit's translation. (The admin said in a comment that the company is currently using Google services for... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber might be expanding beyond ridesharing and food deliveries. A snippet of code seen by Bloomberg includes a new Chore" option, which appears to let users hire people through the app for various jobs.The code suggests that users may be able to hire a worker - reportedly called a tasker" within the app - for at least one hour, as reported by Bloomberg. In addition to specifying the job they want done, users will also have to state how long it might take and when the worker should show up.From there, Bloomberg reports that users will have to enter their address, much like on Uber's food delivery and ridesharing apps. The app will then determine the cost based on the time required" to complete the job. It's still not clear what... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge The giant metaverse platform is huge with kids and getting more popular with adults. Continue reading...

Screenshot from Roblox's RDC 2023 keynote video Roblox really wants to move beyond being an app for kids, and that includes making it a place where adults actually meet and date. As he closed out Friday's Roblox Developers Conference (RDC) 2023 keynote, CEO David Baszucki predicted that thousands" of adults will meet and form real-life relationships" in dating experiences on the platform over the next five years.It's a wild idea, but Roblox is now in a place where this prediction could feasibly come true. The company recently added experiences that can only be played by users who have verified that they are 17 or older, meaning that people hanging out in those exclusive experiences can be relatively sure they're spending time with people who are old enough to be there. Next year,... Continue reading...

Photo by Frazer Harrison / Getty Images The Boy and the Heron, Hayao Miyazaki's first feature film in a decade, probably won't be his last after all. Studio Ghibli executive Junichi Nishioka told CBC News that not only does he not feel like retiring anymore, he's actively coming into work to create yet another film.Other people say that [The Boy and the Heron] might be his last film, but he doesn't feel that way at all," Nishioka told CBC, through a translator, at the Toronto International Film Festival (via Gizmodo).He is currently working on ideas for a new film. He comes into his office every day and does that. This time, he's not going to announce his retirement at all. He's continuing working just as he has always done."That seems... pretty definitive?And really,... Continue reading...

Donald Mustard at the 2018 Game Awards. | Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images Donald Mustard ran a successful studio that showed what the Xbox and iPhone were capable of. Then, he became the face of one of the biggest and boldest storytelling experiments in history, to borrow a phrase, with Fortnite's massive metaverse.Now, he's done: Mustard, chief creative officer at Epic Games, says he's retiring this month.

ChatGPT has limits, and pairing Captain America and the Winter Soldier is one of them... sometimes. | Image: Disney / Marvel AI-generated fiction has become a subject of perpetual fascination for me. It's the bane of some writers' existence, yet it's increasingly cropping up across both commercial storefronts like Amazon and noncommercial writing sites like Archive of Our Own (AO3). While some creators painstakingly train their own tools, many simply plug prompts into an off-the-shelf commercial chatbot, particularly OpenAI's ChatGPT. And ChatGPT is not a rarefied artist's tool. It's a platform, which means every word that goes into and comes out of it is moderated to avoid offense and controversy. That raises a fascinating question: what stories should you be allowed to make an AI system tell?Apparently, not ones about Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes being... Continue reading...

Image: Getty Intuit, the parent company of TurboTax, is still facing blowback over claims it tricked people into using its free" tax filing service that wasn't actually free. In a ruling on Friday, the Federal Trade Commission's chief administrative law judge (ALJ) ruled that Intuit deceived consumers" and engaged in deceptive advertising."The ruling includes several pages of commercials and online ads where Intuit advertised its Free Edition" software. While the name implies that the service is, well, free, people wound up having to pay to use it - sparking a lawsuit from the FTC and a $141 million payout to affected users. Meanwhile, Intuit's actually no-cost Free File version, which it launched in partnership with the IRS, remained... Continue reading...