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Snapchat users will soon able to create their own Dreams in the Memories section of the app. | Image: Snap After releasing its My AI chatbot earlier this year, Snapchat is now jumping on the AI selfie bandwagon with a new feature called Dreams.Located in the camera roll section of Snapchat called Memories, Dreams are the company's own take on the generative AI selfies that one-off apps like Lensa have already popularized. After uploading a series of real-life selfies in the app specifically for Dreams, Snapchat displays a series of eight-photo packs to choose from with themes like doppelgangers or back-to-school.The first pack of Dreams is free to make and each additional one costs $1 as an in-app purchase. Snapchat users in Australia and New Zealand are getting access to Dreams starting today, followed by access opening up to the rest of... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Grubhub's bringing Amazon's cashierless Just Walk Out technology to some colleges, the company announced today. The food delivery service will first focus on rolling out the tech to colleges, starting with Loyola University Maryland next week before expanding nationwide.The tech is capable of identifying items taken from and returned to shelves so students and staff can buy food from on-campus stores without waiting in line. After scanning a QR code in the Grubhub app, the company will automatically charge their Grubhub-linked meal plans or other stored payment methods after they leave the store.With Just Walk Out technology and Grubhub, students, faculty, and staff will find a convenient way to purchase the items they need with a... Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Over the last few months, Elon Musk's X, which was formerly known as Twitter, has been a bubbling cauldron of strange advertising decisions, continuous upheavals, and weird overflows of testosterone.Not that Twitter has ever been calm waters. Before Musk, Twitter was the social media world's most reliable double-edged sword. One minute, you were retweeting a funny meme account and enjoying some wholesome discussion about your current TV binge fixation, and the next, you were being buried by a harassment campaign or finding your day ruined by a thread that makes you want to throw your laptop through the window.Either way, if you're now on X or were ever on Twitter, it's a good idea to take precautions with your posting history since,... Continue reading...

Next time you zone out in a meeting, Meet can help you catch up on what you missed. | Image: Google If Google Meet's new AI tools are as good as advertised, you might never need to pay attention to another meeting again - or even show up at all. At its Cloud Next conference today, Google revealed a handful of new AI-powered features coming soon to Meet.One of the biggest new AI-enabled features is the ability for Google's Duet AI to take notes in real time: click take notes for me," and the app will capture a summary and action items as the meeting is going on. If you're late to a meeting, Google will be able to show you a mid-meeting summary so that you can catch up on what happened. During the call, you'll be able to talk privately with a Google chatbot to go over details you might have missed. And when the meeting is over, you can... Continue reading...

With SynthID, you should be able to edit a photo all you want without destroying the AI watermark. | Image: Google The Google DeepMind team has believed for years that building great generative AI tools also requires building great tools to detect what has been created by AI. There are plenty of obvious, high-stakes reasons why, says Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis. Every time we talk about it and other systems, it's, What about the problem of deepfakes?'" With another contentious election season coming in 2024 in both the US and the UK, Hassabis says that building systems to identify and detect AI imagery is more important all the time.Hassabis and his team have been working on a tool for the last few years, which Google is releasing publicly today. It's called SynthID, and it's designed to essentially watermark an AI-generated image in a way... Continue reading...

Google Chat now looks more like Slack. And Teams. And everything else. | Image: Google Google is making some big changes to Google Chat, its answer to Slack and Microsoft Teams. The messaging app - aka The Product Formerly Known As Hangouts - is getting a new design, some features that will feel distinctly familiar to Slack and Teams users, and a lot of Google's new Duet AI collaboration tools. Most of the new features are rolling out later this year and early next, but they add up to a much more useful and competitive Chat platform.Duet is the flagship new feature and potentially a reason for a lot of Workspace users to start using Chat. You can use Duet to search and ask questions about all your stuff in Drive and Gmail and summarize both documents and conversations. You'll also be able to use AI-powered autocorrect in... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge General Motors is using conversational AI chatbots to handle simple OnStar calls, freeing up the service's human employees to address more complex requests, the company said Tuesday.GM offered more details about its use of AI to coincide with Google's Cloud Next conference. GM has been working hand in hand with the tech giant on a number of fronts, including Google's built-in infotainment software and OnStar.The automaker introduced its OnStar Interactive Virtual Assistant in 2022, which utilizes Google Cloud's conversational AI technologies to provide responses to common inquiries, as well as routing and navigation assistance. And GM is already planning for future uses of AI in its vehicles.GM offered more details about its use of... Continue reading...

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Microsoft has created custom limited edition Xbox consoles for years, but it's now offering up a way to customize your existing Xbox Series X console without having to buy a new one. The new Xbox Series X wraps were announced last week, with a Starfield-branded version arriving in October, followed by camo editions in November. I've been trying out the Starfield one.The Xbox Series X wrap folds down neatly into a package that's the width of the console, and when attached will cover all the sides fully with the exception of the rear. It feels very similar to Microsoft's Surface Pro keyboards: soft to touch, thin, and lightweight. The wrap fits snugly around an Xbox Series X and is held in place by velcro at the rear.

You get a choice of storage but both available models ship with a fixed 12GB of RAM. | Image: Oppo Oppo has officially unveiled the Find N3 Flip - the company's latest clamshell-style foldable smartphone - at a launch event in China. It arrives six months after sales of the Find N2 Flip predecessor began internationally, and just a month after Samsung's global launch of the Galaxy Z Flip.A global release date and price hasn't been provided for the Find N3 Flip, but Oppo claims in a press release that it'll be coming soon" to international markets. It's also unclear if Oppo will release the N3 in the US, unlike the N2 Flip.While sporting a similar clamshell design to the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5, Oppo's offering differs in its camera array which might give it an edge. Compared to the Z Flip 5's 12 megapixel main camera and a 12... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge The next version of Microsoft's Edge web browser might end up with fewer features than before. The new Edge version 117, which is currently in beta and expected to turn stable on September 14th, according to Neowin and 9to5Google, has five features slated for removal. Those features include Math Solver, Picture Dictionary, Citations, Grammar Tools, and Kids Mode.Microsoft previously mentioned the deprecation" of these features in its last beta channel release notes on August 25th. The company said the reason is to improve end user experience and simplify the More tools menu." Screenshot: Umar Shakir / The Verge The More Tools menu on a stable release of Microsoft Edge. As Microsoft tries to get more people... Continue reading...

AMC's logos as seen in the trailer for the second season of Dark Winds. | Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge A handful of AMC Plus shows, including Fear the Walking Dead and Killing Eve, will have a temporary home on Max, Warner Bros. Discovery's streaming service, starting September 1st and going through October 31st. Statements provided to multiple outlets by executives from both services' parent companies make it clear the goal of the deal is to help AMC Plus while adding more content to Max, which is good because, with the strikes in Hollywood bringing productions to a halt and the challenges AMC is facing in the cable space, both companies probably need it.This promotional arrangement with Warner Bros. Discovery is a terrific opportunity to serve up some of our most popular and critically acclaimed programming to millions of Max... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge OpenAI finally released a version of ChatGPT that promises to protect business data as more companies consider using the platform but worry about privacy and security.In a blog post, OpenAI said ChatGPT Enterprise offers better security and privacy, unlimited high-speed access to GPT-4, more powerful data analysis so companies understand information much faster, and the ability to ask more complicated questions to ChatGPT.Privacy and security have been a concern for businesses who fear their data could be used to train ChatGPT and are worried that using the tool might accidentally expose sensitive customer information to AI models. OpenAI said users of ChatGPT Enterprise will have control and ownership over their data, which will not... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon is once again flirting with a $35 minimum for non-Prime subscribers to qualify for free shipping. It's currently testing the increased minimum order amount, which has been set at $25 since 2017. The price actually started at $25 before Amazon raised it to $35 in 2013, then raised it again to $49 in 2016, when it began lowering it to $35 and, later, $25. (Yes, it's all very confusing.)Amazon's ongoing roller-coaster ride of pricing naturally pushes people toward its $139 per-year Prime membership - where you don't have to worry about minimum order amounts on items that qualify for free two-day shipping (or faster).CNBC's reporting indicates that the minimum order hike hasn't yet rolled out to all non-Prime accounts, and a quick... Continue reading...

Photo by Paul Hennessy / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images A new crew recently arrived at the International Space Station (ISS), ready to begin a six-month stint of life in orbit. During its stay, Crew-7 will work on scientific research, including a new suite of experiments into the effects of spaceflight on the human body over time - information that could be crucial to future crewed missions to the Moon and beyond.The crew consists of NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov.The launch had been scheduled for Friday, August 25th, but was delayed by around 24 hours for an extra safety review of the valves in the Dragon's environmental control and... Continue reading...

Poe is now available on the web, iOS, Android, and the Mac. | Image: The Verge Poe, the AI chatbot platform created by Quora, has added a slew of updates, including a Mac app, the ability to have multiple simultaneous conversations with the same AI bot, access to Meta's Llama 2 model, and more. It's also planning an enterprise tier so that companies can manage the platform for their employees, according to an email that was recently sent to Poe users.As my colleague David Pierce wrote in April, Poe's ambition is to be the web browser for AI chatbots. Adam D'Angelo, the CEO of Poe's parent company Quora, also sits on the board of OpenAI and thinks that the number of AI bots will keep increasing. Poe wants to be the one place where you can find them all.I think there's going to be this massive ecosystem similar... Continue reading...

An alleged image of the iPhone 15 USB-C port. | Image: Majin Bu Apple said last year it will bring USB-C to the iPhone, and now alleged pictures of the iPhone 15's USB-C port hint at light blue and green colors for Apple's new non-Pro phones, according to leaker Majin Bu (via AppleInsider). The images, which were shared on X (formerly Twitter) this morning, show three naked USB-C modules in the two colors, as well as a dark, black shade. In addition, Majin Bu shared pictures of somewhat crude mock-ups of the phone, including one with an apparently off-center hole for the USB-C port.

A rendering of Mercedes-Benz's charging hub. | Image: Mercedes-Benz Mercedes-Benz announced its first electric vehicle DC fast charging hubs will launch in the fourth quarter of 2023, with the first station locations coming to Atlanta, Georgia; Chengdu, China; and Mannheim, Germany. The so-called Mercedes-Benz High-Power Charging Network" will have 2,000 chargers installed worldwide by the end of 2024, the automaker said.At the beginning of this year, Mercedez-Benz announced it would go halfsies on spending about $1 billion with solar company MN8 Energy to build out a major worldwide charging network for electric vehicle owners. At the time, its plans included the installation of more than 2,500 DC fast chargers provided by ChargePoint at 400 hub locations in North America.Today, Mercedez-Benz says it... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Today, the SEC announced its first enforcement action against NFTs in a case that was settled by Impact Theory, the NFTs' issuer.The SEC said the NFTs issued by Impact Theory were unlicensed securities. The company agreed to a cease-and-desist order, paid $6.1 million in penalties, and agreed to destroy all of the NFTs in question still in its control. Impact Theory will also eliminate any royalties that it might have received from sales of those NFTs on secondary markets.It's not clear whether the enforcement action means the SEC broadly views NFTs as securities offeringsIn 2021, the company sold three tiers of NFTs that it called Founder's Keys. Impact Theory invited potential investors to view the purchase of a KeyNFT as an... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge DoorDash is launching a new answering service for restaurants that could put you on the phone with AI when ordering takeout or delivery. With the new service, restaurants can have AI field phone calls and take orders from customers, with live agents available to support customers at any time."The answering service is supposed to pick up every phone call that restaurants receive, making it easier for staff to manage takeout orders while juggling in-person customers. When someone calls in, the AI-powered service will attempt to upsell them by offering curated recommendations to complement their meal," while also offering multiple language options. Meanwhile, callers who have ordered from the restaurant before will get the chance to... Continue reading...

Image: Matt Jewell Hey, remember when Foxconn bought a bunch of buildings around Wisconsin just before an election and said it was building innovation centers" around the state in a transparent attempt to build support for the giant tax credits it was given to build an LCD factory that never arrived? Yeah, it's selling two of those buildings. The news was first reported by Wisconsin Public Radio, which got a quote from Foxconn saying that selling its Green Bay property, known as the Watermark building, will add to the vibrancy of the city's downtown." Very good.You might recall two of these buildings, in Eau Claire and Green Bay, because The Verge's Josh Dzieza went and looked in the windows months after they were purchased and noticed they were empty.... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Google and Meta tend to pay their software engineers more than their peers in Big Tech, according to new data from Blind, an anonymous forum for tech employees.Apple and Microsoft, meanwhile, pay the least for entry-level engineers on average, though compensation tends to become more comparable across Big Tech for senior talent. Amazon's promotions can take longer than its peers, and its pay ranges for engineers are the widest.The data is based on self-reported compensation packages from Blind users from January of last year to this month. While public companies have to report the average annual compensation for all their employees compared to what their CEOs make, this kind of level-specific pay data is closely guarded unless you are... Continue reading...

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge The 13-inch Apple MacBook Air with M2 is on sale for its lowest price to date, dropping to just $899 ($200 off) for the base model at Best Buy. The M2 Air starts with 256GB of storage, 8GB of RAM, and an eight-core M2 processor, though if you prefer stepping up to the 512GB model with faster storage and a 10-core chip, that's also $200 off and selling for an all-time low of $1,199 at Best Buy.The M2 MacBook Air earned our top rank of all laptops not long after it was released in fall of 2022; at the time, it started at $1,199. It got a $100 price cut once Apple introduced the larger 15-inch version, so getting that same laptop for just $899 is a bit of a steal now. The M2 Air is an excellent everyday machine that's super thin and light... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Microsoft is reportedly dragging its feet on fixing yet another security vulnerability. This time, it's a flaw in the Skype mobile app that could let hackers obtain your IP address by opening a message with a link - no clicking required, according to a report from 404 Media.The flaw, which was uncovered by the independent security researcher Yossi, allows hackers to see a user's general location by having them open a message containing a link. While Yossi told Microsoft about the flaw earlier this month, 404 Media reports that the company only promised to issue a patch after the outlet reached out.To attest to the severity of the flaw, it doesn't seem to matter what website the link takes you to. The researcher demonstrated the flaw... Continue reading...

Image: The New York Times The New York Times' push into gaming continues as the company is widely launching its next big release: Connections. The game, which has been available in beta since June, is now rolling out basically everywhere the Times games are available. That includes the web, the NYT Games app on both iOS and Android, and soon," it will also be available in the play" tab of the main Times app alongside Wordle, sudoku, and the crossword puzzle.Connections is essentially a word-matching game. Here's the official description:

The Chandrayaan-3 rover leaves India's lander. | Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has been posting images and videos of its lunar rover to X (formerly Twitter) after successfully soft-landing its Chandrayaan-3 lunar module on the Moon's south pole last week. The posts include footage of the rover's exit and its first several meters of driving as well as pictures from the rover itself and data from the mission's instruments.The first video of the rover, posted on Friday, shows it leaving the Chandrayaan-3 lander on a ramp and driving onto the Moon. The ISRO posted the video in a thread that also included footage from the lander approaching its landing site and kicking up dust as it touched down on the surface.

Above, a sight that will not be visible from Flannery Associates' new city. | Photo by Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Over the past five years, a company named Flannery Associates has spent $800 million scooping up land outside San Francisco - without explaining who's behind the effort or what they plan to do with the land. Now, local officials who'd been looking into the matter finally have their answer: a group of wealthy and recognizable tech leaders are behind the venture, and they're hoping to use the land to build a brand new city, according to reports from The New York Times and Bloomberg.The reports say that LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Andreessen Horowitz investors Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, Emerson Collective founder Laurene Powell Jobs, and other tech leaders and investors have put money into the... Continue reading...

The ViewFinity S9 is a 27-inch 5K display. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Several months after announcing the 27-inch ViewFinity S9 desktop monitor at CES 2023, Samsung is finally circling back around with pricing and availability details. Let's get right to it: the 5K display, which is being positioned as a prosumer option meant to rival monitors from LG and Apple, will cost $1,599.99 and you can now order it directly from Samsung and other retailers including Amazon.$1,599 is the same starting MSRP as Apple's Studio Display - also a 27-inch 5K monitor. It's rumored (though not confirmed) that these two screens could be using near-identical panels if not the exact same component. A 5K display is incredibly sharp at 27 inches, but by the rest of today's standards, this display feels a bit dated: there's no... Continue reading...

Last year's Nothing Phone 1 is getting essential Glyph notifications and more. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Nothing's Phone 1 got a major OS update, bringing software parity between the company's first device and its latest Phone 2. Nothing officially announced the Nothing OS 2.0 release on Discord, letting owners of the Phone 1 know that exciting new features, enhanced customization, and improved functionality" are coming to the early adopters.As covered last week, this Nothing OS 2.0 update is based on Android 13, which is what currently ships on Nothing's latest device. Nothing also has a beta OS release that runs atop Android 14, which works on Phone 1.Nothing OS 2.0 for Phone 1 includes the monochromatic visual identity" the company has heavily leaned into for its latest device. It includes new Quick Settings widgets that let you flip... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge WhatsApp is working on a feature that will let you share original quality photos and videos. As spotted by WABetaInfo, the app now includes an option to select original quality photos or videos" in version 2.23.18.12 of the WhatsApp beta for Android.The app will treat the images and videos as documents, however. A screenshot taken by WABetaInfo shows a new option to choose from gallery" in the app's document picker, which specifically mentions the ability to send original quality photos and videos.Previously, you had to use a workaround to send original quality media by changing their file extensions to PDF or DOC, but this new feature should help you avoid that process completely. The ability to send original quality photos and... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge What if you could have a conversation with your notes? That question has consumed a corner of the internet recently, as companies like Dropbox, Box, Notion, and others have built generative AI tools that let you interact with and create new things from the data you already have in their systems.Google's version of this is called NotebookLM. It's an AI-powered research tool that is meant to help you organize and interact with your own notes. (Google originally announced it earlier this year as Project Tailwind but quickly changed the name.) Right now, it's really just a prototype, but a small team inside the company has been trying to figure out what an AI notebook might look like. Ultimately, if NotebookLM sticks around, it'll probably... Continue reading...

A Pixel Fold. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Google appears to be working on a satellite SOS feature for Google Messages that would let users text emergency services from remote areas without a conventional cell signal. As spotted by developer Neil Rahmouni, early code in the Google Messages app shows work on an integration with Garmin and its emergency Garmin Response service. Google also appears to have started work on a UI for messaging emergency responders.Garmin's emergency service uses the Iridium satellite network, which Iridium says is capable of delivering a signal anywhere on Earth." There is a big catch, though, when it comes to using satellite SOS services from Garmin: it requires a $15 per month subscription on Garmin's own devices. So while this would be a great... Continue reading...

British Airways and other flights are affected during this busy bank holiday. | Photo by Urbanandsport / NurPhoto via Getty Images The UK is suffering a major disruption to air travel due to unspecific technical issues" affecting flight control computer systems. Britain's National Air Traffic Services (NATS) says it has applied traffic flow restrictions to maintain safety," with several airlines reporting disruptions felt at airports across the world. Hundreds of flights in and out of the UK have been delayed, according to The Guardian, with delays of up to 12 hours reported.Despite the disruption, NATS says that UK airspace is not currently closed (as of 12:40PM UK time) during this very heavily traveled bank holiday Monday. NATS provided no indication for when the issue might be resolved.

Image: Dolby Dolby Atmos is about to get a whole lot more adaptable. Today, Dolby is announcing Dolby Atmos FlexConnect, which it describes as a new feature that seamlessly pairs together a TV's sound system with accessory wireless speakers to deliver a more extensive and immersive Dolby Atmos sound experience." Since it factors your TV speakers into the equation, FlexConnect doesn't necessarily require a soundbar at the center of everything. TCL will become the first TV manufacturer to offer FlexConnect with its upcoming 2024 TV lineup, and it also plans to release a line of wireless speakers optimized to support the feature.Dolby says that FlexConnect intelligently optimizes the sound for any room layout and speaker setup, offering the freedom... Continue reading...

My 2021 iPad Pro 11-inch. | Image: Wes Davis / The Verge As the third tier of Apple's connected personal computing devices, the iPad sits in an awkward place in 2023. It's a supremely capable product, there's no doubt about that. It's powerful and responsive; most of the models have beautiful screens; and its interface is friendly. But it's also incomplete and insistent on doing things the Apple-prescribed way. And even as it dominates the tablet landscape, sales of iPads have withered since 2020, as Mark Gurman noted in Bloomberg today. In short: it needs more.To be clear, I like my 2021 iPad Pro a lot. It's a nice device for reading and solid for watching TV in bed. It's also indispensable for following recipes while I'm cooking. But when Steve Jobs first introduced the iPad in 2010, saying... Continue reading...

Honestly, I'd keep this grip attached at all times just for the wrist strap. Camera grips are back, baby. Continue reading...

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 3, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. Thanks to everyone who sent stuff in this week - we're starting to get the hang of how this all works, and I really hope it's fun and useful! I know I've already downloaded a terrifying number of new apps thanks to y'all.Only one housekeeping thing today: Installer now has an RSS feed! You can add this link to any RSS reader, and it should work (let me know if you run into issues). Also, Installer's new homepage has every edition ever - all two of them so far. We're still working on some cool new ways you can subscribe and contribute to Installer, but hopefully, we've got all the basics covered now.This week, I've been watching season 3... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A federal judge in California's eastern district has dismissed the Republican National Committee's (RNC) lawsuit against Google over the company's alleged discriminatory" spam filtering, according to The Washington Post.The suit complained Google intentionally sent RNC political emails to Gmail users' spam folders, and the RNC sought restitution for donations it allegedly lost as a result" of those lost emails. The RNC cited a North Carolina State University study that found Gmail was more likely to mark emails from Republican campaigns as spam. One of the study's authors spoke to the Post in May last year, saying its findings had been misrepresented. Muhammad Shahzad noted that it only tested default email settings - in tests on... Continue reading...

Linus Sebastian discusses changes coming to Linus Tech Tips. | Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge Linus Media Group (LMG) founder Linus Sebastian explained LMG's HR policies and how it will improve accuracy and ethics in a video posted to YouTube last night.Following a 10-day pause to evaluate its processes, Sebastian said the company held meetings with team members to dig through every misstep" and identify communication and ... teamwork challenges" that resulted in accusations of LMG's quality issues. He added that the company will no longer insist on uploading videos daily and will slow down to verify its content is accurate.Sebastian did not directly address sexual harassment allegations recently levied by a former employee, Madison Reeve. Sebastian detailed changes to its HR structure over the year, including hiring... Continue reading...