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Google’s forthcoming slate starts at $499. | Image: Google After teasing it at last year’s Google I/O, Google finally confirmed at this year’s developer conference that it’ll release its first-gen Google Pixel Tablet on June 20th. Pricing starts at $499, and if you want to be one of the first to get your hands on the new Android tablet, you can preorder it starting today, May 10th, from Google.Powered by the same Tensor G2 processor found in Google’s Pixel 7 phones — including the new Pixel Fold and Pixel 7A — you can use the tablet for a range of tasks, from making 1080p video calls to sharpening blurry images. With the Google TV app and Chromecast built in, you should also be able to easily cast content from your Pixel phone to the tablet. The forthcoming slate comes with 8GB of RAM, too,... Continue reading…

Project Tailwind is just a concept for now, but it’s a very intriguing one. | Image: Google Google has announced a lot of AI projects at its I/O conference this year, but the one that has me most excited is just a prototype: Project Tailwind.Essentially, it’s an AI notebook trained on your documents that you can query like a sort of personalized tutor or writing companion. Google framed it as a tool for students, but it could have a lot more potential for anyone who deals with a lot of text in their life.“Like a real notebook, your notes and your sources power Tailwind,” said Josh Woodward, a senior director of product management at Google. “How it works is you can simply pick the files from Google Drive, and it effectively creates a personalized and private AI model that has expertise in the information you give it. We’ve... Continue reading…

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Google just revealed some big AI-focused updates to Search and Workspace at Google I/O, and you can now sign up to test them on a dedicated Labs page. They’re a little ways down the page: scroll until you see “Learn More” buttons, and you can click on those to go to the pages that actually let you sign up for the tests.Generative AI tools are all the rage right now, but they’ve also made some famously bad blunders. By letting users opt in to test these early products, Google can get feedback on the new tools by positioning them as “experiments” that may change and improve throughout development.In addition to the Search and Workspace experiments, you can also sign up to test two other products. Project Tailwind is something that... Continue reading…

Google is adding generative AI tools to apps like Docs, Gmail, and more. | Image: Google / The Verge In March, Google announced a bunch of AI features for its Workspace suite of apps in an effort to keep pace with Microsoft’s rapid integration of similar tools. At Google I/O, the company has new branding for this effort — Duet AI — but the features themselves are still not yet widely available to the general public. The company also teased a new feature called “Sidekick” that’s able to read, summarize, and answer questions on documents across different Google apps.Duet AI covers a range of generative AI tools for Google’s productivity apps. As we detailed earlier this year, that includes writing assistance in Docs and Gmail, image generation for Slides, automatic meeting summaries for Meet, and more. But at Google I/O, the only real n... Continue reading…

PaLM 2 is Google’s latest and greatest AI language model. | Image: Google Google has announced PaLM 2: its latest AI language model and competitor to rival systems like OpenAI’s GPT-4.“PaLM 2 models are stronger in logic and reasoning, thanks to broad training in logic and reasoning,” said Google CEO Sundar Pichai onstage at the company’s I/O conference. “It’s also trained on multilingual text spanning over 100 languages.”PaLM 2 is much better at a range of text-based tasks, Google senior research director Slav Petrov told journalists in a roundtable prior to the model’s announcement at Google’s I/O conference, including reasoning, coding, and translation. “It is significantly improved compared to PaLM 1 [which was announced in April 2022],” said Petrov.As an example of its multilingual capabilities,... Continue reading…

Image: Google Google Maps is bringing its recently launched Immersive View to your travel routes, which could make it much easier to understand where you want to go. The new feature, which Google calls Immersive View for routes, was announced at Google I/O 2023 on Wednesday.Immersive View currently offers a 3D view of a place and adds information like weather or traffic to give you a better idea of what’s going on at that location. (It’s kind of like Apple’s Flyover view but with more detail.) By bringing the Immersive View to route planning, you’ll be able to get a bird’s-eye view to help you better visualize the landmarks and buildings you might see while navigating somewhere new. Google will even let you see traffic simulations so that you can... Continue reading…

Image: Nuro Robot delivery startup Nuro announced plans to layoff a portion of its workforce and to pause its commercial operations as it pivots to more research and development. The news comes amid a broader set of financial challenges for the burgeoning autonomous vehicle sector.Nuro grew too rapidly in recent years thanks to an abundance of capital, a zero interest rate environment, and a growing sense of competition. But the company has since run into economic headwinds that are challenging the entire tech industry.Last November, Nuro laid off 20 percent of its staff, or about 300 employees. Additional layoffs will come later this week, Nuro said in a blog post — though it didn’t disclose how many workers would be affected.“Last month, we... Continue reading…

David Tennant and Michael Sheen. | Image: Amazon A few years after the show debuted, Good Omens is finally getting its second season. Amazon announced that season 2 of the show will start streaming on Prime Video on July 28th. Series co-creator Neil Gaiman will return as executive producer and co-showrunner, and much of the main cast is back as well. That includes leads Michael Sheen and David Tennant, alongside the likes of Jon Hamm, Doon Mackichan, and Gloria Obianyo.While season 1 largely followed the events of the novel of the same name from Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, Amazon says that the new episodes will expand on it. Here’s the official description:

Apple’s second-gen AirPods Pro are $50 off and available at their all-time low price. | Image: Chris Welch / The Verge It’s another holiday, so of course there’s yet another sale — and quite a few, in fact. In honor of Mother’s Day, everyone from Amazon to Fitbit is offering discounts on an array of tech and assorted accessories. Many of these will arrive in time for Mother’s Day, too, so not only will you be able to gift Mom the new AirPods Pro or Kindle, but you’ll save some money in the process. And don’t worry if a pair of AirPods is outside your budget, either; there are plenty of affordable deals on Bluetooth trackers, Lego sets, smart speakers, and more.Below, we’ve collected some of the best Mother’s Day tech deals (and then some) for your convenience. And just in case you need some extra help narrowing your options down, be sure to also peruse... Continue reading…

The Nikon Z8 packs impressive specs into a small body. When I reviewed the $5,496.95 Nikon Z9, I said that “Nikon finally put itself in the professional mirrorless camera race, and in a lot of ways it’s now winning.” I said this because, while most camera manufacturers went small and light, Nikon made a big, heavy mirrorless camera with very high specs that felt made for working professionals.The company has now taken those great specs and put them into a smaller $4,000 body. The new Nikon Z8 boasts a 45.7MP stacked CMOS sensor that, thanks to the Expeed 7 image processor, can shoot RAW photos at 20fps for over 1,000 frames. There are also autofocus readings up to 120fps. And impressive video specs: 12-bit N-RAW at 8K 60fps or 4K 120fps. The Z8 can shoot video in 12-bit... Continue reading…

Image: Meta Meta will no longer let creators using its Horizon Worlds social VR playscape make dedicated events, the company announced as part of the platform’s v109 update notes on Tuesday. It’s a surprising shutdown of a feature that some creators hoped would someday see improvements.In March, I published a story about Horizon Worlds creators who run an in-VR comedy club, the Unknown Theater, and how they organized a VR protest over Meta’s treatment of events on the platform. The protestors took issue with changes that made community-organized events much more challenging to find, which poses a problem for the club’s regularly-scheduled shows, and the way Meta gave more prominence to high-profile events featuring big name stars like Carrie... Continue reading…

Image: Private Division Game Freak is best known as the studio behind the mainline Pokémon games, including recent releases like Sword / Shield, Legends: Arceus, and Scarlet / Violet. But the developer is expanding its repertoire for a new release currently codenamed Project Bloom. There isn’t much detail on the game, but it’s described as “a brand-new action-adventure IP.” The studio released a single piece of concept art, which you can see above.To release the game, the studio has partnered with Private Division, a publishing label under the Take-Two umbrella, which previously published titles ranging from The Outer Worlds to OlliOlli World. “We’re ready to help Game Freak unleash their potential and we’re honored to be the first Western publisher to work... Continue reading…

Image: TED Buzz has been building around the secretive tech startup Humane for over a year, and now the company is finally offering a look at what it’s been building. At TED last month, Humane co-founder Imran Chaudhri gave a demonstration of the AI-powered wearable the company is building as a replacement for smartphones. Bits of the video leaked online after the event, but the full video is now available to watch.The device appears to be a small black puck that slips into your breast pocket, with a camera, projector, and speaker sticking out the top. Throughout the 13-minute presentation, Chaudhri walks through a handful of use cases for Humane’s gadget:

Taiichiro Yoshida’s “Jolteon” | Taku Saiki / The Pokémon Company We’re still quite a ways out from Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s big DLC drops, and it’s not clear when the newest Pokémon anime will start airing outside of Japan. But anyone looking for an artful Poké-fix might want to start thinking about visits to Los Angeles this summer to take in The Pokémon Company’s upcoming Pokémon × Kogei craftwork exhibition.Today, The Pokémon Company announced its new collaboration with Japan House Los Angeles to bring Pokémon × Kogei, a collection of over 70 pieces of handcrafted art from 20 different artists working in a variety of mediums, to the US for a five-month-long exhibition. In a press release about the exhibition, The Pokémon Company president and CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara said that it was an honor to... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge Airbnb is revamping its Rooms feature while eyeing AI and betting on work from anywhere. Continue reading…