The Verge

On Thursday evening, with White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks looking over his shoulder, Donald Trump signed an executive order aiming to grab unilateral power over regulating artificial intelligence for the federal government. The order can't by itself unilaterally override state AI laws, but it directs federal agencies to take steps to reduce [...]

The Game Awards are back once again to showcase a metric ton of commercials, provide the gaming public with their monthly dose of Muppets, and validate gamers' opinions on which title should be named the Game of the Year. I don't wanna say it's a foregone conclusion what this year's GOTY will be - Silksong [...]

Disney and OpenAI's new $1 billion partnership feels emblematic of the terrible times we're living through. In exchange for access to the generative AI firm's APIs and tools like ChatGPT, the studio plans to let users of OpenAI's Sora AI video generator create clips featuring hundreds of Disney-owned characters. Sora AI users will be able [...]

At a congressional meeting to vote on the future of kids online safety, the most spirited debate of the day was about a bill that wasn't even on the agenda and Apple CEO Tim Cook. 18 bills that aim to regulate the internet to protect children are now headed for a vote before the full [...]

Amazon Prime Video has pulled its AI-powered video recap of Fallout after viewers noticed that it got key parts of the story wrong. The streaming service began testing Video Recaps last month, and now they're missing from the shows included in the test, including Fallout, The Rig, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, Upload, and Bosch. The [...]

Apple has lost its appeal of a massive district court ruling in its ongoing antitrust dispute with Epic Games. That April ruling from Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said that Apple "willingly" failed to comply with a 2021 order allowing mobile app developers to link to payment options outside of Apple's, and she barred Apple from [...]

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a bill Thursday that will require advertisers to identify if an ad includes AI-generated people. Hochul's announcement said the bill, S.8420-A/A.8887-B, was the first of its kind in the US, describing it as a "common sense" law that would bring increased transparency and protect consumers. A separate bill also [...]

Fortnite players on Android devices in the US can once again download the game directly from the Google Play Store, not long after it returned to Apple's App Store in May. Its return comes five years after it was removed from Google's app store as Epic Games pushed back against Apple and Google's app store [...]

December 31st, 2025 is the deadline to save the Google Stadia controller. That's less than three weeks from today - but there's never been a better time. Last month, I discovered the controller is finally a first-class citizen in Steam and SteamOS. The Stadia controller was originally designed to connect to your Wi-Fi network and [...]

You may not have heard of Hoto, but as my colleague Sean Hollister pointed out in his recent profile, the company is quickly becoming a household name thanks to its penchant for high-quality design. Hoto's new PixelDrive electric screwdriver is a great example of what the company is capable of, and right now it's on [...]

The Chrome team at Google recently built a new browser. It takes a query or prompt, opens a bunch of related tabs for you, and then builds you a custom app for whatever you're trying to do. Ask it for travel tips and it'll build you a planner app; ask it for study help and [...]

We've seen NSFW offerings from Grok and other chatbots, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been teasing adult content within ChatGPT for a while. Now, we have a timeline. Fidji Simo, OpenAI's CEO of Applications, told reporters during a Thursday briefing about GPT-5.2 that she expects "adult mode" to debut within ChatGPT in the first [...]

GPT-5.2 is here, and with it, OpenAI wants "to unlock even more economic value for people," Fidji Simo, the company's CEO of Applications, told reporters in a Thursday briefing. She said it's been in the works for "many, many months." The company calls GPT-5.2 its "best model yet for everyday professional use" in a release, [...]

Amazon's Luna cloud gaming service is coming to cable boxes from Comcast and Rogers. The Luna app is already available via web browsers, Fire TV devices, Fire tablets, and many smart TVs from Samsung and LG, and this new expansion will bring the service to "millions" more devices, according to Amazon. Starting Thursday, Luna will [...]

Hamlet is having something of a renaissance in 2025. This year's edition of the Toronto International Film Festival featured three different takes on the idea, including Chloe Zhao's adaptation of the play's inspiration and Aneil Karia's rendition set in modern-day London. But the most out-there version came from Belle director Mamoru Hosoda, who transformed Shakespeare's [...]

Apple's latest gadgets have gotten some notable discounts lately - including the recently released Apple Watch Series 11, which is still on sale for $100 off at Amazon. Now, we're seeing the AirPods Pro 3 drop down to their lowest price to date, with the noise-canceling earbuds going for just $199 ($50 off) at Amazon [...]

The first trailer for DC Studios' Supergirl feature is finally here to give us a look at what the Woman of Tomorrow is made of. Though Superman's (technically) older cousin Kara Zor-El (Millie Alcock) was kind of a mess when we first met her, she's trying to pull it together in Supergirl's new trailer. The [...]

Disney has accused Google of engaging in copyright infringement on a "massive scale," claiming its AI models have generated images resembling characters from Frozen, Deadpool, Star Wars, and others, according to a report from Variety. In a cease-and-desist letter sent to Google on Wednesday, Disney demands that the tech giant stop allegedly infringing on its [...]

WhatsApp says it's making "voicemails a thing of the past" by introducing a new feature that pretty much works like voicemail. Missed call messages are rolling out as part of WhatsApp's latest feature drop, which makes it easier for you to leave voice or video notes in chats after you've called someone who doesn't answer [...]

This is Lowpass by Janko Roettgers, a newsletter on the ever-evolving intersection of tech and entertainment, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week. When news broke last week that Meta may cut the budget of its Meta Reality Labs unit by as much as 30 percent, followed by reports that the company is [...]

OpenAI is facing a wrongful death lawsuit after a 56-year-old man killed his mother and took his own life after delusion-filled conversations with ChatGPT. The lawsuit, filed in a California court on Thursday, accuses ChatGPT of putting a "target" on the back of 83-year-old Suzanne Adams, who was killed at her Connecticut home in August. [...]

State attorneys general from across the US are demanding more accountability from AI companies, warning them that their chatbots may be violating state laws. As reported by Reuters, the AGs have given Meta, Google, OpenAI, and others a deadline of January 16th, 2026 to respond to demands for more safety measures for generative AI, saying [...]

The Nintendo Switch 2 comes with a pair of Joy-Con 2 controllers, but it's always good to have a second set around in case more people come over for a few rounds of Mario Kart World. BJ's Wholesale Club is offering a set of Joy-Con 2 controllers for $79.99 ($20 off), a new all-time low. [...]

A company called INIU has issued a recall for its BI-B41 10,000mAh power banks because the lithium-ion batteries they use "can overheat and ignite, posing fire and burn hazards to consumers." The company has received 15 reports of the power banks overheating resulting in 11 fires causing over $380,000 in property damage and three minor [...]

AT&T is launching Connected Life, a new smart home security offering built around Google Home that keeps working during power or internet outages. Connected Life can be self-installed and features smart home cameras from Google Nest and security hardware from Abode, as well as professional monitoring. This follows Google launching APIs for its smart home [...]

The Nex Playground is a motion-controlled, cube-shaped console for ages five and up that's selling like hotcakes. It came in third for home console sales during Black Friday week, according to sales data shared on Bluesky from Mat Piscatella of Circana, falling behind only Nintendo's Switch 2 and Sony's PlayStation 5. That's an impressive feat [...]

A new three-year licensing agreement announced between Disney and ChatGPT operator OpenAI will allow the Sora video generator to create "user-prompted social videos" that feature more than 200 characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars. "The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence marks an important moment for our industry, and through this collaboration with OpenAI [...]

It's Game Awards season, y'all. That special time of the year when we gather together to celebrate video games and the people who make them... by watching expensive commercials briefly punctuated by the odd awards speech or musical performance. For better or worse, The Game Awards is the biggest night on the video game event [...]

Entrenching generative AI into Adobe's creative software ecosystem is paying off, according to the company's latest earnings. While its share price has fallen by more than 37 percent this year at the time of writing, Adobe is reporting a bump in annual profits driven by record revenue of $23.77 billion for 2025 - an 11 [...]

Retro gaming handheld manufacturer Ayaneo has finally revealed the design of its first Android phone, which has been teased since August. Fittingly, it too is a throwback - to 2011's Sony Ericcson Xperia Play. The Pocket Play has a screen that slides up to reveal a full set of inset physical controls, including a D-pad, [...]

When business leaders spout buzzwords like "AI," "8K" and "5G," sometimes in the same sentence, we often get a sneaking suspicion they don't know what they mean! With President Donald Trump, there's no need to wonder: he clearly has no idea. "What does [6G] do? Give you a little bit deeper view into somebody's skin?" [...]

The Trump administration could soon require tourists from dozens of nations to hand over their social media handles before entering the country. Under a proposal from US Customs and Border Protection, the agency would make social media history from the past five years a "mandatory" part of the screening process, as reported earlier by The [...]

A new beta feature on Spotify takes the idea behind the Discover Weekly playlist and puts the control in users' hands through AI prompts. Prompted Playlists, which are initially launching in New Zealand on Thursday, let users type out exactly what they want to listen to, with as much or little detail as they like. [...]

A startup called Operation Bluebird is trying to reclaim Twitter's branding, as reported earlier by Ars Technica and Reuters. Last week, Operation Bluebird filed a petition that asks the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to cancel X Corp.'s ownership of the "Twitter" and "Tweet" trademarks, claiming they've been "abandoned" by the Elon Musk-owned company. [...]

A startup developing technologies to harness solar power in space is throwing its hat in with big tech companies attempting to build out data centers that orbit Earth. The US-based company, Aetherflux, announced on Tuesday that it plans to launch its first data center satellite in early 2027 - the first piece of a larger [...]

My classic Sony CRT television won't power on. My living room is chilly because my Mitsubishi heat pump isn't putting out enough hot air. I want my Japanese N64 to play US games, too, but I've been too busy to pop the hood. What if I had an AI companion to talk me through? iFixit [...]

Reddit is starting to test verified profiles, the company announced today. Users who are verified as part of this "limited alpha test" will have a gray checkmark next to their username "across profiles, communities, feeds, post detail pages, and search results." For this "initial test," Reddit says it's "selected a group of public figures and [...]

It looks like someone may have finally done the smart door right. Doma Home, a new company from the creators of the August smart lock, has announced its first product: the Doma Intelligent Door. A motorized smart door that automatically opens as you approach and closes after you enter, the Doma door also features built-in [...]

Apple's Studio Display is an investment even while Amazon and Best Buy have the tilt-adjustable model marked down to $1,368 ($231 off) -its lowest price in several months. The 27-inch 5K monitor looks incredible, and has a built-in six-speaker audio system that impressed us in our tests. Its three microphone array and Apple's optional voice [...]

Meta's next AI model could mark a change in its "open source" AI strategy that Mark Zuckerberg had called "the path forward." Currently, the company is working on a new AI model, code-named Avocado, that it might charge for access to, Bloomberg reports. Last year, Meta launched its open source (depending on who you ask, [...]

I'm convinced that whoever said it's about the journey, not the destination, has never traveled. Try sitting on a plane for 16 hours - plus delays, airport security, and a snoring seat neighbor - and then get back to me. While getting from point A to point B can feel like a test of endurance, [...]

A new feature coming to Android will allow users to get more support during emergencies by sharing a live video feed from their phone with 911 responders. For instance, if someone calls 911 for a medical emergency, the 911 responder can use the live video feed to walk the caller through CPR or first aid [...]

Google is planning to update its AI-powered search feature, AI Mode, to include more in-line links to the sources it's pulling information from. The company included the update as part of a broader change to the way it interacts with sources, saying it will also introduce the links embedded inside AI Mode with an AI-generated [...]

With a smart video doorbell, your front door's communication skills go from 1980s landline to a modern smartphone. Combining a motion-activated camera with a microphone, speaker, and buzzer, a doorbell camera sends alerts to your phone, allowing you to see who's at the door without needing to open it or even be at home. Whether [...]

The US State Department is turning back to an old typeface in its latest quest to tear up anything related to diversity or accessibility. In an internal document seen by Reuters and The New York Times, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the Biden-era decision to switch to Calibri typeface in official department [...]

Last week, I told multiple AI chatbots I was struggling, considering self-harm, and in need of someone to talk to. Fortunately, I didn't feel this way, nor did I need someone to talk to, but of the millions of people turning to AI with mental health challenges, some are struggling and need support. Chatbot companies [...]

If you want a cheap gift that feels expensive, the Echo Spot is a great pick. The versatile smart display can handle dozens of everyday tasks, and right now it's back at its all-time low of $44.99 ($35 off) at Amazon, Target, and Best Buy. That actually beats its Black Friday and Cyber Monday pricing [...]

I asked a simple question at Google's Project Aura demo last week. What do you call these things? To my surprise, multiple people launched into a vigorous discussion on the taxonomy of glasses-shaped face computers. It turns out "smart glasses" is out as a term. The term "AI glasses" is in. Kind of. Actually, it [...]

Netflix is the frontrunner to become Warner Bros.' new owner, but the war for control of the legacy studio isn't over just yet. Paramount Skydance has made its own outsize offer for the company that would give CEO David Ellison even more control over the news and entertainment landscape. And while Warner Bros. Discovery has [...]