The Verge

The explosive growth of AI chatbots in the past three years, since ChatGPT launched in 2022, has started to have some really noticeable, profound, and honestly disturbing effects on some users. There's a lot to unpack there - it can be pretty complicated. So I'm very excited to talk with today's guest, New York Times [...]

On Wednesday, Google announced a partnership with StopNCII.org to combat the spread of non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), the company announced today. Over the next few months, Google will start using StopNCII's hashes to proactively identify nonconsensual images in search results and remove them. Hashes are algorithmically-generated unique identifiers that allow services to identify and block [...]

Corsair wasn't joking around when it named the new $99.99 Sabre V2 Pro Ultralight Wireless gaming mouse. At 36 grams, it weighs just a bit more than seven US nickels. Is that too light? Maybe. Most of Corsair's competitors haven't shipped a mouse much below 50 grams (Sony's new Inzone mouse is 48 grams). I [...]

It's been almost exactly a year since I first saw Megalopolis, and the last 12 months haven't been kind to Francis Ford Coppola's long-gestating epic. It mostly bewildered critics and audiences, earned back just a fraction of its $120 million budget, and still isn't easily accessible via streaming or a Blu-ray release. Megalopolis is a [...]

Nanoleaf is getting serious about its expansion into beauty tech, adding two new LED red light-emitting devices to its product lineup. The company says that its new Light Therapy Wand brings the benefits of a professional facial into the palm of your hand," while its new Light Therapy Panel uses 160 high-focus LEDs" to provide [...]

Epic is continuing its attempts to turn Fortnite into a platform that's bigger than just battle royale - this time by giving creators the ability to make and sell in-game items. Starting in December, Fortnite creators will be able to sell items directly from the islands they've built, using new tools that will be launching [...]

Valve has announced that it will stop supporting 32-bit versions of Windows for its Steam app next year. Valve will continue to support 64-bit versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11 with Steam, but on January 1st 2026 it's game over for 32-bit versions of Windows. Windows 10 is the only 32-bit version of Windows [...]

Modern earbuds often tout how many microphones they have on each bud, each helping contribute to crystal-clear calls and heavy duty noise cancellation. Nothing's Ear 3, announced today, may be the first to boast about how many they have on the charging case instead. There are two, for what it's worth, and they make up [...]

We all know there's a lot of tech to potentially upgrade in your life, but for those who want to upgrade their downtime with inexpensive, relatively short video games, I have good news. 2025 has already featured a wealth of excellent titles to spend your time with, including ones from smaller and independent developers that [...]

Waymo is teaming up with tech transit startup Via to integrate its autonomous vehicles into city public transit networks, starting with a growing suburb of Phoenix. In Chandler, Arizona, Waymo's robotaxis will soon join the town's Flex microtransit service. Users book rides on the Chandler Flex app to be picked up by a shared vehicle [...]

Reddit wants more users and more money from Google in exchange for an even bigger mountain of data feeding its AI machine, according to Bloomberg. The negotiation shows a new front in the struggle between Big AI and content providers as they try to harvest new revenue streams without bleeding out the very traffic and [...]

Tesla is redesigning the electronic door handles that are currently under investigation for trapping people inside their vehicles. In an Interview with Bloomberg, Tesla design chief Franz von Holzhausen said that the company is looking to make the handles more intuitive for occupants in a panic situation." The update will involve combining the electronic and [...]

A software update rolling out to Samsung's Family Hub refrigerators in the US is putting ads on the fridges for the first time. The promotions and curated advertisements" are coming despite Samsung insisting to The Verge in April that it had no plans" to do so. Samsung is calling it a pilot program for now, [...]

Rivian's heavily financed micromobilty spinoff Also is promising something on October 22nd. Also's calling it transcendent mobility," which is a fancy way of saying e-bike after a poorly masked video leaked the rather unique design. While Also is a legally separate company from Rivian, it's chaired by Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe. Rivian also [...]

Meta just showed off all the latest in wearable technology, virtual reality, augmented reality, and more at its annual Connect keynote. In addition to the long-awaited reveal of Meta's updated Ray-Ban smart glasses, the company had some other exciting surprises to share, too. Here's a roundup of all the new tech and software updates announced [...]

Meta is making it easier to stream movies and TV shows on your Quest headset. During its Meta Connect keynote on Wednesday, the company announced that it's rolling out a Horizon TV hub with access to streaming apps like Prime Video, Peacock, Twitch, and - finally - Disney Plus with Hulu and ESPN. The image [...]

Meta is making improvements to its Roblox-like social platform Horizon Worlds, with the biggest upgrades being the introduction of a new game engine with better graphics as well as the Meta Horizon Studio to help creators to make custom in-game experiences. Meta Horizon Studio is an editor that lets creators make VR worlds. Creators can [...]

Meta is rolling out tech that lets you capture a real-world space with a Quest VR headset so you can create a digital, photorealistic VR replica. The company calls the tech Hyperscape," and as part of a gradual rollout beginning today, users will be able to use the beta Hyperscape Capture app with their Quest [...]

Mark Zuckerberg mostly uses the new Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses to send text messages. Lots of them. He has been wearing the glasses around the office, firing off WhatsApp pings to his execs throughout the day. "I run the company through text messages," he tells me recently. "Mark is our number one heaviest user," Alex [...]

I want to preface this hands-on by saying that I've been a smart glasses skeptic for many years. In 2019, I even made a two-part mini documentary with a thesis that consumer smart glasses couldn't happen without massive societal and technological shifts. Well, color me pink and let me find a shoe to eat. After [...]

When the Oakley Meta HSTN arrived earlier this year, it wasn't what I thought Oakley-branded smart glasses would be. Sure, they had Oakley's famous PRIZM lenses, but where was the wraparound design? Where were the athlete-focused features like stronger water and sweat resistance? Confusingly, it felt like the HSTN glasses were just Ray-Ban Meta glasses [...]

Microsoft is getting ready to launch its Xbox full-screen experience on the new Xbox Ally devices next month, but it looks like you won't need new hardware to get it. Windows enthusiasts have discovered a way to enable this new Xbox mode early in Windows 11, thanks to the latest 25H2 update to the operating [...]

Microsoft has been steadily improving its Paint app for Windows 11 in recent years with a dark mode, transparency and layers, and even AI-powered image creation. Now, Microsoft is adding two new Photoshop-like features to Paint. You'll soon be able to save your Paint creations as a project file, much like a Photoshop Document (.PSD). [...]

Google is starting the rollout of its Ask Gemini AI assistant in Google Meet, but it will initially only be available to select Google Workspace customers." The assistant can answer participant's questions by referring to captions generated during the call, resources like Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides they have permission to view, and public websites. [...]

Logitech's next flagship wireless gaming mouse is ditching mechanical switches for an analog system equipped with haptics actuators to simulate the feeling of a click. The mouse is called the Pro X2 Superstrike, and it's coming early next year for $179.99. The inductive analog system (which Logitech calls Haptic Inductive Trigger System, or HITS) boasts [...]

A new study from Pew suggests that Americans aren't particularly optimistic about AI. A full 50 percent of respondents said they were more concerned than excited about the use of AI in their daily lives. That's down ever so slightly from 52 percent in 2023, but it's up significantly from 37 percent in 2021. Americans [...]

Logitech has announced the Astro A20 X wireless gaming headset, which has a feature that console players might appreciate having: it lets you swap between audio from two platforms, be it an Xbox, Switch, PC, or PS5. It launches October 8th for $179.99. The A20 X ships with a transmitter called the Playsync Base that [...]

Garmin is launching its Venu 4 smartwatch today, expanding on the accessibility and sleep tracking features introduced with the Venu 3 two years ago. It's available now in 41mm and 45mm models and starts at $549.99 which is $100 more expensive than the Venu 3. Following the Venu 3's introduction of nap tracking the Venu [...]

Zoom's vision of filling meetings with AI clones has nearly arrived. On Wednesday, the video conferencing app announced that you'll soon be able to create a photorealistic" avatar of yourself in case you aren't camera-ready." That means your AI avatar can appear polished if you've just crawled out of bed. Zoom plans on launching this [...]

I have bad news for ecosystem straddlers who use Google Nest products in their smart homes but rely on iPhones and Apple Home for control: the much-loved Starling Home Hub has been discontinued. In a message on its website, Starling said it can no longer manufacture the hub due to rapidly rising costs of doing [...]

Amazon is opening the door to even more AI ads by offering sellers access to a new chatbot that can generate promos with a simple text prompt. With the new tool, Amazon sellers can describe the type of ad they'd like to see, and the AI chatbot will draw from a seller's brand guidelines, product [...]

It's been almost a decade since former Blizzard chief creative officer Rob Pardo launched a new studio called Bonfire Games - and now it's finally showing off its very first game. It's called Arkheron, and looks a bit like a multiplayer take on Diablo. In each match, 15 teams made up of three players compete [...]

In American Sweatshop, German director Uta Briesewitz's new psychological drama, every character working at a content moderation firm understands that ingesting horrific images is part of the job. They have all seen the disturbing footage uploaded to social media, and they know how important it is that someone is always there to determine whether those [...]

Google's Discover feed will soon include more than just articles from around the web. In the coming weeks, Google plans on incorporating YouTube Shorts alongside posts from platforms like Instagram and X. The Discover feed lives on your homescreen in the Google app, serving up personalized content - and some AI-generated summaries - based on [...]

TCL has launched a new budget-friendly smart lock that incorporates all of the electronics into a door knob, making it easy to install on interior home doors that don't have a dedicated dead bolt. The K1 is available now for $79, and TCL says it will operate for up to 12 months on a set [...]

Look, delays happen. The Analogue 3D, a console made to display N64 games in 4K, has had its release window pushed multiple times. That frustrated me for a while because I wanted to get my hands on 8BitDo's slick 64 Bluetooth controller that was made to go along with the console. Its release was likely [...]

OpenAI this week released what it says is the largest study yet of how people are using ChatGPT, revealing fresh insights on who is using the technology and what they are using it for. The big surprise was finding out that most ChatGPT chats aren't about work. In June 2025, 73 percent of ChatGPT messages [...]

First announced nearly a year ago, Casio's robotic pet Moflin has been selling so well in Japan, according to the Wall Street Journal, the company is now expanding its availability to other markets including the UK and the US. Preorders for the gold or silver version of Moflin are now available through Casio's US website. [...]

What we carry says a lot about what's important to us, who we are, and who we aspire to be. This fall, it's worth examining what you bring with you every day and thinking about how you could refine it. Perhaps you carry too much, and a utility pouch that's just a bit bigger than [...]

PS5 users can now run select games in Power Saving" mode and pair DualSense controllers with multiple devices. Sony started beta testing these features in July, but they're now rolling out to everyone today in the version 25.06-12.00.00 console software update. The new Power Saver mode will reduce the power consumption of PS5 consoles in [...]

Meta is about to kick off its annual Connect conference, beginning with a keynote address from CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday night. Zuckerberg plans to discuss the latest on AI glasses" and will lay out Meta's vision for artificial intelligence and the metaverse," according to the Connect website. As my colleague Victoria Song writes, Meta's [...]

There's a new, free tool to help Americans monitor power outages in real time. Compiling data from its vast network of home sensors, startup Whisker Labs is launching the feature today in its Ting app. You don't actually need to have one of these sensors in your home to use the Ting app to track [...]

Waymo is bringing its robotaxis to Music City, USA. The Alphabet-owned company plans on launching its robotaxi service in Nashville in 2026. Customers will be able to hail a ride initially through the Waymo One app, and then later through the Lyft app. Lyft will also handle fleet services, such as cleaning, maintenance, and EV [...]

Holding a principled commitment to the First Amendment is a challenge. Even so, it's been bemusing to watch the Republican Party - which has spent years demanding legal cover for sending spam emails, sabotaging public health, and avoiding social media moderation - launch a full-scale broadside against it over the past week. Authorities are just [...]

As first noted by Games Fray last week, Nintendo and The Pokemon Company were granted a US patent earlier this month involving summoning characters and making them battle. Headlines popped up with similarly vague language as concern spread on social media: That's a thing in tons of games! Can they do that? Is that even [...]

It's very thin. And very light. And quite nice to look at. It also only has one camera, the battery life isn't amazing, and it's not like Apple saved some special new software feature for its fanciest phone. The new iPhone Air is just... the nice one. So where does that leave the Air? And [...]

It's a tricky year to review the iPhone Pro. It's long been the go-to choice for anyone who wants an iPhone with the nicest screen, longest battery, and great cameras. But the display is no longer unique to the Pro, cameras have largely gotten "good enough" on most phones, and Apple has a new model, [...]

For a while now, choosing the standard iPhone has meant missing out. It's not just that you missed out on classic "pro" features like a more powerful processor or a telephoto lens - it's that you missed out on core make-your-phone better stuff. Stuff like the Dynamic Island or the Action Button or a screen [...]

The iPhone Air is as much a statement as it is a phone. It says something about the person using it: that they don't mind giving up a few things for a phone that's meaningfully thinner and lighter. That they can give up all those extra cameras on the back and just live with one. [...]

In 2023, DJI created a massive hit with the Osmo Pocket 3, a tiny steadicam with a far bigger one-inch-type sensor that dramatically improved the quality of video you could get with so tiny a gadget. Today, the company may be doing the same with its most popular portable line of drones - and with [...]