The Verge

Illustration: The Verge Google will soon start requiring political advertisers to prominently disclose" when they made their ads with AI, as reported earlier by Bloomberg. Starting in November, Google says advertisers must include a disclosure when an election ad features synthetic content" that depicts realistic-looking people or events."That includes political ads that use AI to make someone look as if they're saying or doing something they never did, as well as changing the footage of an actual event (or fabricating a realistic-looking one) to create a scene that never happened.Google says these types of ads must contain a disclaimer in a clear and conspicuous" place, noting that it will apply to images, videos, and audio content. The labels will need... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is making some notable changes to the ad controls available to creators. Beginning in November, YouTube is dropping individual ad controls in YouTube Studio for pre-roll, post-roll, skippable, and non-skippable ads on new videos, according to a support document from the company bylined by Rob," a member of the YouTube team.Instead, creators will only be able to choose between having ads before or after a video on or off. If you choose to have those ads on, YouTube will choose whether to show pre-roll, post-roll, skippable, or non-skippable ads when appropriate," per a notice on another support document.YouTube argues that this won't be too big of a deal. Most creators shouldn't notice a change as they already have many of... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge In the first half of July, Microsoft disclosed that the Chinese hacking group Storm-0558 had gained access to emails from around 25 organizations, including agencies in the US government. Today, the company is explaining how that happened thanks to a series of internal errors while sharply underscoring just how serious a responsibility it is to maintain massive, growing software infrastructure in an increasingly digitally insecure world.According to Microsoft's investigation summary, Storm-0558 was able to gain access to corporate and government emails by obtaining a Microsoft account consumer key," which let them create access tokens to their targets' accounts.Storm-0558 obtained the key after a Rube Goldberg machine-style series of... Continue reading...

Illustration by Nikolas Kokovlis / NurPhoto via Getty Images A few weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg announced that WhatsApp was in the process of rolling out HD photo sharing, with HD video soon to follow. As of today, the process is complete: Meta has confirmed to The Verge that both HD photos and HD videos are available to everyone.Both HD photos and HD videos have rolled out globally," WhatsApp spokesperson Ellie Heatrick told The Verge in an emailed statement. The company also posted a promotional video to Threads earlier today encouraging users to share epic moments" with the new feature, which has been available to beta testers for the past few months.After you select a photo or video to send from your camera roll, you should see an HD" button at the top of your screen (to the left of the... Continue reading...

Image: CFOTO / Future Publishing via Getty Images Apple is investing millions of dollars per day into artificial intelligence, according to a new report from The Information. The company is reportedly working on multiple AI models across several teams.Apple's unit that works on conversational AI is called Foundational Models," per The Information's reporting. It has around 16" members, including several former Google engineers. It's helmed by John Giannandrea, Apple's head of AI, who was hired in 2018 to help improve Siri. (Giannandrea has reportedly expressed skepticism to colleagues about the potential usefulness of chatbots powered by AI language models.")Additional teams at Apple are also working on artificial intelligence, per The Information. A Visual Intelligence unit is... Continue reading...

Image: Clubhouse Clubhouse is back, kinda. The app that popularized social audio rooms is reinventing itself to be more like a messaging app" with new voice-only group chats called chats," as detailed in a blog post from the company.Think of a chat as something like a group Instagram story that you contribute to with your voice. You kick off a chat by recording a voice message, and then you can send that chat around to your friends. They can then hop in and add their own voice recordings to create a kind of voice collage / conversation.The app has been totally redesigned around these new chats. When I opened up the newly updated app, it prompted me to start a new chat and share it. Chats are also what I'm seeing first in the new home tab in the app,... Continue reading...

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge This might finally be the end of the hurricane street shark phenomenon. X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, updated its crowdsourced fact-checking Community Notes feature to tag videos directly and automatically populate those notes onto any matching videos. The same tagging was recently added to images with Community Notes, and last week, the platform added the ability to see the number of matching images that apply to each fact-check. Now, approved Community Notes will automatically show up every time a flagged video is posted or reshared.According to a post on the tool's X account, a select group of Community Notes power users, known as Top Writers" (if you have to ask what that is, you're probably not a part of the club),... Continue reading...

Slack AI can summarie channels and threads. | Image: Slack Slack is launching a built-in AI tool that can do things like summarize threads, recap channel highlights, and search for answers within your messages. In an update on Wednesday, Slack says it will start testing the new feature, called Slack AI, this winter.One of the features that Slack AI will offer is channel recaps, which can automatically generate summaries of messages sent on a particular channel. This could likely help you sift through unrelated chatter and catch up on important conversations you might've missed. The tool will be able to summarize threads, too. Image: Slack This is what it might look like when you ask Slack AI to search your messages. Another handy feature coming with Slack AI is the... Continue reading...

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge Whenever I get a new phone and eventually install Instagram, the first thing I do is dig through the app's settings menu for a toggle that reads Upload at highest quality." According to the app, when enabled, this ensures you'll Always upload the highest quality photos and videos, even if uploading takes longer. When this is off, we'll automatically adjust upload quality to fit network conditions."But here's the weird part: by default, this setting is switched off. Aren't we in the 5G era? Isn't this the social media platform where people obsess over presenting themselves in the best possible light? Why would the highest-quality uploads be an opt-in feature in 2023? And how come they buried this several layers deep in settings?... Continue reading...

Hint: the 7800 XT is the smaller one on top. | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge The most important thing about the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT graphics card, available today, is its $500 price.In almost every other way, it's unremarkable. Reviewers agree: its performance is often indistinguishable from the AMD RX 6800 XT, a card released nearly three years ago. (Nvidia also recently released GPUs that couldn't always beat their two-year-old predecessors: What has the industry been doing all that time?*)Here's the difference: three years ago, the RX 6800 XT debuted at $649.When you factor in inflation, that's $762 in today's money. The reason today's reviews of the RX 7800 XT are quite favorable, including ours, is that AMD is cutting against inflation.Not just standard economic inflation, by the way - also the... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge Max, the streaming service owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, could soon offer sports that you can watch for free during a limited period of time, according to a report from Bloomberg. The promotion will reportedly start later this year, with Warner Bros. Discovery hoping to attract more viewers by showing live basketball, baseball, and hockey games.You may only get to watch free sports for a few months, though, as sources tell Bloomberg that it will make viewers start paying in February or March next year. Warner Bros. Discovery currently owns the media rights for several major sports, including the National Basketball Association (NBA), Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Hockey League (NHL), and others.The company is reportedly... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge China's government has banned officials at central government agencies from bringing foreign-branded phones, including the iPhone, into offices or using them for government work, reports The Wall Street Journal. Citing unnamed sources, the article says China seeks to cut the country's reliance on foreign technology" and beef up cybersecurity, as well as keep sensitive data from leaking to foreign governments.While the move broadly targets foreign-made smartphones, Apple stands out, as China remains one of its biggest markets. The country also continues to be a huge part of its supply chain, even as it transfers manufacturing to countries like India. With China as such a big part of its bottom line, Apple has made changes to its iOS... Continue reading...

Give this phone the software update policy it deserves, Google. | Image: Google If this year's I/O was any indication, we're going to hear about AI a lot at next month's Pixel 8 launch. AI for your videos, AI for your text to the babysitter, blah blah blah. Fine. But there's something else I'm hoping to see in the next generation of Pixel phones, even if it's not quite the attention-getting feature that AI is: four years of OS upgrades.Samsung does it. Xiaomi just announced it's doing it. Even OnePlus is doing it. So why is Google - the company behind Android - still only offering three OS upgrades for its flagship phones when a growing number of other OEMs are promising four? Sure, most Pixel phones launch with the latest OS version, so in some cases, those three OS upgrades are actually even-steven with other... Continue reading...

A still from Elemental. | Image: Disney / Pixar Disney has announced that Disney Plus subscribers will be able to stream Elemental, its parable about interracial relationships, beginning September 13th. The company is also releasing a making-of documentary for the film, called Good Chemistry: The Story of Elemental, and an Up-related short called Carl's Date for its streaming service.Our own Charles Pulliam-Moore praised the film's visuals in his review for The Verge. But he felt the racial framing suffered, partially from the elements-as-people metaphor but potentially also from the writers' eagerness to avoid mistakes made in Zootopia.Elemental, which had a $200 million budget, managed to pull in $480 million on its box office run, according to Disney, despite a mediocre June... Continue reading...

Image: MrBeast The faces on YouTube thumbnails might start to look a bit different. A lot of thumbnails feature a person with an open mouth in shock, awe, excitement, or horror because of a belief that the open-mouth face entices people to click on a video. But MrBeast, the individual with the most subscribers on YouTube, said Wednesday that he's starting to see longer watch times on videos where his thumbnail face has a closed mouth instead of an open one.You can see his results for yourself thanks to some screenshots he shared on X (formerly Twitter) of what appears to be YouTube's creator dashboard. The screenshots don't include numbers about differences in watch time (and that metric doesn't necessarily translate to more views), but they all show... Continue reading...

Sonos' second-gen Move looks similar to the prior model but is now available in a new green shade. | Image: Sonos Four years after releasing its first portable speaker, the Sonos Move, Sonos has finally given it a refresh. After months of leaks and rumors, the company has officially confirmed the Sonos Move 2 will arrive on September 20th for $449.As expected, the Move 2 comes with some significant improvements, which is perhaps why the new Move costs $50 more than its predecessor. According to Sonos, it features true stereo sound and can seamlessly switch from Bluetooth to Wi-Fi. It also boasts twice the battery life as the original Move, allowing it to last up to 24 hours on a single charge.We have yet to test the Move 2, but the original model is our favorite portable Sonos speaker, so we have high hopes. You'll have to stay tuned for our... Continue reading...

The Boy and the Heron. | Image: Studio Ghibli One of the most secretive films of the year just got a little less mysterious with the first trailer for The Boy and the Heron. The latest film from Studio Ghibli and perhaps the final feature-length project from famed director Hayao Miyazaki, The Boy and the Heron premiered in Japan in July.In the lead-up to its debut, Ghibli was refreshingly vague in discussing the film, which is also known as How Do You Live (and based on Genzaburo Yoshino's novel of the same name). Prior to the trailer, all fans had to go on were a few still images, simple plot descriptions, and the teasiest of teasers.For more on the film, be sure to check out our review from its Japanese premiere. But if you want to go in completely spoiler-free, here's the... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is considering changing how and when it shows ads during videos on its main app on connected TVs. One of those changes is more infrequent but longer ad breaks that won't interrupt what you're watching as often.Instead of showing short ads interspersed throughout a video, YouTube is trying out longer chunks of ads for non-Premium subscribers that appear in the middle of the content. It's still not clear how long these new ad breaks will last, as Nicky Rettke, the head of YouTube's ad products team, tells The Verge that there isn't a set length.There are a lot of factors that go into deciding when to show an ad break... so it's a bit dynamic," Rettke says. The overall change is that we're going to continue to have those dynamic... Continue reading...

Image: Celal Gunes / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images The Pentagon is considering expanding its fleet of drones and autonomous systems in the next two years, possibly enhancing it with AI.According to The Wall Street Journal, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said the Department of Defense plans to develop AI systems intended to be small, smart, [and] cheap" to counter threats from China and other countries.The Journal said Hicks will announce plans to add more capabilities to the country's network of drones and sensors that monitor military activities in other countries. One such possibility is a fleet of solar-powered distributed pods of self-propelled [autonomous] systems" that can provide near-real-time information. The department may also look into autonomous ground-based... Continue reading...

Photo by Sarah Stier / Getty Images Whenever there's another of these drawn-out carriage disputes between cable providers and content owners - and they happen often - I always say that the customers are the ones who get hurt the most. Last week, nearly 15 million Spectrum subscribers abruptly lost their ability to watch ESPN, ABC, and other Disney-owned channels right as Labor Day weekend got underway - and smack dab in the middle of the US Open. In the days since, Disney and Spectrum parent Charter Communications have been throwing blame back and forth like a hot potato.But many people are getting fed up with the blackout, and this includes the US Open athletes themselves. I guess in a lot of hotels, they have Spectrum, so I cannot watch it on TV anymore," Daniil... Continue reading...

Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip 5 starts at $799.99. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge The new iPhone 15 may be just around the corner, but if you're an Android lover looking for a phone that'll stand out, Samsung's newest foldables might fit the bill better. Right now, you can buy the unlocked Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip 5 starting at $799.99 for the model with 256GB of storage from Amazon.Unlike many popular phones on the market, the Galaxy Z Flip 5 is a 6.7-inch flip phone that can fold in half to fit in your pocket. Compared to its predecessor, it comes with a larger, 3.4-inch front cover screen that makes it easier to respond to texts, check your calendar, and interact with apps. It's also faster thanks to the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, while its IPX8 rating against full water immersion offers extra peace of... Continue reading...

In another sign generative AI has pierced through mass consciousness, Dictionary.com has added generative AI, GPT, and LLM to its list of words.It also expanded the definition of hallucinate in the context of generative AI, where it means to produce false information contrary to the intent of the user and present the information as if it were true.The site, which also runs Thesaurus.com (aka my best writing friend), announced 566 new entries and 348 new definitions for the fall of 2023 as the dictionary works to keep pace with the ever-changing English language."Other new words or expanded definitions include nepo baby (a celebrity with a famous parent), jawn (something or someone that doesn't need a specific word), biohacking... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is rolling out a new feature to Google Workspace customers: the ability to lock Google Drive files.While a file is locked, no one with any level of access can make edits, comments, or suggestions; essentially, it's in read-only mode until you unlock it. The company wrote in a blog post announcing the change that file locking started rolling out to Rapid Release domains yesterday and will do so over the next 15 days, while those on Scheduled Release domains will start seeing it on September 20th, also with a 15-day rollout period.Restricting a file in Google was already something you could do with the Google Drive API or through file approvals - a similar feature that lets you, say, request approval for a draft that's locked... Continue reading...

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is trying out games as its next experimental offering. The company is adding a new Playables" section on the site that will include games that can be played on both the desktop website and mobile devices. Playables will only appear for a limited number of users to start," and there was no list of game titles published at this time.9to5Google reports that one of the games to grace the new YouTube Playables experiment includes Stack Bounce, which involves a 3D ball bouncing on top of rings you must smash through with well-timed clicks. If you've heard of the game before, it's because Google already offers it on its minigames service, GameSnacks.To check if you're included in the games experiment, look for a new Playables"... Continue reading...

Image: Getty Polestar has found another product to slap its logo on, and it's not an electric car.The Swedish-based, Chinese-owned EV maker will launch its own smartphone in December, Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath told CNBC at the IAA Mobility auto show in Munich, Germany, this week. The phone will be produced by Xingji Meizu, a smartphone company owned by Polestar's parent company, Geely.It doesn't sound like this will be an attempt to challenge China's major smartphone makers like Apple and Oppo. Rather, this will become a way to highlight all the ways in which Polestar's technology-packed cars are basically just computers on wheels, Ingenlath told the network.It doesn't sound like this will be an attempt to challenge China's major smartphone... Continue reading...

Image: Sonos The Sonos Move 2 will be released on September 20th for $449, the company announced this morning. I've already reported extensively on the new product, which is Sonos' third portable speaker after the original Move and much smaller Roam. There are several meaningful improvements to the second-generation Move: it will output stereo audio (the original was only capable of mono), offer more than twice the battery life of its predecessor, and the speaker has redesigned controls that match those of the recent Era 300 and Era 100.The external design is very similar to the original Move. This is still a hefty portable" speaker, but at least there's still a built-in handle for carrying it around your home (and outside). Inside the Move 2 are... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge I'm not going to lie: it sucks that Disney Plus is going to increase the price of its ad-free plan next month. But today, Disney softened the blow somewhat. First, the company introduced a new ad-free Disney Plus and Hulu plan for $19.99 per month, which is about $12 cheaper than buying both separately. And now - even better - Disney's offering a good Disney Plus deal.Through September 20th, new and eligible returning subscribers can get three months of Disney Plus (with ads) for $1.99 per month instead of $7.99 a month. Altogether, that's $18 in savings, which is kind of like getting two months free.Again, though, the deal just applies to the ad-supported tier - which isn't increasing in price. Still, it's a good deal, even if you... Continue reading...

AMD's latest GPUs will put even more pressure on Nvidia's RTX 40-series pricing. Continue reading...

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Roku will be laying off 10 percent of its employees - more than 300 people - in its third round of workforce cuts in under a year. As reported by Variety, Roku revealed the move in an 8-K SEC filing early on Wednesday and says it made the decision in an effort to reduce operating expenses.The company determined to implement additional measures to continue to bring down its year-over-year operating expense growth rate," the filing reads. Roku said these measures will include consolidating office space, cutting back on outside expenses, and limiting new hires - the typical steps companies take in these moments.Roku has had three rounds of layoffs in under a yearRoku expects the workforce reduction" to be largely complete by the end... Continue reading...

The investigations should take a maximum of five months. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple and Microsoft have managed to temporarily prevent iMessage and Bing being subjected to obligations under the EU's strict new Digital Markets Act. Instead, the European Commission announced on Wednesday that it's opened four market investigations into Bing, Edge, Microsoft Advertising, and iMessage, to determine whether they should be designated as "core platform services" under the DMA.The DMA - one of several new EU laws designed to restrict the power of tech companies and help create a level playing field - creates a host of new obligations for large tech companies. Messaging services like iMessage are required to offer other companies some level of interoperability if they're deemed to be big and important enough. Bing would be... Continue reading...

Image: Microsoft MSI has started issuing BIOS updates to fix Windows 11 Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) unsupported processor" errors that started appearing with its Intel 700 and 600 Series motherboards last month. Microsoft initially investigated reports of errors that appeared after the latest KB5029351 update, and MSI now confirms it has found and fixed the source of the problems.MSI had been issuing updates for its 600 and 700 series motherboards in preparation for Intel's upcoming 14th Gen desktop CPUs, codenamed Raptor Lake-S Refresh. These BIOS updates were marked with a support next-gen CPUs" update note, which clearly introduced the BSOD problem.The BSOD will only appear with the latest Intel componentsMSI and Intel found the root cause of... Continue reading...

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is holding a special OneDrive event on October 3rd where the company plans to offer a sneak peek at our AI plans" for the cloud storage service. The future of file management" event will be live streamed on Microsoft Teams and looks like it will include a redesigned OneDrive interface, alongside new AI-powered search and sharing features.Join Jeff Teper and the OneDrive product team as they showcase the next generation of file management across Microsoft 365," reads Microsoft's announcement of the OneDrive event. We'll give a sneak peek at our AI plans which include new search, sharing, and information queries across all your files in OneDrive." Image: Microsoft Microsoft's OneDrive teaser. The... Continue reading...

Image: Getty Waymo is using insurance data to make the case that its self-driving cars are safer than human drivers. The report, a result of the collaboration first announced last year between the Alphabet-owned company and the insurer Swiss Re, is intended to show how driverless vehicles crash less often and damage less property than human-driven vehicles.Waymo's data comes at a time of increased scrutiny of self-driving vehicles after California regulators voted to dramatically expand the ability of robotaxi companies to operate in San Francisco despite warnings from city officials about driverless vehicles blocking roads and delaying emergency responders.The study compares Waymo's liability claims data with those claims filed by human drivers... Continue reading...

A graphic showing the companies and services being designated as gatekeepers. (Click here for higher resolution image.) | Image: European Commission The European Commission has officially confirmed which tech companies, and which of their services, count as gatekeepers" under its strict new Digital Markets Act (DMA). The companies listed all appeared on a provisional list released in early July, and mostly consist of American tech giants. There's Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft from the US, plus ByteDance from China. 22 core platform services provided by gatekeepers must now comply with the DMA's obligations by March 2024.Broadly, the DMA is the EU's attempt to rein in the market power of Big Tech by opening up entrenched platforms and curbing ecosystem lock-in and anti-competitive behavior, making them compete on the merits of their products and services alone. Major... Continue reading...

Image: Ultimate Ears Where do you go next after branding your speakers with names like the Boom, Megaboom, Hyperboom, and Wonderboom? Well, apparently the natural progression has led Ultimate Ears to none other than Epicboom." That's the new speaker that the company just announced today. It's a chunky device that gives off more of a Sonos Move aura as opposed to UE's signature cylindrical Bluetooth speakers. Priced at $349.99, the 4.36-pound Epicboom promises 360-degree audio output from its 4.6-inch woofer and two high-frequency 45mm transductors.This speaker is rated IP67 against dust and water - that's a win over the Move's IP56 rating and means you can submerge it for up to 30 minutes - and it'll last for 17 hours of playback on a charge, the company... Continue reading...

A composite of images from Google's Pixel 8 Pro simulator. | Images: Google If you had any remaining questions about what the Pixel 8 Pro looks like, Google is here to answer them. The company has put online a 360-degree simulator that lets you turn the device over back to front and top to bottom, with helpful indicators pointing out where various sensors and ports are located. The simulator shows the phone in three colors and confirms that the Pixel 8 Pro will be getting a new temperature sensor on the back beside the cameras.The simulator was spotted by Jose Ruben and highlighted by Mishaal Rahman, who both posted about it on X. Google doesn't appear to have published a link to the website - but all you have to do is plug the new phone's name into the URL of Google's other Pixel simulators, and the new phone... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge Apple has struck a deal with the chip design company Arm that goes past 2040, as reported by Reuters. A disclosure noting the arrangement appeared in new documents Arm filed as part of its planned IPO.The statement about the deal doesn't have much additional detail. We have entered into a new long-term agreement with Apple that extends beyond 2040, continuing our longstanding relationship of collaboration with Apple and Apple's access to the Arm architecture," Arm said in the document. But given how much Apple relies on Arm's designs for the custom chips powering its most popular and profitable products, like the iPhone, Mac, iPad, and Apple Watch, in addition to the upcoming Vision Pro, it signals that Apple plans to continue... Continue reading...