The Verge

Image: Anthropic Anthropic is a bit of an unknown quantity in the AI world. Founded by former OpenAI employees and keen to present itself as the safety-conscious AI startup, it’s received serious funding (including $300 million from Google) and a space at the top table, attending a recent White House regulatory discussion alongside reps from Microsoft and Alphabet. Yet the firm is a blank slate to the general public; its only product is a chatbot named Claude, which is primarily available through Slack. So what does Anthropic offer, exactly?According to co-founder Jared Kaplan, the answer is a way to make AI safe. Maybe. The company’s current focus, Kaplan tells The Verge, is a method known as “constitutional AI” — a way to train AI systems like... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Wendy’s is partnering with Google to create an AI chatbot that can take orders at its drive-thrus, as reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal. The fast-food chain has plans to bring its first “Wendy’s FreshAI” enabled drive-thru to a Columbus, Ohio, restaurant in June.The chatbot will be able to take verbal orders from customers who line up at Wendy’s drive-thru kiosks, all with the hope that it will help reduce long wait times. Wendy’s worked with Google to build a tailored chatbot on top of the company’s existing large language model (LLM), which it’s bound to reveal updates about at its Google I/O event on Wednesday. This all goes along with Google’s push into AI, as its Cloud unit sells the idea of companies commissioning their... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Chinese authorities have detained a man in the Gansu province in Northern China for allegedly using ChatGPT to write fake news articles. The move appears to be one of the first arrests made under China’s new anti-AI guidelines, which (among other restrictions) prohibit artificial intelligence services from being misused to distribute “false information.”The suspect, identified only by his surname Hong, is accused of using OpenAI’s chatbot to generate news articles describing a fatal train crash that officials say was “false information,” according to a police statement reported by South China Morning Post. After discovering the article on April 25th, authorities found multiple versions of the same story with different accident locations... Continue reading…

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge The issueStreaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, and HBO Max have chosen to protect their copyright by placing a black overlay over any screenshot made of one of their videos.Quick fixShut off hardware acceleration on any Chromium-based browser.The full storyBack in 2018, before I was on staff at The Verge, I was working as a freelance writer. Things had gotten a little slow when a friend sent me an ad from a production company looking for extras to play “Jewish Resort Guests” for an episode in the second season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. It sounded like fun, so I applied — and was offered two days of work in two separate scenes.Cut to today. Recently, I was telling the story, and a friend asked if I had... Continue reading…

These odor generators can either be stuck into a wearable mask or on a pill-shaped holder that adheres underneath the nose. | Image: Nature Communications Smells have always been hard to recreate in virtual reality, but researchers may have figured out a solution: wearable odor generators.Researchers from Beihang University and the City University of Hong Kong detailed two types of device formats in a paper published today in Nature Communications. The first type is a wearable that attaches to the skin directly under the nose. The other is a soft mask. (You can see both demoed in the videos below.) The former can create two scents while the latter can create up to nine scents. Both generators contain scented wax that can be heated in about 1.44 seconds to release the desired scent in a localized area.Altogether, the researchers were able to generate 30 different scents, including... Continue reading…

Image: Bethesda We know so little of Starfield, only that it’s from Bethesda, involves stars and fields in some configuration, and that Microsoft and Xbox desperately need it to be a hit after Redfall’s pretty terrible launch. But now, thanks to a new ESRB description, we know... honestly, not that much more, but at least we now know there’s plenty of drugs, lots of blood, and possibly jetpack sex.The ESRB summary starts with a description of who we’ll be playing as: “players assume the role of a miner tasked with finding Artifacts across the galaxy.” From the 15-minute gameplay showcase last year, we know these mysterious artifacts are a key plot point but still have no clues about what they are, what they do, or why they’re so important.After that,... Continue reading…

Bose’s QC Earbuds II boast multipoint Bluetooth support, phenomenal ANC, and plenty of other notable features. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Just in case you’ve been living under the proverbial rock for the past couple of weeks, you should know that Mother’s Day is right around the corner. Thankfully, if you have yet to pick up a gift — or fancy a pair of noise-canceling earbuds for yourself — Bose is currently discounting a slew of our favorite devices in the run-up to Sunday, March 14th.There’s quite a bit on offer, including some of the best discounts we’ve seen on the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II and QuietComfort 45 headphones, both of which offer excellent comfort, a natural-sounding transparency mode for letting outside noise in, and some of the best noise cancellation you can get regardless of form factor. Bose’s ongoing promo drops the QC Earbuds II to $249 ($50... Continue reading…

Image: Apple Apple is bringing Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro to the iPad. Both apps will be available for $4.99 per month or $49 per year on iPad starting on May 23rd. For comparison, buying Logic Pro on a Mac costs $199.99, and buying Final Cut Pro normally costs $299.99.The video and music editing apps will come with enhancements specifically for iPads. Final Cut Pro, for example, will come with a new jog wheel that’s supposed to make the editing process “easier than ever,” allowing you to navigate the magnetic timeline, move clips, and perform edits using just your finger and multi-touch gestures. Image: Apple A new feature called Live Drawing lets you use your Apple Pencil to draw and write directly on top of video content.... Continue reading…

Image: _H0x0d_ (Twitter) Microsoft is expanding preview access to its Microsoft 365 Copilot, a digital assistant based on OpenAI’s GPT-4 that brings AI-powered capabilities across Microsoft 365 apps and services. The tech giant has also announced a new indexing tool that lets Copilot more accurately report on internal company data, alongside some new Copilot features for apps like Microsoft Whiteboard, Outlook, and PowerPoint.The company is launching the Microsoft 365 Copilot Early Access Program — an invitation-only paid preview that will initially be rolled out to 600 global customers. Prior to this expansion, just 20 customers have been able to test the Microsoft 365 Copilot. Those new customers will be asked to pay an unspecified amount for the privilege,... Continue reading…

Cocktails are fine, but please, we beg you, no penises. | Image: GE Lighting Announced at CES back in January, Cync’s smart rope lights that can uniquely be bent into shapes of your choosing are now available to buy.The so-called Dynamic Effects Neon-Shape Smart Lights are available in 10- ($79.99) and 16-foot ($119.99) lengths. It’s the type of product naming you’d expect from Cync, formerly known as C by GE, a GE Lighting brand now owned by Savant, not GE.No bridge or hub requiredAnyway, the rope lights can be cut to your desired length, support 16 million colors, work over 2.4GHz Wi-Fi or BLE (no bridge or hub required), have a built-in mic to sync with music and gaming audio, and are compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant. They can also be controlled from outside the home using the Cync app to adjust... Continue reading…

Image: Niantic It’s startling when a cuddly little critter, called a dot, stares at you with its gigantic eyes — even if it’s happening through a screen. Dots are the stars of Peridot, the latest release from Pokémon Go creator Niantic Labs, and they’re sort of like puppies, only a lot weirder. Depending on their type, they can have fuzzy bellies or huge horns or feathers like a peacock. Some look like walking bananas. No matter what, though, they all have those big puppy dog eyes to lure you in.Peridot is essentially a high-tech version of a Tamagotchi. It takes what Niantic is known for — location-based games and augmented reality — and applies it to the virtual pet genre. Initially, the appeal is undeniable. They’re just so cute. Raising a little... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge WhatsApp has released an official app for Wear OS, 9to5Google reports, giving beta testers of its Android app the ability to send text and voice messages from their wrist. The functionality was added with version 2.23.10.10 of the beta Android app, which also reportedly contains hints that the service might soon let Android users edit previously sent messages. The Wear OS app reportedly supports smartwatches including the Pixel Watch and Galaxy Watch 5, 9to5Google notes.Android Police notes that the Meta-owned messaging service previously offered a smartwatch app for Android Wear prior to its Wear OS rebrand, but says that it was eventually discontinued due to a lack of adoption. Since then, Wear OS users have only been able to respond... Continue reading…

More simple, more accessible, more reliable, less money. Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Google I/O is almost here, and that means the launch of the highly anticipated Pixel Fold and Pixel Tablet is right around the corner. While the annual conference is largely geared toward developers, the company always holds a keynote revealing the latest and greatest things that’ll wind up in consumers’ hands.If you want to watch the keynote live but aren’t attending the event, here’s all the information about when and where you can stream it, as well as what you can expect.When is the main Google I/O 2023 keynote?The main Google I/O 2023 keynote kicks off on May 10th, 2023, at 1PM ET / 10AM PT and will feature remarks from Google CEO Sundar Pichai. This year, the event will take place in person with a limited live audience at the... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Google’s I/O event is less than two days away, and a new CNBC report might have just revealed some of the major AI-focused updates to be announced at the show.One big component will be a new large language model (LLM), PaLM 2, which CNBC describes as a “general-use” LLM that is Google’s “most recent and advanced.” The LLM has apparently performed “a broad range of coding and math tests as well as creative writing tests and analysis,” according to CNBC, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see Google show off some of those capabilities onstage. (The first PaLM was announced in April 2022, months before the recent AI boom fueled by applications like ChatGPT.)CNBC reports that Google will also announce “generative experiences” for search and... Continue reading…

I tried to pick the least spoiler-y screenshot from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom that I could. | Image: Nintendo Dodging spoilers is becoming more difficult than ever. Thanks in large part to the many algorithmic social media feeds you can scroll through at any given time, just hanging out on the internet means you might be unwittingly served new information about a show or game you haven’t experienced for yourself.I’ve been particularly sensitive to this with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I can’t wait to explore all of the new secrets hidden around and above Hyrule. But because the full game leaked many days before its May 12th launch, every feed, news site, subreddit, forum post, and comment section is suddenly a potential minefield for spoilers that I want to discover on my own.To protect myself, I’ve cobbled together a few tools... Continue reading…

Severance. | Image: Apple The Writers Guild of America’s current strike is shaping up to be a shining example of just how much power workers have when working collectively. Take, for example, the way production has been halted on Apple’s Severance and HBO’s upcoming Game of Thrones spinoff A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight due to picketing WGA members and allies refusing to cross the line.Deadline reports that, in direct response to the organized demonstrations of striking writers, production on Severance’s second season in New York City and on The Hedge Knight — which is still being written — has stopped, with no clear date as to when things might ramp back up.In addition to the writers themselves striking, Severance’s stoppage was partially... Continue reading…

Photo by Anthony Souffle/Star Tribune via Getty Images Flying sucks. On the one hand, it still feels sort of miraculous to climb into a metal tube and be whisked across the country, flying hundreds of miles per hour through the clouds. But on the other hand, almost everything about that experience is bad and is getting worse over time.The question of who should pay for airfare when things go awry has been lingering in the air for a while now. The obvious answer is the airlines, but the major carriers have been resistant, preferring instead to make passengers pay for all their own accommodations when flights get delayed or canceled. But that way of doing things may be coming to an end.The question of who should pay for airfare when things go awry has been lingering in the air for a while... Continue reading…

Image: BrickLink Designer Program Today, five Lego fans are experiencing a dream come true — Lego will turn their design into an official limited-edition Lego set and pay them 5 percent of the proceeds when the sets go up for preorder (limit 20,000 each) in February 2024.Here are the sets that the internet (and Lego’s panel of judges) have chosen to produce:Parisian Street: Image: BrickLink Designer Program Click for larger image. Image: BrickLink Designer Program Click for larger image. The Snack Shack: Image: BrickLink Designer Program Image: BrickLink Designer Program Mountain Fortress: Image: BrickLink Designer Program Click for larger... Continue reading…

Image: Nicole Rivelli / Amazon Studios Amazon has plans to sell some of its original Prime Video content to other streaming platforms. In a press release posted on Monday (via Variety), the company announced that it’s forming Amazon MGM Studios Distribution to handle the placement of its shows and movies on outside services, including The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Hunters, All the Old Knives, and more.This means that some of the shows and movies that were once exclusive to Prime Video could land on cable networks and other streaming services, including those that offer free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) and advertising-based video on demand (AVOD). While Amazon has licensed its content to other services in the past, establishing a dedicated division signals that the... Continue reading…

Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer. | Universal In real life and in Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming film Oppenheimer, the engineers working closest to the Manhattan Project knew there was a chance that the atomic bomb might ignite the entire planet’s atmosphere. That fear’s very palpable in the movie’s latest trailer but isn’t nearly enough to stop anyone from racing toward the invention of a bomb that shaped the arc of history.Though it’s full of artful explosions and the deeply unsettling crackle of a Geiger counter, Oppenheimer’s latest trailer mainly focuses on J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) — the theoretical physicist and Los Alamos Laboratory director who oversaw the design of the atomic bomb — grappling with the gravity of what he and his colleagues are creating.With... Continue reading…

The feature should eventually be available on the Galaxy Watch 5 (left) and Watch 4 (middle and right) lineups. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Samsung announced today that it received clearance from the Food and Drug Administration for a forthcoming irregular heart rhythm notification feature for its Galaxy Watches. This is meant to work alongside its FDA-cleared EKG feature and first arrive on its upcoming Galaxy Watch 6.Functionally, it’s more similar to Fitbit’s passive AFib monitoring feature that was introduced last year than the EKG spot-checks Apple introduced with the Series 4 in 2018. Unlike the EKG measurements, these irregular heart rhythm notifications don’t require the user to do anything. Once enabled, the Galaxy Watch will monitor for irregular heart rate rhythms in the background and will only alert users once a certain number of consecutive measurements are... Continue reading…

Take advantage of the PlayStation Plus Collection before it’s gone tomorrow. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Last call! Today presents the final moments in which PlayStation 5 owners can claim the PlayStation Plus Collection of last-gen hit games. And you can do so for cheaper by getting a one-year PlayStation Plus Essential membership for $48.43 (about $12 off) at Eneba with offer code USPlus. This deal from Eneba was initially set to expire today, but it’s been extended through May 9th at 7AM ET — just enough time to allow more gamers to claim games like Ratchet & Clank (2016), God of War (2018), Bloodborne, The Last Of Us Remastered (the PS4 version, not the PS5 remake), and Persona 5 (which, confusingly, went away and returned) from Sony.And yes, you can just claim all 20 games being offered by adding them to your account (you don’t even... Continue reading…

Nintendo Live 2023 event poster. | Image: Nintendo Nintendo’s next big live event will take place in Seattle this September, and today, the company revealed dates and more details about Nintendo Live 2023. The event will run from September 1st through September 4th at the Seattle Convention Center and is intended to be an all-ages celebration of Nintendo’s games, as just one of many gaming companies planning events this summer in the shadow of E3 2023’s cancellation.Nintendo Live 2023 is going to be a free event, and there are two ways to get tickets. You can register in a randomly selected drawing on Nintendo’s website at some point between May 31st and June 22nd, where you could get a one-day pass for a group of up to six people.

The Nest Hub interface has been essentially the same since 2020. But maybe not for long. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Google I/O is a couple of days away and, with it, the likely launch of the Pixel Tablet. By itself, the device is just another Android tablet, but when it’s connected to its charging dock, which has built-in speakers, it looks an awful lot like the Nest Hub Max. Like the Nest Hub Max, it can act as a smart home controller — and I sure hope it paves the way for a better smart home interface. It had better.The Nest Hub exemplifies everything that’s gone wrong with smart home controls: its interface is unintuitive and inflexible, its responses are laggy, and its responses are unpredictable and often just plain wrong.Google seems to be using the Pixel Tablet as a chance for a do-over. The Pixel Tablet will run Android, and from what... Continue reading…

Apple’s latest pair of wireless earbuds offer improved sound and more features without sacrificing the great ease of use for which AirPods are known. Happy Saturday, dear readers! In case you weren’t already aware, Mother’s Day is next weekend, which means you have about a week or so to pick up a gift if you were planning on doing so. We’ve assembled a wide array of picks in our Mother’s Day gift guide, but, if want a quick suggestion, Apple’s third-gen AirPods are on sale once again at Amazon and Best Buy for $149.99, nearly matching their best price to date.In many ways, Apple’s latest pair of earbuds are tailor-made for iPhone users. The third-gen earbuds feature automatic device switching, head-tracking spatial audio, and deeper Find My integration than the prior model, helping you to better pinpoint their location if you happen to lose them. They also sound better than the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A race to reserve usernames is kicking off on Discord.Starting in the next couple of weeks, millions of Discord users will be forced to say goodbye to their old four-digit-appended names. Discord is requiring everyone to take up a new common platform-wide handle. For Discord, it’s a move toward mainstream social network conventions. For some users, though, it’s a change to the basics of what Discord is — a shift that’s as much about culture as technology.Discord has historically handled usernames with a numeric suffix system. Instead of requiring a completely unique handle, it allowed duplicate names by adding a four-digit code known as a “discriminator” — think TheVerge#1234. But earlier this week, it announced it was changing course... Continue reading…

Image: Bluesky Bluesky, the chaotic, invite-only “errors and asses” platform, told its users today there’s a new rule: no heads of state. I’m guessing the posters are too feral to be trusted.In some sense, this is understandable. The thing is still in beta. The team is tiny, and actively juggling moderation while trying to ship features. I’m not sure who got invited, but something prompted today’s announcement. An official skeet. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is already there, as is Sen. Brian Schatz and Sen. Ron Wyden. There are celebrities there, as well — CNN’s Jake Tapper, filmmaker Rian Johnson, model Chrissy Teigen, and filmmaker Lilly Wachowski. But the more high-profile members that join, the more moderation challenges the... Continue reading…

Illustration: Samar Haddad / The Verge Passwords have always been a necessary evil, giving you the choice of either using one that is too simple (so you can easily remember it) or one obscure enough to be secure but complicated enough to require a password manager.Until now, the best way to keep your accounts secure was to partner a password with two-factor authorization (2FA). But now, Google is offering another choice: using a passkey — a secure credential tied to the PIN or biometric authentication your device already uses. The passkey only exists on your device, not in the cloud, making it even safer.Want to give it a try? Here’s how.What are the hardware / software requirements?Currently, you can create a passkey on any compatible hardware, including laptops /... Continue reading…

Image: Yahoo Marissa Mayer says Yahoo should’ve bought Netflix or Hulu, not Tumblr, during her time as CEO.“We looked at a transformative acquisition, and we bought Tumblr,” Mayer said in an interview with Tech Brew. “At the same time, we were also considering whether it was possible to buy Hulu or, ironically, Netflix. And I think Netflix was $4 billion and Hulu was at $1.3 billion at the time. And either of those, with hindsight being 20/20, would have been a better acquisition.”Yahoo paid $1.1 billion for Tumblr in 2013 but struggled to make sense of the platform among its other media efforts. The company started bringing ads to Tumblr and pushed employees to meet unrealistic sales goals. In 2016, Yahoo wrote down Tumblr’s value by $230 million.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Gmail is getting more persistent advertisements that have started popping up in the middle of some users’ inboxes, as first reported by 9to5Google. Several screenshots posted to Twitter show promotional messages mixed in with actual emails on Gmail’s desktop site, and users aren’t very happy about it.While Gmail has long placed ads at the very top of the Promotions and Social inboxes, it never dared to stick them in between messages. The new placement makes it even more confusing to distinguish between actual emails and ads, even if the promotions have the little green “Ad” icon placed next to them. It’s not clear if this is some kind of test or a gradual rollout. (I’m not seeing ads scattered within any of my inboxes just yet.)

The new backgrounds in Microsoft Teams. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft is refreshing the backgrounds available in Microsoft Teams and adding in new animated versions. It’s the biggest update to the virtual backgrounds in Teams since the original collection launched in 2020, with new options to replace the messy room behind you with an idyllic scene.Initially, these will be a large collection of new still images followed by some animated versions in June. Microsoft is sharing some details on the new still background imagery today, but it looks like we’ll have to wait until next month to see how these animated backgrounds compare to the ones that have been available on rival Zoom for years.“Featuring all-new images, the reimagined visual library for Teams has been thoughtfully designed to... Continue reading…

Apple’s Live Activities and always-on display are a showcase for what our phones could be. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge The always-on display, Live Activities, and Dynamic Island tease a frictionless future where we spend less time in apps. Continue reading…