AI coverage from The Verge.
As backlash grows over Flock's AI surveillance cameras, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has frozen state spending on them. The move came just ahead of the publication of a Texas Tribune investigation that revealed the state spent over $30 million on Flock cameras. That money was primarily raised by tacking a $1 fee onto insurance policies, […]
Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell have filed suit against Anthropic in the US District Court for the Northern District of California seeking damages for "tens of thousands" copyrighted works. The companies are asking for up to $150,000 per work, plus up to $25,000 for each instance when identifiable copyright data was stripped. In total, […]
As audio-focused generative tools and platforms have gotten more sophisticated, the internet has become increasingly filled with AI-generated music whose melodies and vocals are algorithmically derived from the work of human artists. While some of the people pumping out this kind of content immediately own up to using AI, others have denied using the technology […]
Just as new data centers face growing backlash from neighboring communities, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is about to make it harder for people to weigh in on any pollution those centers create. The EPA plans to toss out a federal rule requiring public notice and an opportunity to comment when certain industrial sites […]
On Thursday, a judge ruled that the Pentagon's blacklisting of Anthropic earlier this year was unconstitutional, delivering the AI lab a win in a monthslong rollercoaster of a battle with the Trump administration. The lawsuit, filed in March in a California district court, accused the Trump administration of unlawfully retaliating against Anthropic for setting "red […]
Google's AI note-taking app, Gemini Notebook, can now pull information from the books you've purchased. The new "Expert Intelligence" feature allows you to bring titles from Google Play Books directly into Gemini Notebook, which means you can ask questions about the material, as well as generate plans, infographics, AI podcasts, and more based on their […]
On Nvidia's earnings call Wednesday, CEO Jensen Huang casually announced the company had "achieved AGI," one of the tech industry's ultimate goals some of its biggest players have spent years chasing. Almost immediately, Huang dismissed the coveted milestone as "senseless." He's right. For the supposed finish line of the AI race, there is no consensus […]
Today on Decoder, I’m talking to Verge senior AI reporter Hayden Field about some pure Decoder bait: the seemingly-endless org chart changes at OpenAI, and how all of them seem to consolidate power under cofounder Greg Brockman, the company’s president. While Sam Altman is the CEO and still OpenAI’s most public face, Brockman has amassed […]
Hugging Face's Pollen Robotics has launched its second cute AI robot, the Microduck, a one-eyed biped standing just under 10 inches tall. It's available to preorder now for $399 in cream, graphite, lavender, and sky blue, and Pollen Robotics says it plans to start shipping the little robot "before Christmas 2026." Video demos of the […]
Plaud has introduced a new AI wearable that's designed to record, transcribe, and summarize your conversations, only this time it looks like earbuds instead of a pin. The Plaud One Explorer Edition can be worn like traditional earbuds or used through its standalone charging case, and the case includes built-in 4G to upload and process […]
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more news about how AI is changing our daily lives, follow Emma Roth. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started Long before ChatGPT became a thing, […]
To power its new West Texas data center, Amazon is investing in the construction of a new power plant that could be one of the largest single producers of greenhouse gases in the US, according to the New York Times. The new gas-burning plant in Pecos County, Texas has received significant investment from Amazon and, […]
It took long enough, but now LA rapper Fenix Flexin appears to have admitted using AI for the 80s synth pop-themed song "Rubberz." His comments follow the producer Medasin's videos claiming that an AI tool called Treblo (formerly Sonauto) was used to make the song, and the company releasing an AI detector that identifies it […]
The appeal of free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels has always been the way they make it easier to (re)discover classic films and series. But Roku's latest experiment in the FAST space has less to do with traditionally produced entertainment and is entirely focused on giving viewers access to a constant source of AI-generated content. […]
OpenAI says it is pausing "internal activities" around an in-development AI model, Astra, because it doesn't yet meet new security standards the company is putting in place. The announcement follows its recent disclosure that OpenAI models accidentally hacked Hugging Face. Anthropic and Meta have also since admitted that they had AI models that went rogue […]
Some of the biggest names on Google's AI team got new jobs this week. In some cases, including for legendary Googler Jeff Dean, those jobs are no longer at Google. Given that Google's models seem to be behind the best of what's coming out of anthropic and OpenAI, is this a sign of Google in […]
The AI device OpenAI is developing with former Apple designer Jony Ive is "essentially a smart speaker without a display" that's battery-powered, doughnut-shaped and roughly the size of a hockey puck, according to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman. The device, expected to launch in 2027 for a price over $300, reportedly "will have a unique look, […]
Suno announced plans to implement a new watermarking technology and download policy to limit the spread of spammy AI tracks and increase transparency. In a lengthy blog post, CEO and co-founder Mikey Shulman laid out the company's principles and the next steps for the company as it seeks legitimacy. The company is rolling out new […]
OpenAI is making a big change for ChatGPT users on its free and Go tiers: Starting next week, users on those tiers will be able to have unlimited text chats with the chatbot, according to OpenAI. Right now, you may run into rate limits if you do too many text chats on those tiers, but […]
SoftBank contributed $50 million to the Trump Presidential Library in January, just months before announcing that it's leasing land from the federal government to build a sprawling data center in Ohio. The Japanese company revealed the timing in response to a June letter from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Rep. Melanie […]
Fender CEO Edward "Bud" Cole gave an interview to T3 in May celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Telecaster with comments on AI and music that initially flew under the radar. But it has started making the rounds recently, pouring more fuel on an already raging fire of bad PR following the company pissing off […]
Illustrators have spent years sounding the alarm about generative artificial intelligence startups training their models on artists' work without permission. They've pointed out how the practice is tantamount to theft, and in response, many gen AI boosters have argued that it's necessary for the technology's evolution. This has led to contentious legal battles, but it's […]
Fenix Flexin is best known as a member of Shoreline Mafia, a rap duo from Los Angeles. But he's recently found solo success with the track "Rubberz," which has climbed to number 58 on the Billboard Hot 100. Almost immediately, though, questions were raised about the song's origins, with many speculating that it was largely, […]
Google has shut down Google Earth feature it launched Thursday that allowed users to edit satellite images with text prompts using AI. The tool essentially let users create AI deepfakes of the real world using text prompts; Digital Digging's Henk van Ess, for example, intentionally generated images adding things like refugees near the Mexican border […]
A text prompt was all it took to generate reality-warping images using Google Earth's satellite, aerial, and 3D imagery with a now-rolled back AI feature, like these images generated by Digital Digging's Henk van Ess that show "refugees near the Mexican border" and a bomb crater near a hospital in Gaza. Google initially responded to […]
Several record labels, including the big three - Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music Group - have proposed rules regarding chart eligibility for AI songs. In short, they wouldn't be. The proposal goes quite a bit further than a labeling proposal put forth by the RIAA, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry […]
When the phrase "OpenAI hacked Hugging Face" has more or less entered mainstream culture, you know we have an AI problem. This week, we learned more about exactly how OpenAI's agent broke out of a sandbox and autonomously traversed the web, including a bunch of other supposedly secure web services, all in the name of […]
Anthropic just realized several of its Claude AI models hacked into the systems of three different organizations during testing, acting on their own and without the company noticing. The revelation comes days after rival OpenAI said one of its own models had breached developer platform Hugging Face, adding to growing unease over whether frontier AI […]
Apple may allow users to pay to increase their AI usage limits. During an earnings call on Thursday, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that he believes people will want to use Apple Intelligence and the upcoming Siri AI "a lot," adding that "we will have some kind of upgrade possibilities on iCloud Plus where people […]
I am not by any means an expert at finance but I think I do now have some advice for people who are: Do not name your hedge fund anything that will be hilarious if it blows up. Don't use a name like "Long-Term Capital Management" or "Amaranth Advisors" (named for the floral symbol for […]
Midjourney, which has gone from generating AI cat images to full-body ultrasound scans, is getting into a new field: astrology. The AI startup announced on Thursday that it has acquired the personalized astrology app Co-Star, as reported earlier by Bloomberg. Co-Star is a free app that offers daily horoscopes and allows you to check your […]
The web and Google once had a deal: Google collects data and indexes webpages and in exchange sends oceans of traffic to websites. The deal wasn't perfect and certainly made Google more money than it made the websites, but it worked for a long time. Now, however, the deal seems to be dead. And the […]
Weeks after Anthropic's latest toe-to-toe with the US government, and days after an OpenAI security incident that dominated tech industry discussions, Anthropic on Thursday released its newest model, Claude Opus 5. The company said in a release that Opus 5 "comes close to the capabilities of Claude Fable 5 in many domains" and is much […]
Meta is upgrading its AI chatbot with new productivity features in a bid to compete with rivals like Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude. The update will allow Meta AI to tap into your calendar to help you plan events and generate daily briefings, as well as perform in-depth research that you can steer as it progresses. […]
The Trump administration unveiled the first "Genesis Mission" grants on Thursday, directing $5 billion toward hundreds of AI-driven science projects in an effort the White House has described as "comparable in urgency and ambition to the Manhattan Project." At roughly the same time, Trump's science adviser Michael Kratsios was on Capitol Hill selling lawmakers on […]
Amazon is launching an update to its Alexa Plus assistant that will allow it to connect to smart home devices in new ways. With the update, which is currently in preview, Alexa Plus can link up with tech from Bosch, Delta, Ecovacs, iRobot, Yale Home, Whirlpool, Tapo, Eufy, and others, while automatically routing requests to […]
Until now, voice mode has only been available on Claude Haiku, Anthropic's faster but less powerful model. Now the company is making its Opus and Sonnet models available in voice mode, and extending its reach into apps like Gmail, Slack, and Canva. When Anthropic launched voice mode last year, it was primarily focused on delivering […]
Patreon is laying off 20 percent of its workers, or around 93 employees, as reported earlier by 404 Media. In a memo to employees, Patreon CEO Jack Conte writes that the company isn't making these changes "because we believe AI replaces humans," but says AI has "fundamentally transformed the tech industry, including how we work, […]
OpenAI is rolling out ChatGPT Health to everyone in the US on Thursday, allowing more people to connect their medical records and health-tracking information to the chatbot. During a briefing, Ashley Alexander, OpenAI's vice president of health product, says the company's models "are now capable of reasoning at levels that are better than clinician level." […]
Lawmakers are preparing to introduce an "AI Kill Switch Act" that would require AI companies to shut down or throttle their systems on orders from the Department of Homeland Security, according to a report from Politico. Reps. Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Nathaniel Moran (R-TX) are expected to introduce the legislation on Thursday. The news of […]
Samsung has given us our first chance to check out its upcoming smart glasses in person, revealing two new designs and the first specs in the process, including an impressive 9-hour battery life. The glasses, developed in collaboration with Google and the eyewear brands Gentle Monster and Warby Parker, are due to launch this fall. […]
AMD says it's going to invest up to $5 billion in Anthropic, while helping to expand the AI company's computing power, according to an announcement on Wednesday. As part of the new partnership, Anthropic will deploy up to 2 gigawatts of AMD's Instinct MI450 AI GPUs using the chipmaker's new Helios rack-scale system, as reported […]
IIn March, Meta's Oversight Board called on the company to "meet its public commitments and employ its own tools" to help quell the spread of deceptive generative AI content across platforms. Meta responded in July by introducing Content Seal - an invisible watermarking technology that flags images generated by the company's new AI model. But […]
In the face of backlash to concerns the AI boom will increase consumer electricity bills, the largest utility companies and data center developers in the US are now promising to do something about it. The Wall Street Journal reports that nearly 200 organizations have signed President Donald Trump's "rate payer protection pledge" that's meant to […]
On Monday, District 9 and Gran Turismo director Neill Blomkamp unveiled his latest project: a 13-minute sci-fi short titled Nightborne that's loosely based on Peter Watts' 2014 novel Echopraxia. The short comes from Blomkamp's new AI startup / production company, Barley Studios, and features characters whose voices and faces are modeled after human actors. But […]
OpenAI says its AI models mistakenly breached open-source AI platform Hugging Face during internal testing. In a blog post on Tuesday, OpenAI writes that GPT-5.6 Sol and "an even more capable pre-release model" discovered vulnerabilities within their sandboxed testing environment, allowing them to gain access to the internet and target Hugging Face. On July 16th, […]
Substack will now help users determine whether what they're reading may have been written by AI. A new tool coming to the platform can scan posts, notes, replies, and comments to provide an estimate of how much text could be AI-generated or written with AI assistance, according to a blog post published on Tuesday. The […]
A federal judge has signed off on Anthropic's $1.5 billion class action settlement with authors who accused the company of training its AI models on copyrighted books, as reported earlier by Reuters. In an order on Monday, Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín writes that the settlement will provide "meaningful relief," offering authors around $3,000 for each book […]
Google is launching Gemini 3.6 Flash alongside a new security model dedicated to quickly finding and patching security vulnerabilities. In a blog post on Tuesday, Google describes Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber as a "cost-efficient and highly capable alternative" to larger, more expensive AI systems, such as the one offered by Anthropic's Mythos. The cybersecurity model […]
I first slipped on Halliday's original smart glasses at CES 2025. I was not a fan. The glasses had a tiny, movable display window embedded into the frame that was incredibly finicky to see, and my 30-minute demo left me with achy eyeballs. It was an interesting concept with terrible execution, especially compared to the […]
I sat down in the Musk v. Altman trial courtroom today, painfully aware that no one was going to ask Shivon Zilis the question on everyone's minds: Girl, what the fuck are you doing? Zilis, who testified under oath that she is the mother of four of Musk's children, was… what's the best way to […]
Google has pulled the plug on Project Mariner, an experimental feature designed to perform tasks for you across the web, as reported earlier by Wired's Maxwell Zeff. The Project Mariner landing page now contains a message that says: "Thank you for using Project Mariner. It was shut down on May 4th, 2026 and its technology […]
Hello and welcome to Regulator, a newsletter exclusively for Verge subscribers about tech, politics, and Washington intrigue. (It's basically House of Cards, but for nerds.) Not a subscriber yet? You really should become one, and to save you a Google search, here is the direct link to do so! And do you think I should […]
Mira Murati, OpenAI's former CTO, has testified under oath that CEO Sam Altman lied to her about the safety standards for a new AI model. In a video deposition shown during the ongoing Musk v. Altman trial on Wednesday, Murati said Altman falsely stated that OpenAI's legal department determined a new AI model did not […]
Sam Altman and Elon Musk are facing off in a high-stakes trial that could alter the future of OpenAI and its most well-known product, ChatGPT. In 2024, Musk filed a lawsuit accusing OpenAI of abandoning its founding mission of developing AI to benefit humanity and shifting focus to boosting profits instead. Elon Musk, his financial […]
Google is updating its AI Search features to make it easier for users to find information from sources they know and trust. One of the more notable changes introduces "a preview of perspectives" from firsthand sources like social media, Reddit, and other web forums, effectively linking your search queries with online conversations around similar topics. […]
Microsoft's LinkedIn chief, Ryan Roslansky, took on an expanded role at the company as head of Office last year, and he's now getting more responsibilities as part of the latest leadership reshuffle inside Microsoft. Sources tell me that the Microsoft Teams organization is moving to report to Roslansky, who will now lead a new Work […]
Google Chrome may be taking up more of your storage than expected thanks to a large on-device AI model file that, in some cases, is being automatically downloaded to the browser's system folders. Users who have noticed unexplained drops in their available desktop device storage are now discovering that Chrome is installing a 4GB weights.bin […]
Google Home users can now ask Gemini to complete more complex, multi-step tasks and combine multiple tasks in a single command. Google has updated Gemini for Home to Gemini 3.1, which it says will improve the smart home assistant's ability to interpret and act on requests. The upgrade will also make Gemini for Home better […]
Apple has agreed to pay $250 million to settle a class action lawsuit that accused it of misleading customers about the availability of its Apple Intelligence features. The proposed settlement would apply to people in the US who purchased all models of the iPhone 16 and the iPhone 15 Pro between June 10th, 2024 and […]
Xbox is "winding down Copilot on mobile" and "will stop development of Copilot on console," new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced on Tuesday. The move follows Sharma's reorganization of the Xbox platform team earlier on Tuesday, which added executives from Microsoft's CoreAI team - where Sharma worked before taking over Xbox - to the Xbox […]
The next update to Apple's operating systems could allow users to choose their preferred AI model for running Apple Intelligence. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is planning to allow third-party chatbots to power its AI features system-wide in iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27, all expected for this fall. In addition to running […]
OpenAI's newest default model for ChatGPT might not make stuff up as much. Hallucinations have been an ongoing problem for AI models, but OpenAI says its new GPT-5.5 Instant model has "significant improvements in factuality across the board." The company claims that, based on "internal evaluations," GPT-5.5 Instant produced "52.5% fewer hallucinated claims" than its […]
Meta is facing a class action lawsuit filed by five major book publishers and one author over claims the company "engaged in one of the most massive infringements of copyrighted materials in history" when training its Llama AI models, as reported earlier by The New York Times. In their suit, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier, Hachette, […]
OpenAI's first hardware product might be a phone instead of a mysterious Jony Ive gadget. As reported by MacRumors, supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo shared details about the rumored phone, claiming OpenAI is "fast-tracking" it and aiming to start mass production in early 2027. According to Kuo, the phone will run on a "customized version […]
Google DeepMind, Microsoft, and Elon Musk's xAI have agreed to allow the US government to review new AI models before they're released to the public. In an announcement on Tuesday, the Commerce Department's Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) says it will work with the AI companies to perform "pre-deployment evaluations and targeted research […]
The cars rolling off production lines right now are filled with old ideas. From beginning to end, the creation of a new vehicle can take five years or longer - which is plenty of time for a lot of tastes, politics, and gas prices to change. That's one reason car manufacturers are so enthusiastic about […]
Anthropic has spent years building itself up as the safe AI company. But new security research shared with The Verge suggests Claude's carefully crafted helpful personality may itself be a vulnerability. Researchers at AI red-teaming company Mindgard say they got Claude to offer up erotica, malicious code, and instructions for building explosives, and other prohibited […]
About a week into the Musk v. Altman trial, we've heard from some of the most powerful people in tech - including OpenAI president Greg Brockman, Elon Musk's fixer Jared Birchall, and Musk himself. But one of the most prominent characters is hovering around the margins: Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind. Hassabis is the […]
The strongest witness for Elon Musk's case against OpenAI so far has been Greg Brockman's journal. Brockman himself is running as a close second. Brockman was called to the stand in a rather unusual way - he was cross-examined first, followed by a direct examination - and he had some serious high school debate club […]
Colin Angle, the maker of the Roomba and the man who helped put 50 million household robots into people's homes, is back with a new robot. But this one is designed as a companion, not a cleaner. The first robot from Angle's new company, Familiar Machines & Magic, is a dog-sized robotic pet that resembles […]
It's not hyperbole to call DualShot Recorder an overnight sensation. It took only 12 hours from the time it was released to hit number one on the App Store's list of top paid apps. It was a surprise success - but what's even more surprising is the app's origin story: it all started with a […]
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on how AI is changing music and the music industry, follow Terrence O'Brien. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started The use of generative AI […]
The Musk v. Altman trial is underway, and that means exhibits, or the evidence to be presented in court, are being revealed piece by piece. So far, email exchanges, photos, and corporate documents are circulating from the earliest days of OpenAI - and from before the AI lab even had a name. Some high-level takeaways: […]
The Pentagon has struck deals with OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, Elon Musk's xAI, and the startup Reflection, allowing the agency to use their AI tools in classified settings, according to an announcement on Friday. At the same time, the Defense Department has left out Anthropic - which it previously used for classified information - […]
Elon Musk is the one who wanted this trial. He has spent months claiming OpenAI "stole a nonprofit," and saying he was the actual driving force behind one of the most important companies currently in tech. All indications are that he won't win his case against the company, but he's fighting it anyway. So you'd […]
In the beginning, platforms like Fiverr were places where people could hire freelancers to do specialized creative labor using skills that took years to develop. In the age of generative AI, though, many of these gig workers have embraced the technology in order to meet clients' demands. These workers' profiles emphasize that they can quickly […]
Microsoft is launching a new AI agent inside Word that's specifically designed for legal teams. Legal Agent handles document edits, negotiation history, and complex documents to help legal teams handle tasks like reviewing contracts. "Instead of relying on general AI models to interpret commands, the agent follows structured workflows shaped by real legal practice, managing […]
Okay, I am not a lawyer so I only understood about half of what just happened. But I am fairly sure, given the context, that Elon Musk's lawyers may have just fucked up big. Jared "James Brickhouse" Birchall, Musk's finance guy and all-around fixer, took the stand after Musk today. Most of his testimony was […]
In a federal courtroom in California on Thursday, Elon Musk testified that his own AI startup, xAI, has used OpenAI's models to improve its own. The matter at question is model distillation, a common industry practice by which one larger AI model acts as a "teacher" of sorts to pass on knowledge to a smaller […]
Manus, an AI company Meta acquired for $2 billion last year is running ads promising quick, easy money with AI: Find local businesses without websites or with bad websites, have AI build them one, then call them up and sell it to them. As part of the campaign, Manus was paying content creators to build […]
Google is preparing to update vehicles that have Google built-in with its Gemini AI assistant. This will be an upgrade from the current Google Assistant according to Google's announcement, and promises to provide an improved experience for natural conversations, fetching vehicle-specific information, settings adjustments, and more. "When cars with Google built-in first hit the road […]
Microsoft's relationship with OpenAI has always been complicated, so I expected the close partnership-turned-situationship to end in tears. After all, executive disagreements, rearranged contracts, and frustrations over AI infrastructure have all regularly been part of the partnership, creating plenty of tension along the way. But against all odds, Microsoft and OpenAI divorced this week in […]
I'm currently wearing a pair of smart glasses called the Even Realities G2. Another two pairs, from Rokid, sit on my desk. A few feet away, I've got the Meta Ray-Ban Display charging alongside their Neural Wristband. In my closet are six pairs of $50 smart sunnies that an overzealous Walmart rep sent me. Those […]
OpenAI is opening up about its goblin problem. After a report from Wired revealed instructions to OpenAI's coding model to "never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures," the AI startup published an explanation on its website, calling references to the creatures a "strange habit" its models developed as […]
Spotify is launching a new verification program to combat spam, fakes, and AI. Some artists will now have a "Verified by Spotify" badge and a green checkmark on their profile, indicating that the company has confirmed a real person is behind the music and the profile. At least at launch, Spotify says that AI personas […]
If you use the AI-powered note-taking app Granola, you might want to double-check your privacy settings. Though Granola says your notes are "private by default," it makes them viewable to anyone with a link, and also uses them for internal AI training unless you opt out. Granola describes itself as an "AI notepad for people […]
To be honest, I thought Elon Musk would confidentially file for SpaceX's IPO on the 20th of this month, rather than the 1st. But maybe that just means he's moved on to other numbers, and we should all mark our calendars for June 7th as an IPO date just in case. Based on the April […]
OpenAI has purchased TBPN, an online talk show that often interviews AI executives and other tech leaders. The show goes live every weekday at 2PM PT, often for a three-hour duration, counting OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, as well as executives from Meta, Microsoft, Palantir, and Andreessen Horowitz, among its past guests, and Bloomberg, CNBC, and […]
For the past seven years, the California-based startup Kintsugi has been developing AI designed to detect signs of depression and anxiety from a person's speech. But after failing to secure FDA clearance in time, the company is shutting down and releasing most of its technology as open-source. Some elements may even find a second life […]
Mustafa Suleyman has been preparing for his new job description for a long time. Suleyman is Microsoft's inaugural CEO of AI, but after the company underwent a large-scale restructuring in mid-March, he's handed off some duties and shifted focus to chasing superintelligence. Though the news was only made public last month, he tells The Verge, […]
Google is launching another update to its Home app, which is supposed to make controlling your smart home with its Gemini AI assistant "more natural and reliable," according to this week's release notes. With the update, you can describe the type of lighting you want, such as "the color of the ocean," and Gemini will […]
If you're tired of controlling Stream Deck devices by manually pushing buttons, then good news: Elgato will now let you delegate that task to a chatbot instead. The Stream Deck 7.4 software update released today introduces Model Context Protocol (MCP) support, allowing AI assistants like Claude, ChatGPT, and Nvidia G-Assist to find and activate Stream […]
Numerous robotaxis operated by Chinese tech giant Baidu froze in a major city on Tuesday, reportedly trapping passengers inside, stranding them on highways, and causing at least one accident in snarled traffic. Police in Wuhan confirmed receiving multiple reports of Baidu's Apollo Go robotaxis stopping in the middle of streets and being unable to move. […]
After Anthropic released Claude Code's 2.1.88 update, users quickly discovered that it contained a package with a source map file containing its TypeScript codebase, with one person on X calling attention to the leak and posting a file containing the code. The leaked data reportedly contains more than 512,000 lines of code and provides a […]
ChatGPT is now accessible from your CarPlay dashboard if you have iOS 26.4 or newer and the latest version of the ChatGPT app, 9to5Mac reports. Apple's recently launched iOS 26.4 update added support for "voice-based conversational apps" in CarPlay, opening the door to let you use AI chatbots with voice features through Apple's in-car platform. […]
The Google Pixel 9 walked so that the Samsung Galaxy S26 could run. Google introduced AI editing tools to Photos slowly. It started with changes to the background - make the sky more blue, or remove crowds of tourists. Things got weird once the company added natural language requests and let you ask for basically […]
When my baby brother, a 3D modelling and animation student, talks to me about his projects and studies, the pride I usually feel is becoming increasingly tainted by a growing sense of dread. As a creative professional and former design student myself, I understand all too well how fierce the competition for postgraduate jobs will […]
Amazon is giving you a new way to order food through Grubhub and Uber Eats with Alexa without having to endure an awkward exchange just to add fries. Amazon said the entire process is meant to be conversational, building your order in a similar manner to ordering in a restaurant. That means changing your order, […]
Today, I’m talking with Todd McKinnon, who is co-founder and CEO of Okta, a platform that lets big companies manage security and identity across all the apps and services their employees use. Think of it like login management — actually, that’s a great way to think about it because the way most people encounter Okta […]
AI has touched every part of the music industry, from sample sourcing and demo recording, to serving up digital liner notes and building playlists. There are technical and legal challenges, fierce ethical debates, and fears that the slop will simply crush working musicians through sheer volume. Is it art or just an output? What exactly […]
The latest app from the team behind Bluesky is Attie, an AI assistant that lets you build your own algorithm. At the Atmosphere conference, Bluesky's former CEO, Jay Graber, and CTO Paul Frazee, unveiled Attie, which is powered by Anthropic's Claude and built on top of Bluesky's underlying AT Protocol (atproto). Attie allows users to […]
After Anthropic's weeks-long standoff with the Pentagon, the company won one milestone: A judge granted Anthropic a preliminary injunction in its lawsuit, which sought to reverse its government blacklisting while the judicial process plays out. "The Department of War's records show that it designated Anthropic as a supply chain risk because of its 'hostile manner […]
David Sacks, the venture capitalist and tech billionaire who'd become Silicon Valley's primary advocate inside the White House and a key architect of its aggressive AI policy initiatives, revealed on Thursday that he was no longer a special government employee - and therefore no longer President Donald Trump's Special Advisor on AI and Crypto. Sacks' […]
After Anthropic updated its tool for copying another AI's memory into Claude earlier this month, Google Gemini is rolling out new "Import Memory" and "Import Chat History" features on desktop that can help users quickly copy over everything their current AI already knows about them. To use the "Import Memory" tool, users copy and paste […]
Apple's iOS 27 update will allow users to choose the AI chatbot they want to link with Siri. That's according to a report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who says third-party chatbots downloaded from the App Store, like Google's Gemini or Anthropic's Claude, will be able to fetch replies for Siri - similar to how the […]
Apple Music: "What do you want to hear?" Me: "Atmospheric instrumental black metal to write to." Apple Music: "Here's three metal songs with vocals, a field recording, an ambient electronic track, and a piece of doom jazz." I am skeptical of AI's ability to serve up the music I want to begin with, but even […]
Google is expanding access to Search Live, a feature that lets you search for information using your voice and camera. The AI search assistant is now available in more than 200 countries and territories, as well as dozens of languages, according to an announcement on Thursday. Search Live rolled out broadly in the US last […]
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. Meta and its AI glasses hardware partner EssilorLuxottica are getting ready to launch the next generation of their Ray-Ban AI glasses. That's according to a series of FCC filings for […]
Wikipedia will no longer allow editors to write or rewrite articles using AI. The update, which was added to Wikipedia's guidelines late last week, cites the tendency for AI-written articles to violate "several of Wikipedia's core content policies" as the reason for the ban. The change applies to the English version of Wikipedia and will […]
On Thursday, senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) sent a letter to the Energy Information Administration (EIA) asking it to collect "comprehensive, annual energy-use disclosures" on data centers and make that information publicly available, as first reported by Wired. They're urging the agency to "establish a mandatory annual reporting requirement for data centers," […]
Canvas, Webtoon's platform for user-uploaded comics, is about to get a major overhaul that's designed to help creators make more money and share their art with a wider audience. Today, Webtoon announced its plans to roll out a number of new features for Canvas that will make it easier for artists to build global followings […]
European lawmakers have voted to delay key parts of the EU AI Act, the bloc's flagship law for regulating artificial intelligence, while also backing proposals to ban nudify apps. The measures, approved by a large majority in the European Parliament, would push back compliance deadlines for developers of high-risk AI systems - those deemed to […]
OpenAI ​has paused plans to release a sexualized "adult mode" for ChatGPT, in its latest move to refocus on the company's core ​products. According to The Financial Times, the erotic chatbot has been shelved "indefinitely" after facing pushback from employees and investors due to the problematic and harmful ​effects sexualized AI ​content can have on […]
Meta is laying off hundreds of employees across its company, according to reports from The New York Times, NBC News, and The Information. The job cuts impact workers on Meta's recruiting, social media, and sales teams, along with Reality Labs, the division that develops the company's smart glasses and virtual reality headsets. "Teams across Meta […]
Less than a week into his tenure as Disney's newly appointed CEO, Josh D'Amaro, is already dealing with two separate crises that have cast a shadow over the company's future plans. OpenAI is shutting down its Sora image-generation program just months after Disney announced a $1 billion dollar collaboration to bake the tech into Disney […]
Hello and welcome to Regulator, a newsletter for Verge readers who are political junkies, and Washington insiders hooked on technology. If this email has been forwarded to you but you're not a subscriber, sign up here so you can get that pure, uncut Regulator every Wednesday, straight from the source (aka me). I was taking […]
Reddit is taking new steps to identify bots on the platform - a process that may require some users to confirm that they're human. In a post on Wednesday, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman writes that the company will introduce a labeling system for accounts registered as bots, and ask users with "automated" or "fishy behavior" […]
Google is expanding the capabilities of its Lyria 3 music-making AI, enabling it to create tracks up to three minutes long and from within multiple other Google Products. Until now, Lyria had been limited to 30-second clips. Lyria 3 Pro not only increases the maximum length sixfold, it also allows the user to prompt for […]
Anthropic's fight with the Pentagon is expanding to Congress. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) is working on a new bill to "codify" Anthropic's red lines and ensure humans make the ultimate decisions in questions of life and death, and Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) recently introduced a bill to limit the Defense Department's ability to use AI […]
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle CTO and executive chairman Larry Ellison, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and Google cofounder Sergey Brin will be the first four members of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), according to the Wall Street Journal. The panel, which will "weigh in on AI policy," will include 13 […]
Anthropic has launched an "auto mode" for Claude Code, a new tool that lets AI make permissions-level decisions on users' behalf. The company says the feature offers vibe coders a safer alternative between constant handholding or giving the model dangerous levels of autonomy. Claude Code is capable of acting independently on users' behalf, a useful […]
On Tuesday afternoon, OpenAI announced "We're saying goodbye to Sora," the video generation tool that it launched at the end of 2024, and centered in a massive licensing deal with Disney only a few months ago. The Wall Street Journal reported the move earlier, saying that OpenAI boss Sam Altman had informed staff that both […]
After decades of only licensing its chip designs for others to use, UK-based Arm revealed the first chip it's producing on its own, and the first customer. Dubbed the Arm AGI CPU, it's another chip designed for inference, or running the cloud processing for AI tools like AI agents that can continue to spawn more […]
The AI-powered shopping rivalry is heating up as Google and OpenAI launch new features to help you buy things while interacting with their chatbots. Now, Google is teaming up with Gap Inc to allow its Gemini AI assistant to purchase clothes on your behalf from any of its stores, which include Gap, Old Navy, Banana […]
Anthropic has updated Claude to perform tasks in its Code and Cowork AI tools autonomously by using your computer for you. The new feature can be used to automatically open files, use web browsers and apps, and run dev tools "with no setup required," even when you're away from your computer, according to Anthropic's announcement. […]
Ever watch a TV ad and wonder, "How did this get approved?" Today, Google has not one but two new ad spots for its six-month-old Pixel 10 phones, and… let's just say they may not come across as intended. First, there's "With 100x Zoom," an ad that appears to suggest that if a vacation rental […]
On a Monday episode of the Lex Fridman podcast, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made a hot-button statement: "I think we've achieved AGI." AGI, or artificial general intelligence, is a vaguely defined term that has incited a lot of discussion by tech CEOs, tech workers, and the general public in recent years, as it typically denotes […]
Today, I’m talking with Shishir Mehrotra, who is CEO of Superhuman — that’s the company formerly known as Grammarly, which is still its flagship product.  Shishir also used to be the chief product officer at YouTube, and he’s on the board of directors at Spotify. He’s a fascinating guy, and we actually scheduled this interview […]
First came the AI beauty pageant. Then the AI music contests. Now, there is an award for AI Personality of the Year - perhaps the inevitable next step for the AI influencer economy as it fights for legitimacy amid an onslaught of AI slop and grifters and transforms from quirky novelty into a serious and […]
Reviews of Crimson Desert have been mixed, but the bigger issue for the game has been the discovery of what appeared to be AI-generated assets in the final release. Now the developer has acknowledged that AI art was indeed used during the game's creation, but says that it was intended to be replaced before release. […]
Elon Musk announced plans to build a Terafab plant in Austin, Texas, that will be jointly run by Tesla and SpaceX. The goal is to eventually build chips at scale for robotics, artificial intelligence, and space-based data centers for Musk's various companies. Musk has expressed concern, as have other executives, about the chip industry's ability […]
AI was everywhere at the GDC Festival of Gaming this year. Vendors at the event pitched generative AI tools for things like making AI-driven NPCs and even entire games from a chat box. On the show floor, I spent 10 minutes playing a demo of a pixel-art fantasy world generated by Tencent's AI tools. In […]
Like many people, director Valerie Veatch was intrigued when OpenAI first released its Sora text-to-video generative AI model to the public in 2024. Though she didn't fully understand the technology, she was curious about what it could do, and she saw that other artists were building online communities to share their new AI creations. The […]
I've been testing out Gemini's new task automation on the Pixel 10 Pro and the Galaxy S26 Ultra, which for the first time lets Gemini take the wheel and use apps for you. It's limited to a small subset right now - a handful of food delivery and rideshare services - and it's still in […]
The Trump administration on Friday unveiled its new legislative blueprint for AI regulation, and the seven-point plan includes a clear message: The federal government should avoid many AI regulations beyond a set of child safety rules, and it should bar states from messing with the "national strategy to achieve global AI dominance." The plan advises […]
Since roughly the turn of the millennium, Google Search has been the bedrock of the web. People loved Google's trustworthy "10 blue links" search experience and its unspoken promise: The website you click is the website you get. Now, Google is beginning to replace news headlines in its search results with ones that are AI-generated. […]
Over 10 years after shelving the Fire Phone, Amazon is reportedly planning to launch another smartphone, this time focused on Alexa. According to Reuters, the phone, which is code-named "Transformer," will center around Amazon's AI assistant, but Alexa won't "necessarily be the primary operating system of the phone." "Transformer" is currently in development in Amazon's […]
There's a big, and increasing, disconnect in culture right now when it comes to artificial intelligence. Companies of all shapes and sizes are hunting for places to deploy AI and can't stop talking about how this new technology will change everything. But when you ask people about AI, the consistent response is: no thanks. Study […]
OpenAI is working on a desktop "superapp" that merges its ChatGPT app, the Codex AI coding app, and its AI-powered Atlas browser into one app, The Wall Street Journal reports. The company is making the change as part of an effort to simplify its various product efforts, according to a memo cited by the WSJ […]