Image: The Verge It’s been a couple of days since OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT’s new advanced voice mode, and the small group of ChatGPT Plus subscribers given access to it seem pretty impressed so far. Various clips of the feature in action have appeared online, demonstrating its ability to sing, imitate accents, correct language pronunciation, … Read more
Image: Netflix Squid Game’s second season will debut on December 26th with a newly-announced “final season” to follow sometime in 2025, Netflix said on Wednesday. Netflix also shared a brief trailer to accompany the news. It’s been nearly three years since the first season of Squid Game premiered on Netflix, and the show has gone … Read more
Mark Zuckerberg. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images Meta’s second quarter earnings continue the same story from the previous quarter: generative AI may be here, but it’s going to take a long time to make money. The good news for Meta is that, unlike pretty much every AI startup, it already makes … Read more
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge A source told The Information that TikTok was paying Microsoft almost $20 million per month to access OpenAI’s models as of March, making up nearly a quarter of the revenue generated by its increasingly lucrative cloud division. Microsoft’s cloud AI business was on track to earn $1 billion … Read more
The 2024 Microsoft Surface Laptop is currently the least expensive available with a Qualcomm X chip. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Currently, the $999 Microsoft Surface Laptop is the cheapest way to get a Windows machine that runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Plus chip, with all the battery life benefits (and caveats) … Read more
The perfect shape for a car — and a mouse. | Image: Honda Take a look at this HP-X concept from 1984 that has been restored, seemingly so Honda can show the world how cool futuristic cars used to look. As a car born in the Knight Rider era, the HP-X placed advanced tech within … Read more
Leaked photos of the DJI Neo drone suggest it may cost just $329 to buy a bundle. | Image: Jasper Ellens DJI’s 4K-ready Neo drone has leaked — and according to the photos, box, specs, and leaked Walmart price we’ve now seen, it could be the lightest and cheapest full-featured DJI drone you can buy. … Read more
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge After striking deals with Google and OpenAI, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is calling on Microsoft and others to pay if they want to continue scraping the site’s data. “Without these agreements, we don’t have any say or knowledge of how our data is displayed and what it’s used … Read more
Siri’s big upgrade starts now, but you’ll need the right iPhone to access it. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge In iOS 18’s latest developer preview, Siri gets a glow-up. Like, the whole phone actually glows around the edges when you invoke Siri. A splash screen reintroduces you to the virtual assistant once … Read more
Image: Google Google’s earlier-than-expected Pixel hardware event is just around the corner — it’s scheduled for Tuesday, August 13th. Thanks to the relentless flow of leaks that have emerged over the past few weeks, we have a pretty good idea of what to expect. Google has already confirmed that it’s launching the Pixel 9 and … Read more
Image: Taco Bell Your next Taco Bell drive-thru order might be handled by AI — and an AI may have helped you get a Chalupa already. Parent company Yum! Brands has been testing its “Voice AI” technology at more than 100 Taco Bell drive-thru in the US, and now Yum! aims to bring the technology … Read more
Photo by David Berding / Getty Images A group of over 200 tech leaders and investors are pledging their support to Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race, countering an opposing group from Silicon Valley that has backed former President Donald Trump. Shark Tank star and former Dallas Mavericks principal owner Mark Cuban, LinkedIn … Read more
Image: Bungie Another round of layoffs has hit Bungie. Bungie CEO Pete Parsons made the announcement on the studio’s website, citing the increasing costs of development and economic conditions as the reason for the reduction of staff — a refrain that’s become common in the last two years of prolific video game industry layoffs. Parsons … Read more
What if Cybertruck light bar but on the back? | Image: Reddit user Abomb1997 Tesla’s Model Y will look a lot different on the back and inside after its rumored redesign, if new photos of the leaked “Juniper” model are to be believed. A user on Reddit shared the images, which include a close-up of … Read more
Illustration: The Verge Microsoft and Discord are greatly improving the integration of the communication platform into Xbox consoles. While you’ve been able to stream your gameplay to friends over Discord since last year, you’ll soon be able to watch your friends’ streams whether they’re streaming gameplay from a PC, a mobile phone, or an Xbox. … Read more
Image: Sonos The hits just keep coming. As Sonos works to get its app back to a better place, it managed to introduce a pretty nasty iOS battery drain problem with last week’s update. Customers were quick to notice and were none too happy with the company for yet another foul-up. Some reported battery usage … Read more
Image: Uber Uber is teaming up with BYD to bring 100,000 of the Chinese automaker’s electric vehicles to the ride-sharing app. The multi-year partnership will roll out in Europe and Latin America first, giving drivers “best-in-class pricing and financing” for BYD vehicles used with Uber. Uber says the goal is to encourage more drivers to … Read more
Image: Microsoft I’m fairly confident Microsoft has created more Xbox controllers than I’ve eaten hot dinners at this point, but I’m always happy to see another translucent option. This time, it’s the new “Sky Cipher Special Edition” controller, which includes a translucent blue design that lets you see the inner workings of the Xbox controller. … Read more
Amazon’s largest e-reader to date is also the only Kindle specifically built for taking notes. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge From AirPods to the Echo Pop, we’ve seen a handful of recent Prime Day standouts resurface as part of Best Buy’s latest sales event. The retailer’s current promo on Amazon devices … Read more
Photo by Jamie Squire / Getty Images As part of a new partnership with the NFL, Sony is developing a new set of headphones for NFL coaches that will debut during the 2025 season. The new headphones are being built “from the ground up,” Sony Electronics’ Matthew Parnell tells The Verge in a briefing, and … Read more
Improved incident reporting UI and new Destination Guidance in Google Maps. | Image: Google Google is updating its two navigation apps — Google Maps and Waze — with a slew of new features, including some changes that bring the two closer together. One of the big updates here continues to integrate the biggest features from … Read more
Image: Álvaro Bernis / The Verge Wix is releasing new generative AI tools that can produce entire SEO-optimized blog posts, right down to the imagery. Available now for English-speaking users of the website builder, Wix says its new tools can create “AI-generated drafts or outlines” that real human writers can use as a foundation to … Read more
Illustration: The Verge Google is rolling out new online safety features that make it easier to remove explicit deepfakes from Search at scale and prevent them from appearing high up in search results in the first place. When users successfully request the removal of explicit nonconsensual fake content that depicts them from Search, Google’s systems … Read more
Image: Nick Barclay / The Verge Spotify has stopped trying to make users pay for song lyrics. After expanding a test that put the feature behind a Premium paywall, Spotify is now reversing the change. A Spotify spokesperson tells Engadget that the company will be “expanding Lyrics availability for Spotify Free users so more people … Read more
Image: Audi Audi’s got some new E-tron EV models, and this time around they aren’t SUVs. Instead, we’re getting electric versions of the A6, the automaker’s popular midsized sedan, and it’s coming in both a Sportback and an Avant station wagon style, along with performance S6 variants. Audi first revealed the A6 E-tron as a … Read more
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is making Skype ad-free in an update that will rollout to users across all platforms soon. The update also includes improved AI image creation tools on Skype for Windows and macOS, and the ability to sign in automatically on iOS if you’re already signed into another Microsoft … Read more
The Nothing Phone 2A Plus will be available in the UK first, followed by limited availability in the US a few days later. | Image: Nothing A little more than four months after the Phone 2A’s debut, Nothing is already introducing a follow-up with the Phone 2A Plus, which has a handful of performance improvements … Read more
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images StubHub is facing a new lawsuit that accuses the ticketing service of hiding fees from customers until the very end of the purchasing process. In the lawsuit filed on Wednesday, District of Columbia Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb claims StubHub engages in “a series of deceptive, manipulative, … Read more
Former President Donald Trump. | Image: Laura Normand / The Verge Meta’s AI assistant incorrectly said that the recent attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump didn’t happen, an error a company executive is now attributing to the technology powering its chatbot and others. In a company blog post published on Tuesday, Joel Kaplan, Meta’s … Read more
Image: Ring On Monday evening, Amazon Web Services sent a notice about issues in the US-EAST-1 region of its server networks, which support many of the internet’s services. So far, the only problem we’ve seen that appears to be linked to the problem is an outage affecting Amazon-owned Ring, with owners of the security cameras … Read more