Technology news

Image: OpenAI OpenAI says it has been in touch with representatives for Scarlett Johansson after the company pulled one of the voices on ChatGPT for sounding too similar to the actress.
“We’ve been in conversations with ScarJo’s team because there seems to be some confusion. We want to take the feedback seriously and hear out the concerns,” says Joanne Jang, model behavior lead at OpenAI.OpenAI pulled Sky, one of the default voices on ChatGPT, after it made headlines last

Image: OpenAI OpenAI says it has been in touch with representatives for Scarlett Johansson after the company pulled one of the voices on ChatGPT for sounding too similar to the actress.
“We’ve been in conversations with ScarJo’s team because there seems to be some confusion. We want to take the feedback seriously and hear out the concerns,” says Joanne Jang, model behavior lead at OpenAI.OpenAI pulled Sky, one of the default voices on ChatGPT, after it made headlines last

Image: Intel Intel has revealed a release window for its Lunar Lake laptop processors. The new x86 chips will arrive in the third quarter of this year, and they’re designed to enable the new AI experience in Copilot Plus PCs.
Intel’s announcement coincides with Microsoft’s Surface and AI event, where Microsoft leaned on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and Plus chips for Copilot Plus PCs that promise high performance and longer battery life. However, Intel claims its Lunar L

The Copilot Plus PCs announced during Microsoft’s Surface event. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge In addition to the Surface Pro and Surface Laptop, Microsoft announced a crop of Copilot Plus PCs from all the major OEMs. Here are all the Copilot Plus PCs announced at Microsoft’s Surface event on Monday.
Acer Swift 14 AI
Not to be confused with the other Swift 14 laptops with AI chips, the Swift 14 AI is the only one with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X series processor. This one comes

Image: Samsung Microsoft announced a whole passel of Copilot Plus PCs at its Surface event on Monday, and Samsung’s entries are a 14-inch laptop and two 16-inch ones, known collectively as the Galaxy Book4 Edge. If you preorder them today, Samsung will throw in a free 50-inch TV! Come on down!
The 14-inch Galaxy Book4 Edge starts at $1,349.99 with a 12-core 3.4GHz Snapdragon X Elite processor with 4.0GHz Dual Core Boost, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD (up to 1TB). It has a 14-inch, 120Hz 2880

Microsoft’s 13.8-inch Surface Laptop starts at a cool $999.99. | Image: Microsoft It feels like forever ago that we got new Surface laptops, but Microsoft has taken the wraps off a handful of 2024 refreshes at its hardware event on Monday. We’re getting consumer-centric versions of the newest Surface Laptop and Surface Pro, both starting at $999.99 and launching June 18th. Microsoft calls the Copilot Plus PCs “the most powerful Windows PCs ever built.” They’ll be fi

Apple’s 13-inch MacBook Air currently starts at just $949.99. | Photography by Amelia Holowaty Krales and Chris Welch Apple’s new iPad Air and iPad Pro are impressive, but personally, I prefer laptops with built-in trackpads and keyboards for getting work done. If you feel the same way, the new M3-powered MacBook Air is our top pick for most people, and right now, you can buy the 13-inch base model with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage for an all-time low of $949.99 ($150 off) at Amaz

Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge Microsoft has just announced a new Surface Pro, which is part of the new wave of Copilot Plus PCs. The new Pro, which is technically the “11th edition,” starts at $999, comes in four colors, and is powered by Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X processors. The base model comes with a 13-inch LCD screen, but you can upgrade to an OLED in some of the higher-end models. The chip is the star of the show here: it’s what enables a lot of the AI featur

Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge The Surface Laptop for non-business types is here, and Microsoft hopes that after four years of Apple Silicon, its new Arm-based “AI PC” has a shot at MacBooks.The sapphire and slightly pink dune color options are fetching in person, and the 13.8-inch screen size feels generous for the machine’s small footprint. I spent a few minutes playing around with the new Recall feature, which lets you search for things you were looking at on your comput

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is confident that it finally nailed the transition to Arm chips — so confident that, this time around, the company spent an entire day pitting its new hardware against the MacBook Air.
On a recent morning at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, Microsoft representatives set out new Surface devices equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chips inside and compared them directly to Apple’s category-leading laptop. I witnessed an hour of demos and

Photo: Asus Following Microsoft’s Windows event, Asus announced its first Copilot Plus PC laptop, the Vivobook S 15 (S5507), driven by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X-series processors. Asus says the Arm-based chip will not only improve a few current Vivobook features but also make new AI-driven programs and workloads fly with 45 TOPS of neural processing power.
The new Vivobook S 15 will have the same OLED display as the previous Intel generation (15.6-inch, 16:9, 2880 x 1620, 120Hz refresh

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge iOS 17.5 arrived last week with one of the weirder problems we’ve seen — users reported that deleted photos on their iPhones and iPads were suddenly reappearing. Apple has refused requests to comment on the issue publicly, but on Monday afternoon it released iOS and iPadOS 17.5.1 updates to fix the problem.
According to the notes, “This update provides important bug fixes and addresses a rare issue where photos that experienced database corrupt

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images Google is pouncing on Microsoft’s weathered enterprise security reputation by pitching its services to government institutions. Pointing to a recent report from the US Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB) that found that Microsoft’s security woes are the result of the company “deprioritizing” enterprise security, Google says it can help.
The company’s pitch isn’t quite as direct as Microsoft CEO S

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x 14 Gen 9. | Image: Lenovo Lenovo announced on Monday that it’s adding two Qualcomm-powered laptops to its portfolio: one new Yoga Slim and one new ThinkPad.The Yoga Slim 7x 14 Gen 9 is the creativity-focused laptop of the two. It will be configured with a Snapdragon X Elite processor, up to 32GB of memory, up to 1TB of M.2 SSD storage, three USB-C ports with Power Delivery and DisplayPort 1.4 support, and a 14.5-inch OLED touch display. The whole laptop will weigh j

The OmniBook is on the left and the EliteBook is on the right. | Image by HP Buying a laptop from a major maker like HP can be infuriating — mainly because there are too many options. HP and other laptop makers do this to give us all “choice,” but if you are the kind of person who uses “RAM” and “storage” interchangeably, those choices can be confounding — which might be one reason HP’s using today’s big AI and Windows on Arm moment to

The Dell XPS 13 (9345). | Dell On Monday, Dell announced that it’s releasing five Qualcomm-configured laptops: the XPS 13 (9345), Inspiron 14, Inspiron 14 Plus, Latitude 7455, and Latitude 5455. That’s more than any other manufacturer has announced so far.
The new XPS 13 is powered by a mid-range 12-core Snapdragon X Elite processor with Dual Core Boost. (There will also be a 10-core X Plus version, but only available in China.) The company says it will support up to 64GB of memory,

Acer’s Swift 14 AI laptop arrives this summer. | Image: Acer On Monday, Acer announced the pending arrival of its first Copilot Plus PC: the Swift 14 AI, which is the Qualcomm Snapdragon version of one of its popular laptops. It will come in two configurations, and both will support a slate of new AI features in Windows 11, like Recall, Cocreator, and Live Captions.
One configuration comes with the base 12-core Snapdragon X Elite processor (the one without dual boost) and the other with th

Acer’s Swift 14 AI laptop arrives this summer. | Image: Acer On Monday, Acer announced the pending arrival of its first Copilot Plus PC: the Swift 14 AI, which is the Qualcomm Snapdragon version of one of its popular laptops. It will come in two configurations, and both will support a slate of new AI features in Windows 11, like Recall, Cocreator, and Live Captions.
One configuration comes with the base 12-core Snapdragon X Elite processor (the one without dual boost) and the other with th

Illustration: The Verge Google’s data centers are expanding to support its AI ambitions, and a new project in Finland shows one way the company is trying to grapple with the environmental impact of that growth.
Google will drop €1 billion (roughly $1.1 billion) to expand its data center in Finland to “further unlock the potential of AI,” the company said in an emailed press release today. It includes plans to reuse heat from the data center to warm nearby homes, schools, a

Image: Allison Johnson / The Verge Just days after Apple’s OLED iPad Pro went on sale, Microsoft is bringing the same core display technology to its new Surface Pro. (Also, it’s now just called the Surface Pro; the company has seemingly done away with its numbering.) For the first time, Microsoft’s tablet will be capable of producing perfect blacks along with all the other benefits to contrast ratio, response time, and more that come with the move to OLED. The new panel also su

The new Surface Pro. It comes in blue! | Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge Microsoft just announced the new Surface Pro, the latest in its lineup of tablet / laptop hybrid devices and the first in a new generation of what Microsoft is calling Copilot Plus PCs. The numbers are gone from the model numbers, which seems to signify a full reboot of the lineup. “Compared to previous Surface generations, it isn’t even close,” said Brett Ostrum, Microsoft’s corporate vice presid

Microsoft has taken the wraps off the new Surface Laptop — an Arm-based laptop for consumers. It’s got one big difference from the Surface Laptop 6 for Business announced in March — it’s equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chip instead of Intel’s Core Ultra, leveling the playing field, the company hopes, with Apple’s powerful and efficient MacBook laptops.
The new Surface laptop comes in four colors and 13.8- and- 15-inch options for its 600-nit

Hims and Hers is the latest pharmacy to offer GLP-1 drugs from compounding pharmacies. | Illustration by Hugo Herrera for The Verge Hims & Hers Health, one of the online pharmacies that got its start prescribing dick pills, is now offering knockoff versions of GLP-1 weight loss drugs.Hims & Hers says it will offer drugs that mimic Ozempic and Wegovy, the active ingredient of which is semaglutide.
The copycat versions are made by compounding pharmacies. The formulations aren’t the s

Image: The Verge Microsoft’s launching Recall for Windows 11, a new tool that keeps track of everything you see and do on your computer and, in return, gives you the ability to search and retrieve anything you’ve done on the device.
The scope of Recall, which Microsoft has internally called AI Explorer, is incredibly vast — it includes logging things you do in apps, tracking communications in live meetings, remembering all websites you’ve visited for research, and more. A

Apple vs. PC | Image: Allison Johnson Microsoft is making a major push to put AI into laptops. It’s introducing a new branding called “Copilot Plus PCs” today that’ll highlight when Windows laptops come with built-in AI hardware and support for AI features across the operating system.
At an event at its headquarters in Redmond on Monday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that Copilot Plus PCs will be offered by all of its major laptop partners, including Dell, Lenovo, Sams

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Are you ready for Microsoft’s latest Windows on Arm push? That’s what we’re expecting at today’s Surface and Windows AI event.Rumors suggest Microsoft will unveil a new Arm-powered Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 devices and a host of new AI features for Windows. Microsoft has been building up to this moment for quite some time, so expect to hear a lot about its transition to Windows on Arm.
Things kick off at 10AM PT / 1PM

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge The annual refreshes of Android and iOS are always worth looking out for, and in the wake of Google I/O 2024, we now have the second beta release of Android 15, so it’s a good opportunity to round up everything coming to the OS this year.
If you want to get involved in the beta testing — bearing in mind that these betas will have bugs and issues — head here to see if your device is eligible. Google Pixel owners can sign up, and a select

Image: Apple You won’t need to travel too far into the future to see Apple TV Plus’ next adventure series. The streamer just announced that Time Bandits, an adaptation of the 1981 Terry Gilliam film of the same name, will premiere on July 24th. The TV version of the story will span 10 episodes and, according to Apple, is about “an unpredictable journey through time and space with a ragtag group of thieves and their newest recruit: an 11-year-old history buff named Kevin.”

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge You may not have even thought about replacing your AirTag yet, but Bloomberg reports that Apple is working on a new one that could arrive in mid-2025. The new AirTag will reportedly feature an updated chip with better location tracking — an improvement it might need as competition among tracking devices ramps up.
By the time Apple rolls out its refreshed AirTag, the Bluetooth tracking landscape will look a lot different on both Android and iOS. Last month,

OpenAI says “AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity’s distinctive voice.” | Photo: Warner Bros. OpenAI is pulling the ChatGPT voice that sounds remarkably similar to Scarlett Johansson after numerous headlines (and even Saturday Night Live) noted the similarity. The voice, known as Sky, is now being put on “pause,” the company says.
“We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity’s distinctive voice— Sky’s vo

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge One of Microsoft’s most consequential hardware events in years is about to take place. It’s not Microsoft Build — the company’s developer conference — which kicks off on Tuesday. Instead, Microsoft is holding a small event today, May 20th, to talk about its next Surface devices.
At the event, we’re expecting Microsoft to announce new versions of the Surface Pro 10 and the Surface Laptop 6, both running on Qualcomm&rs

LG CEO William Cho and home entertainment company president Park Hyoung-sei met with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in February to discuss the collaboration.| Image: LG LG is reportedly pausing its partnership with Meta to develop an extended reality (XR) device that would take on Apple’s Vision Pro headset, just three months after announcing the joint venture.
While multiple Korean news outlets are reporting that the Meta partnership has broken down entirely due to a lack of “synergy&rdqu