Technology news

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images California governor Gavin Newsom has signed two bills that will protect performers from having their likeness simulated by AI digital replicas.
The two SAG-AFTRA supported bills, AB 2602 and AB 1836, were passed by the California legislature in August and are part of a slate of state-level AI regulations. AB 2602 bars contract provisions that would let companies use a digital version of a performer in a project instead of the real human actor, unless the pe

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Google is taking away a Pixel Buds Pro feature that lets users touch and hold an earbud to hear unread notifications. In an update on Tuesday, Google confirmed that Assistant “will no longer read unread notifications when using the press Assistant feature.”Additionally, Google says Assistant will stop automatically alerting you to unread notifications on the Pixel Buds, nor will it let you reply. Instead, Google says you can hear notifications by acti

Signature Plastics’ in-office gallery of various custom mechanical keyboards. | Image: Signature Plastics Signature Plastics, the Custer, Washington-based company known for specialized mechanical keyboard keycaps, has announced it’s being acquired by a Portland-based investment group that intends to keep the company operating with all employees maintained. This comes after majority owner Bob Guenser announced his plans to retire and find new ownership back in January.
Signature Plast

Image: SocialAI Remember the last time you posted a salient take to social media and got zero engagement, or trolled? Now you can avoid that with a new “social network” full of inane AI chatbots that will — your pick! — debate you, attack you, or even just say nice things if you want.
It’s called SocialAI, and the very first thing it invites you to do is pick the followers you want, like “supporters,” “nerds,” “skeptics,” “v

Image: SocialAI Remember the last time you posted a salient take to social media and got zero engagement, or trolled? Now you can avoid that with a new “social network” full of inane AI chatbots that will — your pick! — debate you, attack you, or even just say nice things if you want.
It’s called SocialAI, and the very first thing it invites you to do is pick the followers you want, like “supporters,” “nerds,” “skeptics,” “v

Image: SocialAI Remember the last time you posted a salient take to social media and got zero engagement, or trolled? Now you can avoid that with a new “social network” full of inane AI chatbots that will — your pick! — debate you, attack you, or even just say nice things if you want.
It’s called SocialAI, and the very first thing it invites you to do is pick the followers you want, like “supporters,” “nerds,” “skeptics,” “v

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos by Getty Images In the weeks leading up to the release of OpenAI’s newest “reasoning” model, o1, independent AI safety research firm Apollo found a notable issue. Apollo realized the model produced incorrect outputs in a new way. Or, to put things more colloquially, it lied.
Sometimes the deceptions seemed innocuous. In one example, OpenAI researchers asked o1-preview to provide a brownie recipe with online references. The mode

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The GSM Association, the organization that develops the RCS standard, said on Tuesday it’s working to enable end-to-end encryption (E2EE) on messages sent between Android and iPhone. E2EE prevents third parties, like your messaging service or cell carrier, from viewing your texts.
In the announcement, GSMA technical director Tom Van Pelt said the next milestone for RCS Universal Profile is the “first deployment of standardized, interoperabl

Image: EA EA’s sports games are huge franchises, and soon, the company is launching a mobile app to add even more of EA Sports into your life. As part of an investor presentation today, the company officially announced the EA Sports app, which will soft launch for iOS and Android in Spain this fall.
In a press release, EA says the app will be a “socially-driven app” with features like a discovery feed to keep up to date on news and highlights from their favorite teams, interact

Image: MysteryLupin (Twitter) The next flagship soundbar from Sonos will be called the Arc Ultra, and marketing images of the product have been posted on X today. They line up with the photos I published back in July and offer yet more confirmation that the Arc Ultra will support Bluetooth audio playback.Sonos itself has managed to leak details about the Arc Ultra in recent days; the company’s online store briefly featured a few tidbits about the Arc Ultra and mentioned the inclusion of &l

Image: Netflix We’re still waiting on the biggest news in the Witcher universe — just what Liam Hemsworth will sound like as Geralt — but in the meantime, Netflix has announced when fans can expect the next animated spinoff. The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep will start streaming on February 11th, 2025. And Doug Cockle, the iconic voice of Geralt in the games, will be reprising his role.
Here’s the premise of the film:
Geralt of Rivia, a mutated monster hunter, is hired to i

The Eufy E30 is a Matter-compatible smart lock with a fingerprint reader. It’s Eufy’s first lock to work with Apple Home. | Image: Eufy The latest smart lock from Eufy is its first product to support Matter. The Eufy Smart Lock E30 ($169.99) works over Thread, which should allow for faster responsiveness, longer battery life, and better connectivity than locks that work just over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.The E30 is also the first smart lock from Anker’s smart home arm that works with

The Kensington SD5000T5. | Image: Kensington The first Thunderbolt 5 cables arrived in July, and now it looks like we’re finally getting the first Thunderbolt 5 dock! Kensington has just announced the Intel-certified SD5000T5 EQ is now available to buy, seemingly beating every rival to the 120Gbps single-cable docking punch. (I just checked: Hyper, J5Create and OWC’s docks aren’t yet available.)The new dock claims to support up to three 4K monitors or two 8K monitors on Windows

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you’ve tried out Snapchat’s AI-generated selfies, you might want to double-check a setting that lets Snap use your face in “personalized sponsored content and ads,” as spotted by 404 Media.
The feature, called My Selfie, lets you and your friends create AI-generated images of yourself based on photos you share with Snapchat. When using the feature for the first time, Snapchat prompts you to agree to terms that include using &ldqu

The new “Simple Snapchat.” | Image: Snap Snapchat is undergoing its biggest redesign in years by simplifying from five to three tabs: one for messages and Stories with friends, one for the camera, and another for a TikTok-like feed of full-screen videos from creators and publishers.
The redesign, dubbed “Simple Snapchat,” was announced onstage Tuesday at Snap’s annual Partner Summit in Los Angeles. “It brings Stories closer to conversations, it simplifies cont

Image: Square Enix Final Fantasy XVI is out today on PC, and its producer is asking players to be chill about it. In an interview with PC Gamer, Naoki Yoshida has woefully underestimated the collective horniness of the internet by requesting that fans not create mods for the game that are “offensive or inappropriate.”Good luck with that one, buddy.
PC gaming conventional wisdom dictates that once a game is out on PC, it’s only a matter of time before clips start circulating of

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Meta and eyewear conglomerate EssilorLuxottica plan to work together on smart glasses “into the next decade.” The two announced a long-term agreement today to extend a partnership that started in 2019 and has yielded two generations of Ray-Ban smart glasses.
The collaboration has helped Meta make smart glasses that stand out for their style
So far, the collaboration has helped Meta make smart glasses that stand out for their style. It looks

The iPhone 15 Pro Action Button: more than meets the eye. | Screenshot: iOS Action Button setting Apple’s announcement last week that the Action Button is now on all of its iPhone 16 models, rather than just the Pro model that the button debuted on last year, was a little overshadowed by the introduction of the Camera Control button — a capacitive, tactile button for launching and controlling the iPhone 16’s camera. But don’t let that fool you: the Action Button is still

Ambulances rush wounded people to a hospital in the southern Lebanese city of Saida on September 17, 2024. | Photo by MAHMOUD ZAYYAT/AFP via Getty Images Thousands of people have reportedly been injured by exploding pagers across Lebanon and Syria in what appears to be an attack targeting Hezbollah members on Tuesday, reports Reuters and other news agencies. Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said at least eight people, including a child, have been killed, and around 2,800 others hav

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge Green bubbles, rejoice: your iPhone-using friends are finally going to have a much better time texting you. As part of iOS 18, which was released for everyone on Monday, Apple added support for RCS, the Rich Communication Services protocol for messaging. This means that chats between iPhone and Android users will finally have a bunch of sorely needed features that should have been in place a long time ago.A big reason I’ve stayed on iOS (and haven&

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge With each operating system update, our computers get further away from their earliest, text-based interfaces, when copying files and launching programs required typing out specific commands rather than double-clicking on icons. But although a lot of today’s users won’t know these command line interfaces ever existed, and others will have forgotten all about them, they’re still present in macOS and in Windows. More than that, they’r

Image: EA Games Reports about a movie based on The Sims have been circulating for a while now, but Electronic Arts has just officially announced that a big-screen adaptation of the hit game series is in the works.
In a lengthy blog post detailing some of its upcoming projects, EA announced today that Amazon MGM Studios will be the studio behind a film based on The Sims cowritten by Briony Redman and Kate Herron, who will also direct. Previously, the duo wrote together for the new Doctor Who seri

U.S. Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation Chair Mr. Jason Neubauer speaks at a press conference ahead of the Titan submersible hearing in North Charleston, South Carolina, on Sept. 15, 2024. | Photo: US Coast Guard An eerie image of the sunken Titan submersible was made public this week by the US Coast Guard, which opened an investigation into the vessel’s demise.
The submersible was attempting to ferry tourists to the wreckage of the Titanic when it vanishedThe submersible was attemp

Epomaker’s TH80 Pro offers perks like RGB lighting and customizability for just $53.99. | Image: Jon Porter / The Verge A mechanical keyboard can spruce up any home office, but a lot of the best models don’t come cheap — well, except for one: Epomaker’s TH80 Pro. It’s our top pick for people on a budget, and right now it’s even more affordable at Amazon where you can buy it for $53.99 ($36 off). That’s a new record low price and is available on all versi

Mitch Lowe in HBO’s MoviePass, MovieCrash documentary. | Image: HBO MoviePass ex-CEO Mitch Lowe pleaded guilty to securities fraud on Monday over his involvement in a scheme to mislead investors, as reported earlier by Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. With the plea, Lowe admits to making false representations about the sustainability of a $9.95 monthly plan that promised “unlimited” access to movies in theaters.
Lowe, who took over as CEO of MoviePass in 2016, started allowi

Ekaterina Zaharieva has been nominated as the EU’s first ever commissioner for startups, the bloc’s chief Ursula von der Leyen announced today. Zaharieva served as Bulgaria’s deputy prime minister for judicial reform and foreign affairs between 2017 and 2021. She’s currently a member of the Bulgarian Parliament. Von der Leyen has now proposed Zaharieva as the designated commissioner for startups, research, and innovation. “We must put research and innovation,

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber announced a new rider verification feature aimed at giving drivers and couriers more peace of mind about their customers.The rideshare company has tried to fight fraud and improve safety on its platform through a variety of methods, including safety check-ins, PIN verification, and audio recordings of rides. But to date, most of these efforts have focused on the safety of riders, not drivers. Some drivers have urged Uber to do more for them, leading t

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber announced a new rider verification feature aimed at giving drivers and couriers more peace of mind about their customers.The rideshare company has tried to fight fraud and improve safety on its platform through a variety of methods, including safety check-ins, PIN verification, and audio recordings of rides. But to date, most of these efforts have focused on the safety of riders, not drivers. Some drivers have urged Uber to do more for them, leading t

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge The word of the day in US v. Google was “parking.” As in: did Google buy some of its most ascendant and dangerous competitors in the online advertising business, all the while planning on parking them off in some far-flung corner of the company so that no one could possibly upset Google’s dominance? That is a central question of the government’s entire case against Google, and it came up over and over on Monday morning.
To kick off the sec

Image: Epic Games The Epic Games Store has arrived on the iPad for users in the European Union, making games like Fortnite and Fall Guys available to play from the device.
The launch comes as part of Monday’s iPadOS 18 update, which lets EU users download apps from third-party app stores on the iPad. The Epic Games Store — and several other alternative app marketplaces — launched on the iPhone in the EU last month.
Where can I get the Epic Games Store in the European Union?c

Illustration: The Verge Google is planning to roll out a technology that will identify whether a photo was taken with a camera, edited by software like Photoshop, or produced by generative AI models. In the coming months, Google’s search results will include an updated “about this image feature” to let people know if an image was created or edited with AI tools.
The system Google is using is part of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), one of the larges