Latest 25 news items

Xbox just allcapsmaxxed: Meet XBOX. This isn’t a joke; Microsoft appears to be actually rebranding Xbox to XBOX.

YouTube is expanding its AI likeness detection program to all users over the age of 18 — meaning just about anyone can have the platform hunt for potential deepfakes of themselves. The likeness detection feature uses a selfie-style scan of a person’s face to monitor YouTube for lookalikes.

Attention @arxiv authors: Our Code of Conduct states that by signing your name as an author of a paper, each author takes full responsibility for all its contents, irrespective of how the contents were generated. If generative AI tools generate inappropriate language, plagiarized content, biased content, errors, mistakes, incorrect references, or…

Microsoft’s latest Windows 11 test will allow you to reposition the taskbar and change the size of the Start menu. The update, which is rolling out to Windows 11 Insiders in the Experimental channel, lets you place the taskbar on the bottom, top, left, or right side of the screen.

If you’re not staying on top of Analogue 3D updates, now’s the time to start. Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The Musk v. Altman trial came to a close this week, and the final arguments kept circling back to one question: can we trust the people in charge of AI?

Your trust in AI is about to be put to the test: OpenAI will soon let you give the chatbot direct access to your bank accounts. The new feature announced in preview today will allow users to “securely connect” ChatGPT with Plaid — the bank-to-app bridging platform used by 12,000 financial institutions, including Schwab, Fidelity, Chase, Capital One, and…

It’s no secret that AI data centers have been straining the grid. But Silicon Valley has been relatively insulated from it all, thanks to high land and power prices that have pushed hyperscaler projects elsewhere.

The Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus was billed by the company in late March as one of its “fastest gaming desktop processor ever.” That hype was evidently accurate, as benchmarks done by Gamers Nexus show the processor giving AMD’s pricier X3D cache-equipped Ryzen 9000-series CPUs a run for their money. The Ultra 7 270K Plus also outperforms the Core i9…

OpenAI announced yet another reorganization Friday, consolidating certain areas and making company president Greg Brockman the official lead of all things product. In a memo viewed by The Verge , Brockman wrote that since OpenAI’s product strategy for this year is to go all-in on AI agents, the company is combining its products to “invest in a single…

On Friday, OpenAI launched a new set of personal finance tools in preview for ChatGPT Pro subscribers in the U.S., letting them connect their accounts and ask questions ranging from spending analysis to future financial planning. OpenAI has partnered with the financial connection service Plaid to manage the account connections.

Google updated its spam policy to mark attempts to “manipulate” its AI model in search results as spam, including results in AI Overview or AI Mode in Search, as Search Engine Land reports: “In the context of Google Search, spam refers to techniques used to deceive users or manipulate our Search systems into featuring content prominently, such as…

Where’s the Trump phone? We’re going to keep talking about it every week .

Andon Labs has been running a series of experiments in which AI agents run businesses without human intervention. Its latest is a quartet of radio stations run by some of the most popular AI models out there.

The Memorial Day deals have arrived — err, at least some of them. BioLite, purveyors of all things solar, has kicked off a larger holiday promo ahead of May 26th, resulting in reduced pricing on smokeless fire pits , headlamps , and solar-powered stoves , just in time for summer.

Your trust in AI is about to be put to the test: OpenAI will soon let you give the chatbot direct access to your bank accounts. The new feature announced in preview today will allow users to “securely connect” ChatGPT with Plaid — the bank-to-app bridging platform used by 12,000 financial institutions, including Schwab, Fidelity, Chase, Capital One, and…

X is fighting for its users’ right to anonymity against the far-right influencers and accused human traffickers Andrew and Tristan Tate, who are seeking to unmask their online critics. The Tate brothers filed suit against the owners of more than a dozen social media accounts — several of them run pseudonymously — last year, claiming the accounts engaged in…

This is Optimizer , a weekly newsletter sent every Friday from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest gizmos and potions that swear they’re going to change your life. Opt in for Optimizer here .

This week, a trio of video game cabinets emblazoned with pixel art of Donald Trump and a number of other government officials’ faces suddenly appeared at the DC War Memorial. Looking at the cabinets from a distance, it’s easy to get the sense that Operation Epic Furious: Strait to Hell (which you can also play on the web ) is just another monumental joke…

AI video-generation startup Runway doesn’t have the typical Silicon Valley pedigree. No Stanford founders, no ex-Google founders, no nine-figure seed round that bought them time to ignore revenue.

British online safety regulator Ofcom says it has accepted new commitments from X that aim to better protect UK users from seeing illegal hate and terror content on the platform. Under the agreement announced today , X says it will withhold access in the UK to accounts reported posting illegal terrorist content and determined to be operated by UK terror…

Sonos has a new rival in town. Bose’s new Lifestyle Collection includes a $299 Lifestyle Ultra Speaker, a $1,099 Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar, and the $899 Ultra Subwoofer, all of which are now available directly from Bose and third-party retailers like Amazon and Best Buy.

As AI models increasingly become commoditized, startups are racing to build the software layer that sits on top of them. One interesting entrant into this space is Osaurus , an open source, Apple-only LLM server that lets users move between different local AI models, either locally or in the cloud, while keeping their files and tools all on their own…

Last summer, Peter Degen’s postdoctoral supervisor came to him with an unusual problem: One of his papers was being cited too much. Citations are the currency of academia, but there was something unusual about these.