Apple’s iPhone SE 4 may use OLED screens from a Chinese supplier, not Samsung or LG
The LCD panel used by the 2022 iPhone SE (above) will likely be replaced by a 6.1-inch OLED from Chinese supplier BOE. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge
China-based display maker BOE (Beijing Oriental Electronics) has a complicated relationship with Apple. But despite some missteps, it looks like the two companies will be working together for a while longer, at least: a new report from The Elec (spotted by MacRumors) pegs BOE as the display supplier for the rumored iPhone SE 4. This latest report comes as Apple is allegedly working on its own display tech — and trying to lessen reliance on its main display maker and rival, Samsung.
That’s good news for the bottom line — the SE will likely use an older OLED design, so BOE can use existing parts inventory. But it’s not great news, as Apple has been trying to reduce its dependence on Samsung for displays. A new report from The Information details just how much power Samsung holds over Apple as one of the only manufacturers able to mass-produce high-end OLEDs to its specifications. Samsung Display reportedly gets away with things that no other Apple component supplier would dream of, like not letting Apple engineers into its facilities and refusing to replace a supply of screens when a minor flaw was identified.
As much as Cupertino would like to cut ties with Samsung, it’ll likely be quite a few years before that becomes a reality. If and when it gets its MicroLED production off the ground, Apple will likely start small and use the tech in watches first. In the meantime, Samsung probably isn’t losing any sleep over the iPhone SE order going to its competitor. As The Elec points out, the modern LTPO OLEDs that Samsung makes for the iPhone 14 (and likely 15) cost more than twice as much as the legacy OLEDs the SE will reportedly use. Maybe things will be different in a few years, but until then, it looks like Samsung’s display production lines will be plenty busy making OLED panels destined for high-end iPhones.
Microsoft’s latest AI CoPilot could be the voice behind a deluge of work emails
Image: The Verge
If you notice that emails from salespeople or responses from customer support agents seem a bit off — or that they’ve gotten a significant bump in writing quality — you may be have AI to thank. Microsoft has announced that it’ll be introducing AI features into Dynamics 365, its set of enterprise apps for customer relationship management and resource planning.
The company calls the set of features “CoPilot,” and is pitching it as a way to help businesspeople “create ideas and content faster, complete time-consuming tasks, and get insights and next best actions.” That involves things like having an AI write customizable emails to customers and automatically generate meeting summaries, write a response to customer service chats and emails based on the previous conversation, and help marketers delve into their data without having to write SQL. The company’s also pitching it as a way to help generate ideas for marketing emails, which means that you could start seeing AI-powered ads in your inbox soon.
Microsoft’s promising even more than that — the company says the system will make it easier to create “virtual agents” for customer support, which can use OpenAI’s tech to search Bing and internal knowledge bases for answers.
Like it has with other AI tools, Microsoft is pitching this as something that humans will use, rather than a way to replace employees. In a LinkedIn post, CEO Satya Nadella called the announcement a step towards “transforming every business process and function with interactive, AI-powered collaboration.”
Similar tech could be coming to software that’s not completely enterprise-focused. There are reports that Microsoft is planning on integrating ChatGPT into apps like Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Its most prominent use of the tech is likely with Bing, its chatbot and search engine that’s currently available to people on a waitlist.
Here are the best AirPods deals you can get right now
Apple’s second-gen AirPods Pro are on sale for $50 off at Verizon, matching their all-time low.
If you know where to look, there are often some great discounts available on Apple’s ever-popular AirPods. Since Apple launched the third-gen AirPods toward the end of 2021, we’ve seen the starting price of the second-gen, entry-level model slowly dip to around $100. And now that you can buy the second-gen AirPods Pro at most retailers, we’re seeing even better discounts on the last-gen Pro and other models.
Below, we’ve curated the best deals currently available on each model, including the entry-level AirPods, the AirPods Pro, the third-gen AirPods, and the AirPods Max.
In 2021, Apple lowered the list price of the second-gen AirPods — now the entry-level model — from $159 to $129. It now only sells the model with a wired charging case, however, which charges via a standard Lightning cable. Despite their age, we found that the easy-to-use, second-gen AirPods still offer great wireless performance and reliable battery life, making them a great pick if you can live without a wireless charging case.
While we’ve seen Apple’s most affordable pair of earbuds drop to as low as $79.99, they’re currently only on sale at Amazon, Walmart, and Verizon for $99. Alternatively, if you prefer the model with the wireless charging case, it’s available at Adorama for $139.99 ($20 off).
With support for the company’s MagSafe technology and an asking price of $179, Apple’s third-gen AirPods are often considered the middle child in Apple’s current AirPods lineup. The shorter stems make for a more subtle design, too, while improved sound and features like sweat and water resistance, support for spatial audio with dynamic head tracking, and improved battery life render them a nice improvement over the last-gen model.
In September, Apple quietly introduced a new option for the third-gen AirPods that comes with a Lightning-only charging case, one that retails for a mere $10 less than the option with a MagSafe charging case. However, given the subtle price difference, we recommend that you buy the MagSafe-compatible model, which is available at Costco through March 11th — or while supplies last — for $139.99 ($40 off). Even though that price is only available for Costco members, non-members can still buy them with a 5 percent surcharge for $146.99.
In case you missed it, Apple announced the second-gen AirPods Pro during its “Far Out” event in September, a pair of earbuds that feature a similar build to the first-gen model but offer better noise cancellation. They also sport swipe-based controls, come with Apple’s new H2 chip, and feature an extra-small pair of swappable silicone ear tips for smaller ears. They typically retail for $249, but right now they’re matching their all-time low of $199.99 at Verizon. Read our review.
The first-gen AirPods Pro are also still available for purchase, and sometimes much cheaper than the second-gen model. They have better sound quality than the non-premium models listed above, as well as active noise cancellation. They also come with swappable silicone tips — albeit three, not four — and support Apple’s spatial audio feature, which adds an immersive surround sound effect to select content.
At the end of 2021, Apple launched a new configuration of the first-gen AirPods Pro with a wireless charging case that supports Apple’s MagSafe technology, just like the third-gen AirPods. They used to retail for $249, though they’re available right now for $194.99 at Amazon and B&H Photo. That’s a far cry from their recent low of $129.99 and their typical sale price of around $159, which is why we suggest buying the second-gen AirPods Pro at Verizon or waiting for the first-gen model to drop further in price.
The AirPods Max aren’t the iconic in-ears that have become synonymous with the AirPods name. They’re large and luxurious, comprised of aluminum, steel, and mesh fabric that remains comfortable during extended listening sessions. They also sport excellent noise cancellation, Apple’s spatial audio feature, and wide, balanced sound, even if they lag behind some of their peers when it comes to bass response. They’re not the best noise-canceling headphones for most people — blame the $550 sticker price — but it’s hard to find a pair of Bluetooth headphones that sound better and feature more intuitive controls.
Although Woot and other retailers have discounted the AirPods Max to as low as $409 in the past, prices have since increased across the board. Right now, for instance, the Max are only receiving a steep discount at Best Buy and Amazon, where you can pick them up on sale for $479.99.
How Some Gen Z Instagram Users Post to Facebook: Unwittingly Teenagers and young adults are flummoxed. The reason it keeps happening involves an online prompt and product design.
Microsoft Edge is getting a video upscaler to make blurry old videos look better
The experimental new feature uses machine learning to remove blocky compression artifacts and increase the resolution of low-quality video. | Image: The Verge
Microsoft has unveiled Video Super Resolution (VSR) — an “experimental” video upscaling feature for its Edge web browser that uses machine learning to increase the resolution of low-quality video. Announced on the Edge Insiders blog, Microsoft’s VSR technology can “remove blocky compression artifacts” and improve text clarity for videos on platforms such as YouTube. The feature is still in testing and availability is currently restricted to half of the users running the Canary channel of Edge in Microsoft’s Insider program.
If you want to try it for yourself, there are a few stipulations: Microsoft VSR will only work on video resolutions of 720p or lower (provided both the height and width of the video exceeds 192 pixels), and the video itself can’t be protected with digital rights management (DRM) technology like PlayReady or Widevine, which makes frames inaccessible to the browser for processing. That particular restriction could impact what content you can upscale with the feature, as most popular streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Max all leverage DRM tech for copyright protection.
The device running Microsoft VSR must also contain either an Nvidia RTX 20- / 30- / 40- series graphics card or an AMD Radeon series GPU from the RX5700 through to the RX7800. This support also extends to gaming laptops running discrete versions of these supported GPUs; however, the device must be plugged into a power source, and users will need to adjust their Windows settings to manually force Edge to run on the laptop’s discrete GPU. Microsoft has not mentioned if VSR can boost 720p resolutions to full HD 1080p.
This isn’t the first video upscaling feature to arrive for Edge users. In June last year, Microsoft introduced Clarity Boost spatial upscaling for Xbox Cloud Gaming, designed to make Xbox games streamed on the Edge browser appear clearer and sharper.
Microsoft’s VSR tech is also by no means unique. Intel is similarly developing a video upscaling feature for Chromium-based browsers, and Nvidia has offered an early version of RTX Super Resolution (RTX VSR) — the company’s own AI upscaling technology — on Shield TV devices since 2019. That tech has been well received, and RTX Super Resolution has since rolled out to Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge browsers, albeit restricted to PCs equipped with GeForce RTX 40- and 30-series GPUs. Nvidia also disclosed that Super Resolution may cause a “slight reduction in performance” if used while playing a game or running GPU-reliant creative apps. Microsoft has not mentioned any such performance impacts for VSR. We have reached out to clarify and will update this story should we hear back.
How little green aliens are helping the space flight experts of the future
It may be just a game but some players have gone on to careers in physics, engineering and aeronautics. Now the team behind Kerbal Space Program 2 is working with the European Space Agency to make it even more realistic
When Dr Uri Shumlack was contacted by a video game developer who wanted to discuss his work on interstellar propulsion, for a game about spaceflight, he was wary. A professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the University of Washington, he was a busy individual, and not exactly an avid gamer. He asked some of his engineering undergraduates whether they had heard of a game called Kerbal Space Program, only to discover that half the class were there because of the game.
First playable in 2011, Kerbal Space Program is an idiosyncratic and extremely difficult video game that involves getting little green aliens off the surface of their planet using rockets that you must cobble together from a library of parts. To do this, though – and leave the launchpad without exploding – you have to develop a pretty good understanding of the physics of space travel, calculating orbit trajectories and figuring out how much fuel you need, and whether you can carry it without messing up your thrust-to-weight ratio. It is beloved by space and astrophysics enthusiasts, who have posted thousands of hours of gameplay video showing off their unlikely crafts and ambitious missions in this simulated solar system.
Following the latest cuts, a new Tesla Model S Plaid and Model X Plaid — the performance versions for both vehicles — now share the same price of $109,990. Meanwhile, the base Tesla Model S AWD is now $89,990, down from $94,990. When Tesla first unveiled its redesign for the vehicle back in January 2021, Model S prices started at $79,990.
This is the second time this year that Tesla has made significant reductions to its prices, having cut the cost of its Model Y, Model X, and Model S vehicles back in January by up to 20 percent. Following those initial reductions, Musk has since expressed plans to halve production costs for future EVs during Tesla’s Investor Day on March 1st. “The desire for people to own a Tesla is extremely high,” said Musk. “The limiting factor is their ability to pay for a Tesla.”
The EV producer has regularly tampered with its vehicle pricing over the last few years, having previously made increases across its entire range several times between 2021 and 2022. The recent price cuts haven’t been especially welcome by existing buyers, however. Protests were staged in China earlier this year following reductions of up to 17 percent in the region, with Tesla customers who had purchased at the higher price demanding refunds. Some Tesla owners in the US were also displeased with similar price cuts, with existing customers citing concerns regarding the sudden loss in vehicle value.
Idle no more: how automatic mouse jigglers are taking on nosy bosses
Mouse movers have existed for years, but have recently become a symbol of resistance against workplace surveillance
Watching Premier League matches can be difficult when you live in the US. For midweek games, the kickoff is often in the middle of the work day, posing a challenge even for remote workers: how do you keep your online status from going idle?
The solution is a mouse mover: a tool that keeps your cursor jiggling even as you turn your full attention to the game. And last month, the Premier League’s US Twitter feed endorsed goofing off by offering a “PLinUSA mouse mover” to a lucky winner.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is reportedly getting a major update soon
Image: Valve
Valve’s on the precipice of launching a major update to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, according to a report from esports journalist Richard Lewis (via Forbes). Sources close to the situation tell Lewis that Valve could finally release a new version of the game on the company’s Source 2 engine as early as this month.
Lewis, who has broken big CS:GO stories in the past, says he’s told that Valve already enlisted a group of professional CS:GO players to try out the updated game at the company’s Seattle headquarters. Migrating the game to the Source 2 engine, which is used by some of Valve’s other games, like Dota 2 and Half-Life: Alyx, could allow for better performance and graphics.
Something weird just happened. Latest NVIDIA drivers introduced support for unknown app executables called "csgos2.exe" and "cs2.exe". Why project is called Counter-Strike 2 and what are you cooking @csgo? https://t.co/U9YKlAjwgypic.twitter.com/PU8Op9uGLq
That’s apparently not the only upgrade Valve’s been working on. Lewis adds that the “new” CS:GO could come with an improved matchmaking system that more closely resembles the third-party platforms where players can find and join CS:GO matches, like FACEIT or ESEA. Valve’s also expected to increase the tick rate of the servers used by the game from 64 to 128, potentially making for less latency during online matches.
It’s hard to believe that over 10 years after the release of CS:GO (and over 20 since the release of the original title) that Valve would spring a huge update on us with little to no fanfare. But this isn’t the only evidence of a possible upgrade. Last week, u/DAOWAceon Reddit discovered a suspect pair of executable files, named “csgos2.exe” and “cs2.exe,” included in recent drivers released by Nvidia.
While it may sound like Valve’s releasing an entirely new game, Twitter users @gabefollower and @aquaismissing explain that this could simply indicate that Valve’s moving the game over to the Source 2 engine and that developers may have been a bit lazy with the file-naming. We hopefully won’t have to wait too much longer to see what the so-called Counter-Strike 2 is all about, though, as Lewis says the game’s “about ready to go.”
DJI quietly discontinues its drone-detecting AeroScope system
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
DJI’s no longer producing AeroScope, the drone-detecting system accused of helping Russians target and attack Ukrainian drone pilots, as first spotted by UAV Hive (via DroneDJ). The device’s product page now displays a pop-up that reads: “The Aeroscope is no longer in production. For the latest in DJI technology, please view our product recommendations below.”
You can close out of the notification and view the entirety of AeroScope’s product page, which still has an order form for DJI dealers at the bottom. The China-based DJI hasn’t formally announced the discontinuation of the product, and it’s still not clear whether existing AeroScope devices will lose functionality, or if the platform’s going away forever. According to UAV Hive, rumors indicate that DJI’s working on a second version of the receiver, however, DJI didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for more information.
Screenshot: Emma Roth / The Verge
DJI describes its AeroScope technology as a “comprehensive drone detection platform” that can identify and track drones in real time using the receiver signals broadcasted by newer DJI drones. This signal provides AeroScope users with information like flight status, path, and pilot location from drones up to about 30 miles away.
While the product was originally intended for use by law enforcement or other government agencies to monitor drones flying in potentially dangerous areas (like around an airport runway) and to track down their pilots, the technology became a cause for concern in the midst of the war between Russia and Ukraine.
I don't work there anymore, but probably two reasons:
1. It doesn't make sense to continue supporting a feature that was created to assist US security interests when being constantly attacked by US security agencies.
2. FAA Remote ID is being implemented.https://t.co/qOXXGMxzvj
Brendan Schulman, the former vice president of policy at DJI, says on Twitter that there are “probably two reasons” behind DJI’s decision to discontinue AeroScope. “It doesn’t make sense to continue supporting a feature that was created to assist US security interests when being constantly attacked by US security agencies,” Schulman writes, while also citing the Federal Aviation Administration’s implementation of Remote ID.
This is the upcoming standard that the FAA, law enforcement, and other agencies will use to detect and track “most drones operating in US airspace,” giving them information about the drone’s identity, location, altitude, take-off location, control station location, and more.
Starting on September 16th, 2023, most drone operators in the US will only be able to fly aircraft with built-in remote broadcast capabilities or a retrofitted remote ID broadcast module — essentially what DJI has already been doing with its newer drones and AeroScope. The only time drone operators can use a device that doesn’t emit remote ID signals is if they’re flying in FAA-recognized identified areas.
Just days before AeroScope’s apparent discontinuation came to light, a report from Wired revealed that researchers have created a tool that receives signals from DJI drones through more affordable third-party devices, letting them pick up on the GPS locations of the device and its pilot without the need for an AeroScope system. The engineers working on the project tell Wired they have only tested the tool with drones 15 to 25 feet away, but believe they can track drones from even further away with more testing.
Meet the companies trying to keep up with ChatGPT
Illustration: The Verge
With all the hype surrounding ChatGPT, it’s no wonder other companies are vying for a piece of the AI-powered chatbot game. Companies are betting that we’re at a decisive moment in the artificial intelligence industry, where products that adopt and build upon the budding technology could have the potential to reshape technology as we know it — not to mention shake up the Big Tech hierarchy.
The stakes are high, and technology’s biggest players don’t want to be left behind as breakthroughs in AI make it more accessible — and much more interesting — to users. While tech giants like Microsoft and Google have already introduced their versions of conversational AI tools built using large language models (LLMs), other lesser-known companies have thrown themselves in the mix, setting the stage for an AI showdown.
Here, we’ve rounded up a list of all the companies and AI chatbots that are looking to challenge ChatGPT — or build on top of its success.
Microsoft
Let’s start with Microsoft. The company made its chatbot debut with its launch of the “new” Bing, which promises to upend the way we search for things online. It also built AI-powered tools into the Edge browser.
Image: Microsoft
Microsoft — a big investor in OpenAI — leveraged the technology behind ChatGPT to build an AI tool it says is “even more powerful.” So far, the results have oscillated between impressive and truly off the rails.
The company made the “new” Bing available for beta testers, who have been able to ask questions like “Can you suggest places to visit in Paris?” or “What’s the best apple pie recipe?” and then receive annotated responses describing various tourist destinations or outline the ingredients and steps that go along with a recipe.
But Microsoft may have made Bing a bit too flexible. Users quickly found exploits with the system, including a now-disabled prompt that triggers the Bing bot to divulge its internal nickname, Sydney, and some of the parameters its developers set for its behavior, such as “Sydney’s responses should avoid being vague, controversial, or off-topic.”
As for Edge, Microsoft plans on adding AI enhancements that let you summarize the webpage or document you’re reading online, as well as generate text for social media posts, emails, and more.
Google
Google couldn’t let Microsoft get away with launching an AI chatbot that has the potential to challenge the company’s core business: search. That’s why it rushed to announce its own AI chatbot, Bard, though we still don’t know much about its capabilities.
Image: Google
According to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, the company is using its in-house large language model, LaMDA, to power the conversational AI service, which “draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses.” Google says you’ll be able to use the chatbot for a range of tasks, like planning a baby shower, comparing two Oscar-nominated movies, and getting recipe ideas based on the ingredients you have in your fridge.
The company’s announcement was considerably more haphazard than Microsoft’s, so much so that Googlers reportedly criticized the company for it in internal messages. Bard made a factual error in the very first demo Google posted to Twitter, and a presenter showing off the chatbot during a search event in Paris forgot the phone they were supposed to use during the presentation. Bard is currently only available to a limited test group, with wider availability arriving in the “coming weeks.”
Meta
Meta — the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp — also has its sights set on AI. It developed Galactica, a language model designed to provide assistance to scientists and researchers with summaries of academic articles, solutions to math problems, the ability to annotate molecules, and more.
While Meta says it trained the bot on “over 48 million papers, textbooks, reference material, compounds, proteins and other sources of scientific knowledge,” the bot produced disappointing results when the company made it available in a public beta last November. The scientific community fiercely criticized the tool, with one scientist calling it “dangerous” due to its incorrect or biased responses. Meta took the chatbot offline after just a few days.
There’s more to come from Meta in the AI space just yet. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company established a dedicated AI team that will eventually create “AI personas” designed to help people, as well as text- and image-based AI tools for WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger.
Anthropic
Anthropic, an AI research company founded by former OpenAI employees in 2021, is working on a Chat-GPT competitor of its own called Claude, which has yet to get a full public release. Google invested $300 million into Anthropic in late 2022.
We’ve trained language models to be better at responding to adversarial questions, without becoming obtuse and saying very little. We do this by conditioning them with a simple set of behavioral principles via a technique called Constitutional AI: https://t.co/rlft1pZlP5pic.twitter.com/MIGlKSVTe9
The company developed the chatbot using a methodology it calls Constitutional AI. There’s a whole research paper about the framework here, but, in short, it involves Anthropic training the language model with a set of around 10 “natural language instructions or principles” that it uses to revise its responses automatically. The goal of the system, according to Anthropic, is to “train better and more harmless AI assistants” without incorporating human feedback.
Scale, an AI data platform, was given access to Claude and outlined some of the differences between Anthropic’s bot and Chat-GPT. It found that the service could serve as a “serious” competitor to the OpenAI-made system and that the bot was “more inclined to refuse inappropriate requests.” It does come with some drawbacks, however, as Claude still appears to be prone to making factual errors and mathematical mistakes. For now, the general public can’t access Claude, and it’s only available to companies as an early-access product.
You.com
You.com, a company built by two former Salesforce employees, bills itself as the “search engine you control.” At first glance, it may seem like your typical search engine, but it comes with an AI-powered “chat” tool that works much like the one Microsoft’s piloting on Bing.
You.com first introduced the chatbot, called YouChat, in December 2022 and says it’s built on the company’s C-A-L model, which is “blended with AI-powered conversations, You.com apps, web links and citations.” Just like Microsoft’s AI, YouChat can provide annotated answers to various types of queries, create summaries of articles from the web, generate code, write essays, and more.
In addition to giving users access to an AI-powered chatbot, You.com recently added built-in AI image generator models, including Stable Diffusion 1.5, Stable Diffusion 2.1, and Open Journey, that you can use to generate images based on a written description. The engine also breaks down your search results based on relevant responses on sites like Reddit, TripAdvisor, Wikipedia, and YouTube while also providing standard results from the web.
Alibaba
Alibaba, the China-based e-commerce giant, has caught onto the AI chatbot trend as well. In early February, a company spokesperson told CNBC that the company is testing a Chat-GPT rival internally. Alibaba has reportedly been experimenting with generative AI since 2017, but the company hasn’t provided any sense of when it could announce the tool it’s working on or what it might be capable of.
Alibaba may have to overcome some hurdles before it gets its own version of ChatGPT off the ground, however. A report from Nikkei Asia indicates that Chinese regulators have already told the Alibaba-owned Tencent and Ant Group that they should restrict access to ChatGPT over concerns the bot could espouse uncensored content. The companies will also have to confer with the government before making their own bots available to the public.
Similar rules will likely apply to all of the other Chinese companies developing AI chatbots, calling into question whether they'll even be able to launch their products or if their utility will be held back by China’s strict censorship rules.
Baidu
Another Chinese company, Baidu, is getting ready to launch an AI tool it calls “Ernie Bot” as soon as March. Baidu is best known for its search engine of the same name, along with a cluster of other internet-related services, such as mapping platform Baidu Maps, online encyclopedia Baidu Baike, cloud storage service Baidu Wangpan, and more. It’s also leveraging AI technology to develop a self-driving car.
We are proud to announce our ongoing development of the AI chatbot project, ERNIE Bot (文心一言). First proposed as a language model in 2019, ERNIE has made significant progress since then.
Ernie, which stands for Enhanced Representation through kNowledge IntEgration, first appeared in 2019 and has since evolved into a ChatGPT-like tool that can generate conversational responses. In late 2021, Baidu said it trained the model on “massive unstructured data and a gigantic knowledge graph” and that it “excels at both natural language understanding (NLU) and generation (NLG).”
Aside from companies making standalone chatbots for search, there are a few other companies using generative AI in slightly different ways.
Snapchat, for example, is working on a “My AI” chatbot that essentially works as an in-app version of ChatGPT, allowing users to ask for recipe suggestions or plan trips. It’s more limiting than ChatGPT, however, as it’s been trained to avoid breaking Snapchat’s trust and safety guidelines. The service is only available as part of Snapchat’s $3.99 per month Plus subscribers for now, but CEO Evan Spiegel plans on eventually bringing it to all users.
Image: Snap
Snap’s My AI chatbot is basically a mobile version of ChatGPT.
Character.AI is another one of these tools and comes from the developers of Google’s LaMDA technology. The site lets you create or browse chatbots modeled after real people or fictional characters, such as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, or Tony Stark. When “conversing” with these bots, the AI attempts to respond in a manner similar to that person or character’s personality. However, that’s not the only thing these bots are capable of, as some are designed to help generate book recommendations, brainstorm ideas, practice a new language, and more.
Meanwhile, Chinese gaming firm NetEase has announced that its education subsidiary, Youdao, is planning to incorporate AI-powered tools into some of its educational products, according to a report from CNBC. It’s still not clear what exactly this tool will do, but it seems the company’s interested in employing the technology in one of its upcoming games as well.
With Generative AI being all over the headlines these days, NetEase says it'll launch launch the first game version of ChatGPT in Justice Online Mobile, its upcoming MMO title.
It'll allow players to chat with NPCs and have them react in unique ways that impact the game. pic.twitter.com/JBiFy3J5dV
Daniel Ahmad, the director of research and insights at Niko Partners, reports that NetEase could bring a ChatGPT-style tool to the mobile MMO Justice Online Mobile. As noted by Ahmad, the tool will “allow players to chat with NPCs and have them react in unique ways that impact the game” through text or voice inputs. However, there’s only one demo of the tool so far, so we don’t know how (or if) it will make its way into the final version of the game.
Then, there’s Replika, an AI chatbot that functions as a sort of “companion” that you can talk to via text-based chats and even video calls. The tool combines the company’s own version of the GPT-3 model and scripted dialogue content to build memories and generate responses tailored to your conversation style. But the company that owns the tool recently ruled out erotic roleplay, devastating dedicated users.
We’re still at the beginning of what conversational AI can do, and with major players like Microsoft and Google getting on board, we’re bound to see some progress. It’ll be interesting to see how all of these tools evolve over the coming years, as well as which ones manage to make their way into our daily lives.
Apple will reportedly launch an M3-equipped iMac later this year
The M1-equipped iMac released in 2021. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Apple’s readying a new iMac that could launch as early as the second half of this year, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. While the new iMac will reportedly feature the same 24-inch display size as the previous model, it’s expected to come with a more powerful M3 chip made with a 3nm process.
The new iMac isn’t expected to enter mass production until at least three months, Gurman notes, but could still start shipping in the latter half of this year in the same colorways as its predecessor, including blue, silver, pink, and orange. Gurman says the new iMac is at “an advanced stage of development” and that Apple’s currently “conducting production tests of the machine.” This tracks with previous rumors from Gurman, which also hinted at a 2023 iMac launch.
Other details disclosed by Gurman indicate that some of the iMac’s internal components might get “relocated and redesigned,” and that the production process for mounting the iMac’s stand to the display is “different.” The iMac is overdue for an upgrade. Apple hasn’t refreshed its lineup in two years, with the 2021 model being the first to come with the company’s in-house silicon, along with a larger display size and an array of new colors.
In addition to a new iMac, Gurman says Apple’s also getting ready to launch the new 15-inch MacBook Air, an upgraded 13-inch MacBook Air, and a Mac Pro equipped with an M2 Ultra chip. Gurman speculates that it might make sense for Apple to include an M3 chip in the 13-inch MacBook Air as well, given that the company just released an M2-equipped one last year, while reserving the M2 chip for the larger 15-inch model.
It’s shaping up to be a busy year for Apple. The company’s expected to showcase its new M3 chip at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June, where it could also take the wraps off of its highly-anticipated mixed-reality headset.
‘They’re more concerned about profit’: Osha, DoJ take on Amazon’s grueling working conditions
The federal workplace safety agency has issued citations against the company at multiple warehouses for various violations
The US’s top workplace safety regulator and the justice department are pressuring Amazon to explain safety practices that have led to injury rates for warehouse workers that are on average close to twice as high as the company’s competitors and in one case five times higher.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) issued citations against Amazon at six warehouses in December 2022, January 2023 and February 2023 over unsafe working conditions, ergonomic hazards and failure to properly report injuries.
How A.I. Is Being Used to Detect Cancer That Doctors Miss Hungary has become a major testing ground for A.I. software to spot cancer, as doctors debate whether the technology will replace them in medical jobs.
Facebook’s willing to reform its controversial cross-check program — but only parts of it
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
Meta has agreed to modify Facebook and Instagram’s cross-check program, which exempts high-profile users from the company’s automated moderation system. In an updated blog post published Friday, the company shared its response to the Oversight Board’s recommendations, stating it will make the cross-check system “more transparent through regular reporting” as well as tweak the criteria it uses to add people to the program “to better account for human rights interests and equity.”
The Oversight Board, or the “independent body” that reviews Meta’s content moderation decisions, made a total of 32 recommendations on how Meta can improve its cross-check program last December. Meta has opted to fully implement 11 of those recommendations, while partially adopting 15.
Several aspects of Meta’s response haven’t gone as far as we recommended to achieve a more transparent and equitable system. Meta declined the Board's suggestion that deserving users be able to apply for the protections afforded by cross-check.
Facebook and Instagram’s cross-check program came under fire after a 2021 report from The Wall Street Journalrevealed that Meta’s been using it to shield politicians, celebrities, and popular athletes from its automated moderation system. According to Meta, the system lets the company apply “additional levels of human review” to posts shared by high-profile figures in an attempt to avoid wrongly removing them.
The Oversight Board criticized the program, stating it “appears more directly structured to satisfy business concerns” rather than as a way to further the company’s “human rights commitments” as it previously claimed. As part of its response, Meta agreed to implement recommendations that require it to take immediate action on cross-checked content “identified as potentially severely violating.” It also committed to reducing the cross-check program’s backlog, an issue the Oversight Board found could cause harmful content to stay online longer than it should.
However, Meta’s still “assessing the feasibility” of a rule that would allow figures to opt out of the cross-check program, and isn’t going through with five recommendations, including a suggestion to “publicly mark” some of the figures benefitting from the program. It also rejected the Oversight Board’s recommendation to notify users that it might take longer for Meta to take action when they report a post from someone in the cross-check program. You can read the full list of recommendations and Meta’s response to each here.
While the Oversight Board calls Meta’s response a “landmark moment” in a thread on Twitter, it isn’t completely satisfied with the changes the company’s willing to make. “Several aspects of Meta’s response haven’t gone as far as we recommended to achieve a more transparent and equitable system,” the Oversight Board writes. “Meta declined the Board’s suggestion that deserving users be able to apply for the protections afforded by cross-check... We will continue to react to Meta’s specific responses in the days and weeks to come.”
Amazon’s sleep-tracking Halo Rise smart alarm drops to a new all-time low price
The Amazon Halo Rise is on sale for $99.99 ($40 off) at multiple retailers. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Welcome to the weekend — and the last one where you’ll be able to enjoy an “extra” hour of sleep before you lose it next Sunday. That’s right: Daylight Saving Time begins in the US next Sunday, March 12th, which means the clocks will spring forward one hour, the days will get brighter, and we’re all going to wake up the following Monday morning even sleepier than usual.
That sucks, but today’s deal on Amazon’s Halo Rise might help make the adjustment to the change in time go a little smoother. Right now, you can buy Amazon’s latest wellness gadget at a new all-time low of $99.99 ($40 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Lowe’s. Part smart alarm clock, the Rise will gently wake you up during your lightest sleeping stage with a natural morning light so getting up earlier feels less disorienting. At the same time, the Rise is a noninvasive sleep tracker that helps you improve your sleep habits as you adjust by generating daily reports and monitoring potential disturbances, like room temperature.
Oh, and just in case you find it hard to actually get to sleep, you can also use the Rise as a soothing warm smart table lamp you can use to read before bed. It’s also compatible with Echo devices, so you can ask Alexa to play some relaxing music. Read our review.
Shopping for an excellent pair of noise-canceling headphones? Good news: today we’ve found deals on two of the best on the market: Bose’s QuietComfort 45 and Apple’s AirPods Max. First up, Bose’s QuietComfort 45 are on sale at Amazon and Newegg for $279 ($50 off) in various colors. Not only do these over-ear headphones boast excellent noise cancellation, but they are also some of the most comfortable we’ve ever tested. As a result, you won’t suffer from ear fatigue when you want to tune out loud passengers while, say, flying out of town for spring break. You won’t need to fear running out of battery either as they can last 24 hours, and fitting them into your luggage won’t be a problem as the ear cups can even swivel and fold. Read our review.
If you’re more of an Apple aficionado, though, you can alternatively buy Apple’s AirPods Max for $449.99 ($100 off) in all colors at Best Buy, which is the lowest price we’ve seen this year. Compared to their plastic Bose and Sony rivals, the aluminum and steel AirPods Max feature superior build quality, albeit with a heavier weight. While their bass response isn’t quite as good, their sound quality is still phenomenal, thanks to nice features like spatial audio support. Plus, the Bluetooth headphones pair well with other Apple devices, making them a particularly good pick for iPhone owners. Read our review.
If you’re looking for a powerful Chromebook, you might want to take a look at today’s deal on Acer’s Chromebook Spin 714. With Intel’s fast 12th Gen processors and Thunderbolt 4 support, it’s our favorite Chromebook for power users and even comes with an included stylus to boot. Yet at the same time, it’s relatively quiet and produces very little heat in comparison to its predecessor. There’s also an HDMI port, which is rare to find in a thin Chromebook. While it’s a shame its battery life is slightly worse than its predecessor’s and its speakers aren’t that great, it’s an otherwise good Chromebook capable of handling more intense workloads than many of its rivals. You can buy it with 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and an Intel Evo Core i5 processor for $499 ($230 off) at Best Buy, which is just $20 shy of its all-time low price. Read our review.
You can buy the Dart Zone Pro MK-3 foam blaster for $59.99 ($25 off) in red from Amazon. The well-designed blaster is powerful to use and capable of firing darts at up to 150 feet per second. Read our review.
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening for Nintendo Switch is $39.99 ($20 off) at Target. The Switch reimagining of the 1993 Game Boy classic offers a whole new take on the original, with an adorable miniature-like aesthetic to its graphics. Read our review.
Sick of hunt-and-peck? Here’s how to touch-type like a pro
Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge
As a kid, I started typing by tapping in cheat codes on ’90s PC games like Doom and Rise of the Triad, but it wasn’t until the covid pandemic that I finally ditched my awkward hunt-and-peck technique and learned touch typing.
If you don’t know how to touch type, there are very approachable ways you can learn on your own. You may think you do just fine ham-fisting your way through the keys, but with a little effort, you can learn to type faster, use your fingers more ergonomically, and rarely have to take your eyes off your screen as you clackity-clack-clack-clack along.
If you’ve been relying on only a few fingers to type, it’s going to take some time to adjust and get those idle digits cracking along. At first, you may type as slow as molasses while you learn what fingers are responsible for what keys, but that’s okay. Even if you start off at 20 words per minute, it’s key to focus on accuracy and building that new muscle memory from the ground up. Just like playing a musical instrument, hit the right notes first — then do it faster.
Image: Keybr
The home row resting position and the corresponding keys for each finger.
Touch typing begins with anchoring your fingers on the home row. On a QWERTY layout keyboard, that involves resting your left fingers on A, S, D, and F while your right digits are on J, K, L, and semicolon. Both thumbs should hover over / rest on the space bar. Do you feel a little raised bump, nub, or other signifier on the F and J keys? Most keycaps have some tactile accent making these two keys feel different. That’s how you find these important keys to anchor your index fingers and let the rest fall into place, even without looking.
It’s easy to get started with different kinds of training apps (the majority of which are free) that simplify the typing experience and even make it fun. In this article, I’ll first walk you through a variety of options for you to try and then add some dos and don’ts that should get you learning new finger muscle memory to make you much, much faster.
Keybr starts you off with limited keys and slowly lights more up as it introduces them into your routine.
When it comes to free resources for learning how to touch-type, I highly recommend using Keybr on a desktop browser. This site automatically builds typing lessons for you by measuring your initial skill (accuracy and speed) and generates practice lessons that focus first on the most frequently used letters. It then slowly ramps up with more letters to type and fingers to use. You’ll be typing a mix of real words and fake words that follow familiar-looking phonetic structures, so it works your fingers without abstracting away all semblance of language.
By making an account with Keybr (via email, Google, or Facebook sign-ins), you can save your progress and pick up where you left off. Keybr also offers a premium account for a one-time $10 purchase that removes ads and disables ad trackers, though the on-page ads are not very invasive.
The key to using Keybr, just like any typing tool, is consistency. Keep practicing daily and the program will work you through all the keys before you know it. Once you’ve “unlocked” all the keys, keep forging ahead and focusing on accuracy. Your speed will slowly go up over time.
You can see from my practice calendar that my prime learning time was about six weeks of fairly consistent practicing. Keybr also saves other nifty data about your progress in your profile, like your best and worst letters.
And then, just when you start to get some confidence, try turning on capital letters and punctuation in Keybr’s settings. I assure you, it will suck at first, but you gotta learn those shift keys eventually. Best practice dictates that you should use the pinky finger of the opposite hand that’s typing the capital letter, but in reality, I’m sure many of us slip on that fine detail.
I don’t love that Keybr adds capitalization and punctuation to every single word when you enable those settings, but you can always switch it off when you want to pivot back to focusing on character speed. Plus, once you start feeling generally comfortable touch typing without looking, you can always switch from Keybr to another program that incorporates more real-world use of caps and symbols.
Monkeytype offers myriad controls for custom-tailoring your typing lessons. For example, I’ve themed mine with Verge colors (whichyou can use, too), while that user-submitted text prompt is from the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Once you start getting the hang of touch typing, the site that I continuously return to is Monkeytype. Monkeytype is the sleekest, most customizable type tester I’ve come across. Its clean interface allows you to load it up and hammer out some phrases in a matter of seconds, or you can dive into the options and custom-tailor something unique. The site has all kinds of cool templates and styles for you to customize. You can test based on time or phrase length, and you can also choose to incorporate punctuation, capitalization, longer or shorter passages, or extra-hard parameters — like failing if you make a single mistake or dip below a words-per-minute threshold. You can even load up randomly generated tests that pull from movie, book, and TV quotes.
Really, there’s a lot of fun stuff to tinker with on Monkeytype, ranging from the color layout to weird graphical effects that may test your threshold for motion sickness as much as your typing.
Little Women isn’t just a timeless American coming-of-age novel — it makes for a fun typing exercise.
Want to practice typing while reading classics by George Orwell, Dante Alighieri, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and more? TypeLit.io has dozens of books for you to practice typing with, like The War of the Worlds or Sense and Sensibility. There’s even William Strunk Jr.’s The Elements of Style, so you can learn 1920s-era American-English writing style while you type.
This may be a bit of a novelty, but it’s a charming take on typing practice. It offers thousands of pages of actual literary text, which makes for some good exercises.
It’s basic looking, but Typing Trainer gets the job done and has some handy lessons if you want to practice specific trouble spots in your typing.
Brace yourself for some antiquated design and graphics. Typing Trainer may look like the cheesy programs we used as kids, but it’s still an effective learning tool. You can work your way through a series of courses from the very beginning or jump into some timed tests.
Typing Trainer also has some browser games you can play, where you can race a car or blast alien spaceships by, you guessed it, typing. They’re pretty basic, with an early-2000s flash game aesthetic, but they’re a fun distraction to practice with.
Mamma mia! What the hell is going on with Toad’s face in this title screen?
Many of us olds might remember the 1992 DOS classic Mario Teaches Typing, made for Nintendo by Interplay. You can now play the whole game free in your browser courtesy of the Internet Archive. It’s very dated and probably not the best way to learn today since it’s stuck in the old ways of grueling and unrelenting repetition using lots of individual letters and repeated sequences, but it’s worth it for a laugh and the nostalgia trip. Fun fact: this was the first game where Mario spoke, and the voice lines are hilariously bad, sounding like they’re trying the Italian-American accent thing way too hard.
Plus, there’s a writing prompt about the American Civil War that seems to downplay the significance of slavery in the cause of the war. So, yeah, be prepared for some problematic stuff buried in there.
Image: Fishing Cactus
Not only do you type your way through battles in Epistory, but the movement keys are situated on the home row to keep your hands in the right position. It takes a little getting used to, but in this case, it’s better than using traditional WASD controls.
Epistory - Typing Chronicles is a charming Steam-based action-adventure game with a papercraft aesthetic that uses typing to activate the powers of your fox-riding protagonist and fight monsters while exploring a fantasy world. I find Epistory to be a little dry at times, but it’s a pretty game, and I admire its fun twist on the typing genre. It’s a novel way to practice once you’ve started getting the hang of touch typing, and if you enjoy it, there’s even a sequel due out soon.
Image: Sega
Putting down zombies with a rat-a-tat-tat as you feverishly tap away on your keys just somehow feels right.
This is an on-rails shooter spinoff of the House of the Dead games, where typing words fires bullets at zombies. The Typing of the Dead: Overkill is a visceral experience that’s good for a cheap thrill while typing, though it shows some of its 2010s-era cringe with campy jokes and characters that lean on tired stereotypes. It’s like a C-movie video game with B-level typing, but I can’t help myself from enjoying it and recommending it.
More tips for learning touch-typing skills
Having gone through this learning process myself and being a bit of a nerd for mechanical keyboards (the two often go hand-in-hand), here’s some further advice and best practices on developing your touch-typing expertise.
Dos:
Practice regularly. Ideally, once a day.
Turn practicing into a regular routine or habit, like starting your day with it while drinking your morning coffee.
Test yourself with capital letters, punctuation, and even numbers. Real-world typing isn’t just lowercase letters!
Look ahead to the next word on a typing prompt. You type faster when you know what’s coming next. Think of it like Tetris.
Use the same methods for learning alternate keyboard layouts like Dvorak and Colemak. Sites like Keybr and Monkeytype offer training in all of them, though QWERTY is the default.
Use your newfound love of typing as an excuse to get into mechanical keyboards. Sure, they won’t help you type faster, but they sound and look cool, and it’s a fun rabbit hole to dive into.
Don’ts:
Don’t get impatient about getting faster.
Don’t ignore your typos. If a type trainer allows you to backspace and fix mistakes, you should do that to build the habit.
Don’t overdo the training. Your fingers can get overworked, and practicing too much in one sitting yields diminishing returns. Just like when you exercise, recovery and rest are important, too. You’ll probably be slightly faster when you pick it up the next day.
Don’t be elitist about typing. Just because you know how to touch-type doesn’t mean you get to judge others for not knowing or for typing slowly. Sometimes people online use Words Per Minute (WPM) as a measure of people’s worth or as a way of gatekeeping, and that’s just not cool. Instead, be welcoming and encourage others to get into it if they’re interested.
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Screenshot: Emma Roth / The Verge
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