Fisker shows off ambitious EV lineup, starting at $29,900

Fisker shows off ambitious EV lineup, starting at $29,900

Image: Fisker

Fisker showed off a series of prototype vehicles at its first “Product Vision Day” event, outlining the EV startup’s wide-ranging roadmap for the coming years. These included the sub-$30,000 Pear SUV, the Ronin sports car, Alaska pickup truck, and a new off-road package for the Ocean SUV that Fisker just started delivering a few short months ago.

Although the company had teased a few of these vehicles beforehand (and even opened reservations for the Pear last year), TechCrunch notes the event marked the first time they were all shown off in prototype form. Fisker hopes to put more than one of the cars into production within the next couple of years — an ambitious target given, as Reuters notes, the supply chain disruptions the small company has been facing.

Image: Fisker

From left to right: the Ocean SUV with Force-E offroad package, the Pear, the Alaska, and the Ronin.

The most affordable vehicle in the lineup is scheduled to be the Pear (which stands for “Personal Electric Automotive Revolution”). Fisker hopes to eventually sell the SUV for $29,900 when it goes on sale in mid-2025, which Electrek notes should bring its price down to $22,400 after tax credits. Fisker hopes to hit this relatively affordable price point by producing the Pear in large quantities and with a simplified design process that it says results in it needing 35 percent fewer parts than comparable models. The car will be assembled by contract manufacturer Foxconn in Ohio, where it has a plant it acquired from Lordstown Motors.

Other interesting features of the Pear electric SUV include a so-called “Houdini Trunk” that slides down into the rear bumper to be more space efficient in cramped parking spots, the option to have a bench seat in the front of the car so it can seat up to six people, and a front trunk that Electrek notes slides out from behind the car’s front grille.

Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images

Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images

Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images

Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images

The Fisker Ocean with its Force-E offroad package.

Next up is the Alaska, an $45,400 electric pickup truck that Fisker hopes to start delivering in 2025. In a press release, Fisker outlined its ambition for the Alaska to be the “world’s lightest EV pickup truck” and the “world’s most sustainable truck” to boot, and is targeting a maximum range of between 230 and 340 miles. It also has a Houdini-branded element; a bed divider that can retract to turn the cargo bed and rear cabin into a single surface up to 9.2 feet in length. TechCrunch reports it’ll be built by a contract manufacturer in Europe in the same plant that has produced its Ocean SUV.

Meanwhile, the Ocean SUV is getting a new Force-E offroad package that’s scheduled to be available in the first quarter of next year at a price that’s yet to be announced. The package includes higher ground clearance, 33-inch tyres on 20-inch wheels, a roof basket, and a more durable underbody plate.

Finally there’s the top-of-the-line Ronin, a fiver-seater grand tourer sports car that Fisker hopes will one day offer over 600 miles of range per charge. It’s a hard-top convertible with four butterfly doors with ambitions to do 0 to 60 in two seconds. Fisker’s press release doesn’t offer any firm pricing information on the Ronin beyond saying that it “will be ultra-luxury priced and built in limited quantities.”

The Google Inbox email successor is finally ready for Android

The Google Inbox email successor is finally ready for Android

Great news for Android users who are still mourning the loss of Google Inbox. | Image: Shortwave

Shortwave — an email app for iOS and the web that serves as the spiritual successor to Google Inbox — has fully arrived on Android devices following 18 months of beta testing. Version 1.0 of Shortwave is available to download via Google Play. The basic version is free to use, though you’ll need to pay a $9 monthly subscription to unlock premium features.

Shortwave was specifically developed by a group of former Google employees to fill the gap left after Google shut down its innovative Gmail alternative in 2019. Inbox was fairly radical for its time compared to rival email clients, providing features like Bundles (which automatically organized your email by type) and Delivery Schedules to control when those Bundles would arrive in your inbox. Its demise was mourned by many.

Image: Shortwave

Shortwave 1.0 resurrects Inbox for Android users.

Shortwave provides many of these same Inbox features, in addition to a sweep button for marking emails en-mass, AI-powered smart replies, and options to quickly pin, snooze, archive, and delete emails. The free version has some limitations (like restricting users to 90 days of searchable email history), which can be unlocked with the $9 monthly subscription. A full list of Shortwave for Android’s features can be found on the company’s blog.

As noted by Android Police, this latest release appears to be a web application rather than a native Android app but the overall 1.0 experience is closer to what you’d find on its iOS counterpart, compared to the previous beta.

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‘Every single’ Amazon team is working on generative AI, says CEO

‘Every single’ Amazon team is working on generative AI, says CEO

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

“Every single one” of Amazon’s businesses has “multiple generative AI initiatives going right now,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said on the company’s Q2 2023 earnings call on Thursday. The company offers infrastructure and services via AWS that can help power many generative artificial intelligence applications, which Jassy did discuss on the call, but he also stressed just how important AI is across the company as a whole.

Here’s more from Jassy about those generative AI initiatives:

They range from things that help us be more cost-effective and streamlined in how we run operations and various businesses, to the absolute heart of every customer experience in which we offer. It’s true in our Stores business, it’s true in our AWS business, it’s true in our advertising business, it’s true in all our devices — and you can just imagine what we’re working on with respect to Alexa there — it’s true in our entertainment businesses... every single one. It is going to be at the heart of what we do. It’s a significant investment and focus for us.

We could see something from these initiatives soon; I wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon announced some generative AI-based improvements for Alexa at its upcoming devices event on September 20th. (Perhaps those will be powered by the improved large language model (LLM) it’s working on for Alexa, which is something Jassy discussed in April’s earnings call.) And job listings from earlier this year indicated that Amazon was hiring to help improve Amazon Search with an “interactive conversational experience.”

Jassy wasn’t the only CEO to hype up AI this earnings season. Apple CEO Tim Cook said that AI and machine learning are “virtually embedded in every product that we build.” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai called Google’s new Search Generative Experience “the next major evolution in search.” And Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed how the company is working on “a number of new products,” including creative tools and AI agents, that it’s building using its LLaMA LLM.

Samsung’s new ‘flagship’ repair centers will provide more types of phone fixes and faster

Samsung’s new ‘flagship’ repair centers will provide more types of phone fixes and faster

Faster repairs and more walk-in repair types? Music to our ears. | Image: Samsung

Samsung and its repair provider, Asurion, have announced that certain uBreakiFix locations will be getting an upgrade, helping them turn around Galaxy phone repairs faster. By the end of the year, 50 existing repair centers across the US will be designated as Samsung flagship locations, equipped with specialized tools and larger parts inventory for Galaxy devices. It’s a helpful step toward making phone repairs less painful, which remains a deeply uncomfortable process — just ask anyone who’s cracked a phone screen in the past, oh, decade or so.

Some repair centers in parts of Texas, Orlando, and Los Angeles have already been upgraded to flagship status, and Samsung says that the program will continue to roll out throughout 2023. Staff at these stores will get special training for Samsung repairs and will help implement new repair types before they’re used more widely at standard uBreakiFix locations. Samsung also says that upgraded locations will be able to handle certain types of repairs not previously available at a walk-in repair center.

Parting with your phone for any amount of time while it’s being repaired is tough. Personally, it still sends a shiver up my spine thinking of the four hours I spent wandering phone-less through the Bellevue mall, and that was over four years ago. Samsung and iFixit sell self-repair kits if you want to maintain possession of your phone, but not all models or repairs are supported — and the hands-on approach isn’t for everyone. But when the other option is shipping your phone out for repairs, suffering through a few hours without your device doesn’t sound so bad. Better integration between an OEM and its repair partner is something we like to see and will hopefully result in more — and faster — fixes for Galaxy phone owners.

LG’s ‘wireless’ and wildly expensive 97-inch OLED TV sees first global release

LG’s ‘wireless’ and wildly expensive 97-inch OLED TV sees first global release

LG’s eye-catching 97-inch Signature OLED M TV, which is almost completely free of wires save for a single power cord, finally has a price and release date outside of South Korea.

The TV is notable for its “Zero Connect Box,” that you plug your set-top boxes, games consoles, and Blu-ray players into and which beams content wirelessly to the TV at up to 4K 120Hz. So aside from power, you’re not plugging anything into the TV itself.

LG says the 97-inch OLED Signature (model 97M3) will be available in the UK from September priced at £27,999.99 (about $35,400). It’ll be joined by two other TV sizes, the 83-inch OLED evo for £7,999.99 (about $10,000) and the 77-inch OLED evo for £5,999.99 (about $7,600), which are equipped with the same “Zero Connect technology” for an (almost) wire-free experience. US pricing and availability is yet to be announced — LG’s press release notes that the 97-inch Signature OLED M will be available in North America and Europe “later this year.”

The TV was first announced back at CES in early January and is already available in South Korea for 45,800,000 won, which works out to roughly $35,168 — a price that includes tax.

Image: LG

The back of LG’s Zero Connect Box.

I don’t quite buy LG’s “world’s first wireless OLED TV” marketing for the Signature OLED M because of the aforementioned power cord, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a cool piece of kit. The Zero Connect Box offers three HDMI 2.1 ports that you plug devices into, which theoretically means all your equipment can be placed as much as 30 feet away from the TV itself without the need for a cabinet placed directly beneath the screen.

At any rate, going fully wireless means relying on batteries like competitor Displace is trying to do, and that comes with significant trade-offs. The dream of a completely wireless TV goes back years, with companies like Sony and Haier having shown off various attempts at trade shows.

The Signature OLED M supports Dolby Atmos audio, Dolby Vision HDR, and has G-Sync to offer variable refresh rates with Nvidia hardware. There are three 4K 120Hz HDMI ports on the TV’s Zero Connect Box, alongside two USB-A, Ethernet, and optical audio. Aside from its wireless connectivity, FlatPanelsHD notes that the TV is all-but identical to LG’s G3 OLED.

LG says its proprietary AV transmission technology offers up to three times the speed of Wi-Fi 6E, but I’ll nevertheless be very interesting to see what kind of latency this wireless solution offers. OLED TVs are often recommended for gaming thanks to their nearly-instantaneous pixel response times, but it will be a tall order to minimize input lag wirelessly.

LG’s 27-inch OLED is ushering in a new age for monitors

LG’s 27-inch OLED is ushering in a new age for monitors

The LG 27GR95QE-B is a tantalizing taste of what’s to come.

We’ve come so far. In a year or three, I wouldn’t be surprised if OLED supplants IPS, VA, and high-refresh-rate TN panels as the PC gamer’s screen of choice.

Because the 27-inch panel inside a wave of new monitors, including the LG 27GR95QE-B I’m reviewing today, is almost — nearly — not quite — the best of all worlds.

For years, buying a gaming monitor has meant huge tradeoffs. You couldn’t get amazing color, deep blacks, competitive refresh rates, high resolution, and excellent viewing angles all in a single screen. The rule of thumb was IPS for bright rooms, VA for dark ones, and TN only if you absolutely, positively needed the highest refresh rates — or a budget panel.

But OLED panels can theoretically do it all if you’ve got the cash. They’ve already taken over high-end phones because their true blacks and brilliant organic colors say “premium” like nothing else. I swear by my OLED TV. But as I saw when I tried turning a 48-inch LG OLED television into my desktop monitor for work and play, there’s been plenty holding them back. They need a monitor-like size, controls, and a way to address desktop PC burn-in fears without so much auto-dimming that I want to claw my eyes out.

The $999 LG 27GR95QE-B and friends are most of the way there. These screens are 100 nits of sustained brightness, a warranty update, and a decent sale away from winning me over for good.

The LG 27GR95QE-B, specifically, is a 26.5-inch, 2560 x 1440 OLED screen with a 240Hz refresh rate over DisplayPort 1.4 or either of its twin HDMI 2.1 ports. It supports Nvidia G-Sync, AMD FreeSync Premium, and generic 48–120Hz VRR at up to a downscaled 4K resolution for your PS5, Xbox, or streaming gadget. (I fired up The Touryst, one of the few native 4K 120Hz games for PS5, and it worked smoothly downscaled to 1440p.)

LG’s “hexagon lighting” includes these vents and a single LED for underglow.

No USB-C here, but all three video inputs can do 240Hz with VRR.

Keep the remote handy: the monitor itself only has a single button for the entire OSD.

The monitor has a simple USB hub with two 5Gbps USB-A ports; it raises, tilts, swivels, and pivots on its included click-in stand; and it comes with a miniature TV remote to switch inputs, brightness, and adjust volume for its 3.5mm headphone jack. There’s no USB-C port for single-cable docking, I’m afraid — laptop users will need to charge them elsewhere.

The LG 27GR95QE-B is most definitely not the only monitor with this screen inside. In fact, I keep hearing this Asus PG27AQDM, with the same exact LG OLED panel, has a slight edge in brightness and creature comforts (like a built-in joystick to control the OSD). But after replacing my regular 27-inch 1440p IPS screen with LG’s 27-inch 1440p OLED for three whole months, I feel like I need to share with you how few compromises are left.

Until April of this year, my daily driver desktop monitor was a 27-inch Asus TUF VG27AQ. I picked it because Rtings rated it one of the very best all-around monitors at the time — save for crummy HDR and the “IPS glow” that makes blacks look gray in a dark room. It’s long been flanked by two ancient Dell U2412M monitors I stand vertically so I can keep an eye on Slack and Discord and Facebook Messenger and... well, whatever’s replacing Twitter next.

Before, adding OLED meant dismantling that entire setup to fit at least a giant 34-inch monitor on my desk, if not a 42- or 48-inch TV. But with this LG, it’s finally a direct replacement: 27-inch monitor out, 27-inch monitor in. I just had to shove my Synology NAS and mousepad a bit further away to fit LG’s large V-shaped stand.

The first test: would I notice a deal-breaking difference? Could I truly drop this monitor into my Verge-editing, game-blasting battlestation without missing a beat — and without babying the screen to avoid burn-in? I decided I’d never turn off the monitor manually, or hide my taskbar, or any of the things you’re theoretically supposed to do to protect an OLED screen. I would rely entirely on the monitor’s built-in protections and see what would happen.

There was one hitch. A few hours into my very first workday, LG’s auto-brightness-limiting anti-burn-in techniques were already driving me up the wall. I’ll point you to this good TFTCentral explainer if you want to read about ABL, ASBL, and TPC because I’m pleased to say they aren’t as relevant to this review as I feared. The short version is that the more of the screen that’s covered in bright white objects, the more the screen dims — an utter travesty for desktop work because most websites and applications are white even if you enable dark mode in your OS.

A little video from Asus that illustrates one form of auto-dimming.

But after I installed a firmware update (via LG’s OnScreen Control app), that irritation disappeared. For the past three months, I’ve been working on an OLED screen that never abruptly, infuriatingly dims!

I understand that isn’t the case for every monitor that uses LG’s 27-inch OLED panel. With the Asus PG27AQDM, it’s actually optional: you have to turn on a setting called Uniform Brightness in a settings menu. But with the firmware update, LG made Uniform Brightness the default on the LG 27GR95QE-B, and it’s the key to making OLED the one screen to rule them all.

Here’s the thing: Uniform Brightness means, by definition, that LG is turning down the brightness of the entire screen to a set level... and you may have heard correctly that these LG panels are relatively dim! I’ll lean on reviewers with professional equipment to tell you we’re talking around 200 nits of brightness, a far cry from the 1,000-nit peak you might have seen advertised. (More on that peak in a sec.)

The bundled remote. The DTS button is for the monitor’s headphone jack, though the screen also has an optical audio output for your HDMI video sources.

During work hours, this actually didn’t bug me much! I never run my desktop monitors at anything close to their peak — my old IPS screen is set closer to 100 nits as I write these words late into the evening, and I’ll boost the screen to around 200 during the day. But when my wife occasionally opens up the curtains, it’s true that the LG OLED doesn’t have any extra oomph to power through the sheen on its anti-glare screen. And when it’s time to game or watch Netflix, I would often find myself stabbing the bundled remote’s “raise brightness” key only to find out it was already maxed.

There is one other potential wrinkle for desktop work: LG’s WOLED subpixel arrangement, which doesn’t perfectly line up its red, green, blue, and extra white subpixels, can lead to slightly less crisp, occasionally color-fringed icons and text compared to traditional RGB stripe panels. But that was never a problem for me. It wasn’t until I switched back to my IPS screen three months later that I noticed documents were slightly crisper. And frankly, a 27-inch 1440p monitor less than two feet from my face is no Retina display — neither OLED nor IPS can keep me from seeing rough pixel edges at that pixel density (110ppi) and distance, so it feels like a minor tradeoff.

Color-fringed icons. I had to get really close to truly notice them.

But the OLED was clearly superior in almost every game I played. And when I say “clearly,” I literally mean the clarity. It feels slightly more like looking through a window into another world and slightly less like looking at a screen.

As you probably know, OLED screens have incredible contrast because of their true black levels. Their pixels generate light and can turn off that light entirely; there’s no backlight here, which means less haze in dark scenes. They’re also incredibly responsive, leading to glassy, clear motion that’s beyond all but the fastest LCD screens. (I used Blur Busters’ popular UFO test to check, but any well-engineered game with a high enough frame rate works.) That was true even of the 120Hz OLED TV I tried to use as a monitor; this one runs at 240Hz, and it’s such a smooth experience.

What can amp up that clarity even further is HDR, which I’ve often described as removing a haze from whatever you’re looking at, letting dark be dark and light be light instead of compressing all the colors in between. HDR is also where you can actually access the panel’s nearly 1,000-nit peak. But HDR still has issues on Windows — and some additional ones on this monitor, I’m sorry to say.

Gears 5. It’s impossible to show you HDR with an SDR camera and screen, but you can imagine.

With the right game, it’s phenomenal. Gears 5 begins with chrome-covered soldiers rappelling down from a helicopter through a rainbow and past a sunlit waterfall to explore dark caves by the light of a drone with glowing blue repulsors for levitation. Every part of that looks amazing because the majority of the scene is dark, with only those lights I just described — the glint of armor, ripples of sunlight in the moving water, flying sparks from a chainsaw — bursting through the scene.

On my old IPS monitor, those lights simply don’t look real; I can barely see in the dark caves because my old screen makes them muddy gray.

Ori. He just... bursts with light. It’s widely considered one of the best HDR games.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps similarly sees light and dark collide, only here, Ori himself is a being of light whose every action is a flash of blue. But I started to notice that every time Ori’s powers flared, everything else on the screen got slightly darker. And when I started playing HDR games that were mostly already bright like Forza Horizon 5 or The Touryst or Genshin Impact on PS5, it was clear that LG’s 27-inch OLED panel didn’t have nearly enough sustained full-screen brightness to make, say, an island paradise feel properly lit. Firing off a Genshin Impact ultimate attack immediately dimmed the entire screen in a way I’ve never seen on my 65-inch LG OLED television.

(I even had a weird experience in Halo Infinite where throwing a grenade too close to my feet black-screened the entire monitor until I unplugged it and plugged it back in, but I couldn’t reproduce it more than twice, and it might have nothing to do with the monitor or HDR. Perhaps a video driver glitch? I’m only sharing it here in case you have the same experience — I’ve never, ever seen this happen with a monitor before.)

I took a macro shot of Ori for the hell of it.

Still, on balance, I’d rather play games on this monitor than even my LG OLED television. It’s just so immersive to have such a clear image so close to my face.

Movies and TV shows are a slightly different story, but that’s not really LG’s fault. Almost every streaming service is still arbitrarily nerfed on Windows. I couldn’t even get my Vudu copy of Blade Runner 2049 to play in HDR, much less 4K, and Netflix was stuck at 1080p HDR during my Windows tests regardless of which browser (or app) I used. Same with Amazon Prime Video. Same with Disney Plus. And 1080p on a 1440p monitor is, well, not the best streaming quality. YouTube works great at 1440p HDR, 4K HDR, and even 8K HDR on this monitor (slightly aliased due to downscaling), so there’s no particularly good reason why the paid subscriptions can’t (it’s because of DRM).

4K HDR YouTube is your best bet to see what this screen can truly do. (And there, I highly recommend Jacob and Katie Schwarz.)

But thankfully, the LG 27GR95QE-B twin HDMI 2.1 ports meant I could easily plug in my Chromecast or PS5 and stream 4K HDR video from there. The Witcher’s latest candlelit season looks mighty fine on this monitor in downscaled 4K, even if it’s a slightly better experience in native 4K on my living room OLED.

It’d be nice if I didn’t have to switch devices and modes so often with this monitor, though. I wound up adding a Windows HDR toggle button to my Stream Deck because I never want to deal with the HDR mode’s auto-dimming when I’m using the desktop. I’d probably want to rig up an Nvidia G-Sync toggle, too; I’ve played a few games, like Diablo IV, where the monitor keeps flickering in its variable refresh mode. (LG’s monitor menu actually warns about the flicker, and you can toggle off VRR there, too.)

But these are nitpicks. My only real hesitations are brightness, price, and that LG doesn’t stand behind this screen when it comes to burn-in. Bear with me, because this is going to get a little weird.

This screen pops.

Theoretically, we’re at a turning point for OLED desktop monitors. These 27-inch panels will maintain a fixed brightness, if a little low, indefinitely. LG must have figured out they won’t burn-in at that 200-nit mark, right?

But the company wouldn’t confirm that to me. And though LG third-party spokesperson Jordan Guthmann originally told me that the standard two-year warranty does cover image retention “except in very certain use cases,” the actual warranty document that shipped alongside this monitor disagrees. There, LG specifically wrote that “burned-in images resulting from improper usage as described in the user manual” aren’t covered under warranty.

Speaking of improper and proper usage, the user manual doesn’t actually contain those phrases — but it does point out that static desktop icons, fixed windows, menus, and web browser bars are things that could put your monitor at risk of image retention. It sure sounds like normal desktop use is not recommended!

When I brought that up with Guthmann, he told me that LG was in the process of updating its warranty — and that a new version will specifically call out normal desktop features like static images and fixed menus as “not being a misuse case.” Similarly, although the user manual recommends turning Screen Move on, Guthmann says it’s okay that it’s off by default. “The warranty still applies even if it isn’t turned on.”

That new warranty language was supposed to be final in a few days. But 48 days later, the only change LG has made is removing that line about “burned-in images” from the warranty. Today, it’s not clear whether burn-in is covered at all.

Frankly, a two-year burn-in warranty might be the bare minimum. My 65-inch OLED TV didn’t start showing signs of it for closer to four years. After 5,700 hours of use, I mostly only notice it in animated movies and games with lots of color gradients.

Desktop work monitors, meanwhile, can easily be on for many more hours in a row than your average TV. So far, I’ve only put in about 700 hours on the LG 27GR95QE-B, and I haven’t yet found a test image that shows any burn-in at all.

If LG wants my money for a desktop OLED monitor, here’s what I’d like to see: first, 100 extra nits of sustained brightness across the entire screen, something Samsung has mostly managed with the QD-OLED panel you’ll find in the 34-inch ultrawide Alienware AW3423DWF. Second and more importantly, a warranty that actually sets my mind at ease. When those things arrive in a future wave of OLED, I’ll be lining up to put my money down.

Photography by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Zelda and Mario boost Nintendo to record profit

Zelda and Mario boost Nintendo to record profit

A profitable pair of plumbers. | Image: Illumination

Nintendo just had a bumper quarter thanks to the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, as well as the Super Mario Bros. Movie. “Both sales and profits were notably large for a first quarter” the company noted in today’s earnings release, which covers the three months through June 30th.

Net sales stood at ¥461.3 billion (around $3.2 billion), a 50 percent increase versus last year, while operating profit rose 82.4 percent to ¥185.4 billion (around $1.3 billion). Bloomberg notes that it’s the highest first-quarter profit recorded by the company, beating its previous 2020 high set in the the first year of the pandemic just after the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

The benefits of the release of Zelda and the Mario movie were felt directly and indirectly. Tears of the Kingdom sold 18.51 million units during Nintendo’s first quarter and is now the ninth best-selling Nintendo game for the console. Meanwhile, the Mario movie helped increase Nintendo’s “mobile and IP related income” by 190.1 percent versus last year. The Super Mario Bros. Movie has been a huge success, taking over $1 billion at the box office worldwide. Nintendo’s earnings release adds that the movie helped promote sales of its existing Mario games.

While sales of Switch consoles were still up compared to the same quarter last year (3.91 million units versus 3.43 million units), the consensus is that this hardware is nearing the end of its life, and Nintendo’s release calendar for the rest of the year is looking significantly leaner. The big question is when Nintendo might announce a Switch successor. Earlier this week VGC reported that a new console is planned for the second half of 2024, and that some of Nintendo’s software partners have already received development hardware for the forthcoming device.

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Alienware’s new Aurora R16 desktop sheds gobs of plastic for a 40 percent smaller build

Alienware’s new Aurora R16 desktop sheds gobs of plastic for a 40 percent smaller build

Alienware has clearly heard the feedback. Its prebuilt Aurora desktop PC needs work, particularly in the cooling department. So the new Alienware Aurora R16 is laser-focused on fixing that — to the point the company is largely ditching its trademark out-of-this-world look.

The new Aurora R16 has largely the same basic steel chassis inside, with the same 25.2 liters of space for your components. But its boxy new design ditches multiple pounds of plastic to make the entire computer 40 percent smaller in volume — shrinking all the way down from 60.7 liters to 36 liters in total.

Image: Alienware

Alienware R15 vs. Alienware R16. They have the same internal volume.

The goal of not being “impeded by plastics” was specifically for increased airflow, Alienware told journalists.

Image: Alienware

The new R16’s layout. Blue tabs mean toolless removal.

The result is “up to” 10 percent lower CPU and 6 percent lower GPU temperatures, and a 20 percent quieter system on average. It’s the quietest Aurora that the company has ever built, says long-time Alienware vet Eddy Goyanes.

Image: Alienware

Suit of armor not included.

The PC now pulls its air in through the “Stadium Loop”: large looped vents on both sides of the front of the rig, with a single 120mm intake fan behind them. The window-side of the loop is covered in 44 distinct LEDs for lighting, one of three RGB LED zones in the computer. (The 120mm rear exhuast fan and the alienhead logo in the front also have RGB LEDs inside; there’s also an optional 240mm liquid cooling radiator with twin 120mm fans up top. The other side of the PC has no lighting.)

The side of the chassis is also covered in hexagonal vents, the front of which it expects to intake air, while the rear ones exhaust it too — likely depending on your GPU.

Image: Alienware

An image illustrating the Aurora R16’s cooling with wavy lines showing where the air goes in and comes out.

The new R16 comes standard with Intel AX210 Wi-Fi 6E, a 500W 80+ Platinum power supply and 12-phase voltage regulation, and two memory slots and two M.2 SSD slots for up to 64GB of DDR5-5600 RAM and up to 8TB of PCIe Gen 4 storage. (Aftermarket storage and memory prices are currently at historic lows, by the by.)

You can fit a 3.5mm spinning hard drive in there as well. There’s also an optional 1000W 80+ Platinum power supply depending on your CPU and GPU.

Image: Alienware

Here’s what the default air cooling will look like.

The 33.8 pound (maximum weight) chassis also has quite a few ports: just around front is a USB-C port running at 10Gbps, three 5Gbps USB-A ports and a 3.5mm headset jack, and the rear offers a 20Gbps USB-C port, a 10Gbps USB-C port, two 5Gbps USB-A ports, and a pair of USB 2.0 ports as well as 2.5Gbps ethernet and an array of audio out.

Image: Alienware

There’s no cover for the front ports — they’re merely recessed.

Image: Alienware

Proprietary motherboard has lots of USB and audio ports. Also 2.5Gbps ethernet.

It’s available today starting at $1,750 in the United States (or $2300 CAD in Canada) with an air-cooled Core i7 13700F and Nvidia RTX 4070 graphics. You won’t get much higher in the GPU department for a bit: Asia and Europe can start with a RTX 3050 or upgrade to a RTX 4080 if you like, but in the United States the only other GPU option is the RTX 4070 Ti until later in the year. A 13th Gen i9 13900F is also available, though, and the company says the R16 will become its most powerful desktop by the end of the year.

Also missing from this new model is proper upgradability: the power supply and Z690 motherboard are still proprietary. Alienware lead Matt McGowan tells me that’s down to focus and time: “It was more efficient for us to move forward with this architecture and iterate on that than it was for us to completely redesign the product.”

Image: Alienware

Liquid cooling does not come standard, but those neat honeycomb vents do.

McGowan told journalists the team iterated around the previous-gen Alienware R15 to focus on space savings, complexity, and airflow before it potentially considers upgradability for future models — but no promises there. “We’ve obviously talked about how much upgradability we want to have with this product given all the other advantages it provides,” he says.

The company’s also not commenting on whether it will offer an AMD version of the R16. “We’re looking at that for future roadmap but not commenting on that at this time.”

Image: Alienware

A better look at the liquid cooling module.

Image: Alienware

One loop is RGB-lit, the other is not.

Image: Alienware

Wi-Fi antenna.

Image: Alienware

Cable management.

Image: Alienware.

Feet.

Image: Alienware

A last look.

Meta and the UFC are teaming up on a UFC-themed experience in Horizon Worlds

Meta and the UFC are teaming up on a UFC-themed experience in Horizon Worlds

Image: Nick Barclay / The Verge

Meta and the UFC are working together to make a special UFC-themed experience in Meta’s Horizon Worlds social VR platform, according to a Meta blog post on Wednesday.

In the UFC zone, you’ll be able to watch 4K, 180-degree streams of fights, socialize with other players about UFC, see a virtual recreation of the Octagon, and compete in in-world games to get “exclusive unlockable rewards” and eventually become “a UFC Hall of Famer.” It’s set to launch sometime in November.

I’m not a UFC fan, so I don’t think I’ll be spending much time in the zone. But the dedicated UFC space in Horizon Worlds is just one of a growing number of tailored experiences from Meta to try and get people to hang out on the platform. (It’s reportedly struggled to keep users.) Last week, for example, Meta launched an in-Horizon first-person shooter called Super Rumble, and in a blog post discussing the game, the company said that it was “the first of many Worlds experiences to come that will showcase improvements like better graphics, deeper gameplay, and a variety of quests and rewards.”

Experiences like Super Rumble and this forthcoming UFC-themed zone could prove to be important as Meta expands Horizon Worlds from VR to other platforms. The company might finally be launching the mobile version of Horizon Worlds soon (maybe at its Connect event on September 27th?), and Meta has also said it’s working on a web version of the app.

Meta’s Wednesday blog post also included a schedule of upcoming UFC fights you can watch in VR on Quest headsets through the Xtadium app with a UFC Fight Pass subscription. I’m guessing Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has competed in Jiu-Jitsu, might be tuning in — that is, if he’s not training in the octagon in his backyard.

How to Self-Publish Your E-Book

How to Self-Publish Your E-Book If you have a story you want to share, you can easily publish your work in popular electronic bookstores — and maybe even make a little money.

Twitter Blue subscribers can now hide their blue checks

Twitter Blue subscribers can now hide their blue checks

Image: The Verge

Twitter Blue, which Elon Musk is currently rebranding to X Blue, now includes the option to hide the notorious blue checkmark. Twitter Blue subscribers recently started noticing the “hide your blue checkmark” option on the web and in mobile apps, offering the ability to hide that they’re paying for Twitter and avoid memes about how “this mf paid for twitter.”

“The checkmark will be hidden on your profile and posts,” notes a Twitter support article. “The checkmark may still appear in some places and some features could still reveal you have an active subscription. Some features may not be available while your checkmark is hidden.”

Screenshot by Tom Warren / The Verge

The new hide blue checkmark option.

Twitter previously used a blue checkmark verification system for account recognition or credibility, but when Elon Musk started allowing anyone to be “verified” through a Blue subscription it briefly descended into chaos with fake accounts. Then everyone soon realized who was paying to be verified on Twitter before Twitter eventually removed blue checkmarks from legacy verified accounts and changed how verified checkmarks were displayed multiple times. Blue checkmarks are also assigned to users with one million or more followers.

If you subscribe to Twitter Blue the service will now add an optional blue checkmark to your profile with a “verified since” date attached. Legacy verified accounts include the date an account was originally verified on Twitter before the Blue subscription system.

Twitter owner Elon Musk is currently rebranding the service to X in a bid to create an “everything app” that will likely include some form of a payments system in the future. The little blue bird disappeared last week, replaced with an “interim” X logo that briefly appeared on top of Twitter’s San Francisco office building in the form of an extravagant flashing and strobing X sign. There are still plenty of places where X refers to Twitter, and even the X Blue subscription page mentions Twitter Blue plenty of times.

Tired of Dating Apps, Some Turn to Google Docs

Tired of Dating Apps, Some Turn to Google Docs Writers of so-called Date-Me Docs, which can read like 1,000-word versions of the personal ads of yore, hope for a more meaningful connection than a swipe might allow.

Everything we know about Apple’s Vision Pro headset

Everything we know about Apple’s Vision Pro headset

Illustration: Kristen Radtke / The Verge

Apple announced Vision Pro, its long-rumored virtual and augmented reality headset, at WWDC 2023. Here’s a timeline of all the details that have emerged about the device over the years and what we know so far.

People have been speculating about Apple’s entry into the world of virtual and augmented reality headsets for the better part of a decade, and at WWDC 2023, it finally revealed Vision Pro.

The new headset runs visionOS, uses two Apple Silicon chips (M2 Ultra and R1), and can be used for up to two hours with a tethered battery pack or for as long as you want if it’s plugged in. It also uses “natural control” with hand and eye tracking as well as voice commands. The Vision Pro headset will arrive “early next year” in the US, and Apple is pricing it at $3,499 to start.

Apple had never officially confirmed that it was working on the headset, but over the years, there were all kinds of rumors about what it might make. Now we know the truth about Vision Pro, a mixed reality device capable of both virtual and augmented reality experiences. Just like the rumors said, users can switch between AR and VR using a digital crown-style dial, and depending on what they’re viewing, it displays their eyes on the front so that others know the person wearing it can see them.

Read on for all our coverage so far on Apple’s Vision Pro headset.

The entire story of Twitter / X under Elon Musk

The entire story of Twitter / X under Elon Musk

Image: Laura Normand / The Verge

Forget Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and The Boring Company — Elon Musk is now the owner of Twitter.

Elon Musk bought Twitter, and now he’s rebranding it as X. Signs have gone up (and back down), icons are changing, and an old plan is new.

How’d we get here?

On April 4th, 2022, we learned that Musk had purchased enough shares of Twitter to become its largest individual shareholder. Eventually, he followed up with an unsolicited offer to buy 100 percent of Twitter’s shares for $54.20 each, or about $44 billion. Twitter accepted Musk’s offer, but then things got weird because he tried to cancel the deal.

There was a lot of back-and-forth about bots and text messages, but in the end, Musk settled on buying the company rather than facing a deposition or Chancery Court trial and eventually strode into Twitter HQ carrying a sink.

Since then, there have been layoffs, more layoffs, and even more layoffs — plus drama over Substack, unpaid bills, and blue checkmarks. With ad revenue still down from previous years, Elon finally abdicated the role of CEO in May 2023, installing longtime NBCUniversal ad executive Linda Yaccarino.

Read on for the latest updates about what’s going on inside Twitter right now.

Anker’s second 3D printer is the more affordable AnkerMake M5C

Anker’s second 3D printer is the more affordable AnkerMake M5C

The AnkerMake M5C. | Image: Anker

Anker didn’t exactly knock it out of the park with its first 3D printer, the AnkerMake M5, but today, it’s trying again. The new AnkerMake M5C, shipping today in the United States, ditches some of the original’s clumsier features in exchange for a $400 price tag. That’s half what the AnkerMake M5 cost when it arrived last year.

The M5C still offers the same 49-point automatic bed leveling system, removable flexible magnetic plate for easy adhesion and removal, and remarkably fast printing speeds up to 500mm per second (though no promises about quality at maximum speed). It still prints down to 0.1mm in resolution, has a hefty aluminum base and dual screws for the Z-axis, and now boasts a one-piece design for faster, simpler setup. Print volume is just slightly smaller at 220 x 220 x 250mm instead of 235 x 235 x 250.

Image: Anker

Importantly, it now comes with an all-metal hotend, something the M5 lacked. (While Kickstarter backers were promised one for meeting stretch goals, Anker later claimed it was a misunderstanding.) All-metal hotends let the machine reach higher temperatures to melt tougher filaments and — done right — can help prevent certain kinds of jams.

So, what do you give up in exchange for the $400 price tag? Here are M5 features that the M5C lacks:

• The “AI camera” that never really worked and didn’t make great timelapse videos, either, and raised questions about security
• The filament runout sensor that never properly paused my prints during my review and added additional friction to filament loading
• The dual-belt Y-axis bed carriage system that sometimes shipped with belt or V-wheel issues — it’s been radically changed now
• Any kind of screen at all

That last is a weird omission! Printers half the price of the AnkerMake M5C still come with a screen, and they’re quite handy to monitor the status of your print and make calibration tweaks. Here, you’ll have to use Anker’s still-in-beta PC and Mac slicing software and Android and iOS apps instead.

“The intuitive AnkerMake app empowers users to monitor the status of prints, control the printer, and transfer sliced models directly from their smartphone or laptop,” reads a line from the company’s press release.

You do get one control on the printer itself, though: a single programmable button you can press, double-tap, or long-press to activate three functions of your choice. I’d rather have a screen, but I suppose I’d program mine to pause, play, and raise the gantry 100mm to more easily get at the bed — something I did often with the original AnkerMake M5 by repeatedly stabbing a touchscreen.

Image: Anker

The AnkerMake M5C’s single programmable button and USB port.

The AnkerMake M5C still doesn’t have an SD card slot but does retain a port for a USB thumbdrive on the right side of the base — it’ll be nice to no longer have it atop the moving gantry.

I didn’t enjoy beta testing Anker’s first 3D printer, but I have to admit that it got a bit better, and it sounds like this new one may have fewer points of failure. But the real question is whether the company’s quality control has improved, something that (I keep hearing) also afflicts some buyers of lower-priced Creality machines.

Personally, I’ve moved on to a $700 Bambu P1P (currently on sale for $600 now that Bambu has introduced the enclosed P1S), and I’ve never had an easier time printing than now. And I’m looking forward to seeing if the $600 Creality K1, a very similar machine, is its equal or better.

The Fitbit app is getting a streamlined new look this fall

The Fitbit app is getting a streamlined new look this fall

There’s a new three-tab structure and a more minimalist overall design. | Image: Google

Fitbit’s been going through a lot of changes over the past year — and it looks like that’s only going to continue. The Google-owned app is getting a total redesign this fall, and select Fitbit users may see an invite to try a beta version starting today.

For starters, Fitbit is reorganizing how it presents your data. Going forward, the app will be divided into three tabs: Today, Coach, and You. The Today tab isn’t changing too drastically from what it is now, but the main metrics you see up top can be customized to highlight different focus areas. For example, if you want to sleep better, you’ll see your Sleep, steps, mindfulness, and Zone Minutes first thing. If your goal is to improve your heart health, the app will instead emphasize your heart, health metrics, Zone minutes, and exercise. You’ve always been able to customize what you see up top; now, Fitbit provides some custom presets for common goals. In its press release, Fitbit also says the new tab will feature “more consistent charts, graphics, and icons that show your health trends.”

Image: Google

Everything’s been redesigned to better fit Google’s Material Design standards.

The Coach tab is where content will live, like curated workouts or mindfulness sessions. Some of these will be available to free users, while others, like HIIT and dance cardio classes, will be exclusive to Fitbit Premium subscribers. The tab will also get filters that let you sort classes more easily (e.g., by time, required equipment, etc.)

The You tab is perhaps the most unfamiliar of the bunch. From a demo video, it appears that this is where you’ll be able to adjust personal settings, such as daily steps, bedtime, active zone minutes, etc. It’s also where you can view newly redesigned achievement badges. Fitbit says this is also where you can “manage community connections,” but it’s unclear what social features the redesigned app will have after Challenges were discontinued earlier this year.

It’s hard to see from official renders, but Fitbit says that it’ll be easier to log things like steps, exercise, and water intake — regardless of whether you have a Fitbit device. Otherwise, the look of the app has also been refreshed with a new color palette and updated photography, icons, and illustrations to match Google’s Material Design standards. From the official screenshots, it’s got a similar vibe to the Pixel Watch 2 watchfaces that leaked over the weekend. You could say the redesign finally makes it clear that Google owns Fitbit now.

None of this should come as surprising if you’ve been paying attention to the Android wearable space as of late. As mentioned, Fitbit ended its legacy Challenges and social features in March, angering several longtime users. Soon after, Google announced it would start the migration process from Fitbit to Google Accounts this summer. In May, Google announced Wear OS 4 at its annual I/O conference, and later this month, we’ll get to see how the new platform functions on the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 series. Along the way, Google’s released a smattering of minor Wear OS and Fitbit updates.

It’s clear from this timeline that Google is laying the groundwork for the Pixel Watch 2, which is expected to launch later this fall alongside the Pixel 8. So far, we haven’t heard much about the second-gen smartwatch, though rumor has it Google will add a continuous electrodermal activity sensor and ditch Samsung’s processor for the new Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 Plus platform. When the Pixel Watch initially launched, there was understandable skepticism about whether Google would commit to its renewed wearables push. This, along with other efforts to further integrate Fitbit into the Google fold, seems to indicate that the Pixel Watch (and Fitbit) will be spared from Google’s graveyard. At least for now.

Sony’s take-anywhere XB100 speaker is on sale for less than $50

Sony’s take-anywhere XB100 speaker is on sale for less than $50

Few speakers offer as much bang for your buck — let alone charm — as Sony’s colorful XB100. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

The world of portable speakers is vast and varied — a fact that is immediately apparent if you punch the words “Bluetooth speaker” into Google or Amazon. Thankfully, if you’ve been scouring the web for something affordable that will still sound better than your phone, Sony’s SRS-XB100 speaker is on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and direct from Sony for as little as $48 ($12 off), its lowest price to date.

Despite its pint-size design, the XB100 manages to dish out crisp, clear sound with a surprising amount of low-end bass. The rugged little speaker offers up to 16 hours of continuous battery life and IP67 dust and water resistance, too, making it as suitable for an outing in the park as a pool party in your own backyard. You can even pair two XB100s together for stereo sound or use a single unit as a speakerphone, something that is seldom the case, even when you pony up for pricier Bluetooth speakers.

Read our Sony SRS-XB100 review.

Whether you want to admit it, back-to-school season is upon us. Fortunately for us deal hunters, the inevitable return to the classroom also means the return of back-to-school savings at places like Amazon and Best Buy. This year, eBay is also getting in on the action, offering 20 percent off select items through 11:59PM PT on August 6th when you apply offer code SAVE4SCHOOL at checkout.

As you might expect, eBay’s current promo covers a wide swath of gadgets and gizmos, from Philips Hue bulbs to LG’s unique StanbyME TV. One of the better deals available, however, is on the iRobot Roomba i4, which is available in refurbished condition via iRobot’s eBay storefront on its own for $139.99 ($110 off) or with an auto-empty dock for $219.99 ($130 off).

The Roomba i4 is nearly identical to our favorite budget robot vacuum, the Roomba i3 Evo, save for a longer runtime, which means it still packs smart mapping features, support for virtual assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, and a physical spot-cleaning button for those times when you want to clean up a small area on the fly. Both models also come with a two-year warranty from iRobot, just in case buying refurbished tech gives you the slightest bit of pause.

Read our robot vacuum buying guide.

A few additional deals and discounts

• There’s more to eBay’s back-to-school promo than just vacuums. Now through August 6th, for instance, LG’s 48-inch C3 OLED is on sale at eBay via Electronic Express for $1,037.59 (about $262 off) when you use promo code SAVE4SCHOOL. The 4K TV isn’t a huge step up from LG’s already-fantastic C2 panel, but it does offer more processing power and a few new picture modes.
• Amazon’s third-gen Echo Show 5 is down to $44.99 ($45 off) at Best Buy, Target, and The Home Depot, beating its Prime Day price by $5. The Alexa-based smart display is a lot like the second-gen model we reviewed in 2021, only with a snappier AZ2 chip and better speakers — two upgrades that help solidify the compact display as one of the better options for your desk or nightstand.
• If you want a colorful piece of eye candy that will never wilt, Lego’s Wildflower Bouquet is currently on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target for $52.99 ($7 off). That’s nearly the best price we’ve seen on the 939-piece Lego kit, which allows you to construct lavender stems, Welsh poppies, and several other types of flowers.
• You can grab Sony’s WH-CH720N at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target for around $128 ($21 off). The budget-friendly headphones aren’t quite as impressive as Sony’s more premium models — most notably, the WH-1000XM5 — yet they still offer good sound, 35 hours of battery life, and active noise cancellation for far less.
• The physical version of Tears of the Kingdom is still available at Amazon and Walmart for $56.99 ($13 off). Nintendo’s wildly creative sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild launched at $69.99, and while we have seen the excellent Switch title dip to as low as $52 or so, today’s deal remains worth pointing out given the sheer amount of game you get for the price. Read our review.

YouTube uses AI to summarize videos in latest test

YouTube uses AI to summarize videos in latest test

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google is experimenting with the use of AI to auto-generate YouTube video summaries, according to a notice on a support page dated July 31st. The page, which we spotted via Android Police, notes that these summaries will only appear next to a limited number of English-language videos, and will only be viewable by a limited number of users. They’ll appear on YouTube’s watch and search pages, and are intended to give a brief overview of a video’s contents without replacing its existing description written by a human.

“​​We’re starting to test AI auto-generated summaries on YouTube, so that it’s easier for you to read a quick summary about a video and decide whether it’s the right fit for you,” the support page reads. Android Police notes that users are typically able to sign up to participate in YouTube experiments over at YouTube.com/new, though participating in some tests may require a YouTube Premium subscription.

“Read a quick summary about a video and decide whether it’s the right fit for you”

YouTube’s experiment is one of a raft of generative AI initiatives happening at Google right now, as the company races to find uses for the emerging technology. Back at its developer conference in May, for example, the company announced a new Play Store feature which aimed to use generative AI to summarize app user reviews. But of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Google’s AI efforts which include a new Search Generative Experience, and Duet AI tools for its Workspace productivity apps.

Other companies have also attempted to use AI to auto-generate summaries of online content. Artifact, for example, recently launched a summary feature for news articles.

If they end up getting a wider rollout, it’ll be interesting to see if the AI summaries impact how YouTube creators structure their videos. Every policy change and new feature introduced by the video platform can have wide-ranging effects on its content ecosystem, as creators attempt to please its all-seeing yet obscure recommendation algorithm. Who knows what will happen when creators have to make videos for both humans and Google’s AI to understand?

Your Google data and YouTube videos will be easier to migrate after GDPR challenge

Your Google data and YouTube videos will be easier to migrate after GDPR challenge

Google Takeout is getting new features that will allow users to upload their Google account data to third-party services. | Illustration: The Verge

Google is making it easier to backup and transfer your personal data between third-party services, in response to a GDPR investigation by Italy’s AGCM competition watchdog.

In a press release announcing the changes, the AGCM said that Google’s binding commitments will “ensure significant automation of the procedure available for data export,” and “improve the interoperability mechanism that makes the data available in the Google ecosystem accessible to third-party platforms.”

Google has made three commitments to resolve the investigation. The first two involve enhancing Google Takeout, while the third will introduce a new solution to “allow direct data portability from service to service” for authorized third-party operators, specifically regarding data generated through user activity on Google’s online search engine and YouTube platform.

The commitments seemingly build on Google’s existing work within the Data Transfer Initiative

As 9to5Google notes, the third commitment seems to build on work that Google is already undertaking within the Data Transfer Initiative — an open-source project backed by Meta, Apple, Google, and Microsoft that supports the direct transfer of user data between online platforms. The initiative already spawned a service-to-service transfer tool in 2020 that allows Facebook users to transfer their photos and videos to Google Photos without needing to manually download and re-upload the files.

The Google Takeout service already allows users to export their personal YouTube videos along with their search history and comments on the platform, for backup and preparation for export to third-party services. A “direct service-to-service portability solution” will make things easier and faster (no local downloads) for users and third-party operators. Google anticipates that this capability will be launched during the first quarter of 2024, and that third-party service providers will be able to test it “at least six months” prior to the official release.

The investigation began after Hoda, an Italian data export startup, accused Google of impeding its US users from sharing their personal data with other digital service platforms. By making Google’s proposed commitments binding, the AGCM has now closed its investigation.

Uber Posts 14% Rise in Revenue as Growth Slows

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Meta’s AI ‘personas’ might launch next month

Meta’s AI ‘personas’ might launch next month

Illustration: Nick Barclay / The Verge

Meta could launch AI-powered “personas” in its services — which include Facebook and Instagram — as soon as next month, giving users a new way to search, get recommendations, and otherwise engage with its products, the Financial Times reports. Citing conversations with three company insiders, the FT notes that the chatbots could come with distinct personalities, including one that offers travel recommendations “in the style of a surfer” and another that speaks like Abraham Lincoln.

The imminent launch could help Meta compete on two fronts. On the one hand, built-in chatbots could be a way to boost engagement with services like Facebook and Instagram in the face of competition from the likes of TikTok. On the other, the chatbots could serve as a display of Meta’s AI capabilities as it competes with Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Google’s Bard.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been open about his plans to build “AI personas” into the company’s products. In February he announced the creation of a new product group focused on generative AI. “Over the longer term, we’ll focus on developing AI personas that can help people in a variety of ways,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We’re exploring experiences with text (like chat in WhatsApp and Messenger), with images (like creative Instagram filters and ad formats), and with video and multi-modal experiences.”

“We’re exploring experiences with text... with images... and with video and multi-modal experiences”

In early June, app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi spotted signs of a new “Chat with an AI” feature in the Instagram app that would be able to answer questions and give advice in the style of 30 different AI personalities. The chatbot could also help users compose messages, according to the leak.

Zuckerberg again mentioned the company’s AI initiatives in an earnings call last week. He said the company is building them using its own LLaMA large language model. “You can imagine lots of ways that AI can help people connect and express themselves in our apps, creative tools that make it easier and more fun to share content, agents that act as assistance, coaches or that can help you interact with businesses and creators and more,” the CEO said. More details on Meta’s AI road map are expected to be announced at its Connect developer event in September.

While the CEO’s comments have emphasized the benefits such chatbots could have for Meta’s users, the Financial Times notes that they could also provide the company with more data on their interests to help with ad targeting. In the past couple of months, rival social media company Snap has tested adding sponsored links into its ChatGPT-powered My AI chatbot.

A spokesperson from Meta did not immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment.