Image: Álvaro Bernis / The Verge Social media is abuzz with examples of Google’s new AI Overview product saying weird stuff, from telling users to put glue on their pizza to suggesting they eat rocks. The messy rollout means Google is racing to manually disable AI Overviews for specific searches as various memes get posted, which is why users are seeing so many of them disappear shortly after being posted to social networks.It’s an odd situation, since Google has been testing AI Overviews for a year now — the feature launched in beta in May 2023 as the Search Generative Experience — and CEO Sundar Pichai has said the company served over a billion queries in that time.But Pichai has also said that Google’s brought the cost of delivering AI answers down by 80 percent... Continue reading…

Image: Activision The families of the victims killed in the Uvalde, Texas school shooting are suing Meta and Call of Duty developer Activision over allegations that they promoted the use of firearms to underage boys. The lawsuit claims both companies “knowingly exposed the Shooter to the weapon, conditioned him to see it as the solution to his problems, and trained him to use it.” It’s the kind of claim we’ve seen unsuccessfully thrown at video game companies numerous times in the past.The complaint was filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court on Friday on behalf of around 45 family members. As noted in the lawsuit, the families accuse Activision and Meta of “grooming” young men and putting them on a path toward violent acts. On May 24th, 2022,... Continue reading…

OpenAI unveiled its ChatGPT app for Macs at its most recent launch event where it also unveiled GPT-4o, a multi-modal LLM that manages to be significantly faster than previous iterations of the GPT language model. The Mac application was said to bring most of the features available on iPhones to your desktop, with the biggest being an instant-access hotkey that you can access at any time.

The Surface Pro 9 is a flagship 2-in-1 from Microsoft. It keeps the same shape and form factor as Surface Pro 8 but comes with fresher 12th-generation Intel CPUs, a new 5G option powered by the Microsoft SQ3 Processor, and a bunch of new color options. That makes it one of our favorite Surface PCs and one of the most portable and powerful Windows tablets ever.

Microsoft launched its Copilot+ PC initiative with the new Surface Laptop 7 and Surface Pro 11 leading the charge. The seventh-generation Surface Laptop (which Microsoft calls the "7th Edition") features a new redesign, sporting slimmed-down bezels and a powerful new Snapdragon X processor. Unfortunately, the lack of an Intel chip means no official Thunderbolt certification. However, the Surface Laptop 7's USB4 connectivity supports high-speed data transfer and external monitors, so your choices aren't limited when choosing from the best docking stations. Read on to see our favorite docks that can turn your Surface Laptop 7 into a full-fledged desktop workstation.

It's the start of Memorial Day weekend and that means retailers are gearing up to offer some spectacular deals on TVs, laptops, smartphones, monitors, PC components, accessories, and more. Of course, with an event like this, there's just so much to sift through that it can sometimes be a little exhausting and certainly overwhelming if you're trying to find the best price for that one item you need.

A network-attached storage (NAS) device can be used for various tasks, including blocking website advertisements. If you've grown tired of being tracked online, desire some privacy, and don't want your PC grinding to a halt due to the loading of five automatic videos and six resource-intensive advert blocks, AdGuard may be what you need in your online life. I'm going to show you how to set it up on a Synology NAS enclosure. You can now store all your files, run a media server, manage surveillance, and block ads all on the same device.

Building your PC means customizing it to suit your preferences. However, these days, having a unique build is such a challenging enterprise, thanks to most PC cases sharing similar designs. To overcome this problem and make their rigs unique, most people choose colorful cases instead of the default white and black options.

Image: Epic Games Out with the gods, in with... a post-apocalypse. After some teasing, Fortnite just launched its latest battle royale season — we’re up to Chapter 5: Season 3 — and it’s heavily inspired by Mad Max and Fallout (in fact, Fallout is part of it). It’s called “Wrecked,” and it introduces a new wasteland region, a larger focus on vehicular combat, and, for some reason, Magneto.First up, let’s talk about the island itself. In the game’s fiction, a massive sandstorm rolled in, completely changing the southern section of the map. There are three new locations: a refinery called Redline Rig, a vehicle arena called Nitrodrome, and a beach area called Brutal Beachhead. To go along with them are “Wasteland Warriors,” which are basically this... Continue reading…

If you're building a new PC, chances are you've been looking through all the different options from Intel and AMD when it comes to CPUs. While both brands offer a fantastic assortment for nearly every budget, AMD does tend to offer better bang for the buck, especially if you're trying to find a CPU that really excels at gaming.

Turns out the “deleted” files may have been on devices this entire time. | Photo: Wes Davis / The Verge We finally have a better understanding of why devices running iOS 17.5 started resurfacing long-deleted photos, courtesy of Apple and some third-party researchers. While Apple released the iOS 17.5.1 iPhone update to fix the issue earlier this week, attributing it to a “database corruption,” the company remained tight-lipped about what was specifically causing old files — including deleted nudes, in some reports — to start appearing on devices that never hosted them.Elaborating on the issue to 9to5Mac, Apple says it was caused by a corrupt database entry on the device’s file system, impacting files on the devices themselves and not those that had been synced to iCloud. Those files may have been carried over from older devices when... Continue reading…

After one of the most exciting (yet longest) waits I've had to endure as a Windows fan, Microsoft, Qualcomm, and hardware partners all came together on May 20th to announce the first wave of true AI PCs, powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon X series of processors. There's more than one reason why this event was incredibly exciting.