Leia co-founder and CEO David Fattal, with his Red Hydrogen smartphone. A 200-person startup named after Star Wars’ Princess Leia may have quietly cornered the market on glasses-free 2D to 3D screens — after clawing its way back from one of the biggest gadget flops of the past decade.Remember the Red Hydrogen, the 3D phone that crashed and burned so hard its founder decided it was time to retire? Leia is the company that designed its “holographic” screen, and the company has been relatively quiet since that experience. Walking into its private hotel room suite at CES 2024 in Las Vegas, my expectations were not particularly high!So you can imagine my surprise to find five tables full of Acer, Asus, Dell, Lenovo and MSI products and prototypes, plus a brand-new 3D OLED phone — each featuring a eye-popping... Continue reading…

Image: OpenAI A new report from Bloomberg says that once-again CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman’s efforts to raise billions for an AI chip venture are aimed at using that cash to develop a “network of factories” for fabrication that would stretch around the globe and involve working with unnamed “top chip manufacturers.” A major cost and limitation for running AI models is having enough chips to handle the computations behind bots like ChatGPT or DALL-E that answer prompts and generate images. Nvidia’s value rose above $1 trillion for the first time last year, partly due to a virtual monopoly it has as GPT-4, Gemini, Llama 2, and other models depend heavily on its popular H100 GPUs.Accordingly, the race to manufacture more high-powered chips to run complex... Continue reading…

This year kicked off to a great start for tech, thanks to CES 2024, and it has gotten even better with Samsung's Galaxy S24 series launch. In its typical fashion, Samsung unveiled three models: S24, S24+, and S24 Ultra. These new devices boast upgraded chips, brighter displays, improved camera performance, and better AI features, though they still have no chargers in the box. While all three models have gotten huge improvements, the Galaxy S24+ is the perfect option for users who want a bigger display, more RAM, and better storage without going for the Ultra model.

CES 2024 has come and gone, giving us an early look at the latest developments in computers, phones, laptops, TVs, monitors, and all the wearable tech in between. Oh, and some manufacturers also heard you like AI, so they decided to hammer AI into everything. Now that the CES dust has settled, and I've had some breathing room to filter out AI and read up on the gauntlet of computer innovation that came swinging our way, it's time to reflect on the absolute best and most exciting desktop and PC components we saw at CES 2024.

Mark Zuckerberg. Aside from Meta’s new focus on building artificial general intelligence, the biggest news inside the company this week is CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to move its AI research team, FAIR, to sit in its product organization. Going forward, Joelle Pineau, the VP who leads FAIR, and Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist, will report to Meta’s chief product officer, Chris Cox. They previously reported to CTO Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth, who leads the Reality Labs division. “With this change, we elevate the importance of AI research as an essential ingredient to the long-term success of the company and our products,” Cox wrote in an internal note to employees on Wednesday that I obtained. “Alongside the major infrastructure investments Mark mentioned... Continue reading…

Image: Square Enix Making sure an event as large as Games Done Quick (GDQ) runs smoothly is a monumental task. There are lots of technical moving parts, from video equipment, to lighting, sound, and stream overlays, to donation trackers that have to be kept running 24 hours a day for a week straight. The tech team also has to consider the individual needs of over 100 runners playing on consoles that range in age and complexity from the NES to the PlayStation 5.With all of that going on, I wondered which game out of the thousands that have been run at GDQ throughout its 10-plus-year history the tech team hates the most, and the answer surprised me.It’s the PSX SquareSoft (remember them??) RPG Chrono Cross.After speaking with GDQ’s director of technology,... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok has launched many songs that have gone viral over the years, but now it’s testing a feature that lets more people exercise their songwriting skills… with some help from AI.AI Song generates songs from text prompts with help from the large language model Bloom. Users can write out lyrics on the text field when making a post. TikTok will then recommend AI Song to add sounds to the post, and they can toggle the song’s genre. The Verge reached out to TikTok for comment. The feature was first spotted last week. AI Song doesn’t seem to be available to everyone yet, but some TikTok users have already begun experimenting with it. The results so far are not great. Many are out of tune despite the availability of auto-tuning vocals. Take... Continue reading…

When you set up a new iPhone, you'll notice a wide range of preinstalled apps. Naturally, these apps act as the default for their respective purposes, such as iOS 17 defaulting to Apple Music for music playback. But what if you want to set a third-party app as the default? Well, you can on iOS 14 and newer versions, but there are some restrictions.

Last year’s iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, which introduced the Action Button. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Another report, this time from The Information, claims that Apple is testing a new camera-focused button for inclusion on this year’s iPhone release, presumably called the iPhone 16. According to the publication’s sources, the button could be located on the lower right side of the device, placing it under your index finger when taking photos and videos in landscape. Rumors of a new camera button have been around since at least September, when MacRumors reported on the in-development feature. But while MacRumors reported that the button would be capacitive, and therefore simulate a press with a vibration, The Information says it’ll be mechanical like a traditional button, but with extra capacitive features that make it both touch- and... Continue reading…

CPU-Z, a well-known system information tool by CPUID, has recently introduced its ARM64 version for Windows ARM64 PCs. This release represents a significant shift for CPU-Z, aligning with the increasing adoption of ARM-based devices in the computing sector.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Arizona State University (ASU) and OpenAI announced a partnership to bring ChatGPT into ASU’s classrooms.In a press release, ASU stated that it wants to focus on “three key areas of concentration” where it can use ChatGPT Enterprise, like “enhancing student success, forging new avenues for innovative research, and streamlining organizational processes.” ASU deputy chief information officer Kyle Bowen told The Verge, “Our faculty and staff were already using ChatGPT, and after the launch of ChatGPT Enterprise, which for us addressed a lot of the security concerns we had, we believed it made sense to connect with OpenAI.” He added that ASU faculty members, some of whom have expertise in AI, will help guide the usage of generative AI on... Continue reading…

Users can disable the feature within their account settings, and restrict who can contact them when it’s enabled. | Illustration: The Verge X (formerly Twitter) is now rolling out its audio and video calling capabilities to Android users following their iOS launch last October. Users may need to update the app to see the feature, according to X developer Enrique Barragan, who also says that any user can receive calls, but only X Premium subscribers can place them.It’s unclear how long the rollout will take to reach all Android users, though we’ve confirmed that at least one of The Verge’s Android devices is showing the feature after the X app was updated. X Premium subscriptions start at $3 per month for the “Basic” tier, but it isn’t clear from X’s Help Centre which tier the outbound video and audio calling perk is locked behind. Image: X There are... Continue reading…