Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge It’s a cliché at this point to say that podcasts (and, to a less publicized extent, audiobooks) have a discovery problem. To help fix that, Spotify announced it’s using Google Cloud’s AI tools to improve both content discovery and personalized recommendations for its audio offerings. With this latest move, Spotify is using Google Cloud’s LLMs (large language models) to analyze the roughly 5 million podcasts and 350,000 audiobooks in its content library with a goal of trying to “augment” the metadata, according to a press release. (The Verge has reached out to Spotify to clarify exactly what “augment” means in this case). A podcast or audiobook’s metadata includes information like the title, the name of the host or author, show notes,... Continue reading…

Illustrator by Alex Castro / The Verge The Federal Communications Commission has approved a new set of rules aiming to prevent “digital discrimination.” It means the agency can hold telecom companies accountable for digitally discriminating against customers — or giving certain communities poorer service (or none at all) based on income level, race, or religion.The new rules come as part of the Biden Administration’s 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which requires the FCC to develop and adopt anti-digital discrimination rules. “Many of the communities that lack adequate access to broadband today are the same areas that suffer from longstanding patterns of residential segregation and economic disadvantage,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said following today’s vote.... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Microsoft is working on offering a better customer service experience powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 for its visually impaired users through a partnership with Be My Eyes, a company that helps visually impaired individuals tackle everyday tasks with the help of sighted volunteers.Microsoft is integrating a digital visual assistant tool Be My Eyes created — Be My AI — into its Microsoft Disability Answer Desk, allowing visually impaired Microsoft users to resolve technical issues or perform tasks like updating software without needing the assistance of a call center agent. After testing the tool earlier this year on Microsoft users, Be My Eyes said the tool resolved inquiries in four minutes on average, which is less than half the average... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Google is going to allow teens to use Bard beginning Thursday, though the AI chatbot will have some guardrails in place, according to a blog post from Google’s Tulsee Doshi.Bard will be available for teens in “most countries around the world” as long as they meet Google’s minimum age requirement to be in charge of their own account, Doshi says. (For many countries, that age is 13; Google lists the exceptions in a support document.) To start, teens will only be able to use Bard in English, but Doshi says Google will add more languages “over time.”Google has a few safety measures to help teens understand how generative AI works and prevent them from seeing unsafe content.As part of the onboarding process for teens, Google will share... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Sonos is in a bit of a rough patch with its consumer hardware business. Demand isn’t nearly on the same level that it was a few years ago, and CEO Patrick Spence has used the word “challenging” more than once when discussing the company’s last several financial quarters. Today’s earnings, which saw revenue decrease by 5.5 percent year over year, are another example. “While it was a challenging year in the categories in which we play, the strength of the Sonos brand and product portfolio enabled us to retain a strong market share position,” Spence said in Sonos’ press release.But Spence and the Sonos team predict big things ahead in 2024. Namely, some sort of significant new product is on the roadmap for later next year that Sonos... Continue reading…

It’s fine to say aspartame is safe — but not to obscure that you’re being paid to do it. | Photo by Long Wei/VCG via Getty Images The first rule of sponsored content: You have to tell people it was paid for.Today, the Federal Trade Commission publicly admonished over a dozen health influencers for publishing videos on TikTok and Instagram about sugar and the artificial sweetener aspartame without disclosing that the posts were paid for by the American Beverage Association and The Canadian Sugar Institute.The FTC says this makes each of them potentially on the hook for fines over $50,000 if they continue posting without disclosures. Samuel Levine, who heads the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, called it “irresponsible for any trade group to hire influencers to tout its members’ product” without making sure content creators are clear about the deal. The FTC... Continue reading…

Here’s hoping this Starship test flight ends better than the first attempt. | Image: SpaceX The second test flight for SpaceX’s Starship rocket has now been given the all clear by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The FAA said in a statement that it “has given license authorization for the second launch of the SpaceX Starship Super Heavy vehicle. The FAA determined SpaceX met all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements.”SpaceX confirmed it’s now targeting November 17th for the test, with a two-hour launch window starting at 8AM ET.The launch was initially grounded following an investigation into the first orbital launch test for the Starship and Super Heavy booster in April, which burst into flames and fired detonators to self-destruct about four minutes into its flight. SpaceX said in... Continue reading…

Threads is adding trending topics and hashtags. | Image: Meta Mark Zuckerberg revealed Meta is testing a new tagging feature for Threads that’s like hashtags, but not exactly. Yes, you’ll use a hashtag to create or add to a topic’s conversation, but instead of showing up as a hashtagged word, Threads converts it to a blue-text hyperlink. Australian users will get the first crack at it in the initial “limited test” before it gets a wider release.Typing a “#” into the post text field brings up a card with the topic you’re tagging or other, similar ones. Underneath that, each of the topics comes with a count of posts about it, just like Instagram does.Those with Threads’ new tagging feature can only add a single topic to a post at a time, which will probably limit anyone hoping to spam their... Continue reading…

You can get a great device for less than $500 these days if you know how to pick your priorities. | Image: The Verge You can’t have absolutely everything at this price, but you can get a great smartphone. Whether you want an iPhone, a 120Hz screen, or water resistance, you’ve got options. Continue reading…

The 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N has a soul patch. | Image: Hyundai Hyundai showed off its production performance-variant Ioniq 5 “N” at the LA Auto Show this week, releasing final specifications of the electric crossover and announcing its availability at US dealerships in March 2024.As previously announced in July, this new version of the Ioniq 5 was built by Hyundai’s performance tuning teams under its N sub-brand. The engineers behind the 2025 Ioniq 5 N used Hyundai’s base E-GMP electric vehicle platform, adding motorsport tech learned from the automaker’s “rolling labs” experiment vehicles like the N Vision 74, RM20e, and the RN22e.Hyundai includes features for habitual motorheads like the N e-shift, which mimics the feeling of simulating an eight-speed dual-clutch transmission gas car, and the N... Continue reading…

Despite the iPhone 15 series being the latest models in Apple's smartphone lineup, the iPhone 14 Pro paved the way for the current series with the introduction of a more versatile AMOLED display with a varied refresh rate, ushering in the Always-On Display (AOD) and also the much discussed Dynamic Island.

If you've used the internet at all in the last couple of months, you've probably heard of ChatGPT. Like Google Bard and Bing Chat, it's a chatbot powered by natural language processing advancements and has been trained on vast swathes of internet data. You can ask it a question, and it will give you an answer, though the authenticity of the information in the answer that it gives you is sometimes questionable. The public, free version of ChatGPT is based on GPT-3.5, though you can pay for a ChatGPT Plus subscription and get access to GPT-4 for $20 per month.