Artists whose work has been co-opted by AI are taking to court. | Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge When The Atlantic published a searchable dataset of works used to train AI, Kirk Wallace Johnson, like a lot of artists, looked for his name out of curiosity. And, like a lot of artists, he found it. Essentially, his books, like The Feather Thief and The Fishermen and the Dragon - nonfiction tomes that he spent "five to six years researching, writing, and investigating" - had been pirated and fed to a chatbot. He says he felt a "cocktail" of emotions: "anger over the brazenness of the theft, worry over what this means for writers, and a healthy thirst for revenge on these massive corporations that have become galactically wealthy" using his …Read the full story at The Verge.

It's become all too common for people to keep the only copy of something that matters to them in the cloud. Keeping wedding photos and years of work in a single folder that's synced to the cloud doesn't treat it like the single point of failure it actually is. As long as the sync icon stays green, everyone considers the data protected.

In an interview with our friend Joanna Stern on her YouTube channel, OpenAI president Greg Brockman said the company is working on a "family of devices" for interacting with its AI models. However, Brockman didn't confirm reports that one of those devices is a smart speaker OpenAI's rumored to be launching in 2027, or earlier rumors that the device might be a wearable like the Humane AI pin. He didn't give a release date, either, only saying that "you can expect them soon."When asked about whether Apple's lawsuit against OpenAI could impact the devices it's working on with former Apple designer Jony Ive, Brockman said, "We are focused on o …Read the full story at The Verge.

This Logitech G335 gaming headset features a vibrant design, good audio thanks to its 40mm drivers, and will feel comfortable on your head after hours of use. It's also the perfect option if you're someone who's on a budget, costing just $30 thanks to a steep 57% discount from the original MSRP.

When the Trump administration announced yesterday that it was banning "advanced robotic devices" from entering the United States, the headlines were all about humanoids. But spying doesn't require legs - and neither does the FCC's robot ban. The robot ban will sweep up robot vacuum cleaners too, FCC media relations director Katie Gorscak confirms to The Verge. It's not coming for your existing Roomba, and companies can keep importing and selling already approved ones. But the government claims that future foreign robots pose a national security risk, and even robovac companies are suddenly being asked to commit to US manufacturing. Whi …Read the full story at The Verge.

Apple's new Upgrade program is here, allowing you to lease select models of iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Watches with a relatively low monthly payment. The company promises you won't pay more than the full price of the device over the course of the one- to three-year lease, and in some cases, you'll pay hundreds of dollars less.The basics of the program make it sound like an amazing deal… so surely there must be a catch, right?The answer basically depends on how you use the Upgrade Program. At least with current pricing, a diligent user really should be able to make a monthly payment, swap in their phone a year or more later, and move along …Read the full story at The Verge.

As schools across the country continue to implement cellphone bans, a new Pew Research Center survey shows they continue to gain support. Seventy-seven percent of US adults support banning cellphones in middle and high school classes, and 48 percent support banning them for the entire school day. That's the first time more Americans have supported, rather than opposed, so-called bell-to-bell bans. Two years ago, just 36 percent of American adults supported an all day ban.Across all age groups over 18 that were surveyed, most respondents support in-class bans. That support is lower but still at least half for all-day bans across most age …Read the full story at The Verge.

For years now, native 4K gaming has been touted as the finish line for every new GPU generation. Hardware has kept getting faster, sure, but games have also become heavier in more ways than one. The goalposts have kept moving, and that's why even flagship graphics cards sometimes struggle to keep pace with native 4K gaming.

Sometimes, even if you pay for 1Gbps fiber internet and use a modern Wi-Fi 6 or 7 router, your web pages might still buffer. Gaming pings might spike unexpectedly, and your local file transfers can drag. Even after checking for malware, blaming your ISP, rebooting the router, and running speed tests next to the node, everything seems fine on paper.

I am a long-term Cursor user and really like the agentic features it brings. Its $20 plan offers a lot more value than what you get with Claude Code for the same amount. I also love the auto mode, which uses models according to the task instead of using the top-tier model to even change file names, which is sometimes the case with both Claude Code and Codex. However, Cursor’s real edge over the competition is how well it understands your entire project. The same Claude or GPT model can perform differently inside Cursor. The model is only one part of the product. Cursor also controls the instructions, search tools, file-reading process, and the amount of context returned to the model.

After years of using Plex, I caught the "true" self-hosting bug early this year and shifted over to Jellyfin for good. It took a while to truly get used to doing a lot of the busywork myself, but there's nothing quite like having your media library completely independent and under your control.

Xbox is having yet another tough quarter, as revenue from content and services like its Game Pass subscription dipped 10 percent over the past few months. At the same time, Xbox hardware sales declined 13 percent, according to Microsoft's fourth-quarter earnings report released on Wednesday.The news comes just weeks after Xbox head Asha Sharma announced a "reset" plan for Xbox that included sweeping layoffs and the spinoff of four games studios, including South of Midnight developer Compulsion Games and Psychonauts creator Double Fine Productions.Sharma has also made some other big changes to Xbox, including lowering GamePass prices, tes …Read the full story at The Verge.