The Verge AI
The Verge's coverage of AI and artificial intelligence
Microsoft’s New ‘Superintelligence’ Game Plan Is All About Business
Microsoft has appointed its first CEO of AI, Mustafa Suleyman, to steer a "superintelligence" agenda centered on business value. A March restructuring merged enterprise and consumer AI groups under the Copilot banner, freeing Suleyman to focus on frontier models. The company unveiled MAI‑Transcribe‑1, a new transcription model that claims half the GPU cost of comparable state‑of‑the‑art systems while handling 25 languages and noisy audio. The rollout marks the first broad commercial availability of Microsoft’s latest voice, image and transcription models.
Senate Democrats Are Trying to ‘Codify’ Anthropic’s Red Lines on Autonomous Weapons and Mass Surveillance
Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Adam Schiff and Sen. Elissa Slotkin, are drafting legislation to codify Anthropic’s self‑imposed limits on the use of artificial intelligence for autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. The bills would require a human in the loop...
Adobe’s AI Image Generator Can Now Be Trained on Your Own Art
Adobe has opened a public beta for Firefly Custom Models, letting creators and brands train its AI image generator on their own artwork. The tool preserves specific visual attributes such as stroke weight, color palette, lighting, and character features, ensuring...
How the Spiraling Iran Conflict Could Affect Data Centers and Electricity Costs
Escalating conflict between the US, Israel and Iran has shut down traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, pushing crude oil prices above $110 per barrel and raising concerns about global energy volatility. The disruption is also tightening natural‑gas markets as...
Ford Is Giving Its Commercial Fleet Business an AI Makeover
Ford unveiled Ford Pro AI, a generative‑AI chatbot embedded in its Pro telematics platform, to turn fleet telemetry into actionable insights for its 840,000 paid subscribers. The model‑agnostic service runs on Google Cloud, operates in read‑only mode and still requires human oversight,...
YouTube Is Expanding Its AI Deepfake Detection Tool to Politicians and Journalists
YouTube is rolling out its AI‑powered likeness detection tool to a pilot group of politicians, journalists and other public officials. The feature scans the platform for videos that replicate a person’s face and lets verified individuals request removal, though requests...
OpenAI’s New GPT-5.4 Model Is a Big Step Toward Autonomous Agents
OpenAI has launched GPT‑5.4, its latest model that combines advanced reasoning, coding, and professional‑task abilities with native computer‑use capabilities, allowing it to issue keyboard and mouse commands from screenshots. The model, available via the ChatGPT web app, Android, API, Codex,...
Raycast’s Glaze Is an All-in-One Vibe Coding App Platform
Raycast has introduced Glaze, an AI‑driven vibe‑coding platform that lets users create tiny Mac apps by typing a single prompt. Powered by Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex, Glaze generates, deploys, and packages utilities in one go, then lists them in...
How the Experts Figure Out What’s Real in the Age of Deepfakes
The Verge explains how leading newsrooms such as The New York Times, Bellingcat and Indicator combat deep‑fake misinformation after high‑profile conflicts. Reporters follow a four‑step workflow: meticulous visual inspection, vetting source reputation, tracing the digital footprint, and confirming date and location with...
A Robot Arm with Puppy Dog Eyes Is Just One of Lenovo’s New Desktop AI Concepts
Lenovo used the Mobile World Congress stage to unveil two AI‑driven desktop concepts designed as always‑on work companions. The AI Workmate features a small robotic arm, camera and built‑in projector that can scan documents, generate summaries and display content on...
Get Ready for the AI Ad-Pocalypse
Generative AI is rapidly infiltrating advertising, with over half of brand marketers already using AI tools in 2025 and 90% planning AI‑driven video ads. Studies project AI‑generated content will power 40% of all ads by 2026, while human detection rates...
Adobe Is Developing ‘IP-Safe’ Gen AI Models for the Entertainment Industry
Adobe announced Firefly Foundry, a suite of private, IP‑safe generative AI models designed for the entertainment sector. The models are trained solely on intellectual property owned by each client, avoiding the scraped‑data approach of most public AI tools. Integrated with...
Instagram’s Top Boss Is Missing the Point About AI on the Platform
Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri warned that AI‑generated content will flood the platform and threaten authentic creator voices. He argues that authenticity will become “infinitely reproducible” and that labeling AI work will be harder than watermarking. The article counters that Instagram...
Reolink Made a Local AI Hub for Its Security Cameras
Reolink unveiled the AI Box, a local‑processing hub that uses a Qualcomm Dragonwing Q8‑series chip to run AI features directly on security cameras. The device supports prompt‑based alerts, natural‑language video search, event description, and automated smart summaries, eliminating the need...
Billionaires Want Data Centers Everywhere, Including Space
Tech billionaires are turning space into the next frontier for AI data centers, citing limitless solar power and reduced terrestrial footprint. Google’s Project Suncatcher aims to launch a cluster of up to 81 low‑Earth‑orbit satellites by 2027, each packed with...
Alexa Plus Can Automatically Buy Stuff when the Price Drops
Amazon has rolled out Alexa Plus price‑tracking and auto‑buy capabilities, letting users set price thresholds and have the assistant purchase items automatically when those thresholds are met. The features debut on Echo Show 15 and Echo Show 21 within a new "Shopping Essentials" command center...
The Vergecast 2025 Year in Review
2025 was defined by an AI arms race among OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and other rivals, with Nvidia soaring to become the world’s most valuable company. Data centers multiplied globally as every app, device and enterprise pursued AI strategies. The Vergecast’s...
Meta Strikes AI Licensing Deals with CNN, Fox News, and USA Today
Meta announced that its AI chatbot will now draw information from major news outlets including CNN, Fox News, USA Today and People Inc., alongside conservative sites Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, and French media group Le Monde. The move follows a...
Amazon Says Alexa Plus Can Find that Movie Scene You’re Thinking About
Amazon has launched Alexa Plus on Fire TV, an AI‑driven feature that jumps to specific movie moments on Prime Video when users describe the scene aloud. The system combines Amazon Nova and Anthropic Claude models to understand character names, dialogue and visual cues, working with...
Sora and Nano Banana Pro Throttled Amid Soaring Demand
OpenAI announced that free users of its Sora video generator are now limited to six generations per day, citing GPU overload. Google responded similarly, cutting the free image generation limit for its newly launched Nano Banana Pro to two images...
The DoorDash Problem: How AI Browsers Are a Huge Threat to Amazon
Amazon has filed a lawsuit against Perplexity AI, alleging that its Comet browser’s shopping agent violates Amazon’s terms of service and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by automating purchases on the site. The legal action highlights the emerging "DoorDash...
Google Gemini Is Getting Better at Identifying AI Fakes
Google announced that Gemini can now identify whether an image was created or edited by a Google AI tool, letting users ask “Is this AI-generated?” within the app. The feature initially supports only images using Google’s SynthID watermark, but Google...
Google’s Nano Banana AI Image Model Goes Pro and Is Free to Try
Google has launched Nano Banana Pro, an upgraded image generation and editing model built on Gemini 3 Pro, now available for free trial worldwide through the Gemini app’s “Create image” feature. The model can blend up to 14 images, render...
I Rode in One of the UK’s First Self-Driving Cars
London reporter Robert Hart rode one of Wayve's Ford Mustang Mach‑E robotaxis, marking one of the UK’s first Level 4 autonomous trips. Wayve, backed by more than $1 billion from Nvidia, Microsoft and SoftBank, is testing its end‑to‑end AI model that drives...
Mozilla Announces an AI ‘Window’ for Firefox
Mozilla announced the development of an AI‑powered "AI Window" for Firefox, an opt‑in browsing mode that integrates an AI assistant and chatbot. The feature will sit alongside private and classic windows, letting users select the underlying AI model and providing...
LinkedIn Is Making It Easier to Search for People with AI
LinkedIn has introduced an AI‑powered people search that lets users describe the type of professional they need—e.g., “Northwestern alumni who work in entertainment marketing”—instead of relying on exact names, titles or companies. The system uses generative AI to surface and...
The Future of Disney Plus Could Involve AI-Generated Videos
Disney CEO Bob Iger said the company is "really excited about AI" and envisions Disney+ letting subscribers both create and consume short‑form AI‑generated videos. He also hinted at adding game‑like features through Disney’s partnership with Epic Games and turning the...
AI Chatbots Are Helping Hide Eating Disorders and Making Deepfake ‘Thinspiration’
Researchers from Stanford and the Center for Democracy & Technology report that AI chatbots—including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini and Mistral’s Le Chat—are dispensing dieting advice, tips for concealing eating‑disorder behaviors, and generating hyper‑personalized “thinspiration” images. The study cites concrete...
Lost in AI Translation
Victoria Song’s first‑hand account shows that despite the proliferation of AI‑powered translation apps and dedicated devices like Pocketalk and Timekettle T1, real‑world travel still exposes their shortcomings—offline language packs must be pre‑loaded, devices need charging, and latency can make them...
Amazon Offers AI Translation for Self-Published Kindle Books
Amazon has introduced Kindle Translate, an AI-driven translation service for self‑published Kindle books that entered beta on Thursday for a limited group of KDP authors. The tool currently supports English‑Spanish and German‑English translations at no cost, letting authors select target...
Chaos and Lies: Why Sam Altman Was Booted From OpenAI, According to New Testimony
New deposition testimony from OpenAI co‑founder Ilya Sutskever, part of Elon Musk’s lawsuit, details why Sam Altman was briefly ousted in November 2023. Sutskever alleges Altman repeatedly lied to the board, pitted senior executives against each other, gave conflicting information...
Foursquare’s Founder Launches a New App that Talks to You About Your Neighborhood
Dennis Crowley, co‑founder of Foursquare, has launched BeeBot, an AI‑powered iOS app that delivers short, location‑based audio updates through headphones, acting like a personalized radio DJ that tells users about nearby friends, events and local news. The app activates automatically...
Google Gemini’s Deep Research Can Look Into Your Emails, Drive, and Chats
Google announced that Gemini’s Deep Research feature can now access users’ Gmail, Drive, and Chat data to augment AI‑generated research reports. The agentic tool first creates a multi‑step research plan, then pulls information from web searches and the selected Workspace...
WEB WAR III
OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Atlas, an AI‑powered web browser that embeds a ChatGPT interface in each tab, allowing users to query the current page, automate form‑filling, shop via Instacart, and search their browsing history. The move reflects a broader trend...
XAI Used Employee Biometric Data to Train Elon Musk’s AI Girlfriend
Elon Musk’s xAI mandated that employees submit biometric data—including faces and voices—to train its new "Ani" AI chatbot, an anime‑styled, NSFW companion offered to X’s $30‑a‑month SuperGrok subscribers. Staff assigned as AI tutors were required to sign release forms granting...
Microsoft AI’s First In-House Image Generator MAI-Image-1 Is Now Available
Microsoft has launched its first in‑house text‑to‑image model, MAI‑Image‑1, now integrated into Bing Image Creator and Copilot Audio Expressions. The model, praised by AI chief Mustafa Suleyman for its photorealistic rendering of food, nature and nuanced lighting, promises faster generation...
I Let Gemini Watch My Family for the Weekend — It Got Weird
Google introduced Gemini for Home, an AI layer in the Google Home app that analyzes video from Nest cameras and delivers detailed, written descriptions of activities, plus daily "Home Brief" summaries. In a 72‑hour test, the system generated mostly accurate...
OpenAI Launches Its Sora App on Android
OpenAI has launched its AI video app Sora on Android, making it available in the United States, Canada, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam via the Google Play Store. The app, which debuted on iOS in September, amassed more than...
Google Maps Can Tell Polestar 4 Drivers when to Merge Lanes
Google Maps is introducing live lane guidance for Polestar 4 electric vehicles, using the car’s front‑facing camera to detect lane markings and road signs and feed that data to Google’s AI. The system delivers real‑time audio and visual cues on...
No, ChatGPT Hasn’t Added a Ban on Giving Legal and Health Advice
OpenAI refuted viral claims that a recent policy update bans ChatGPT from giving legal or medical advice, stating the chatbot’s behavior remains unchanged. Karan Singhal, head of health AI, said the new October 29 usage policy merely reiterates existing prohibitions on...
Studio Ghibli, Bandai Namco, Square Enix Demand OpenAI Stop Using Their Content to Train AI
The Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), representing Japanese IP owners such as Studio Ghibli, Bandai Namco and Square Enix, sent a formal letter to OpenAI demanding that the company stop using their copyrighted works to train its text‑to‑video model Sora 2....
Coca-Cola’s New AI Holiday Ad Is a Sloppy Eyesore
Coca‑Cola rolled out a new AI‑generated holiday commercial titled “Holidays Are Coming,” featuring a mishmash of animated critters that critics say look sloppy and inconsistent, though the iconic Coke truck wheels finally turn. The ad was produced with AI studios...
The AI Industry Is Running on FOMO
Big‑tech firms Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta are collectively spending more than $350 billion on AI this year and expect the figure to top $400 billion next year, while dedicated AI players such as OpenAI are generating $12 billion in revenue but face...
OpenAI Strikes $38 Billion AI Training Deal with Amazon
OpenAI signed a seven‑year, $38 billion agreement with Amazon Web Services that grants the AI firm access to hundreds of thousands of Nvidia GPUs, with all capacity slated for deployment by the end of 2026 and the option to expand through...
Google Pulls AI Model After Senator Says It Fabricated Assault Allegation
Google removed its Gemma AI model from the AI Studio platform after Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn alleged the model fabricated false criminal accusations about her. Gemma, designed for developers and accessible via API, was being used by non‑developers to answer...
Adobe’s Experimental AI Tool Can Edit Entire Videos Using One Frame
Adobe unveiled a suite of experimental AI tools at its Max conference, highlighted by Project Frame Forward, which lets editors modify the first frame of a video and automatically propagate additions or removals across the entire clip. The demo showed...
Microsoft’s Agent Platform Play
At GitHub Universe, Microsoft unveiled Agent HQ, a new interface that lets AI coding assistants such as OpenAI’s Codex, Anthropic’s Claude Code, Google, Cognition and xAI agents plug directly into the GitHub ecosystem. Senior Vice President Jared Palmer said the goal is...
OpenAI Adds Reusable ‘Characters’ and Video Stitching to Sora
OpenAI’s Sora 2 video generator now supports reusable “character cameos,” allowing users to create AI avatars from themselves, pets, illustrations or toys and assign distinct permission settings for private, follower‑only, or public use. The update also adds video‑stitching to merge...
Mark Zuckerberg Is Excited to Add More AI Content to All Your Social Feeds
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company will significantly increase AI‑generated posts in users' feeds, framing it as the next era of social media. Meta is embedding AI tools across its apps and piloting dedicated AI‑focused platforms such as...
TikTok Can Use AI to Turn Your Long Video Into Short Ones
TikTok unveiled three AI‑driven creator tools at its US Creator Summit: Smart Split, which automatically chops long videos (over a minute) into multiple short, vertically‑framed clips with captions; AI Outline, an AI‑generated pre‑production assistant that drafts video titles, hashtags, hooks...