AI

AI Follow Follow Artificial intelligence is more a part of our lives than ever before. While some might call it hype and compare it to NFTs or 3D TVs, generative AI is causing a sea change in nearly every part of the technology industry. OpenAI’s ChatGPT is still the best-known AI chatbot around, but with Google pushing Gemini, Microsoft building Copilot, and Apple adding its Intelligence to Siri, AI is probably going to be in the spotlight for a very long time. At The Verge, we’re exploring what might be possible with AI — and a lot of the bad stuff AI does, too. RELATED / xAI Anthropic Let’s talk about Ring, lost dogs, and the surveillance state The security camera maker’s Search Party feature, advertised during the Super Bowl, has sparked a surveillance backlash. Nilay Patel Feb 16 After spooking Hollywood, ByteDance will tweak safeguards on new AI model Disney and Paramount allege that Seedance 2.0 is distributing and reproducing their intellectual property. Jess Weatherbed Feb 16 Latest In AI J External Link Jay Peters Feb 16 Link ChatGPT is getting a Lockdown Mode. Lockdown Mode is “not necessary” for most people and “tightly constrains how ChatGPT can interact with external systems to reduce the risk of prompt injection–based data exfiltration,” according to OpenAI . Introducing Lockdown Mode and Elevated Risk labels in ChatGPT [ OpenAI ] J External Link Jay Peters Feb 16 Link Unity plans to let developers “prompt full casual games into existence” with AI. Despite developers being increasingly skeptical of generative AI , “AI-driven authoring is our second major area of focus for 2026,” Unity CEO Matthew Bromberg said in earnings remarks reported on by Game Developer . The company plans to reveal more about the new prompting tools at the GDC Festival of Gaming in March. Unity says its AI tech will soon eliminate the need for coding [ Game Developer ] J External Link Jay Peters Feb 16 Link The Department of Defense may designate Anthropic as a “supply chain risk.” Should Anthropic get the designation, “anyone who wants to do business with the U.S. military has to cut ties with the company,” Axios says . The two sides have apparently been negotiating for months over how the military can use Anthropic’s AI tools. Exclusive: Pentagon threatens Anthropic punishment [ Axios ] J External Link Jess Weatherbed Feb 16 Link AI translations for the Holy Masses. St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican has partnered with Translated, an AI-assisted live-translation service, to make the liturgy available in 60 languages. Vatican visitors can use their smartphones to access audio and text translations via the web by scanning QR codes within the Basilica, no app or special equipment required. The Vatican introduces an AI-assisted live translation service [ Engadget ] OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI Terrence O'Brien Feb 15 T Quote Terrence O'Brien Feb 15 Link NPR’s David Greene is suing Google over its AI podcast voice. The former host of Morning Edition and current host of Left, Right & Center claims that Google illegally replicated his voice for its male podcast host in NotebookLM. Google denies this, but Greene (and many of his friends and colleagues) say the resemblance is “uncanny.” As the Washington Post reports: To Greene, the resemblance of the AI voice to his own is uncanny — and the harm is deeper and more personal than just a missed chance to capitalize on his most recognizable asset. “My voice is, like, the most important part of who I am,” Greene said. I hate my AI pet with every fiber of my being Robert Hart Feb 15 T Quote Terrence O'Brien Feb 15 Link Western Digital says it’s “pretty much soldout” for 2026. Enterprise customers, especially AI data centers, have already gobbled up the company’s capacity for 2026. At this point, consumer sales account for just 5 percent of the company’s revenue, so it’s no surprise WD is prioritizing high-capacity drives for data centers. What’s more, theyre also driving up prices . Tan told investors: We’ve pretty much sold out for calendar year 26. We have firm POs with our top seven customers. And we’ve also established LTAs with two of them for calendar year 27 and one of them for calendar year 28. AI can’t make good video game worlds yet, and it might never be able to Jay Peters Feb 15 T Terrence O'Brien Feb 14 Link Some users are reporting problems with Gemini. What’s causing the issues or how widespread they are is unclear. We’ve been unable to reproduce the issue here, but DownDetector has seen a spike in reports over the past few hours. Users report that Gemini displays error messages or hangs after a prompt . We’ve reached out to Google for comment. Image: DownDetector T Quote Terrence O'Brien Feb 14 Link Spotify’s CEO bragged that it’s paying its best developers not to code. During the company’s Q4 earnings call, Gustav Söderström revealed that Spotify had fully embraced vibe coding . AI is coming for a lot of jobs, and software developer is high on the list of those in danger. Still, it’s shocking that the top devs at Spotify haven’t written any code in 2026. Per Business Insider : “When I speak to my most senior engineers — the best developers we have — they actually say that they haven’t written a single line of code since December… They actually only generate code and supervise it.” - Spotify CEO Gustav Söderström My uncanny AI valentines On a frigid February evening, I went on four dates with AI companions at a pop-up dating café. Victoria Song Feb 14 J External Link Jay Peters Feb 14 Link Disney accuses Bytedance’s new AI video model of infringing on its characters. In a cease and desist letter, Disney includes examples of the new Seedance 2.0 model making videos featuring characters like Spider-Man and Darth Vader, according to Axios . “ByteDance is hijacking Disney’s characters by reproducing, distributing, and creating derivative works featuring those characters,” Disney’s attorney said. Scoop: Disney sends cease and desist letter to ByteDance over Seedance 2.0 [ Axios ] What’s behind the mass exodus at xAI? Hayden Field Feb 13 Ring’s adorable surveillance hellscape David Pierce Feb 13 Meta reportedly wants to add face recognition to smart glasses while privacy advocates are distracted Emma Roth Feb 13 J External Link Jess Weatherbed Feb 13 Link Good Riddance. While we still lack reliable deepfake detection tech, Jeremy Carrasco (@showtoolsai) has been using his social platforms to help people visually identify red flags for AI in videos. Now, Carrasco is expanding his AI literacy efforts with Riddance — a dedicated text publication for AI media news, investigations, and analysis. Announcing Riddance [ Riddance ] J Jess Weatherbed Feb 13 Link Google adds AI audio summarization to Docs. Gemini-powered Audio Summaries give you a condensed overview of lengthy documents instead of reading the entire thing . The feature is starting to roll out to select business and Google AI users now, and can be found in the Tools menu in Google Docs. Audio Summaries can be found in the Tools menu in Google Docs. Image: Google S Sean Hollister Feb 12 Link Meta sold 7 million smart glasses in 2025 — that’s triple 2023 and 2024 combined. Remember when EssilorLuxottica said it sold 2 million and would hit 10 million a year by 2027? 10M seems well within reach. “In 2025, we sold more than 7 million units of AI glasses, posting exponential growth,” said CEO Francesco Milleri. Prices may stay high in the short term, though, they hinted on the earnings call . Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is a rollicking parable about this moment in tech Gore Verbinski’s latest film gets at the heart of everything that makes society feel poisoned about the big push for AI. Charles Pulliam-Moore Feb 12 Play The surprising case for AI judges Bridget McCormack of the American Arbitration Association on AI-powered courts and the future of law. Nilay Patel Feb 12 ByteDance’s next-gen AI model can generate clips based on text, images, audio, and video Emma Roth Feb 12 This $7,999 robot will fold (some of) your laundry Robert Hart Feb 12 J External Link Jess Weatherbed Feb 12 Link Claude gets more free features to capitalize on ChatGPT ads. After already dunking on OpenAI’s plan to bring ads to ChatGPT , Anthropic is bolstering its own chatbot to attract anyone jumping ship. Free Claude users can now create and edit files (including spreadsheets, presentations, and PDFs), access Skills for specialized tasks, connect to third-party services , and more — features previously limited to paying subscribers. Anthropic beefs up Claude's free tier as OpenAI prepares to stuff ads into ChatGPT's [ Engadget ] D Quote Dominic Preston Feb 12 Link Who needs a job anyway? Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman seems to think AI will be ready to replace most white-collar work within two years — presumably not including his own, of course. He also claimed more of Microsoft’s own AI models are due this year. “White-collar work, where you’re sitting down at a computer, either being a lawyer or an accountant or a project manager or a marketing person — most of those tasks will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months.” Two more xAI co-founders are among those leaving after the SpaceX merger Hayden Field Feb 11 Anthropic says it’ll try to keep its data centers from raising electricity costs Justine Calma Feb 11 Apple keeps hitting bumps with its overhauled Siri Jay Peters Feb 11 S External Link Stevie Bonifield Feb 11 Link The New York Times uses a custom AI tool to monitor “manosphere” podcasts. For the past year, the Times has been using LLMs to create what’s internally known as the “Manosphere Report,” according to Nieman Lab . The AI-generated reports include episode transcripts and summaries for around 80 primarily right-wing podcasts, including the Ben Shapiro Show , Red Scare , and The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show . How The New York Times uses a custom AI tool to track the “manosphere” [ Nieman Lab ] E Quote Emma Roth Feb 11 Link Ex-OpenAI researcher has “deep reservations” about its approach to ads. In an op-ed for The New York Times , Zoë Hitzig, a researcher who left OpenAI this week, expresses concerns about the company’s move to put ads in ChatGPT , while posing alternatives to a setup that could potentially harm users down the line: So the real question is not ads or no ads. It is whether we can design structures that avoid both excluding people from using these tools, and potentially manipulating them as consumers. I think we can. R Richard Lawler Feb 11 Link Sen. Markey calls on Amazon to “discontinue” Ring monitoring features. Ring’s Super Bowl ad focused on how its cameras could be networked to find a missing dog , but for a lot of people, it highlighted the surveillance power hiding in those devices. Now Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) has sent a letter to Amazon saying, “Get this creepy technology away from our homes.” You can read it in full here , but here’s a snippet: Instagram and X have an impossible deepfake detection deadline Jess Weatherbed Feb 11 H External Link Hayden Field Feb 11 Link OpenAI reportedly disbanded its Mission Alignment team. Members of the team — which was tasked with ensuring AGI benefits all of humanity — have been transferred to other areas of the company, and former team lead Joshua Achiam will take on a new role as OpenAI’s “chief futurist,” Platformer reported . OpenAI disbanded its mission alignment team [ Platformer ] Here are the brands bringing ads to ChatGPT Emma Roth Feb 11 How an ‘icepocalypse’ raises more questions about Meta’s biggest data center project Justine Calma Feb 11 T-Mobile will live translate regular phone calls without an app Jess Weatherbed Feb 11 Uber Eats adds AI assistant to help with grocery shopping Andrew J. Hawkins Feb 11 ‘Shut up and focus on the mission’: Tech workers are frustrated by their companies’ silence about ICE Across the industry, workers describe a ‘fear-based culture’ and pressure to ‘fall in line.‘ Hayden Field Feb 11 D External Link Dominic Preston Feb 11 Link OpenAI fired exec who opposed ‘adult mode.’ Ryan Beiermeister, previously vice president of the product policy team, was reportedly fired in early January over alleged sexual discrimination against a male colleague. Beiermeister, who called the allegation “absolutely false,” had opposed adding adult content , and worried safeguards weren’t strong enough. OpenAI said her firing was “not related to any issue she raised.” OpenAI Executive Who Opposed ‘Adult Mode’ Fired for Sexual Discrimination [ WSJ ] ChatGPT’s deep research tool adds a built-in document viewer so you can read its reports Emma Roth Feb 10 Most Popular Most Popular Apple’s doing something on March 4th Why are Epstein’s emails full of equals signs? OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI The Pocket Taco is the best way to turn your phone into a Game Boy Anker’s USB-C cable that lets you charge two gadgets at once is 20 percent off Advertiser Content From This is the title for the native ad