After deepfakes go viral, AI image generator Midjourney stops free trials citing ‘abuse’

Midjourney’s software can be used to create misinformation, like fake images of Donald Trump being arrested. | Image: Will Joel / The Verge

AI image generator Midjourney has halted free trials of its service after a number of its generations — including fabricated images of Donald Trump being arrested and the pope wearing a stylish jacket — went viral online, with many mistaking the fakes for real photographs. Midjourney CEO and founder David Holz announced the change on Tuesday, citing “extraordinary demand and trial abuse” (spotted via The Washington Post).

Previously, Midjourney allowed anyone to sign up to use its software via Discord, offering 25 free image generations before charging subscriptions starting at $10 a month. Although experts have been warning for years about the potential of AI to generate misinformation, this was not previously a huge problem given that...

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Oura Ring Generation 3 review: a relationship for the long term

The Gen 3 had a rocky launch, but after a year of testing, it’s easy to see the hype behind this buzzy smart ring.

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The Last of Us on PC gets a first patch to fix some performance issues

Image: Naughty Dog

The Last of Us Part I on PC hasn’t had a smooth launch. PC players have reported crashes, performance issues, and plenty of weird visual glitches. Now, Sony-owned developer Naughty Dog has started issuing bug fixes to try and fix some of the widespread problems and investigate other bugs that are affecting PC players.

A new patch arrived on Steam and the Epic Games Store last night, which includes fixes for “several performance & hitch related issues impacting some users.” It’s not clear exactly what has been fixed, and for some players, it was only a 36MB patch on Steam.

Naughty Dog has enabled extra crash diagnostic information, though. It’s designed to help the developer investigate crashes related to shader building and “other common...

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Huge Microsoft exploit allowed users to manipulate Bing search results and access Outlook email accounts

Microsoft has since patched the “BingBang” exploit and made changes to reduce similar vulnerabilities from occurring. | Illustration: Beatrice Sala

A dangerous vulnerability was detected in Microsoft’s Bing search engine earlier this year that allowed users to alter search results and access other Bing users’ private information from the likes of Teams, Outlook, and Office 365. Back in January, security researchers at Wiz discovered a misconfiguration in Azure — Microsoft’s cloud computing platform — that compromised Bing, allowing any Azure user to access applications without authorization.

The vulnerability was detected in the Azure Active Directory (AAD) identity and access management service. Applications using the platform’s multi-tenant permissions are accessible by any Azure user, requiring developers to validate which users can access their apps. This responsibility isn’t...

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Arc’s mobile browser is here — and it’s not really a web browser at all

Arc’s mobile app doesn’t do too much yet, but it’s already fast and simple and useful. | Image: Arc/David Pierce

When the team at The Browser Company set out at the beginning of this year to build a mobile web browser, CEO Josh Miller made a rule: we are not allowed to build a default mobile browser. Building another Safari felt like a waste of time because, well, Safari exists. Because of the way Apple locks down browser development, pretty much every other browser on iOS is just another Safari. Besides, The Browser Company isn’t trying to build another web browser — it’s trying to build “the internet computer,” an operating system for the internet that changes the way we interact with apps and content online.

Instead of a browser, the team set out to do one thing and one thing only: bring users’ Arc sidebars to mobile phones. The sidebar is the...

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FTC should stop OpenAI from launching new GPT models, says AI policy group

Illustration: The Verge

An artificial intelligence-focused tech ethics group has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate OpenAI for violating consumer protection rules, arguing that the organization’s rollout of AI text generation tools has been “biased, deceptive, and a risk to public safety.”

The Center for AI and Digital Policy (CAIDP) filed its complaint today following the publication of a high-profile open letter calling for a pause on large generative AI experiments. CAIDP president Marc Rotenberg was one of the letter’s signatories, alongside a number of AI researchers and OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk. Similar to that letter, the complaint calls to slow down the development of generative AI models and implement stricter government oversight.

T...

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Roku is laying off another 6 percent of its workforce

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Roku plans to lay off an additional 200 employees, the company announced today in an 8-K filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, a little over four months after announcing a previous round of 200 layoffs last November. While the first round affected its US workforce specifically, today’s filing doesn’t specify where the affected workers are based.

The layoffs are expected to impact around 6 percent of Roku’s workforce, and are part of a restructuring plan to “lower the company’s year-over-year operating expense growth and prioritize projects that the company believes will have a higher return on investment.” The restructuring changes are expected to mostly be completed by the end of the second quarter of this year.

R...

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Twitter announces new API pricing, posing a challenge for small developers

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter has formally announced its revamped API tiers a month and a half after new CEO Elon Musk promised a big shake up of the system. In a thread, the company’s official developer account listed three tiers — free, basic, and enterprise — and provided some details on their prices and read and write limits. It also linked to signup pages, which offer links to get started with the first two tiers, and to express an interest in the third.

The company says older tiers will be depreciated “over the next 30 days.” Here’s a short summary of the three replacements (which can also be found on Twitter’s website):

• Free — Write-only access with the ability to post 1,500 tweets per month at no cost.
• Basic — A $100 per month subscription for...

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Marshall, the iconic amp manufacturer, is being acquired by Marshall speaker maker Zound

Jimi Hendrix with a Marshall amp in 1967. | Image: JJs / Alamy Stock Photo

Marshall Amplification, the 60-year-old company that’s produced iconic guitar amps used by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Slash, and Kurt Cobain, is being acquired by Zound Industries, the Swedish company that’s previously licensed the Marshall brand for its headphones and speakers. Exact financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the resulting company will be the privately owned Marshall Group. The Marshall family will serve as its largest shareholder with a 24 percent stake.

Jeremy de Maillard, who currently serves as Zound’s CEO and who will be CEO of Marshall Group going forward, said in an interview with The Verge that the deal is as much about acquiring Marshall’s engineering expertise as it is about acquiring the brand name....

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Elon Musk is now the most-followed person on Twitter

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Photo: Getty Images

Elon Musk has dethroned former President Barack Obama as the most followed person on Twitter. As of right now, the billionaire has 133,068,709 followers compared to Obama’s 133,042,819, according to the follower counts reported on their respective Twitter profiles.

Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter has undoubtedly helped skyrocket his follower count past Obama’s. The Twitter chief hit 100 million followers last June, and that number has only continued to grow in the months that followed.

In between posting random and sometimes offensive memes, Musk uses his account to communicate various changes coming to Twitter. He has also polled followers about some major decisions, like letting Donald Trump back onto the platform and whether...

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Google denies Bard was trained with ChatGPT data

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google’s Bard hasn’t exactly had an impressive debut — and The Information is reporting that the company is so interested in changing the fortunes of its AI chatbots, it’s forcing its DeepMind division to help the Google Brain team beat OpenAI with a new initiative called Gemini. The Information’s report also contains the potentially staggering thirdhand allegation that Google stooped so low as to train Bard using data from OpenAI’s ChatGPT, scraped from a website called ShareGPT.

But Google is firmly and clearly denying that: “Bard is not trained on any data from ShareGPT or ChatGPT,” spokesperson Chris Pappas tells The Verge.

NEW: Prominent Google AI researcher resigned after warning Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and other senior...

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Netflix might let you use an iPhone to control games on your TV

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Netflix is working on a feature that would let you use your iPhone to control games on your TV, according a new report from Bloomberg and code shared by MacRumors contributing writer Steve Moser. Netflix recently said that it wants to make its games “playable on every Netflix device that you have,” and being able to use your iPhone to play TV games could be one way to help with that mission.

According to Moser, the iOS app apparently contains code that says: “A game on your TV needs a controller to play. Do you want to use this phone as a game controller?”

Netflix wants to make games playable on every device by turning your iPhone into a controller for Netflix running on a TV. Code hidden in their iOS app: "A game on your TV needs a...

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Microsoft’s Bing chatbot is getting ads

Illustration: The Verge

It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for: ads are coming to Bing’s AI-powered chatbot. Microsoft corporate vice president Yusuf Mehdi said in a blog on Wednesday that the company is “exploring placing ads in the chat experience,” and when we asked for more details, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that you might start seeing them.

“Yes, ads will show in the new Bing, specifically in chat (as they do in the traditional search results),” said Caitlin Roulston, a director of communications at Microsoft, says in a statement to The Verge. “Since the new Bing is in preview, there may be some variability in how it’s currently showing up. We’re still exploring new opportunities for ad experiences and will share more over time.”

If you want...

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Fortnite now shows how many people are playing Battle Royale — and every other island

Epic’s Deserted: Domination has nearly 3,000 players as of this writing. | Image: Epic Games

Fortnite’s Discover tab, which lets you pick from Epic Games-made modes like Battle Royale or experiences from non-Epic creators, now show how many players are currently participating in any given experience. The change was officially rolled out on Wednesday, and it could be an important tool for creators to benchmark their work against Epic’s official modes.

You can see the player counts in the game’s Discover tab, which represent the global number of players in-match at any given time, Epic spokesperson Dan Walsh tells The Verge. Based on what I saw, it’s overwhelmingly clear that Epic’s Battle Royale and Zero Build (the no-building Battle Royale introduced last year) are dramatically more popular than any experiences made by non-Epic...

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iPhone users on Google Fi can finally use 5G

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

If you’re one of the people brave enough to use Google Fi with an iPhone, your experience is about to get a lot better, as Google announced on Wednesday that you can finally use 5G instead of being stuck with LTE (via 9to5Google).

According to Google’s documentation, using 5G with your iPhone requires iOS 16.4, which was released earlier this week. (Though Fi’s 5G support was spotted during the 16.4 beta process.) You also have to have an iPhone 12 or newer, since older iPhones don’t support 5G. Turning it on after you’ve updated your phone is simple, though: go to Settings > Cellular Data Options > Voice and Data, then select “5G Auto.” Just like that, you’ll have access to T-Mobile’s 5G network.

iPhone® users Fi

Get fast 5G...

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Sen. Rand Paul becomes latest lawmaker opposing TikTok ban

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

On Wednesday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) came out in opposition to a bipartisan effort to ban TikTok, condemning Republicans and Democrats for a move he said could chill First Amendment-protected speech.

“I hope saner minds will reflect on which is more dangerous: videos of teenagers dancing, or the precedent of the US government banning speech,” Paul said on the Senate floor Wednesday.

Paul’s remarks followed an attempt by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) to ban TikTok nationwide on the Senate floor Wednesday. Earlier this year, Hawley, a long-time China hawk, introduced the No TikTok on United States Devices Act, a bill that would direct the president to ban use of the app on US devices, including those belonging to consumers.

“I hope saner minds...

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Instagram now lets you save posts into collections shared with friends

Kristen Radtke / The Verge

Instagram is building off of its existing collections feature by allowing you to create libraries of posts that you share with friends. In an announcement on Twitter, Instagram says that you can now save content into “collaborative collections” that both you and your friends can view and contribute to, as first reported by TechCrunch.

While Instagram first rolled out its Pinterest-like collections feature in 2017, which lets you save and organize posts into separate categories, this update puts a spin on things by allowing your friends to add posts of their own. According to Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri’s IG Updates channel, you and your friends can save posts from Instagram’s feed, Explore page, and even DMs.

Friends who share together,...

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Microsoft’s Surface Hub 2S is finally getting an upgrade

Pricing hasn’t been revealed yet, nor have any hardware specifications. | Image: Microsoft

Microsoft has announced a second generation of its Surface Hub 2S interactive whiteboard will be arriving later this year, equipped with new features built around Microsoft’s Teams conferencing software. The updated enterprise device features the same 50-inch and 85-inch design as the current Surface Hub 2S, and will be the first touch-enabled board to run Teams Rooms on Windows.

Microsoft Teams Rooms is meant for all-in-one conferencing systems designed to replace individual remote meeting devices like webcams and TVs. Microsoft says that the Teams Rooms on Windows experience adds new features like additional video layouts, chat channel modes, and management capabilities for both users and admins. It also features a new user interface...

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EA is laying off 6 percent of its workers

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Electronic Arts is laying off around 6 percent of its workforce, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. In a blog post published on Wednesday, EA CEO Andrew Wilson says the job cuts come as the game publisher looks to reevaluate its investment strategy and reduce office space.

“As we drive greater focus across our portfolio, we are moving away from projects that do not contribute to our strategy, reviewing our real estate footprint, and restructuring some of our teams,” Wilson states. “These decisions are expected to impact approximately six percent of our company’s workforce.”

While Wilson doesn’t mention the specific departments that the layoffs are affecting, he says that it will provide “opportunities for our colleagues to...

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Adult Swim’s starting an hour earlier as Warner Bros. Discovery makes a play for older viewers

Tseng from Unicorn: Warriors Eternal_._ | Image: Adult Swim

Though it once seemed as if Cartoon Network might end up taking quite a bit of damage as a consequence of Warner Bros.’ merger with Discovery, Adult Swim president Michael Ouweleen says that’s far from the case as the network gears up to expand its adult-oriented content block.

Deadline reports that Cartoon Network plans to start shifting over to Adult Swim programming one hour earlier — up from 8PM ET to 7PM ET — beginning in May as the network makes a more concerted play for viewers older than 18.

Speaking to Deadline, Ouweleen said that while the animation industry definitely went through a tumultuous period that lasted throughout 2022, there’s since “been a correction” and emphasized that “the animation bubble hasn’t burst but it’s...

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Seattle’s new law gives gig workers paid sick time off

Image: David Becker/Getty Images for Nightclub & Bar Media Group

Seattle is making sure that some gig workers will be guaranteed rights that have generally only been available to traditional employees. This week, the city’s council passed legislation that requires app-based delivery companies like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Instacart to provide paid sick time off to workers.

Food delivery workers in Seattle have had these protections for a while — the city council passed the Gig Worker Paid Sick and Safe Time Ordinance in July 2020. However, that law was temporary and was set to expire at the end of April (some parts of it had already gone out of effect in November 2022 when Seattle and Washington as a whole ended their covid states of emergency). The new law, called the App-Based Worker Paid Sick and...

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YES Network’s new subscription will let you watch Yankees games without cable

Image: Cliff Welch/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

The Yankee Entertainment and Sports (YES) Network, a regional channel that broadcasts games from the New York Yankees, Brooklyn Nets, and the New York Liberty, is introducing a direct subscription so that you don’t need to have cable to watch the channel.

The new direct subscription will be sold in monthly and annual packages of $24.99 per month, or $239.99 per year. You can subscribe via the YES app, which is available in a browser or through various smart TV app ecosystems. And if you want to save a few bucks, YES Network is offering introductory deals of $19.99 per month (a price that you can keep through the end of 2023) and $199.99 if you subscribe by April 30th.

You’ll have to be in YES Network’s “regional coverage territory” to...

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Disney just laid off the guy it bought Marvel from... but that’s probably a good thing

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Disney has laid off Marvel Entertainment chair Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter as part of its layoffs affecting 7,000 workers, according to a report from The New York Times. Perlmutter, who’s been a Marvel executive since 1993 and joined Disney when Marvel was acquired in 2009, is a divisive figure.

Perlmutter helmed Marvel during its sale to Disney and later served as an executive chair. During his 30-year tenure at Marvel, Perlmutter has been blamed for holding back the inclusion of women and people of color in the studio’s films. In a set of leaked emails from 2014, Perlmutter argued that past superhero movies with a female lead flopped, while a memoir from Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed that he had to get past Perlmutter’s “roadblocks” when...

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Finally, a Logitech name-brand headset for little school kids

When my six-year-old’s teacher told us we had to buy her a wired headset for school, I must have spent an entire hour doomscrolling Amazon reviews. Normal headsets wouldn’t fit, and every option for younger kids was from an alphabet soup brand of dubious quality — they felt like so much of a gamble that we eventually just went with one of the cheapest options.

Logitech’s new Zone Learn would have been an instabuy for me. Not only does the $40 rotating boom mic headset come from a name brand but it also actually looks thoughtfully designed.

It’s flexible, adjustable, gives you the choice of over-ear ear cups or on-ear ear pads (in case your kid needs more or less isolation or gets claustrophobic or sweaty) and your pick of audio cables:...

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Danganronpa’s creator wants to make detective games more approachable

Master Detective Archives: Rain Code. | Image: Spike Chunsoft

While detective stories are a mainstay in the worlds of film, television, and literature, they’re comparatively niche when it comes to video games. And with a few notable exceptions, the most beloved detective games tend to be visual novels. Kazutaka Kodaka loves detective stories and is best known for the dark adventure series Danganronpa. But for his studio’s next project, Master Detective Archives: Rain Code, he decided to take things in a slightly different direction. “Mystery games tend to be dull because it’s mostly reading text,” Kodaka says. “But for this we created a world where you can solve various kinds of mysteries and roam around freely.”

Rain Code is described as a “lucid-noir” detective game. It takes place in a sort of...

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Unicorn: Warriors Eternal looks like Genndy Tartakovsky’s most epic series yet

There might not have been all that much noise being made about Adult Swim’s upcoming series Unicorn: Warriors Eternal from creator Genndy Tartakovsky, but the animated series’ action-packed first trailer might just change that.

Set in a world that’s been plagued by a malevolent presence since the dawn of time, Unicorn: Warriors Eternal tells the tale of a group of ancient heroes who, through countless reincarnations, have spent multiple lifetimes fighting to keep the forces of darkness at bay. Though a powerful sorceress named Melinda, a “cosmic monk” called Tseng, and Edred, a warrior elf, are all committed to their mission, their lives are all upended when their reincarnation cycle’s interrupted, which flings their souls into the...

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Apple’s WWDC 2023 kicks off on June 5th

Image: Apple

Apple has announced that its Worldwide Developers Conference, or WWDC, will begin on June 5th. The full event will run from June 5th through June 9th in an online format, but like last year, there will be an in-person experience at Apple Park on the first day of the show. Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of worldwide developer relations, says this year’s WWDC is going to be Apple’s “biggest and most exciting yet.”

Traditionally, Apple uses the show to share details on the next versions of its operating systems, such as iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and (sometimes) tvOS. Last year, the company used the event’s keynote to announce iOS 16’s customizable lock screens, its Home app refresh, Stage Manager, the M2 chip, and more.

There are...

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Forspoken is going full Sailor Moon in new story DLC

Image: Square Enix

I’m one of the handful of people who actually enjoyed Forspoken. Despite its flaws (and yeah, my glowing review aside, it is a flawed game) I saw a solid story with interesting characters and a unique combat and traversal system that was genuinely fun to play. So the announcement of new story DLC for the game has me pleased that I’ll have another opportunity to hardcore parkour my way through Athia.

Spoilers for Forspoken to follow.

In Tanta We Trust is set to take place 25 years before the events of Forspoken and will feature Frey venturing into the past to team up with her mother during a great battle. One of my biggest complaints about Forspoken is that Frey didn’t get enough time to process the revelation of who her mother was and...

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How Wordle lives on at The New York Times

Image: Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images

Executive producer Zoe Bell explains how the paper is keeping the phenomenon going more than a year after acquiring it.

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Alexa can now make and receive calls through T-Mobile

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Alexa now has the ability to let T-Mobile subscribers make and receive phone calls on dedicated devices hands-free. The new feature comes in the form of an Alexa skill, which can link your T-Mobile service directly to your Alexa Account. The new feature joins the other big US carriers AT&T and Verizon in enabling Alexa to handle phone calls.

”This is completely free for T-Mobile customers and it’s fully available to all Alexa customers today,” wrote T-Mobile spokesperson Trang Nguyen in an email to The Verge. In comparison, Verizon still charges you $5 per month to use its Alexa skill.

You can enable the new feature by opening your Alexa app and then going to More > Settings > Communication. Then, under accounts, select T-Mobile and...

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