Google, how do I ask your AI the right questions?

Live footage of me thinking of what to ask AI bots. | Image: The Verge

A few weeks ago, my spouse and I made a bet. I said there was no way ChatGPT could believably mimic my writing style for a smartwatch review. I’d already asked the bot to do that months ago, and the results were laughable. My spouse bet that they could ask ChatGPT the exact same thing but get a much better result. My problem, they said, was I didn’t know the right queries to ask to get the answer I wanted.

To my chagrin, they were right. ChatGPT wrote much better reviews as me when my spouse did the asking.

That memory flashed through my mind while Iiveblogging Google I/O. This year’s keynote was essentially a two-hour thesis on AI, how it’ll impact Search, and all the ways it could boldly and responsibly make our lives better. A lot of...

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Google’s new Magic Editor pushes us toward AI-perfected fakery

Image: Google

One of the most impressive demos at Google I/O started with a photo of a woman in front of a waterfall. A presenter onstage tapped on the woman, picked her up, and moved her to the other side of the image, with the app automatically filling in the space where she once stood. They then tapped on the overcast sky, and it instantly bloomed into a brighter cloudless blue. In just a matter of seconds, the image had been transformed.

The AI-powered tool, dubbed the Magic Editor, certainly lived up to its name during the demo. It’s the kind of tool that Google has been building toward for years. It already has a couple of AI-powered image editing features in its arsenal, including the Magic Eraser, which lets you quickly remove people or...

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Google’s AI tools embrace the dream of Clippy

Microsoft’s Clippy sits atop its paper throne. | Image: Microsoft

The words “it looks like you’re writing a letter, would you like some help with that?” didn’t appear at any point during Google’s recent demo of its AI office suite tools. But as I watched Aparna Pappu, Google’s Workspace leader, outline the feature onstage at I/O, I was reminded of a certain animated paperclip that another tech giant once hoped would help usher in a new era of office work.

Even Microsoft would acknowledge that Clippy’s legacy is not wholly positive, but the virtual assistant is forever associated with a particular period of work — one packed to the brim with laborious emails, clip art, and beige computers with clunking hard drives. Now, work has changed — it’s Slack pings, text cursors jostling in a Google Doc, and...

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Google’s AI pitch is a recipe for email hell

Screenshot taken from the Google I/O 2023 keynote replay

Of all the emotions I expected out of this week’s Google I/O keynote, “dread” was not on my short list. Google has spent a couple of decades creating products that make my life easier. This week, it demonstrated the exact opposite: a way to make communicating with other people worse.

Google I/O, this year, was focused on artificial intelligence, and one of its centerpieces was prompt-based text generation, particularly in Google’s office suite. At several points throughout the keynote, it demoed a system called “Help me write” — which rewrites simple prompts in Gmail and other apps as more polished paragraphs of text. But more polished doesn’t automatically mean better.

Good writing can delight us with an intriguing turn of phrase. It...

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Android 14 played a surprisingly small role in Google’s I/O keynote

This year’s I/O keynote featured a lot of AI and very little about the next version of Google’s mobile OS. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

There was a chilly marine layer hanging in the air above the Shoreline Amphitheater, but the danceable beats thumped on in spite of it. Dan Deacon was playing a set that had something to do with AI, followed by a person in a duck costume dancing on stage. Not the kind of spectacle you’re typically expecting before you’ve even had your second cup of coffee, but that’s Google I/O, baby.

I/O is, of course, the company’s yearly developer conference, and it officially kicked off on Wednesday morning when CEO Sundar Pichai took the stage, headlining a two-hour presentation that was almost entirely centered on AI. We got a preview of what’s coming to Google Search, Gmail, and Photos, along with an unappetizing, photo-realistic image of pizza...

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Apple’s AirTags are available at a rare discount

You can get a discount no matter whether you buy a single AirTag or a set of four today. | Image: Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Memorial Day is just around the corner, and if you’ve got plans to travel, today’s deal on Apple’s AirTags has landed at the perfect time. Right now, you can buy a single AirTagfor $25 ($4 off) at Amazon and Best Buy, which is the lowest price we’ve seen so far this year. If you’d like to buy a set for the whole family, you can also buy a pack of four for $89.99 ($10 off) from Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy. Even better? If you order from Walmart or Amazon in the next few hours, you may still be able to get the set in time by Mother’s Day.

Apple’s ultra wideband-capable Bluetooth tracker can help you keep tabs on everything from keys to suitcases, allowing you to easily find your belongings should they get lost. The location tracker...

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Tears of the Kingdom’s portable stove is Link’s most powerful new gadget

Link receiving a portable pot from a Zonai device dispenser. | Image: Nintendo

The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wild’s simple cooking was one of the most delightfully helpful parts of the game when it came to recovering hearts or stamina wheels, and it’s no surprise to see the mechanic return in Tears of the Kingdom. But while cooking has always been important in Nintendo’s current take on Hyrule, Tears of the Kingdom’s new portable pot technologically switches things up so significantly that it’s fair to call it one of the most powerful tools Link has ever had in his arsenal.

Despite it taking place shortly after Breath of the Wild — a story in which Link is meant, but not required, to gain a number of skills, powers, and pieces of armor that make him tougher — Tears of the Kingdom takes you back to square...

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Can Google’s Pixel Fold really hang?

For US buyers, the Pixel Fold is the first credible alternative to Samsung’s Galaxy Fold series. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Google’s debut foldable makes a strong first impression. But if recent Pixels are anything to go by, the company has a lot to prove when it comes to performance and dependability.

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Amazon’s working on a secret new home robot that could be more like Rosie

Amazon is looking to improve on its current home robot Astro by adding ChatGPT-like features to future versions | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

As a smart home reviewer of a certain age, all I’ve ever wanted for my home is a Rosie the Robot. The Jetsons’ mechanical housekeeper was the example I held Amazon’s Astro to when I tested the company’s first home robot — and it unsurprisingly failed. Not just because it had no arms, but because it couldn’t really do anything.

Now, according to internal documents from Amazon seen by Insider, the company thinks it has found the keys to unlock Astro’s potential. Burnham is a secret new AI robot project Amazon is developing that, according to the documents, adds a layer of “intelligence and a conversational spoken interface” to a smart home robot, reports Insider.

An upgraded Astro powered by Burnham could use large language models, and...

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What two-thirds of car dealerships are missing in the US

This 2019 preowned Nissan Leaf SV is the only electric vehicle at a dealership in Milford, Massachusetts, on July 13th, 2022. | Photo by Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Electric vehicles just aren’t easy to find in American car dealerships, a survey by the environmental group Sierra Club confirms. Two-thirds of car dealerships surveyed across the US didn’t have a single battery electric vehicle or plug-in hybrid for sale.

That doesn’t line up with the Biden administration’s climate goals, which depend on consumers switching from gas-guzzling cars to electric vehicles to slash tailpipe emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed aggressive new emissions standards last month that are supposed to boost electric vehicle sales to more than two-thirds of all car sales by 2032.

The survey exposes the challenges that might keep more customers in the US from making the switch to electric

The...

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Amazon’s best snack has been out of stock for months, and I want answers

I want the truth. But mostly, I just want more cheese puffs. | Photo: Amazon

Modern life is full of tragedies. There are the big ones — the climate crisis, living in late-stage capitalism, take your pick — but the little ones sting, too. Like finding out that there are 200,000 people ahead of you in the queue for Taylor Swift tickets or taking a screenshot when you meant to turn your phone off. Or, let’s say, discovering that your favorite snack is out of stock at the only place it’s sold, and it’s probably never coming back.

I’m not proud of it, but ordering groceries from Amazon Fresh has become a weekly habit in my house. It’s convenient, plus Fresh sells some surprisingly good snacks under the Aplenty house brand. That’s not to be confused with the Whole Foods brand, or the 365 house brand, or the...

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The Ask Jeeves-ification of online search

Does Google even care about search anymore? | Screenshot taken from the Google I/O 2023 keynote replay

There are some who will tell you that Ask Jeeves was right all along. I’m less sure that’s true. In fact, I am starting to think that if you are a technical person who is considering a startup, Google’s fascination with adding a slow and unreliable AI chat to its results is an opening for you to put a brick on the gas pedal and absolutely run Google over.

Ask Jeeves launched in 1997, and the idea was that you’d type a natural-language query into the box, and the valet would come back with an answer. (Jeeves is named for P.G. Wodehouse’s famous character, a near-omniscient man with a “feudal spirit.” Disclosure: my cat is also named for this character.) It was popular until Google Search entered the scene — an engine with a better ability...

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LG’s 65-inch C2 OLED is down to nearly its best price to date

LG’s brilliant 65-inch OLED has only been cheaper once before. | Image: LG

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: now is a great time to splurge on a high-end OLED TV. And if you’re thinking about picking up one — perhaps in preparation for a certain Nintendo Switch game that launched today — LG’s 65-inch C2 OLED is on sale at Woot right now for $1,394.99, which is about $200 less than the TV’s typical sale price.

Despite being last year’s model, the C2 strikes a great balance between performance and price. The newer C3 model offers more processing power and new picture modes, but otherwise, it’s a relatively minor update. Like the C3, the 2022 model features a 120Hz refresh rate and Dolby Vision, as well as a variable refresh rate with support for AMD FreeSync Premium and Nvidia G-Sync. The 4K TV also...

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Oppo gives up on building custom chips for its flagship phones

Photo by Jon Porter / The Verge

Chinese phone manufacturer Oppo is shuttering its Zeku chip development division and letting go of its internal System-on-Chip (SoC) design aspirations, according to the South China Morning Post. The news comes as worldwide smartphone sales continue to decline and the US carries on with chip export restrictions.

Bloomberg reports Oppo’s Zeku division was set up in 2019 and carried about 200 patents in its Shanghai division. Like Apple, Oppo started making its own co-processors for imaging and other smartphone components but had not successfully launched its own SoC to get away from relying on other companies for the most significant chip in the device.

Oppo’s most recent releases include the Oppo Find N2 Flip, which is powered by a...

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A conversation with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s creative leads

Link grasping the Master Sword. | Image: Nintendo

The Legend of Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma and Tears of the Kingdom director Hidemaro Fujibayashi found their way by looking to Breath of the Wild’s thrill-seeking experimenters and trusting their own “unconventional” creative instincts.

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16 ways that Android 14 will subtly improve your phone

Image: Google

It wouldn’t be Google I/O if the company didn’t have a new version of its smartphone and tablet operating system waiting in the wings — and while Android 14 got totally upstaged by AI and the company’s first folding phone, we’ve since learned more from the company’s developer sessions.

Don’t get too excited: these changes are subtle! But here are a few ways Google’s “Upside Down Cake” might make your life slightly sweeter when it arrives this fall.

Screenshot by Sean Hollister / Video by Google

Every Android version has a dessert codename — Android 14’s is “Upside Down Cake,” and Android 13’s was “Tiramisu.” The codenames were public until 2019.

Ditch passwords

Passkeys are already here — but not evenly...

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Google’s new Pixel Tablet might be the end of the smart display

The Pixel Tablet, with its charging speaker dock and more powerful processor, is a compelling replacement for underpowered smart displays. | Image: Dan Seifert / The Verge

With the arrival of the Pixel Tablet with a charging speaker dock at Google I/O this week, Google did what it does best: killed a product. Only this time, it didn’t just kill its product; it foreshadowed the death of the entire smart display category. Ah well. They had a good run, but folks, it’s the end of the line. The precise time of death was when Google exec Rose Yao described the new Pixel Tablet on its dock like this: “It feels like a smart display, but it has one huge advantage … Android apps.”

When one of really only two companies that make smart displays proudly proclaims that its shiny new smart home control device is not a smart display, the game is up. Yao also correctly pointed out one of two major problems with smart...

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Dbrand’s Zelda skin turns your Switch into a giant middle finger to Nintendo lawyers

Dbrand switches things up. | Image: Dbrand

Dbrand just made another quick buck by flipping off Nintendo. You can now preorder a $50 skin for your Nintendo Switch that’s a dead ringer for the $359 Nintendo Switch OLED Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Edition — at least until you look closely.

At first, the “Clone of the Kingdom” seems like just that. But then you realize that Dbrand replaced the Triforce with The Eye of Providence, a symbol often as famous for its connections to conspiracy theories and the Illuminati as for its benign appearance on the back of a US Dollar. (Admittedly, the crest of the Sheikah is an eye with three pyramids for eyebrows.)

Then, you might notice the runes. What might they read? “Go fuck yourself, lawyers” is the first one I decoded; I won't...

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Twitter’s new CEO is Linda Yaccarino, a longtime ad exec for NBCU

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter has a new CEO, and it’s former NBCUniversal advertising executive Linda Yaccarino. Elon Musk announced her appointment in a tweet, saying she “will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology.”

“I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter!” Musk writes. “Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app.”

Yaccarino previously worked as chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCU, where she has been since 2011. She helped oversee the launch of NBC Peacock and advocated for the modernization of ad measurement technologies. Yaccarino is also credited with helping NBC forge “non-traditional partnerships” with...

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Garmin’s flagship smartwatch lineups leak early

Image: WinFuture

Garmin’s smartwatch lineup is getting a big upgrade. A set of leaked images shared by WinFuture gives us a detailed look at some of Garmin’s upcoming flagships, including the Epix Pro Gen 2, Fenix 7X Pro, and Fenix 7 Pro that are set to go toe-to-toe with the Apple Watch Ultra.

It looks like the “Pro” version of the premium Epix Gen 2 watch will come in a few different display sizes: 42mm, 47mm, and 51mm, which is nice given that the standard Epix Gen only came in one 47mm size. There’s also the option for a sapphire crystal display that’s supposed to make it more scratch-resistant, along with several color variations, including white, black, and off-white.

While WinFuture doesn’t include any details about specs or pricing, previous...

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Google wants you to forget the 10 blue links

Screenshot taken from the Google I/O 2023 keynote replay

The single most visited page on the internet is undergoing its most radical change in 25 years.

On Wednesday, Google introduced a major overhaul of its search results page that infuses the screen with AI. Called the Search Generative Experience (SGE), the new interface makes it so that when you type a query into the search box, the so-called “10 blue links” that we’re all familiar with appear for only a brief moment before being pushed off the page by a colorful new shade with AI-generated information. The shade pushes the rest of Google’s links far down the page you’re looking at — and when I say far, I mean almost entirely off the screen.

The current version of Google’s search results page isn’t perfect. It’s often cluttered and...

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The PlayStation VR2 is now available at more retailers

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The PlayStation VR2 may be leashed by a USB cable, but Sony is finally untethering its sales exclusivity hold on the virtual reality headset.

After a low-key Twitter announcement that the PSVR 2 is coming to third-party vendors, the headset can now be purchased at Amazon, Best Buy, Target, Walmart, and GameStop. Each retailer is selling the PSVR 2 and its controllers for $549.99, the same as Sony. Also, if you prefer to get it with Horizon Call of the Mountain, that bundle showcasing a lot of the PSVR 2’s potential costs $599.99 and is also on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, Target, Walmart, and GameStop.

When the PSVR 2 launched in late February, Sony’s website was the only place to buy it. While that’s not the only reason that sales of the...

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Tesla forced to ‘recall’ 1.1 million vehicles in China to address braking problems

People view a Tesla electric car in Hangzhou, east China’s Zhejiang province, April 17th, 2023. | Photo by CFOTO / Future Publishing via Getty Images

Tesla said that it would push an over-the-air software update to 1.1 million vehicles in China in response to a braking and acceleration problem, multiple outlets are reporting.

China’s market regulator identified the issue as a “product recall,” though, as is typical with Tesla, the issue appears to be addressable with a software update. It isn’t clear whether Tesla wants customers to bring in their vehicles for any maintenance, nor whether there is a refund available to those who want to return their cars.

The recall covers all four of Tesla’s vehicle models — Model S, X, 3, and Y — both imported and made in China, that were manufactured between January 12th, 2019, and April 24th, 2023. In a statement, the State Administration for...

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Netflix’s Black Knight is a mix of Mad Max and Death Stranding

Kim Woo-bin in Black Knight_._ | Image: Netflix

Two of the most defining pieces of postapocalyptic storytelling from the last decade are Mad Max: Fury Road and Death Stranding; one imagines a future of vehicular mayhem across a desolate desert, while the other is a strange exploration of just how important home deliveries will be at the end of the world. Black Knight, a new action series on Netflix, is what happens when you smoosh those two worlds together. It doesn’t reach the heights of either, but it does present its own distinct take on our climate change-fueled future — one that just so happens to be a blast to watch.

Black Knight takes place 40 years after a comet collided with the Earth, poisoning the air and turning the Korean peninsula into a bleak desert. The small number of...

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Even Final Fantasy’s producer is playing Zelda

Image: Square Enix

Even Naoki Yoshida cannot resist the allure of Zelda.

Yoshida is a busy, busy man. Not only is he in the middle of a press tour promoting the soon-to-be-out Final Fantasy XVI, but he’s also working on the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV. Naturally, that leaves him little time for personal pursuits, but apparently, he hasn’t let his demanding schedule get between him and the game launch of the summer.

During the downtime ahead of today’s Final Fantasy XIV developer livestream — a regular event in which game director Yoshida and community manager Toshio Murouchi talk about new additions and updates to the game — Yoshida was seen playing a Switch.

During the test stream, it seems the producer is occupied... Something else...

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Teenage Engineering’s $1,500 audio recorder had me at ‘motorized tape reel’

Image: Teenage Engineering

Would you pay $1,499 for a dictaphone? What if it’s a really fancy dictaphone with a spinning “tape” reel? The folks over at Swedish electronics company Teenage Engineering certainly believe there’s a market by announcing the TP-7 field recorder — a quirky, compact recording device designed to capture audio “with zero friction in the highest possible quality.”

The TP-7 features a built-in mic / speaker, 128GB of internal storage, and three two-way 3.5mm jacks that can be used for both audio input and output. There’s also a USB-C port, which is used for data transfer and charging the device. Teenage Engineering claims a full charge should last around seven hours. It’s the latest addition to Teenage Engineering’s field system of portable...

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The Verge’s 2023 Graduation Gift Guide

Image: Will Joel

We found a wide range of gifts that’ll help graduates as they embark upon their next adventure, whether that’s college or a career.

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Sex workers are the unlikely beneficiaries of Twitter Blue

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

On April 20th, as Twitter finally lived up to its longstanding promise to abolish legacy verified accounts, many users started categorizing the last remaining “blue checks.” There were the Elon fanboys, who angrily badgered formerly verified users about their unwillingness to pay $8 a month for a new checkmark. There were sheepish Twitter Blue subscribers who appreciated its extra features. There were celebrities puzzled to find they’d retained their verification despite (or, sometimes, because) of their vocal unwillingness to pay for Twitter Blue.

But there was also another, far less discussed group. When I clicked the Verified tab in my mentions, I’d once been greeted with a variety of journalist friends, activists, and the odd...

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How Google is making up for lost time

Google CEO Sundar Pichai on stage at I/O 2023. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

The arrival of ChatGPT last year sent a rare shiver through Google’s spine. For years the company had positioned itself as a leader in the development in artificial intelligence. Suddenly, though, a product from the upstart OpenAI rocketed to tens of millions of monthly users — and observers began asking whether Google had squandered its lead.

Within weeks, leaders at the company declared a “code red” — a signal that the time to begin shipping AI features was now. (It was widely reported that CEO Sundar Pichai declared the code red, but he later told me that it wasn’t the case.)

A handful of products have shipped since — most notably Bard, the company’s ChatGPT analog. But on Wednesday, at the company’s annual developer conference, the...

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Google’s open-source AI tool let me play my favorite Dreamcast game with my face

The homescreen for Project Gameface is so cheerful. | Screenshot by Wes Davis / The Verge

While Wednesday’s Google I/O event largely hyped the company’s biggest AI initiatives, the company also announced updates to the machine learning suite that powers Google Lens and Google Meet features like object tracking and recognition, gesture control, and of course, facial detection. The newest update enables app developers to, among other things, create Snapchat-like face filters and hand tracking, with the company showing off a GIF that’s definitely not a Memoji.

This update underpins a special project announced during the I/O developer keynote: an open-source accessibility application called Project Gameface, which lets you play games... with your face. During the keynote, Google played a very Wes Anderson-esque mini-documentary...

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