AMD releases new chips to power faster AI training

Image: PaulSakuma.com

AMD wants people to remember that Nvidia’s not the only company selling AI chips. It’s announced the availability of new accelerators and processors geared toward running large language models, or LLMs.

The chipmaker unveiled the Instinct MI300X accelerator and the Instinct M1300A accelerated processing unit (APU), which the company said works to train and run LLMs. The company said the MI300X has 1.5 times more memory capacity than the previous M1250X version. Both new products have better memory capacity and are more energy-efficient than their predecessors, said AMD.

“LLMs continue to increase in size and complexity, requiring massive amounts of memory and compute,” AMD CEO Lisa Su said. “And we know the availability of GPUs is the...

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A24 is bringing its entire theatrical slate to HBO, Max, and Cinemax

Image: A24

Indie powerhouse A24 has a new home for its theatrical releases — both new and old. The production company has inked a multiyear exclusive deal with Warner Bros. Discovery to bring its entire slate of new releases to HBO, Max, and Cinemax after they leave theaters. On top of that, the two companies extended a licensing deal for its films that are already on HBO and Max — and will grow to include over 100 films in total, including The Whale, Uncut Gems, Everything Everywhere All At Once, and others.

The agreement is a Pay 1 output deal — which will mean that after new A24 films complete their run in theaters, they’ll only be available on these WBD-owned platforms for a set period of time. A24 had a similar Pay 1 deal with Showtime it...

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You can still nab Nintendo’s Smash Bros.-themed Switch OLED for $325

GameStop’s current promo takes $25 off Nintendo’s latest holiday bundle as long as you’re willing to visit a brick-and-mortar store. | Image: Nintendo

Unsurprisingly, Black Friday and Cyber Monday brought a flurry of discounts on the Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5, and all three iterations of the Nintendo Switch. Some of those deals have since dried up — pour one out for the $349 Xbox Series X deal we saw last week — but a few newcomers have popped up in their stead. Take GameStop’s current promo on the Smash Bros.-inspired Nintendo Switch OLED bundle, which drops the excellent console bundle to $324.99 ($25 off) when you purchase in-store or order online and pick it up in-store.

While not as slick as the previous _Super Smash Bros.-_themed Switch, Nintendo’s latest holiday bundle makes up for it in sheer value (especially at this price). It includes a Nintendo Switch OLED and a pair of...

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With Dream Scenario, Nic Cage wants to let you in on a secret

The Verge / Photo by Steve Jennings, Getty Images

Dream Scenario’s Nic Cage wants you to know that there’s a difference between maximalism and pushing the boundaries of filmmaking as an art.

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A bunch of EVs are going to lose their tax credit starting January 1st

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge

Electric vehicles with batteries that contain minerals and materials sourced from China won’t be eligible for the $7,500 federal EV tax credit starting on January 1, 2024, according to guidelines recently released by the Internal Revenue Service.

That means a lot of EVs are about to lose their eligibility — chief among them, the Ford Mustang Mach-E. Ford sent out a notice to dealers recently stating that it is “unlikely that any Mustang Mach-Es will qualify for the Federal Tax Credit beginning on 1/1/24,” according to a report in Cars Direct. (A Ford spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

Tesla is also warning customers that certain versions of the Model 3 — the Rear-Wheel Drive and Long Range trims — will...

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Meta will let you ‘reimagine’ your friends’ AI-generated images

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Meta detailed a bunch of updates to its Meta AI tools today in a blog post, including some new features for its AI image generators.

One that caught my eye was a tool that will let you remix AI-generated images your friends share in a Messenger or Instagram chat. The images are made with a tool Meta calls “imagine,” and the company says you’ll now be able to “reimagine” images other people make in the group chat by pressing and holding on the picture and adding a text prompt.

Image: Meta

Meta’s new “reimagine” tool for AI-generated images.

Meta is also bringing the imagine tool out of chats and letting users in the US access it on the web at imagine.meta.com. The company says that the tool is designed for...

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Apple reportedly plans to launch a bigger iPad Air and OLED iPad Pro in the spring

Illustration: The Verge

Bloomberg’s Apple reporter, Mark Gurman, says Apple has some big changes coming for 2024 in the form of a bigger iPad Air joining the existing smaller size and the previously rumored iPad Pro with an OLED screen. In addition to that, the company will release an updated MacBook Air using Apple’s new M3 processor that just debuted in the updated 14-inch MacBook Pro and new iMacs.

The new iPad Air will reportedly have a 12.9-inch screen to join the 10.9-inch model, bringing the lineup much closer to the iPad Pro’s 11- and 12.9-inch options. Gurman didn’t provide a specific date, only saying the devices will arrive in “early 2024,” adding that Apple hopes to turn things around for sales of both product lines.

The company will also release a...

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The Verge’s favorite splurge-worthy gifts for 2023

Photo Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales and Cath Virginia / The Verge

The sky’s the limit when money is no object, so why waste your hard-earned cash and coin on the everyday essentials? It’s time to dream big.

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Disney Plus and Hulu’s one-app experience is launching in beta

Hulu now has its own tile on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. | Image: Disney

Disney is rolling out the beta version of its combined Disney Plus and Hulu experience today. The new hub, called Hulu on Disney Plus, puts content from both services on the Disney Plus app.

If you’re subscribed to a Disney Plus and Hulu bundle, you’ll see a new Hulu card that appears next to the Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic titles at the very top of Disney Plus’ interface. Selecting the Hulu option will bring you to a “Hulu Hub,” where you’ll gain access to the thousands of movies and TV shows available through the service. The experience is also available to people who subscribe to Disney Plus and Hulu separately, as long as both accounts are associated with the same email address.

I found that I already...

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Apple joins AI fray with release of model framework

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Apple, which many had considered very conservative in its approach to AI, quietly released frameworks and model libraries designed to run on its chips and maybe bring generative AI apps to MacBooks.

The company’s machine learning research team released MLX, a machine learning framework where developers can build models that run efficiently on Apple Silicon and deep learning model library MLX Data. Both are accessible through open-source repositories like GitHub and PyPI.

According to Apple on GitHub, frameworks like PyTorch, Jax, and ArrayFire inspired the design of MLX, with the notable difference of having a shared memory, meaning any task run on MLX works on supported devices (right now, CPUs and GPUs) without moving data. C...

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Google is ending the year with a big update for Pixel devices

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Google is bringing some sophisticated new AI smarts to the Pixel 8 Pro today, but it’s not stopping there. The company is also rolling out its December feature drop for Pixel hardware, which includes two big software features for the 8 Pro — but plenty of new tricks for other devices as well.

Video Boost, which is exclusive to Google’s larger-size flagship, will be available starting today. It “uploads your videos to the cloud where our computational photography models adjust color, lighting, stabilization and graininess,” according to Google’s blog post. After that, you receive a touched-up video that “looks true to life.” This isn’t something anyone’s really gotten to test much yet, so we’re all about to find out together where Video...

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Squid Game: The Challenge gets a second season — and a video game

Squid Game: The Challenge gets a second season. | Image: Netflix

In the least surprising move ever, Netflix has greenlit its popular Squid Game: The Challenge for a second season and is recruiting contestants right now. The company also mentioned it’s making a video game “in the Squid Game universe” — missing an opportunity to coin the term “Squidiverse.” Actually, I’m sorry I just typed that.

Netflix didn’t offer any details about the video game except to say that players will “compete with friends in games they’ll recognize from the series.” We asked for more details, but the company didn’t respond by press time.

Attention players, are you ready for the next game? Squid Game: The Challenge is returning for a Season 2! Join the reality competition on https://t.co/rHt0nq0WtI. p...

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The Verge’s 2023 gaming and entertainment holiday gift guide

Photo Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales and Cath Virginia / The Verge

Even if someone is the type to buy all the latest big games, we’re certain we can help you find them a unique and adequately geeky gift this holiday.

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Facebook and Instagram accused of creating a ‘marketplace’ for child predators in new lawsuit

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Meta and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, allowed Facebook and Instagram to become a “marketplace for predators in search of children,” a new lawsuit from the New Mexico attorney general alleges, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. The lawsuit, filed in state court on Tuesday, also claims Meta’s algorithms recommend sexual content to children.

As outlined in the complaint, the New Mexico attorney general’s office conducted an investigation that involved creating test profiles on Facebook and Instagram that appeared to be teenagers or preteens. Not only did the office find inappropriate recommendations for each of the decoys, such as an account that “openly” posted adult pornography, but it also found that they attracted...

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Google’s Gemini AI model is coming to the Pixel 8 Pro — and eventually to Android

The Pixel 8 Pro is the first Gemini-capable phone — but it won’t be the last. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Gemini may be the biggest, most powerful large language model, or LLM, Google has ever developed, but it’s better suited to running in data centers than on your phone. With Gemini Nano, though, the company is trying to split the difference: it built a reduced version of its flagship LLM that can run locally and offline on your device. Well, a device, anyway. The Pixel 8 Pro is the only Nano-compatible phone so far, but Google sees the new model as a core part of Android going forward.

If you have a Pixel 8 Pro, starting today, two things on your phone will be powered by Gemini Nano: the auto-summarization feature in the Recorder app, and the Smart Reply part of the Gboard keyboard. Both are coming as part of the Pixel’s December Feature...

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How AI is fooling the photography world

Boris Eldagsen

“Promptography” is what Berlin-based artist Boris Eldagsen calls his creative process. He inputs highly specific and deliberate text prompts into generative AI programs like DALL-E or Midjourney and tweaks their outputs repeatedly to create thought-provoking photographs — or at least, what look like photographs. His work is so convincing that he fooled Sony into giving him a photography award, only to decline the honor and reveal that his work was made using AI.

In this episode of Status Update, senior video producer Becca Farsace takes a flight to Berlin, Germany. There, she attends Eldagsen’s gallery opening and learns what it takes to be a promptographer.

Watch to find out if Becca could answer The Verge’s favorite question of the...

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Google launches Gemini, the AI model it hopes will take down GPT-4

Gemini was designed from the beginning to be about much more than just text. | Image: Google

Google has been an ‘AI-first company’ for nearly a decade. Now, a year into the AI era brought on by ChatGPT, it’s finally making a big move.

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Google’s Bard chatbot is getting way better thanks to Gemini

Bard has access to Google’s apps and now its best large language model, too. | Image: Google

While OpenAI’s ChatGPT has become a worldwide phenomenon and one of the fastest-growing consumer products ever, Google’s Bard has been something of an afterthought. The chatbot has steadily gained new features, including access to your data across other Google products, but its answers and information have rarely seemed to rival what you get from ChatGPT and other bots using GPT-3 and GPT-4.

The case for Bard may have just gotten more compelling, though: as of today, for English-speaking users in 170 countries, Bard is now powered by Google’s new Gemini model, which it says matches and even exceeds OpenAI’s tech in a number of ways. (Google says Gemini is coming to more languages and countries “in the near future.”)

Bard is now running...

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Microsoft is investigating a Windows issue that’s renaming printers to HP LaserJet

Image by Jess Weatherbed / The Verge

Microsoft says it’s investigating a new issue in Windows 10 and Windows 11 where printers are randomly being renamed to HP LaserJet ones. “Some issues related to printer configurations are being observed on Windows devices which have access to the Microsoft Store,” explains Microsoft in a support note. “Microsoft is investigating this issue and coordinating with partners on a solution.”

The problem affects both Windows 10 and Windows 10 devices running the 22H2 update and results in the HP Smart app being automatically installed and printers being renamed even if they’re not HP ones. “Printers are renamed as HP printers regardless of their manufacturer,” says Microsoft. “Most are being named as the HP LaserJet M101-M106 model. Printer...

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Honda will launch a ‘new global EV series’ at CES

While the Consumer Electronics Show looks to be a little light on auto-related announcements next year, Honda said it will use the event to launch a new global series of electric vehicles. And today it dropped its first teaser.

The photo shows what appears to be a sloping rear section of a car with no visible tail lights or bumper. There’s a wheel covering featuring lined triangles, and apparently a lot of glass and purple lighting. Beyond that, we don’t know much else. Such is the nature of the teaser: all flair, no substance.

A sloping rear section of a car with no visible tail lights or bumper

“Honda will showcase the global EV series models and several key technologies that illustrate the significant transformation Honda is...

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TikTok’s biggest hits are videos you’ve probably never seen

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

It’s the most wonderful time of the year: when TikTok publishes its annual roundup of the biggest hits, and I get to see what everyone else has been doing on the app all year.

Despite the hold TikTok has on our cultural and political psyche, it’s hard to tell what exactlyis going on across the platform. Seeing something served up on your For You page doesn’t mean it’s a thing all the kids are doing — it just means that the algorithm decided you might watch it based on what you spend your time doing on the app. Out of the bottomless supply of videos posted each day, you’re being fed everything from celebrity clips with millions of views to videos from random accounts with zero likes and zero comments. None of our For You pages look the...

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The road ahead for EV adoption is made of gravel

Illustration by Sisi Kim for The Verge

Every day, Mitch Stults commutes about 60 miles each way from his home in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, a town of 17,000 people, to his job as a sales manager for a manufactured homebuilder in Cullman.

Stults was driving a King Ranch pickup 110 miles per day, spending an estimated $1,000 on gas per week, and getting just 13 miles to the gallon. “That was when I decided to give a Tesla a try,” he said.

Stults, 29, began hunting for a Tesla Model Y and found one at a dealership in Tupelo, Mississippi, 87 miles away. He traded in his King Ranch a few days later.

But the thrill of an electrified ride didn’t last long. Three months later, Stults returned the Tesla and traded it in for a GMC half-ton Duramax diesel pickup.

“That was when I decided...

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Amazon slams Microsoft’s business practices in UK cloud market probe

Amazon says Microsoft’s licensing rules make it “financially unviable” for customers to switch from Azure. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Amazon has joined Google in criticizing Microsoft over licensing agreements that restrict competition in the UK’s cloud computing market, claiming Microsoft’s business practices make it harder for customers to switch to alternative cloud providers or run competing services alongside Azure. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is currently investigating the UK’s cloud computing industry which Amazon and Microsoft dominate.

Amazon laid out its concerns in a letter dated November 23rd, 2023 but published by the CMA yesterday:

“Some IT providers, such as Microsoft, use licensing practices that restrict customer choice and make switching more difficult. For example, Microsoft changed its licensing terms in 2019 and again in 2022 to...

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Intel accuses AMD of selling snake oil CPUs in now deleted attack

Intel’s deleted presentation takes aim at one of AMD’s latest CPUs. | Image: Intel

Intel has accused AMD of “selling half-truths to unsuspecting customers” by using its Zen 2 architecture in some of its latest Ryzen 7000 series mobile processors. In a now-deleted presentation to system integrators, Intel’s “Core Truths” largely focuses on AMD’s Ryzen 5 7520U mobile processor and its confusing and somewhat misleading naming.

AMD revealed a new naming scheme for its Ryzen 7000 series last year, with the first digit referring to the model year, the second for the segment, and the third revealing the architecture. At first glance you might look at the Ryzen 5 7520U naming and think it’s a mid-range CPU from AMD, with the 7 meaning it’s the latest. But the Ryzen 5 7520U is actually based on AMD’s older Zen 2 architecture,...

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Climate groups say Biden AI order doesn’t address AI’s climate impact

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Several groups mainly tackling climate change and disinformation said the Biden administration’s approach to artificial intelligence regulation does not respond to AI’s impact on the climate and how it can be used to spread disinformation.

The groups sent a letter to the White House urging the Biden administration, including national climate advisor Ali Zaidi, to add more climate-centered policies in its AI executive order released earlier in October. Seventeen groups signed the letter, including Accountable Tech, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, Climate Action Against Disinformation, Greenpeace USA, and the Tech Oversight Project.

The letter accuses the administration of neglecting AI’s impact on spreading disinformation on...

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Finally, non-MagSafe wireless chargers will fast-charge recent iPhones

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Now that Apple has released a preview of the next iOS update, Anker says its upcoming Qi2-compatible wireless chargers will provide faster 15W charging for iPhone 13, iPhone 14, and iPhone 15 devices.

Apple has not responded to a request for comment, but presumably, this support will extend to all Qi2 chargers. The only problem left is that despite companies like Anker, Belkin, and Mophie all announcing Qi2-compatible hardware a few months ago, there are no certified products available for purchase yet.

Third-party chargers that work with iPhones at the same rate as MagSafe-branded tech is the way we’d hoped things would work, considering the updated Qi2 spec’s Magnetic Power Profile brings in magnets and authentication contributed by...

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Hollywood’s strikes are over

Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld / Getty Images

The guilds representing actors and writers have both ratified new deals with big media companies addressing concerns around streaming and AI.

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Reddit says a bug is letting slurs get added to its links

Image: Reddit

A Reddit bug is allowing slurs to get added to Reddit URLs — and those URLs occasionally appear prominently on Google.

Content warning : the following story includes mentions of a slur.

Here’s what we’ve observed. While Googling something related to a lighthearted debate in The Verge’s Slack, one staffer found that some of the Reddit links that surfaced had a subdomain with unexpected characters and a slur before reddit.com: https://2goback-[f-word].reddit.com/r/[rest of the URL]. Despite the additional characters, the link points to Reddit (though the page had the Old Reddit layout).

The slur didn’t just appear for that query. A Reddit site search on Google for the subdomain reveals a bunch of links from different subreddits that have...

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Spotify’s not going for Pulitzers anymore

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge

This is Hot Pod_,_ The Verge’s newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more.

The dust is still settling on Spotify’s latest round of layoffs. On Monday, Spotify announced it was cutting 17 percent of its workforce, or approximately 1,500 employees, as a means of making the company even more efficient. This round of layoffs dwarfs the past two this year, with the company cutting about 600 employees in January and another 200 employees (mostly from podcasting) in June. Details are still coming out, but it appears the cuts are impacting people across the company, from product to content to advertising.

“I realize that for many, a reduction of this size will feel surprisingly large given the recent positive...

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Here are the best Kindle deals right now

Amazon’s latest Kindle Paperwhite is often on sale when purchased as a part of a bundle. | Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge

When it comes to finding a device to use to read your ebooks, you have a few options to choose from. You can always buy a tablet or use your phone, but those devices are multipurpose and can be used for a ton of things, like surfing the web or doom-scrolling on Twitter. If you are looking for something to strictly read books, e-readers, while niche, are designed to store all of your books in a virtual library with limited functionality.

Amazon, one of the pioneers of the e-reader, has dominated the space for years with its ever-expanding Kindle lineup, which consists of several unique models with their own pros and cons. The bulk of the devices function as simple ebook readers; however, with the Kindle Scribe, Amazon looks to be moving...

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