Daily AI Briefing

Kanishka Narayan to say Britain cannot rely entirely on tech companies amid rising global concern over AI dangers Companies building the most advanced AI systems must increase safety efforts, the UK’s AI minister will say, as he announces a strengthening of Britain’s cyber defences. Kanishka Narayan will call on companies developing frontier AI to do more to make sure it is safe. He will say Britain cannot rely entirely on technology companies to police their own models and will argue the UK nee

Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen multiple reports that Apple was working on a new smart home product, but now it seems the product has a name and a launch date.

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When President Donald Trump announced his plans to rebrand artificial intelligence as "super intelligence," you'd be forgiven for being skeptical that it would catch on. While most of the broader population is sticking with AI, some of Silicon Valley's most powerful are falling in line and trying to give Trump the great AI rebrand he so desires. That Elon Musk was quick to jump on board, promising to rename SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI, isn't surprising. When, hours after Donald Trump declared that "Th

The latest rumors are that the new Apple TV will have a built-in microphone, while the upgraded remote will get a speaker. The mic would let users control the set-top box using Siri without having to speak into the remote or a connected HomePod device. That could also let the Apple TV serve as a simple smart home hub - controlling thermostats and locking doors - without the need to hunt for the remote. If you happen to misplace the remote, the new integrated speaker should make it easier to trac

On Equity, we debate the impact of data center moratoriums and whether the AI industry has a communication problem.

Happy hormones | Fuel costs | Drive-in parking | Guys and girls | Young or old? | Singapore pollution Re your report (‘Pull the plug’: protesters resort to direct action against AI firms, 6 October), the US neuroscientist Ben Rein has shown that there is a fundamental difference in our cognitive response according to the type of interaction we have. In-person meetings and conversations show a dramatic increase in serotonin, oxytocin and dopamine – “feelgood” hormones – compared with online inter

A crew annotated image showing where the Artemis II team observed impact flashes on the dark side of the Moon. | Image: NASA If you thought you'd seen all there is to see from the Artemis II mission, you're wrong. This week NASA posted over 800GB worth of science data, images, and videos on the Artemis II: Sights & Sounds of Science site. The archive includes over 11,000 photos and videos, over 8.5 hours of audio, and crew-annotated images, such as the one marking where they saw impact flashes

George A. Romero is obviously best known as the father of the modern zombie movie. But between inventing the genre with Night of the Living Dead and his outbreak horror, The Crazies, Romero made two much lesser-known films: There's Always Vanilla, which I'll admit I've never seen, and Season of the Witch, or, as it was originally titled, Hungry Wives. Hungry Wives was supposed to be an exploitation film. The studio marketed it as a softcore porn, but it failed to find an audience - probably bec

Voice AI's often misses important points for its context layer, and causes the whole pipeline to break

We are quickly coming up on Apple's "Welcome Home" launch event, where we expect a host of smart home-related announcements. We are expecting refreshes to Apple TV and HomePod Mini, as well as a brand new smart home hub. We could also see the debut of a new platform called homeOS, and some partner devices from LG. What we probably won't be seeing is the long-rumored touchscreen MacBook, which Cupertino whisperer Mark Gurman says will debut later this month. "Welcome Home" will officially kick of

From Disney Plus to HBO Max, almost every major established streaming service is experimenting with ways to get into vertical content. It's clear that these companies see video-focused social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram as existential threats. In this arms race for viewers' attention, it has often felt like everyone is trying to find new ways to exist on people's phones. But a new startup thinks that the next step in vertical series' evolution is going to take place on our wide-scr

For multiple years, the hottest toy in the United States was a book. But not just any book: a smart book that could play sounds and respond to taps and help kids learn to read. It was the kind of gadget seemingly any parent could get behind, but it came with a high price - and some unexpected parenting questions. On this episode of Version History, David Pierce is joined by The Verge's Andru Marino and Jennifer Pattison Tuohy to explain how the LeapPad worked, why it was so enticing to both kids

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on how pervasive horror has become, follow Andrew Webster. The Stepback, arrives in our subscribers' inboxes on Sunday at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started Resident Evil has been around for 30 years, but the survival horror series is more popular than ever. The most recent game, Resident Evil Requiem, has sold 8 million copies since it launched in February, already making

‘Even if AI supercharged the economy, its impact on the government’s finances would be muted’ Back through political history to the age of Ronald Reagan, Republicans have repeatedly promised the US public that tax cuts would pay for themselves, firing up economic growth and filling the government’s coffers. The promise never really panned out. From the Gipper’s day on, the Republicans’ tax cuts inevitably increased the budget deficit. Despite its failure, though, the promise is back, coated in a

Baby’s first local AI agent. | Photo: Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge I'm embarking on a journey I've so far been hesitant to go on: actually using AI on the regular. Giving my most personal data to cloud services has been a major hold up for me, but it's increasingly possible to run powerful models locally to see what they're capable of. Is this tech so useful that it's worth throwing gobs of money at a computer or a laptop with lots of overpriced RAM? I'll try to help you find out. I'm n

This is no scoffing matter. The accelerating proliferation of advanced nuclear weapons is bringing ‘end times’ closer by the day Humankind has fearfully and sometimes joyfully anticipated the end of the world ever since it began. The Bible’s Book of Revelation speaks of “end times”, a period of tribulation, war, famine, plague, floods and environmental catastrophe that may seem a less absurd prospect today than perhaps it once did. Islam, too, posits a fateful day of judgment or day of reckoning

Are we really living through ‘end-times fascism’? Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor think so. In a new series from the Guardian, the pair speak to Radical Thinking with Aditya Chakrabortty in an extended interview. From Trump 2.0 and the rise of the tech billionaires to Gaza and the climate emergency, Klein and Taylor argue we are not just lurching from crisis to crisis but are in a new and dangerous moment in history. But they haven’t given up hope of a fightback You can watch the full interview wit

Newly established commission identifies 17 catastrophic threats to human health but says ‘realistic route to act’ on each exists Humans could become extinct by the year 2100 due to malicious use of AI or nuclear conflict, according to a new global risk assessment. They top a list of 17 major threats to human health over the next 75 years, which also includes cuts to aid spending by wealthy countries, the climate crisis and childhood malnutrition. Continue reading...

Did you know Meta doesn’t just want to build the next AI model? It wants to replace your programming assistant too. Continue reading on Towards AI »

Add a server from Docker’s catalog to a profile, write a catalog entry for your own Postgres server, and see where its password actually… Continue reading on Towards AI »

In a lengthy post on X, Microsoft's CEO laid out his views on the dangers posed by highly advanced AI models and how to confront those risks. Nadella says we can no longer accept a world where AI is treated as a "set of nested black boxes" whose advice and actions we simply accept or reject. He calls for building a more transparent system where models can be contained, observed, and leaves behind "tamper-proof human readable evidence." Many of his recommendations align with what we've heard from

Every eval suite grades output. Almost none grade absence — the skipped check, the unsent alert, the file never opened. Continue reading on Towards AI »

In a Saturday morning post, Microsoft's CEO wrote that it’s time “to step back and assess the trust architecture” of AI.

Leaderboard rankings, prices and one honest limit for each model, plus a simple three-prompt test you can run yourself. Continue reading on Towards AI »

Is Apple hoping to get into the AI-generated podcast business?

Five stories that feel like five answers to one important question: in a world where AI chatbots can help us through a breakup, listen like a friend, be a life coach, draft a difficult text message and do our work, where do we draw the line? Continue reading...

Artists are taking to social media to complain that DistroKid has unceremoniously removed their work without notice. Now DistroKid has confirmed to The Verge that the takedowns are a direct response to claims made by UMG. The label filed a lawsuit in September claiming that DistroKid has created an "AI-slop pipeline." Artists are saying that their non-AI works are being caught up in the purge, however. Musician and self-described "Video Game boy" McGwire reported that six of his songs had been r

Reports have been mounting that users of the Ledger crypto wallet have seen their accounts drained, and it appears to be related to tampered hardware sold by CryptoBillis. Ledger has asked CryptoBillis to pause all sales of its wallets while it conducts an investigation. Ledger has confirmed that "one of the impacted users' devices contained an unauthorized hardware implant." Photos and videos posted on X and Threads appear to show a small circuit board sandwiched under the screen. The implant a

Sunmi is an undeniable force in K-pop. She first made her debut as a member of the Wonder Girls back in 2007, one of the first K-pop acts to really break through in the West. The English version of their single "Nobody" was the first K-pop song to hit the Billboard Hot 100 in October 2009. In 2010 Sunmi left the group to go back to school, but the siren call of a music career pulled her back in. She released her debut solo EP Full Moon in 2014. That began a run of award-winning releases for the

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 takes place October 13-15 in San Francisco. Over 300 startups will show what they’ve built to 10,000 tech leaders. Plus, 250+ speakers are ready to share insights across 200+ sessions. Register before doors open to save up to $100 and get a second pass at 50% off.

After a recent spate of high-profile incidents in which AI agents escaped containment, Anthropic is cutting off internet access for all internal evaluations. In a report Friday, the company detailed "unintended model actions," including submitting a false tip regarding an unsolved murder, that led to the decision. Although the impact of these behaviors was minimal and we had already turned off live internet access for some high-risk and cybersecurity evaluations, we have now decided to expand th

Today, I’m talking with Peter Kafka, chief correspondent at Business Insider and host of the Channels podcast, about the gigantic Warner Bros.-Paramount merger and the future of the company now simply called Skydance. Skydance is owned by David Ellison, son of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, and its deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery officially closed the day Peter and I spoke. There are some grand ambitions here, but the reality is that acquiring Warner never goes well for anyone. AOL failed, AT&

The LG’s picture is bright and punchy, but its panel is very reflective. When it comes to TVs, the LG name has long been synonymous with OLEDs, continually leading Samsung and Sony as the top OLED manufacturer. But 2026 is all about RGB LED TVs. Almost every major company has released models with the new technology - including LG and its $3,600 75-inch Micro RGB evo MRGB95B that I've been testing. And while LG's RGB LED TV benefits from the brightness and color capability the technology provid

At this year's OpenAI DevDay, CEO Sam Altman unveiled the company's new AI agent Dots - and told the crowd that the company wants to "set a new standard for privacy in frontier AI." OpenAI would spend the day taking veiled shots at Meta's Muse, its primary competitor, for failing to keep users' data safe. Yet Muse itself, a couple of months earlier, had launched as a supposedly safer alternative to predecessor OpenClaw - with CEO Mark Zuckerberg promising it was "built from the ground up for pri

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 147, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, I missed you all, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) I'm back from parental leave! Part time, anyway. Thanks to everyone who sent well wishes and tips for managing three kids. I need 'em all. This week, I've been reading about McMansions and data centers and sports cards and ICANN, trying to run my life on the Dell XPS Googlebook,

I'm bouncing down the road in San Carlos, California, zipping past behemoth tech companies like EA and Oracle, in America's smallest electric truck. The Telo MT1 (which stands for "mini truck") unquestionably turns heads because it looks so remarkably different from everything else on the market right now. It has a nearly cab-over design, meaning that front-seat passengers sit almost directly over the front axle. It looks a lot like a Japanese kei truck, with a super-short nose and four doors.

George Williamson says ‘national resilience’ is key focus of ATI amid US and China’s runaway leadership in field The UK must not become dependent on foreign AI systems that can be switched off at short notice and must develop its own versions of the technology, according to the head of the Alan Turing Institute. The country needs a stronger domestic position in AI in response to the US and China’s runaway leadership in the field, with “national resilience” a key focus for ATI said George William

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Tom Watson, of Worcester, alleged to be behind Big Time Charlie X account that created so-called Traitorbase The owner of a recruitment firm has been accused of being at the centre of a so-called “doxxing” campaign against the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), anti-racism activists and business executives who recruit black, Asian and minority ethnic workers. Tom Watson, from Worcester, is alleged to be behind an X account calling itself “Big Time Charlie”, which was deactivated shortly

Are we really living through ‘end times fascism’? Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor think so. In a new series from the Guardian, the pair speak to Radical Thinking with Aditya Chakrabortty in an extended interview. From Trump 2.0 and the rise of the tech billionaire to Gaza and the climate emergency, Klein and Taylor argue we are not just lurching from crisis to crisis but are in a new and dangerous moment in history. But they haven’t given up hope of a fightback Radical Thinking will be published ev

Anthropic said it "turned off live internet access" for "all our internal evaluations" until further notice.