Engadget News + Next

-The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said it received more than 1 million reports of AI-related child sexual abuse material (CSAM) last year. -A few major publications have begun blocking the nonprofit Internet Archives access to their content based on concerns that AI companies' bots are using the Internet Archive's collections to indirectly scrape their articles. -The Chinese...

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-Tesla will “basically stop the production” of its Model S and X electric vehicles next quarter. So says CEO Elon Musk, who made that announcement at the automaker’s earnings call for the 2025 fiscal year. You can still buy the vehicles as long as there are units to be sold, and Tesla promises to support them for as long as people have them. -Mark Zuckerberg says there's an end in sight to Reality...

It's part of a strategy to rely less on US services for government use. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-Meta has faced some serious questions about how it allows its underage users to interact with AI-powered chatbots. Most recently, internal communications obtained by the New Mexico Attorney General's Office revealed that although Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was opposed to the chatbots having "explicit" conversations with minors, he also rejected the idea of placing parental controls on the feature....

X's lack of controls potentially 'exposed citizens in the EU to serious harm,' regulators said. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-The Trump administration is planning on using Google Gemini to draft important federal regulations starting with the Department of Transportation. -TikTok's newly formed US entity is off to a very bumpy start. As the app continues to face technical issues affecting the recommendation algorithm, view counts and other features, TikTok is also seeing a wave of frustrated users uninstalling it. -Goog...

The safety probe comes after Waymo did a voluntary software recall late last year addressing the same issue. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-OpenAI may have called GPT-5.2 its "most advanced frontier model for professional work," but tests conducted by the Guardian cast doubt on its credibility. According to the report, OpenAI's GPT-5.2 model cited Grokipedia, the online encyclopedia powered by xAI, when it came to specific, but controversial topics related to Iran or the Holocaust. -According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple wants t...

Apple needs a better Siri, not an unproven wearable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-TikTok has finalized the deal for its US entity, with its parent company ByteDance selling the majority of its stake to a group of non-Chinese investors. -Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison is apparently still hopeful that investors will approve his $108.4 billion hostile takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. -Elon Musk took the stage recently at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and...

The agentic "Health AI" will be integrated into the primary care provider's app. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-Apple's long-awaited Siri overhaul will allegedly involve transforming the voice assistant into an AI chatbot, internally called Campos. -A report by The Information on Wednesday said that Apple is working on an AI pin. The wearable is said to resemble a slightly thicker AirTag and include multiple cameras, a speaker, microphones, and wireless charging. -Threads has grown enough for Meta to fully...

It also launched new features for Adobe After Effects. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-The AI business is beginning a global rollout of an age prediction tool to determine whether or not a user is a minor. -The FTC lost its antitrust case against Meta last year, but the regulator hasn't given up on its attempts to punish the social media company for its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram. -After testing the feature for the last six months or so, Netflix said it will bring verti...

The project was shut down last year as the company shifted focus toward AI. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-Adobe has announced updates for Premiere and After Effects, including new AI-powered tools that are meant to speed up your video editing tasks. -The UK government has announced a consultation, asking people for their feedback on whether to introduce a social media ban for children under 16 years old. -Gladys West's work laid the foundation for the global positioning system. Learn more about your...

Plus, how to claim Verizon's $20 credit for last week's service outage Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-If you weren't able to shut down your Windows 11 device recently, Microsoft has rolled out an emergency fix addressing a couple of critical bugs that popped up with its latest January 2026 Windows security update. -Washington state residents may soon be forced to produce IDs before getting onto websites with pornographic content. -Six years after the announcement of plans to build Atari Hotels in...

The best budget fitness trackers can help you stick to your fitness goals without breaking the bank. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-The US Department of Commerce announced that Taiwanese businesses will make an upfront investment of at least $250 billion into their US production capacity. -Live Now is included as part of Bluesky's latest update, alongside "cashtags," a separate type of hashtag for collecting conversations about publicly-traded companies. -The Netflix/Sony deal expands on the exclusive rights the companies hav...

The AI can search through your photos, Gmail and Search and YouTube history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-X says it is changing its policies around Grok’s image-editing abilities following a multi-week outcry over the chatbot repeatedly being accused of generating sexualized images of children and nonconsensual nudity. -OpenAI has debuted a dedicated ChatGPT-powered translation tool. While folks have been using the main chatbot for translation for some time, Android Authority spotted that you can now...

Claude Cowork is a file-managing AI agent for the rest of us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced on his X platform that the company will stop selling its $8,000 Full Self-Driving option and make it strictly a monthly subscription service after February 14. -The DEFIANCE Act lets the subjects of nonconsensual, sexually explicit deepfakes take civil action against the people who create and host them. Deepfakes are a known issue online, but without the proper prote...