Engadget News + Next

TechCrunch reports that these new messaging features will roll out in the coming weeks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google is officially debunking a series of reports that claimed Gmail has been hit with a "major" security issue in recent days. "We want to reassure our users that Gmail’s protections are strong and effective," the company said in a somewhat unusual statement. "Several inaccurate claims surfaced recently that incorrectly stated that we issued a broad warning to all Gmail users about a major Gmail...

Plus, looking ahead to the Apple iPhone 17 event. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TikTok is taking another step towards becoming more than just a platform for infinitely scrolling through short videos. The social media app told TechCrunch that its users will soon be able to send voice notes, images and videos in direct messages or group chats. In other tech news, Meta hosted several AI chatbots with the names and likenesses of celebrities without their permission, according to...

The feature has begun appearing for some users but hasn't rolled out widely yet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Microsoft is expanding its AI footprint with the release of two new models that its teams trained completely in-house. MAI-Voice-1 is the tech major's first natural speech generation model, while MAI-1-preview is text-based and is the company's first foundation model trained end-to-end. MAI-Voice-1 is currently being used in the Copilot Daily and Podcast features. Microsoft has made MAI-1-preview...

The company's threat report detailed a 'vibe hacking' extortion scheme powered by Claude. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Most of the time, AI companies are locked in a race to the top, treating each other as rivals and competitors. Today, OpenAI and Anthropic revealed that they agreed to evaluate the alignment of each other's publicly available systems and shared the results of their analyses. The full reports get pretty technical, but are worth a read for anyone who's following the nuts and bolts of AI development....

They singled out the behaviors of Meta's AI chatbots in their letter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

SpaceX has successfully launched the Starship for its 10th test flight after it was delayed a couple of times due to weather conditions and other issues. This time, the company was able to achieve its objectives without the vehicle and its booster exploding mid-test. In other tech news, Anthropic has settled a class-action lawsuit brought by a group of authors for an undisclosed sum. The move mean...

The Jetson AGX Thor developer kit retails for $3,499. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The US Attorneys General of 44 jurisdictions have signed a letter addressed to the Chief Executive Officers of multiple AI companies, urging them to protect children "from exploitation by predatory artificial intelligence products." In other news, Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI is suing Apple and OpenAI, as reported by Reuters. The suit accuses the companies of illegally conspirin...

xAI made the older Grok model available for all, while Elon Musk said the upcoming Grok 3 will follow suit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apple is going after another one of its previous employees for allegedly sharing trade secrets with a new employer. Apple's lawsuit listed Chen Shi, a former employee who worked on the Apple Watch team, along with Oppo, as defendants, claiming they "conspired to steal Apple’s trade secrets." In other news, Users with Mississippi IP addresses can no longer access the Bluesky app. The decentralized...

AI Mode will add agentic event and appointment finders soon, too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

AppleInsider spotted the latest bizarre wrinkle to this story, which is that the actual phone still does not exist. The publication noticed that promotional images for T1 all show different smartphones that appear to be tweaked in a photo editor to look gold. While the website shows a badly edited image of what appears to be a Revvl 7 Pro 5G phone, an Instagram ad seems to depict an iPhone 16 Pro...

It's a battle of the foldables and we break down the differences between the two most popular folding phone brands. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We've heard a lot this year about AI enabling new scams, from celebrity deepfakes on Facebook to hackers impersonating government officials. However, a new report suggests that AI also poses a fraud risk from the other direction — easily falling for scams that human users are much more likely to catch. The report, titled "Scamlexity," comes from a cybersecurity startup called Guardio, which produc...

They cost $230 and are available in two colorways. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The White House has joined TikTok, the social media app that President Trump wanted to ban during his first term. Its first post shows clips of Trump in various events with Kendrick Lamar's track playing in the background. The New York Times notes that it references a popular video edit of Creed, a boxing movie starring Michael B. Jordan, on the app. In the TikTok post, Trump could be heard saying...

A plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee will open in partnership with Kairos Power. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

UK officials will no longer compel Apple to create backdoor access to its users' data. That’s according to US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. She wrote on X that the administration worked closely with the UK over the past months. As The New York Times noted, the UK government issued the secret order earlier this year after amending the Investigatory Powers Act of 2016. In other ne...

Players can expect more age-based restrictions and a new tool that automatically detects inappropriate content. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anthropic's latest feature for two of its Claude AI models could be the beginning of the end for the AI jailbreaking community. The company announced in a post on its website that the Claude Opus 4 and 4.1 models now have the power to end a conversation with users. According to Anthropic, this feature will only be used in "rare, extreme cases of persistently harmful or abusive user interactions."...

They offer real-time text recognition, scene descriptions, facial recognition and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices