Meta is developing what’s described as “super-sensing” vision software that can recognize people by name, according to The Information. The company is reportedly working on two pairs of smart glasses for next year, internally called Aperol and Bellini, and has recently reworked its processes for assessing privacy and safety risks to release products more quickly. In addition to facial recognition, Meta’s AI software — which is activated with a “Hey Meta, start live AI” command — could eventually do things like remind you to grab your keys if it saw that you didn’t, or remind you to pick up groceries as you walk home. The super-sensing feature keeps cameras and sensors always on so the AI can keep track of everything you do. Meta reportedly is already testing live AI on already released models. However, it cuts the battery down to just 30 minutes. Meta is aiming for its upcoming glasses, and possibly a set of earphones that have cameras, to run the software for hours on a single charge.

Alex Mashinsky, the founder and former CEO of the collapsed cryptocurrency lending firm Celsius, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for fraud that led to “billions in losses,” the Department of Justice announced on Thursday. Celsius, which held $25 billion in assets at its peak, abruptly halted withdrawals and transfers during a broader crypto crash in 2022, locking up billions in customer funds. The firm filed for bankruptcy just weeks later. The DOJ charged Mashinsky with securities fraud in 2023, accusing him of misrepresenting Celsius’s business and finances. It also claimed Mashinsky artificially inflated the price of the platform’s token, CEL, by “spending hundreds of millions purchasing it on the open market.” Mashinsky pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud and one count of commodities fraud last December. Mashinsky’s arrest comes as the Trump administration takes a softer stance on crypto regulation. Last month, a memo obtained by The Washington Post revealed the disbandment of a DOJ division dedicated to investigating crypto firms. The Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped several cases against companies in crypto, including Coinbase, Kraken, and Robinhood. “Alexander Mashinsky targeted retail investors with promises that he would keep their ‘digital assets’ safer than a bank, when in fact he used those assets to place risky bets and to line his own pockets,” US Attorney Jay Clayton said in the press release. “In the end, Mashinsky made tens of millions of dollars while his customers lost billions.”

The moment the white smoke appeared above the Sistine Chapel, I immediately turned on my television, because I wanted to see who the new pope would be, and then hopped on social media, because I knew that the internet could tell me more about the new pope faster than television could. That, and the memes would be good. The memes came first, naturally, flying in harder and faster than they ever did with Pope Francis, because the new pope was American. Not just that — Robert Francis Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, was from Chicago, with a bio full of cultural touchstones that the American meme economy grasped immediately: Did the pope ever drink Malort? Was the pope a Cubs or a Sox fan? Was God going to intercede on behalf of the Knicks in the NBA playoffs because the pope graduated from Villanova? The next wave of information was, I’d suspected, going to be news and articles about his upbringing, pastoral history and religious stances — things that would tell the world what sort of leader this new pope would be. And then someone I followed posted a screenshot from an X account with the handle @drprevost: three retweets, over the past three months, that linked to articles harshly criticizing Donald Trump’s immigration policy. True, they weren’t words directly from then-Cardinal Prevost himself, but they were signs of life and intent nonetheless: a brief, unguarded moment, a marker that he was active and engaged, that spoke volumes about the new pope’s innermost thoughts. I guess he didn’t have time to wipe his socials, I thought first, knowing that a giant MAGA political backlash was on the horizon. The pope only has an hour — if that — between being chosen and revealing himself to the world. Definitely not enough time to make sure his timelines are clean. And then I paused. Wait. Why am I thinking about the POPE cleaning up his timelines?I’m not a Catholic, and didn’t grow up one. The best description of my religious affiliation is probably “lapsed Buddhist.” But I’ve always been intrigued by the Catholic Church as an institution: its deep history, its vast theology, its artistic influence and societal dominance, the internal politics and external diplomacy of the modern Vatican. I sometimes joke that I treat and exoticize Catholicism the same way that white men exoticize Japan, but my fascination itself is sincere: I am astonished that somehow, the Vatican has maintained its mysticism in the modern era — an earthly waypoint between the physical and the divine. Which is why I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that less than two hours into his papacy, I learned more about the pope through his digital footprint than I did through the information filtered through Vatican press releases or interviews with his friends and family. I learned from his retweets (and the discourse around the retweets) that he supported gun control legislation and Syrian refugees, opposed the repeal of DACA, condemned the 2017 massacre at Charlottesville, and called on Trump to support climate change legislation. I learned that he’d written a book on religious statistics (available on JSTOR). I learned from one post that he’d been a registered Republican, only to learn moments later that Illinois doesn’t have partisan voter registration. (The Washington Free Beacon reports that Leo XIV has previously voted in Republican primaries.) I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone posted a screenshot of the pope’s Venmo transactions. And then I came across something more intimate: Pope Leo XIV’s personal Facebook profile. I didn’t even have to go digging for it. A friend of mine who’d attended an Augustinian high school sent it to me, because it was apparently going viral among people who’d attended Augustinian educational institutions, because everyone who ever went to an Augustinian school in the United States somehow knows someone who knows him. Robert Prevost’s account is currently set to private — wild, because 68-year-olds rarely set their Facebook accounts to private by default — but there is one public photo available: the future Pope Leo XIV, wearing aviators and a black windbreaker, atop a pony. That’s a meme right there, thought my horrible, earthly, secular mind. Without thinking about it, I copied the link and nearly sent it to a group chat, before catching myself in disgust. Viral or not, this was the private account of a man who’d had some degree of a private life when he got out of bed this morning, and clearly had not anticipated being elected pope. Anyone who harbored the ambition of becoming the spiritual leader of 1.4 billion people worldwide would, at a minimum, probably make sure his socials were secure — that his 172 Facebook friends were masked from the rest of the world, or that his retweets from 2017 wouldn’t set off a diplomatic firestorm from an impulsive president or a spiteful vice president — before he surrendered his electronic devices at the conclave.I don’t think I would have paused to send that social media profile if it had belonged to anybody else: a politician, a celebrity, a coworker whom I didn’t know well, a blind date who needed vetting. And there’s a strong argument to be made that mining any public figure’s digital activity is fair game, particularly if they’re political leaders held to some degree of accountability. Venmo requests are enough to tank congressmen’s careers. Old tweets can land someone in hot water in the present day. Finding a former Fox News anchor’s phone number linked to a public Google Reviews account can indicate a massive national security crisis.The moment you try to apply that standard to the freaking pope, though, the logic just grinds to a halt — not because a world leader shouldn’t be held to this standard, but because it is utterly baffling that one can even mine the socials of the Vicar of Christ. In fact, it’s baffling to think that a religious figure could be subjected to scrutiny of their internet history, or that they possess something as anodyne as a digital footprint — particularly someone inheriting a role that supposedly dates back to the time of Jesus and was established by Saint Peter the Apostle, whose predecessors are ancient saints and medieval rulers, and who claims the title of God’s representative on Earth, according to the 1.4 billion members of the church he leads.Maybe obsessing over the pope’s retweets is a uniquely secular, American way to assess an American pope — not through his leadership of the Order of Saint Augustine or his ministerial work in Peru, but through his voting record, sports loyalty, or whether he’s retweeted mean things about the President. (We are a very tribalist nation that only thinks about things through the lens of being American.) We are now collectively engaged in mining the metadata of Pope Leo XIV’s former life for clues as to the direction of his papacy just as much as we are trying to divine meaning from his choice of regnal name and the thirteen Leos that came before him. Frivolous or not, the digital history of a religious figure is now a thing that exists.See More:

Ever since Google introduced the “Audio Overviews” feature into its NotebookLM research tool, I have been experimenting with feeding it bodies of text that I did not want to sit and read: stereo instructions, Wikipedia rabbit holes, my Q1 performance review, etc.With this AI tool, two uncanny valley robot voices are generated to “dive deep” into any documents I upload — adding metaphors, puns, and even casual banter to a summarized conversation. Click play, and what you’ll hear sounds a lot like a stereotypical podcast.After a few Audio Overviews into my week, I realized I was taking significant time away from listening to podcasts made by real people. And as a podcast producer, this was both alarming and fascinating. I hate to admit how impressive Audio Overviews is. It organizes topics in segments the way a real podcast would, and it brings in outside context to help you better understand the subject material. I generated a podcast from a Spanish paella recipe I found online, and the hosts made note of the difference in rice texture between paella and risotto, without risotto specifically being mentioned in the recipe. Like every AI product I’ve ever used, you have to be careful with the accuracy of the content — it does have issues with hallucination. I uploaded notes from a story I was working on, and the AI hosts made up fictional quotes from my sources that were nowhere in my document.What makes Audio Overviews unique within the AI world is it isn’t necessarily about saving you time. The hosts frequently vamp for a few minutes before getting to the important stuff (that being said, very similar to a real podcast). Director of product at NotebookLM Simon Tokumine tells me this casual format is by design. Initially, the product was very quick and efficient with information, until the team heard feedback from outside of Google.“It was only when we started to actually share what we were building with others and get feedback from people who aren’t necessarily obsessed with making every second of their day as efficient as possible, but are more into leaning back and listening in and just kind of going with a wave of information, that we realized there were two different populations we were building for here,” Tokumine said. “And the population we were building for was not necessarily Googlers.”Watch our full video to see my journey testing out Audio Overviews and my conversations with Simon Tokumine, Vulture podcast critic Nicholas Quah, and our own podcast producers here at The Verge.Oh, and here’s an Audio Overview of that video. See More:

Netflix is removing the last two shows listed on its Interactive Specials page: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend, reports What’s on Netflix. The two specials will be pulled on May 12th, 2025, according to the publication, so if you want to watch them, you’ll want to catch them soon. Bandersnatch wasn’t Netflix’s first interactive special, but it was arguably the platform’s most famous. It was a dark, choose-your-own-adventure-style movie, and after it launched, Reddit detectives immediately went to work to decode the many choices throughout the film. (Though it didn’t work on every device that could play Netflix.) As of late, however, Netflix has been moving in a different direction with its interactive experiences, focusing more on its mobile games library (which has a Black Mirror-themed game) and testing cloud-streamed games over TVs. The new design for Netflix on TVs was even created in part to help people better find games they might like. The removals perhaps shouldn’t be surprising following Netflix’s decision late last year to pull all but four of its interactive specials from its catalog. “The technology served its purpose, but is now limiting as we focus on technological efforts in other areas,” spokesperson Chrissy Kelleher told me ahead of those removals. The other two interactive shows that stuck around were Ranveer vs. Wild with Bear Grylls and You vs. Wild. What’s on Netflix says they were removed in January of this year, but I’m seeing non-interactive versions of the show available to watch. Netflix spokesperson Jessica Braslow declined to comment.

Peloton said it’s not sweating tariffs in its Q3 2025 earnings today, noting it is “predominantly a subscription business” while acknowledging that macroeconomic uncertainty could impact demand for its pricey bikes and treadmills.“During the period of GDP decline between 2008 and 2009, external data showed that us spend[ing] on fitness continued to grow, and that implies the fitness industry has some resilience to external economic factors,” Peloton CFO Liz Coddington said on its earnings call, while underscoring the company’s main revenue comes from subscriptions and that it has a loyal subscriber base. “Or to put it more plainly, the data suggests that fitness isn’t among the first places that consumers are likely to scale back when times are tough.”Peloton disclosed in its shareholder letter just how tariffs are impacting its business. Its hardware is subject to 25 percent tariffs due to its use of aluminum, while its apparel is subject to whatever tariffs end up being levied on China. For its Q4 forecast, Peloton said it expected about $5 million in headwinds for its free cash flow as a result.While Peloton downplayed the impact of tariffs, it’s a fact that Peloton hardware isn’t the cheapest on the market. To that end, Coddington was keen to emphasize that Peloton offers zero percent interest financing, a bike rental program, as well as lower-priced refurbished models. Stern also said the company worked with partners to “pilot dedicated vans stocked with Peloton spare parts” for repairs in a bid to increase customer satisfaction. Stern also shared that the company had appointed a new Chief Operating Officer Charles Kirol, whose main goal is to focus on supply chain logistics and cost management.RelatedCEO Peter Stern added that the company is taking a hard look at pricing, “taking into consideration the impact of tariffs.” Regarding subscriptions, Stern declined to comment but noted it’s been nearly three years since the company hiked subscription prices.Overall, however, Peloton saw losses with hardware sales falling 27 percent year-over-year and subscription revenue dropping four percent over the same time period. Despite that, the company raised its outlook from $247.6 to $247.7 million.A bit more out of left field, Stern took time out of the call to emphasize how AI will help Peloton improve customer satisfaction and efficiency. “I think AI has the potential to give humans superpowers, and so that’s how we’re using AI,” says Stern. As for how, exactly, the company is using AI, Stern primarily discussed how customer support staff now have an AI agent to help them take notes on calls. Peloton has also added AI-powered translations for subtitling its classes. It says it subtitled 3,300 classes this way in Q3, and has ramped up to translating roughly 100 classes per day using AI.Stern also noted that Peloton has been “deploying Google Gemini to most of its Peloton team members” as it will allow them to use their “big creative brains to do big creative thinking.” He added that Peloton is also using AI in personalized plans where the company “take[s] our amazing human instructors and allow[s] them to basically create a program so that we feel more like a personal coach.” Launched in Q3, Stern says that the company is already up to half a million personalized plans set up.“The future is bright for Peloton members with AI,” he said.See More:

When Adam Mosseri took over Meta-owned Instagram as CEO in 2018, the app was experiencing what he’d later call “concerning” drops and plateaus in user engagement, thanks partly to fierce competition from a new app: TikTok. Instagram estimated in 2019 that 23 percent of the decline in time spent on Instagram in the US was due to TikTok. Bytedance’s video app kept expanding through the onset of the covid-19 pandemic. “We can’t explain it all, but what’s clear at this point is that we need to adapt, and do so quickly,” Mosseri wrote to his team in March 2020. Instagram needed to recover, he testified Thursday in a DC courtroom, because “you’re either growing, or you’re slowly dying.”Mosseri described the dire situation while testifying in the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust trial against Meta, where the government alleges the company illegally monopolized the market for personal social networking services, a category that it says includes Snapchat but not more entertainment-focused apps like YouTube or TikTok. Mosseri’s testimony highlighted how much Instagram sees itself as in competition with TikTok, but it also showed that even as entertainment content becomes a larger portion of its offerings, connecting with friends is still a central part of its service — meaning it may still be a relevant market for the court to find it monopolizes.Since his March 2020 warning, Instagram has seen more success, thanks in part to improved AI recommendations for Reels. But TikTok still represents “the fiercest competition that we have faced.” As Instagram has sought to compete more effectively with TikTok in building out Reels, TikTok has become more similar to Instagram, Mosseri testified. While he used to consider TikTok a more of “lean-back experiences” where users passively watch videos, he now sees it as “every bit as participatory as we are at this point.” TikTok is actively trying to engage users’ connections with their friends, he testified, noting it’s rolled out a feed to watch friends’ videos. (A TikTok executive testified earlier in the trial that only 1 percent of videos watched on the platform are through that tab.)Meta has emphasized throughout the trial that connecting with friends and family has become a smaller part of its business in the face of competitive pressures. But Mosseri’s testimony highlighted that helping users engage with their friends is still a core use case for Instagram today, and a way it sees itself being differentiated from rivals. Mosseri said in a 2024 video on his own Instagram account that the reason the app wouldn’t expand into long-form video was because it wasn’t as conducive to sharing with friends. “I still think friends are an important part of the experience,” he testified, though he also shared that as the app has grown overall, “the percentage of the app spent on friend content has gone down.”“Instagram will always need to focus on friends,” Zuckerberg wrote in a 2018 email to Mosseri. Even as it grows to include more entertainment, he added, it “can never exclusively be for public figures or it will cease to be a social product.” Mosseri also bridged the gap between earlier testimony from Zuckerberg, who testified about all the ways Facebook helped Instagram grow, and Instagram co-founder and former CEO Kevin Systrom, who testified that eventually, Zuckerberg pulled back resources from Instagram in favor of Facebook. Mosseri took over as CEO when Systrom left in 2018, and he gave a third perspective on the key question of whether Meta helped grow Instagram in ways it couldn’t have otherwise, or whether it bought it to squash a nascent competitor and later deprive it of resources. Mosseri came over to Instagram from a role at Meta, so he was familiar with the cultures and gripes in both organizations. “As a new member of the Instagram team and a previous member of the Facebook team, I sat right in the middle of it,” he testified. Mosseri observed that in some ways, Instagram had “drifted culturally a bit too far apart in my opinion. We used to refer to Instagram as its own company, and it’s not.” He could see why Instagram’s founders were upset with some of the changes Facebook made to reduce promotion of Instagram from Facebook, but he saw both sides. “I disagreed with some of the changes personally, but I also thought they were being made more of than they needed to be.”Ultimately, Mosseri testified, Facebook’s decision to buy Instagram could go down as ​​“one of the best acquisitions of all time.” Instagram got to access Facebook’s resources and experience, and Facebook got to access the Instagram founders’ unique talent for coming up with innovative products — something Meta would need to stay ahead of competition in years to come. Both companies, he said, “benefited greatly.”See More:

OpenAI has hired Fidji Simo, the CEO of Instacart and former Facebook app chief, as the head of the company’s apps business. In a post on X, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says introducing the new role will allow him to “focus on research, compute, and safety.” After joining Facebook in 2011, the company appointed Simo head of the Facebook app in 2019. Simo oversaw features like the News Feed, Stories, live video, and more, helping to build out the company’s advertising business. Instacart hired Simo as its CEO in 2021 and led efforts to bring the company public just two years later. Simo has served as an OpenAI board member since last year, but she won’t leave Instacart right away to join the AI giant. In a post on LinkedIn, Simo tells Instacart staff that she’s “not going anywhere for a couple of months,” adding that she’ll remain CEO until the company announces a successor. Apps have become a major part of OpenAI’s business as ChatGPT has launched across iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS. OpenAI is also building an X-like social network, as The Verge reported in April.

If you’ve been harboring complaints about Ticketmaster, now’s the time to let it all out. The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission are inviting the public to submit comments about harmful practices in live ticketing as part of efforts to “identify unfair and anticompetitive” behavior in the industry. In March, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to address unfair practices in the ticketing industry, such as scalpers using bots to buy up massive amounts of tickets. He directed the FTC and DOJ to enforce competition laws, as well as file a report about their progress within six months. The agencies plan to use the public comments to inform their recommendations. Ticketmaster has been under closer regulatory scrutiny after its site crashed when Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour tickets went on sale in November 2022, sparking outrage among fans and even Swift herself. The DOJ filed an antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster and its parent company, LiveNation, last year, claiming their illegal monopoly results in higher ticket prices for consumers. You can submit your comments about the live ticketing industry on the Regulations.gov website from now until July 7th. “We will continue to closely examine this market and look for opportunities where vigorous enforcement of the antitrust laws can lead to increased competition that makes tickets more affordable for fans while offering fairer compensation for artists,” Abigail Slater, the assistant attorney general of the DOJ’s antitrust division, said in the press release.

Today, I’m talking with Paul Bascobert, who is the president of Reuters, the news and information service you have undoubtedly heard of. This is part of a special Thursday series we’re running this month to explore how leaders at some of the world’s biggest companies make decisions in such a rapidly changing environment. You know, Decoder stuff. Reuters is a great company for us to kick off with, because it’s been around basically forever. The company was founded in 1851, when the hot technology enabling new kinds of media was the telegraph, and the entire concept of a “wire service” was a wild new idea. Here, today in 2025, the tech driving media has clearly changed more than just a little bit. Distribution in a world full of iPhones and generative AI is a really different proposition than distributing media 50 years before the invention of the radio. It’s even a pretty different proposition now than it was just 20 or 30 years ago, in the web 1.0 era.There’s a lot there, and you’ll hear us get deep into basically every Decoder theme there is. For example, Paul and I spent a lot of time talking about how an organization with a legacy as old as Reuters’ can keep finding an audience and being successful in the current age of digital media, which is dominated by social platforms. The audience isn’t reading newspapers anymore, and I’m not even sure the next generation of news consumers will even be visiting websites. So Reuters is doing a lot of work to make sure its work can find and reach new audiences.Decoder listeners who are familiar with our other episodes with media leaders know I’m very curious how generative AI is going to change the very business of news. And how big media companies are thinking about licensing their content to AI companies, being in litigation with those same companies, or even working with them to build new kinds of products. Paul had a lot of really interesting thoughts here, because Reuters fundamentally has always had licensed content arrangements, because really, that’s just what a wire service is. To Paul, that dovetails neatly into a way to think about AI and AI training data. I pushed really hard to get some hard numbers out of him, so I think you’ll really enjoy the back-and-forth. If you’d like to read more on what we talked about in this episode, check out the links below:The Trust Principles | ReutersBrendan Carr’s FCC is an anti-consumer, rights-trampling harassment machine | VergeAP wins reinstatement to White House events | AP NYT publisher AG Sulzberger on Trump, OpenAI and the economy | ChannelsDow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, press freedom, and the future of news | DecoderPlatforms need the news — but they’re killing it | DecoderWhy The Atlantic signed a deal with OpenAI | DecoderPlatformer’s Casey Newton on surviving the great media collapse | DecoderQuestions or comments about this episode? Hit us up at decoder@theverge.com. We really do read every email!Decoder with Nilay PatelA podcast from The Verge about big ideas and other problems.SUBSCRIBE NOW!See More:

Today, 5 minutes agoLauren Feiner‘Part of our core identity’ is connecting friends.In this 2024 video played in court, Mosseri explains that Instagram doesn’t plan to go after the long-form video market because it’s not as conducive to sharing and interacting with friends. Mosseri testifies that even today, “I still think friends are an important part of the experience.”Today, 19 minutes agoLauren FeinerMosseri moderated a ‘strained’ relationship with Instagram’s founders.In an email thread from 2018, Mosseri checked in with Zuckerberg from paternity leave to try to communicate concerns the Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger had with strategy changes for the app. Mosseri wrote that after catching up with Systrom, it was “hard for me to get a read on what’s going on as the relationship is strained.” He told Zuckerberg, “The core tension seems to be twofold: (1) you believe slowing down Instagram will help more than some others do, and (2) your tolerance for handicapping Instagram is expectedly higher than the Instagram team’s.”Today, 28 minutes agoLauren Feiner‘Instagram will always need to focus on friends.’Zuckerberg told Mosseri in a 2018 email that even as Instagram grows to include more public entertainment posts, it “can never exclusively be for public figures or it will cease to be a social product.” Meta has been arguing that the social media market has changed so much that entertainment is a key focus of social apps including Instagram and TikTok, but the email suggests that at least at the time, Meta’s CEO felt that connecting with friends would always need to be remain a core use case.Today, 51 minutes agoLauren FeinerThe FTC plays Mosseri’s ‘Decoder’ interview.The Verge’s Editor-in-Chief Nilay Patel gets a shoutout in court when the government plays a clip of Mosseri’s January 2021 podcast interview. In the clip, Mosseri talks about joining Instagram and making changes to the safety and integrity operations. Mosseri says on the stand that he indeed “vaguely remember[s] talking to Nilay.” Here’s part of the transcript from the clip they played in court:When I joined Instagram, I wasn’t running it. I was the head of product. I had come from running News Feed at Facebook for a number of years. And I told everybody I was going to be a sponge, and I wasn’t going to push for any change for a couple months while I ramped up and tried to better understand Instagram, the product, the employee base, and the values.But the one place where I almost immediately broke my promise was on safety and integrity. I was pretty interested in the details, having spent the last couple of years being responsible for fake news on Facebook and a bunch of other gnarly safety problems.I found for the most part that [Instagram was] just running our own stuff, and our team was tiny. And so I made the team pivot and essentially [integrate] the technology and work with the engineers who worked on safety across the rest of the company. I actually lost a bunch of people because of that. Not because they disagreed that it was a better way to keep people safe on Instagram over the long run, but it just wasn’t why they signed up to be on the team. So it was pretty painful for six months on that front. And I lost some credibility with some of the people.Today, An hour agoLauren FeinerThreads was initially going to be inside the Instagram app.But the team decided to make it a standalone app because they wanted to replicate how within Twitter, replies are as prominent as the original posts — something that’s not typically the case on Instagram. The group decided it would be too confusing to users to squeeze in this different model. “That was a very contentious decision internally,” Mosseri testifies.Today, An hour agoLauren FeinerPeople go to Twitter for news and celebrities.That’s how Meta viewed the app when it was evaluating launching a competitor that would eventually be called Threads. The FTC is trying to use Meta’s internal evaluations of Twitter to show that it doesn’t see the primary reason for going to Twitter as connecting with friends and family — and therefore, it’s arguing, in a different market from the one it says Facebook and Instagram monopolize.Today, An hour agoLauren FeinerConnecting with friends is still an important part of using Instagram.Mosseri says the app finds the most success in blending entertainment with interacting with friends. That could look like commenting on a public post about a sporting event and interacting with a friend in the comments, he says. That’s important since Meta noted in documents around 2018 that people were sharing less in their feeds, and public content was increasing. The FTC is trying to point out that even if posting to the apps has declined, there’s still friends and family interaction happening.Today, Two hours agoLauren FeinerInstagram CEO Adam Mosseri takes the stand.The FTC is beginning its questioning of the Meta executive by fleshing out what users want out of Instagram. The testimony will help shape how the judge thinks about the market Meta competes in: a limited market in social media networking to keep up with friends and family, or a broader market including entertainment that encompasses apps like TikTok and YouTube.May 7Lauren FeinerInstagram chief Adam Mosseri is testifying tomorrow.Schultz began testifying about how Meta tracked the rise of mobile messaging apps. Mosseri is expected to take the stand tomorrow and we’ll go live again then.May 7Lauren FeinerMeta’s chief marketing officer takes the stand.Alex Schultz, who’s worked at Meta for years in growth and analytics, is now testifying. He clarifies during the FTC’s introductory questions that while there are multiple VPs of analytics, he is “the” VP of analytics. While I was across the courthouse covering Apple executive Eddy Cue’s testimony in the Google remedies case, WhatsApp chief Will Cathcart was testifying earlier today, followed by an FTC expert who surveyed users about their main motivations for using various social media apps.May 5Lauren FeinerCourt adjourns for the day.The judge opted to watch video testimony slated for the day in his chambers, so we’re done for the day. We’ll go live again this week when the trial continues.May 5Lauren FeinerCuts to Instagram’s growth staffing came ‘out of the blue,’ Systrom wrote.A 2014 chat log between Systrom and Deng seems to undercut Deng’s testimony that he doesn’t recall Meta scaling back growth resources for Instagram. Deng says he doesn’t have enough context to confirm what he and Systrom were discussing, but described the chat as a “knee-jerk reaction” to an email they mentioned at the time. “Am I reading correctly we now have less growth support, not more?” Systrom asked. “This isn’t great for us,” Deng wrote at the time.May 5Lauren FeinerMeta supercharged Instagram’s growth, its former product chief says.Deng, who moved to Instagram in 2013 until 2015 after working on Facebook Messenger, is challenging Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom’s testimony that the app could have reached the same success without Meta and that the company deprived it of resources. Deng says Meta helped Instagram with speeding up high quality hiring, and sharing infrastructure and growth team staff. Still, Deng left Instagram several years before Systrom departed the company.May 5Lauren FeinerMessenger exec was ‘not at all’ concerned about WhatsApp becoming a major competitor.Deng, who led product for Facebook’s messenger product in the early 2010s, says he was not worried about WhatsApp growing into a big rival in the US. Since many people in the US had iPhones where they could send mobile messages including photos through iMessage, he says, “people just expected more here than just text messaging,” which was the focus of the simple WhatsApp service. “There’s nothing about what they did that signaled they remotely wanted to get into more expressive messaging.” he says.May 5Lauren Feiner‘We’re all terrified.’Former product executive Peter Deng warned colleagues about the existential threat of mobile messaging apps moving into Facebook’s core space. In an October 2012 email, he called messaging rivals “the biggest threat to our product that I’ve ever seen in my 5 years here at Facebook; it’s bigger than G+, and we’re all terrified,” he wrote, referring to Google’s now-defunct social media competitor. “These guys actually have a credible strategy: start with the most intimate social graph (i.e. The ones you message on mobile), and build from there.” Deng testifies he was referring to the three mobile apps that had started adding such features, and not the one Facebook ultimately acquired: WhatsApp.May 1Lauren FeinerPeople don’t come to TikTok to connect with real-life friends.Former TikTok director of UX research Eric Morrison testifies in a short video deposition that as of 2022, unlike Facebook and Instagram, TikTok “was not necessarily serving that need to connect to people that you already know.” This is the need that the FTC says Facebook and Instagram uniquely fill, alongside the smaller apps Snapchat and MeWe.May 1Lauren FeinerMeta has grown despite the threat of TikTok.Hegeman concedes that even with TikTok becoming a more significant competitor in the past two years, Facebook’s user base and the time users spend on it have continued to grow.May 1Lauren FeinerMeta throws a jab at Apple over its developer policies.Hegeman says that the (not publicly disclosed) number of users who opted out of off-app tracking through Apple’s App Tracking Transparency policy mostly reflects Apple’s scare tactics in framing the question to users, rather than whether users actually prefer not to share their data with Meta. He adds that Apple frames the ask very differently when asking users about similar opt-ins for its own products. “I think it’s a clear example of them trying to leverage their position controlling the iOS operating system to advantage their position in the market,” he says.May 1Lauren FeinerFocusing on friends and family wasn’t a great strategy for Meta.Sometime after 2018, Meta realized that focusing on surfacing friends and family content wasn’t helping it as much as it had hoped. Competitors like TikTok were taking over a lot of time users would spend online, and Hegeman says Meta found it to be a better strategy to broaden the focus of the Facebook app to include investments in video and other kinds of content.May 1Lauren FeinerAds aren’t a huge cost for users.In 2021, Meta found that by reducing the relative amount of ads some groups saw by 80 percent, it only saw about a 3 percent increase of a usage metric. This shows ads aren’t a major cost for consumers, Hegeman says, because if a company like Apple lowered the price of its iPhone by 80 percent, it would likely see much more than a 3 percent increase in sales.May 1Lauren Feiner‘Very little interest’ in Meta’s ad-free subscription in Europe.In response to regulations in the EU, Meta began offering an ad-free version of its products there for 6 Euros a month. But that offering hasn’t caught on, Hegeman says — just about 0.007 percent of users opted to pay for the service.May 1Lauren FeinerUsers don’t really notice when Meta shows them more ads.Meta found when it tested a new system to customize how many ads it shows based on how much a user likes or dislikes them, users didn’t seem to know the difference. The time they spent on the platforms and engaged on it didn’t change much. “This change had a minimal impact on people’s experience and was not very noticeable,” Hegeman says.May 1Lauren FeinerApple’s privacy changes let users block Meta from tracking them off-app.The FTC is asking Meta about Apple’s 2021 App Tracking Transparency policy that let users decide whether to let developers track their activity off-app to help serve more persoanlized ads. Meta warned investors in 2022 that it would result in a $10 billion revenue hit to its business that year. That’s presumably because when users are given an option to give Facebook and Instagram less data, at least a significant chunk of them take it. We don’t know exactly how many, though, since the judge sealed the courtroom to discuss internal metrics like how many people opted into the tracking.May 1Lauren FeinerWould Instagram have collected less user data without Meta?That’s theme of the FTC’s questioning of Meta’s CRO. The FTC’s Stephen Pearson is asking about what Meta says it collects in its privacy policy, and points out that if Instagram were independent, it would have its own policy. Meta uses this data to fuel personalized advertising, which makes money for the company. Pearson is also beginning to touch on ad load — or the relative amount of ads to organic posts users see in their feed — which the FTC has tried to show Meta can increase with relatively little risk of losing users.May 1Lauren FeinerMeta’s chief revenue officer is up next.John Hegeman, the top executive in charge of monetizing Facebook and Instagram, just took the stand. He previously led product management for the Facebook feed.

Palworld. The ongoing lawsuit between Nintendo and Palworld developer Pocketpair has forced the studio to make some changes to its Pokémon-like game. In a new blog post, Pocketpair explained that a patch in November removed certain gameplay features, and that an upcoming update will cull even more. “We have had to make certain compromises in order to avoid disruptions to the development and distribution of Palworld,” the studio says. This started with a patch on November 30th, which most notably removed the ability to summon creatures by throwing a “Pal Sphere,” which is reminiscent of summoning pokémon with a Poké Ball. The studio adds that other changes were made, without specifying what they were. “As many have speculated, these changes were indeed a result of the ongoing litigation.” “As many have speculated, these changes were indeed a result of the ongoing litigation,” Pocketpair explains. “Everyone here at Pocketpair was disappointed that this adjustment had to be made, and we fully understand that many players feel the same frustration. Unfortunately, as the alternative would have led to an even greater deterioration of the gameplay experience for players, it was determined that this change was necessary.” More changes are coming, as well. Pocketpair says that the upcoming patch v0.5.5 will change how gliding works, as “gliding will be performed using a glider rather than with Pals.” Nintendo first filed its patent infringement lawsuit in September of last year, and Pocketpair initially said that “we are unaware of the specific patents we are accused of infringing upon, and we have not been notified of such details.” However, soon after the exact patents at the heart of the lawsuit were revealed, and they covered elements like riding characters and throwing balls in a field. Despite the forced changes, Pocketpair says that “we remain committed to developing Palworld and delivering exciting new content to our fans.” Nintendo, meanwhile, is set to release the next major Pokémon game with Pokémon Legends: Z-A later this year.

Tesla has officially scrapped the range extender accessory it was making for Cybertrucks. In emails seen by Electrek, Tesla confirmed to Cybertruck owners that it’s “no longer planning to sell” the $16,000 battery pack, and that it would be issuing full refunds for the $2,000 deposit put down by customers. The range extender would have taken up around half of the Cybertruck’s rear bed space, and Tesla initially promised that it would give the dual-motor Cybertruck an estimated total range of 470 miles. That estimate was downgraded to 445 miles in 2024, alongside the original release date of “early 2025” being bumped back to “mid-2025.” Official confirmation of its cancellation follows Tesla quietly removing the range extender from the Cybertruck online configurator last month, preventing interested consumers from putting down a deposit for the unreleased accessory.  The battery pack was intended to address disappointment over production versions of the electric pickup. When the tri-motor Cybertruck was announced in 2019, Tesla said it would cost about $70,000 and sport a range of more than 500 miles. The final version’s $99,990 price and 301-mile range fell short of that, as did the $79,990 dual-motor AWD model, with a 325-mile range. Tesla says its entry-level $69,990 Long Range Cybertruck can drive up to 362 miles on a charge. This is the latest in a string of bad developments for Tesla. 35,000 – 50,000 Cybertruck units were sold in 2024 compared to the “over 1 million” people that Elon Musk said had reserved the vehicle the year prior, and sales across the Tesla lineup fell a staggering 13 percent year over year in the first quarter of 2025 amid protests and boycotts over Musk meddling in US and global politics.

The Trump administration is moving to shut down the Energy Star program, which saves homeowners an average of $450 a year. “If you wanted to raise families’ energy bills, getting rid of the Energy Star label would be a pretty good way,” says Steven Nadel of the American Council for Energy Efficiency.  The program, which started in 1992, provides basic information about how much energy an appliance uses. Without it, your next large appliance purchase could end up costing you more money than you bargained for. Buying Energy Star-rated products can also qualify you for rebates on appliances as well as tax credits of up to $3,200 annually. Sources in the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees Energy Star, say that Trump administration officials told them the program will be shuttered, according to reports from CNN and The Washington Post. Molly Vaseliou, EPA Associate Administrator for Public Affairs, confirmed to The Verge via email that the agency is going through the “next phase of organizational improvements” to “better provide clean air, water, and land for all Americans.” Vaseliou shared a PDF showing a future organizational chart with the Office of Transportation & Air Quality and the Office of Radiation & Indoor Air Quality eliminated. Vaseliou did not respond to questions about Energy Star specifically, but the program falls under these departments. Energy Star is a private-public partnership set up by the first Bush administration in 1992 to help consumers and businesses save money by reducing their energy use, while conserving natural resources. Over that time, it’s saved more than $500 billion in energy costs. “For just $32 million a year, Energy Star helps American families save over $40 billion in annual energy costs,” Paula Glover, president of the nonprofit Alliance to Save Energy, told CNN. “That’s a return of $350 for every federal dollar invested.” 

Running out of time but still want to impress Mom this Mother’s Day? Don’t panic – there’s still time to grab a gift that ships fast and won’t scream “last-minute.” Whether you’re after something to make her life easier or something to help her unwind, we’ve rounded up the best gadgets and goodies to do just that. Even better, most are on sale, so you can treat yourself to some savings, too.One final note: non-Prime members may have to pay extra to get their presents in time from Amazon. Fortunately, retailers like Best Buy and Target often offer free shipping that still ensures your gift arrives by Mother’s Day — so there are options for everyone.RelatedThe best last-minute gifts under $50Echo Pop$28$4030% off$28If you’re looking for a versatile gift, the semi-spherical Echo Pop should ship in time for the holiday. Despite its small size, the Echo Pop delivers an impressively rich sound. And as it’s an Alexa-enabled smart speaker, mom can also use it to set alarms, control smart home devices using her voice, and (because it can also function as an Eero mesh Wi-Fi extender) even boost her Wi-Fi coverage. Read our review.You can gift the Dash Rapid Egg Cooker in time for the holiday when you buy it at its full price of $16.99 at Amazon and Target. The Dash Rapid Egg Cooker makes it easy for moms to grab a quick, nutritious breakfast on the go. The dishwasher-safe egg cooker can boil seven eggs in less than 15 minutes with few steps required, and can even be used to quickly whip up an omelette. If you’re looking for a location tracker that works well with both Android and iOS devices, the latest Tile Pro is $29.99 ($5 off) at Target while the Pebblebee Card Universal is available for $29.74 ($5 off) at Amazon. Both are excellent Bluetooth trackers that will help mom keep tabs on her valuables, but the thinner Pebblebee is more wallet-friendly and is compatible with both Apple and Google Find My networks.You can pick up a single Tapo Smart WiFi Light Bulb for $10.78 ($7 off) at Amazon. Best Buy will also ship it in time for the holiday, though you’ll have to pay $59.99 for a pack of five. The 1,100-lumen light bulb can display 16 million colors and supports Matter, so it’ll work with all major smart home platforms with no hub required.Amazon’s latest Fire TV Stick 4K Max is available for $39.99 ($20 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target. The 4K-capable streaming device is faster than its predecessor, offering twice the storage (16GB vs. 8GB) and support for Wi-Fi 6E. It also functions as an Echo Show when idle, displaying widgets and artwork while offering impressive integration with Amazon Alexa.The best last-minute gifts between $51 and $200AirPods 4$99$12923% off$99Apple’s most affordable wireless earbuds offer improved sound over their predecessor, along with a charging case that includes a built-in speaker, so they’re easy to track via Apple’s Find My app. They also introduce Voice Isolation – a feature previously exclusive to the latest AirPods Pro – for clearer call quality. Read our review.If mom’s into fitness, the Fitbit Charge 6 is on sale for $119.95 ($40 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target, which is $20 shy of its all-time low price. The Fitbit Charge 6 will help mom keep tabs of essential health and fitness metrics like irregular heart alerts and sleep tracking, while offering built-in GPS and turn-by-turn navigation via Google Maps. It can also sync with compatible gym equipment via Bluetooth and comes with Google Wallet support, so mom can leave her wallet at home on runs. Read our Fitbit Charge 6 review.The iRobot Roomba Combo i5 is a robot vacuum/mop hybrid that is down to an all-time low of $199 ($150 off) at Amazon, or for $279.99 ($70 off) at Best Buy. Target will also ship it on time for the holiday, albeit at its full price of $349.99. One of our favorite budget-friendly robot vacuums, the Combo i5’s dual roller rubber brushes do an excellent job of cleaning up dirt. It lacks virtual keep-out zones, but it does a good job of mapping out your home and cleaning up designated areas.The Aura Carver digital picture frame isn’t on sale, but it can still arrive in time for Mother’s Day when you buy it for $149 at Amazon and Best Buy. The 10.1-inch cloud-connected frame lets Mom upload and showcase her favorite memories from an Android or iOS device, beautifully displaying each photo in either landscape or portrait mode.The latest Kindle also isn’t on sale, but you can still gift the e-reader in time for Mother’s Day when you buy it with ads and 16GB of storage for $109.99 at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target. Amazon’s entry-level e-reader is not waterproof like the pricier Kindle Paperwhite, but the Kindle is still our favorite budget-friendly option thanks to its sharp 300ppi screen, pocketable six-inch size, and USB-C support. Fujifilm’s Instax Mini 12 is on sale for $69.99 ($10 off) at Target and Best Buy, which is $10 shy of its best price yet. The Instax Mini 12 is our favorite pick for most people, as all you need is point and shoot to quickly generate high-quality snaps. It also comes in a range of fun colors and features handy extras like a built-in selfie mirror.The best last-minute gifts over $200The Skylight Calendar (15-inch)$280$32013% off$280The color-coded Skylight Calendar helps busy moms juggle multiple schedules, even letting them assign chores, create meal plans, display family photos, and more. Its 15-inch screen also offers an at-a-glance view of the family’s schedule so everyone’s on the same page. Read our Skylight Calendar Max review.If mom’s got a sweet tooth, she’ll enjoy the Ninja Swirl, an ice cream maker that will ship in time for the holiday when you purchase it at its full price of $348 at Amazon and $349.99 at Best Buy. In just a few simple steps, the versatile 2-in-1 appliance makes everything from soft serve and hard ice cream to milkshakes, gelato, and frozen yogurt.If you’ve got the money to splurge, the 55-inch version of Samsung’s previous generation The Frame is on sale for $999.99 ($500 off) at Best Buy. If you prefer to buy a similar sized model from Amazon, the 50-inch model is on sale and will arrive in time for the holiday when you buy it for $867.99 ($430 off). The 4K QLED TV displays artwork when idle while offering a smooth 120Hz refresh rate and HDMI 2.1 support. However, it lacks the 2025 model’s faster 144Hz refresh rate, Neo QLED Mini-LED panel, and Wireless One Connect Box.The Oura Ring 4 is a smart ring that offers mom a stylish way to keep track of her health, and will arrive in time when you buy it for $349 at Amazon and Best Buy. The ring accurately tracks many of the standard metrics you’d expect like your heart rate, though it particularly excels as a sleep and recovery tracker. Read our review.See More:

It’s gonna be May. | Image: Samsung Samsung will formally unveil the Galaxy S25 Edge during a virtual Unpacked event on Monday, May 12th at 8PM ET. This answers at least one of our many questions about Samsung’s upcoming slim phone which the company teased back in January. A blog post published with today’s announcement reveals another tidbit or two, but for the rest of the answers we’ll have to tune in on Monday. Samsung isn’t being coy about what it’s announcing: it’s definitely the Galaxy S25 Edge. The blog post comes right out and names the device, saying it “…not only sets a new standard for what you can achieve with your smartphone, but it also unlocks a new era of growth for the mobile industry.” That would be great news for an industry that has seen slumping sales over the past few years. Also noted in the blog post: despite its slim profile, the S25 Edge will come with a 200-megapixel main camera, like the top-of-the-line Galaxy S25 Ultra does. That suggests the S25 Edge will clock in as more of a premium device than Apple’s rumored slim phone is rumored to be. The iPhone 17 Air could come with a single rear camera and a mix of high and low-end features. The S25 Edge, according to Samsung, will merge “flagship-level performance with superior portability.” So what does a flagship-level slim phone that’s supposedly going to set the ailing mobile industry on fire cost? And where will it be sold? Recent rumors pointed to a delayed US launch. It wouldn’t be too surprising to see the phone launch first in Korea, though the fact that Samsung US is offering a $50 credit to those who reserve the phone now bodes well for us. At least one thing looks certain: we won’t have to keep guessing for much longer. The virtual event will stream in plenty of places including Samsung’s YouTube channel.

Google has announced a dedicated iPadOS version of the Gemini app. Previously, you could only run the iOS version of Gemini in compatibility mode on an iPad. Here’s some of the announcement, which Google spokesperson Elijah Lawal emailed to The Verge: With the new app, you can use the split view on the iPad to put Gemini side by side with other apps for multitasking. You can also effortlessly use powerful features like: • Gemini Live: Have natural, free-flowing conversations in over 45 languages. • Deep Research: Quickly generate reports and gather information, saving significant time. • Audio Overview: Easily process and understand audio files. • Canvas: Co-create and edit documents and code in an innovative space built for collaboration with AI. • Image and video generation: Bring your ideas to life by generating stunning, varied images and videos directly on your iPad. The dedicated iPad app is available today in all countries where Gemini is currently offered. You can download it directly from the App Store. Speaking of updated features, we’ve significantly expanded the availability of Audio Overview. Following great initial feedback, this feature, which initially launched in English for Gemini and Gemini Advanced subscribers, is now available in over 45 languages globally. According to the listing, Gemini can also now be added as a homescreen widget, and supports connecting to your Google Photos library.  Google launched Gemini for iOS in November. And while it would’ve been nice for it to debut an iPad-native app at the time, the next best time, as they say, is now. And anyway, it’s not like Google is the worst offender there. 

Microsoft’s Bing or DuckDuckGo probably won’t disrupt Google’s dominance in search, said Apple senior vice president of services Eddy Cue — but AI services easily could.Cue was returning to a courtroom in Washington, DC where he last testified in the Justice Department’s trial against Google’s search monopoly in September 2023. During the current remedies trial on Wednesday, Cue said that in the time since, well-funded generative AI upstarts have made such significant advancements that they could ultimately disrupt that monopoly — perhaps more effectively than the court could. Cue was also, however, there to defend a significant source of Apple’s revenue: the payments Google offers for default search engine placement on Apple’s Safari browser.After the 2023 trial, Judge Amit Mehta found that Google illegally monopolized the online search market, in part through agreements like the Safari deal. For the last two and a half weeks, Google and the DOJ have pitched Mehta on what he should (or shouldn’t) do to fix the problem. The DOJ says Google should be forced to share valuable search data with competitors and spin off its Chrome browser, while Google (which plans to appeal the earlier ruling) wants only restrictions on the deals Mehta deemed unfairly exclusionary. And rather than barring its Apple deal altogether, it would make Google give Apple more flexibility to sign additional default search agreements across its various devices or in private browsing mode. Cue argued Wednesday that rapid AI advancements mean the antitrust threat Mehta identified is shrinking. For the first time in 22 years, Cue said, Apple saw search volume decline in its Safari browser last month — a side effect of users seeking more information from AI chatbots. The DOJ, unsurprisingly, disagrees. It’s not uncommon for technological development to outpace the slow trudge of the court system, but the government says that pace isn’t fast enough to fix a persistent market issue.Apple has a lot of skin in the game here — the DOJ previously revealed it rakes in $20 billion in payments from Google annually. Google’s proposed remedies could reduce it, but they would also open up Apple’s options and preserve much of its revenue flow. The DOJ’s, meanwhile, could wipe out that cash flow altogether. Cue seemed bewildered that Apple could get the short end of the stick for a punishment supposedly inflicted on Google. The idea that the court could decide Google did something wrong and then let it save money at Apple’s expense, he said, “just seems crazy to me.”Google could even keep its prime Safari placement without a deal in the short term, Cue said. “We don’t really have a choice today,” he testified. Even if Apple could cut a new default deal with another company, Google is still the best service available for customers, so they’d probably seek it out — and Apple wouldn’t get a cut. Cue said he’s “lost a lot of sleep” over the prospect of losing the Google deal, and warned it would impact Apple’s ability to make new products. Cue also told Mehta he “can’t say I disagree” with his analysis that Apple was disincentivized from building its own search engine because of its deal with Google. But, he added, “we can’t do everything,” and since Google is really good at what it does, Apple prefers to focus on areas where it can offer unique value. There’s “much greater potential because there are new entrants that are attacking the problem in a different way”AI could eventually change all of this, Cue testified. Apple is already exploring adding AI search options, though it recognizes they can’t yet replace traditional search engines. “To date, they’re just not good enough,” he said.Cue said “good enough” could come sooner than he anticipated. He said there’s “much greater potential because there are new entrants that are attacking the problem in a different way.” Large language model (LLM) AI companies haven’t built a robust enough search index to substitute for Google yet, he said, but combining an LLM with search could let them use a smaller index effectively soon. Even though he is backing Google’s fight to keep its search deals, he seemed to acknowledge that the DOJ’s proposal to syndicate Google’s search index could get AI rivals up to speed even faster. Cue cautioned the judge that tech is not like other industries, and giants often fall even without court intervention. “When I got to Silicon Valley, all of the best companies, or the most successful companies, either don’t exist today or are significantly smaller and less impactful,” Cue said, pointing to companies like HP, Sun Microsystems, and Intel. In the technology field, being an incumbent might not offer the same benefits it does in other markets. “We’re not an oil company, we’re not toothpaste. These are things that are going to last forever,” he said. “You may not need an iPhone 10 years from now.” After nearly four decades at Apple, Cue now sees AI as “a huge technological shift.”Putting himself in the judge’s shoes, Cue told Mehta, “we’re lucky, because honestly, if AI had not come about, I don’t know what you could do.” That’s because, he explained, “until there are truly competitive products, people will keep using the best one.”See More:

Eddy Cue at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 9th, 2024. | Photo by Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images<br> Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of services, gave an ominous warning today that the iPhone could go the way of the iPod 10 years from now. And the reason, as one might guess, is artificial intelligence. Cue's remarks came during the Google Search antitrust remedies trial today while discussing how AI has the potential to reshape the tech industry and open the door to new entrants. Incumbents have a hard time … we're not an oil company, we're not toothpaste - these are things that are going to last forever … you may not need an iPhone 10 years from now. Cue went on to say that the best thing Apple did was kill the iPod, a move he said was bold. "Why would you kill the golden goose," he added. That may seem like a silly thing for Apple to say, given that more than half of its revenue is iPhone sales. But Cue calls AI a "huge technological shift," and suggests that such shifts can humble companies that once seemed unassailable. "When I got to Silicon Valley," he said, "all the best companies or the most successful companies" - he mentioned HP, Sun Microsystems, and Intel - "either don't exist today or are significantly smaller and much less impactful." Some companies … Read the full story at The Verge.

Android’s new design language looks extremely… Gen Z.That much is obvious from the concept images in the leaked blog post that surfaced today (published by Google, as it tends to do). While the theme is customizable, Google highlighted pink, purple, and coral throughout the interface. It’s a decidedly younger, bubblier, and more fun design that screams “look at all this fresh paint!” and less “choose from one of these six popular shades of blue.” Google’s blog also confirms the push toward youth appeal. Fine; freshening up the interface every once in a while is a good and necessary pursuit. Aside from the inherent cringe factor when a group of designers tries to quantify youth appeal in bar graphs labeled “Coolness attributes,” I can’t shake the feeling that none of this matters much against Android’s biggest hurdle in addressing the younger demographic: the iPhone. Android is the most popular mobile operating system in the world. But here in the US, Apple owns a solid majority of all phones sold. The numbers skew even more heavily toward iOS when you look at younger demographics. A 2025 survey from investment bank Piper Sandler reports that 88 percent of teenagers polled own an iPhone. A 2023 article in The Wall Street Journal found that kids who dared to bring an Android phone to school faced teasing for using what is seen as a phone for old people. Google, it seems, would like to do something about that.The screenshots from the blog post, which were saved by 9to5Google, give us a peek at what Google’s attempt to appeal to the youth looks like. It builds on Material You, the interface that Google introduced with Android 12, with a focus on customizability. It added the ability to change the system-wide color palette based on your wallpaper, a feature that Apple more or less copied in iOS 18 with an option to tint homescreen icons. Material Three pushes even further, mixing in bold fonts, bigger icons, and vibrant colors. Material Three seems to emphasize bold icons and colors even more than Material You did. Image: Google / 9to5GoogleThe leaked blog post calls Material Three its “most-researched update to Google’s design system, ever.” Google’s leaked post says it conducted 46 studies testing its new designs, with over 18,000 participants. “While there was a net positive indication across all age groups, younger study participants had the most enthusiastic preference for M3 Expressive, and also rating the designs as high in Visual Appeal and Intention to Use,” the post claimed.It’s not all about the youth. It also says, “…with Expressive versions, we’re seeing a removal of age effects in fixation times, helping 45+ year old users perform on par with their younger counterparts.” Let’s just remember that anyone who’s 45 has probably owned a smartphone longer than the “younger counterparts” have been alive, and I think they were finding the email send button just fine, but I appreciate the consideration.Google’s researchers had participants rate the designs for certain attributes, including those “Coolness Attributes” like “Stand Apart” and “Fascinating.” Great! What the hell does that mean?Apparently, Google thinks it’s an indicator that people might actually be willing to switch to Android based on these designs. “We’ve also seen that this coolness isn’t just a vanity metric, but a positive driver of behavioral intent, meaning users are more likely to want to switch to a product with this design.” Image: Google / 9to5GoogleThere’s only so much Google can do. No amount of vibrant color treatments and “fascinating” icons will change the fact that an Android owner is still the green bubble in the group chat.Apple knows that locking people into iMessage is a huge factor in keeping them in the ecosystem, particularly with the phones people give their kids. RCS has made cross-platform chats much more bearable, but we’re still not quite at feature parity — and those bubbles are still green. Honestly, I don’t hate Material Three, and leaning into a design that looks so different from iOS strikes me as a better idea than making an iOS knockoff. But, at least in the US market, a decision by Apple to open iMessage and FaceTime would do more to boost Android sales than anything Google’s designers can dream up. Is that fair? Not at all, and regulators are trying to do something about it. The UI glow-up doesn’t hurt, but I don’t think this is a situation Google can design itself out of.See More:

Apple is “actively looking at” bringing AI search options to Safari. Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, made the statement during Google’s antitrust trial on Wednesday, saying the company will likely add AI search features to Safari in the coming year as they continue to improve. “To date, they’re just not good enough,” Cue said, adding that Apple has already had discussions with Perplexity, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Cue is mindful that it’s still early days for generative AI, and says that with Apple’s existing agreement with OpenAI for other AI services, it was important to “make sure we have the capability to switch if we have to,” in case a different provider leaps ahead.  The statements came as part of Cue’s testimony about the around $20 billion Google pays Apple to make it the default search engine on Safari. Apple currently offers a ChatGPT integration with Siri, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed last week that the company is getting closer to striking a deal to bring Gemini to the iPhone. Cue added that searches in Safari fell for the first time last month, something that has “never happened in 22 years.” Under Google’s deal with Apple, the search giant pays Apple a chunk of ad revenue from searches on Safari. Fewer searches mean less revenue for Apple, something he has said he’s “lost a lot of sleep thinking about.”

Tesla has started taking orders for its cheaper rear-wheel drive Model Y in the US. The $45,990 vehicle costs $37,490 after federal tax subsidies (as long as they still exist), making it the second-cheapest EV in the company’s lineup after the RWD Model 3. The new option, which Tesla says will start US delivery within the next few weeks, comes with 357 miles of range, or 30 miles more than the all-wheel drive Model Y. It has a single motor on the rear axel, and accelerates from zero to 60 in 5.4 seconds, which is a little slower than the 4.6 seconds of its AWD counterpart.  Tesla needs cheaper EVs to boost sales. Amid growing protests against Tesla CEO Elon Musk targeted Tesla showrooms, Tesla reported its worst sales in three years. Ideally for Tesla, this cheaper EV would reverse its fortunes, although the cheaper Model Ys haven’t had that effect in Europe, where they launched in February. CNN reports that sales continue to drop there, even in the more Tesla-friendly UK, where the company’s April sales plummeted by 62 percent.  Things aren’t looking any better in China, where deliveries dropped by 26 percent compared to March, something the South China Morning Post attributes to a preference for “cheaper, tech-laden” Chinese domestic models.

LinkedIn is launching a new generative AI tool that allows users to find job listings by describing their perfect role. The platform’s updated AI-powered search bar now provides users with job posting results based on natural language descriptions, such as “find me entry-level brand manager roles in fashion,” and “jobs for analysts who love sustainability challenges.” The idea is to provide greater flexibility for people hunting for a new job compared to the restrictive search filters for location, industry, and role already available on LinkedIn. Rather than manually checking each vacancy to see if it matches their skills and interests, users can instead specifically search for the ideal jobs that they qualify for. “AI is changing the way we work, and job search on LinkedIn will completely change the way people find their next opportunity,” LinkedIn career expert Zara Easton said in the company’s press release. “Our hope is that this way of discovering roles — and even new careers — will bring together job seekers’ skills, interests, and aspirations to find their next step.” The AI-powered search is available in English to all LinkedIn Premium subscribers starting today, and is expected to roll out for all members who have their language set to Global English by the end of the week.

On April 22nd, Fight Fight Fight LLC, a company with ties to President Donald Trump, announced that the 220 top investors in its meme coin $TRUMP would be invited to meet with Trump himself. The event was billed as an “intimate private” dinner, but with obvious hints that attendees were buying an elected official’s time. Around the date of the announcement, federal government officials reportedly registered three websites apparently related to the dinner: thetrilliondollarinner.gov, dinnerforamerica.gov, and thetrillion.gov. At least one, it was reported, temporarily directed to a Department of Commerce login portal, suggesting that the coin was somehow linked to the government. The coin’s price jumped by more than 50 percent after the dinner was announced, netting Trump and his allies nearly $900,000 in trading fees in just two days.Two democratic senators demanded an ethics probe into the May 22 dinner, but in February, Trump fired the head of the body that would typically investigate that type of alleged misconduct.The meme coin dinner is the kind of open graft controversy that would have been unfathomable under previous administrations, even Trump’s first term eight years ago. Now it’s just one of dozens of ways the president and those in his orbit have enriched themselves. Along the way, they’ve dismantled government watchdogs that crack down on scams of every scale. The president has created his own money-fleecing spin on Reagonomics — instead of promising trickle-down wealth, it’s trickle-down opportunities for fraud.Trickle-down enrichment starts at the top, with Trump selling access to the White House through promotions like the meme coin dinner . Beneath him are high-profile donors who have bought their way out of accusations of corporate misconduct or outright fraud, particularly the grift-ripe world of cryptocurrency. As the watchdogs that oversee these companies are hobbled, they leave the door open to small-time scammers who can trust their operations won’t be spotted. And this government chaos creates whole new opportunities — and more vulnerable people — to exploit. At every level, regular people have become little more than collateral damage or prey.Related“It’s every direction of influence peddling and corruption that you could imagine,” Lisa Gilbert, the cochair of the Not Above the Law Coalition, told The Verge. “You’ve got the Trump family personally profiting off the presidency. There are the billionaires surrounding him in the cabinet, which is a whole other level. They’re raking it in.”Gilbert, who is also the copresident of the consumer rights advocacy group Public Citizen, described the Trump administration’s relationships with business — and particularly with tech — as a “concentric circle” of influence peddling. “There’s this tech bro ecosystem of which Elon Musk is the pinnacle where it’s all about personal profit in your own companies and your own contracts with the government and what you can get out of it,” Gilbert says. “It’s really corruption in every direction you look.”Trump’s meme coin isn’t his only crypto project. Months before the 2024 election, Trump and his two oldest sons, Eric and Don Jr., launched a cryptocurrency platform called World Liberty Financial. The initial announcement was light on details, but the Trumps described it as a way to help underserved people, as well as those who had been “debanked,” access financial markets they’d otherwise be shut out of. World Liberty struggled to sell its $WLFI tokens early on — until Trump became president, that is. It’s still unclear how much World Liberty is helping debanked people, but it’s a vehicle for foreign investors to essentially donate to the president, as a recent New York Times investigation found.No one has invested more in World Liberty than Justin Sun. Sun’s crypto company Tron was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for fraud in 2023, after allegedly engaging in market manipulation around its token TRX. Then, the embattled founder spent $75 million on $WLFI coins between November and January. A month after Trump took office, the SEC asked a federal judge to halt proceedings in its suit.Trump’s first term was marked by some obvious conflicts of interest, like foreign dignitaries and political groups booking rooms and hosting events at his hotels and other properties. But the apparent partiality has become standard practice in Trump’s second term, extending to federal agencies as well. The SEC has dropped inquiries into and cases against several crypto companies that donated to Trump’s inaugural fund, including ConsenSys, Robinhood, Coinbase, Kraken, Ripple Labs, and Crypto.com, the latter of which recently announced a venture with the Trump Media & Technology Group.Trump media, the parent company of Trump’s social media app Truth Social, has reportedly partnered with Crypto.com and Yorkville America Digital, a Florida-based investment firm, to launch a series of exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the top Democratic member of the Senate Committee on Banking, called Trump’s foray into financial services an “extraordinary conflict of interest” and called on the SEC to ensure that the project would be “free from undue influence.” It’s unlikely that her request will go anywhere.‘It’s every direction of influence peddling and corruption that you could imagine.’In the unlikely event that Republicans help launch a congressional probe into Trump’s self-dealing, the administration has completely dismantled nearly every regulatory body that would enforce potential penalties against the president — not to mention gutted the government agencies dedicated to combatting corporate malfeasance in all its forms. The Department of Justice (DOJ) even disbanded a unit dedicated to enforcing crypto fraud, putting an end to what deputy attorney general Todd Blanche described as “regulation by prosecution.”Other industries are benefitting from Trump’s more laissez-faire approach to enforcement. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has attempted to effectively eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, sending layoff notices to nearly 1,500 workers in apparent violation of a court order barring further firings. Before DOGE’s evisceration of the CFPB, the bureau had already rolled back or outright dropped several investigations into and lawsuits against corporate misconduct, including a suit alleging that the payment platform Zelle had failed to protect its users from “widespread fraud.”Musk’s companies themselves, naturally, have also benefited — including Tesla, which reportedly saved over a billion dollars in potential penalties for allegedly misleading customers about its “self-driving” tech.Far from reining Trump and DOGE in, the Republican-controlled Senate has also attempted to defang the CFPB, and in March voted to strip the bureau of its power to regulate X. The deregulation extends beyond the tech industry: in February, the CFPB halted litigation against Walmart, which it had sued under the Biden administration for allegedly forcing delivery workers to pay “junk fees” in order to get paid. The administration also dropped a lawsuit against Capital One, which the bureau previously alleged had misled customers about savings account interest rates.Trump’s destruction of the CFPB “has huge ramifications for the American people,” says Gilbert, of the Not Above the Law Coalition. “It reins in payday lenders. It helps people grapple with student loan debt and malfeasance on behalf of the institutions that they borrow from. It helps people who are getting ripped off in terms of service. It was founded in the wake of the financial crisis because there was no cop on the beat explicitly for protecting everyday consumers, so taking it away — the consequences are immediate and scary.”The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is investigating the Trump administration’s efforts to do away with the CFPB, according to a letter obtained by CNN. Forty Democratic senators have also written to acting CFPB director Russ Vought, asking him to provide a “detailed accounting” of how the CFPB can “perform all of its statutorily required functions with a staff of 200 people left after slashing almost 90% of the agency.”In a statement to The Verge, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), one of the senators who signed onto the letter to Vought, described Trump’s mass deregulation as “sabotage” that is “turning the country into a grifter’s paradise.”“By gutting watchdogs like the CFPB, FTC, and SEC to tying regulators’ hands, Trump has opened the floodgates to scams, fraud, and grift at every level,” Schumer says. “Under Trump, the United States isn’t just the Wild West; it’s open season on working families.”While the president and his cronies strip the government for parts, the worsening economic climate and total dismantling of the regulatory state are creating a perfect storm for scammers who want to bilk people out of their money.There’s already a copycat $WLFI coin on the market, and there are too many MAGA-inspired shitcoins to name, the values of which crest and fall depending on the goings-on in Trumpworld. One Trump acolyte claims to have founded an app that pays people in crypto for reporting sightings of undocumented immigrants — but that, too, appears to be little more than a crypto pump and dump scheme disguised as a migrant bounty hunting tool.RelatedAs job growth slows further and experts warn of a recession on the horizon, it’s likely that people will find themselves increasingly desperate for work and more susceptible to scams as a result. Before Trump took office, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) warned of a sharp increase in “task scams” that purport to offer people work, often in the form of “game-like online jobs.” More recently, fraudsters posing as mortgage lenders have targeted homeowners, saying they’ll put their houses into foreclosure unless they send payments to a third party immediately. Some scammers are reportedly claiming to offer government checks from DOGE.Gilbert pointed out that many CFPB enforcement actions were the result of complaints lodged by individual consumers. “A lot of that is small-board stuff, things that would not necessarily rise to the level of writing a new rule,” Gilbert says. “When we don’t have those levers in place — when we don’t have that database being watched and reacted to — small scams will be perpetrated across the country, and I think the same is true for each agency that has that responsibility.”The few government agencies left more or less unscathed by DOGE’s cuts have largely moved their focus to protecting Trump and his allies from their critics — or to going after Trump’s enemies. As the DOJ is downscaling crypto crime investigations, the FBI launched a task force to investigate vandalism of Tesla cars and showrooms, which the government is calling “domestic terrorism.” And the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), now helmed by Trump loyalist Brendan Carr, has shifted its efforts away from consumer protection, focusing instead on harassing media and telecom companies that aren’t sufficiently deferential to the president. For as long as money has changed hands, con artists have tried to swindle people out of it. Trump didn’t invent scams, but his administration’s dismantling of every institution that protects consumers will allow them to flourish. It won’t matter. They’ve got theirs.See More:

Patreon creators on iOS can now link fans to alternative payment systems. The latest version of Patreon’s iOS app allows creators in the US to accept payments outside of Apple’s App Store payment system. First seen by TechCrunch, the 125.5.0 update released on Monday enables Patreon creators to link out to web payments, avoiding the up to 30 percent commission that Apple charges on in-app purchases. This follows the Epic v. Apple ruling on May 1st that blocks Apple from imposing fees on purchases made outside of apps. The expected Patreon update joins Spotify, Amazon’s Kindle, and other apps that can now steer US users to better pricing and deals outside of Apple’s App Store without incurring a 27 percent charge from Apple. The new Patreon web payment option supports Apple Pay, credit cards, Venmo, and PayPal. The alternative checkout options are currently limited to fans purchasing new memberships and creators using the subscription billing model, which charges fans based on their sign-up date, according to Patreon. The company is working to include alternative checkout options for one-time payments “in a future update.” “This ruling is a huge moment for creators and fans, and we will continue fighting for a future where creators are in control, communities thrive, and professional creativity is possible for all,” Patreon said in a statement last week.

On Tuesday, a publication called Nexus Point News published a headline for what looked to be a major piece of entertainment news: “EXCLUSIVE: Alex Garland Set To Direct ‘Elden Ring’ Film For A24.” The article claimed that Elden Ring “is expected to be Garland’s next film” and that shooting is expected to start in 2026.But don’t get your hopes up: soon after the article was published, Nexus Point News pulled it, and the publication won’t say why. How this article made the rounds is an interesting case study in the way news travels on the internet.We first saw the Nexus Point News article from a Wario64 post on X. Generally, Wario64 is a great account to follow to see breaking news in video games almost as soon as it happens. And the account is quite popular, with more than 1 million followers on X. But none of us at The Verge had ever heard of Nexus Point News, let alone recognized it as a place that reliably breaks entertainment news, so something didn’t seem right.(Another recent Nexus Point News “exclusive” includes a potential cast member “being eyed” for one of the male leads of Star Wars: Starfighter, but the article includes an update that says “a LucasFilm spokesperson has denied this reporting.”)So I messaged Wario64, asking why he reposted it. He said that the person who posted a thread on the gaming forum ResetEra claimed the site was reliable and that “I guess I’m sharing cause I too think it’s absurd lol.”That thread appears to be this one, where the poster says, in a reply to somebody asking “bro what the fuck is this source lmaooo,” that “Nexus point news is pretty reliable, they are breaking more and more news before the traditional trades.”Soon after, I refreshed the Nexus Point News story and saw that it had been taken down. I told Wario64 that we were looking into the story on our end and about its removal. Soon after, Wario64 posted about the removal and deleted the original tweet.Then, I emailed Nexus Point News’ press line to see if somebody could say what was going on. Demet Koc, the publication’s editor-in-chief, replied two minutes later but declined to comment.A24’s Sophia Shin also declined to comment on the record.The possibility of an Elden Ring adaptation seems likely. FromSoftware said in early 2022 that it hoped to expand the franchise “beyond the realm of games.” George R.R. Martin, who provided the “mythos” for the world of Elden Ring, hinted last year that some kind of adaptation might be in the works. And FromSoftware is about to release Elden Ring Nightreign, a multiplayer-focused spinoff, so announcing a film around now would make some sense. But for the moment, there’s nothing official about an Elden Ring movie.A ResetEra admin locked the thread about the article and another one. “For a site no one’s heard of, they sure have a lot of exclusives,” the admin said.See More:

Amazon-owned Zoox says it issued a software recall for all 270 of its vehicles after an unoccupied robotaxi in Las Vegas crashed into a passenger vehicle on April 8th, Reuters reports. The update rolled out between April 16th and 17th to address a risky situation that could arise when the vehicle operating at over 40mph closed in on another vehicle that approaches its lane from a perpendicular driveway before stopping. In a press release on Tuesday, Zoox said there was only minor damage to both vehicles and no injuries were reported. Zoox shared how the incident played out in the voluntary safety recall report it sent to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on May 1st: The incident involved a passenger car quickly approaching the lane where our purpose-built robotaxi was traveling. Anticipating that the passenger car would proceed forward, the Zoox robotaxi slowed down and steered to the right. Instead, the car came to a stop, fully yielding to the Zoox robotaxi and remaining in the shoulder lane. The Zoox robotaxi braked hard, but contact was unavoidable. The report states that, prior to the update, the company says, “In situations where Zoox vehicles are operating at speeds greater than 40mph, and a vehicle incrementally encroaches from a perpendicular driveway approaching the Zoox vehicle’s lane, the Zoox vehicle may make an inaccurately confident prediction that the vehicle is going to proceed into the Zoox vehicle’s lane.” Reacting based on that inaccurate projection could cause a crash, as happened here. A March recall notice from Zoox also notes that after two incidents where its Toyota Highlander-based robotaxis performed sudden hard braking, causing approaching motorcyclists to rear-end them, it rolled out a software update to address the problem last November.

The AI recorder premise is an enticing one. You wear this tiny microphone around your neck, on your wrist, or pinned to your sweater, and it records everything. Your recorder can tell you all the things you promised to do and immediately forgot; remind you where you were when you talked about how much you liked the coffee; keep notes on all your meetings and conversations. Perfect memory is hard to argue with. But on this episode of The Vergecast, we wonder whether perfect memory is really such a good idea. The Verge's Victoria Song joins the show to talk about her experience with wearables like the Bee, which was sometimes very cool and sometimes totally alarming. We talk about how it felt to be recording all the time, what our friends and families thought, and whether there's a version of these devices we'd be more excited to use. Subscribe: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Pocket Casts | More Then we talk keyboards. Beautiful, expensive, ridiculous-in-the-best-way keyboards. The Verge's Nathan Edwards joins the show along with Ryan Norbauer, the creator of the new $3,600 Seneca keyboard, to discuss what it takes to build the perfect typing tool - and why it's worth … Read the full story at The Verge.

After abruptly pulling their support from what would have been the Senate’s first stablecoin regulatory bill, Senate Democrats announced Tuesday that they would introduce a new bill that would prevent federal officials and their families from issuing digital assets – a bill directed at Donald Trump and his family’s current stablecoin and meme coin holdings.“Currently, people who wish to cultivate influence with the president can enrich him personally by buying cryptocurrency he owns or controls,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who introduced the bill to the Senate floor, in a press release. “This is a profoundly corrupt scheme. It endangers our national security and erodes public trust in government. Let’s end this corruption immediately.”The End Crypto Corruption Act comes in response to concerns inside the Democratic party that the GENIUS Act, which previously had strong bipartisan support, was inadequate at preventing corruption. Though the Senate Banking Committee passed the bill in March with a bipartisan vote, two subsequent developments reportedly pushed the Democrats to change course. First, a New York Times report last week revealed that the Trump family could potentially earn $2 billion from a stablecoin transaction with a Dubai-based investment firm under the current regulatory framework. Second, Trump announced a contest in April wherein the top holders of his meme coin would win a private dinner with the president, and the top 25 holders would win an additional guided tour of the White House. According to a report from Chainalysis, the meme coin’s issuers, Official Trump, have earned $320 million from trading fees from the contest alone.Though they admitted that there’s not much they can do to stop the president right now (see: no laws), Senate Republicans also expressed skepticism over the $TRUMP contest to NBC, and at least one staunch Trump ally, Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, offered to partner with the Democrats on efforts to regulate lawmakers holding digital assets. “Even what may appear to be ‘cringey’ with regard to meme coins, it’s legal, and what we need to do is have a regulatory framework that makes this more clear, so we don’t have this Wild West scenario,” she told NBC.See More:

Google has a new AI tool that can help iPhone users to better grasp complicated or confusing writing online. The Simplify feature, rolling out in the Google app on iOS starting today, generates a simpler, more digestible version of any highlighted text without leaving the current web page. Simplify is built on Google’s Gemini AI model, and was developed by Google Research to make technical jargon easier for anyone to understand without losing key details. For example, Simplify can break down medical terms like “emphysema” (a condition that damages the air sacs in lungs) and “fibrosis” (dense connective tissue or scarring that develops in response to damage) in reports and journals, preventing readers from needing to reference terminology on a separate web page. Google says that people found the simplified versions to be “significantly more helpful than the original complex text” in its testing, but acknowledged the study “has limitations” and that “ongoing vigilance” is required to monitor errors. The feature can be found in the iOS Google app by highlighting any text on a website, and tapping the Simplify icon from the menu options that appear. When asked if Simplify will be made available for Android and desktop Chrome users, Google spokesperson Jennifer Kutz told The Verge that “we don’t have anything to announce yet, but we’re always looking to bring useful features to more of our products.”