Voice AI company ElevenLabs is now letting authors publish AI-generated audiobooks on its own Reader app, TechCrunch has learned and the company confirmed. The announcement comes days after the company partnered with Spotify for AI-narrated audiobooks. ElevenLabs, which raised a $180 million mega-round last month, started inviting authors to try out their publishing program through [β¦]
ProximaΒ Fusion, a two-year-old, German nuclear fusion startup, has published plans for a working fusion power plant in a peer-reviewed journal, in what is being touted as a step-change in the race to generate limitless energy. Todayβs nuclear fission reactors create radioactive waste, whereas nuclear fusion releases vast amounts of energy, with zero carbon emissions and [β¦]
Two years ago, the last time Framework had an event in San Francisco, California, the highlight was the Framework Laptop 16 β a laptop promising the βholy grailβ of upgradable graphics cards, and easily one of the most ambitious laptops ever made.
But today, the Framework Laptop 16 got little mention at its new event, which focused on the new, similarly gamer-oriented Framework Desktop instead. While the Desktop and Frameworkβs original 13-inch laptop both got the latest AMD processors today, we donβt yet know if or when the Framework Laptop 16 might leap forward too.
The only mention of Frameworkβs flagship laptop was a new βOne Key Moduleβ that will experimentally be available for the Framework community to build their own electromechanical keyboards, should they choose to, that would be thin enough to fit in the Laptop 16βs extremely thin Input Module bay. (You can see how the Input Modules work in my video here.)
I tracked down Framework CEO Nirav Patel at the event today, and he wouldnβt say much, but he was clear on one thing: βWeβre nowhere near done with Framework Laptop 16.β
I pushed my luck, asking: Is today the day he can assure us that the Laptop 16 will eventually see at least one GPU upgrade or snap-on secondary battery?
βToday is not that day,β he told me.
I want to see Framework succeed, and perhaps itβs too early to begin to wonder otherwise β it was still shipping preordered batches of the Laptop 16 to buyers through the middle of last year.
Framework has resisted our pushes so far, stopping short of confirming it in our 2023 story: hereβs his exact language at the time. Itβd be nice if Framework could assure buyers that the upgrades are absolutely coming. But personally, thereβs more than a few things about that laptop Iβd like to change, and I wouldnβt be surprised if Framework was doing a bit of a rethink even if it does deliver.
Following the division behind Pixel, Android, and Chrome in January, Google today announced a new βvoluntary exitβ program for its People Operations, or HR, team.
Anthropic, one of the worldβs largest AI vendors, has a powerful family of generative AI models called Claude. These models can perform a range of tasks, from captioning images and writing emails to solving math and coding challenges. With Anthropicβs model ecosystem growing so quickly, it can be tough to keep track of which Claude [β¦]
Razer is adding a fresh gaming laptop to the pile of new models up for preorder today: the Blade 18. Like its smaller (but far from small) Blade 16 cousin, the new Razer Blade 18 will come with Nvidiaβs RTX 50-series GPUs and Intel Arrow Lake CPUs. But one major way it differs is its large 18-inch display, which has dual modes allowing it to run at either 3840 x 2400 at 240Hz or 1920 x 1200 at 440Hz.
The Blade 18 will start at $3,199.99 with an RTX 5070 Ti and climb to $4,499.99 with an RTX 5090. But if either the Blade 18 or the already announced $2,799.99 Blade 16 are the right pricey option for you, youβll have to wait until late-April for them to actually ship.
Razer isnβt the only PC manufacturer offering new gaming laptops for preorder today. As Nvidia already teased, a variety of new notebooks sporting RTX 50-series GPUs now have finalized pricing, and there are fresh offerings from the likes of Asus ROG, MSI, and HP. Back when many of these laptops were first announced at CES in January, they mostly had estimated prices or no pricing at all.
Asusβs flagship ROG Strix Scar 16, with its new wraparound RGB lighting, starts at $3,299.99 with an RTX 5080 GPU and $4,299.99 with a top-of-the-line RTX 5090. The sleeker Zephyrus G14, which is a Verge favorite for balancing gaming performance with everyday usability, starts at $2,499.99 with an RTX 5070 Ti. And the larger Zephyrus G16 starts with the same GPU at $2,699.99. The G14 can go up to the RTX 5080, but the G16 will go all the way to an RTX 5090 once those higher-end configurations come a little later.
MSI has its RTX 5090-equipped Titan 18 HX AI is up for preorder for an astounding $5,999.99. (Thatβs not even MSIβs ridiculous Dragon Edition Norse Myth, which is still listed as βcoming soon.β) The company has some of its slightly more down-to-Earth gaming laptops up for preorder as well, like the Stealth 18 HX AI with an RTX 5070 Ti starting at $2,999.99.
Lots of these gaming laptops are sitting at the high end with high prices, and some are more expensive than their last-gen versions with 40-series GPUs. Like, previous generations we may have to wait until cheaper mobile GPUs are announced and brought to market to get something not priced into the stratosphere. Hopefully the mobile versions of Nvidiaβs new cards wonβt be saddled some of the problems that have hit its latest desktop class, like mediocre improvements over their last-gen counterparts, power issues, or manufacturing missteps.
The first PCIe Gen 5 SSDs from the likes of Seagate and Crucial began hitting the market nearly two years ago, but Samsung has been notably absent with its own model. That will change in March with the arrival of the Samsung 9100 Pro series, its first consumer-ready pure PCIe Gen 5 SSD built with NVMe 2.0. At launch, it will be available in 1TB (starting at $199.99), 2TB ($299.99), and 4TB ($549.99) capacities in an M.2 form factor, with or without heatsinks. An 8TB configuration, a first for Samsung NVMe SSDs, is slated for the second half of 2025.
By the numbers, the 9100 Proβs theoretical maximum random read and write speeds β 2,200K and 2,600K input-output operations per second (IOPS) β are at least twice as fast as the last-gen Samsung 980 Pro, a PCIe Gen4 SSD. Our earliest comparison of that SSD with Seagateβs Firecuda 540 and Crucialβs T700 showed no noticeable benefits for PC gaming; however, the difference may be more evident for heavier computing workflows. If nothing else, itβd be nice to know youβre future-proofed, at least until PCIe Gen 6 arrives.
The gains might be more apparent if youβre talking about large-volume file transfers, though, which videographers or software engineers working with large datasets might appreciate. Samsung says the 9100 Pro (built on its V Nand TLC V8 with a custom controller) can reach sequential read and write speeds of up to 14.8GBps and 13.4GBps, respectively. Thatβs roughly double the last-gen 980 Pro, and about 2-3GBps per second faster than the earliest PCIe 5 SSDs can manage.
Google is shaking up the AI-powered coding tools market with Gemini Code Assist for Individuals, a free version of its AI-driven coding tool, Gemini Code Assist. This new release gives developers access to advanced code completion and assistance at no [β¦]
Microsoft announced that it is making some features available for free in its Copilot AI assistant. Everyone now has unlimited access to Voice and Think Deeper, which is powered by OpenAIβs o1 model.
Copilot got the Voice feature, which allows users to have conversations with the AI assistant, in October 2024. Think Deeper is intended to parse complicated queries, such as assessing the pros and cons of major home purchases, taking cost and long-term value into account.
"We are working hard to scale unlimited access to advanced features to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible," the blog post noted. Microsoft noted that users could experience delays or interruptions during times of high usage for these newly free Copilot applications. Members of the Copilot Pro subscription will still have preferred access to the company's latest AI models at those peak usage times, as well as to new features that are still in the experimental stage.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/microsoft-copilot-offers-voice-and-o1-powered-think-deeper-for-free-232723768.html?src=rss
Opera released an update on Tuesday for Opera One, the companyβs web browser focused on AI tools. With the new version, Opera One makes it easier for users to access Discord, Slack, and Bluesky directly from the sidebar with just a click.
A bizarre bug is causing iPhones to automatically change the word βracistβ to βTrumpβ when using the built-in dictation feature in iOS. The issue, which seems to have been discovered by TikTok users, crops up when using the voice-to-text feature in Apple apps like Messages.
When speaking the word βracist,β iOS briefly transcribes the text as βTrumpβ before changing it back to the intended word. Itβs not clear what could cause this behavior. Engadget was able to replicate the issue, as you can see in the GIF below.
Apple told The New York TimesΒ it was due to βphonetic overlap between the two words,β despite the fact that the two words do not sound similar. That also doesn't explain why "racist," with a lowercase "r" would transcribe as "Trump" β seemingly a reference to our current president β and not "trump," the noun. An AI expert who once worked on Siri told the paper it could be a βserious prankβ on the part of an Apple employee.Β
Apple didnβt immediately respond to a request for comment.
Whether itβs a bug or prank, it surfaced at a particularly embarrassing time for the iPhone maker, which announced on Monday that it planned to invest $500 billion in manufacturing facilities for AI servers. The investment, most of which was already planned, came after Apple CEO Tim Cook met with President Donald Trump at the White House last week.Β
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/iphones-are-briefly-changing-racist-to-trump-due-to-an-ios-dictation-issue-230712021.html?src=rss
New models of the Apple iPhone 16 are displayed after Apple's "It's Glowtime" event in Cupertino, California, September 9, 2024. Apple on Monday announced a new iPhone built for generative artificial intelligence as it seeks to boost sales and show it is keeping up in the technology race. (Photo by Nic Coury / AFP) (Photo by NIC COURY/AFP via Getty Images)
On Sunday, xAI released a new voice interaction mode for its Grok 3 AI model that is currently available to its premium subscribers. The feature is somewhat similar to OpenAI's Advanced Voice Mode for ChatGPT. But unlike ChatGPT, Grok offers several uncensored personalities users can choose from (currently expressed through the same default female voice), including an "unhinged" mode and one that will roleplay verbal sexual scenarios.
On Monday, AI researcher Riley Goodside brought wider attention to the over-the-top "unhinged" mode in particular when he tweeted a video (warning: NSFW audio) that showed him repeatedly interrupting the vocal chatbot, which began to simulate yelling when asked. "Grok 3 Voice Mode, following repeated, interrupting requests to yell louder, lets out an inhuman 30-second scream, insults me, and hangs up," he wrote.
By default, "unhinged" mode curses, insults, and belittles the user non-stop using vulgar language. Other modes include "Storyteller" (which does what it sounds like), "Romantic" (which stammers and speaks in a slow, uncertain, and insecure way), "Meditation" (which can guide you through a meditation-like experience), "Conspiracy" (which likes to talk about conspiracy theories, UFOs, and bigfoot), "Unlicensed Therapist" (which plays the part of a talk psychologist), "Grok Doc" (a doctor), "Sexy" (marked as "18+" and acts almost like a 1-800 phone sex operator), and "Professor" (which talks about science).
