Instagram is reportedly considering spinning its Reels feature into a standalone short-form video app to take advantage of TikTok’s uncertain future in the US. Instagram head Adam Mosseri was overheard discussing the plans with staff this week according to an anonymous source cited by The Information.
The Reels app is reportedly part of a Meta initiative code-named Project Ray which aims to help Instagram better compete against TikTok. Plans include improving how Instagram content is recommended and bringing more three-minute-long Reels videos to users in the US.
TikTok has around 170 million US users and still faces a ban after being given a 75-day extension by President Donald Trump in January. During TikTok’s temporary removal from app stores last month, Instagram released Edits — a blatant riff on the CapCut video editing app owned by TikTok’s parent company ByteDance — and allegedly tried to lure creators to its own platform with cash bonuses.
It’s unclear if Reels would still be integrated into Instagram if it does get its own separate app, but a dedicated short-form video platform would be closer to the curated scrolling experience provided by TikTok. This would be Meta’s second attempt to launch a direct TikTok competitor after releasing the standalone video-sharing app Lasso in 2018 — and later shutting the app down in 2020 to focus on Reels.
Xiaomi has announced its 15 Ultra flagship phone at a launch event in China, where it’s going on sale starting at 6,499 yuan (around $893). The Android phone joins the company’s Xiaomi 15 and 15 Pro, which went on sale there in October 2024. It is a mostly iterative upgrade on last year’s model, but the big change is the addition of a 200-megapixel periscope camera that the company says excels in low light. The 15 series, including the Ultra, is getting an international launch this Sunday, March 2nd, at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Exactly which markets it will go on sale in remains to be seen, but it’s a safe bet that this one won’t be coming to the US.
Xiaomi’s Ultra line has always been camera-centric, even more so than Samsung or Apple’s top models, and the 15 Ultra is no different. Like last year’s 14 Ultra, the quad rear camera is arrayed in an enormous circular module on the phone’s rear. It’s designed to resemble photography partner Leica’s dedicated camera hardware, right down to the two-tone silver and black finish, and compact “Ultra” corner logo found on one of the phone’s three versions. There are also simpler black or white models.
The 200-megapixel 4.3x periscopic lens follows similar periscopes in Vivo’s X100 Ultra and X200 Pro, and Honor’s Magic 7 Pro. This is a shorter zoom than the 5x periscope on the 14 Ultra, but uses a larger sensor, faster aperture, and higher resolution, which Xiaomi says results in better light capture, bringing improvements in zoom photography, especially in lower light. Xiaomi even codenamed the phone “Night God” internally, so low light photography is clearly a focus this year.
The other three rear sensors are all 50-megapixel, and are set up similarly to last year’s model, albeit with small variations. The most noteworthy change is to the main camera, which has dropped the variable aperture tech featured on the previous model in favor of a fixed — but fast — f/1.63.
The photography focus is enhanced by the release of Xiaomi’s third-generation Photography Kit, an optional extra that includes a case and a camera grip. Beyond a new red finish, not much has changed here either: the internal battery is a little larger at 2,000mAh(allowing this to double as a small power bank for the phone), and there’s a new thumb rest, but the core camera controls remain the same: a shutter button, video button, zoom lever, and exposure dial.
Beyond the inevitable upgrade to the current-generation Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, there are few other upgrades or design changes. The 6.73-inch displayis again 1-120Hz but a little brighter at 3,200 nits peak HDR brightness.An IP68 rating returns, too. The 6,000mAh battery is significantly larger, but the 90W wired charging and 80W wireless speeds are unchanged. As with other recent Android flagships, there’s still no sign of Qi2 adoption.
I thought the 14 Ultra was last year’s best phone camera by some distance, and my colleague Allison called it “a photography nerd’s dream,” so Xiaomi has set itself a high bar to live up to. This was such a strong camera, it’s understandable that the company has kept changes to a minimum this time around. But we’re looking forward to finding out whether its one big upgrade, the periscope, will deliver.
Europe has an electric bike problem. Direct-to-consumer e-bikes from inexpensive Chinese brands like Engwe and countless others can be easily purchased online despite openly flouting EU restrictions. They feature throttles and powerful motors that can be easily unlocked to far exceed the 25km/h (16mph) legal speed limit â no pedaling required.
Engweâs new Mapfour lineup is the companyâs attempt at going legit by expanding from souped-up electric fat bikes and foldables into âpremium commuterâ e-bikes. And because theyâre the first e-bikes that Engwe has designed exclusively for European roads, the company swears they canât be unlocked for more speed.
Iâve been riding the new Mapfour N1 Pro model for the last few weeks. It lists for â¬1,899 (almost $2,000), or â¬1,799 during the initial launch â a price that brings heightened expectations.
The N1 Pro is slathered in premium capabilities like GPS/GSM tracki …
The cheapest iPhone still feels about $100 too expensive.
The iPhone 16E is everything I love and hate about iOS. FaceTime at your fingertips. A reliable camera. Simplicity. Familiarity. Theyâre the pillars of the iPhone experience, and Appleâs newest phone has âem.
My husband picked up the 16E, concerned that he would have to âlearn something newâ to use it. He swiped around for a second and said, âOh. Itâs just like my phone.â It is just like his phone â a six-year-old iPhone XR â only updated with a few essential improvements (a faster processor, nicer screen, and a modern camera, that kind of thing) and little else.
Thatâs the other pillar of the iPhone experience: You get exactly what Apple gives you and nothing more. On Android, you can buy a $500 phone with a fast refresh-rate screen, two rear cameras, seven years of software support, and wireless charging. On iOS, you can buy this $599 phone with one rear camera, a standard 60Hz screen, wireless charging (but no MagSafe), and an ample but unstated amount of software support. Apple has no competition when it comes to phones running iOS. The company can gatekeep these conveniences behind a higher price tag, and thatâs simply the way things will be. Iâm …
The moment Vjeran and I got to the demo room at Frameworkâs San Francisco event, we knew right away â the mint and pink version of the Framework Laptop 12 was the one I wanted to touch, the one he wanted to photograph and film.
Could a modular repairable laptop look great and be cheap? That’s the goal of the Framework Laptop 12 — which is also the company’s first laptop with a touchscreen, its first with a stylus, and its first convertible 2-in-1 tablet PC. We haven’t seen its insides, and we don’t know its price, only that it’ll cost less than $750 when it arrives mid-year. #framework#laptop#repair#tech#techtok#todayimtoyingwith
One of the women standing next to the demo stations thanked us for saying that out loud, because she wasnât initially sure mint and pink would make the cut! She introduced herself as Esther Yen, the senior industrial designer of this entire laptop â and says they were the colors she had asked for.
In late September, Automattic CEO and WordPress cofounder Matt Mullenweg started a public dispute with the hosting provider WP Engine, calling the company “a cancer to WordPress.” He accused WP Engine of not contributing enough to the WordPress ecosystem and profiting off of trademark confusion. As a result, WP Engine was blocked from accessing WordPress.org’s servers.
Automattic has since sent a cease and desist order to WP Engine to stop it from using its trademarks, while WP Engine has followed up with a lawsuit that accuses Automattic and Mullenweg of extortion.
The series of events set off a public battle that calls into question the boundaries between WordPress.com host Automattic, the WordPress open-source project, and the nonprofit that’s behind it.
Tons of colors are on sale, some cheaper than others.
Of the three major gaming consoles, the Xbox Series X / S may have the most diverse controller selection, but Microsoft’s basic Xbox Wireless Controller is still the best Xbox controller for most people. That’s mostly because it’s the cheapest one you can buy with native support for Xbox’s built-in wireless protocol (you can also use it with PC and mobile via Bluetooth or USB-C), but it’s also just really solid overall.
It’s hard to beat the value, especially when they’re on sale for as low as $39, just a few dollars more than their all-time low, as they are in select colors at Amazon and Walmart right now. That’ll get you the basic crop of colors such as black, white, and blue. You can spend a bit more to get the awesome translucent models, which are starting at $57.50 (about $12 off) at Amazon and Walmart.
The Xbox Wireless Controller isn’t loaded with fancy features and gimmicks like newer, more expensive controllers. You can’t easily remove or replace any of its parts, for example, nor does it have back buttons, sensitivity adjustments, or built-in means for customizing and swapping button mapping configurations. But it still sets the standard for how a controller should look, feel, and work. The ergonomic shape and button layout are still the most widely emulated of any controller, perhaps ever.
Some people still scoff that it doesn’t have a rechargeable internal battery, but that’s a point in its favor. Its versatile battery bay lets you either use standard AA batteries or slot in a rechargeable pack. Some of those batteries offer much more play time than controllers with built-in batteries. You’ll never have to plug it in or dock it if you have a charged spare handy, and you won’t have to dismantle an entire controller or shell out for a replacement once they run dry
Exposure to extreme heat could lead to faster aging, a new study published today in the journal Science Advances suggests. Older people living in hotter areas of the US showed faster aging at the molecular level than people living in cooler areas.
The study looked at measures of a person’s biological, or epigenetic, age, which is based on how a person’s body is functioning at the molecular and cellular levels and doesn’t necessarily match a person’s chronological age based on birth. Longer-term exposure to heat was associated with an increase in a person’s biological age by up to 2.48 years. The impact on the body is comparable to the effects of smoking, according to the study authors.
Extreme heat is already the deadliest type of weather disaster in the US, a threat that’s growing as climate change leads to more frequent and intense heatwaves. The new research shows how there are more subtle, insidious ways that prolonged heat exposure can affect the body beyond heat illness or stroke in the moment.
The impact on the body is comparable to the effects of smoking
“We’re kind of surprised [at] how massive this impact could be,” says Eun Young Choi, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral associate at the University of Southern California. “The effects of extreme heat might not show up right away as a diagnosable health condition, but it could be taking a silent toll at the cellular and the molecular level which could years later develop into disability and disease.“
The research included blood samples collected from 3,686 adults aged 56 or older living across the US. The study authors compared those samples with heat index data, a measure of temperature and humidity, between 2010 and 2016. They found a correlation between greater exposure to extreme heat and a bigger jump in epigenetic age. A person living in a place where the heat index is 90 degrees Fahrenheit or above for half the year experienced up to 14 more months of biological aging compared to someone living somewhere with less than 10 days a year that hot.
“The thing that is interesting here is that a lot of observational data focuses on acute impacts of extreme heat exposure – this paper underlines that there may be chronic impacts on epigenetic age that are important predictors of adverse health,” Amruta Nori-Sarma, deputy director of Harvard Chan C-CHANGE and assistant professor of environmental health and population sciences says in an email to The Verge.
Nori-Sarma and Choi say it’s important to keep in mind, however, that the study doesn’t take into consideration whether a person had access to air conditioning or other ways to stay cool. There’s room for more research into what factors might make an individual more resilient or more vulnerable to heat.
“Our finding doesn’t necessarily mean that every person living in Phoenix, Arizona, for example, has an older biological age. This is really an average impact,” Choi says. “Two people in the same neighborhood could have very different levels of personal exposure depending on whether they have air conditioning.”
That also shows that there are steps that can be taken to keep people safe in a warming world. Aside from stopping climate change, that can look like planting more trees and painting rooftops white to prevent urban areas from trapping as much heat, and opening up more public spaces where people can get access to air conditioning. Finding solutions gets easier to do when people are more aware of the potential risks.
It’s technically already Pokémon Day in Japan, and while we’re still a few hours away from this year’s big Pokémon Presents showcase, there’s a new animated short film out that right now feels like the perfect way to get pumped up for whatever surprises Nintendo has in store.
Many of the Pokémon Company’s animated projects outside of the mainline anime have been fun explorations of what people and their pokémon get up to besides battling. But director Maho Aoki’s Dragonite and the Special Delivery also feels like a reminder to thank your mail carriers for all the hard work they do. Produced by CoMix Wave Films — the studio behind Suzume, Weathering With You, and Your Name — Dragonite and the Special Delivery tells the story of Hana (Riko Fukumoto), a young Paldean postal worker who dreams of becoming an expert deliveryperson.
While most deliverypeople get the chance to venture out into the world, as a letter sorter, Hana’s days are usually spent behind a desk with her partner Fuecoco. But when Hana happens to find an unaddressed letter from a young boy who is trying to wish his traveling father a happy birthday, she recognizes it as an opportunity to prove that she has what it takes to become one of the postal system’s greats like a certain friendly Dragonite.
The short spotlights how it takes all kinds of specialized human and pokémon labor to keep the inter-regional postal system running smoothly. Unsurprisingly, CoMix Wave’s take on the pokémon world is a visual delight that makes all of the short’s creatures look downright majestic regardless of whether they’re ordinary or legendary monsters. The short also features a sweeping shot of Kalos’ Lumiose City and quite a few pokémon capable of Mega Evolution.
First-generation Echo speakers won’t get Alexa Plus.
Amazon is bringing the new AI-powered Alexa Plus to a wide range of its existing Echo devices — but the upgrade will skip many of the earliest models. The majority of the company’s first-generation Echos won’t get support, according to the Alexa Plus FAQ page, though Amazon says they will continue to work with the standard Alexa.
Alexa Plus won’t support “certain older generation Echo devices,” such as the first-generation Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Plus, Echo Tap, Echo Spot, and Echo Show; the second-generation Echo Show won’t support it, either. Amazon spokesperson Kristy Schmidt confirmed that is the full list of devices. If so, that still leaves many early Echo devices that will work with Alexa Plus.
That means I’ll be able to ask Alexa to book a restaurant reservation through my Echo Flex, the quirky modular Echo speaker that plugs straight into a wall outlet. And people can still get an AI-generated song piped through speakers they’ve connected their microphone-only Echo Inputs to. And if you have an ancient first- or- second-gen Echo Show 15 or newer Echo Hub, those will apparently get access to the AI-enhanced Alexa, too. Schmidt confirmed that each of those will be compatible.
Perhaps it’s a bummer that some of the older Echo devices won’t use AI to book reservations, track ticket prices, or generate fake songs. But at least they’ll still be able to do the old Alexa stuff, like turn on your lights or tell you the weather. And given rumors about the struggle Amazon has had getting Alexa Plus to work right, that might be a good thing, at least for a while.
Max announced today that it no longer intends to charge subscribers of its Standard ($16.99 / month or $169.99 / year) and Premium ($20.99 / month or $209.99 / year) tiers an extra $9.99 a month for CNN Max and Bleacher Reports Sports. The add-ons will be removed from Max’s ad-supported tier ($9.99 / month or $99.99 / year) beginning on March 30th, however, meaning that subscribers will have to move up to more expensive tiers should they want to keep watching live sports and news.
As The Hollywood Reporter notes, Max’s decision reads very much like a sign of the streamer prioritizing live sports as part of its bundling strategy and responding to competitors like Peacock and Netflix getting more serious about live sports programming of their own. In a statement about the pivot, Warner Bros. Discovery’s head of global streaming and games, JB Perrette, said that Max’s new plan of action came after a year of assessing how users were engaging with sports content on the platform.
“We believe that the best place for that content for now is within the Standard and Premium tiers,” Perrette said. “This update ensures that subscribers can continue to enjoy that coveted access within Max, while also enabling ongoing investment in our premium sports and news portfolio.”
Jeff Bezos attends President Donald Trump’s inauguration, joined by fellow free speech and free market supporters Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. | Image: Getty Images
In a move promoted as supporting freedom of speech, The Washington Post will no longer publish opinion columns that oppose the core views of Post owner and Amazon executive chair Jeff Bezos, Bezos has reportedly told staff. New York Times reporter Benjamin Mullin and Semafor reporter Max Tani published details about the move on Wednesday, noting that changes also include the departure of current opinion editor David Shipley. The memo from Bezos and another from Washington Post CEO Will Lewis were leaked during an Amazon event announcing new features for its Alexa assistant.
“We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” Bezos wrote in an email, according to a screenshot from Mullin. “A big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical; it drives creativity, invention and prosperity.” Opinion articles that oppose these two pillars, Bezos says, “will be left to be published by others.” He concludes that “I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America,” saying he is excited to fill a “void” of coverage supporting them.
Lewis’ email praises Bezos for his email’s “clarity and transparency,” saying a replacement for Shipley will be “announced in due course.”
“Freedom is ethical”
Bezos acquired The Washington Post in 2013, but he began shaping it more visibly shortly before the 2024 presidential election, when he reportedly nixed a planned endorsement of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. (The Postissued a denial that did not actually deny the reports.) While this was commercially detrimental to the paper, it avoided a move that could have incensed victorious Republican candidate and current President Donald Trump, who holds significant power over the fate of Bezos’ e-commerce and aerospace endeavors, as well as its potential acquisition of TikTok. Lewis’ email tells employees that the new shift is “not about siding with any political party.”
Neither Lewis nor Bezos indicated there would be changes to the Post’s news coverage, which is distinct from its opinion section. Bezos also says the opinion section will continue to cover topics unrelated to his two pillars.
All news outlets, of course, have implicit or explicit boundaries for their opinion coverage — and free speech is a central value for many journalists. It’s not even uncommon for opinion writers to publish stories that significantly conflict with their news reporting. But newspaper owners have traditionally allowed their editorial staff to make those decisions, in part to clearly establish their independence. Bezos’ direct involvement raises questions about how independent the Post is from an owner with many other financial interests. In current cultural parlance, terms like “free speech” can also be defined in ways that include direct government regulation of speech.
Fortunately, America is facing numerous urgent and timely questions that fit Bezos’ new, personally issued directive. Are major tech companies like Amazon monopolies that distort fair market competition, and should the US government pursue sweeping antitrust cases that could break them up? Will the administration led by Trump, whose inauguration received a $1 million Amazon donation and was attended prominently by Bezos, continue attempts to censor media outlets by leveraging its regulatory power and access to information? The possibilities are nearly endless.
Amazon’s Panos Panay on stage introducing Alexa Plus. | Photo: Chris Welch / The Verge
Amazon announced a new version of its smart assistant today. Alexa Plus comes with expanded capabilities, the company appeared to demonstrate, like finding concert tickets on your behalf or ordering an Uber to pick up someone at the airport. The upgraded smart assistant will also make it easier to have more natural conversations with it, but Amazon will be charging users for those new abilities for the first time.
Free early access to Alexa Plus will begin in late March 2025 in the United States for customers with eligible Echo Show devices. They’ll be notified through email and device notifications once access to Alexa Plus has been granted, but they will have to opt in to using it.
Subscriptions for Alexa Plus start at $19.99 per month once early access ends, but it’s free for Prime users. Given that Prime costs $14.99 per month, or $139 per year, it’s hard to imagine anyone opting to pay for Alexa Plus on its own. Many of the smart assistant’s new capabilities, such as jumping to the part of a movie where a specific song is playing, will also be dependent on services like Amazon Music and Amazon Prime Video. So to fully take advantage of Alexa Plus, a Prime membership almost seems mandatory.
There were no hardware announcements made at today’s Amazon event, but the company has confirmed that Alexa Plus will work on “almost every” Alexa device released so far, including the Alexa mobile app, as well as Fire TVs and tablets. However, the Echo Show 8, 10, 15, and 21, which all feature touchscreen interfaces, will be prioritized during early access. The company has also confirmed that certain older generation Echo devices, including the Echo Tap and first-generation versions of the Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Plus, Echo Spot, and Echo Show, won’t support Alexa Plus. Amazon’s Astro robot will also only be compatible with the original Alexa.
Update, February 26th: Added additional details on device compatibility and availability.
The Victrola Stream Onyx lets you play vinyl records via your Sonos speakers without the need for additional equipment.
It’s shaping up to be a good week to be a Sonos fan. First, Sonos launched a sale for existing customers that includes steep discounts on soundbars, speakers, and headphones, and now the Sonos-ready Victrola Stream Onyx is more than 50 percent off. Now through February 28th, you can buy the two-speed, belt-driven turntable at Woot for just $249.99 ($350 off), which is a new low price.
The Onyx is the entry-level model in Victrola’s Works with Sonos turntable lineup. Like its pricier siblings — specifically the $799.99 Stream Carbon, $799.99 Stream Pearl, and $1,299.99 Stream Sapphire — it lets you play your vinyl records over your Sonos speaker without requiring you to install any extra equipment. It looks nearly as sleek as the more premium models, too, thanks to a relatively compact design, a metal platter, and a charming illuminated knob found on the front that allows you to control the volume while playing vinyl.
To keep costs down, Victrola made the Onyx from cheaper, thick molded plastic as opposed to higher-quality materials such as metal or wood. The Onyx also comes with a less expensive Audio-Technica VM95E cartridge and, unlike the Sapphire, won’t let you stream records to non-Sonos devices via Wi-Fi. But if you just want a simple, cheap(ish) way to listen to your favorite vinyl records via your Sonos speakers, you probably won’t miss the extra perks.
More ways to save today
Anker’s Soundcore Sport X20 earbuds are on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart for $63.99 ($16 off), which is their second-best price to date. The fitness-friendly buds are a lot like the Sport X10 — which were once our favorite budget earbuds for the gym — only they offer longer battery life, a more robust IP68 water resistance rating, and multipoint support. They also supposedly offer better noise cancellation and continue to sport an adjustable ear hook, which is a boon if you’re someone who struggles with keeping traditional earbuds in during intense gym sessions.
The OnePlus 12R is available at Best Buy with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage for $399.99 ($100 off) as a result of a recent price cut. The 12R remains one of the better midrange phones on the market, with an impressive 6.78-inch OLED display, great build quality, and superfast 80W wired charging. It uses an older chipset than the $599.99 OnePlus 13R and lacks the updated 50-megapixel main shooter, but it’s still snappy enough and comes with a decent camera array. Read our review.
As we noted yesterday, Apple’s AirTags are down to their lowest price to date. If you’re embedded in Samsung’s ecosystem, however, the Galaxy SmartTag2 is a better bet. Luckily, Samsung’s handy item tracker is on sale at Amazon and Chewy starting at $15.96 ($14 off), an all-time low. The UWB-equipped tracker works with Samsung’s Galaxy Find network, allowing Galaxy device owners to locate their misplaced valuables. Each tracker also includes a battery that can last up to 700 days and a robust IP67 rating for water and dust resistance.
Loss of Pulse Detection is already available in the EU, but needed FDA clearance to launch in the US.
Google just announced it’s received FDA clearance for the Pixel Watch 3’s Loss of Pulse Detection feature. It will start rolling out to US devices sometime at the end of March.
The Loss of Pulse Detection feature is exactly what it sounds like: if the Pixel Watch 3 senses that you’ve lost your pulse through an event like a heart attack or an overdose, it’ll send you a prompt. If you don’t respond, it’ll automatically call emergency services on your behalf. Back in August, Sandeep Waraich, Google’s senior director of product manager for Pixel wearables, told The Verge that the Pixel Watch 3 is capable of differentiating between a genuine loss-of-pulse event and a person simply taking the watch off.
This feature has been available in the European Union since September 2024. However, high-stakes health features like Loss of Pulse Detection require regulatory clearance, and each country has its own governing bodies and procedures. Whether it rolls out to other regions will depend on the relevant local regulatory agency.
Here’s what Amazon’s alexa.com website will look like.
Amazon is refreshing the alexa.com website and the Alexa mobile app so that Alexa Plus subscribers will be able to use the revamped, AI-powered voice assistant. We don’t have many details beyond that, but the website and the app could be handy new ways to interact with the revamped Alexa, which was announced at an event this morning.
At the event, Amazon showed how you’ll be able to have conversations with Alexa Plus for things like ordering groceries, controlling smart home devices, and even telling you if someone in your house has recently walked the dog by looking at your home camera footage. Amazon also demoed how Alexa Plus could analyze and summarize documents, and perhaps the new website and app will be used to upload that information.
You’ll access Alexa Plus from the current Alexa app — there won’t be a new app to download, spokesperson Devon Corvasce confirms to The Verge. And when we first published this story, alexa.com just took you to a page to learn more about Alexa and to access the Alexa mobile apps, but now it redirects to a page about Alexa Plus.
It seems like we’ll have to wait a little bit for the new website and app to be available widely, though. Amazon says that Alexa Plus will initially roll out in the US “in the next few weeks,” and then “subsequently in waves in the coming months.” Alexa Plus will cost $19.99 per month or will also be available as part of a Prime membership.
Update, February 26th: Amazon confirmed that Alexa Plus won’t require a separate appand has changed the current page you see when you visit alexa.com.
While showing up at a protest can demonstrate your opinion to the world, you may not want your face â or the faces of other protesters â to be included, especially when there is the possibility that authorities will collect and use that information (as they did for tracking movements during COVID-19 social distancing). As a result, many consider it vital to obscure the faces of people in any photos you may post on social media and other online sources.
What follows are some strategies for removing facial features from your photos. Of course, you can open up your images on a desktop or laptop using Photoshop or Preview to blur or scrub, but weâre going to assume you arenât carrying around a laptop with you. So with mobile in mind, you still have some solid options.
What needs to be done
When removing faces, you want to use a method that canât be reversed. It is possible to de-blur a photo, especially using neural networks. Itâs not possible to completely reverse the blurring, since it is lossy (in other words, some data will be permanently lost), but a lot can be ârestored.â So why take the risk? Painting over faces, or using mosaic blur techniques, will prevent …
Amazon is finally launching the long-awaited generative AI version of Alexa — Alexa Plus — that, if all goes well, will take away much of the friction that comes with talking to a speaker to control your smart home or getting info on the fly.
Some of the new abilities coming to Alexa Plus include the ability to do things for you — you’ll be able to ask it to order groceries for you or send event invites to your friends. Amazon says it will also be able to memorize personal details like your diet and movie preferences.
Alexa Plus is $19.99 per month on its own or free for Amazon Prime members — a better deal, considering Prime costs just $14.99 per month or $139 per year. That comes with access to the Alexa website, where the company said you can do “longform work.” Amazon also said it created a new Alexa app to go with the new assistant. Alexa Plus will work on “almost every” Alexa device released so far, starting with the Echo Show 8, 10, 15, and 21. Early access will start rolling out next month.
Alexa Plus will also be able to carry on conversations from uttering its wake word, which is still just “Alexa.” It also has vision capabilities and can take pictures and analyze images. Amazon demoed other abilities, such as Alexa prompting you to tell you about concert ticket availability and being able to tell you about local businesses (referencing Yelp to do so) and book dinner reservations. The company says it can read a study guide and test you on the answers, as well as research trips and create itineraries.
Like before, you can still control smart home devices, with Amazon calling out things like smart home cameras and lights, but the company says it can create routines on your behalf as well. You’ll also be able to use Alexa Plus for music, with the ability to find songs based on relatively vague descriptions. The company also said you can ask Alexa to jump to a specific scene in a movie, though that took a couple of tries.
A lot of what Amazon showed off was clearly well beyond what you can do with the older version of Alexa. In one part of the demo, Amazon SVP of devices and services Panos Panay asked Alexa if anyone had walked the dog recently, and it referenced smart home cameras to respond that, yes, someone had.
Amazon’s director of Alexa, Mara Segal, demonstrated that you’ll be able to share documents with Alexa — such as handwritten notes and recipes, emails, instruction manuals, and pictures — that it can reference later. For instance, Segal asked Alexa to read a housing association document and analyze its rules regarding solar panels. She also asked it for a readout of a SXSW schedule.
Segal also demonstrated how Alexa Plus can take action when prompted, like telling her about a kids’ soccer schedule and adding calendar details and reminders based on it, all using fairly casual, natural language in an ongoing conversation.
A lot of the demonstrated Alexa Plus features were visual, meaning that the dashboard and UI on touchscreen Echo devices have had a facelift. There are new customizable widgets on the homescreen that can be moved to a second page and a whole new widget specifically for controlling connected smart home devices.
When you speak with the new Alexa Plus on Echo devices with a display, you’ll also see a fluctuating blue bar at the bottom of the interface. Panay said this “is Alexa” and that the little animations and icons it displays are called “Alexicons,” which are used to visually express a sense of personality.
The company also showed off some familiar LLM greatest hits — you can get Alexa Plus to make up stories for you, and it seems to be able to generate AI art as well.
Amazon said Alexa Plus is a model-agnostic system, using its own Amazon Nova model, as well as those from companies like Anthropic. It will choose the best model for the task at hand, according to the company.
Amazon also listed a number of partners from which Alexa Plus draws data to understand and analyze financial markets, sports, and more. Some of the partners include The Associated Press, Politico, The Washington Post, and Reuters.
The company demonstrated that by having Alexa answer questions about the Boston Red Sox and asking Alexa to track ticket availability over time. Alexa Plus will apparently also be able to buy those tickets for you. The company says these are day-one capabilities powered by hundreds of models it calls “experts.”
Amazon said its LLM experts can also do things for services from firms like Uber Eats, Sonos, Wyze, Zoom, Xbox, Plex, Dyson, Bose, Grubhub, Levoit, and Ticketmaster. It also noted some of the Alexa Plus features will be available on the web through Alexa.com.
The company is also partnering with AI song generator Suno to allow Alexa Plus to create songs on the fly from a prompt, with the company demonstrating an AI-made country song about a bodega cat.
Amazon first announced it was going to “supercharge” Alexa with AI in September 2023. Back then, the company made a lot of big claims, saying that Alexa would understand context or build automated routines for you — you needed only ask. But by the following June, around when Apple announced its own Siri AI upgrade, reports emerged that the company was struggling to realize its efforts and that some employees were leaving because they didn’t think this version of Alexa would ever work.
The devices team at Amazon also saw a major executive shakeup in the interim, with longtime leader Dave Limp being replaced by Panay, who’d come over from running Microsoft’s Surface lineup.
Now that its AI Alexa is here, Amazon is entering a world very different from the one Alexa was born into back in 2014. It will compete with a crowded field of AI-powered digital assistants like the way-ahead Google Gemini, the category-defining ChatGPT, and Apple’s reportedly also-struggling upgraded Siri. But with some very limited exceptions, those chatbots aren’t on smart speakers yet, and that may be Amazon’s opportunity. Its speakers could bring an AI chatbot to a lot of people a lot faster than competitors. Amazon just needs to finish getting it out the door.
Peter Rawlinson will stay on as a “strategic technical advisor.”
Lucid Motors founder and CEO Peter Rawlinson will step down, as the luxury EV company sets its sights on doubling production over the next year.
Rawlinson won’t be leaving the company. Instead, he’ll be assuming the role of “Strategic Technical Advisor to the Chairman of the Board,” the company said. Chief operating officer Marc Winterhoff will serve as interim CEO while the board initiates a search for a new chief executive.
“Now that we have successfully launched the Lucid Gravity, I have decided it is finally the right time for me to step aside from my roles at Lucid,” Rawlinson said in a statement. “I am incredibly proud of the accomplishments the Lucid team have achieved together through my tenure of these past twelve years. We grew from a tiny company with a big ambition, to a widely recognized technological world leader in sustainable mobility. It has been my honor to have led and grown this remarkable, truly world-class organization, because Lucid has always been first and foremost about a team effort.”
“I have decided it is finally the right time for me to step aside from my roles at Lucid.”
The leadership shuffle comes as Lucid eyes major growth for the next year. The company says it expects to sell 20,000 vehicles in 2025, nearly double the 10,241 EVs it delivered in 2024. The updated guidance was announced as part of the company’s fourth quarter earnings. Lucid reported a net loss attributable to common stockholders of $636.9 million for the three month period ending December 31st.
Lucid said it earned $234.4 million in revenue for the fourth quarter, on top of $807.8 million for the entire year. The company lost $3.06 billion attributable to common stockholders in 2024, and ended the year with $6.13 billion in total liquidity.
Doubling production will be a tough feat for Lucid, with most analysts predicting that EV share of the retail market to remain flat this year. Its especially tough for a luxury EV company like Lucid, with most of the growth taking place in the mass-market segment. But Lucid has high hopes for its Gravity SUV, which just started its first customer deliveries late last year. The company says it plans on gradually ramping up production during the year.
Lucid said the SUV would get up to 440 miles of range, offer 800 horsepower, and accelerate 0–60 mph in under 3.5 seconds. The Gravity will also be the first vehicle from Lucid to come with a native NACS charging port that’s compatible with Tesla’s Supercharger network.
Amazon is set to announce new Alexa features beginning at 10AM ET this morning — and we hope a few devices accompany them. There isn’t a way to watch the event remotely, but our team is here in person to bring you all of the updates as they happen.
We’re expecting Amazon to announce its new AI-powered Alexa, which, according to earlier reports, could cost as much as $5 to $10 per month on top of a Prime membership. Reuters said in June that Amazon has considered the subscription pricing for a complete Alexa overhaul that could allow people to order dinner from services like Uber Eats or help write an email.
The Washington Post said earlier this month that Amazon won’t release the new version of Alexa for at least a month after this event because the company has reportedly encountered issues with inaccurate answers to test questions.
It seems like it would be a good time for Amazon to announce new products that use the latest version of Alexa, too, so we’re hoping to see new Echos or updates to Amazon’s glasses, Fire TV platform, and other devices and services. But who knows? Follow along below for the updates.
