Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed sales figures for the company’s Ray-Ban smart glasses for the first time, telling employees that over 1 million units were sold in 2024. In remarks during an all-hands meeting seen by The Verge, Zuckerberg posed a question to staff about whether sales would go from 1 million to as much as 5 million units in 2025.

“I think one of the questions for us is, are we going to go from 1 million this year to 2 million? Are we going to go from 1 million to 5 million?” Zuckerberg said. Since the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses first launched in 2023, they have gradually added new features, such as multimodal AI to process what you’re seeing, hearing, and reading, along with live AI and translations.

“We basically invented the category and our competitors haven’t really shown up yet,” Zuckerberg said during the meeting. “I think we’ll probably start seeing some of that maybe a little later this year, maybe next year, but we just have this wide open field right now to run and basically introduce as many people as possible to Meta AI glasses and we should take that opportunity.”

Meta declined to comment for this story.

Meta is expected to take an …

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Amazon has raised the price of its Music Unlimited service in the US, Canada, and the UK, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter. In an update on its website, Amazon says it’s raising the price for Prime members from $9.99 to $10.99 per month (or $99 to $109 / year), while the plan for non-Prime members is going from $10.99 to $11.99 per month.

The Unlimited Family Plan, which lets up to six people listen to music at the same time, is also increasing from $16.99 to $19.99 per month (or $169 to $199 / year). The price change went into effect for new subscribers on January 29th, 2025, while existing customers will have to pay the updated pricing when their subscription renews, or on or after March 5th, 2025.

Amazon says it’s making the change “in order to bring you even more content and new features.” The company last raised the price of Music Unlimited in August 2023, but its most recent change makes its non-Prime member plan just as expensive as a Spotify individual subscription.

Amazon Music Unlimited has started adding features similar to Spotify in recent months, including one free audiobook each month and a Wrapped-like yearly recap.

Google is trying out a new tool that lets AI call businesses to ask questions for you. The feature, called Ask for Me, collects information about the pricing and availability of a service, but it’s only available for nail salons and auto shops for now.

Once you enable the experiment on Google Search Labs, you might see an “Ask for Me” prompt when looking for local nail salons or auto shops in Search. Select it, and Google will ask a series of questions, like whether looking to get an oil change or tile rotation, what kind of car you have, and when you want to book an appointment. You’ll also have to enter your email address or phone number, where you’ll receive updates about your request.

In a post on X, Google product lead Rose Yao said the feature is built using Duplex, a tool that similarly uses AI to make reservations or book appointments over the phone. With Ask for Me, Google spokesperson Craig Ewer tells The Verge that “every call begins by announcing that it’s an automated system calling from Google on behalf of a user.”

Businesses can opt out of receiving the automated calls from their Google Business Profile settings, or by asking Google not to call them when they receive a call. Ewer says Google has call quotas in place to ensure businesses don’t get calls too often, adding that any information it collects “can be used to help with similar requests from other users.“

But, just like we saw with Duplex, there’s bound to be some confusion when mechanics or nail salon owners pick up the phone and hear an AI calling from Google on the other end.

DeepSeek has secured a “completely open” database that exposed user chat histories, API authentication keys, system logs, and other sensitive information, according to cloud security firm Wiz. The security researchers said they found the Chinese AI startup’s publicly accessible database in “minutes,” with no authentication required.

The exposed information was housed within an open-source data management system called ClickHouse and consisted of more than 1 million log lines. As noted by Wiz, the exposure “allowed for full database control and potential privilege escalation within the DeepSeek environment,” which could’ve given bad actors access to the startup’s internal systems. These findings were first reported by Wired.

DeepSeek “promptly secured” the database after Wiz notified the startup about the issue.

It’s still not clear whether anyone else was able to access the exposed data, but the researchers told Wired, “it wouldn’t be surprising, given how simple it was to discover.” Wiz’s researchers also told the outlet that DeepSeek’s systems are designed similarly to those used by OpenAI, “down to details like the format of the API keys.” OpenAI accused DeepSeek of using its data to train its AI models earlier this week.

Max is putting you in the driver’s seat for NASCAR’s upcoming races. The streamer will now let you watch up to four in-car driver cams at once, starting with the Cook Out Clash on Sunday, February 2nd.

You can switch between up to 40 different driver cams, with each 1080p feed offering the sounds of both the scanner team radios and ambient car noise. If you’re having trouble choosing which drivers to watch in multiview, Max will offer preset options “based on the most compelling matchups.”

Though Max won’t present a top-down view of the race, it will still show a leaderboard, along with the lap number, race status, and stage while you watch the driver cams. You can also switch between the audio on each feed while you’re watching in multiview.

The in-car cams will be available exclusively on Max throughout this year’s NASCAR season. You can access the feeds across all of Max’s platforms, whether you’re watching on a TV or your phone.

“This is such a great way for fans to complement the television experience or the broadcast experience,” Hania Poole, Warner Bros. Discovery Sports’ SVP of digital and product, said in an interview with The Verge. “I think that this product specifically will just continue to evolve, and we’ll iterate, we’ll learn, and we’ll test, and maybe apply it to other scenarios.”

Max currently streams live games from leagues like the NBA, MLB, and NHL, which originally arrived on the service as part of a sports add-on that’s still free for a “limited time.” Now that WBD, Fox, and ESPN have abandoned their live sports streaming venture, companies like Comcast and DirecTV are racing to fill the coverage gap.

Amazon’s Prime Video is about to get a lot more Lionsgate films as part of a multi-year deal that will put the studio’s entire 2026 slate of films on the service. Under the agreement, Prime Video will exclusively stream Lionsgate’s upcoming films in the US after they first appear on Starz. The lineup includes titles like Now You See Me 3 and The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping.

Prime Video doesn’t say how long this exclusivity window will last, but the deal will expand the number of high-profile movies on the service, joining the swath of films it added following Amazon’s acquisition of MGM. Netflix has a similar deal in place that brings Sony films exclusively to the platform.

Along with these new films, Prime Video will also be able to license certain “premium” titles from Lionsgate’s broader catalog, such as John Wick, Twilight, Divergent, Weeds, and Nurse Jackie, starting next year. Prime Video will also get some of the films from Liongate’s 2025 lineup, but there’s no word on which ones it will include, like the John Wick spinoff Ballerina or Saw XI.

Google’s malware scanning Play Protect service will now automatically turn off an Android app’s permissions if it’s potentially harmful. The feature is designed to prevent malicious apps from having access to your phone’s storage, photos, camera, and more.

Though you can still restore the permissions for these apps, Google will ask you to confirm your decision for “added security.” Google Play Protect runs scans on all the apps on your device, including those that have been sideloaded. If Google identifies a harmful app, it will remove it from the Play Store and then warn users if they have it installed on their phone.

Play Protect already has the ability to reset app permissions for apps you haven’t used in a while, and can automatically block or disable a harmful app depending on its severity.

Additionally, if you switch off Play Protect, Google will now display notifications on Chrome and Android asking you to reenable it.

Google is also fending off scammers’ social engineering tactics like those that convince users to turn off Play Protect while on calls “to download malicious Internet-sideloaded apps.” To prevent this, Play Protect will now no longer let you toggle off the service during phone and video calls, including those made through ”popular” third-party apps.

Google has been gradually expanding Play Protect to combat the evolving scams that pop up on its app store, with a recent update bringing live threat detection to Pixel devices, which can pick up on harmful app behavior in real time. This week, Google also introduced a new verification badge for VPNs to indicate that they meet specific security standards.

Spirit Airlines has rejected yet another acquisition bid from Frontier, which would’ve merged the two companies to create the fifth-largest airline in the US, as reported earlier by Reuters. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Spirit called Frontier’s deal ”woefully insufficient financially” compared to the $2.9 billion agreement tossed out in 2022.

As shown in a series of emails made public in the filing, Frontier first submitted its “compelling proposal” to buy Spirit on January 7th in a deal valued at $2.1 billion. However, Spirit CEO Ted Christie and board chair Mac Gardner responded by saying the advisors to Spirit’s bondholders “believe your current proposal is so insufficient as not to merit a counter.”

After some back and forth between the two companies, Spirit ultimately rejected the offer in favor of its existing restructuring plan that’s expected to pull the beleaguered airline out of bankruptcy. “While we appreciate your continued interest and share your view of the logic of a potential transaction, your January 7 terms (which have not been improved on in the last three weeks) are both inadequate and unactionable,” Christie and Gardner said in a January 28th email.

JetBlue, which also attempted to purchase Spirit, abandoned its agreement last year after a federal judge blocked the merger. Frontier’s revived offer may have been designed to take advantage of President Trump’s more merger-friendly administration.

Google Play will now display verification badges on approved VPNs as a way to “highlight apps that prioritize user privacy and safety,” the company announced on Tuesday. The new badge will appear on a VPN app’s details page and within search results, proving that it meets specific standards outlined by Google.

To qualify for the new verification badge, VPN apps must complete a Mobile Application Security Assessment (MASA) Level 2 validation, which evaluates an app’s security. VPNs must also have at least 10,000 installs and 250 reviews, be published on Google Play for at least 90 days, submit information on how they collect user data, and opt in to independent security reviews. Google notes that while “other factors contribute to the evaluation,” completing these requirements “significantly increase[s]” a VPN app’s chance of getting a verified badge.

The update has good timing, as many users are downloading VPNs — some of which may not be secure — in order to gain access to TikTok, which still hasn’t returned to Google Play or Apple’s App Store. VPN apps from Nord, hide.me, and Aloha have already received a verification badge.

This builds on Google’s efforts to provide more transparency and security in the Play Store. The company rolled out privacy labels in 2022 and later introduced a badge showing whether an app received an independent security review.

OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Gov, a version of its flagship chatbot that’s tailored to government agencies. The company says the tool will let US government agencies securely access OpenAI’s frontier models, like GPT-4o.

As noted by OpenAI, government agencies can deploy ChatGPT Gov within their own Microsoft Azure cloud instance, making it easier to manage security and privacy requirements. OpenAI says the launch could help advance the use of OpenAI’s tools “for the handling of non-public sensitive data.”

ChatGPT Gov will come with many of the same features as ChatGPT Enterprise, including the ability to save and share conversations within a workspace, a way to build custom GPTs, and an administrative console for IT teams. OpenAI is similarly working with the UK government to launch an AI chatbot on the UK.gov website.

“By making our products available to the U.S. government, we aim to ensure AI serves the national interest and the public good, aligned with democratic values, while empowering policymakers to responsibly integrate these capabilities to deliver better services to the American people,” OpenAI says in its announcement.

Last week, President Donald Trump rescinded Joe Biden’s executive order that would introduce safeguards for AI systems in the US. Trump also joined OpenAI’s Sam Altman, SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, and Oracle’s Larry Ellison when announcing Stargate, a $500 billion joint venture to build AI data centers.

Since 2024, more than 90,000 users in over 3,500 US federal, state, and local government agencies have sent over 18 million messages in ChatGPT, according to OpenAI. Some agencies using ChatGPT include the Air Force Research Laboratory, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and Minnesota’s Enterprise Translations Office.

Amazon’s first UK drone deliveries will take flight in Darlington, England, the company announced on Monday. The e-commerce giant is taking the initial steps to get Prime Air deliveries off the ground in the area, working with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) for authorization to fly its drones in the airspace.

Once Amazon has approval, it will begin hiring team members to launch drone deliveries out of its Darlington fulfillment center. Amazon didn’t share any details about when Prime Air deliveries will launch in the area.

“We’ll continue to work closely with the CAA as they develop the regulatory framework to make commercial drone delivery a reality in the UK,” Amazon said in its announcement. “In the meantime, we will also engage with the Darlington community to answer questions and collect feedback as we seek to offer this new delivery option.”

Other drone companies have already launched delivery services in the UK, with Skysports partnering with the Royal Mail service for commercial deliveries, and Zipline teaming up with the National Health Service to deliver medical supplies to hospitals and other healthcare providers.

Amazon first announced plans to expand its delivery program to the UK in 2023. The company also completed its first drone delivery test in Italy last year using its new MK30 drone, which is supposed to fly farther – and more quietly – compared to its other drones. Amazon already launched the MK30 drone in Arizona and Texas, where it has approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to operate Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS).

Following years of litigation, a federal court has finally ruled it unconstitutional for the FBI to search communications of US citizens collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In a ruling unsealed last week, US District Court Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall decided that these “backdoor” searches violate the Fourth Amendment.

As noted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, FISA allows federal intelligence agencies to collect swaths of foreign communications “in the name of ‘national security.’” Even though some of those communications might involve US residents, the government has argued that requiring warrants “would hinder the FBI’s ability to obtain and act upon threat intelligence.” In 2023, the FBI conducted more than 57,000 “US person” data searches, marking a 52 percent decrease from 2022.

This particular decision stems from a case involving Agron Hasbajrami, a permanent US resident who was arrested in 2011 over accusations that he planned to join a terrorist organization in Pakistan. However, the government failed to disclose that part of its case rested on emails it obtained without a warrant through Section 702 of FISA. 

An appeals c …

Read the full story at The Verge.

iOS 18.3 is here, and it’s bringing changes to AI notification summaries on your iPhone. In iOS 18.3’s release notes, Apple says it has temporarily disabled notification summaries for news and entertainment apps.

The change, which was first spotted in the iOS 18.3 beta, comes after the BBC called out the feature for incorrectly summarizing one of its headlines. If you opt-in to the feature, Apple will notify you once it becomes available again.

For Apple devices that support Apple Intelligence (iPhone 15 Pro and later, iPads and Macs with the Apple Silicon M1 chip or later, and the most recent version of the iPad mini), today’s updates will also switch Apple Intelligence on by default.

Other features coming with the new iPhone update include the ability to use Visual Intelligence to add an event to the Calendar app from a poster or flyer, as well as a way to “easily identify plants and animals.” On Macs, the macOS 15.3 update that is also rolling out now is adding support for Genmoji, along with similar changes for notification summaries.

Additionally, iOS 18.3 will show notification summaries in italicized text to help you distinguish them from standard notifications. There will be new settings that let you manage notification summaries from your lock screen as well.

You can download the iOS 18.3 update by heading to Settings > General > Software Update.

Meta is widely launching the ability for its AI chatbot to “remember” certain details about you, such as your dietary preferences or your interests, the company said in a blog post on Monday. It will then use your past conversations, in addition to details from Facebook and Instagram accounts, to provide more relevant recommendations.

Meta first started rolling out a memory feature for its AI chatbot last year, but now it will be available across Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp on iOS and Android in the US and Canada. Though you can tell Meta AI to remember certain things, like that you love traveling, it will also “pick up important details based on context.”

For example, if Meta AI provides you with a recipe that contains meat, and you respond that you’re vegan, the chatbot will adjust its future responses to account for your preference.

Image: Meta

Along with these “memories,” Meta AI on Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram will deliver “a greater level of personalization” using information from your accounts on each platform, including your age, gender, and “interests based on your activity,” according to Meta’s support page.

As noted by Meta, if you ask its chatbot for something fun to do with family, Meta AI could use your home location listed in your Facebook profile, as well as recently-viewed reels showing live country performances, to recommend a local country music show. When asked whether you can disable personalization, Meta spokesperson Emil Vazquez said the company doesn’t “offer an opt-out for these features at this time,” adding that “we believe that the best experiences are personalized.”

Meta says its AI will only remember things in one-on-one conversations, not in group chats, and that you can delete its memories “at any time.” Chatbots like ChatGPT and Google Gemini already have a similar feature.

Update, January 27th: Added more information from Meta.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg expects to spend as much as $65 billion on AI in 2025 as part of a “massive effort” to further the company’s AI ambitions. Part of the plan includes a Louisiana data center that Zuckerberg says “is so large it would cover a significant part of Manhattan,” he wrote on Threads today.

The announcement reads like a response to the big AI data center news touted by competitors earlier this week. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump joined OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Softbank’s Masayoshi Son, and Oracle’s Larry Ellison as they announced Project Stargate, a $500 billion joint venture that will build sprawling AI data centers in Texas and other parts of the country. City documents seen by Bloomberg suggest the Texas data center will be as big as New York’s Central Park.

Meta started building its $10 billion AI data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana last December, and its construction is expected to continue through 2030. The data center is one of many Meta started working on last year to power its open-source large language model Llama. Aside from Meta, tech giants including OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia are spending billions to scale up their data-hungry AI efforts.

Zuckerberg said he expects to end the year with over 1.3 million GPUs, while “significantly” growing the company’s AI team. “This will be a defining year for AI,” Zuckerberg wrote. “In 2025, I expect Meta AI will be the leading assistant serving more than 1 billion people, Llama 4 will become the leading state of the art model, and we’ll build an AI engineer that will start contributing increasing amounts of code to our R&D [research and development] efforts.”

Your Threads feed will soon have ads. On Friday, Meta announced that it’s rolling out a “limited, early test of ads in Threads,” and the test will happen with a “handful of brands in the US and Japan,” according to Instagram boss Adam Mosseri.

Image: Meta

Ads on Threads will appear as images between posts in your home feed. “As we learn from this test, we will monitor to see how it’s going before filling out more broadly,” Meta says.

To serve you relevant ads, Meta will use your activity on Threads and Instagram, the posts you interact with, your email address, and “your activity from off Meta technologies,” according to a support page. Threads will also offer ways to customize the ads you see from your account center, along with options to skip, hide, and report them from within your feed.

Last April, Mosseri confirmed that Threads would eventually get ads, and rumors emerged that they would appear in early 2025.

Sony is officially ending production of recordable Blu-rays. In an announcement from Japan spotted by Tom’s Hardware, Sony Storage Media Solutions said it will stop manufacturing the discs in February, alongside recordable MiniDiscs, MD-Data, and MiniDV cassettes, adding, “there will be no successor models.”

This discontinuation doesn’t impact the Blu-rays you can buy with films or TV shows on them; it just affects the blank ones consumers use to record stuff on themselves with PCs or DVRs. Sony hinted at the discontinuation last year, telling the Japanese outlet AVWatch that it would “gradually end development and production of ‘recordable optical disc media.’’

Sony has helped lead the production of Blu-ray since the very beginning. In 2000, the company showed off the first Blu-ray prototypes and later revealed its Blu-ray disc recorders in 2006. Like Sony, LG, Samsung, and Oppo have also started backing away from the format by ending the production of Blu-ray players.

In addition to Blu-ray, Sony’s announcement also affects the MiniDisc — the compact disc format Sony made in 1992 as an alternative to more fragile cassettes and unwieldy CDs. This might make it harder for MiniDisc diehards to get their hands on blank discs, which you can apparently still load music onto using your smartphone.

Following last month’s test, Threads will now let everyone schedule posts, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced on Thursday. You can use the feature by creating a new post, selecting the three-dot menu in the top-left corner, and selecting “Schedule.”

Once you get your post timed up, you can view, delete, or edit it from your drafts folder. Threads will let you schedule your posts up to 75 days in advance, but it won’t allow you to schedule replies.

Screenshot: The Verge

Mosseri also said that Threads is adding a way to “markup” a post you’re resharing. Based on early versions of the feature shared by users, it looks like it will let you draw over, highlight, or add arrows to an existing post. This feature is rolling out to a “few countries with more to come soon.”

There are some big changes in store for Threads, which will also trade fact-checking for Community Notes as part of Meta’s broader moderation shift. The X competitor will start adding political content to recommendations as well.

Google is bringing smart home controls in Gemini to everyone. The Google Home extension in the Gemini app is adding a few new features, in addition to letting you adjust your smart lighting, thermostat, speakers, and other compatible devices as long as they’re connected to your Google account.

Google first previewed the extension last November. With it, you can use natural language to control your smart home when interacting with Gemini, such as saying “The sun is too bright in the living room” to close your smart blinds. But now, Gemini can also carry out multiple requests, like “Turn the armchair light on too, but dim the kitchen lamp.” You’ll be able to use the Google Home extension to ask Gemini about the status of your devices too, such as whether you’ve left your porch light on.

Additionally, Google will let you control “non-sensitive” smart home devices, like your lights, from your phone’s lock screen. Other updates include the ability to adjust the volume, pause, and resume media on smart speakers, displays, and TVs within the Gemini app, as well as an updated thermostat control design that matches the one inside Google Home. Gemini will also automatically open the Google Home app for security-related actions for cameras and locks (it previously only linked you).

The launch of the Google Home extension follows a big update to Gemini, which lets it perform more complex tasks across multiple apps. You can try out the integration for yourself by signing into Gemini with the same account you use for Home and turning on the Google Home extension. It launches today but is rolling out “over the coming weeks.”

Perplexity has turned its AI “answer engine” into a mobile assistant on Android. The new assistant can answer general questions and perform tasks on your behalf, such as writing an email, setting a reminder, booking dinners, and more.

It’s also multimodal, meaning you can ask it questions about what’s on your screen as well as have it open your camera and “see” what’s in front of you. In an example shared by Perplexity, a user asks the assistant to “get me a ride.” Once it learns where the user wants to go, the assistant automatically opens Uber with available rides to that destination.

I tried it out for myself, and it is kind of neat. When I asked it to “open up a good podcast,” my phone started playing the latest episode of The Joe Rogan Experience on YouTube. It worked rather quickly, even though its taste may be questionable.

Screenshots: The Verge

Using my phone’s camera, Perplexity’s assistant successfully identified the promotional Pokémon pack I got in a McDonald’s Happy Meal (don’t judge), which I found impressive since the promotion only started a couple of days ago. It also helped me write and send a text to a family member using the information in my contacts.

Alongside Samsung’s announcement of the Gemini-equipped Galaxy S25, Google revealed that its AI assistant can now complete tasks across multiple apps, as well as complete multimodal requests.

But Perplexity’s assistant doesn’t work across every app and with every feature. It’s not able to access Slack or Reddit, for example, and I also couldn’t use it to leave a comment on a YouTube video. Right now, the assistant supports Spotify, YouTube, and Uber, along with email, messaging, and clock apps, according to Perplexity spokesperson Sara Platick. “We’re continuing to add support for more apps and more functionality though, so this is just the starting point,” Platnick adds.

You can enable the assistant through the Perplexity app, which prompts you to replace your phone’s default assistant with Perplexity. From there, you can swipe up on the left corner of your screen or hold down your home button to access the assistant.

It’s currently not available on the iPhone, however. “If Apple gives us the right permissions, we’ll make it happen,” Platnick says.