Новости за 27.01.2024

Illustration: The Verge

X appears to have blocked searches for Taylor Swift as a reaction to a recent trend of graphic AI fakes of the world-famous recording artist being posted to the site. Right now, if you search “Taylor Swift” or “Taylor Swift AI” on X, formerly Twitter, you may see a “Something went wrong” message. After Platformer’s Casey Newton posted about the apparent block, we tried some other searches. If X is intentionally blocking searches for illicit AI-generated images of Swift, it doesn’t seem to have gotten very far.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft released a new Canary test build for Windows yesterday that brings the company’s Voice Clarity feature, which previously only worked on Surface devices, to all Windows machines, including those using ARM CPUs. The company says in a blog post that the feature uses “low complexity AI models” to filter out background noise, echo, and reverberation in real-time.

Nomad’s minimalist Base One Max 3-in-1 is on sale for $95. | Image: Nomad

Fancy phone chargers are nice, but they’re often too expensive to justify the cost. Nomad’s Base One Max 3-in-1 is one of those rare unicorns that delivers a lot of value for your money, however, thus making it worth the splurge. After all, the device can simultaneously charge a MagSafe-compatible phone, your Apple Watch, and a pair of AirPods (or another Qi-compatible device) — that’s something not even Nomad’s forthcoming Qi2 charger can do. Читать дальше...

Still frame from a teaser reel of Lumiere clips | Image: Google

Google’s new video generation AI model Lumiere uses a new diffusion model called Space-Time-U-Net, or STUNet, that figures out where things are in a video (space) and how they simultaneously move and change (time). Ars Technica reports this method lets Lumiere create the video in one process instead of putting smaller still frames together.

The Jamstik Classic.

For many years now, my Stratocaster has been a memento hanging on my wall representing the time before I got a MacBook. I swapped my electric guitar out for a 25-key keyboard controller and a library of virtual instruments once my career headed to podcasting. In Logic Pro or Ableton, the Stratocaster could only sound like a Stratocaster, but the MIDI keyboard could be anything I needed it to be for my music or sound design work.

Image: The Verge

Many of us are hyperaware of the multitude of ways we can be tracked with modern technology, so you may feel like you don’t need to add another to the mix. But knowing the whereabouts of trusted friends and family can be useful a lot of the time, and it’s something you can do from your Android phone.

Illustration: The Verge

Was it a joyous outage where you got to relax, or did something mission-critical go wrong? Either way, “a portion” of Microsoft Teams went down Friday for over eight hours — with outages in North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, according to status updates from Microsoft’s official account.

Laura Normand / The Verge

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has responded to a controversy over sexually explicit AI-made fake images of Taylor Swift. In an interview with NBC Nightly News that will air next Tuesday, Nadella calls the proliferation of nonconsensual simulated nudes “alarming and terrible,” telling interviewer Lester Holt that “I think it behooves us to move fast on this.”

Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

Legislation needs to be passed to protect people from fake sexual images generated by AI, the White House said this afternoon. The statement, from White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, came in response to a question about the spread of fake sexualized photos of Taylor Swift on social media this week.

The Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Fossil Group has decided to call it quits on smartwatches.

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Spotify — one of Apple’s biggest critics — says Apple’s new plan to comply with the European Union’s tech regulations is “a complete and total farce.” In a post published on Spotify’s website, the company calls Apple’s new app installation fee “extortion, plain and simple” and says Apple is trying to force developers not to leave its store.

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in! I’ll be writing today’s Insider edition of Hot Pod while Ariel Shapiro is getting some R&R in sunny Puerto Rico with her family (meanwhile, it’s been an uncharacteristically rainy and gray week here in Los Angeles).

Image: Beeper

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Beeper announced it’s removing the Beeper Mini app from the Google Play Store and moving the iMessage bridge to the “Labs” section of its cloud version. No new users will be able to use Beeper Cloud to gain entry into Apple’s messaging service, but the chat app acknowledged that iMessage may still work on Beeper Cloud for some existing users. Beeper also made the iMessage bridge (which it noted cost $750,000 to build) open source.

Image: Mozilla

Apple’s new rules in the European Union mean browsers like Firefox can finally use their own engines on iOS. Although this may seem like a welcome change, Mozilla spokesperson Damiano DeMonte tells The Verge it’s “extremely disappointed” with the way things turned out.

Is this what Gen Z really looks like? | Image: Getty

Okay, Gen Z. Sit down, babes. It’s time to talk.