Google is using AI to make fake podcasts from your notes

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos by Getty Images Google can now turn your research into an AI-generated podcast, complete with two “hosts” that discuss what you’ve dug up. The experimental feature lives within NotebookLM, the AI note-taking app Google launched last year, and will have AI hosts “summarize your material, make connections between topics, and banter back and forth.”
It’s meant to build on NotebookLM’s existing features that

The Eufy E30 is a Matter-compatible smart lock with a fingerprint reader. It’s Eufy’s first lock to work with Apple Home. | Image: Eufy The latest smart lock from Eufy is its first product to support Matter. The Eufy Smart Lock E30 ($169.99) works over Thread, which should allow for faster responsiveness, longer battery life, and better connectivity than locks that work just over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.The E30 is also the first smart lock from Anker’s smart home arm that works with

The Kensington SD5000T5. | Image: Kensington The first Thunderbolt 5 cables arrived in July, and now it looks like we’re finally getting the first Thunderbolt 5 dock! Kensington has just announced the Intel-certified SD5000T5 EQ is now available to buy, seemingly beating every rival to the 120Gbps single-cable docking punch. (I just checked: Hyper, J5Create and OWC’s docks aren’t yet available.)The new dock claims to support up to three 4K monitors or two 8K monitors on Windows

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you’ve tried out Snapchat’s AI-generated selfies, you might want to double-check a setting that lets Snap use your face in “personalized sponsored content and ads,” as spotted by 404 Media.
The feature, called My Selfie, lets you and your friends create AI-generated images of yourself based on photos you share with Snapchat. When using the feature for the first time, Snapchat prompts you to agree to terms that include using &ldqu

The new “Simple Snapchat.” | Image: Snap Snapchat is undergoing its biggest redesign in years by simplifying from five to three tabs: one for messages and Stories with friends, one for the camera, and another for a TikTok-like feed of full-screen videos from creators and publishers.
The redesign, dubbed “Simple Snapchat,” was announced onstage Tuesday at Snap’s annual Partner Summit in Los Angeles. “It brings Stories closer to conversations, it simplifies cont

Image: Square Enix Final Fantasy XVI is out today on PC, and its producer is asking players to be chill about it. In an interview with PC Gamer, Naoki Yoshida has woefully underestimated the collective horniness of the internet by requesting that fans not create mods for the game that are “offensive or inappropriate.”Good luck with that one, buddy.
PC gaming conventional wisdom dictates that once a game is out on PC, it’s only a matter of time before clips start circulating of

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Meta and eyewear conglomerate EssilorLuxottica plan to work together on smart glasses “into the next decade.” The two announced a long-term agreement today to extend a partnership that started in 2019 and has yielded two generations of Ray-Ban smart glasses.
The collaboration has helped Meta make smart glasses that stand out for their style
So far, the collaboration has helped Meta make smart glasses that stand out for their style. It looks

The iPhone 15 Pro Action Button: more than meets the eye. | Screenshot: iOS Action Button setting Apple’s announcement last week that the Action Button is now on all of its iPhone 16 models, rather than just the Pro model that the button debuted on last year, was a little overshadowed by the introduction of the Camera Control button — a capacitive, tactile button for launching and controlling the iPhone 16’s camera. But don’t let that fool you: the Action Button is still

Ambulances rush wounded people to a hospital in the southern Lebanese city of Saida on September 17, 2024. | Photo by MAHMOUD ZAYYAT/AFP via Getty Images Thousands of people have reportedly been injured by exploding pagers across Lebanon and Syria in what appears to be an attack targeting Hezbollah members on Tuesday, reports Reuters and other news agencies. Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said at least eight people, including a child, have been killed, and around 2,800 others hav

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge Green bubbles, rejoice: your iPhone-using friends are finally going to have a much better time texting you. As part of iOS 18, which was released for everyone on Monday, Apple added support for RCS, the Rich Communication Services protocol for messaging. This means that chats between iPhone and Android users will finally have a bunch of sorely needed features that should have been in place a long time ago.A big reason I’ve stayed on iOS (and haven&

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge With each operating system update, our computers get further away from their earliest, text-based interfaces, when copying files and launching programs required typing out specific commands rather than double-clicking on icons. But although a lot of today’s users won’t know these command line interfaces ever existed, and others will have forgotten all about them, they’re still present in macOS and in Windows. More than that, they’r

Image: EA Games Reports about a movie based on The Sims have been circulating for a while now, but Electronic Arts has just officially announced that a big-screen adaptation of the hit game series is in the works.
In a lengthy blog post detailing some of its upcoming projects, EA announced today that Amazon MGM Studios will be the studio behind a film based on The Sims cowritten by Briony Redman and Kate Herron, who will also direct. Previously, the duo wrote together for the new Doctor Who seri

U.S. Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation Chair Mr. Jason Neubauer speaks at a press conference ahead of the Titan submersible hearing in North Charleston, South Carolina, on Sept. 15, 2024. | Photo: US Coast Guard An eerie image of the sunken Titan submersible was made public this week by the US Coast Guard, which opened an investigation into the vessel’s demise.
The submersible was attempting to ferry tourists to the wreckage of the Titanic when it vanishedThe submersible was attemp

Epomaker’s TH80 Pro offers perks like RGB lighting and customizability for just $53.99. | Image: Jon Porter / The Verge A mechanical keyboard can spruce up any home office, but a lot of the best models don’t come cheap — well, except for one: Epomaker’s TH80 Pro. It’s our top pick for people on a budget, and right now it’s even more affordable at Amazon where you can buy it for $53.99 ($36 off). That’s a new record low price and is available on all versi

Mitch Lowe in HBO’s MoviePass, MovieCrash documentary. | Image: HBO MoviePass ex-CEO Mitch Lowe pleaded guilty to securities fraud on Monday over his involvement in a scheme to mislead investors, as reported earlier by Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. With the plea, Lowe admits to making false representations about the sustainability of a $9.95 monthly plan that promised “unlimited” access to movies in theaters.
Lowe, who took over as CEO of MoviePass in 2016, started allowi

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber announced a new rider verification feature aimed at giving drivers and couriers more peace of mind about their customers.The rideshare company has tried to fight fraud and improve safety on its platform through a variety of methods, including safety check-ins, PIN verification, and audio recordings of rides. But to date, most of these efforts have focused on the safety of riders, not drivers. Some drivers have urged Uber to do more for them, leading t

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber announced a new rider verification feature aimed at giving drivers and couriers more peace of mind about their customers.The rideshare company has tried to fight fraud and improve safety on its platform through a variety of methods, including safety check-ins, PIN verification, and audio recordings of rides. But to date, most of these efforts have focused on the safety of riders, not drivers. Some drivers have urged Uber to do more for them, leading t

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge The word of the day in US v. Google was “parking.” As in: did Google buy some of its most ascendant and dangerous competitors in the online advertising business, all the while planning on parking them off in some far-flung corner of the company so that no one could possibly upset Google’s dominance? That is a central question of the government’s entire case against Google, and it came up over and over on Monday morning.
To kick off the sec

Image: Epic Games The Epic Games Store has arrived on the iPad for users in the European Union, making games like Fortnite and Fall Guys available to play from the device.
The launch comes as part of Monday’s iPadOS 18 update, which lets EU users download apps from third-party app stores on the iPad. The Epic Games Store — and several other alternative app marketplaces — launched on the iPhone in the EU last month.
Where can I get the Epic Games Store in the European Union?c

Illustration: The Verge Google is planning to roll out a technology that will identify whether a photo was taken with a camera, edited by software like Photoshop, or produced by generative AI models. In the coming months, Google’s search results will include an updated “about this image feature” to let people know if an image was created or edited with AI tools.
The system Google is using is part of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), one of the larges

Image: Meta Starting today, Instagram will begin putting new and existing users under the age of 18 into “Teen Accounts” — a move that will affect how tens of millions of teens interact with the platform. The new account type automatically applies a set of protections to young users, and only users 16 years of age and older can loosen some of these settings.
For starters, the accounts of all minors on Instagram will be private by default (not just teens under 16) and will come

Apple announced a new set of AirPods Max during its event last week, updating them with USB-C and in a new set of colors. The switch to USB-C is a welcome one, to be sure, but Apple changed nothing else about them. And that feels weird, right? What gives?
Apple’s high-end luxury headphones were impressive when they launched in 2020. They had all the features of the AirPods Pro and made clever use of the Apple Watch’s digital crown for volume control. They also sounded fantastic &mda