Author: News Room

Roblox is using AI to alter the content of chat messages on its platform in real time using a new feature rolling out today. Real-time chat rephrasing goes beyond the current filtering for banned language, which replaces certain words and phrases with “#” symbols. Now, Roblox says those words and phrases can be “translated into more respectful language that remains closer to the user’s original intent.”For instance, if a user posts “Hurry TF up!” in chat, Roblox’s AI will alter the message to say “Hurry up!” instead. Whenever this happens, Roblox says “everyone in the chat is notified that the…

After being announced last November, Ikea’s Matter-compatible smart home collection has been slowly trickling into its stores around the world over the past few months. Despite some early connectivity issues, one of the most anticipated items in that collection is Ikea’s new Matter-over-Thread smart bulbs. The company originally said they’d hit the US sometime in April 2026, but they’re now available through Ikea’s online store, and many of its retail locations around the country.Amongst the smart home products it’s been selling for years, smart bulbs have been one of Ikea’s most popular, offering a cheaper but similarly functional alternative to…

The forthcoming MacBook Neo is certainly compelling — at least for the right person. One could argue that buying a last-gen MacBook Air is a better bet in most instances; however, if you’re still sold on picking Apple’s colorful budget laptop ahead of its launch on March 11th, Best Buy is throwing in a $25 e-gift card when you preorder either the 256GB model for $599 or the step-up 512GB variant for $699.At its core, Apple’s cheapest laptop is all about tradeoffs. For $599, you get a 13-inch aluminum machine with a fairly large bezel around the display, a color-matched…

Apple is asking artists and record labels on its music streaming platform to voluntarily label songs that were made using AI. The new “Transparency Tags” metadata system for Apple Music was announced in a newsletter to industry partners yesterday, according to Music Business Worldwide, and covers four categories, including track, composition, artwork, and music videos.The track tag should be applied when “a material portion of a sound recording” has been generated by AI tools, while the composition tag covers other AI-generated compositional elements, such as song lyrics. The artwork tag applies to static or moving graphics, but only at the…

Do you have a Reddit alt, secret X, finsta, or Glassdoor account you trash your boss with? AI might have just made it a lot easier to unmask you. That’s the conclusion of a recently published study, which hints at some uncomfortable consequences for staying private online — even if it’s not quite time to hold a funeral for anonymity just yet.The finding, which has not been peer reviewed, comes from researchers at ETH Zurich, Anthropic, and the Machine Learning Alignment and Theory Scholars program. They built an automated system of AI agents using unspecified models — capable of searching…

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is reportedly back at the negotiating table with the Department of Defense in an attempt to salvage the company’s relationship with the US military and prevent it from being iced out of defense work for being a “supply chain risk.” Talks between the two parties imploded on Friday after weeks of bitter public feuding over the startup’s refusal to grant the Pentagon unrestricted access to its AI, with rivals like OpenAI rushing to fill the void.Amodei is in talks with under-secretary of defense for research and engineering Emil Michael about a new contract that would allow…

After the release of the Headphone 1 last year — Nothing’s first over-ear headphones — the company is back with the Headphone A. They’re a slimmed-down over-ear option that keep the Nothing design aesthetic and excellent controls while decreasing the weight and bumping battery life up to a maximum of 135 hours. There are some concessions — middling call quality and a carrying bag instead of a case — but they’re also cheaper at $199. The Headphone A makes more sense to me than the Headphone 1 ever did, and are a great second offering from Nothing.The Headphone A’s design…

Today Nothing has revealed the 4A and 4A Pro, its latest midrange phones. The two look startlingly different from one another, with varying designs and Glyph Light interfaces. The Pro is especially striking: it’s the first Nothing phone to almost entirely abandon the brand’s trademark transparent design.I’m currently at Nothing’s launch event in London, where I’m about to get my first look at the 4A Pro in person, so stay tuned for hands-on impressions coming up shortly.The 4A Pro, which will go on sale in the US later this month, adopts a metal unibody design instead of the usual clear…

After over four months of teasing, I’ve finally been able to see Honor’s Robot Phone in action. And after all that, it looks pretty legit — just so long as you weren’t actually expecting a robot.The Robot Phone could more accurately be called the Gimbal Phone, though I suspect the company’s marketing department would disagree. Its big hardware innovation is a 200-megapixel camera mounted on a gimbal arm, which unfolds from the back of the phone when you need it, and retracts behind a cover when you don’t.It unlocks a set of camera features much like you’d find in a…

Powered by the new M5 chip, Apple’s latest MacBook Airs are more powerful than ever with double the base storage (512GB), but they also cost $100 more than their predecessor. Fortunately, though, we’ve found a few ways to save. Best Buy is offering the new 13-inch M5-powered MacBook Air for $1,099 with a $50 gift card and the 15-inch for $1,299 with the same perk ahead of their March 11th release date. That said, if you’d rather spend less and don’t mind buying last year’s model, Amazon’s also selling the 15-inch M4 MacBook Air with 512GB of storage and 16GB…

Epic Games and Google are burying the hatchet, but documents released today reveal that they aren’t only aligned on how Google is shaking things up for app stores. The two companies have also agreed to terms about a new class of apps that they’re calling “metaverse browsers,” according to a heavily redacted section of a revised binding term sheet.While the term “metaverse” has largely fallen out of favor — Mark Zuckerberg, for example, is now much more interested in AI — Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has been talking for years about the metaverse and how it might work in the…

“[Tech companies] need some PR help because people think that if a data center goes in, their electricity prices are going to go up,” Trump said during the event. “Some centers were rejected by communities for that and now I think it’s going to be the opposite.”“People think that if a data center goes in, their electricity prices are going to go up.”According to the proclamation, the seven companies present at the event have “accepted the terms of the Ratepayer Protection Pledge” and that “the commitments embodied therein effectuate the national policy of the United States.” It adds, however, that…