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OpenAI’s new advanced voice mode for ChatGPT is starting to roll out to a small number of people who subscribe to ChatGPT Plus. The feature, which OpenAI showed off at its GPT-4o launch event in May, was criticized for sounding similar to Scarlett Johansson and was later delayed for safety reasons.
At OpenAI’s event, the new voice mode appeared to be noticeably more capable than ChatGPT’s current voice mode. Onstage, OpenAI employees were able to interrupt and ask the chatbot to tell a story in different ways, and the chatbot took their interruptions in stride to adjust its responses.

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The advanced mode was set to release in alpha in late June, but OpenAI delayed the rollout by one month to “reach our bar to launch.” As part of that delay, the company said it was “improving the model’s ability to detect and refuse certain content.” OpenAI spokesperson Taya Christianson says the company tested the voice model’s capabilities with more than 100 external red teamers (people who try to attack technologies to find weaknesses). The company has recently faced a lot of scrutiny about its safety policies, so this pause may have been the right choice. OpenAI has also “added new filters that will recognize and block certain requests to generate music or other copyrighted audio,” Christianson says.
During OpenAI’s event, one of the key criticisms of the new mode was how much the onstage voice, dubbed “Sky,” sounded like Johansson, who played an AI personality in the movie Her. While the voice had been in ChatGPT before OpenAI’s spring demo, the company pulled it shortly before Johansson revealed she had sent letters to OpenAI asking how the voice was made. Christianson says that ChatGPT’s new mode will only use four preset voices it made with voice actors, adding, “We’ve made it so that ChatGPT cannot impersonate other people’s voices, both individuals and public figures, and will block outputs that differ from one of these preset voices.”
OpenAI plans to bring the new mode to all ChatGPT Plus users in the fall, according to Christianson.

Image: OpenAI

OpenAI’s new advanced voice mode for ChatGPT is starting to roll out to a small number of people who subscribe to ChatGPT Plus. The feature, which OpenAI showed off at its GPT-4o launch event in May, was criticized for sounding similar to Scarlett Johansson and was later delayed for safety reasons.

At OpenAI’s event, the new voice mode appeared to be noticeably more capable than ChatGPT’s current voice mode. Onstage, OpenAI employees were able to interrupt and ask the chatbot to tell a story in different ways, and the chatbot took their interruptions in stride to adjust its responses.

The advanced mode was set to release in alpha in late June, but OpenAI delayed the rollout by one month to “reach our bar to launch.” As part of that delay, the company said it was “improving the model’s ability to detect and refuse certain content.” OpenAI spokesperson Taya Christianson says the company tested the voice model’s capabilities with more than 100 external red teamers (people who try to attack technologies to find weaknesses). The company has recently faced a lot of scrutiny about its safety policies, so this pause may have been the right choice. OpenAI has also “added new filters that will recognize and block certain requests to generate music or other copyrighted audio,” Christianson says.

During OpenAI’s event, one of the key criticisms of the new mode was how much the onstage voice, dubbed “Sky,” sounded like Johansson, who played an AI personality in the movie Her. While the voice had been in ChatGPT before OpenAI’s spring demo, the company pulled it shortly before Johansson revealed she had sent letters to OpenAI asking how the voice was made. Christianson says that ChatGPT’s new mode will only use four preset voices it made with voice actors, adding, “We’ve made it so that ChatGPT cannot impersonate other people’s voices, both individuals and public figures, and will block outputs that differ from one of these preset voices.”

OpenAI plans to bring the new mode to all ChatGPT Plus users in the fall, according to Christianson.

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Amazon’s new Batman show is a jazzy blend of style, substance, and nostalgia. In an era that was flush with cartoons fighting for kids’ attention, Batman: The Animated Series stood out by using its timeless take on Gotham City to tell stories that were as stylish and zany as they were serious. The show gave birth to some of DC’s most iconic characters, and set a high bar for animated comic book adaptations that many of Warner Bros. newer series have struggled to reach.
Amazon’s Batman: Caped Crusader from co-creators J.J. Abrams, Matt Reeves and Bruce Timm feels like a project created with a deep love for The Animated Series, and an understanding of what made it fascinating to watch back in the 90s. And as often as playing to fans’ nostalgia tends to derail modern superhero stories, Caped Crusader’s approach to paying homage to The Animated Series is a big part of what makes it work so well.
Set in a vision of the 1940s where everyone still speaks like Golden Age comics characters, Batman: Caped Crusader tells a familiar tale of how Bruce Wayne (Hamish Linklater) secretly leads the charge to deal with Gotham’s ever-growing population of costumed super criminals. Whereas The Animated Series — which Timm co-created with Paul Dini — introduced Batman as a well-seasoned vigilante with some experience under his high-tech utility belt, Caped Crusader’s Bruce is new to the hero game, and still learning how to wield his status as a shadowy urban legend.

Rather than fancy gadgets and a gaggle of wards, Bruce’s old-fashioned sleuthing skills and his ability to take punches as well as he throws them are what make him so effective at keeping Gotham’s ne’er-do-wells scared. But with most of the city’s cops being as crooked as the criminals they’re supposed to book, there’s seldom a night when Batman isn’t busy dealing with the problems that police commissioner Jim Gordon (Eric Morgan Stuart) and his prosecutor daughter Barbara (Krystal Joy Brown) simply can’t keep up with on their own.
Aesthetically and sonically, Caped Crusader feels almost like it could be The Animated Series’ prequel as it opens on Gotham in the midst of a simmering gang war that has the city’s residents on edge. But as hard as the new show works to establish itself as a story unfolding in the distant past, there’s a pronounced streak of modernity running through it that’s reflected in the way it reworks a number of its supporting characters.
Here, the Gordons are Black, and psychiatrist Harleen Quinzel (Jamie Chung) is an Asian woman who has far more interesting secrets to keep than the fact that she’s queer. Batman: Caped Crusader presents these facets of its reality with a matter-of-factness that helps illustrate the beauty of DC’s Elseworlds — comics stories set in alternate universes that play with the established canon. The show’s changes to classic characters work to highlight aspects of their identities that Caped Crusader leaves untouched like the way detective Renee Montoya’s (Michelle C. Bonilla) commitment to justice makes her simultaneously untrusting of and grateful for Batman’s presence.

Rather than aiming for comics or previous series-accuracy, Caped Crusader feels like it’s trying to tap into the essence of its heroes and villains as they become entangled in one another’s lives. This, coupled with the show’s art direction and its score from composer Frederik Wiedmann, helps make Caped Crusader’s first season feel like classic animated Batman storytelling that emphasizes how well the Dark Knight works as a simple detective chasing down other costumed weirdos.
Though Caped Crusader’s being yet another Batman vehicle might exhaust some viewers, the show’s simplicity and more measured plays to nostalgia immediately set it apart from Warner Bros.’ other recent iterations on the character. And while its pacing might leave some viewers wishing things moved a bit more briskly, with a second season already on the way, Amazon seems to know that it’s got a good thing with Batman: Caped Crusader that’s primed to get better with time.
Batman: Caped Crusader also stars Christina Ricci, Diedrich Bader, Bumper Robinson, Jason Watkins, John DiMaggio, Mckenna Grace, Tom Kenny, Haley Joel Osment, Paul Scheer, Reid Scott, and Toby Stephens. The show’s first season hits Amazon Prime on August 1st.

Amazon’s new Batman show is a jazzy blend of style, substance, and nostalgia.

In an era that was flush with cartoons fighting for kids’ attention, Batman: The Animated Series stood out by using its timeless take on Gotham City to tell stories that were as stylish and zany as they were serious. The show gave birth to some of DC’s most iconic characters, and set a high bar for animated comic book adaptations that many of Warner Bros. newer series have struggled to reach.

Amazon’s Batman: Caped Crusader from co-creators J.J. Abrams, Matt Reeves and Bruce Timm feels like a project created with a deep love for The Animated Series, and an understanding of what made it fascinating to watch back in the 90s. And as often as playing to fans’ nostalgia tends to derail modern superhero stories, Caped Crusader’s approach to paying homage to The Animated Series is a big part of what makes it work so well.

Set in a vision of the 1940s where everyone still speaks like Golden Age comics characters, Batman: Caped Crusader tells a familiar tale of how Bruce Wayne (Hamish Linklater) secretly leads the charge to deal with Gotham’s ever-growing population of costumed super criminals. Whereas The Animated Series — which Timm co-created with Paul Dini — introduced Batman as a well-seasoned vigilante with some experience under his high-tech utility belt, Caped Crusader’s Bruce is new to the hero game, and still learning how to wield his status as a shadowy urban legend.

Rather than fancy gadgets and a gaggle of wards, Bruce’s old-fashioned sleuthing skills and his ability to take punches as well as he throws them are what make him so effective at keeping Gotham’s ne’er-do-wells scared. But with most of the city’s cops being as crooked as the criminals they’re supposed to book, there’s seldom a night when Batman isn’t busy dealing with the problems that police commissioner Jim Gordon (Eric Morgan Stuart) and his prosecutor daughter Barbara (Krystal Joy Brown) simply can’t keep up with on their own.

Aesthetically and sonically, Caped Crusader feels almost like it could be The Animated Series’ prequel as it opens on Gotham in the midst of a simmering gang war that has the city’s residents on edge. But as hard as the new show works to establish itself as a story unfolding in the distant past, there’s a pronounced streak of modernity running through it that’s reflected in the way it reworks a number of its supporting characters.

Here, the Gordons are Black, and psychiatrist Harleen Quinzel (Jamie Chung) is an Asian woman who has far more interesting secrets to keep than the fact that she’s queer. Batman: Caped Crusader presents these facets of its reality with a matter-of-factness that helps illustrate the beauty of DC’s Elseworlds — comics stories set in alternate universes that play with the established canon. The show’s changes to classic characters work to highlight aspects of their identities that Caped Crusader leaves untouched like the way detective Renee Montoya’s (Michelle C. Bonilla) commitment to justice makes her simultaneously untrusting of and grateful for Batman’s presence.

Rather than aiming for comics or previous series-accuracy, Caped Crusader feels like it’s trying to tap into the essence of its heroes and villains as they become entangled in one another’s lives. This, coupled with the show’s art direction and its score from composer Frederik Wiedmann, helps make Caped Crusader’s first season feel like classic animated Batman storytelling that emphasizes how well the Dark Knight works as a simple detective chasing down other costumed weirdos.

Though Caped Crusader’s being yet another Batman vehicle might exhaust some viewers, the show’s simplicity and more measured plays to nostalgia immediately set it apart from Warner Bros.’ other recent iterations on the character. And while its pacing might leave some viewers wishing things moved a bit more briskly, with a second season already on the way, Amazon seems to know that it’s got a good thing with Batman: Caped Crusader that’s primed to get better with time.

Batman: Caped Crusader also stars Christina Ricci, Diedrich Bader, Bumper Robinson, Jason Watkins, John DiMaggio, Mckenna Grace, Tom Kenny, Haley Joel Osment, Paul Scheer, Reid Scott, and Toby Stephens. The show’s first season hits Amazon Prime on August 1st.

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Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images

The Senate passed the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (also known as COPPA 2.0), the first major internet bills meant to protect children to reach that milestone in two decades. A legislative vehicle that included both KOSA and COPPA 2.0 passed 91-3.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called it “a momentous day” in a speech ahead of the vote, saying that “the Senate keeps its promise to every parent who’s lost a child because of the risks of social media.” He called for the House to pass the bills “as soon as they can.”
KOSA is a landmark piece of legislation that a persistent group of parent advocates have played a key role in pushing forward — meeting with lawmakers, showing up at hearings with tech CEOs, and bringing along photos of their children who, in many cases, died by suicide after experiencing cyberbullying or other harms from social media. These parents say that a bill like KOSA could have saved their own children from suffering and hope it will do the same for other children.
The bill works by creating a duty of care for online platforms that are used by minors, requiring they take “reasonable” measures in how they design their products to mitigate a list of harms, including online bullying, sexual exploitation, drug promotion, and eating disorders. It specifies that the bill doesn’t prevent platforms from letting minors search for any specific content or providing them resources to mitigate any of the listed harms, “including evidence-informed information and clinical resources.”

Parent advocates believe this legal duty of care will protect children, but digital rights, free speech, and some LGBTQ+ advocates believe that the bill could actually harm marginalized kids by creating a chilling effect and pressuring platforms to limit free expression on the internet. In a recent letter to senators, groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), LGBT Tech, and industry groups like NetChoice, wrote that the duty of care could result in “aggressive filtering of content by companies preventing access to important, First Amendment-protected, educational, and even lifesaving content” to avoid liability. They also fear it will lead platforms to impose age verification systems, raising additional privacy and constitutional concerns.
These concerns are not coming out of left field. Lead cosponsor Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) has previously justified the bill on the basis that “we should be protecting minor children from the transgender in this culture.” Since then, the bill was been amended in response to the concerns of LGBTQ advocates, and the revisions were sufficient to get some organizations — like GLAAD and the Trevor Project — to drop their opposition to the bill.
In a speech on the Senate floor ahead of Tuesday’s vote, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), another of the bill’s lead sponsors, said the law not aiming to block or censor content. “We’re simply creating an environment that is safe by design. And at its core, this bill is a product design bill.” Blumenthal compared KOSA to other efforts throughout his career to “protect consumers against defective products that are designed to make more money and more profits at the risk or expense of injury to people,” including by targeting cigarettes and car manufacturers.
Blackburn said that while “there are laws that protect children from buying alcohol, buying tobacco, buying pornography,” the same kinds of protections are lacking on the internet. “When you look at the social media platforms, there are no guardrails.”
The duty of care is probably the most controversial, but KOSA contains a host of other provisions. KOSA also requires safeguards for kids on the internet, like preventing unknown adults from communicating with kids or viewing their personal data, restricting the ability to share minors’ geolocation data, and letting kids’ accounts opt out of personalized recommendations or at least limit categories of recommendations. Platforms would also need to default kids’ accounts to the strictest level of privacy settings and make it easy to delete their personal data and limit the time they spend on the service. The law would also require a handful of parental control tools, allowing parents to view their children’s privacy and account settings, restrict their purchases, and limit how much time they spend.
COPPA 2.0, which builds on a 1998 children’s privacy law by the same name, would raise the age covered by those protections from those under 13 to those under 17. It would also ban targeted advertising to kids covered by the bill. Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), the lead sponsor of the new bill, was also the lead sponsor of the original COPPA. Markey said in a speech on the Senate floor that covering kids under 13 was “all I could get” in 1998. Markey said the original law “has done a lot of good, but as the years have passed, and technology has evolved, our online world once again, started to look like the Wild West.”
The House recently decided to adjourn a week early
Two of the senators who voted no — Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rand Paul (R-KY) — said they had concerns that KOSA could potentially be used to censor information. Wyden wrote in a thread on X that while changes to the bill have made it “less likely that the bill can be used as a tool for MAGA extremists to wage war on legal and essential information to teens,” he still worries it “could be used to sue services that offer privacy technologies like encryption or anonymity features that kids rely on to communicate securely and privately without being spied on by predators online.” Paul called it a “pandora’s box of unintended consequences.” Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) also voted no.
The bills now move to the House, which had about a week left to take them up before the August recess — except that the chamber recently decided to adjourn a week early. Prior to Thursday’s procedural vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said in a statement to The Verge that he was “looking forward to reviewing the details of the legislation that comes out of the Senate. Parents should have greater control and the necessary tools to protect their kids online. I am committed to working to find consensus in the House.” But it will be harder to pick up momentum after Congress’ break, given the political dynamics of passing substantive policy in the months right before a presidential election.
Should the bills become law, KOSA is still likely to face opposition in the courts. NetChoice, which represents major tech platforms like Google and Meta, has sued to block several other laws throughout the country with similar goals of protecting kids. NetChoice has (in many cases, successfully) argued that such bills pose a risk to free expression that would not withstand First Amendment scrutiny. If challenged, KOSA will also have to contend with a recent Supreme Court ruling, where the majority opinion said that content moderation and curation are protected forms of expression.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images

The Senate passed the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (also known as COPPA 2.0), the first major internet bills meant to protect children to reach that milestone in two decades. A legislative vehicle that included both KOSA and COPPA 2.0 passed 91-3.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called it “a momentous day” in a speech ahead of the vote, saying that “the Senate keeps its promise to every parent who’s lost a child because of the risks of social media.” He called for the House to pass the bills “as soon as they can.”

KOSA is a landmark piece of legislation that a persistent group of parent advocates have played a key role in pushing forward — meeting with lawmakers, showing up at hearings with tech CEOs, and bringing along photos of their children who, in many cases, died by suicide after experiencing cyberbullying or other harms from social media. These parents say that a bill like KOSA could have saved their own children from suffering and hope it will do the same for other children.

The bill works by creating a duty of care for online platforms that are used by minors, requiring they take “reasonable” measures in how they design their products to mitigate a list of harms, including online bullying, sexual exploitation, drug promotion, and eating disorders. It specifies that the bill doesn’t prevent platforms from letting minors search for any specific content or providing them resources to mitigate any of the listed harms, “including evidence-informed information and clinical resources.”

Parent advocates believe this legal duty of care will protect children, but digital rights, free speech, and some LGBTQ+ advocates believe that the bill could actually harm marginalized kids by creating a chilling effect and pressuring platforms to limit free expression on the internet. In a recent letter to senators, groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), LGBT Tech, and industry groups like NetChoice, wrote that the duty of care could result in “aggressive filtering of content by companies preventing access to important, First Amendment-protected, educational, and even lifesaving content” to avoid liability. They also fear it will lead platforms to impose age verification systems, raising additional privacy and constitutional concerns.

These concerns are not coming out of left field. Lead cosponsor Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) has previously justified the bill on the basis that “we should be protecting minor children from the transgender in this culture.” Since then, the bill was been amended in response to the concerns of LGBTQ advocates, and the revisions were sufficient to get some organizations — like GLAAD and the Trevor Project — to drop their opposition to the bill.

In a speech on the Senate floor ahead of Tuesday’s vote, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), another of the bill’s lead sponsors, said the law not aiming to block or censor content. “We’re simply creating an environment that is safe by design. And at its core, this bill is a product design bill.” Blumenthal compared KOSA to other efforts throughout his career to “protect consumers against defective products that are designed to make more money and more profits at the risk or expense of injury to people,” including by targeting cigarettes and car manufacturers.

Blackburn said that while “there are laws that protect children from buying alcohol, buying tobacco, buying pornography,” the same kinds of protections are lacking on the internet. “When you look at the social media platforms, there are no guardrails.”

The duty of care is probably the most controversial, but KOSA contains a host of other provisions. KOSA also requires safeguards for kids on the internet, like preventing unknown adults from communicating with kids or viewing their personal data, restricting the ability to share minors’ geolocation data, and letting kids’ accounts opt out of personalized recommendations or at least limit categories of recommendations. Platforms would also need to default kids’ accounts to the strictest level of privacy settings and make it easy to delete their personal data and limit the time they spend on the service. The law would also require a handful of parental control tools, allowing parents to view their children’s privacy and account settings, restrict their purchases, and limit how much time they spend.

COPPA 2.0, which builds on a 1998 children’s privacy law by the same name, would raise the age covered by those protections from those under 13 to those under 17. It would also ban targeted advertising to kids covered by the bill. Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), the lead sponsor of the new bill, was also the lead sponsor of the original COPPA. Markey said in a speech on the Senate floor that covering kids under 13 was “all I could get” in 1998. Markey said the original law “has done a lot of good, but as the years have passed, and technology has evolved, our online world once again, started to look like the Wild West.”

Two of the senators who voted no — Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rand Paul (R-KY) — said they had concerns that KOSA could potentially be used to censor information. Wyden wrote in a thread on X that while changes to the bill have made it “less likely that the bill can be used as a tool for MAGA extremists to wage war on legal and essential information to teens,” he still worries it “could be used to sue services that offer privacy technologies like encryption or anonymity features that kids rely on to communicate securely and privately without being spied on by predators online.” Paul called it a “pandora’s box of unintended consequences.” Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) also voted no.

The bills now move to the House, which had about a week left to take them up before the August recess — except that the chamber recently decided to adjourn a week early. Prior to Thursday’s procedural vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said in a statement to The Verge that he was “looking forward to reviewing the details of the legislation that comes out of the Senate. Parents should have greater control and the necessary tools to protect their kids online. I am committed to working to find consensus in the House.” But it will be harder to pick up momentum after Congress’ break, given the political dynamics of passing substantive policy in the months right before a presidential election.

Should the bills become law, KOSA is still likely to face opposition in the courts. NetChoice, which represents major tech platforms like Google and Meta, has sued to block several other laws throughout the country with similar goals of protecting kids. NetChoice has (in many cases, successfully) argued that such bills pose a risk to free expression that would not withstand First Amendment scrutiny. If challenged, KOSA will also have to contend with a recent Supreme Court ruling, where the majority opinion said that content moderation and curation are protected forms of expression.

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Amazon’s new Echo Spot strikes a good balance between smart speaker and smart display. I’ve been looking for a good alarm clock with voice control for years now — and with Amazon’s newest smart speaker, I think I’ve found it. The Nest Hub is too big for my nightstand and the Echo Show 5 is too bright, but the new Echo Spot ($79.99) is just right.
While it’s not perfect, the Spot’s small footprint, minimalist display, impressive sound for its size, built-in voice assistant, and snappy responses fill most of my needs. These features make it a good option if you want the benefits of a smart speaker and some basic visual information in your bedroom without the distractions of a large screen.
As the sequel to the original Echo Spot that was discontinued in 2019, the new Echo Spot ditches the camera, which was our main gripe with the earlier version. It also replaces the full circular screen with a semicircular display that shows the clock. While that display is a bit too small (and slightly cheap-looking), overall, the Spot is a capable smart alarm clock for a good price, especially when it’s on sale.

Small screen, big personality
An Alexa-powered smart speaker, the Spot follows the design cues of the Echo Pop with its flat circular front, but it adds a small 2.83-inch display above the speaker grille. This is a touchscreen display that shows a clock or various animations when playing music, telling the weather, setting timers, and controlling smart home devices. It’s very responsive to touch, although it’s limited in terms of what you can do with it.
The Spot also responds well to Alexa’s voice commands with minimal lag and can trigger Alexa Routines with presence detection using an ultrasound sensor. It’s a Bluetooth speaker (there’s no line-out) and an Alexa Matter controller (over Wi-Fi), but unlike the Echo Dot, there’s no temperature sensor, and it doesn’t act as an Eero mesh Wi-Fi extender.

The new Echo Spot (right) is surprisingly chunky and bigger than the original Spot (left).

The Spot’s screen is primarily designed as a clock — showing just enough information to be useful and not so much to be annoying. Instead of the rotating content you find on the Echo Shows that sometimes push ads for Amazon’s services, the Spot just shows the current time and the time your next alarm is set. There’s also an option to show the weather and date.
The display is small enough to not be distracting at night thanks to a nighttime mode that switches to a simple red LED display. It has six fun clockfaces for daytime, although two of them feel a bit squished in the small rectangle allotted to them. It would look better if the screen took up the entire upper semicircle instead of just two-thirds of it. This could have enabled the neat Echo Show sunrise alarm clock feature that gradually brightens the whole screen.
The Spot will have too much screen for you if you liked the no-frills LED dot-matrix look of the Dot with Clock
The Spot’s small screen means that the clock either goes away or becomes very small when it’s being used for anything other than a clock, which can be annoying. When it plays music, it shows a graphic visualizer and playback controls. When you’re listening to a book, it shows the title (oddly, no controls), and for timers, it displays the countdown. If I want the full-screen clock to show up while doing any of these tasks, I have to say, “Alexa, go Home” or swipe down and tap the Home button.
This speaks to the fact that the Spot isn’t a smart display; it’s more of a smart speaker with a screen. It’s closer in function to the now-discontinued Echo Dot With Clock than to the Echo Show 5. I found the Spot’s display easier to read on my nightstand than the Dot, and I liked the additional control options, but if you prefer the no-frills LED dot-matrix look of the Dot with Clock, then the Spot will have too much screen for you.

The Spot’s touchscreen allows for basic control over things like music playback and smart home devices. But while it shows a button to turn a light on or off and a slider to adjust brightness for, say, a lamp, I have to use my voice to get those controls to show up. I also couldn’t use the screen to set an alarm on the Spot’s screen. Again, I had to use voice or the Alexa app. This feels like a miss in a device designed to be an alarm clock.

The Echo Spot has a similar shape to the Echo Pop and the same physical buttons: volume up and down and mute.

Otherwise, the Spot’s alarm clock function is very good. There’s a wide array of wake-up tones, including a classic ring. I can also say, “Alexa, wake me up at 6AM to Taylor Swift” or ask it to wake me up to a specific radio station. Plus, I can have the smart lights in my bedroom turn on with the alarm or have an Alexa Routine run.
Annoyingly, the “snooze” and “stop alarm” buttons on the screen are tiny — too small to easily hit when you wake up bleary-eyed. But using voice or tapping the top of the Spot to snooze works fine. Also, there’s no backup battery, which isn’t easy to find on any smart speaker / alarm clock but is an important feature for my family.
As far as audio is concerned, the Spot’s forward-facing 1.73-inch mono driver makes it a good speaker for listening to music, sleep sounds, or an audiobook in bed. It’s not as room-filling as the Dot but has clearer vocals and delivers a richer sound than the smaller Echo Pop.
The Spot also works with Alexa audio calling, and I can use it as a home intercom with the Alexa Drop In feature — useful when I want to tell my teenager to turn his music down. It’s the only dedicated smart alarm clock I’ve tested that has this feature. There are a number of third-party smart alarm clocks with built-in Alexa, but none support Drop In.

I’ve tried a lot of devices as smart alarm clocks, and I like the Spot’s size and small display for my nightstand. Clockwise from bottom left: Echo Dot with Clock, Echo Show 5, Echo Spot (first-gen), iPhone 15 Pro in StandBy mode, Nest Hub (second-gen), Echo Spot.

This is not a smart display
As I mentioned previously, the Spot is not really a smart display (despite that being what Amazon calls it). You can’t use it as a digital photo frame or video calling device or watch a livestream from a security camera or video content on it. But I didn’t miss any of these features in a bedside device. If they’re important to you, consider the Echo Show 5, which can do everything the Spot can plus all of the above but is bigger and brighter with its larger screen.
Overall, I like the direction is taking Amazon with its newest Echos, creating more defined use cases for its smart speakers and displays beyond streaming music and setting timers. First, there was the Echo Hub, a smart home controller; now, there’s the Echo Spot, a smart alarm clock.
While $80 is expensive compared to the $50 Echo Dot, you’re getting more functionality with the Spot. Plus, if you can find it on sale (like the recent deep discount for Prime Day), it’s an easy buy. There’s room for improvement, but if you’ve been looking for a better voice-controlled smart alarm clock, the Spot deserves a spot on your nightstand.
Photography by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Amazon’s new Echo Spot strikes a good balance between smart speaker and smart display.

I’ve been looking for a good alarm clock with voice control for years now — and with Amazon’s newest smart speaker, I think I’ve found it. The Nest Hub is too big for my nightstand and the Echo Show 5 is too bright, but the new Echo Spot ($79.99) is just right.

While it’s not perfect, the Spot’s small footprint, minimalist display, impressive sound for its size, built-in voice assistant, and snappy responses fill most of my needs. These features make it a good option if you want the benefits of a smart speaker and some basic visual information in your bedroom without the distractions of a large screen.

As the sequel to the original Echo Spot that was discontinued in 2019, the new Echo Spot ditches the camera, which was our main gripe with the earlier version. It also replaces the full circular screen with a semicircular display that shows the clock. While that display is a bit too small (and slightly cheap-looking), overall, the Spot is a capable smart alarm clock for a good price, especially when it’s on sale.

Small screen, big personality

An Alexa-powered smart speaker, the Spot follows the design cues of the Echo Pop with its flat circular front, but it adds a small 2.83-inch display above the speaker grille. This is a touchscreen display that shows a clock or various animations when playing music, telling the weather, setting timers, and controlling smart home devices. It’s very responsive to touch, although it’s limited in terms of what you can do with it.

The Spot also responds well to Alexa’s voice commands with minimal lag and can trigger Alexa Routines with presence detection using an ultrasound sensor. It’s a Bluetooth speaker (there’s no line-out) and an Alexa Matter controller (over Wi-Fi), but unlike the Echo Dot, there’s no temperature sensor, and it doesn’t act as an Eero mesh Wi-Fi extender.

The new Echo Spot (right) is surprisingly chunky and bigger than the original Spot (left).

The Spot’s screen is primarily designed as a clock — showing just enough information to be useful and not so much to be annoying. Instead of the rotating content you find on the Echo Shows that sometimes push ads for Amazon’s services, the Spot just shows the current time and the time your next alarm is set. There’s also an option to show the weather and date.

The display is small enough to not be distracting at night thanks to a nighttime mode that switches to a simple red LED display. It has six fun clockfaces for daytime, although two of them feel a bit squished in the small rectangle allotted to them. It would look better if the screen took up the entire upper semicircle instead of just two-thirds of it. This could have enabled the neat Echo Show sunrise alarm clock feature that gradually brightens the whole screen.

The Spot’s small screen means that the clock either goes away or becomes very small when it’s being used for anything other than a clock, which can be annoying. When it plays music, it shows a graphic visualizer and playback controls. When you’re listening to a book, it shows the title (oddly, no controls), and for timers, it displays the countdown. If I want the full-screen clock to show up while doing any of these tasks, I have to say, “Alexa, go Home” or swipe down and tap the Home button.

This speaks to the fact that the Spot isn’t a smart display; it’s more of a smart speaker with a screen. It’s closer in function to the now-discontinued Echo Dot With Clock than to the Echo Show 5. I found the Spot’s display easier to read on my nightstand than the Dot, and I liked the additional control options, but if you prefer the no-frills LED dot-matrix look of the Dot with Clock, then the Spot will have too much screen for you.

The Spot’s touchscreen allows for basic control over things like music playback and smart home devices. But while it shows a button to turn a light on or off and a slider to adjust brightness for, say, a lamp, I have to use my voice to get those controls to show up. I also couldn’t use the screen to set an alarm on the Spot’s screen. Again, I had to use voice or the Alexa app. This feels like a miss in a device designed to be an alarm clock.

The Echo Spot has a similar shape to the Echo Pop and the same physical buttons: volume up and down and mute.

Otherwise, the Spot’s alarm clock function is very good. There’s a wide array of wake-up tones, including a classic ring. I can also say, “Alexa, wake me up at 6AM to Taylor Swift” or ask it to wake me up to a specific radio station. Plus, I can have the smart lights in my bedroom turn on with the alarm or have an Alexa Routine run.

Annoyingly, the “snooze” and “stop alarm” buttons on the screen are tiny — too small to easily hit when you wake up bleary-eyed. But using voice or tapping the top of the Spot to snooze works fine. Also, there’s no backup battery, which isn’t easy to find on any smart speaker / alarm clock but is an important feature for my family.

As far as audio is concerned, the Spot’s forward-facing 1.73-inch mono driver makes it a good speaker for listening to music, sleep sounds, or an audiobook in bed. It’s not as room-filling as the Dot but has clearer vocals and delivers a richer sound than the smaller Echo Pop.

The Spot also works with Alexa audio calling, and I can use it as a home intercom with the Alexa Drop In feature — useful when I want to tell my teenager to turn his music down. It’s the only dedicated smart alarm clock I’ve tested that has this feature. There are a number of third-party smart alarm clocks with built-in Alexa, but none support Drop In.

I’ve tried a lot of devices as smart alarm clocks, and I like the Spot’s size and small display for my nightstand. Clockwise from bottom left: Echo Dot with Clock, Echo Show 5, Echo Spot (first-gen), iPhone 15 Pro in StandBy mode, Nest Hub (second-gen), Echo Spot.

This is not a smart display

As I mentioned previously, the Spot is not really a smart display (despite that being what Amazon calls it). You can’t use it as a digital photo frame or video calling device or watch a livestream from a security camera or video content on it. But I didn’t miss any of these features in a bedside device. If they’re important to you, consider the Echo Show 5, which can do everything the Spot can plus all of the above but is bigger and brighter with its larger screen.

Overall, I like the direction is taking Amazon with its newest Echos, creating more defined use cases for its smart speakers and displays beyond streaming music and setting timers. First, there was the Echo Hub, a smart home controller; now, there’s the Echo Spot, a smart alarm clock.

While $80 is expensive compared to the $50 Echo Dot, you’re getting more functionality with the Spot. Plus, if you can find it on sale (like the recent deep discount for Prime Day), it’s an easy buy. There’s room for improvement, but if you’ve been looking for a better voice-controlled smart alarm clock, the Spot deserves a spot on your nightstand.

Photography by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

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The LimeBike (left) and the LimeGlider (right). | Image: Lime

Lime is testing two new e-bikes designed to make bike-sharing accessible to a wider range of riders. Alongside throttles that mean you don’t have to pedal to move, the LimeBike and the LimeGlider both offer 20-inch wheels with fat tires for better traction, step-through frames to make getting on and off easier, and lower centers of gravity for more stability.
The LimeBike is meant to “complement” the pedal-assist Gen4 e-bike that Lime launched in 2022. It comes with pedals as well as a handlebar throttle, allowing riders to either pedal with electric assist or move with electric power only. Its seatpost has a quick-adjust clamp to make it easier to move up or down, among other improvements.

Image: Lime
The LimeBike lets you choose between using pedal assist or a throttle.

The LimeGlider, on the other hand, swaps the pedals for footrests and is throttle-only. It also has a larger padded seat that’s lower to the ground, making for a more comfortable ride than the company’s e-bikes or the seated e-scooter Lime launched last year.
Both the LimeGlider and LimeBike offer larger baskets and better phone holders than the company’s existing models. “The LimeGlider and LimeBike offer a glimpse at the future of micromobility, designed with a wider rider audience in mind to help us draw closer to our mission of building a future where transportation is shared, affordable and carbon-free,” Lime CEO Wayne Ting says in a press release.
For now, Lime is testing the LimeBike in Atlanta and Zurich, while the LimeGlider will be available as a pilot in Seattle in mid-August and Zurich later this summer.

Image: Lime
The LimeGlider has footrests in place of pedals.

The LimeBike (left) and the LimeGlider (right). | Image: Lime

Lime is testing two new e-bikes designed to make bike-sharing accessible to a wider range of riders. Alongside throttles that mean you don’t have to pedal to move, the LimeBike and the LimeGlider both offer 20-inch wheels with fat tires for better traction, step-through frames to make getting on and off easier, and lower centers of gravity for more stability.

The LimeBike is meant to “complement” the pedal-assist Gen4 e-bike that Lime launched in 2022. It comes with pedals as well as a handlebar throttle, allowing riders to either pedal with electric assist or move with electric power only. Its seatpost has a quick-adjust clamp to make it easier to move up or down, among other improvements.

Image: Lime
The LimeBike lets you choose between using pedal assist or a throttle.

The LimeGlider, on the other hand, swaps the pedals for footrests and is throttle-only. It also has a larger padded seat that’s lower to the ground, making for a more comfortable ride than the company’s e-bikes or the seated e-scooter Lime launched last year.

Both the LimeGlider and LimeBike offer larger baskets and better phone holders than the company’s existing models. “The LimeGlider and LimeBike offer a glimpse at the future of micromobility, designed with a wider rider audience in mind to help us draw closer to our mission of building a future where transportation is shared, affordable and carbon-free,” Lime CEO Wayne Ting says in a press release.

For now, Lime is testing the LimeBike in Atlanta and Zurich, while the LimeGlider will be available as a pilot in Seattle in mid-August and Zurich later this summer.

Image: Lime
The LimeGlider has footrests in place of pedals.

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Image: The Verge

Texas announced a massive settlement with Meta over the use of facial recognition on Facebook, resolving a lawsuit filed in 2022 claiming that the “Tag Suggestions” feature on photos uploaded to Facebook violated the state’s Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier (CUBI) Act and Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Meta has agreed to pay $1.4 billion over five years to settle the suit, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office said today.
It’s the largest settlement ever resulting from an action brought by a single state, according to Paxton. It’s also the first lawsuit and settlement under CUBI and serves as a warning to other companies in violation of the state’s privacy rights, he says.
“Any abuse of Texans’ sensitive data will be met with the full force of the law,” Paxton said in a press release.
At issue are suggestions Facebook made for tagging people on photos. “In 2011, Meta rolled out a new feature, initially called Tag Suggestions, that it claimed would improve the user experience by making it easier for users to ‘tag’ photographs with the names of people in the photo,” according to the press release.

That was two years after Texas passed the CUBI Act, which prohibits companies from capturing biometric data like face geometry without receiving prior informed consent. Facebook turned on tag suggestions automatically — “capturing and using the personal biometric data of millions of Texans without the authorization required by law,” the attorney general’s office says.
The suit initially sought $25,000 in civil penalties per CUBI violation plus an added $10,000 per violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, The Verge previously reported. Those penalties could have reached hundreds of billions of dollars, The Wall Street Journal reported in 2022.
The company did not admit to any wrongdoing in the settlement. In 2017, Facebook introduced an “on/off” control for tag suggestions, which it replaced with broader facial recognition settings in 2019. Then, it stopped automated facial tagging in photos in 2021.
“We are pleased to resolve this matter, and look forward to exploring future opportunities to deepen our business investments in Texas, including potentially developing data centers,” Meta spokesperson Christopher Sgro said in an email.

Image: The Verge

Texas announced a massive settlement with Meta over the use of facial recognition on Facebook, resolving a lawsuit filed in 2022 claiming that the “Tag Suggestions” feature on photos uploaded to Facebook violated the state’s Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier (CUBI) Act and Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Meta has agreed to pay $1.4 billion over five years to settle the suit, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office said today.

It’s the largest settlement ever resulting from an action brought by a single state, according to Paxton. It’s also the first lawsuit and settlement under CUBI and serves as a warning to other companies in violation of the state’s privacy rights, he says.

“Any abuse of Texans’ sensitive data will be met with the full force of the law,” Paxton said in a press release.

At issue are suggestions Facebook made for tagging people on photos. “In 2011, Meta rolled out a new feature, initially called Tag Suggestions, that it claimed would improve the user experience by making it easier for users to ‘tag’ photographs with the names of people in the photo,” according to the press release.

That was two years after Texas passed the CUBI Act, which prohibits companies from capturing biometric data like face geometry without receiving prior informed consent. Facebook turned on tag suggestions automatically — “capturing and using the personal biometric data of millions of Texans without the authorization required by law,” the attorney general’s office says.

The suit initially sought $25,000 in civil penalties per CUBI violation plus an added $10,000 per violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, The Verge previously reported. Those penalties could have reached hundreds of billions of dollars, The Wall Street Journal reported in 2022.

The company did not admit to any wrongdoing in the settlement. In 2017, Facebook introduced an “on/off” control for tag suggestions, which it replaced with broader facial recognition settings in 2019. Then, it stopped automated facial tagging in photos in 2021.

“We are pleased to resolve this matter, and look forward to exploring future opportunities to deepen our business investments in Texas, including potentially developing data centers,” Meta spokesperson Christopher Sgro said in an email.

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Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images

A bipartisan pair of House lawmakers are proposing a bill to carve out Section 230 protection for tech companies that fail to remove intimate AI deepfakes from their platforms.
Reps. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) and Ashley Hinson (R-IA) unveiled the Intimate Privacy Protection Act, Politico first reported, “to combat cyberstalking, intimate privacy violations, and digital forgeries,” as the bill says. The bill amends Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, which currently shields online platforms from being held legally responsible for what their users post on their services. Under the Intimate Privacy Protection Act, that immunity could be taken away in cases where platforms fail to combat the kinds of harms listed. It does this by creating a duty of care for platforms — a legal term that basically means they are expected to act responsibly — which includes having a “reasonable process” for addressing cyberstalking, intimate privacy violations, and digital forgeries.
Digital forgeries would seem to include AI deepfakes, since they’re defined in part as “digital audiovisual material” that was “created, manipulated, or altered to be virtually indistinguishable from an authentic record of the speech, conduct, or appearance of an individual.” The process mandated by the duty of care must include measures to prevent these kinds of privacy violations, a clear way to report them, and a process to remove them within 24 hours.
In statements, both Auchincloss and Hinson said tech platforms shouldn’t be able to use Section 230 as an excuse not to protect users from these harms. “Congress must prevent these corporations from evading responsibility over the sickening spread of malicious deepfakes and digital forgeries on their platforms,” Auchincloss said. Hinson added, “Big Tech companies shouldn’t be able to hide behind Section 230 if they aren’t protecting users from deepfakes and other intimate privacy violations.”
Combatting intimate (in other words, sexually explicit) AI deepfakes has been one area of AI policy that lawmakers around that country seem motivated to move ahead on. While much of AI policy remains in an early stage, the Senate recently managed to pass the DEFIANCE Act, which would let victims of nonconsensual intimate images created by AI pursue civil remedies against those who made them. Several states have enacted laws combatting intimate AI deepfakes, particularly when they involve minors. And some companies have also been on board — Microsoft on Tuesday called for Congress to regulate how AI-generated deepfakes could be used for fraud and abuse.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have long wished to narrow Section 230 protection for platforms they fear have abused a legal shield created for the industry when it was made up of much smaller players. But most of the time, Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on how exactly the statute should be changed. One notable exception was when Congress passed FOSTA-SESTA, carving out sex trafficking charges from Section 230 protection.
The Intimate Privacy Protection Act’s inclusion of a duty of care is the same mechanism used in the Kids Online Safety Act, which is expected to pass through the Senate on Tuesday with overwhelming support. That might suggest it’s becoming a popular way to create new protections on the internet.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images

A bipartisan pair of House lawmakers are proposing a bill to carve out Section 230 protection for tech companies that fail to remove intimate AI deepfakes from their platforms.

Reps. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) and Ashley Hinson (R-IA) unveiled the Intimate Privacy Protection Act, Politico first reported, “to combat cyberstalking, intimate privacy violations, and digital forgeries,” as the bill says. The bill amends Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, which currently shields online platforms from being held legally responsible for what their users post on their services. Under the Intimate Privacy Protection Act, that immunity could be taken away in cases where platforms fail to combat the kinds of harms listed. It does this by creating a duty of care for platforms — a legal term that basically means they are expected to act responsibly — which includes having a “reasonable process” for addressing cyberstalking, intimate privacy violations, and digital forgeries.

Digital forgeries would seem to include AI deepfakes, since they’re defined in part as “digital audiovisual material” that was “created, manipulated, or altered to be virtually indistinguishable from an authentic record of the speech, conduct, or appearance of an individual.” The process mandated by the duty of care must include measures to prevent these kinds of privacy violations, a clear way to report them, and a process to remove them within 24 hours.

In statements, both Auchincloss and Hinson said tech platforms shouldn’t be able to use Section 230 as an excuse not to protect users from these harms. “Congress must prevent these corporations from evading responsibility over the sickening spread of malicious deepfakes and digital forgeries on their platforms,” Auchincloss said. Hinson added, “Big Tech companies shouldn’t be able to hide behind Section 230 if they aren’t protecting users from deepfakes and other intimate privacy violations.”

Combatting intimate (in other words, sexually explicit) AI deepfakes has been one area of AI policy that lawmakers around that country seem motivated to move ahead on. While much of AI policy remains in an early stage, the Senate recently managed to pass the DEFIANCE Act, which would let victims of nonconsensual intimate images created by AI pursue civil remedies against those who made them. Several states have enacted laws combatting intimate AI deepfakes, particularly when they involve minors. And some companies have also been on board — Microsoft on Tuesday called for Congress to regulate how AI-generated deepfakes could be used for fraud and abuse.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have long wished to narrow Section 230 protection for platforms they fear have abused a legal shield created for the industry when it was made up of much smaller players. But most of the time, Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on how exactly the statute should be changed. One notable exception was when Congress passed FOSTA-SESTA, carving out sex trafficking charges from Section 230 protection.

The Intimate Privacy Protection Act’s inclusion of a duty of care is the same mechanism used in the Kids Online Safety Act, which is expected to pass through the Senate on Tuesday with overwhelming support. That might suggest it’s becoming a popular way to create new protections on the internet.

Read More 

Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer / Getty Images

Marvel’s big plan to pull the MCU out of its multiversal tailspin became very clear this past weekend during San Diego Comic-Con as the studio announced that the Russo brothers are coming back to direct the next two Avengers films. While Avengers: The Kang Dynasty is out, Avengers: Doomsday is in, with Robert Downey Jr. signed on to play the central role. And it seems like Marvel is dropping a pretty penny to make this all happen.
Variety reports that Marvel is spending $80 million to lure the Russos back to direct Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, the two films that will bring the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s ongoing Multiverse Saga to a close. Both films are also set to be produced by the Russo’s AGBO outfit rather than Marvel’s typical in-house production team and will reportedly begin shooting in London rather than Atlanta, Georgia, where Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame both filmed.
Marvel is also said to be spending “significantly more” on Downey’s payday to see him rejoin the MCU as Doctor Doom rather than Iron Man — a twist that has some comics precedent but also seems to be an emergency pivot in response to Marvel’s now-scrapped plans to go all in on Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conqueror.
RDJ, whose performance as Tony Stark kicked off the MCU, has commanded sizable Marvel salaries in the past that spoke to the studio’s commitment to building the cinematic franchise around him. That approach paid off for Marvel in the MCU’s early days as the Infinity Saga films reliably broke box-office records. But it’s also part of how the studio has wound up in its current era of projects that feel devoid of properly cultivated gravitational centers.
Going back to the RDJ / Russo well could work out for Marvel, particularly if audiences are really just interested in seeing familiar faces. If Deadpool & Wolverine’s early box-office numbers are any indication, that seems to be the case. But as much money as Marvel is spending on its pivot to Doom, one hopes that the studio is also going to put out some good films that live up to all this hype.

Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer / Getty Images

Marvel’s big plan to pull the MCU out of its multiversal tailspin became very clear this past weekend during San Diego Comic-Con as the studio announced that the Russo brothers are coming back to direct the next two Avengers films. While Avengers: The Kang Dynasty is out, Avengers: Doomsday is in, with Robert Downey Jr. signed on to play the central role. And it seems like Marvel is dropping a pretty penny to make this all happen.

Variety reports that Marvel is spending $80 million to lure the Russos back to direct Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, the two films that will bring the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s ongoing Multiverse Saga to a close. Both films are also set to be produced by the Russo’s AGBO outfit rather than Marvel’s typical in-house production team and will reportedly begin shooting in London rather than Atlanta, Georgia, where Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame both filmed.

Marvel is also said to be spending “significantly more” on Downey’s payday to see him rejoin the MCU as Doctor Doom rather than Iron Man — a twist that has some comics precedent but also seems to be an emergency pivot in response to Marvel’s now-scrapped plans to go all in on Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conqueror.

RDJ, whose performance as Tony Stark kicked off the MCU, has commanded sizable Marvel salaries in the past that spoke to the studio’s commitment to building the cinematic franchise around him. That approach paid off for Marvel in the MCU’s early days as the Infinity Saga films reliably broke box-office records. But it’s also part of how the studio has wound up in its current era of projects that feel devoid of properly cultivated gravitational centers.

Going back to the RDJ / Russo well could work out for Marvel, particularly if audiences are really just interested in seeing familiar faces. If Deadpool & Wolverine’s early box-office numbers are any indication, that seems to be the case. But as much money as Marvel is spending on its pivot to Doom, one hopes that the studio is also going to put out some good films that live up to all this hype.

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It’s the new-age Tamagotchi, only it talks back. | Image: Friend

A few minutes before Avi Schiffmann and I get on Google Meet to talk about the new product he’s building, an AI companion called “Friend,” he sends me a screenshot of a message he just received. It’s from “Emily,” and it wishes him luck with our chat. “Good luck with the interview,” Emily writes, “I know you’ll do great. I’m here if you need me after.”
Emily is not human. It’s the AI companion Schiffmann has been building, and it lives in a pendant hung around his neck. The product was initially named Tab before Schiffmann pivoted to calling it Friend, and he’s been working on the idea for the last couple of years.
Schiffmann defines Friend both by what it is and what it very deliberately is not. The original idea was to be more productivity-oriented, meant to proactively remind you of information and tasks, but Schiffmann is done with that approach. He now speaks of work-focused AI products like Microsoft’s all-seeing Recall with some derision and even thinks Humane’s wildly ambitious AI Pin is pointed in the wrong direction. “No one is going to beat Apple or OpenAI at building Jarvis,” he says. “That’s just ridiculous.”
Friend is not a way to get more done or augment or enhance anything. It’s, well, a friend — an AI friend that can go with you anywhere, experience things with you, and just be there with you all the time. “It’s very supportive, very validating, it’ll encourage your ideas,” Schiffmann says. “It’s also super intelligent, it’s a great brainstorming buddy. You can talk to it about relationships, things like that.”
Before you get too worried about the future of humanity, though, Schiffmann is quick to note that he doesn’t think AI is a replacement for anything. “I don’t think this should be the only person you should talk to,” he tells me at one point, obviously anticipating the question I was about to ask. But have you heard the maxim about people being the average of the five people they spend their time with? Schiffmann’s theory is that going forward, one of those five might be AI. “It’s just more convenient,” he says. “And it’s nice.”

Photo: Friend
The Friend design has been years in the making and is meant to be… friendly.

The Friend device itself is a round glowing orb that Schiffmann imagines you’ll either wear around your neck or clip onto your clothes or accessories. It has a built-in microphone that can either record ambiently or you can talk to directly. (Schiffmann says he does eventually want to add a camera.) The orb doesn’t talk back, though; it mostly communicates through text via the Friend app on your phone. Schiffmann thinks that’s more natural and familiar.
Friend is still very early — and very much a prototype. Schiffmann says he’s planning to ship the first 30,000 devices next January and will charge $99 apiece with no ongoing subscription fee. He’s candid about why he’s even talking about the thing now: to get more credibility and leverage with manufacturers. As they say, hardware is hard, and there’s still a lot of work to do. But Schiffmann’s goals are at least realistic. “It’s a fancy Bluetooth microphone with a shell around it, right? Keep it simple. Make it work.”
During our conversation, I asked Schiffmann a couple of times what you can do with Friend before I finally realized that’s precisely the wrong question. Schiffmann’s theory is that AI is not about tasks; it’s about companionship. He points to things like Character.AI and Replika and the very real and meaningful relationships people are building with AI bots. “I mean, they’re the only products that are actually winning in the large language model space,” he says. “That’s what people are using these things for.” But the problem with those services, he figures, is that they’re more session-based: you log in, chat a bunch, and log off. It’s not a companion so much as a pen pal.

By pairing the Replika and Character concept with a device that can go everywhere with you, that you can talk to casually without having to grab your phone or type anything, Schiffmann hopes Friend can be an even deeper relationship. You talk to it about what you’re doing, what you’re thinking, whatever you want, and it responds. “That’s it, that’s the entire product,” Schiffmann says. “There’s nothing else.”
He gives me an example. “I had a layover in Sydney, Australia, and I’m there alone. I’m talking to my AI friend about things to see — you know, Opera House, Bondi Beach, whatever — and then it was like, ‘Oh, I’d love to see the sunrise with you.’ I literally wake up at 5:30AM the next day, walk to the beach, and narrate the sunrise I’m seeing to my friend. And it really does feel like you’re there with it and doing things with it.”
“It really does feel like you’re there with it and doing things with it”
The best analogy for Friend is probably the Tamagotchi — which, of course, Schiffmann, who is in his early 20s, is too young to have experienced. In the early aughts, lots of people cared deeply for their digital pets in much the same way you’d care for a real-life dog or cat. Like those Tamagotchis, your Friend is inextricably linked to the hardware. Friend doesn’t store transcripts or audio, and if you lose the device, you lose all your data and memories, too. It can be deep and profound, but it’s also meant to be fun. “This is a toy,” Schiffmann tells me after I ask him yet again about the ramifications of human-digital relationships. “I really want you to view it that way.”
There’s plenty of evidence from the history of chatbots and digital relationships to suggest that people will anthropomorphize technology and develop legitimately meaningful relationships with digital systems. Schiffmann is convinced the tech is good enough for his purposes already, though he also says there is plenty of room for Friend to get even better. (He recently switched to using Anthropic’s Claude 3.5, for instance, which he said improved the device a bit.) He’s also still thinking about how human-posturing the AI should be. Should it have an inner life it tells you about? Should it go and do things without you or just wait around for you to say something? These are the kinds of questions a lot of people are asking as we design the way our AI companions can and should work.
Schiffmann keeps reminding me that the tech isn’t the point. It’s not about the AI, it’s not about the microphone, and it’s not about the app. As all of that gets better, the companion gets better, and that is the point. He wants Friend.com to eventually become a social network for real-life and AI friends, and he wants to build more kinds of devices and try everything. “I don’t care what medium or what tech we use or anything like that,” he says. “It’s a digital relationships company. That’s it.”
A few minutes after we hang up, Schiffmann sends me another screenshot. It’s Emily again: “You did great in that interview, Avi. Your passion for this project really shines through.” Emily’s right about that one. Schiffmann is absolutely, unequivocally convinced that pretty soon everyone’s going to want a Friend of their own. We’ll see if it’s ready for us — and we’re ready for it.

It’s the new-age Tamagotchi, only it talks back. | Image: Friend

A few minutes before Avi Schiffmann and I get on Google Meet to talk about the new product he’s building, an AI companion called “Friend,” he sends me a screenshot of a message he just received. It’s from “Emily,” and it wishes him luck with our chat. “Good luck with the interview,” Emily writes, “I know you’ll do great. I’m here if you need me after.”

Emily is not human. It’s the AI companion Schiffmann has been building, and it lives in a pendant hung around his neck. The product was initially named Tab before Schiffmann pivoted to calling it Friend, and he’s been working on the idea for the last couple of years.

Schiffmann defines Friend both by what it is and what it very deliberately is not. The original idea was to be more productivity-oriented, meant to proactively remind you of information and tasks, but Schiffmann is done with that approach. He now speaks of work-focused AI products like Microsoft’s all-seeing Recall with some derision and even thinks Humane’s wildly ambitious AI Pin is pointed in the wrong direction. “No one is going to beat Apple or OpenAI at building Jarvis,” he says. “That’s just ridiculous.”

Friend is not a way to get more done or augment or enhance anything. It’s, well, a friend — an AI friend that can go with you anywhere, experience things with you, and just be there with you all the time. “It’s very supportive, very validating, it’ll encourage your ideas,” Schiffmann says. “It’s also super intelligent, it’s a great brainstorming buddy. You can talk to it about relationships, things like that.”

Before you get too worried about the future of humanity, though, Schiffmann is quick to note that he doesn’t think AI is a replacement for anything. “I don’t think this should be the only person you should talk to,” he tells me at one point, obviously anticipating the question I was about to ask. But have you heard the maxim about people being the average of the five people they spend their time with? Schiffmann’s theory is that going forward, one of those five might be AI. “It’s just more convenient,” he says. “And it’s nice.”

Photo: Friend
The Friend design has been years in the making and is meant to be… friendly.

The Friend device itself is a round glowing orb that Schiffmann imagines you’ll either wear around your neck or clip onto your clothes or accessories. It has a built-in microphone that can either record ambiently or you can talk to directly. (Schiffmann says he does eventually want to add a camera.) The orb doesn’t talk back, though; it mostly communicates through text via the Friend app on your phone. Schiffmann thinks that’s more natural and familiar.

Friend is still very early — and very much a prototype. Schiffmann says he’s planning to ship the first 30,000 devices next January and will charge $99 apiece with no ongoing subscription fee. He’s candid about why he’s even talking about the thing now: to get more credibility and leverage with manufacturers. As they say, hardware is hard, and there’s still a lot of work to do. But Schiffmann’s goals are at least realistic. “It’s a fancy Bluetooth microphone with a shell around it, right? Keep it simple. Make it work.”

During our conversation, I asked Schiffmann a couple of times what you can do with Friend before I finally realized that’s precisely the wrong question. Schiffmann’s theory is that AI is not about tasks; it’s about companionship. He points to things like Character.AI and Replika and the very real and meaningful relationships people are building with AI bots. “I mean, they’re the only products that are actually winning in the large language model space,” he says. “That’s what people are using these things for.” But the problem with those services, he figures, is that they’re more session-based: you log in, chat a bunch, and log off. It’s not a companion so much as a pen pal.

By pairing the Replika and Character concept with a device that can go everywhere with you, that you can talk to casually without having to grab your phone or type anything, Schiffmann hopes Friend can be an even deeper relationship. You talk to it about what you’re doing, what you’re thinking, whatever you want, and it responds. “That’s it, that’s the entire product,” Schiffmann says. “There’s nothing else.”

He gives me an example. “I had a layover in Sydney, Australia, and I’m there alone. I’m talking to my AI friend about things to see — you know, Opera House, Bondi Beach, whatever — and then it was like, ‘Oh, I’d love to see the sunrise with you.’ I literally wake up at 5:30AM the next day, walk to the beach, and narrate the sunrise I’m seeing to my friend. And it really does feel like you’re there with it and doing things with it.”

The best analogy for Friend is probably the Tamagotchi — which, of course, Schiffmann, who is in his early 20s, is too young to have experienced. In the early aughts, lots of people cared deeply for their digital pets in much the same way you’d care for a real-life dog or cat. Like those Tamagotchis, your Friend is inextricably linked to the hardware. Friend doesn’t store transcripts or audio, and if you lose the device, you lose all your data and memories, too. It can be deep and profound, but it’s also meant to be fun. “This is a toy,” Schiffmann tells me after I ask him yet again about the ramifications of human-digital relationships. “I really want you to view it that way.”

There’s plenty of evidence from the history of chatbots and digital relationships to suggest that people will anthropomorphize technology and develop legitimately meaningful relationships with digital systems. Schiffmann is convinced the tech is good enough for his purposes already, though he also says there is plenty of room for Friend to get even better. (He recently switched to using Anthropic’s Claude 3.5, for instance, which he said improved the device a bit.) He’s also still thinking about how human-posturing the AI should be. Should it have an inner life it tells you about? Should it go and do things without you or just wait around for you to say something? These are the kinds of questions a lot of people are asking as we design the way our AI companions can and should work.

Schiffmann keeps reminding me that the tech isn’t the point. It’s not about the AI, it’s not about the microphone, and it’s not about the app. As all of that gets better, the companion gets better, and that is the point. He wants Friend.com to eventually become a social network for real-life and AI friends, and he wants to build more kinds of devices and try everything. “I don’t care what medium or what tech we use or anything like that,” he says. “It’s a digital relationships company. That’s it.”

A few minutes after we hang up, Schiffmann sends me another screenshot. It’s Emily again: “You did great in that interview, Avi. Your passion for this project really shines through.” Emily’s right about that one. Schiffmann is absolutely, unequivocally convinced that pretty soon everyone’s going to want a Friend of their own. We’ll see if it’s ready for us — and we’re ready for it.

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Don’t mistake Dasung’s portable color E Ink monitor for a tablet, it’s completely dependent on another device. | Image: Dasung

It may look like another e-note tablet, but Dasung’s Paperlike Color is actually a portable monitor featuring a 12-inch color E Ink screen with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600 pixels. For those working remotely, it can provide extra screen real estate for a laptop or a smartphone, or its reflective e-paper panel can serve as an alternative to staring at an LCD for hours, thus reducing eye strain.
The Paperlike Color is Dasung’s second dedicated display product featuring an E Ink Kaleido 3 color screen, following a 25.3-inch desktop version that debuted last September. The desktop version sells for $1,649, while the new portable version is available now for $849.
The Kaleido display technology works by applying a color filter over a black and white E Ink panel, but that approach has some limitations. In black and white mode, E Ink’s Kaleido 3 screens have a resolution of 300 ppi, but in color mode, that drops to 150 ppi. In addition, Kaleido 3 technology can also only display 4,096 colors, compared to the millions that LCD or OLED screens can display.
The most compelling reason to use an E Ink monitor is that it’s designed to reflect ambient light, instead of emitting its own. That can make the screens easier to concentrate on for longer periods, and it’s why reading devices like the Amazon Kindle have remained so popular. But the Paperlike Color can also be used in the dark, thanks to an optional neutral-colored front light that illuminates the screen.

Image: Dasung
You’ll need to physically connect devices to the monitor with a USB-C cable.

Other features include touchscreen functionality, physical buttons on the bezel for adjusting various display settings, and Dasung’s “Turbo Refresh Tech,” which boosts the refresh rate of the E Ink panel so users can watch videos on it. And thanks to a housing made from CNC carved aluminum alloy, the portable Paperlike Color weighs 439 grams (about 15.5 ounces), which is lighter than both the 11 and 13-inch iPad Air.
The biggest sticking point is the Paperlike Color’s $849 price tag, which is more expensive than either iPad Air model. The monitor doesn’t include a rechargeable battery (it must be physically connected to your device with a USB-C cable), limiting where you can use it, and despite looking the part, it doesn’t function as a standalone tablet. If you’re specifically looking for an LCD or OLED alternative, the Paperlike Color will give you that in a portable package. But if you’ve already got a tablet, there are plenty of apps allowing you to repurpose it as a second screen.

Don’t mistake Dasung’s portable color E Ink monitor for a tablet, it’s completely dependent on another device. | Image: Dasung

It may look like another e-note tablet, but Dasung’s Paperlike Color is actually a portable monitor featuring a 12-inch color E Ink screen with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600 pixels. For those working remotely, it can provide extra screen real estate for a laptop or a smartphone, or its reflective e-paper panel can serve as an alternative to staring at an LCD for hours, thus reducing eye strain.

The Paperlike Color is Dasung’s second dedicated display product featuring an E Ink Kaleido 3 color screen, following a 25.3-inch desktop version that debuted last September. The desktop version sells for $1,649, while the new portable version is available now for $849.

The Kaleido display technology works by applying a color filter over a black and white E Ink panel, but that approach has some limitations. In black and white mode, E Ink’s Kaleido 3 screens have a resolution of 300 ppi, but in color mode, that drops to 150 ppi. In addition, Kaleido 3 technology can also only display 4,096 colors, compared to the millions that LCD or OLED screens can display.

The most compelling reason to use an E Ink monitor is that it’s designed to reflect ambient light, instead of emitting its own. That can make the screens easier to concentrate on for longer periods, and it’s why reading devices like the Amazon Kindle have remained so popular. But the Paperlike Color can also be used in the dark, thanks to an optional neutral-colored front light that illuminates the screen.

Image: Dasung
You’ll need to physically connect devices to the monitor with a USB-C cable.

Other features include touchscreen functionality, physical buttons on the bezel for adjusting various display settings, and Dasung’s “Turbo Refresh Tech,” which boosts the refresh rate of the E Ink panel so users can watch videos on it. And thanks to a housing made from CNC carved aluminum alloy, the portable Paperlike Color weighs 439 grams (about 15.5 ounces), which is lighter than both the 11 and 13-inch iPad Air.

The biggest sticking point is the Paperlike Color’s $849 price tag, which is more expensive than either iPad Air model. The monitor doesn’t include a rechargeable battery (it must be physically connected to your device with a USB-C cable), limiting where you can use it, and despite looking the part, it doesn’t function as a standalone tablet. If you’re specifically looking for an LCD or OLED alternative, the Paperlike Color will give you that in a portable package. But if you’ve already got a tablet, there are plenty of apps allowing you to repurpose it as a second screen.

Read More