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The man behind the AI gaffes at Sports Illustrated and USA Today has a yearslong history of filling the internet with garbage. In the summer of 2018, staff of the Chicago Tribune awoke to find a story they didn’t recognize on the newspaper’s website. The article, multiple sources say, had something to do with a purse carried by Meghan Markle, the royal also known as the Duchess of Sussex.
Advertisements frequently masquerade as news articles at the bottom of actual journalism — this is the phenomenon some have dubbed “the chumbox.” But this article about Markle’s purse was, in terms of where it was hosted, how it was formatted, and where it was appearing, truly in the Tribune — its online edition, at least. Yet this was not what one would expect to run on the site of one of the most prominent newspapers in the country. It was more suited for a gossip rag or blog, a type of “as seen on celebrities” article pushing product. It clearly did not meet the paper’s editorial standards. (One person with knowledge of the article recalls that Markle’s name was misspelled.)
The piece was pulled down quickly after leadership at the company was alerted to it. When Tribune staff inspected the article in the site’s content management system, they discovered something curious: the piece had been published by BestReviews, a consumer product reviews website whose content was syndicated on the Tribune.
This incident was highly unusual. A few months before the Markle story was published, Tribune Publishing, the company that owned the Tribune, acquired a majority stake in BestReviews. The relationship between the Tribune and BestReviews was courteous. BestReviews staff published their work on a separate site and also republished work on chicagotribune.com, a fairly standard syndication deal with no issues until this point. The Markle article was in contrast with established protocol: BestReviews shouldn’t have pushed new types of content to the Tribune site without discussing it with staff at the paper. After the article was published, top executives at Tribune Publishing called up and questioned BestReviews leadership, multiple people who worked at the companies, said.
Tribune staff were confused by what had happened, but it was explained to them as a fluke. After the article was pulled, boundaries and standards were reiterated to Ben Faw, a cofounder of BestReviews, and staff moved on — it was an odd incident in an era of far bigger scandals at Tribune Publishing.
Unbeknownst to most, though, the article was, in fact, a piece of marketing content promoting a shopping startup founded by one of Faw’s friends, according to a person familiar with the situation. Faw did not dispute this when The Verge asked about the story.
Fast-forward to today, and a different media scandal has roiled the publishing industry for the last year and a half: the frenzied proliferation of web content generated by artificial intelligence tools.
In October, The Verge and other outlets reported on product review articles appearing on Gannett publications like USA Today that seemed to be AI-generated. Gannett maintained that the content was produced by humans and that a third-party marketing firm was responsible. Just a month later, eerily similar review articles were published on the website of Sports Illustrated, but this time, Futurism discovered that the article authors’ headshots were for sale on an AI photo website. Shortly after, Sports Illustrated said it had cut ties with the company that produced the reviews.
The apparent AI content proved embarrassing for nearly everyone involved: venerated publications that hired a third-party marketing firm to produce content were now attempting to defend the work — and themselves — after readers discovered the low-quality junk content on their sites. Workers who had nothing to do with the stories feared it could be the beginning of the end of their jobs. In January, the Sports Illustrated newsroom was gutted by mass layoffs, though much of the staff was later rehired after its parent company found a new publisher.
In both cases, as reported by The Verge, the AI-generated content was produced by a mysterious company called AdVon Commerce, a marketing firm that boasts of its AI-powered products. There’s little information available about AdVon online, as its owners have worked to scrub their names from the internet.
“I literally saw that headline about Sports Illustrated, and I was like, ‘I bet Ben did that.’”
But AdVon didn’t come out of nowhere. For years, according to former colleagues, internal documents, and court records, a person behind the operation has seemingly used his connections in the media industry to enrich himself: Ben Faw, CEO and cofounder of AdVon. For Faw, AI-generated sludge was just the next tactic to do so.
Faw has a stacked resume that he regularly highlights: a US Army veteran and West Point graduate, he went on to attend Harvard Business School and lists previous jobs at companies like LinkedIn and Tesla on his LinkedIn page. But to some who worked with Faw before he started AdVon, it was no surprise that the shoddy AI content was traced back to him.
“I literally saw that headline about Sports Illustrated [The Verge’s story],” one person who worked with Faw says, “and I was like, ‘I bet Ben did that.’”

Online marketers focused on Google Search traffic live and die by “reputation” — being seen as a reliable, trustworthy publisher in the eyes of Google leads to better placement in search results, which, in turn, leads to more clicks, more sales, and more eyeballs.
One of the signals Google uses to assess the reputation of a site is backlinks, or how often other trustworthy websites link to a site. The idea is that publications are legitimized by how many others cite them. The bigger the website, the more authority it bestows on links, at least in the world of SEO, where links are like currency: marketers inundate reporters with pitches, hoping to get mentions and links in stories. The shadier SEO specialists buy, sell, and trade links, a practice that Google prohibits.
In mid-2019, BestReviews staff began to notice that unfamiliar backlinks had been placed in content that was already live on the outlet’s website, bestreviews.com. The hyperlinks were numerous and largely unrelated to the articles they appeared on. They led to other blogs about pets and lawn care, OB-GYN practices in Ohio, and beauty product companies, according to documents reviewed by The Verge.
But the seemingly random links had something in common: Faw was somehow connected to many of the companies being promoted. A cosmetics company called Beauty Bakerie, for example, was linked to dozens of times. Faw is described as a board member of the company in a biography published online.
It wasn’t just the links to Beauty Bakerie that raised the alarm. Interviews with former associates, internal documents, and court records obtained by The Verge paint a picture of a complex web of companies involved in a backlink scheme, with Faw seemingly at the center.
Some of the links involve a company called Alan Morgan Group, a digital marketing firm based in Ohio that was cofounded by Eric Spurling, the cofounder and president of AdVon and a classmate of Faw’s from West Point. The firm’s services include “getting [clients’] content featured on the front page of some of the best-known digital newspapers” and search engine optimization. According to two people with insider knowledge, BestReviews had hired the firm to do SEO work for the website.
Faw was confronted about the thousands of links inserted into BestReviews’ content
In reality, Faw and others involved with Alan Morgan appear to have set up an elaborate, self-dealing system that used Faw’s connections to BestReviews to enrich themselves. According to interviews and internal documents seen by The Verge, hundreds of links placed in BestReviews stories went to clients of Alan Morgan. Though BestReviews had hired Alan Morgan to improve its SEO, in practice, it was more like Alan Morgan clients were getting SEO services in the form of plum, potentially lucrative backlinks from BestReviews.
According to documents seen by The Verge, Faw was confronted in June 2019 about the thousands of links inserted into BestReviews’ content, including links that didn’t make sense in context: the phrase “trauma shears”’ linked to Beauty Bakerie; a link on “learn more here” led to a different consumer reviews site.
When Faw was asked about the links, he claimed that someone at Alan Morgan Group had inserted the links, according to multiple people with knowledge of the conversations. The relationship was terminated.
What wasn’t known then, even to some senior BestReviews staff, is that Faw was allegedly employed by Alan Morgan and held a one-third equity stake in the company, according to a lawsuit filed by former business associate Jonathan Smith, a copy of which was obtained by The Verge. In the suit, Smith accuses Spurling and Faw of fraud and conspiracy, claiming the two ran off with money, intellectual property, and clients of his business as they spun up a dizzying number of companies — including, eventually, AdVon. Smith did not respond to requests for comment, and the case is now closed, per the court’s website. Interviews and documents suggest that Faw was employed at both Alan Morgan and BestReviews at the same time, in what appears to be a clear conflict of interest.
There are other threads in the links that, once pulled at, unravel and seem to lead back to Spurling and Faw. On one of the backlinked sites, dog-gear.com, an “About Us” page describes a “founding team” with a background that bears a striking similarity to Faw’s resume: West Point, Harvard Business School, Fortune 500 companies. An archived version of a DogGear author page indexed by Google lists “editor@advoncommerce.com” as a contact email. In his suit, Smith alleges that Spurling spun up a company called Pet Gear LLC, a company designed to link publisher’s content with Amazon affiliate links “in a way that would maximize revenue for the publisher,” according to the lawsuit. In the suit, Smith also requests financial documents related to dog-gear.com, though it’s not clear that the site is operated by Pet Gear, founded by Spurling.
Another site called Better Lawns and Garden was also linked to more than a hundred times, according to documents viewed by The Verge. The site publishes articles like, “The Best Potting Soils for Proper Plant Nutrition” and “Tree Felling: How to Safely Remove a Tree Yourself.” The pieces are written by a person named Mike Dover, who, according to the LinkedIn profile listed on his author page, works for AdVon.
The competing reviews sites were especially strange, implying that Faw, while working at BestReviews, possibly spun up competing review sites and linked out to them hoping to take advantage of BestReviews’ prominence and Google standing. Some of the outside reviews sites mirrored BestReviews’ own content: an archived version of the FAQ page on dog-gear.com from April, for example, is nearly identical to an archived version of BestReviews’ FAQ page from May.
At least once, this linking practice spilled over to the Tribune site as well. According to a person familiar with the incident, some time after the Meghan Markle purse story appeared and was removed, a Tribune web editor noticed a weird link inserted into a BestReviews article that was syndicated on the Tribune’s website.
“It was just a normal hyperlink to, I think, a dentist or some sort of private business in the South,” the person told The Verge. “It made absolutely no sense in the content.”
Like the Markle article, the addition of the link was traced back to BestReviews. Tribune staff quickly removed the hyperlink, and an executive called BestReviews to discuss the rogue link. After that, the source says, safeguards were put in place to prevent it from happening again, including limiting BestReviews’ CMS access.
“In both those situations we noted it quickly — we had somebody minding the store,” a former Tribune staffer says. “We saw that something wasn’t right, we took care of it immediately [and] wiped it out.”
Hedge fund Alden Global Capital acquired Tribune Publishing in 2021, after BestReviews was sold to Nexstar. Reached for comment via email, spokesperson Davidson Goldin didn’t answer questions related to the piece, saying that the events in this story predate Alden’s acquisition.
But at BestReviews, no one noticed the links until months after they were inserted, according to a person who worked at the company. The idea that Faw allegedly had created competing reviews sites — some of which directly ripped off the work of BestReviews — while still working at the company he helped build was shocking.
“No matter how you feel about a company, who does this?” they said. “Who cheats like this?”

Faw was prominently featured in a recent Futurism report about AdVon’s numerous publisher deals. The outlet reported that AdVon’s product review content had appeared on sites ranging from the Los Angeles Times to Hollywood Life and Us Weekly, attributed to writers that don’t exist. The articles, with titles like “Best Yoga Mats” and “Develop Your Core Using the Best Ab Roller,” contain paragraphs of stilted, unnatural-sounding language, with links leading to Amazon product pages, earning a small commission every time a reader purchases an item. They are essentially sales pitches dressed up to look like news articles or product reviews.
After both the USA Today / Gannett and Sports Illustrated debacles, AdVon denied claims that the product reviews were AI-generated. But when pressed by Futurism about documents that showed AdVon staff using AI, the company backtracked, saying automated tools were in use at least for some publishing partners. Still, many of the outlets cut ties with AdVon due to the quality of the work, Futurism reported.
But a former AdVon employee told The Verge that the content that AdVon says is created by humans is nearly identical to the AI-generated content they created while working there. Freelancers who were initially hired as writers were reassigned to roles of editors and tasked with making AI-generated writing sound human. The tool AdVon used — called MEL internally — generated hundreds of words on products using bare-bones prompts like “best televisions,” spitting out links to product pages on Amazon.
“I looked at [MEL’s output] the first time and I just fell apart,” the former AdVon worker says. “Everything we were working towards — all that education, all of the writing experience … it was gone. There was none of the human journalistic writing. It was just, generate a bunch of words that we hope will look like a good article.”
Faw and Spurling did not directly respond to The Verge’s questions about the details of this piece. Instead, Faw sent a statement saying AdVon is helpful to newsrooms and “generate[s] affiliate revenue which publishers use to fund newsroom operations and salaries.”
“AdVon offers human-only, AI-enhanced, and hybrid solutions to help our customers with this problem,” the statement continues. “We’re committed to working closely with our publishing partners to ensure that their optional use of our AI solutions meets their content standards in this quickly evolving space.”
Since the widespread availability of AI tools, news outlets have been at the center of conversations about artificial intelligence: Is there an ethical way to use them? How should outlets signal to readers when AI is involved? How can workers and human labor be protected?
Product reviews specifically have felt the effects of AI
Product reviews and commerce content specifically have felt the effects of AI: across many outlets, it’s been this type of service journalism that corporations have unleashed AI “experiments” on first. At CNET, AI tools were secretly used on content meant to sell credit cards, insurance, and other products and services before readers and media caught on. At The Inventory, a site owned by G/O Media, a bot has published dozens of stories a week highlighting Amazon products that are on sale since company leadership announced its plans to use AI. At both Sports Illustrated and USA Today / Gannett, third-party articles with all the hallmarks of being AI-generated were published alongside the work of human journalists.
The degradation of product reviews and recommendations is ironic given it’s often some of the most profitable work for media companies: each time a reader makes a purchase through a link in a story, the outlet gets a small kickback through affiliate revenue. Established review sites like The New York Times’ Wirecutter or niche interest blogs might not uncover corruption or break news, but readers care about that work — at their best, reviews are trustworthy, rigorously researched stories that help people make decisions about their lives. They also bring in money for news outlets.
By all accounts, the work of BestReviews while under Tribune ownership struck that balance. BestReviews was cofounded by Denis Grosz and Momchil Filev in 2014 and quickly built an archive of lucrative product reviews that earned the outlet money each time a reader made a purchase from an article. Grosz and Filev declined to comment for this story. Nexstar, the media company that acquired BestReviews in 2020, also declined to comment.
Multiple former BestReviews staff tell The Verge that they produced quality work, made by real people who cared about journalism. Articles were written by subject matter experts, or at least people who had an interest in the topic and were willing to do research about products and actually test them. There was a test lab, in-house photo and video teams, and editorial standards. To this day, BestReviews promises that it doesn’t accept payment or free products “in exchange for positive reviews,” therefore remaining unbiased.
“It’s not like Pulitzer Prize-winning content that we were doing,” a former BestReviews employee says. “But truly the mission was: save people money by giving them an honest review, pros and cons, and give them a few options based on different budgets.”
“We didn’t put out just a fluff piece or advertising for the [manufacturers],” another former staffer says. “We didn’t really take a bias towards a certain company. We kept our standards.”
But the work produced at AdVon was different. A former staffer told The Verge that when they wrote articles, they were simply creating marketing materials for brands that had hired AdVon to promote their products. There was no testing of gear or even selecting different models to compare; writers simply got a list of products and were tasked with rewriting Amazon product listings into articles. Another person who worked at AdVon described a similar experience using the AI system, in which MEL selected the products featured in the articles for them.
“[It was] promotional listicle content articles. It would be like, ‘10 best backpacks,’ and then they would have a list of backpacks promoted by companies that they were trying to support,” a former AdVon staffer says. “Most of this was to try to break through [search algorithms] so that that content could be promoted through SEO.”
Publishers are leaning into product review content, hoping it will buoy a sinking ship
While reputable outlets review and recommend products without fear or favor, an army of lower-quality blogs, content farms, and influencers push similar content that’s designed only to generate sales. “Best of” lists can be a cash cow for publishers looking for evergreen content that drives traffic from Google, and manufacturers stand to benefit from the press mentioning and linking to their products. As publishers stare down the barrel of Google Search traffic drying up to zero, outlets big and small, trustworthy and less so, are leaning into product review content, hoping it will buoy a sinking ship. But the ecosystem of online reviews is essentially the Wild West.
One of the countless companies promising to help brands get publicity via product reviews is called SellerRocket. The company markets to Amazon sellers who want their products mentioned in recommendation lists or reviews. SellerRocket says it has “helped more than 4,000 brands get coverage.”
In one webinar posted to YouTube, a SellerRocket employee explains to prospective clients how the company can get their products featured in news articles and reviews. They pull up a Sports Illustrated review of ab rollers — authored by “Damon Ward,” one of the fake AI authors created by AdVon — saying the magazine is a “publisher we work with.”
They then show that the best ab roller article is ranking highly on Google Search. Clicking on the story, the employee says, “They always lay out how they went about their grading process, why they chose what [products] they did.” There’s no mention of AdVon, but the article includes a familiar disclaimer: “Sports Illustrated and its partners may earn a commission if you purchase a product through one of our links.”
It’s not clear who selected the items appearing in AdVon’s product recommendations or why SellerRocket boasted of its success using an AdVon article. But according to Utah public records, the registered agent for a company called Seller Rocket shares a name with an operations specialist working at AdVon. SellerRocket didn’t respond to questions about its relationship with AdVon.
If any of the Sports Illustrated or Gannett content featured clients that paid for placement in reviews, that financial relationship wasn’t clearly disclosed to readers — which, if true, would be a violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.”
The SellerRocket website previously listed the logos of BuzzFeed, Forbes, Wirecutter, and BestReviews, implying they were SellerRocket clients. Faw and Spurling did not respond to questions surrounding the use of these logos.
“Wirecutter has never done business with SellerRocket. The use of our logo was misleading and factually incorrect and we had them take it down via a cease and desist order,” Jordan Cohen, spokesperson for The New York Times said in an email. Forbes spokesperson Jocelyn Swift and BuzzFeed spokesperson Juliana Clifton also told The Verge that the outlets have never worked with SellerRocket.
SellerRocket has since removed mention of those publications from its site.

By drawing on his deep network in media and product reviews, Faw was able to land deals with premier publishers like Sports Illustrated, USA Today, and McClatchy newspapers like the Miami Herald. The seemingly AI-generated content that was described as human-made lost AdVon business, and the publications running the work issued naive-sounding statements. Sports Illustrated, for example, said at the time that AdVon content was not AI-generated but that the listed author names were fake, leading the publisher to drop AdVon. After revelations that Sports Illustrated had been publishing content attributed to fake writers, the outlet’s then publisher ousted CEO Ross Levinsohn, a serial media executive who worked at Tribune Publishing around the time Faw was at BestReviews. (Levinsohn left the company after NPR reported he had been sued twice for sexual harassment, with both cases ending in settlements.)
In the time since the controversy erupted, Faw and Spurling have removed their names from the AdVon website.
But for the writers hired by AdVon to actually write, the company’s business practices have had lingering effects. One former AdVon worker told The Verge of having work dry up as they were instructed to use AI tools, so much so that eventually they couldn’t continue to do work for the firm.
Another former AdVon writer — who maintains they didn’t use AI while working at the company — says that because AdVon has deleted so much of its work, they’re unable to find their human-written clips to show potential clients as work samples. Some time after they left AdVon, an AdVon employee reached out to them, offering an AI editing position.
AdVon and the companies that have hired the firm are doubling down on all the same tactics that digital publishers have wrung dry: flooding Google with clickable, thin content; accelerating output at the cost of quality work; and trying to replace knowledgeable humans with cheaper machines.
For AdVon and other companies, the shift to AI is marketed as exciting, new, and forward-thinking. The name “AdVon” stands for advanced echelon, a military term describing a group that’s the first on the ground ahead of everyone else: elite, cutting-edge, leaders. Instead, Faw and his team flooded the internet with duplicitous, cheap words, nakedly designed for quick profits at the expense of human workers. It’s not visionary, but it’s the oldest trick in the book, a regurgitation of old ideas dressed up as new. The only question is how much longer it can last.

The man behind the AI gaffes at Sports Illustrated and USA Today has a yearslong history of filling the internet with garbage.

In the summer of 2018, staff of the Chicago Tribune awoke to find a story they didn’t recognize on the newspaper’s website. The article, multiple sources say, had something to do with a purse carried by Meghan Markle, the royal also known as the Duchess of Sussex.

Advertisements frequently masquerade as news articles at the bottom of actual journalism — this is the phenomenon some have dubbed “the chumbox.” But this article about Markle’s purse was, in terms of where it was hosted, how it was formatted, and where it was appearing, truly in the Tribune — its online edition, at least. Yet this was not what one would expect to run on the site of one of the most prominent newspapers in the country. It was more suited for a gossip rag or blog, a type of “as seen on celebrities” article pushing product. It clearly did not meet the paper’s editorial standards. (One person with knowledge of the article recalls that Markle’s name was misspelled.)

The piece was pulled down quickly after leadership at the company was alerted to it. When Tribune staff inspected the article in the site’s content management system, they discovered something curious: the piece had been published by BestReviews, a consumer product reviews website whose content was syndicated on the Tribune.

This incident was highly unusual. A few months before the Markle story was published, Tribune Publishing, the company that owned the Tribune, acquired a majority stake in BestReviews. The relationship between the Tribune and BestReviews was courteous. BestReviews staff published their work on a separate site and also republished work on chicagotribune.com, a fairly standard syndication deal with no issues until this point. The Markle article was in contrast with established protocol: BestReviews shouldn’t have pushed new types of content to the Tribune site without discussing it with staff at the paper. After the article was published, top executives at Tribune Publishing called up and questioned BestReviews leadership, multiple people who worked at the companies, said.

Tribune staff were confused by what had happened, but it was explained to them as a fluke. After the article was pulled, boundaries and standards were reiterated to Ben Faw, a cofounder of BestReviews, and staff moved on — it was an odd incident in an era of far bigger scandals at Tribune Publishing.

Unbeknownst to most, though, the article was, in fact, a piece of marketing content promoting a shopping startup founded by one of Faw’s friends, according to a person familiar with the situation. Faw did not dispute this when The Verge asked about the story.

Fast-forward to today, and a different media scandal has roiled the publishing industry for the last year and a half: the frenzied proliferation of web content generated by artificial intelligence tools.

In October, The Verge and other outlets reported on product review articles appearing on Gannett publications like USA Today that seemed to be AI-generated. Gannett maintained that the content was produced by humans and that a third-party marketing firm was responsible. Just a month later, eerily similar review articles were published on the website of Sports Illustrated, but this time, Futurism discovered that the article authors’ headshots were for sale on an AI photo website. Shortly after, Sports Illustrated said it had cut ties with the company that produced the reviews.

The apparent AI content proved embarrassing for nearly everyone involved: venerated publications that hired a third-party marketing firm to produce content were now attempting to defend the work — and themselves — after readers discovered the low-quality junk content on their sites. Workers who had nothing to do with the stories feared it could be the beginning of the end of their jobs. In January, the Sports Illustrated newsroom was gutted by mass layoffs, though much of the staff was later rehired after its parent company found a new publisher.

In both cases, as reported by The Verge, the AI-generated content was produced by a mysterious company called AdVon Commerce, a marketing firm that boasts of its AI-powered products. There’s little information available about AdVon online, as its owners have worked to scrub their names from the internet.

But AdVon didn’t come out of nowhere. For years, according to former colleagues, internal documents, and court records, a person behind the operation has seemingly used his connections in the media industry to enrich himself: Ben Faw, CEO and cofounder of AdVon. For Faw, AI-generated sludge was just the next tactic to do so.

Faw has a stacked resume that he regularly highlights: a US Army veteran and West Point graduate, he went on to attend Harvard Business School and lists previous jobs at companies like LinkedIn and Tesla on his LinkedIn page. But to some who worked with Faw before he started AdVon, it was no surprise that the shoddy AI content was traced back to him.

“I literally saw that headline about Sports Illustrated [The Verge’s story],” one person who worked with Faw says, “and I was like, ‘I bet Ben did that.’”

Online marketers focused on Google Search traffic live and die by “reputation” — being seen as a reliable, trustworthy publisher in the eyes of Google leads to better placement in search results, which, in turn, leads to more clicks, more sales, and more eyeballs.

One of the signals Google uses to assess the reputation of a site is backlinks, or how often other trustworthy websites link to a site. The idea is that publications are legitimized by how many others cite them. The bigger the website, the more authority it bestows on links, at least in the world of SEO, where links are like currency: marketers inundate reporters with pitches, hoping to get mentions and links in stories. The shadier SEO specialists buy, sell, and trade links, a practice that Google prohibits.

In mid-2019, BestReviews staff began to notice that unfamiliar backlinks had been placed in content that was already live on the outlet’s website, bestreviews.com. The hyperlinks were numerous and largely unrelated to the articles they appeared on. They led to other blogs about pets and lawn care, OB-GYN practices in Ohio, and beauty product companies, according to documents reviewed by The Verge.

But the seemingly random links had something in common: Faw was somehow connected to many of the companies being promoted. A cosmetics company called Beauty Bakerie, for example, was linked to dozens of times. Faw is described as a board member of the company in a biography published online.

It wasn’t just the links to Beauty Bakerie that raised the alarm. Interviews with former associates, internal documents, and court records obtained by The Verge paint a picture of a complex web of companies involved in a backlink scheme, with Faw seemingly at the center.

Some of the links involve a company called Alan Morgan Group, a digital marketing firm based in Ohio that was cofounded by Eric Spurling, the cofounder and president of AdVon and a classmate of Faw’s from West Point. The firm’s services include “getting [clients’] content featured on the front page of some of the best-known digital newspapers” and search engine optimization. According to two people with insider knowledge, BestReviews had hired the firm to do SEO work for the website.

In reality, Faw and others involved with Alan Morgan appear to have set up an elaborate, self-dealing system that used Faw’s connections to BestReviews to enrich themselves. According to interviews and internal documents seen by The Verge, hundreds of links placed in BestReviews stories went to clients of Alan Morgan. Though BestReviews had hired Alan Morgan to improve its SEO, in practice, it was more like Alan Morgan clients were getting SEO services in the form of plum, potentially lucrative backlinks from BestReviews.

According to documents seen by The Verge, Faw was confronted in June 2019 about the thousands of links inserted into BestReviews’ content, including links that didn’t make sense in context: the phrase “trauma shears”’ linked to Beauty Bakerie; a link on “learn more here” led to a different consumer reviews site.

When Faw was asked about the links, he claimed that someone at Alan Morgan Group had inserted the links, according to multiple people with knowledge of the conversations. The relationship was terminated.

What wasn’t known then, even to some senior BestReviews staff, is that Faw was allegedly employed by Alan Morgan and held a one-third equity stake in the company, according to a lawsuit filed by former business associate Jonathan Smith, a copy of which was obtained by The Verge. In the suit, Smith accuses Spurling and Faw of fraud and conspiracy, claiming the two ran off with money, intellectual property, and clients of his business as they spun up a dizzying number of companies — including, eventually, AdVon. Smith did not respond to requests for comment, and the case is now closed, per the court’s website. Interviews and documents suggest that Faw was employed at both Alan Morgan and BestReviews at the same time, in what appears to be a clear conflict of interest.

There are other threads in the links that, once pulled at, unravel and seem to lead back to Spurling and Faw. On one of the backlinked sites, dog-gear.com, an “About Us” page describes a “founding team” with a background that bears a striking similarity to Faw’s resume: West Point, Harvard Business School, Fortune 500 companies. An archived version of a DogGear author page indexed by Google lists “editor@advoncommerce.com” as a contact email. In his suit, Smith alleges that Spurling spun up a company called Pet Gear LLC, a company designed to link publisher’s content with Amazon affiliate links “in a way that would maximize revenue for the publisher,” according to the lawsuit. In the suit, Smith also requests financial documents related to dog-gear.com, though it’s not clear that the site is operated by Pet Gear, founded by Spurling.

Another site called Better Lawns and Garden was also linked to more than a hundred times, according to documents viewed by The Verge. The site publishes articles like, “The Best Potting Soils for Proper Plant Nutrition” and “Tree Felling: How to Safely Remove a Tree Yourself.” The pieces are written by a person named Mike Dover, who, according to the LinkedIn profile listed on his author page, works for AdVon.

The competing reviews sites were especially strange, implying that Faw, while working at BestReviews, possibly spun up competing review sites and linked out to them hoping to take advantage of BestReviews’ prominence and Google standing. Some of the outside reviews sites mirrored BestReviews’ own content: an archived version of the FAQ page on dog-gear.com from April, for example, is nearly identical to an archived version of BestReviews’ FAQ page from May.

At least once, this linking practice spilled over to the Tribune site as well. According to a person familiar with the incident, some time after the Meghan Markle purse story appeared and was removed, a Tribune web editor noticed a weird link inserted into a BestReviews article that was syndicated on the Tribune’s website.

“It was just a normal hyperlink to, I think, a dentist or some sort of private business in the South,” the person told The Verge. “It made absolutely no sense in the content.”

Like the Markle article, the addition of the link was traced back to BestReviews. Tribune staff quickly removed the hyperlink, and an executive called BestReviews to discuss the rogue link. After that, the source says, safeguards were put in place to prevent it from happening again, including limiting BestReviews’ CMS access.

“In both those situations we noted it quickly — we had somebody minding the store,” a former Tribune staffer says. “We saw that something wasn’t right, we took care of it immediately [and] wiped it out.”

Hedge fund Alden Global Capital acquired Tribune Publishing in 2021, after BestReviews was sold to Nexstar. Reached for comment via email, spokesperson Davidson Goldin didn’t answer questions related to the piece, saying that the events in this story predate Alden’s acquisition.

But at BestReviews, no one noticed the links until months after they were inserted, according to a person who worked at the company. The idea that Faw allegedly had created competing reviews sites — some of which directly ripped off the work of BestReviews — while still working at the company he helped build was shocking.

“No matter how you feel about a company, who does this?” they said. “Who cheats like this?”

Faw was prominently featured in a recent Futurism report about AdVon’s numerous publisher deals. The outlet reported that AdVon’s product review content had appeared on sites ranging from the Los Angeles Times to Hollywood Life and Us Weekly, attributed to writers that don’t exist. The articles, with titles like “Best Yoga Mats” and “Develop Your Core Using the Best Ab Roller,” contain paragraphs of stilted, unnatural-sounding language, with links leading to Amazon product pages, earning a small commission every time a reader purchases an item. They are essentially sales pitches dressed up to look like news articles or product reviews.

After both the USA Today / Gannett and Sports Illustrated debacles, AdVon denied claims that the product reviews were AI-generated. But when pressed by Futurism about documents that showed AdVon staff using AI, the company backtracked, saying automated tools were in use at least for some publishing partners. Still, many of the outlets cut ties with AdVon due to the quality of the work, Futurism reported.

But a former AdVon employee told The Verge that the content that AdVon says is created by humans is nearly identical to the AI-generated content they created while working there. Freelancers who were initially hired as writers were reassigned to roles of editors and tasked with making AI-generated writing sound human. The tool AdVon used — called MEL internally — generated hundreds of words on products using bare-bones prompts like “best televisions,” spitting out links to product pages on Amazon.

“I looked at [MEL’s output] the first time and I just fell apart,” the former AdVon worker says. “Everything we were working towards — all that education, all of the writing experience … it was gone. There was none of the human journalistic writing. It was just, generate a bunch of words that we hope will look like a good article.”

Faw and Spurling did not directly respond to The Verge’s questions about the details of this piece. Instead, Faw sent a statement saying AdVon is helpful to newsrooms and “generate[s] affiliate revenue which publishers use to fund newsroom operations and salaries.”

“AdVon offers human-only, AI-enhanced, and hybrid solutions to help our customers with this problem,” the statement continues. “We’re committed to working closely with our publishing partners to ensure that their optional use of our AI solutions meets their content standards in this quickly evolving space.”

Since the widespread availability of AI tools, news outlets have been at the center of conversations about artificial intelligence: Is there an ethical way to use them? How should outlets signal to readers when AI is involved? How can workers and human labor be protected?

Product reviews and commerce content specifically have felt the effects of AI: across many outlets, it’s been this type of service journalism that corporations have unleashed AI “experiments” on first. At CNET, AI tools were secretly used on content meant to sell credit cards, insurance, and other products and services before readers and media caught on. At The Inventory, a site owned by G/O Media, a bot has published dozens of stories a week highlighting Amazon products that are on sale since company leadership announced its plans to use AI. At both Sports Illustrated and USA Today / Gannett, third-party articles with all the hallmarks of being AI-generated were published alongside the work of human journalists.

The degradation of product reviews and recommendations is ironic given it’s often some of the most profitable work for media companies: each time a reader makes a purchase through a link in a story, the outlet gets a small kickback through affiliate revenue. Established review sites like The New York Times’ Wirecutter or niche interest blogs might not uncover corruption or break news, but readers care about that work — at their best, reviews are trustworthy, rigorously researched stories that help people make decisions about their lives. They also bring in money for news outlets.

By all accounts, the work of BestReviews while under Tribune ownership struck that balance. BestReviews was cofounded by Denis Grosz and Momchil Filev in 2014 and quickly built an archive of lucrative product reviews that earned the outlet money each time a reader made a purchase from an article. Grosz and Filev declined to comment for this story. Nexstar, the media company that acquired BestReviews in 2020, also declined to comment.

Multiple former BestReviews staff tell The Verge that they produced quality work, made by real people who cared about journalism. Articles were written by subject matter experts, or at least people who had an interest in the topic and were willing to do research about products and actually test them. There was a test lab, in-house photo and video teams, and editorial standards. To this day, BestReviews promises that it doesn’t accept payment or free products “in exchange for positive reviews,” therefore remaining unbiased.

“It’s not like Pulitzer Prize-winning content that we were doing,” a former BestReviews employee says. “But truly the mission was: save people money by giving them an honest review, pros and cons, and give them a few options based on different budgets.”

“We didn’t put out just a fluff piece or advertising for the [manufacturers],” another former staffer says. “We didn’t really take a bias towards a certain company. We kept our standards.”

But the work produced at AdVon was different. A former staffer told The Verge that when they wrote articles, they were simply creating marketing materials for brands that had hired AdVon to promote their products. There was no testing of gear or even selecting different models to compare; writers simply got a list of products and were tasked with rewriting Amazon product listings into articles. Another person who worked at AdVon described a similar experience using the AI system, in which MEL selected the products featured in the articles for them.

“[It was] promotional listicle content articles. It would be like, ‘10 best backpacks,’ and then they would have a list of backpacks promoted by companies that they were trying to support,” a former AdVon staffer says. “Most of this was to try to break through [search algorithms] so that that content could be promoted through SEO.”

While reputable outlets review and recommend products without fear or favor, an army of lower-quality blogs, content farms, and influencers push similar content that’s designed only to generate sales. “Best of” lists can be a cash cow for publishers looking for evergreen content that drives traffic from Google, and manufacturers stand to benefit from the press mentioning and linking to their products. As publishers stare down the barrel of Google Search traffic drying up to zero, outlets big and small, trustworthy and less so, are leaning into product review content, hoping it will buoy a sinking ship. But the ecosystem of online reviews is essentially the Wild West.

One of the countless companies promising to help brands get publicity via product reviews is called SellerRocket. The company markets to Amazon sellers who want their products mentioned in recommendation lists or reviews. SellerRocket says it has “helped more than 4,000 brands get coverage.”

In one webinar posted to YouTube, a SellerRocket employee explains to prospective clients how the company can get their products featured in news articles and reviews. They pull up a Sports Illustrated review of ab rollers — authored by “Damon Ward,” one of the fake AI authors created by AdVon — saying the magazine is a “publisher we work with.”

They then show that the best ab roller article is ranking highly on Google Search. Clicking on the story, the employee says, “They always lay out how they went about their grading process, why they chose what [products] they did.” There’s no mention of AdVon, but the article includes a familiar disclaimer: “Sports Illustrated and its partners may earn a commission if you purchase a product through one of our links.”

It’s not clear who selected the items appearing in AdVon’s product recommendations or why SellerRocket boasted of its success using an AdVon article. But according to Utah public records, the registered agent for a company called Seller Rocket shares a name with an operations specialist working at AdVon. SellerRocket didn’t respond to questions about its relationship with AdVon.

If any of the Sports Illustrated or Gannett content featured clients that paid for placement in reviews, that financial relationship wasn’t clearly disclosed to readers — which, if true, would be a violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.”

The SellerRocket website previously listed the logos of BuzzFeed, Forbes, Wirecutter, and BestReviews, implying they were SellerRocket clients. Faw and Spurling did not respond to questions surrounding the use of these logos.

“Wirecutter has never done business with SellerRocket. The use of our logo was misleading and factually incorrect and we had them take it down via a cease and desist order,” Jordan Cohen, spokesperson for The New York Times said in an email. Forbes spokesperson Jocelyn Swift and BuzzFeed spokesperson Juliana Clifton also told The Verge that the outlets have never worked with SellerRocket.

SellerRocket has since removed mention of those publications from its site.

By drawing on his deep network in media and product reviews, Faw was able to land deals with premier publishers like Sports Illustrated, USA Today, and McClatchy newspapers like the Miami Herald. The seemingly AI-generated content that was described as human-made lost AdVon business, and the publications running the work issued naive-sounding statements. Sports Illustrated, for example, said at the time that AdVon content was not AI-generated but that the listed author names were fake, leading the publisher to drop AdVon. After revelations that Sports Illustrated had been publishing content attributed to fake writers, the outlet’s then publisher ousted CEO Ross Levinsohn, a serial media executive who worked at Tribune Publishing around the time Faw was at BestReviews. (Levinsohn left the company after NPR reported he had been sued twice for sexual harassment, with both cases ending in settlements.)

In the time since the controversy erupted, Faw and Spurling have removed their names from the AdVon website.

But for the writers hired by AdVon to actually write, the company’s business practices have had lingering effects. One former AdVon worker told The Verge of having work dry up as they were instructed to use AI tools, so much so that eventually they couldn’t continue to do work for the firm.

Another former AdVon writer — who maintains they didn’t use AI while working at the company — says that because AdVon has deleted so much of its work, they’re unable to find their human-written clips to show potential clients as work samples. Some time after they left AdVon, an AdVon employee reached out to them, offering an AI editing position.

AdVon and the companies that have hired the firm are doubling down on all the same tactics that digital publishers have wrung dry: flooding Google with clickable, thin content; accelerating output at the cost of quality work; and trying to replace knowledgeable humans with cheaper machines.

For AdVon and other companies, the shift to AI is marketed as exciting, new, and forward-thinking. The name “AdVon” stands for advanced echelon, a military term describing a group that’s the first on the ground ahead of everyone else: elite, cutting-edge, leaders. Instead, Faw and his team flooded the internet with duplicitous, cheap words, nakedly designed for quick profits at the expense of human workers. It’s not visionary, but it’s the oldest trick in the book, a regurgitation of old ideas dressed up as new. The only question is how much longer it can last.

Read More 

Image: Jackson Gibbs for The Verge

I thought AI apps could help design my space, but they’re not quite ready yet. When I moved to a new studio apartment last year, it was my chance to live out my DIY YouTube girly dreams and design it to my heart’s content. But it turned out to be harder than I thought. Since I couldn’t afford an actual designer, I decided to try out some of the generative AI-powered design apps I’d seen floating around the internet.
AI-based design tools began cropping up about the time ChatGPT burst onto the scene. They come in different flavors, from platforms where you upload a photo and write a prompt for the AI to overlay a new image on top of to ones that suggest new styles for you to try.

Photo by Emilia David / The Verge
One of the images I asked AI apps to redesign.

Photo by Emilia David / The Verge
The second photo I uploaded, showing a corner of my living room.

I decided to try out a couple of straight AI chatbots (ChatGPT and Gemini), a retail-based AI assistant from Ikea, and three design apps (Spacely AI, Decoratly, and RoomGPT). I uploaded photos of my apartment to the platforms and wrote two prompts for those that had a prompt box: “Give me a storage solution for this area” and “Transform this image into a midcentury modern-style living room.”
Here are short summaries of how each one fared.

ChatGPT and Gemini

Screenshot: ChatGPT
My conversation with ChatGPT about redesigning my apartment.

ChatGPT and Gemini were (obviously) not made explicitly for design, so the most I expected were some suggestions and maybe an edit of the photo with some information about the items it chose.
I got some of what I hoped for. Both ChatGPT and Gemini gave me storage suggestions, with ChatGPT telling me what materials I should look for to keep the room in the midcentury modern style. Neither chatbot was capable of changing my photo or generating its own living room designs in my chosen style.
ChatGPT is free to use for a limited number of messages; otherwise, it’s $20 per month. Gemini is free, but the advanced version with improved AI models is $19.99 with a Google One membership.
The Ikea AI Assistant

Screenshot: Ikea
Ikea’s chatbot gave me some furniture ideas.

Ikea created a custom version of ChatGPT last February so that shoppers could ask questions about furnishing their living spaces and get suggestions about styles and furniture. I uploaded a photo of a corner of my living room, which admittedly showed a messy pile of workout stuff, vinyl records, a bookshelf, and just general bric-a-brac, and checked out its suggestions.
To store my yoga mat (and a travel pillow it mistook for a yoga mat), Ikea’s chatbot suggested I get a storage rack and other “decorative items.” (It also suggested that I add a bookshelf even though there was already one in my photo.)
As expected, after suggesting storage solutions, Ikea wanted me to buy its products, so I gave it rough measurements of the spot and told it I would love items evoking a midcentury modern feel but with dark wood. It responded with photos of the items and told me where to find them. Despite all that, it still felt more like a search tool than a design app.
The better option is probably Ikea’s non-ChatGPT-based mobile app, which uses augmented reality to help you imagine what your space would look like by overlaying its product in your home.
Ikea’s custom GPT is free at the OpenGPT Store.
Spacely AI

Screenshot: Spacely AI
Spacely did an okay job, but for some reason, it turned my lemon into a blue egg.

One of the most recommended AI-based design platforms on social media is Spacely AI. After uploading a photo or choosing from a template, users can redesign a space, furnish an empty room, or edit a photo through written prompts.
I asked Spacely to reimagine my space in a midcentury modern design with mainly wooden furniture. Spacely is more customizable than other platforms, allowing me to control how much its model follows my prompts (such as preferred style, color palette, etc.). However, the customization choices are vastly limited in the free version; if you want to do more than just try it out, you’ll need to go for a paid plan.
Spacely had a basic understanding of what I wanted, but the images it generated didn’t really fulfill my brief. For example, I happened to upload a photo that included two plastic containers and a lemon, and the AI generator transformed the two objects into… decorative items, I guess. The plastic containers became wooden cylinders and the lemon either is a rock or rotten fruit. (Unfortunately, it’s still normal for funny things to show up in AI-generated images.)
Spacely AI Pro is $20.75 a month for a yearly plan or $39 for a monthly subscription for unlimited prompts, watermark-free photos, and high-resolution downloads.
Decoratly

Screenshot: Decoratly
Decoratly’s stab at designing my apartment felt closer to a real room with a distinct style.

Decoratly also transforms photos into a specific style. It’s very limited for free users; before I subscribed, I could only upload my photo and tap the quick redesign button to generate a generic design filled with white and black furniture and zero character.
When I upgraded to a Pro account, I was able to use Decoratly’s “Build a Prompt” feature and its image filter, which lets you give instructions on what you’d like the app to make. Unlike the other AI prompt builders I tried, Decoratly wouldn’t let me write my own prompts. Instead, I had to choose from a prepared set of words to describe what style, color, material, and texture I wanted to see in the transformed photo.
I chose the words “midcentury modern,” “dark,” “gray,” “wooden,” “metal,” “smooth,” and “neutral” for my room. The new photo it created felt closer to a real room with a distinct style than those I got with the other apps, although some of its choices could be weird — like putting some sort of table thing on top of the cylinder it transformed my electric fan into. Also, it put my monstera plant in a teeny-tiny pot that would have fallen over in five seconds flat.
Decoratly costs $12 / month for unlimited designs and additional features. A 24-hour ($3) and seven-day ($6) trial is available.
RoomGPT

Screenshot: RoomGPT
RoomGPT’s attempt added a blur filter to my apartment.

Out of the dedicated AI design platforms I tried, RoomGPT was the most disappointing.
I felt like the app did the bare minimum in redesigning my space. It did change a couple of items to fit the brief — for example, adding a couch to a room that didn’t have one — but it also removed my TV and media console entirely and never transformed the room to fit the style I wanted.
RoomGPT runs on a credit system, where each render is one credit. The free version offers two free credits. After that, there are three paid tiers based on the number of credits or room designs: $9 for 30 room designs; $19 for 100 designs; and $29 for 200 credits.
Waiting for better
In short, none of the AI apps I tried really helped me design my place. The most they did was show me the kinds of furniture that could fit the vibe I was looking for, which I could’ve done with a quick Google search anyway. None of them were capable of figuring out a new style for my space or truly reimagining my apartment. As with other things, AI is not really ready to design our living spaces.

Image: Jackson Gibbs for The Verge

I thought AI apps could help design my space, but they’re not quite ready yet.

When I moved to a new studio apartment last year, it was my chance to live out my DIY YouTube girly dreams and design it to my heart’s content. But it turned out to be harder than I thought. Since I couldn’t afford an actual designer, I decided to try out some of the generative AI-powered design apps I’d seen floating around the internet.

AI-based design tools began cropping up about the time ChatGPT burst onto the scene. They come in different flavors, from platforms where you upload a photo and write a prompt for the AI to overlay a new image on top of to ones that suggest new styles for you to try.

Photo by Emilia David / The Verge
One of the images I asked AI apps to redesign.

Photo by Emilia David / The Verge
The second photo I uploaded, showing a corner of my living room.

I decided to try out a couple of straight AI chatbots (ChatGPT and Gemini), a retail-based AI assistant from Ikea, and three design apps (Spacely AI, Decoratly, and RoomGPT). I uploaded photos of my apartment to the platforms and wrote two prompts for those that had a prompt box: “Give me a storage solution for this area” and “Transform this image into a midcentury modern-style living room.”

Here are short summaries of how each one fared.

ChatGPT and Gemini

Screenshot: ChatGPT
My conversation with ChatGPT about redesigning my apartment.

ChatGPT and Gemini were (obviously) not made explicitly for design, so the most I expected were some suggestions and maybe an edit of the photo with some information about the items it chose.

I got some of what I hoped for. Both ChatGPT and Gemini gave me storage suggestions, with ChatGPT telling me what materials I should look for to keep the room in the midcentury modern style. Neither chatbot was capable of changing my photo or generating its own living room designs in my chosen style.

ChatGPT is free to use for a limited number of messages; otherwise, it’s $20 per month. Gemini is free, but the advanced version with improved AI models is $19.99 with a Google One membership.

The Ikea AI Assistant

Screenshot: Ikea
Ikea’s chatbot gave me some furniture ideas.

Ikea created a custom version of ChatGPT last February so that shoppers could ask questions about furnishing their living spaces and get suggestions about styles and furniture. I uploaded a photo of a corner of my living room, which admittedly showed a messy pile of workout stuff, vinyl records, a bookshelf, and just general bric-a-brac, and checked out its suggestions.

To store my yoga mat (and a travel pillow it mistook for a yoga mat), Ikea’s chatbot suggested I get a storage rack and other “decorative items.” (It also suggested that I add a bookshelf even though there was already one in my photo.)

As expected, after suggesting storage solutions, Ikea wanted me to buy its products, so I gave it rough measurements of the spot and told it I would love items evoking a midcentury modern feel but with dark wood. It responded with photos of the items and told me where to find them. Despite all that, it still felt more like a search tool than a design app.

The better option is probably Ikea’s non-ChatGPT-based mobile app, which uses augmented reality to help you imagine what your space would look like by overlaying its product in your home.

Ikea’s custom GPT is free at the OpenGPT Store.

Spacely AI

Screenshot: Spacely AI
Spacely did an okay job, but for some reason, it turned my lemon into a blue egg.

One of the most recommended AI-based design platforms on social media is Spacely AI. After uploading a photo or choosing from a template, users can redesign a space, furnish an empty room, or edit a photo through written prompts.

I asked Spacely to reimagine my space in a midcentury modern design with mainly wooden furniture. Spacely is more customizable than other platforms, allowing me to control how much its model follows my prompts (such as preferred style, color palette, etc.). However, the customization choices are vastly limited in the free version; if you want to do more than just try it out, you’ll need to go for a paid plan.

Spacely had a basic understanding of what I wanted, but the images it generated didn’t really fulfill my brief. For example, I happened to upload a photo that included two plastic containers and a lemon, and the AI generator transformed the two objects into… decorative items, I guess. The plastic containers became wooden cylinders and the lemon either is a rock or rotten fruit. (Unfortunately, it’s still normal for funny things to show up in AI-generated images.)

Spacely AI Pro is $20.75 a month for a yearly plan or $39 for a monthly subscription for unlimited prompts, watermark-free photos, and high-resolution downloads.

Decoratly

Screenshot: Decoratly
Decoratly’s stab at designing my apartment felt closer to a real room with a distinct style.

Decoratly also transforms photos into a specific style. It’s very limited for free users; before I subscribed, I could only upload my photo and tap the quick redesign button to generate a generic design filled with white and black furniture and zero character.

When I upgraded to a Pro account, I was able to use Decoratly’s “Build a Prompt” feature and its image filter, which lets you give instructions on what you’d like the app to make. Unlike the other AI prompt builders I tried, Decoratly wouldn’t let me write my own prompts. Instead, I had to choose from a prepared set of words to describe what style, color, material, and texture I wanted to see in the transformed photo.

I chose the words “midcentury modern,” “dark,” “gray,” “wooden,” “metal,” “smooth,” and “neutral” for my room. The new photo it created felt closer to a real room with a distinct style than those I got with the other apps, although some of its choices could be weird — like putting some sort of table thing on top of the cylinder it transformed my electric fan into. Also, it put my monstera plant in a teeny-tiny pot that would have fallen over in five seconds flat.

Decoratly costs $12 / month for unlimited designs and additional features. A 24-hour ($3) and seven-day ($6) trial is available.

RoomGPT

Screenshot: RoomGPT
RoomGPT’s attempt added a blur filter to my apartment.

Out of the dedicated AI design platforms I tried, RoomGPT was the most disappointing.

I felt like the app did the bare minimum in redesigning my space. It did change a couple of items to fit the brief — for example, adding a couch to a room that didn’t have one — but it also removed my TV and media console entirely and never transformed the room to fit the style I wanted.

RoomGPT runs on a credit system, where each render is one credit. The free version offers two free credits. After that, there are three paid tiers based on the number of credits or room designs: $9 for 30 room designs; $19 for 100 designs; and $29 for 200 credits.

Waiting for better

In short, none of the AI apps I tried really helped me design my place. The most they did was show me the kinds of furniture that could fit the vibe I was looking for, which I could’ve done with a quick Google search anyway. None of them were capable of figuring out a new style for my space or truly reimagining my apartment. As with other things, AI is not really ready to design our living spaces.

Read More 

Illustration: The Verge

As Sonos continues chipping away at fixing bugs and improving the performance of its poorly received mobile app redesign, the company also remains focused on several new hardware products. Among them is an ultrapremium soundbar that will serve as a successor to the current Sonos Arc — and likely at a higher price. Codenamed Lasso, the device is currently in limited beta testing, and today, I can share the first images of it.
The exterior of the Lasso soundbar bears a strong resemblance to the Arc, which Sonos introduced over four years ago. But inside, the components and speaker drivers have been completely overhauled and redesigned, and that’s expected to result in a cost upwards of $1,200. Sonos aims to ship Lasso later this year, though the timeframe could change.

Image: The Verge
Yep, the Lasso soundbar has a very similar design to the Arc. If it ain’t broke…

Whenever it does arrive, Lasso (hardware model S45) will be the first Sonos product to integrate technology from Mayht, a Netherlands-based startup that the company acquired in 2022 for $100 million in cash. At the time, Sonos credited Mayht for having “invented a new, revolutionary approach to audio transducers.” CEO Patrick Spence said the deal would give Sonos “more incredible people, technology, and intellectual property that will further distinguish the Sonos experience, enhance our competitive advantage, and accelerate our future roadmap.”
But it’s taken quite some time to get Mayht’s ideas into a shipping product. Sonos has released several small speakers over the last couple years — the Era 100, Move 2, and Roam 2 among them — that could’ve benefitted from Mayht’s innovative transducers, which are said to “enable smaller and lighter form factors without compromising on quality.” But it’s the soundbar that will offer the first taste of what the acquisition has yielded. Sources tell me that it’s been a challenge to make Mayht’s transducer system more cost efficient, as it partly makes use of “expensive” neodymium magnets.
Bloomberg previously reported the Lasso codename, its rumored price, and the inclusion of Mayht’s technology. The product’s final consumer branding isn’t yet known, but for now, Sonos is playfully including the Ted Lasso typeface on beta units.

Image: The Verge
Lasso is the soundbar’s codename — not the final consumer branding.

The Arc is already a very impressive Dolby Atmos soundbar, and you can expect even greater immersion from Lasso and its revamped internals. Additionally, according to sources, the upcoming soundbar should deliver substantially better bass performance than its predecessor. With the Arc, you really need to add a Sub or Sub Mini to get the most out of it. Sonos could maybe get away with that with a $899 product, but if it’s going to charge well over $1,000 for Lasso, the device needs to deliver top-tier home theater audio without any added help.

Image: The Verge
The new soundbar will support Bluetooth audio playback, something that the Arc does not.

The images also reveal a dedicated Bluetooth button, suggesting that Lasso could support Bluetooth audio playback. That feature has been absent from all previous Sonos soundbars. And similar to the company’s other recent products, there’ll be a physical switch for disabling the built-in microphones.
Just like the Arc, Lasso is designed to work with the recently released Sonos Ace headphones for private listening with spatial audio. The company has pledged to extend Ace compatibility to its more affordable Beam and Ray soundbars by late summer or early fall.

As for the more immediate future, Sonos continues to release updates to its mobile app at a frequent pace as it tries to address customer frustrations and lift the negative sentiment that has embroiled the company’s community since May.
It’s clear to me that Sonos is listening and moving quickly, but a lot of damage has already been done: the Android version of the Sonos app currently has a brutal 1.2-star average review rating. The rating on Apple’s App Store isn’t nearly as bad since older reviews are still balancing out the spate of complaints that came with the redesign.

Illustration: The Verge

As Sonos continues chipping away at fixing bugs and improving the performance of its poorly received mobile app redesign, the company also remains focused on several new hardware products. Among them is an ultrapremium soundbar that will serve as a successor to the current Sonos Arc — and likely at a higher price. Codenamed Lasso, the device is currently in limited beta testing, and today, I can share the first images of it.

The exterior of the Lasso soundbar bears a strong resemblance to the Arc, which Sonos introduced over four years ago. But inside, the components and speaker drivers have been completely overhauled and redesigned, and that’s expected to result in a cost upwards of $1,200. Sonos aims to ship Lasso later this year, though the timeframe could change.

Image: The Verge
Yep, the Lasso soundbar has a very similar design to the Arc. If it ain’t broke…

Whenever it does arrive, Lasso (hardware model S45) will be the first Sonos product to integrate technology from Mayht, a Netherlands-based startup that the company acquired in 2022 for $100 million in cash. At the time, Sonos credited Mayht for having “invented a new, revolutionary approach to audio transducers.” CEO Patrick Spence said the deal would give Sonos “more incredible people, technology, and intellectual property that will further distinguish the Sonos experience, enhance our competitive advantage, and accelerate our future roadmap.”

But it’s taken quite some time to get Mayht’s ideas into a shipping product. Sonos has released several small speakers over the last couple years — the Era 100, Move 2, and Roam 2 among them — that could’ve benefitted from Mayht’s innovative transducers, which are said to “enable smaller and lighter form factors without compromising on quality.” But it’s the soundbar that will offer the first taste of what the acquisition has yielded. Sources tell me that it’s been a challenge to make Mayht’s transducer system more cost efficient, as it partly makes use of “expensive” neodymium magnets.

Bloomberg previously reported the Lasso codename, its rumored price, and the inclusion of Mayht’s technology. The product’s final consumer branding isn’t yet known, but for now, Sonos is playfully including the Ted Lasso typeface on beta units.

Image: The Verge
Lasso is the soundbar’s codename — not the final consumer branding.

The Arc is already a very impressive Dolby Atmos soundbar, and you can expect even greater immersion from Lasso and its revamped internals. Additionally, according to sources, the upcoming soundbar should deliver substantially better bass performance than its predecessor. With the Arc, you really need to add a Sub or Sub Mini to get the most out of it. Sonos could maybe get away with that with a $899 product, but if it’s going to charge well over $1,000 for Lasso, the device needs to deliver top-tier home theater audio without any added help.

Image: The Verge
The new soundbar will support Bluetooth audio playback, something that the Arc does not.

The images also reveal a dedicated Bluetooth button, suggesting that Lasso could support Bluetooth audio playback. That feature has been absent from all previous Sonos soundbars. And similar to the company’s other recent products, there’ll be a physical switch for disabling the built-in microphones.

Just like the Arc, Lasso is designed to work with the recently released Sonos Ace headphones for private listening with spatial audio. The company has pledged to extend Ace compatibility to its more affordable Beam and Ray soundbars by late summer or early fall.

As for the more immediate future, Sonos continues to release updates to its mobile app at a frequent pace as it tries to address customer frustrations and lift the negative sentiment that has embroiled the company’s community since May.

It’s clear to me that Sonos is listening and moving quickly, but a lot of damage has already been done: the Android version of the Sonos app currently has a brutal 1.2-star average review rating. The rating on Apple’s App Store isn’t nearly as bad since older reviews are still balancing out the spate of complaints that came with the redesign.

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Image: Jackson Gibbs for The Verge

Uprooting your life and moving hundreds — or thousands — of miles isn’t easy. Here’s how to make sense of it all. Moving is one of the most daunting tasks a human can do. But the difficulty level gets even higher when you’re setting off on a long-distance move that has you crossing multiple state lines.
My first and only move involved a 1,200-mile trek in a 16-foot moving truck. The whole process, from packing to driving, was pretty stressful, but all of the bumps in the road still didn’t overshadow the satisfaction of actually arriving at my destination and settling in.
Here are some of the things I did during my move to keep my sanity — and some of the things I wish I’d considered.
Figuring out how to move
Preparation is key for any move, especially a long-distance one. The first thing you’ll want to consider is how you want to move. That will largely depend on how much stuff you need to transport and how much you’re willing to pay. You have a few options:

Stuff your car with all your belongings and drive there yourself.
Rent a moving truck and drive to your destination.
Have a moving company fill up and drive the truck for you.
Rent a storage trailer or pod, fill it up at your leisure, and have a moving company pick it up and drop it off.

That’s a lot to consider, especially when you also have to think about how to get your car to your destination. For that, you can either take a road trip there yourself (while a moving company takes care of your belongings) or have your car transported there by a car shipment company (while you take the moving truck yourself). You can also tow a moving trailer or your vehicle with either option.
Since there are a lot of factors here, I recommend opening Google Sheets and jotting down the potential cost of each of these options. Unfortunately, there’s no simple way to figure out how much everything costs without going to individual websites, inputting your information, and receiving a quote.

Photo by: Lindsey Nicholson / UCG / Universal Images Group via Getty Images
If you decide to rent a moving truck, don’t forget to consider its size.

But Moving.com has a handy little calculator that gives you a rough estimate of how much it might cost for a company to handle your whole move. It’s also worth checking with trucking companies like Penske and U-Haul to compare prices of truck rentals. For our long-distance move, we found that the most cost-effective option was to fill up a moving truck or trailer and drive the thing ourselves. Just be mindful of the potential cost of having to fill the tank with gas along the way. A tool like the one offered by GasBuddy can help you figure out how much you may end up paying for gas, depending on the type of vehicle you’re using and the distance.
Keeping track of it all
Once you’ve chosen how to get to your destination, you’ll need to sort out some logistics. That involves figuring out what exactly you need to pack as well as doing things like changing your address, finding a new primary doctor, and getting a driver’s license in your new state. Luckily, someone has made a highly detailed moving dashboard that you can access through Notion.
I wish I found this before my move, as it includes a massive moving checklist that offers suggestions on what to do in the months and weeks leading up to your move. Instead, my partner and I mainly relied on memory. We winged the packing process and basically figured out everything as we went along. I wouldn’t recommend this.

I wish I knew about this Notion template before starting my move.

It’s way easier to stick to a list, given you have the time and patience to make one. The Notion moving dashboard even offers a template you can fill out to keep track of all the boxes you pack as well as a premade chart you can use to write down all of the companies you need to notify of an address change. The last thing you want is to set off on your journey and realize that you’re forgetting something.
Staying sane while on the road
If you have a long drive ahead of you, you’re going to need some entertainment. I’d suggest downloading some of your favorite podcasts, audiobooks, or movies (if you’re in the passenger’s seat) before your trip. That way, if you’re stuck in an area without service, you can still listen to or watch something during your ride. I used the 20-hour trip to catch up on the first season of Serial, which is a great podcast if you haven’t already gotten around to it.
You’ll also want to download the map to your destination in case you lose service. Both Google Maps and Apple Maps let you download your trip for offline viewing. If you really want to get old-fashioned, you can even print out your directions (remember MapQuest?).
Ahead of the trip, we decided that we would stop overnight at the halfway point. I used this tool from Travelmath to find our halfway point, which happened to be a small town in North Carolina. (The site also has a tool to find the best stopping points for multiday trips.) But since you can’t predict everything during your road trip, we ended up stopping somewhere in Virginia because it started getting dark and we were tired. We didn’t have a hotel booked in advance, so I quickly pulled up Google Maps to find the nearest Hampton Inn, and that’s where we stayed for the night.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Apple Maps and Google Maps aren’t always the most helpful for long-distance drives.

I also found it really helpful to bring a road atlas. This book was a godsend when my partner and I got stuck in the small town of Midway, Georgia, after a major tractor-trailer accident shut down I-95 for miles. Google Maps became useless when we got off the highway (it kept trying to route us back on), so we had to figure out an alternative route ourselves. Let’s just say I had to relearn how to read a map pretty quickly.
Oh, and it doesn’t hurt to bring an emergency roadside kit with you as well. I’d recommend one (like this) that comes with a portable air compressor, a tire repair kit, jumper cables, and other items that you might need in case of a tire blowout or other issues you might encounter on the road. We didn’t end up bringing a kit during this trip, and we were fortunate enough to not need one. I still stow one in my daily driver, though!
Getting settled
Congrats, you made it! Once you’re unpacked and (mostly) settled in, you might want to get to know your new community. This can be especially difficult if you’re a remote worker (like me) since you’re probably not getting out of the house every day and getting to know the locals.
I’ve found it helpful to join local Facebook groups to stay on top of what’s going on around me. I know not everyone likes Facebook, but it has been crucial in helping me get acquainted with my community. I’ve joined groups that have helped me meet up with people my age as well as provide recommendations about things like the best restaurants and hair salons nearby.
If you don’t like Facebook, you can also try Meetup, a platform you can use to find local activities and events in your new town.

Image: Jackson Gibbs for The Verge

Uprooting your life and moving hundreds — or thousands — of miles isn’t easy. Here’s how to make sense of it all.

Moving is one of the most daunting tasks a human can do. But the difficulty level gets even higher when you’re setting off on a long-distance move that has you crossing multiple state lines.

My first and only move involved a 1,200-mile trek in a 16-foot moving truck. The whole process, from packing to driving, was pretty stressful, but all of the bumps in the road still didn’t overshadow the satisfaction of actually arriving at my destination and settling in.

Here are some of the things I did during my move to keep my sanity — and some of the things I wish I’d considered.

Figuring out how to move

Preparation is key for any move, especially a long-distance one. The first thing you’ll want to consider is how you want to move. That will largely depend on how much stuff you need to transport and how much you’re willing to pay. You have a few options:

Stuff your car with all your belongings and drive there yourself.
Rent a moving truck and drive to your destination.
Have a moving company fill up and drive the truck for you.
Rent a storage trailer or pod, fill it up at your leisure, and have a moving company pick it up and drop it off.

That’s a lot to consider, especially when you also have to think about how to get your car to your destination. For that, you can either take a road trip there yourself (while a moving company takes care of your belongings) or have your car transported there by a car shipment company (while you take the moving truck yourself). You can also tow a moving trailer or your vehicle with either option.

Since there are a lot of factors here, I recommend opening Google Sheets and jotting down the potential cost of each of these options. Unfortunately, there’s no simple way to figure out how much everything costs without going to individual websites, inputting your information, and receiving a quote.

Photo by: Lindsey Nicholson / UCG / Universal Images Group via Getty Images
If you decide to rent a moving truck, don’t forget to consider its size.

But Moving.com has a handy little calculator that gives you a rough estimate of how much it might cost for a company to handle your whole move. It’s also worth checking with trucking companies like Penske and U-Haul to compare prices of truck rentals. For our long-distance move, we found that the most cost-effective option was to fill up a moving truck or trailer and drive the thing ourselves. Just be mindful of the potential cost of having to fill the tank with gas along the way. A tool like the one offered by GasBuddy can help you figure out how much you may end up paying for gas, depending on the type of vehicle you’re using and the distance.

Keeping track of it all

Once you’ve chosen how to get to your destination, you’ll need to sort out some logistics. That involves figuring out what exactly you need to pack as well as doing things like changing your address, finding a new primary doctor, and getting a driver’s license in your new state. Luckily, someone has made a highly detailed moving dashboard that you can access through Notion.

I wish I found this before my move, as it includes a massive moving checklist that offers suggestions on what to do in the months and weeks leading up to your move. Instead, my partner and I mainly relied on memory. We winged the packing process and basically figured out everything as we went along. I wouldn’t recommend this.

I wish I knew about this Notion template before starting my move.

It’s way easier to stick to a list, given you have the time and patience to make one. The Notion moving dashboard even offers a template you can fill out to keep track of all the boxes you pack as well as a premade chart you can use to write down all of the companies you need to notify of an address change. The last thing you want is to set off on your journey and realize that you’re forgetting something.

Staying sane while on the road

If you have a long drive ahead of you, you’re going to need some entertainment. I’d suggest downloading some of your favorite podcasts, audiobooks, or movies (if you’re in the passenger’s seat) before your trip. That way, if you’re stuck in an area without service, you can still listen to or watch something during your ride. I used the 20-hour trip to catch up on the first season of Serial, which is a great podcast if you haven’t already gotten around to it.

You’ll also want to download the map to your destination in case you lose service. Both Google Maps and Apple Maps let you download your trip for offline viewing. If you really want to get old-fashioned, you can even print out your directions (remember MapQuest?).

Ahead of the trip, we decided that we would stop overnight at the halfway point. I used this tool from Travelmath to find our halfway point, which happened to be a small town in North Carolina. (The site also has a tool to find the best stopping points for multiday trips.) But since you can’t predict everything during your road trip, we ended up stopping somewhere in Virginia because it started getting dark and we were tired. We didn’t have a hotel booked in advance, so I quickly pulled up Google Maps to find the nearest Hampton Inn, and that’s where we stayed for the night.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Apple Maps and Google Maps aren’t always the most helpful for long-distance drives.

I also found it really helpful to bring a road atlas. This book was a godsend when my partner and I got stuck in the small town of Midway, Georgia, after a major tractor-trailer accident shut down I-95 for miles. Google Maps became useless when we got off the highway (it kept trying to route us back on), so we had to figure out an alternative route ourselves. Let’s just say I had to relearn how to read a map pretty quickly.

Oh, and it doesn’t hurt to bring an emergency roadside kit with you as well. I’d recommend one (like this) that comes with a portable air compressor, a tire repair kit, jumper cables, and other items that you might need in case of a tire blowout or other issues you might encounter on the road. We didn’t end up bringing a kit during this trip, and we were fortunate enough to not need one. I still stow one in my daily driver, though!

Getting settled

Congrats, you made it! Once you’re unpacked and (mostly) settled in, you might want to get to know your new community. This can be especially difficult if you’re a remote worker (like me) since you’re probably not getting out of the house every day and getting to know the locals.

I’ve found it helpful to join local Facebook groups to stay on top of what’s going on around me. I know not everyone likes Facebook, but it has been crucial in helping me get acquainted with my community. I’ve joined groups that have helped me meet up with people my age as well as provide recommendations about things like the best restaurants and hair salons nearby.

If you don’t like Facebook, you can also try Meetup, a platform you can use to find local activities and events in your new town.

Read More 

The Killers marked England’s victory against The Netherlands in the Euro 2024 semi-finals with a bright(side) bang. | Image: The Killers

The Killers assisted UK fans in celebrating England’s Euro 2024 semifinal victory yesterday by pausing their gig at London’s O2 Arena to project the final moments of the game behind the band. Viral videos across X and Instagram captured the elation that followed as confetti showered the crowd during a rousing rendition of “Mr. Brightside” — and now they’re being taken offline by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA).
According to an Instagram takedown notice seen by The Verge, UEFA says the removed videos include content that “infringes their copyright.” Many of the impacted videos being pulled, such as a clip posted by photographer Bella Falk, contained mere seconds of the live match and are “transformative” enough to fall under fair use. Falk says she’s now “banned from Instagram for a month for copyright infringement,” after her video was removed from the service.
The video embedded below remains active at the time of this writing, and shows the moment that The Killers kicked off the celebration.

pic.twitter.com/SsqNR27DKS— Nikki Wicks (@nikkiwicks) July 11, 2024

The takedowns especially sting given the UK’s fanatic obsession with The Killers. The band, and particularly its hit song “Mr. Brightside,” has developed such a devout fanbase in Britain that it holds Guinness World Record titles for spending years in the UK charts. “Mr. Brightside” is widely considered to be the country’s unofficial national anthem, so to experience it live as England secured a place in the Euro finals must have been euphoric, countered only by the dull overreach of UEFA.
It’s bad enough that the UEFA is attempting to strike down content that it has no claim over, but also disappointing that X and Instagram are honoring the requests. We have asked X, Instagram, and the UEFA for comment and will update this story if we hear back.

The Killers marked England’s victory against The Netherlands in the Euro 2024 semi-finals with a bright(side) bang. | Image: The Killers

The Killers assisted UK fans in celebrating England’s Euro 2024 semifinal victory yesterday by pausing their gig at London’s O2 Arena to project the final moments of the game behind the band. Viral videos across X and Instagram captured the elation that followed as confetti showered the crowd during a rousing rendition of “Mr. Brightside” — and now they’re being taken offline by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA).

According to an Instagram takedown notice seen by The Verge, UEFA says the removed videos include content that “infringes their copyright.” Many of the impacted videos being pulled, such as a clip posted by photographer Bella Falk, contained mere seconds of the live match and are “transformative” enough to fall under fair use. Falk says she’s now “banned from Instagram for a month for copyright infringement,” after her video was removed from the service.

The video embedded below remains active at the time of this writing, and shows the moment that The Killers kicked off the celebration.

The takedowns especially sting given the UK’s fanatic obsession with The Killers. The band, and particularly its hit song “Mr. Brightside,” has developed such a devout fanbase in Britain that it holds Guinness World Record titles for spending years in the UK charts. “Mr. Brightside” is widely considered to be the country’s unofficial national anthem, so to experience it live as England secured a place in the Euro finals must have been euphoric, countered only by the dull overreach of UEFA.

It’s bad enough that the UEFA is attempting to strike down content that it has no claim over, but also disappointing that X and Instagram are honoring the requests. We have asked X, Instagram, and the UEFA for comment and will update this story if we hear back.

Read More 

Stellantis’ idled Belvidere Assembly Plant is one of the factories that will have new life as an EV facility thanks to $334 million in grant money. | Image: Getty

The Biden administration announced $1.7 billion to convert endangered or shuttered plants into electric vehicle manufacturing facilities.
Eleven auto factories across eight states that are currently closed or at risk of closing will receive the funding in order to retrofit their operations for EV manufacturing, administration officials said in a call with reporters. The types of goods these factories will produce run the gamut from “parts for electric motorcycles and school buses, hybrid powertrains, heavy-duty commercial truck batteries, and electric SUVs,” the White House says.
“Building a clean energy economy can and should be a win-win for union autoworkers and automakers,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “This investment will create thousands of good-paying, union manufacturing jobs and retain even more—from Lansing, Michigan to Fort Valley, Georgia – by helping auto companies retool, reboot, and rehire in the same factories and communities.”
“This investment will create thousands of good-paying, union manufacturing jobs”
The money is part of a larger $15.5 billion program administered by the Department of Energy, announced late last year, that seeks to retrofit existing manufacturing facilities into EV and clean vehicle assembly operations. The funding was approved as part of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which was President Biden’s landmark climate legislation.
Some of the factories that will be converted include an idled Stellantis factory in Belvidere, Illinois, that will be converted into an EV assembly plant using $334 million in grant money. (Stellantis and the United Auto Workers union announced an agreement to reopen the factory earlier this year.) Stellantis will also receive an additional $250 million to retrofit its transmission plant in Kokomo, Indiana, for the production of electric drive modules.
General Motors will get $500 million to reconstitute its 25-year-old factory in Lansing, Michigan, into one that will produce electrified models. A Harley-Davidson facility in York, Pennsylvania, will become an electric motorcycle assembly plant with $89 million. And the Blue Bird Corporation, which makes school buses, will get $79 million to upgrade a 600,000-square-foot facility in Fort Valley, Georgia, for the production of electric buses.
One of the preconditions of the grant awards is that the money go toward retaining and creating new union jobs in the auto sector, officials said. Biden made it clear in his statement that the awards “will help ensure the future of the auto industry is made in America by American union workers.” The UAW has endorsed Biden in his reelection campaign.
The president has made EVs a central piece of his climate platform, approving billions of dollars in new spending on consumer incentives for car shoppers and charging station installations. Former President Donald Trump has promised to hit the brakes on Biden’s EV spending if he wins in November, and House Republicans have passed numerous bills to scrap the administration’s EV tax credit program.

Stellantis’ idled Belvidere Assembly Plant is one of the factories that will have new life as an EV facility thanks to $334 million in grant money. | Image: Getty

The Biden administration announced $1.7 billion to convert endangered or shuttered plants into electric vehicle manufacturing facilities.

Eleven auto factories across eight states that are currently closed or at risk of closing will receive the funding in order to retrofit their operations for EV manufacturing, administration officials said in a call with reporters. The types of goods these factories will produce run the gamut from “parts for electric motorcycles and school buses, hybrid powertrains, heavy-duty commercial truck batteries, and electric SUVs,” the White House says.

“Building a clean energy economy can and should be a win-win for union autoworkers and automakers,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “This investment will create thousands of good-paying, union manufacturing jobs and retain even more—from Lansing, Michigan to Fort Valley, Georgia – by helping auto companies retool, reboot, and rehire in the same factories and communities.”

The money is part of a larger $15.5 billion program administered by the Department of Energy, announced late last year, that seeks to retrofit existing manufacturing facilities into EV and clean vehicle assembly operations. The funding was approved as part of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which was President Biden’s landmark climate legislation.

Some of the factories that will be converted include an idled Stellantis factory in Belvidere, Illinois, that will be converted into an EV assembly plant using $334 million in grant money. (Stellantis and the United Auto Workers union announced an agreement to reopen the factory earlier this year.) Stellantis will also receive an additional $250 million to retrofit its transmission plant in Kokomo, Indiana, for the production of electric drive modules.

General Motors will get $500 million to reconstitute its 25-year-old factory in Lansing, Michigan, into one that will produce electrified models. A Harley-Davidson facility in York, Pennsylvania, will become an electric motorcycle assembly plant with $89 million. And the Blue Bird Corporation, which makes school buses, will get $79 million to upgrade a 600,000-square-foot facility in Fort Valley, Georgia, for the production of electric buses.

One of the preconditions of the grant awards is that the money go toward retaining and creating new union jobs in the auto sector, officials said. Biden made it clear in his statement that the awards “will help ensure the future of the auto industry is made in America by American union workers.” The UAW has endorsed Biden in his reelection campaign.

The president has made EVs a central piece of his climate platform, approving billions of dollars in new spending on consumer incentives for car shoppers and charging station installations. Former President Donald Trump has promised to hit the brakes on Biden’s EV spending if he wins in November, and House Republicans have passed numerous bills to scrap the administration’s EV tax credit program.

Read More 

The Starlink Mini can be powered by a portable USB battery. | Image: SpaceX

SpaceX’s Starlink Mini dish — which Elon Musk says “will change the world” — is now available to anyone in the US. The diminutive internet-from-space kit neatly integrates the dish and Wi-Fi router into a weatherproof package that’s significantly smaller and uses less power than previous Starlink kits. The laptop-sized all-in-one dish can even be powered directly by a USB-PD power bank capable of 100W (20V/5A).
Initially, Starlink Mini was only available as an add-on for current Residential subscribers in the US. Now, just a few weeks since launch, it’s available to a wide spectrum of vanlifers and digital nomads who want to stay connected no matter where they set up shop.
The Starlink Mini hardware costs $599 and is available with both Regional and Mini Roam services. Regional costs $150 per month for unlimited portable data in North America, with an option to pay per GB for in-motion use. Mini Roam is just $50 per month but is limited to 50GB of portable or in-motion data on the continent, with additional data priced per GB. Both services can be paused between adventures.

The Starlink Mini can be powered by a portable USB battery. | Image: SpaceX

SpaceX’s Starlink Mini dish — which Elon Musk says “will change the world” — is now available to anyone in the US. The diminutive internet-from-space kit neatly integrates the dish and Wi-Fi router into a weatherproof package that’s significantly smaller and uses less power than previous Starlink kits. The laptop-sized all-in-one dish can even be powered directly by a USB-PD power bank capable of 100W (20V/5A).

Initially, Starlink Mini was only available as an add-on for current Residential subscribers in the US. Now, just a few weeks since launch, it’s available to a wide spectrum of vanlifers and digital nomads who want to stay connected no matter where they set up shop.

The Starlink Mini hardware costs $599 and is available with both Regional and Mini Roam services. Regional costs $150 per month for unlimited portable data in North America, with an option to pay per GB for in-motion use. Mini Roam is just $50 per month but is limited to 50GB of portable or in-motion data on the continent, with additional data priced per GB. Both services can be paused between adventures.

Read More 

Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images

A judge overseeing Redbox owner Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment’s bankruptcy case granted a request Wednesday to convert it from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7 bankruptcy, according to Lowpass’ Janko Roettgers and The Wall Street Journal. The company’s lawyers said Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment will lay off its remaining 1,000 employees and liquidate the businesses, including streaming operations and the 24,000 or so disc kiosks that have rented out DVDs, Blu-rays, and videogames for years.
According to Roettgers, Judge Thomas Horan said, “There is no means to continue to pay employees, pay any bills, otherwise finance this case. It is hopelessly insolvent… Given the fact that there may also be at least the possibility of misappropriation of funds that were held in trust for employees, there is more than ample reason why this case should be converted.”

In addition to operating Redbox, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment also manages brands like Crackle and Screen Media. (Note that Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment is a part of Chicken Soup for the Soul LLC; the broader company isn’t a part of this bankruptcy case, according to the WSJ.)
Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
Roettgers has been covering Redbox and its parent company’s recent troubles for The Verge, including a missed multimillion-dollar payment owed to NBCUniversal, the original bankruptcy filing, and Chicken Soup failing to make payroll for Redbox employees.

Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images

A judge overseeing Redbox owner Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment’s bankruptcy case granted a request Wednesday to convert it from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7 bankruptcy, according to Lowpass’ Janko Roettgers and The Wall Street Journal. The company’s lawyers said Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment will lay off its remaining 1,000 employees and liquidate the businesses, including streaming operations and the 24,000 or so disc kiosks that have rented out DVDs, Blu-rays, and videogames for years.

According to Roettgers, Judge Thomas Horan said, “There is no means to continue to pay employees, pay any bills, otherwise finance this case. It is hopelessly insolvent… Given the fact that there may also be at least the possibility of misappropriation of funds that were held in trust for employees, there is more than ample reason why this case should be converted.”

In addition to operating Redbox, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment also manages brands like Crackle and Screen Media. (Note that Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment is a part of Chicken Soup for the Soul LLC; the broader company isn’t a part of this bankruptcy case, according to the WSJ.)

Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

Roettgers has been covering Redbox and its parent company’s recent troubles for The Verge, including a missed multimillion-dollar payment owed to NBCUniversal, the original bankruptcy filing, and Chicken Soup failing to make payroll for Redbox employees.

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Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FLHSMV) has shut down its digital ID app, Florida Smart ID, for iPhones and Android phones. The department emailed users asking them to delete the app and said it’s looking for another vendor to help it revive the service by “early 2025,” according to 9to5Mac.
The state promoted its Smart ID app as a contact-free way to show proof of age or identity at stores or when talking to police, but now it’s gone. According to a report by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel last year, not many people were using it, with only 95,000 activations out of more than 17 million licensed drivers, and many police departments said they weren’t using it, either.
The state department has posted this statement on its website:
The Florida Smart ID applications will be updated and improved by a new vendor. At this time, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles is removing the current Florida Smart ID application from the app store. Please email FloridaSmartID@flhsmv.gov to receive notification of future availability.

I’ve been using the Florida smart ID for a while and just received an email out of the blue that they are redeveloping with a new vendor and thus the virtual ID can’t be used until 2025. What the heck. Florida is such a mess.— Korin Reid (@korinreid) July 10, 2024

The agency reported issues with the service near the end of June before it was shut down, apparently in early July.
Other states, like Louisiana and New York, are part of a slowly increasing number of states adopting digital IDs. Like Florida, they’re offering the service through their own apps, while other states like Maryland and Arizona support digital IDs added to Google Wallet or Apple Wallet.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FLHSMV) has shut down its digital ID app, Florida Smart ID, for iPhones and Android phones. The department emailed users asking them to delete the app and said it’s looking for another vendor to help it revive the service by “early 2025,” according to 9to5Mac.

The state promoted its Smart ID app as a contact-free way to show proof of age or identity at stores or when talking to police, but now it’s gone. According to a report by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel last year, not many people were using it, with only 95,000 activations out of more than 17 million licensed drivers, and many police departments said they weren’t using it, either.

The state department has posted this statement on its website:

The Florida Smart ID applications will be updated and improved by a new vendor. At this time, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles is removing the current Florida Smart ID application from the app store. Please email FloridaSmartID@flhsmv.gov to receive notification of future availability.

The agency reported issues with the service near the end of June before it was shut down, apparently in early July.

Other states, like Louisiana and New York, are part of a slowly increasing number of states adopting digital IDs. Like Florida, they’re offering the service through their own apps, while other states like Maryland and Arizona support digital IDs added to Google Wallet or Apple Wallet.

Read More 

Walmart’s exclusive Switch Lite deal includes a digital copy of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. | Image: Nintendo

From terrific deals on MacBooks to the Super Mario Party Joy-Con bundle, Walmart’s rival Prime Day sale has surprised us with some pretty good deals. Today, we’re highlighting another one that’s perfect if you’re looking for something to keep the kids (or yourself) entertained this summer. Right now, you can buy an Animal Crossing-themed Nintendo Switch Lite at Walmart for just $159 ($41 off), which is the best price we’ve seen on Timmy & Tommy’s Aloha Edition bundle, which includes a digital copy of Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

The Nintendo Switch Lite plays many of the same games as the standard Switch and the step-up OLED model, with similar battery life and performance. However, it can’t connect to TVs or play titles that require detachable Joy-Con controllers. At 5.5 inches, the kickstand-less handheld is also lighter and smaller than its hybrid siblings, rendering it a better option if you want something to entertain yourself while traveling. The display shares the same resolution as the standard model, but it appears sharper given the reduced size; it also features better controls thanks to the inclusion of a proper directional pad.

It’s worth mentioning that Nintendo plans to release a so-called “Switch 2” next year. The Switch Lite is pretty old by this point, though it’s still worth picking up if you want to play any of the forthcoming titles announced during the most recent Nintendo Direct — including The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom and Mario & Luigi: Brothership, both of which arrive in the fall.

Read our Nintendo Switch Lite review.

Walmart’s exclusive Switch Lite deal includes a digital copy of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. | Image: Nintendo

From terrific deals on MacBooks to the Super Mario Party Joy-Con bundle, Walmart’s rival Prime Day sale has surprised us with some pretty good deals. Today, we’re highlighting another one that’s perfect if you’re looking for something to keep the kids (or yourself) entertained this summer. Right now, you can buy an Animal Crossing-themed Nintendo Switch Lite at Walmart for just $159 ($41 off), which is the best price we’ve seen on Timmy & Tommy’s Aloha Edition bundle, which includes a digital copy of Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

The Nintendo Switch Lite plays many of the same games as the standard Switch and the step-up OLED model, with similar battery life and performance. However, it can’t connect to TVs or play titles that require detachable Joy-Con controllers. At 5.5 inches, the kickstand-less handheld is also lighter and smaller than its hybrid siblings, rendering it a better option if you want something to entertain yourself while traveling. The display shares the same resolution as the standard model, but it appears sharper given the reduced size; it also features better controls thanks to the inclusion of a proper directional pad.

It’s worth mentioning that Nintendo plans to release a so-called “Switch 2” next year. The Switch Lite is pretty old by this point, though it’s still worth picking up if you want to play any of the forthcoming titles announced during the most recent Nintendo Direct — including The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom and Mario & Luigi: Brothership, both of which arrive in the fall.

Read our Nintendo Switch Lite review.

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