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Image: Epic Games

Fortnite is bigger than a battle royale now, and to help make progressing through the various available battle passes a little bit more streamlined, Epic Games is going to allow XP from any experience apply to any of those passes.
Currently, XP you earn across various modes in Fortnite doesn’t help you progress through the special passes for Lego Fortnite and the music-themed Fortnite Festival. Instead, you progress by earning “studs” and “festival points,” respectively, by playing those modes.
Starting November 2nd, however, Epic will begin the migration to let you progress using XP. As Epic details in a blog post, the change will first apply the upcoming Music Pass (renamed from Festival Pass), meaning festival points will go away. On December 1st, the change to XP will go into effect for the “Brick or Treat” Lego Pass and studs will be retired. That same day, the “battle stars” that you earn with XP in Fortnite’s main battle pass will also be removed.
Epic is continuing to make Fortnite more of a platform with lots of Epic- and creator-made experiences rather than just one main mode. Letting players use XP to all of its various players helps address some growing pains with that transition — especially now that Epic has had about a year since the launch of Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing, and Fortnite Festival to figure out what players want.

There are a few more changes coming, too. Music and LEGO Passes that release after December 1st will offer one track that has both free rewards and premium rewards exclusive to people who buy them, like how the main Fortnite battle pass works. Epic will let users directly buy a reward on a pass that they might want, meaning they won’t have to grind levels just to get it (or buy the necessary levels to reach that point). And while the battle pass, Lego Pass, and Music Pass are currently all separate purchases, Epic is promising that it will “soon” offer a way to buy all of them at once.
The battle pass changes are being announced just days before the conclusion of the current Marvel-themed season, which is set to end on Saturday at 2AM ET. Epic is already teasing a new live event and that the next season, “Remix,” will return to the Chapter 2 island, meaning we’ll probably get another “OG”-like trip through the game’s history.

Image: Epic Games

Fortnite is bigger than a battle royale now, and to help make progressing through the various available battle passes a little bit more streamlined, Epic Games is going to allow XP from any experience apply to any of those passes.

Currently, XP you earn across various modes in Fortnite doesn’t help you progress through the special passes for Lego Fortnite and the music-themed Fortnite Festival. Instead, you progress by earning “studs” and “festival points,” respectively, by playing those modes.

Starting November 2nd, however, Epic will begin the migration to let you progress using XP. As Epic details in a blog post, the change will first apply the upcoming Music Pass (renamed from Festival Pass), meaning festival points will go away. On December 1st, the change to XP will go into effect for the “Brick or Treat” Lego Pass and studs will be retired. That same day, the “battle stars” that you earn with XP in Fortnite’s main battle pass will also be removed.

Epic is continuing to make Fortnite more of a platform with lots of Epic- and creator-made experiences rather than just one main mode. Letting players use XP to all of its various players helps address some growing pains with that transition — especially now that Epic has had about a year since the launch of Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing, and Fortnite Festival to figure out what players want.

There are a few more changes coming, too. Music and LEGO Passes that release after December 1st will offer one track that has both free rewards and premium rewards exclusive to people who buy them, like how the main Fortnite battle pass works. Epic will let users directly buy a reward on a pass that they might want, meaning they won’t have to grind levels just to get it (or buy the necessary levels to reach that point). And while the battle pass, Lego Pass, and Music Pass are currently all separate purchases, Epic is promising that it will “soon” offer a way to buy all of them at once.

The battle pass changes are being announced just days before the conclusion of the current Marvel-themed season, which is set to end on Saturday at 2AM ET. Epic is already teasing a new live event and that the next season, “Remix,” will return to the Chapter 2 island, meaning we’ll probably get another “OG”-like trip through the game’s history.

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Illustration: Nick Barclay / The Verge

Meta is working on an AI-powered search engine to decrease its dependence on Google and Microsoft, according to a report from The Information. The search engine would reportedly provide AI-generated search summaries of current events within the Meta AI chatbot.
The Meta AI bot built into Instagram and Facebook currently uses Google — whose parent company, Alphabet, will report quarterly earnings tomorrow — and Microsoft Bing to answer questions about recent news and events.
That could eventually change, as Meta’s web crawler was spotted roving the web months ago. The Information’s source indicates a team has been working for about eight months to build a database of information for its chatbot. Meta has worked on building up location data that could compete with Google Maps, and last month, Bloomberg reported that Apple’s work on search tools in the App Store showed how it “has what it needs” for its own AI-powered Google Search replacement.
Last week, Meta also announced that it struck a multi-year deal with Reuters, allowing its chatbot to use the outlet’s news articles in answers. The Verge reached out to Meta with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.
Otherwise, OpenAI has confirmed it’s working on an AI search engine called SearchGPT. At the same time, Perplexity’s AI search engine is the subject of lawsuits from News Corp and is also facing legal threats from other publishers, including The New York Times.

Illustration: Nick Barclay / The Verge

Meta is working on an AI-powered search engine to decrease its dependence on Google and Microsoft, according to a report from The Information. The search engine would reportedly provide AI-generated search summaries of current events within the Meta AI chatbot.

The Meta AI bot built into Instagram and Facebook currently uses Google — whose parent company, Alphabet, will report quarterly earnings tomorrow — and Microsoft Bing to answer questions about recent news and events.

That could eventually change, as Meta’s web crawler was spotted roving the web months ago. The Information’s source indicates a team has been working for about eight months to build a database of information for its chatbot. Meta has worked on building up location data that could compete with Google Maps, and last month, Bloomberg reported that Apple’s work on search tools in the App Store showed how it “has what it needs” for its own AI-powered Google Search replacement.

Last week, Meta also announced that it struck a multi-year deal with Reuters, allowing its chatbot to use the outlet’s news articles in answers. The Verge reached out to Meta with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.

Otherwise, OpenAI has confirmed it’s working on an AI search engine called SearchGPT. At the same time, Perplexity’s AI search engine is the subject of lawsuits from News Corp and is also facing legal threats from other publishers, including The New York Times.

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Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos by Getty Images

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) has released its official definition of “open” artificial intelligence, setting the stage for a clash with tech giants like Meta — whose models don’t fit the rules.
OSI has long set the industry standard for what constitutes open-source software, but AI systems include elements that aren’t covered by conventional licenses, like model training data. Now, for an AI system to be considered truly open source, it must provide:

Access to details about the data used to train the AI so others can understand and re-create it
The complete code used to build and run the AI
The settings and weights from the training, which help the AI produce its results

This definition directly challenges Meta’s Llama, widely promoted as the largest open-source AI model. Llama is publicly available for download and use, but it has restrictions on commercial use (for applications with over 700 million users) and does not provide access to training data, causing it to fall short of OSI’s standards for unrestricted freedom to use, modify, and share.
Meta spokesperson Faith Eischen told The Verge that while “we agree with our partner OSI on many things,” the company disagrees with this definition. “There is no single open source AI definition, and defining it is a challenge because previous open source definitions do not encompass the complexities of today’s rapidly advancing AI models.”
“We will continue working with OSI and other industry groups to make AI more accessible and free responsibly, regardless of technical definitions,” Eischen added.
For 25 years, OSI’s definition of open-source software has been widely accepted by developers who want to build on each other’s work without fear of lawsuits or licensing traps. Now, as AI reshapes the landscape, tech giants face a pivotal choice: embrace these established principles or reject them. The Linux Foundation has also made a recent attempt to define “open-source AI,” signaling a growing debate over how traditional open-source values will adapt to the AI era.
“Now that we have a robust definition in place maybe we can push back more aggressively against companies who are ‘open washing’ and declaring their work open source when it actually isn’t,” Simon Willison, an independent researcher and creator of the open-source multi-tool Datasette, told The Verge.
Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue called OSI’s definition “a huge help in shaping the conversation around openness in AI, especially when it comes to the crucial role of training data.”
OSI’s executive director Stefano Maffulli says it took the initiative two years, consulting experts globally, to refine this definition through a collaborative process. This involved working with experts from academia on machine learning and natural language processing, philosophers, content creators from the Creative Commons world, and more.
While Meta cites safety concerns for restricting access to its training data, critics see a simpler motive: minimizing its legal liability and safeguarding its competitive advantage. Many AI models are almost certainly trained on copyrighted material; in April, The New York Times reported that Meta internally acknowledged there was copyrighted content in its training data “because we have no way of not collecting that.” There’s a litany of lawsuits against Meta, OpenAI, Perplexity, Anthropic, and others for alleged infringement. But with rare exceptions — like Stable Diffusion, which reveals its training data — plaintiffs must currently rely on circumstantial evidence to demonstrate that their work has been scraped.
Meanwhile, Maffulli sees open-source history repeating itself. “Meta is making the same arguments” as Microsoft did in the 1990s when it saw open source as a threat to its business model, Maffulli told The Verge. He recalls Meta telling him about its intensive investment in Llama, asking him “who do you think is going to be able to do the same thing?” Maffulli saw a familiar pattern: a tech giant using cost and complexity to justify keeping its technology locked away. “We come back to the early days,” he said.
“That’s their secret sauce,” Maffulli said of the training data. “It’s the valuable IP.”

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos by Getty Images

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) has released its official definition of “open” artificial intelligence, setting the stage for a clash with tech giants like Meta — whose models don’t fit the rules.

OSI has long set the industry standard for what constitutes open-source software, but AI systems include elements that aren’t covered by conventional licenses, like model training data. Now, for an AI system to be considered truly open source, it must provide:

Access to details about the data used to train the AI so others can understand and re-create it
The complete code used to build and run the AI
The settings and weights from the training, which help the AI produce its results

This definition directly challenges Meta’s Llama, widely promoted as the largest open-source AI model. Llama is publicly available for download and use, but it has restrictions on commercial use (for applications with over 700 million users) and does not provide access to training data, causing it to fall short of OSI’s standards for unrestricted freedom to use, modify, and share.

Meta spokesperson Faith Eischen told The Verge that while “we agree with our partner OSI on many things,” the company disagrees with this definition. “There is no single open source AI definition, and defining it is a challenge because previous open source definitions do not encompass the complexities of today’s rapidly advancing AI models.”

“We will continue working with OSI and other industry groups to make AI more accessible and free responsibly, regardless of technical definitions,” Eischen added.

For 25 years, OSI’s definition of open-source software has been widely accepted by developers who want to build on each other’s work without fear of lawsuits or licensing traps. Now, as AI reshapes the landscape, tech giants face a pivotal choice: embrace these established principles or reject them. The Linux Foundation has also made a recent attempt to define “open-source AI,” signaling a growing debate over how traditional open-source values will adapt to the AI era.

“Now that we have a robust definition in place maybe we can push back more aggressively against companies who are ‘open washing’ and declaring their work open source when it actually isn’t,” Simon Willison, an independent researcher and creator of the open-source multi-tool Datasette, told The Verge.

Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue called OSI’s definition “a huge help in shaping the conversation around openness in AI, especially when it comes to the crucial role of training data.”

OSI’s executive director Stefano Maffulli says it took the initiative two years, consulting experts globally, to refine this definition through a collaborative process. This involved working with experts from academia on machine learning and natural language processing, philosophers, content creators from the Creative Commons world, and more.

While Meta cites safety concerns for restricting access to its training data, critics see a simpler motive: minimizing its legal liability and safeguarding its competitive advantage. Many AI models are almost certainly trained on copyrighted material; in April, The New York Times reported that Meta internally acknowledged there was copyrighted content in its training data “because we have no way of not collecting that.” There’s a litany of lawsuits against Meta, OpenAI, Perplexity, Anthropic, and others for alleged infringement. But with rare exceptions — like Stable Diffusion, which reveals its training data — plaintiffs must currently rely on circumstantial evidence to demonstrate that their work has been scraped.

Meanwhile, Maffulli sees open-source history repeating itself. “Meta is making the same arguments” as Microsoft did in the 1990s when it saw open source as a threat to its business model, Maffulli told The Verge. He recalls Meta telling him about its intensive investment in Llama, asking him “who do you think is going to be able to do the same thing?” Maffulli saw a familiar pattern: a tech giant using cost and complexity to justify keeping its technology locked away. “We come back to the early days,” he said.

“That’s their secret sauce,” Maffulli said of the training data. “It’s the valuable IP.”

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UMG and AI company Klay are forming their own foundational Music-generating AI model. | Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Image

Universal Music Group (UMG) announced a new deal centered on creating an “ethical” foundational model for AI music generation. It’s partnered with a company called Klay Vision that’s creating a “Large Music Model” named KLayMM and plans to launch out of stealth mode with a product within months. Ary Attie, its founder and CEO, said the company believes “the next Beatles will play with KLAY.”
The two say the model will work “in collaboration with the music industry and its creators,” without many details about how, while Klay plans to make music AI “more than a short-lived gimmick.”
This is how the companies explain their shared goals:
Building generative AI music models ethically and fully respectful of copyright, as well as name and likeness rights, will dramatically lessen the threat to human creators and stand the greatest opportunity to be transformational, creating significant new avenues for creativity and future monetization of copyrights.
As for how whatever it is they’re working on will affect human artists:
KLAY is developing a global ecosystem to host AI-driven experiences and content, including accurate attribution, and will not compete with artists’ catalogs in traditional music services.

UMG’s new partnership comes as it is involved in lawsuits against AI music generator sites and Anthropic, and in May, it ended a short stand-off with TikTok by signing a new licensing arrangement that covered, among other things, AI-generated music.
Klay is also run by chief content officer Thomas Hesse, who was previously Sony Music Entertainment’s president. Former Google Deepmind researcher Björn Winckler, who led the development of Google’s Lyria AI music model, is joining the company as its head of research.

UMG and AI company Klay are forming their own foundational Music-generating AI model. | Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Image

Universal Music Group (UMG) announced a new deal centered on creating an “ethical” foundational model for AI music generation. It’s partnered with a company called Klay Vision that’s creating a “Large Music Model” named KLayMM and plans to launch out of stealth mode with a product within months. Ary Attie, its founder and CEO, said the company believes “the next Beatles will play with KLAY.”

The two say the model will work “in collaboration with the music industry and its creators,” without many details about how, while Klay plans to make music AI “more than a short-lived gimmick.”

This is how the companies explain their shared goals:

Building generative AI music models ethically and fully respectful of copyright, as well as name and likeness rights, will dramatically lessen the threat to human creators and stand the greatest opportunity to be transformational, creating significant new avenues for creativity and future monetization of copyrights.

As for how whatever it is they’re working on will affect human artists:

KLAY is developing a global ecosystem to host AI-driven experiences and content, including accurate attribution, and will not compete with artists’ catalogs in traditional music services.

UMG’s new partnership comes as it is involved in lawsuits against AI music generator sites and Anthropic, and in May, it ended a short stand-off with TikTok by signing a new licensing arrangement that covered, among other things, AI-generated music.

Klay is also run by chief content officer Thomas Hesse, who was previously Sony Music Entertainment’s president. Former Google Deepmind researcher Björn Winckler, who led the development of Google’s Lyria AI music model, is joining the company as its head of research.

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Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

Apple Intelligence has finally launched in US English, and if you’re in the EU, you’ll be able to use the new AI features on your iPhone and iPad starting in April, according to an Irish Apple newsroom post.
When the features roll out to iPhones and iPads in the EU, they’ll include “include many of the core features of Apple Intelligence, including Writing Tools, Genmoji, a redesigned Siri with richer language understanding, ChatGPT integration, and more,” Apple says in the post.

However, if EU users want to get a taste of Apple Intelligence sooner, they can try the initial features on their Mac that are now available with macOS Sequoia 15.1. That first batch of features includes AI-powered writing tools, improvements to Siri, and email summaries in Mail.
Apple also announced that Apple Intelligence will launch in localized English in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the UK in December. Presumably, they’ll be included with iOS 18.2, which is set to add a bunch more Apple Intelligence features like Siri’s ChatGPT upgrade.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

Apple Intelligence has finally launched in US English, and if you’re in the EU, you’ll be able to use the new AI features on your iPhone and iPad starting in April, according to an Irish Apple newsroom post.

When the features roll out to iPhones and iPads in the EU, they’ll include “include many of the core features of Apple Intelligence, including Writing Tools, Genmoji, a redesigned Siri with richer language understanding, ChatGPT integration, and more,” Apple says in the post.

However, if EU users want to get a taste of Apple Intelligence sooner, they can try the initial features on their Mac that are now available with macOS Sequoia 15.1. That first batch of features includes AI-powered writing tools, improvements to Siri, and email summaries in Mail.

Apple also announced that Apple Intelligence will launch in localized English in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the UK in December. Presumably, they’ll be included with iOS 18.2, which is set to add a bunch more Apple Intelligence features like Siri’s ChatGPT upgrade.

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“We take pride in the fact that we are expanding the market by welcoming new investors into the financial system.” – Robinhood’s S-1 | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

US citizens can gamble on the upcoming election on Robinhood, the financial nihilism app announced. Robinhood has termed this “unlocking a new asset class that democratizes access to events as they unfold.”
Let’s pause — I would like to reflect on this incredible phrase, about an asset class that democratizes access to events as they unfold. See, I thought we all had access to the events of the election because we all exist in reality and can find out about them. But apparently, if we can’t gamble on an event, it isn’t happening. This is a fascinating vision of metaphysics, and I would like to hear more about it. No one bet on my birth, for instance, and thus there is no asset class relating to my existence. So am I real?
“Democratizes access” is one way you can describe “opening a betting market”
I’m kidding. Obviously whoever wrote that is just not very good at sentences. No, I want to get down to the heart of the matter here, which is signaled by the phrase “democratizes access.” This phrase sits right next to “financial inclusion” in the lexicon of people who are trying to take your money. “Democratizes access” is one way you can describe “opening a betting market,” but I don’t think it’s the most accurate one!
Here’s what Robinhood will let users do, starting today. If you believe Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will win the presidential election, you can purchase an “event contract.” You can trade these contracts for real money; they are a kind of derivatives contract. Robinhood’s exciting new investment opportunity comes after the Commodities Future Trading Commission lost a lawsuit against a platform, Kalshi, that offers political event contracts. That case is being appealed, but won’t be decided before the current election.
Look, I’m aware there are lots of election markets available, because a group of people have decided that the framework of gambling is useful everywhere else. Their given reasoning is that it helps with figuring out events’ probability. (I strongly suspect the actual reason is just that it expands the field of shit to bet on.) Some even go so far as to write whole books justifying their gambling habit as a superior understanding of statistics; others wind up in jail for gambling with other people’s money, continuing to bet on the winning an appeal.
Anyway what’s really fun about election markets is that they can skew easily. For instance, Polymarket has admitted that a single French bettor is responsible for enormous bets that Donald Trump will win the presidential race. So while the polls show the candidates in a close race, Polymarket placed Trump’s odds of winning at 62 percent. Are betting markets accurate? Well, no, not always.
But let’s be real about Robinhood for a minute. “Robinhood is the brokerage for fun gambling on meme stocks and meme cryptocurrencies,” Bloomberg’s Matt Levine noted back in 2021. A quick tour of Robinhood’s most recent quarterly earnings reports shows that an awful lot of its revenue growth is attributable to crypto trading.
I am old enough to remember a period when Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev went around with a straight face insisting that Robinhood was just a good way of introducing people to financial markets, as though eTrade (and before that, investing clubs) didn’t already exist. This was an obvious lie if you looked at the revenue model — Robinhood makes money every time a user trades, and the more frequently a user trades, the more likely they are to lose money.
I don’t think anyone imagines an investor building up long-term wealth by gambling on the presidential election. Certainly it is not the kind of thing that goes into a prudent retirement account. I do think, though, that this is just the beginning of the contracts you’ll be able to gamble on with Robinhood, and those may prove to be even more effective at generating revenue than crypto.

“We take pride in the fact that we are expanding the market by welcoming new investors into the financial system.” – Robinhood’s S-1 | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

US citizens can gamble on the upcoming election on Robinhood, the financial nihilism app announced. Robinhood has termed this “unlocking a new asset class that democratizes access to events as they unfold.”

Let’s pause — I would like to reflect on this incredible phrase, about an asset class that democratizes access to events as they unfold. See, I thought we all had access to the events of the election because we all exist in reality and can find out about them. But apparently, if we can’t gamble on an event, it isn’t happening. This is a fascinating vision of metaphysics, and I would like to hear more about it. No one bet on my birth, for instance, and thus there is no asset class relating to my existence. So am I real?

I’m kidding. Obviously whoever wrote that is just not very good at sentences. No, I want to get down to the heart of the matter here, which is signaled by the phrase “democratizes access.” This phrase sits right next to “financial inclusion” in the lexicon of people who are trying to take your money. “Democratizes access” is one way you can describe “opening a betting market,” but I don’t think it’s the most accurate one!

Here’s what Robinhood will let users do, starting today. If you believe Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will win the presidential election, you can purchase an “event contract.” You can trade these contracts for real money; they are a kind of derivatives contract. Robinhood’s exciting new investment opportunity comes after the Commodities Future Trading Commission lost a lawsuit against a platform, Kalshi, that offers political event contracts. That case is being appealed, but won’t be decided before the current election.

Look, I’m aware there are lots of election markets available, because a group of people have decided that the framework of gambling is useful everywhere else. Their given reasoning is that it helps with figuring out events’ probability. (I strongly suspect the actual reason is just that it expands the field of shit to bet on.) Some even go so far as to write whole books justifying their gambling habit as a superior understanding of statistics; others wind up in jail for gambling with other people’s money, continuing to bet on the winning an appeal.

Anyway what’s really fun about election markets is that they can skew easily. For instance, Polymarket has admitted that a single French bettor is responsible for enormous bets that Donald Trump will win the presidential race. So while the polls show the candidates in a close race, Polymarket placed Trump’s odds of winning at 62 percent. Are betting markets accurate? Well, no, not always.

But let’s be real about Robinhood for a minute. “Robinhood is the brokerage for fun gambling on meme stocks and meme cryptocurrencies,” Bloomberg’s Matt Levine noted back in 2021. A quick tour of Robinhood’s most recent quarterly earnings reports shows that an awful lot of its revenue growth is attributable to crypto trading.

I am old enough to remember a period when Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev went around with a straight face insisting that Robinhood was just a good way of introducing people to financial markets, as though eTrade (and before that, investing clubs) didn’t already exist. This was an obvious lie if you looked at the revenue model — Robinhood makes money every time a user trades, and the more frequently a user trades, the more likely they are to lose money.

I don’t think anyone imagines an investor building up long-term wealth by gambling on the presidential election. Certainly it is not the kind of thing that goes into a prudent retirement account. I do think, though, that this is just the beginning of the contracts you’ll be able to gamble on with Robinhood, and those may prove to be even more effective at generating revenue than crypto.

Read More 

Image: Scout Motors

The VW-backed company is following in the footsteps of Tesla and Rivian by selling directly to customers without a dealership. Less than 12 hours after Scout Motors unveiled a pair of buzzy electrified vehicles last week, car dealers started threatening lawsuits.
Scout, which is backed by Volkswagen, thinks that dealers are history. It would rather sell its EVs directly to consumers, following in the footsteps of Tesla, Rivian, and Polestar in completely rethinking the business of car selling. But unlike those brands, it’s doing so while receiving financial support from an incumbent automaker: VW.
But if the company is nervous about challenging a century-old business model, it isn’t showing it.
“Scout is a 100 percent separate brand, separate entity, separate structure, separate everything,” Scout CEO Scott Keogh said last week, noting that the Scout buying experience will be “transparent, super fast, and super easy.”

Digital sales and service
To make that happen, Scout Motors is relying heavily on a digital platform that it’s building in-house. “Scout Motors doesn’t have any legacy apparatus,” Cody Thacker, Scout’s VP of growth, said. “We kept asking ourselves, if an OEM could start over again, what would they do differently?”
This clean-sheet approach is trying to remake car buying, one of the most loathed financial transactions Americans go through. According to research compiled by Scout, the car-buying experience consumes an average of 13 hours, 31 minutes per shopper. Just 8 percent of consumers have high or very high trust in dealers, resulting in more than 180,000 dealer-related complaints to the Federal Trade Commission every year. And nearly 70 percent of customers prefer independent service shops over dealer servicing because of issues like overcharging and delays.
Car buying is one of the most loathed financial transactions in America
Add in the fact that, nationwide, 49 percent of dealers are “not excited at all” to sell EVs, and Scout sees its rationale for smoothing out the experience. It also wants to more closely control customer data, allowing the company to target sales in certain areas, control vehicle supplies, and adjust incentives to keep the company profitable.
“A big point of frustration for consumers is that they want transparency in pricing and they resent all the hidden fees and markups. Only through a direct-to-consumer model can we tackle these head on and resolve them,” Thacker said.
Scout envisions its sales platform as a place where customers can do all the things they’d normally do at a dealership, like purchase accessories, set up service appointments, and get details about over-the-air updates. But instead of chatting with a human dealer, they may instead encounter an AI-powered chatbot. (AI chatbots have been a mixed bag for a variety of industries, but the automotive space, in particular, has struggled to make them work.)
Scout says that it will launch 25 brick-and-mortar “Scout Workshops” and “Scout Studios” around the country in the next five years, where consumers can test-drive and check out Scout vehicles. To be sure, automakers have tied themselves in knots, trying to rename and rebrand dealerships and service centers in different ways to avoid the negative connotation they have for consumers and circumvent the roundly hated system.
The renderings Scout presented of the workshops are slick-looking and airy, with open work bays in full view of consumer spaces, where vehicle owners can sit and sip coffee while overseeing the work done on their vehicles. In addition to the brick-and-mortar locations, Scout will also offer consumers who live outside of a 45-minute radius of a Scout Workshop the option to book mobile service through Scout-certified partners. Scout will also offer Scout Studios, which will act as marketing and sales locations, much like the Tesla stores located in malls around the country.

Image: Scout Motors
A rendering of Scout’s Workshop.

It’s the data
The decades-old dealership model evolved in the early 1900s, when companies like Ford and GM used to sell directly to consumers. As the automobile industry took off, there were increasing concerns about monopolistic practices, and state franchise laws arose.
Today, dealerships have an iron grip on car sales, though some companies like Tesla, Rivian, and Polestar have found workarounds. Hyundai is testing direct-to-consumer sales via Amazon (albeit with dealers involved), and Honda is selling its Acura EV exclusively online. Dealers have made direct-to-consumer sales as difficult as possible, filing lawsuits and lobbying heavily through their trade group, the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA).
True to form, as soon as Scout announced its plan to go “Scout-to-Consumer” on Thursday, dealers began to rattle their sabers. NADA announced that it “will challenge this and all attempts to sell direct in courthouses and statehouses across the country.”
Dealerships have an iron grip on car sales
Part of the issue that makes this battle a bit different is that Scout has close ties to Volkswagen, and VW dealers have long wanted the company to launch a truck in North America because they see it as a cash cow. Indeed, Scout says that at least two-thirds of the reservations that came in since the launch have been for the Scout Traveler SUV and one-third are for the Scout Terra truck.
Of course, these are also the same dealers that argued that “Americans aren’t ready for EVs,” in an open letter to the Biden administration less than a year ago, stating that EVs were just sitting on their lots (though another study by Sierra Club showed that 66 percent of dealers have no EVs on their lots). NADA has been in a drawn-out battle with Tesla over its direct-to-consumer model for many years.

At the heart of the conflict, ultimately, is data and who controls it. “Only through a direct sales model can Scout Motors get a full 360-degree view of the customer,” Thacker said. “This means that we can completely influence the customer journey. We can have unprecedented access to customer data, which drives deep customer insights, which can then drive intelligence throughout the business.” Dealerships currently manage most of the customer data and relationships, including financing, in the current model.
Scout seems unfazed by dealer threats. In a statement, Scout spokesperson Lindsay Bago said, “Just as utilizing franchised dealers may be appropriate for some brands and their customers, utilizing a direct sales model best supports our customers and our strategic customer-first vision as we launch a new vehicle platform, a new production center, and a new retail network.”
While Scout Motors has opened online reservations for their new Terra and Traveler vehicles that debuted last week, the company hasn’t nailed down details of a financial partner for purchasing or leasing just yet. The company could tap VW’s huge financial arm to handle financing, though Thacker said that portion of the equation is still being figured out. “I think what we can say today is that we want this to be a seamless experience,” Thacker said.
Keogh, the CEO of Scout, is confident that the model will work and support the consumer in the right way. “Scout wants to be old-school,” he told The Verge last week, “We want a brand that you can have data trust and customer trust, because I think it’s finally into a place that people are apprehensive and rightfully so,” he continued. “We can control the customer data, secure the customer, and not badger our customers. So that’s what we’re looking to do, what it will do.”

Image: Scout Motors

The VW-backed company is following in the footsteps of Tesla and Rivian by selling directly to customers without a dealership.

Less than 12 hours after Scout Motors unveiled a pair of buzzy electrified vehicles last week, car dealers started threatening lawsuits.

Scout, which is backed by Volkswagen, thinks that dealers are history. It would rather sell its EVs directly to consumers, following in the footsteps of Tesla, Rivian, and Polestar in completely rethinking the business of car selling. But unlike those brands, it’s doing so while receiving financial support from an incumbent automaker: VW.

But if the company is nervous about challenging a century-old business model, it isn’t showing it.

“Scout is a 100 percent separate brand, separate entity, separate structure, separate everything,” Scout CEO Scott Keogh said last week, noting that the Scout buying experience will be “transparent, super fast, and super easy.”

Digital sales and service

To make that happen, Scout Motors is relying heavily on a digital platform that it’s building in-house. “Scout Motors doesn’t have any legacy apparatus,” Cody Thacker, Scout’s VP of growth, said. “We kept asking ourselves, if an OEM could start over again, what would they do differently?”

This clean-sheet approach is trying to remake car buying, one of the most loathed financial transactions Americans go through. According to research compiled by Scout, the car-buying experience consumes an average of 13 hours, 31 minutes per shopper. Just 8 percent of consumers have high or very high trust in dealers, resulting in more than 180,000 dealer-related complaints to the Federal Trade Commission every year. And nearly 70 percent of customers prefer independent service shops over dealer servicing because of issues like overcharging and delays.

Add in the fact that, nationwide, 49 percent of dealers are “not excited at all” to sell EVs, and Scout sees its rationale for smoothing out the experience. It also wants to more closely control customer data, allowing the company to target sales in certain areas, control vehicle supplies, and adjust incentives to keep the company profitable.

“A big point of frustration for consumers is that they want transparency in pricing and they resent all the hidden fees and markups. Only through a direct-to-consumer model can we tackle these head on and resolve them,” Thacker said.

Scout envisions its sales platform as a place where customers can do all the things they’d normally do at a dealership, like purchase accessories, set up service appointments, and get details about over-the-air updates. But instead of chatting with a human dealer, they may instead encounter an AI-powered chatbot. (AI chatbots have been a mixed bag for a variety of industries, but the automotive space, in particular, has struggled to make them work.)

Scout says that it will launch 25 brick-and-mortar “Scout Workshops” and “Scout Studios” around the country in the next five years, where consumers can test-drive and check out Scout vehicles. To be sure, automakers have tied themselves in knots, trying to rename and rebrand dealerships and service centers in different ways to avoid the negative connotation they have for consumers and circumvent the roundly hated system.

The renderings Scout presented of the workshops are slick-looking and airy, with open work bays in full view of consumer spaces, where vehicle owners can sit and sip coffee while overseeing the work done on their vehicles. In addition to the brick-and-mortar locations, Scout will also offer consumers who live outside of a 45-minute radius of a Scout Workshop the option to book mobile service through Scout-certified partners. Scout will also offer Scout Studios, which will act as marketing and sales locations, much like the Tesla stores located in malls around the country.

Image: Scout Motors
A rendering of Scout’s Workshop.

It’s the data

The decades-old dealership model evolved in the early 1900s, when companies like Ford and GM used to sell directly to consumers. As the automobile industry took off, there were increasing concerns about monopolistic practices, and state franchise laws arose.

Today, dealerships have an iron grip on car sales, though some companies like Tesla, Rivian, and Polestar have found workarounds. Hyundai is testing direct-to-consumer sales via Amazon (albeit with dealers involved), and Honda is selling its Acura EV exclusively online. Dealers have made direct-to-consumer sales as difficult as possible, filing lawsuits and lobbying heavily through their trade group, the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA).

True to form, as soon as Scout announced its plan to go “Scout-to-Consumer” on Thursday, dealers began to rattle their sabers. NADA announced that it “will challenge this and all attempts to sell direct in courthouses and statehouses across the country.”

Part of the issue that makes this battle a bit different is that Scout has close ties to Volkswagen, and VW dealers have long wanted the company to launch a truck in North America because they see it as a cash cow. Indeed, Scout says that at least two-thirds of the reservations that came in since the launch have been for the Scout Traveler SUV and one-third are for the Scout Terra truck.

Of course, these are also the same dealers that argued that “Americans aren’t ready for EVs,” in an open letter to the Biden administration less than a year ago, stating that EVs were just sitting on their lots (though another study by Sierra Club showed that 66 percent of dealers have no EVs on their lots). NADA has been in a drawn-out battle with Tesla over its direct-to-consumer model for many years.

At the heart of the conflict, ultimately, is data and who controls it. “Only through a direct sales model can Scout Motors get a full 360-degree view of the customer,” Thacker said. “This means that we can completely influence the customer journey. We can have unprecedented access to customer data, which drives deep customer insights, which can then drive intelligence throughout the business.” Dealerships currently manage most of the customer data and relationships, including financing, in the current model.

Scout seems unfazed by dealer threats. In a statement, Scout spokesperson Lindsay Bago said, “Just as utilizing franchised dealers may be appropriate for some brands and their customers, utilizing a direct sales model best supports our customers and our strategic customer-first vision as we launch a new vehicle platform, a new production center, and a new retail network.”

While Scout Motors has opened online reservations for their new Terra and Traveler vehicles that debuted last week, the company hasn’t nailed down details of a financial partner for purchasing or leasing just yet. The company could tap VW’s huge financial arm to handle financing, though Thacker said that portion of the equation is still being figured out. “I think what we can say today is that we want this to be a seamless experience,” Thacker said.

Keogh, the CEO of Scout, is confident that the model will work and support the consumer in the right way. “Scout wants to be old-school,” he told The Verge last week, “We want a brand that you can have data trust and customer trust, because I think it’s finally into a place that people are apprehensive and rightfully so,” he continued. “We can control the customer data, secure the customer, and not badger our customers. So that’s what we’re looking to do, what it will do.”

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Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

Microsoft is taking its gloves off today. The software giant is accusing Google of being behind what it calls “shadow campaigns” to discredit Microsoft’s cloud business. In a scathing blog post, Microsoft deputy general counsel Rima Alaily reveals that Google is about to launch a new “astroturf” group this week.
“It is designed to discredit Microsoft with competition authorities, and policymakers and mislead the public,” says Alaily. “Google has gone through great lengths to obfuscate its involvement, funding, and control, most notably by recruiting a handful of European cloud providers, to serve as the public face of the new organization. When the group launches, Google, we understand, will likely present itself as a backseat member rather than its leader.”
Google has allegedly hired a lobbying and communications agency in Europe to create this new lobbying organization. Microsoft appears to have learned about the campaign after an unnamed European cloud provider declined to join and tipped off Microsoft. “One of the companies approached, who ultimately declined, told us that the organization will be directed and largely funded by Google for the purpose of attacking Microsoft’s cloud computing business in the European Union and the United Kingdom,” says Alaily.
This new lobbying group comes just weeks after Google filed an antitrust complaint to EU regulators in September. The search giant accused Microsoft of unfair licensing contracts for its Azure cloud services, after Microsoft reached a settlement with an industry group backed by European cloud infrastructure providers who were voicing similar concerns about Microsoft’s licensing practices.
Microsoft alleges that Google tried to derail its settlement with the group, Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE), in July. “Google offered CISPE’s members a combination of cash and credits amounting to an eye-popping $500 million to reject the settlement and continue pursuing litigation,” says Alaily. CISPE eventually agreed a deal with Microsoft to withdraw its 2022 EU complaint after the software giant allowed European cloud providers to offer Microsoft’s apps and services on local cloud infrastructure.
Google has complained publicly about Microsoft’s licensing fees for Windows Server. Google Cloud vice president Amit Zavery told reporters last month that Microsoft makes its customers pay a 400 percent markup to continue using Windows Server on rival cloud providers but that this fee doesn’t apply on Azure.
“Fundamentally, Google’s argument is that it should not have to pay Microsoft when it builds and offers cloud services using our intellectual property – namely Windows Server – if customers have otherwise purchased the same software for a very different use, i.e., on their own server,” argues Alaily. “We disagree. When a streaming service, like Netflix or Disney, includes a movie in their service, they pay for that right. They don’t get a credit or discount if a subscriber happens to own a DVD of the same movie. Software and the cloud are no different.”
Microsoft and Google ended a six-year truce on legal battles in 2021, and since then we’ve seen hints that the pair could return to the bitter rivalry that led to Scroogled and arguments over Google services on Windows Phone. Now, it looks like the war of words is very much back on, with cloud competition at the center of this latest battle.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

Microsoft is taking its gloves off today. The software giant is accusing Google of being behind what it calls “shadow campaigns” to discredit Microsoft’s cloud business. In a scathing blog post, Microsoft deputy general counsel Rima Alaily reveals that Google is about to launch a new “astroturf” group this week.

“It is designed to discredit Microsoft with competition authorities, and policymakers and mislead the public,” says Alaily. “Google has gone through great lengths to obfuscate its involvement, funding, and control, most notably by recruiting a handful of European cloud providers, to serve as the public face of the new organization. When the group launches, Google, we understand, will likely present itself as a backseat member rather than its leader.”

Google has allegedly hired a lobbying and communications agency in Europe to create this new lobbying organization. Microsoft appears to have learned about the campaign after an unnamed European cloud provider declined to join and tipped off Microsoft. “One of the companies approached, who ultimately declined, told us that the organization will be directed and largely funded by Google for the purpose of attacking Microsoft’s cloud computing business in the European Union and the United Kingdom,” says Alaily.

This new lobbying group comes just weeks after Google filed an antitrust complaint to EU regulators in September. The search giant accused Microsoft of unfair licensing contracts for its Azure cloud services, after Microsoft reached a settlement with an industry group backed by European cloud infrastructure providers who were voicing similar concerns about Microsoft’s licensing practices.

Microsoft alleges that Google tried to derail its settlement with the group, Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE), in July. “Google offered CISPE’s members a combination of cash and credits amounting to an eye-popping $500 million to reject the settlement and continue pursuing litigation,” says Alaily. CISPE eventually agreed a deal with Microsoft to withdraw its 2022 EU complaint after the software giant allowed European cloud providers to offer Microsoft’s apps and services on local cloud infrastructure.

Google has complained publicly about Microsoft’s licensing fees for Windows Server. Google Cloud vice president Amit Zavery told reporters last month that Microsoft makes its customers pay a 400 percent markup to continue using Windows Server on rival cloud providers but that this fee doesn’t apply on Azure.

“Fundamentally, Google’s argument is that it should not have to pay Microsoft when it builds and offers cloud services using our intellectual property – namely Windows Server – if customers have otherwise purchased the same software for a very different use, i.e., on their own server,” argues Alaily. “We disagree. When a streaming service, like Netflix or Disney, includes a movie in their service, they pay for that right. They don’t get a credit or discount if a subscriber happens to own a DVD of the same movie. Software and the cloud are no different.”

Microsoft and Google ended a six-year truce on legal battles in 2021, and since then we’ve seen hints that the pair could return to the bitter rivalry that led to Scroogled and arguments over Google services on Windows Phone. Now, it looks like the war of words is very much back on, with cloud competition at the center of this latest battle.

Read More 

Apple’s iMac refresh brings a new processor, more colors, and double the RAM. | Image: Apple

Between new M4-based Macs and the long-awaited arrival of Apple Intelligence in macOS, Apple is taking the entire week to drip-feed us news regarding its new Mac lineup. The 24-inch iMac with M4 is the first up. You can preorder it now from Apple starting at $1,299 with a November 8th release date, and we’re expecting Apple to reveal new silicon for the MacBook Pro and Mac Mini in the days to come. (The MacBook Air isn’t expected to get similar treatment until 2025.)

In addition to the M4 iMac’s new colors, USB-C peripherals, and an upgraded 12MP FaceTime camera, Apple is also increasing the starting RAM from 8GB to 16GB. There aren’t many other drastic performance differences over last year’s model, but the added power and memory are a welcome boost for handling the AI-powered Apple Intelligence features that are arriving this week as part of macOS Sequoia 15.1.
Those features will seed to older M-series Macs as well and should be usable on devices with less memory. However, Apple seems to be establishing an ideal baseline for its future AI plans with the 2024 Macs. We haven’t tested the new iMac (yet), but if you fancy yourself an early adopter, there are a lot of preorder options to consider.
Where to preorder the M4 iMac
The iMac comes with a Magic Keyboard and your choice of a Magic Mouse or a Magic Trackpad (the latter of which costs $50 extra), all of which now feature USB-C ports. It will be available on November 8th, but you can preorder it now from Apple in green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, blue, and silver, with the base model starting at $1,299.
The entry-level version offers a pair of Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports, along with an 8-core CPU and an 8-core GPU. It also offers 16GB of RAM, but you can upgrade to 24GB for $200 more. The iMac also features 256GB of storage by default, but an extra $200 gets you 512GB of storage, while $400 more gets you 1TB of storage. For another $200, you can add nano-textured glass, which helps scatter light and minimize screen glare.
The higher-end models, meanwhile, are available from Apple starting at $1,499 and come with four Thunderbolt 4 ports, 16GB RAM, and 256GB of storage. Paying $200 extra allows you to upgrade to either 24GB of RAM or 512GB of storage. If you need even more storage, you can get 1TB or 2TB for an extra $400 or $800, respectively. Apple also lets you upgrade to 32GB of RAM and 512GB of storage for $400 extra.

Apple’s iMac refresh brings a new processor, more colors, and double the RAM. | Image: Apple

Between new M4-based Macs and the long-awaited arrival of Apple Intelligence in macOS, Apple is taking the entire week to drip-feed us news regarding its new Mac lineup. The 24-inch iMac with M4 is the first up. You can preorder it now from Apple starting at $1,299 with a November 8th release date, and we’re expecting Apple to reveal new silicon for the MacBook Pro and Mac Mini in the days to come. (The MacBook Air isn’t expected to get similar treatment until 2025.)

In addition to the M4 iMac’s new colors, USB-C peripherals, and an upgraded 12MP FaceTime camera, Apple is also increasing the starting RAM from 8GB to 16GB. There aren’t many other drastic performance differences over last year’s model, but the added power and memory are a welcome boost for handling the AI-powered Apple Intelligence features that are arriving this week as part of macOS Sequoia 15.1.

Those features will seed to older M-series Macs as well and should be usable on devices with less memory. However, Apple seems to be establishing an ideal baseline for its future AI plans with the 2024 Macs. We haven’t tested the new iMac (yet), but if you fancy yourself an early adopter, there are a lot of preorder options to consider.

Where to preorder the M4 iMac

The iMac comes with a Magic Keyboard and your choice of a Magic Mouse or a Magic Trackpad (the latter of which costs $50 extra), all of which now feature USB-C ports. It will be available on November 8th, but you can preorder it now from Apple in green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, blue, and silver, with the base model starting at $1,299.

The entry-level version offers a pair of Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports, along with an 8-core CPU and an 8-core GPU. It also offers 16GB of RAM, but you can upgrade to 24GB for $200 more. The iMac also features 256GB of storage by default, but an extra $200 gets you 512GB of storage, while $400 more gets you 1TB of storage. For another $200, you can add nano-textured glass, which helps scatter light and minimize screen glare.

The higher-end models, meanwhile, are available from Apple starting at $1,499 and come with four Thunderbolt 4 ports, 16GB RAM, and 256GB of storage. Paying $200 extra allows you to upgrade to either 24GB of RAM or 512GB of storage. If you need even more storage, you can get 1TB or 2TB for an extra $400 or $800, respectively. Apple also lets you upgrade to 32GB of RAM and 512GB of storage for $400 extra.

Read More 

Illustration: The Verge

Google’s AI Overviews are expanding across more than 100 countries this week. The AI-generated search summaries will appear for users in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Colombia, Chile, the Phillippines, Nigeria, and many more locations. You can view the full list of countries on Google’s website.
In each country, AI Overviews will now appear in any supported language, including English, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish. That means if you’re located in the US, you can make a search in Spanish and see an AI Overview in the same language.

Earlier this month, Google rolled out ads in AI Overviews on mobile — but only in the US. For all other locations, Google says “ads will continue to appear in dedicated slots throughout the page” rather than directly within AI Overviews.
Google launched AI Overviews in the US in May before expanding the feature to the UK, India, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, and Brazil in August. The company has also started displaying cited webpages within AI Overviews more prominently following a months-long test.

Illustration: The Verge

Google’s AI Overviews are expanding across more than 100 countries this week. The AI-generated search summaries will appear for users in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Colombia, Chile, the Phillippines, Nigeria, and many more locations. You can view the full list of countries on Google’s website.

In each country, AI Overviews will now appear in any supported language, including English, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish. That means if you’re located in the US, you can make a search in Spanish and see an AI Overview in the same language.

Earlier this month, Google rolled out ads in AI Overviews on mobile — but only in the US. For all other locations, Google says “ads will continue to appear in dedicated slots throughout the page” rather than directly within AI Overviews.

Google launched AI Overviews in the US in May before expanding the feature to the UK, India, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, and Brazil in August. The company has also started displaying cited webpages within AI Overviews more prominently following a months-long test.

Read More