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Published May 16, 2026, 12:00 PM

Need a new laptop? It’s a tough decision. If you’re like most people, a laptop is one of the most expensive tech purchases you’ll make, and it’s something you’ll use and live with nearly every day for years to come. So there’s a lot riding on this pricey expense. I’ve tested all kinds of laptops, from cheap Windows computers and Chromebooks to bre…
Published May 16, 2026, 12:00 PM

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 128, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, sorry this one's so Mac-heavy, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading about David Attenborough and screenwriters-turned-AI-trainers and the Subway Takes guy,…
Published May 16, 2026, 9:30 AM

“I’ve got one hand on the keyboard, one hand down below,” an artist who role-plays with their chatbot tells WIRED. But some asexual advocates aren’t thrilled about the association.
Published May 15, 2026, 11:39 PM

MIT Tech Review
In the final week of the Musk v. Altman trial, lawyers traded blows over Elon Musk’s and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s credibility. Altman was grilled on his alleged history of lying and self-dealing involving companies that do business with OpenAI. But he fired back, painting Musk as a power-seeker who wanted to control the development…
Published May 15, 2026, 10:25 PM

YouTube is expanding its AI likeness detection program to all users over the age of 18 - meaning just about anyone can have the platform hunt for potential deepfakes of themselves. The likeness detection feature uses a selfie-style scan of a person's face to monitor YouTube for lookalikes. If there is a match, YouTube alerts the user; the person t…
Published May 15, 2026, 8:38 PM

ArXiv, a popular platform for preprint academic research, is taking a new step to attempt to reduce the volume of papers that include AI slop. If a paper has "incontrovertible evidence that the authors did not check the results of LLM generation," such as hallucinated references or "meta-comments" left by an LLM, authors will be banned from ArXiv…
Published May 15, 2026, 7:24 PM

The Musk v. Altman trial came to a close this week, and the final arguments kept circling back to one question: can we trust the people in charge of AI? All of this is playing out as SpaceX charges toward what could be one of the largest IPOs in American history, with a whole generation of founders already spinning out […]
Published May 15, 2026, 6:21 PM

OpenAI announced yet another reorganization Friday, consolidating certain areas and making company president Greg Brockman the official lead of all things product. In a memo viewed by The Verge, Brockman wrote that since OpenAI's product strategy for this year is to go all-in on AI agents, the company is combining its products to "invest in a sing…
Published May 15, 2026, 6:14 PM

Lake Tahoe, Silicon Valley's favorite vacation spot, is about to get hit with higher energy prices as AI drives demand for electricity.
Published May 15, 2026, 5:09 PM

OpenAI is once again reorganizing its executive ranks as part of its effort to unify ChatGPT and Codex into one core product experience.
Published May 15, 2026, 5:09 PM

AI radio DJs demonstrated their volatile personalities. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Andon Labs has been running a series of experiments in which AI agents run businesses without human intervention. Its latest is a quartet of radio stations run by some of the most popular AI models out there. "Thinking Frequencies" is run by Cl…
Published May 15, 2026, 4:42 PM

Google updated its spam policy to mark attempts to "manipulate" its AI model in search results as spam, including results in AI Overview or AI Mode in Search, as Search Engine Land reports: "In the context of Google Search, spam refers to techniques used to deceive users or manipulate our Search systems into featuring content prominently, such as…
Published May 15, 2026, 4:00 PM

Once users connect their accounts, they will see a dashboard of their portfolio performance, spending, subscriptions, and upcoming payments.
Published May 15, 2026, 2:00 PM

AI video-generation startup Runway is betting that video generation is the path to world models. And that being an AI outsider is an advantage, not a liability.
Published May 15, 2026, 12:19 PM

Osaurus combines local and cloud AI models in a Mac app that keeps users’ memory, files, and tools on their own hardware.
Published May 15, 2026, 12:10 PM

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. How Chinese short dramas became AI content machines China’s short drama industry is fueled by bite-sized, melodramatic, and smutty shows built for smartphone scrolling. Now, many are being made entirely with…
Published May 15, 2026, 9:00 AM

The Thinking Machines Lab founder and former CTO of OpenAI tells WIRED she isn’t interested in automating people out of jobs. Instead, she’s building AI that can collaborate.
Published May 15, 2026, 9:00 AM

MIT Tech Review
In a dimly lit bedroom, a frightened young woman is thrown onto a bed by a tall, muscular man. He grabs her hand, and flame-like vines crawl across her body, fusing with her flesh. She levitates, then drops. A dragon-shaped tattoo appears across her chest. “Two months,” the man says. “Give me an heir, or…
Published May 14, 2026, 10:21 PM

The Verge
Today was closing arguments in the Musk v. Altman trial, and I almost feel bad writing about the unbelievable demolition derby I just witnessed. Steven Molo, Musk's lawyer, stumbled over his words. He at one point called Greg Brockman - a co-defendant - Greg Altman. He erroneously claimed that Musk wasn't asking for money and had to be corrected b…
Published May 14, 2026, 8:59 PM

The Verge
Yesterday, in Musk v. Altman, before the jurors came in, Sam Altman's team passed up what looked - from a distance - like a little league trophy. It was not. Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers had the lawyers read the inscription aloud for the press: "Never stop being a jackass." It's a commemoration OpenAI employees bought for research scientist Josh Achiam,…
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