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Netflix has shows and movies. And video games. And live sports. And podcasts. And also, apparently, YouTube videos ? For a company that used to seem like the next big thing in TV, it all feels a little frenetic, and maybe a tad desperate . For a company that sees sleep as its primary competitor, it might all make perfect sense. On this episode of The Vergecast , David and Nilay try to figure out why Netflix continues to expand its content machine and whether the company's ongoing YouTube-ification makes any sense at all. Many have tried to compete with YouTube; none have succeeded. Does that mean Netflix might inch its way up the Go90 Scale of … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/podcast/964082/netflix-youtube-smart-glasses-vergecast

You can see if ads on Google Search, Google Discover, and YouTube were made or edited using AI from a new section in Google's "My Ad Center," as reported earlier by TechCrunch . The update, announced on Thursday, adds a "created or edited with AI" label under the "how this ad was made" tab. Users can find it by tapping the three dots or info button on ads, which pulls up the same panel where you can also block or report ads. Google says it will automatically apply the AI label to any ads made with its own generative AI advertising tools, but AI ads made elsewhere will need to have the label applied manually. In some regions, Google's new AI … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/963628/google-ai-generated-ads-label

About two weeks after OpenAI's GPT-5.6 was caught up in regulatory drama - rolled out only to government-approved organizations during a "limited preview" period - the company has received the Trump administration's greenlight for a public rollout of the model. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called it "the best model we have ever produced." To celebrate, OpenAI also unveiled a new AI agent on the same day: ChatGPT Work. It's billed as a combination of ChatGPT and Codex, allowing the everyday non-technical user to take advantage of Codex's capabilities for non-coding tasks, and it's powered by the GPT-5.6 model suite (Sol, Terra, and Luna). "It can g … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/963464/openai-gpt-5-6-codex-chatgpt-work

OpenAI is overhauling ChatGPT's voice mode with a new model that it says is more like "talking to another person." The new GPT-Live-1 is designed to interrupt you less and will also wait for you to continue speaking if you pause mid-conversation. During a press briefing, OpenAI research lead Kundan Kumar called GPT-Live-1 the company's "smartest voice model" yet. It will automatically pass your queries to its best text models, like GPT-5.5, when it needs to reason or search the web, allowing it to more quickly transition from researching the topic you've asked about to talking about its findings. The upgraded model will also supplement conv … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/962856/chatgpt-upgraded-voice-mode-gpt-live

Google is hosting its next Made by Google launch event for Pixel hardware on August 12th in New York City, according to an invitation sent by Google to The Verge . Unusually, the event is taking place in the evening: It'll kick off at 6PM ET that day. The email also includes a brief animation teasing what appears to be a phone in the Pixel 11 family that's gold. Pixel 11 leaks that have popped up so far show that the base phone could have slimmer bezels than the Pixel 10 and a solid black camera bar. Leaks of Pixel 11 Pro indicate the phone could be a touch thinner than the Pixel 10 Pro . And the Pixel 11 Pro Fold could also be thinner than … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/tech/962313/made-by-google-pixel-11-launch-event

As part of the mass layoffs hitting Xbox, Doom developer id Software has laid off around 50 percent of its staff, according to Game Developer . One source claimed to the publication that the cuts equate to more than 90 redundancies. Another source said that id's QA department was significantly impacted. The report was published the same day that id is releasing a major expansion for its latest Doom game . A former id employee affected by the cuts, Michael Maynard, corroborated the figure in a LinkedIn post , saying that the layoffs affected "roughly" 50 percent of the company. "We created arguably THE BEST first person engine technology in the … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/games/962223/doom-id-software-xbox-layoffs