Humanoid robot competes in the optional boxing routine event during the 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games at National Speed Skating Oval on August 26, 2026 in Beijing, China.…
| Image: Getty Images This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaki…
For more on falling robots and the US-China AI race, follow Robert Hart.
Sony Music and Warner Chappell are suing Anthropic
Sony Music and Warner Chappell have filed suit against Anthropic in the US District Court for the Northern District of California seeking damages for "tens of thousands" copyrighted works.…
The companies are asking for up to $150,000 per work, plus up to $25,0…
In total, the damages could amount to several billion dollars if a cou…
The Galaxy Z Flip 8 is at its best when there’s friction
The Z Flip 8 is designed to be used shut more than ever before.| Photo: Dominic Preston / The Verge What do you want from a flip phone when it's closed?…
A simple interface, perhaps notifications and a widget or two, for han…
Or a fully fledged Android experience shrunk down for the Flip form fa…
Musicians-turned-detectives are hunting for AI grifters
As audio-focused generative tools and platforms have gotten more sophisticated, the internet has become increasingly filled with AI-generated music whose melodies and vocals are algorithmically derived from the work of human artists.…
While some of the people pumping out this kind of content immediately …
For musicians - especially those creating art in technologically-focus…
Anthropic was illegally blacklisted by the Trump administration, court rules
On Thursday, a judge ruled that the Pentagon's blacklisting of Anthropic earlier this year was unconstitutional, delivering the AI lab a win in a monthslong rollercoaster of a battle with the Trump administration.…
The lawsuit, filed in March in a California district court, accused th…
"The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to pun…
The biggest video game of all time looks like a movie
I think I know why Rockstar Games debuted its "extended look" of Grand Theft Auto VI on Netflix instead of immediately dropping it for free on YouTube.…
Unlike most video game trailers, the almost 27-minute preview of GTA V…
To make a new game that lasts another decade or more and potentially r…
Jensen Huang says Nvidia achieved AGI, again — not that it matters
On Nvidia's earnings call Wednesday, CEO Jensen Huang casually announced the company had "achieved AGI," one of the tech industry's ultimate goals some of its biggest players have spent years chasing.…
Almost immediately, Huang dismissed the coveted milestone as "senseless.
If Meta’s going down, it’s taking TikTok and YouTube with it
Meta might be on the hook for $17.1 billion and a host of app changes under a new kids safety settlement, but it's already spinning the deal to its advantage.…
After years of being the national punching bag for social media harms,…
"We want to ensure teens benefit from this new industry standard, but …
OpenAI’s executive exodus has one big winner
Today on Decoder, I’m talking to Verge senior AI reporter Hayden Field about some pure Decoder bait: the seemingly-endless org chart changes at OpenAI, and how all of them seem to consolidate power under cofounder Greg Brockman, the company’s president.…
While Sam Altman is the CEO and still OpenAI’s most public face, Brock…
Verge subscribers, don’t forget you get exclusive access to ad-free De…
Plaud has introduced a new AI wearable that's designed to record, transcribe, and summarize your conversations, only this time it looks like earbuds instead of a pin.…
The Plaud One Explorer Edition can be worn like traditional earbuds or…
Each earbud features 16MB of local storage (for a total of 32MB) and t…
Samsung announced its upcoming lineup of Odyssey gaming monitors today at Gamescom, and says that several will feature "world-first innovations" across display speeds and design.…
This includes the 27-inch Odyssey G6 it initially unveiled in December…
The Odyssey G6 G60H's upgraded 1,100Hz final launch specification is a…
Samsung’s Galaxy S26 FE pairs last year’s hardware with last month’s software
The Galaxy S26 FE holds few surprises.The Fan Edition phones are rarely Samsung's most exciting launches of the year, but the new Galaxy S26 FE feels especially familiar.…
Hardware-wise, little has changed since the S25 FE launched 12 months …
At its core, this is the same phone as last year's.