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Google has been quietly striking deals with some publishers to use new generative AI tools to publish stories, according to a report in Adweek. The deals, reportedly worth tens of thousands of dollars a year, are apparently part of the Google News Initiative (GNI), a six-year-old program that funds media literacy projects, fact-checking tools, and other resources for newsrooms. But the move into generative AI publishing tools would be a new, and likely controversial, step for the company.

According to Adweek, the program is currently targeting a “handful” of smaller publishers. “The beta tools let under-resourced publishers create aggregated content more efficiently by indexing recently published reports generated by other organizations, like government agencies and neighboring news outlets, and then summarizing and publishing them as a new article,” Adweek reports.

It’s not clear exactly how much publishers are being paid under the arrangement, though Adweek says it’s a “five-figure sum” per year. In exchange, media organizations reportedly agree to publish at least three articles a day, one weekly newsletter and one monthly marketing campaign using the tools.

Of note, publishers in the program are apparently not required to disclose their use of AI, nor are the aggregated websites informed that their content is being used to create AI-written stories on other sites. The AI-generated copy reportedly uses a color-coded system to indicate the reliability of each section of text to help human editors review the content before publishing.

Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement to Adweek the company said it was “in the early stages of exploring ideas to potentially provide AI-enabled tools to help journalists with their work.” The spokesperson added that the AI tools “are not intended to, and cannot, replace the essential role journalists have in reporting, creating and fact-checking their articles.”

It’s not clear what Google is getting out of the arrangement, though it wouldn’t be the first tech company to pay newsrooms to use proprietary tools. The arrangement bears some similarities to the deals Facebook once struck with publishers to create live video content in 2016. The social media company made headlines as it paid publishers millions of dollars to juice its nascent video platform and dozens of media outlets opted to “pivot to video” as a result.

Those deals later evaporated after Facebook discovered it had wildly miscalculated the number of views such content was getting. The social network ended its live video deals soon after and has since tweaked its algorithm to recommend less news content. The media industry’s “pivot to video” cost hundreds of journalists their jobs, by some estimates.

While the GNI program appears to be much smaller than what Facebook attempted nearly a decade ago with live video, it will likely raise fresh scrutiny over the use of generative AI tools by publishers. Publications like CNET and Sports Illustrated have been widely criticized for attempting to pass off AI-authored articles as written by human staffers.

Tumblr and WordPress are reportedly set to strike deals to sell user data to artificial intelligence companies OpenAI and Midjourney. 404 Media reports that the platforms’ parent company, Automattic, is nearing completion of an agreement to provide data to help train the AI companies’ models.

It isn’t clear which data will be included, but the report suggests Automattic may have overreached initially. An alleged internal post from Tumblr product manager Cyle Gage suggests Automattic prepared to send private or partner-related data that wasn’t supposed to be included in the deal. The questionable content reportedly included private posts on public blog posts, deleted or suspended blogs, unanswered (therefore, not publicly posted) questions, private answers, posts marked explicit and content from premium partner blogs (like Apple’s former music site).

The internal post suggests Automattic’s engineers are preparing a list of post IDs that should have been excluded. It isn’t clear whether the data had already been sent to the AI companies. Engadget emailed Automattic to ask for comment on the report, and we’ll update this article if we hear back.

The company reportedly plans to launch a new opt-out tool on Wednesday that claims to allow users to block third parties — including AI companies — from training on their data. 404 Media reviewed an alleged internal FAQ Automattic prepared for the tool, which includes the answer, “If you opt out from the start, we will block crawlers from accessing your content by adding your site on a disallowed list. If you change your mind later, we also plan to update any partners about people who newly opt-out and ask that their content be removed from past sources and future training.” 

The phrasing, describing it as “asking” the AI companies to remove the data, may be relevant.

An alleged internal document from Automattic’s AI head, Andrew Spittle, replying to a staff question about data-removal assurances when using the tool, explains, “We will notify existing partners on a regular basis about anyone who’s opted out since the last time we provided a list. I want this to be an ongoing process where we regularly advocate for past content to be excluded based on current preferences. We will ask that content be deleted and removed from any future training runs. I believe partners will honor this based on our conversations with them to this point. I don’t think they gain much overall by retaining it.”

So, if a Tumblr or WordPress user requests to opt out of AI training, Automattic will allegedly “ask” and “advocate for” their removal. And the company’s AI boss “believes” the AI companies will find it in their best interest to comply “based on our conversations.” (How’s that for reassurance!)

AI data training deals have become a lucrative opportunity for websites treading water in today’s slippery online publishing landscape. (Tumblr’s staff was reportedly reduced to a skeleton crew in late 2023.) Last week, Google struck a deal with Reddit (ahead of the latter’s IPO) to train on the platform’s vast knowledge base of user-created content. Meanwhile, OpenAI rolled out a partnership program last year to collect datasets from third parties to help train its AI models.

Ten years, billions of dollars, multiple leadership changes, and dozens of rumors later, the Apple Car project is dead. A new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says that Apple has officially canceled the car, breaking the news to nearly 2,000 employees who had been working on it on Tuesday.

As part of the change, Apple will move “many employees working on the car” to the company’s artificial intelligence division where they will focus on generative AI projects, which Apple is expected to share more about later this year, according to a statement by CEO Tim Cook on the company’s earnings call earlier this month. But the car team also included hundreds of hardware engineers and car designers, some of who, Bloomberg reports, will be able to apply for jobs in other divisions of the company. The rest are likely to be laid off.

Apple has never spoken publicly about its efforts to build a vehicle, internally known as Project Titan. But a number of leaks over the years revealed the company’s ambitions to expand into a brand new product category it had no experience in. At the beginning of the project in 2014, Apple wanted to build fully self-driving car without pedals or a steering wheel with a remote command center ready to take over for a driver. But in recent years, Apple reportedly pared down its ambitions. As recently as last month, new reports suggested that Apple’s car, which could debut in 2028, would be an electric vehicle more akin to a Tesla than something completely new.

Project Titan also went through multiple leadership shakeups. In 2021, Apple appointed Kevin Lynch, the executive who previously oversaw Apple Watch development, to head the car division after Doug Field, Project Titan’s previous head, left for Ford.

Apple had reportedly considered pricing the car at around $100,000, in the ballpark of a high-end Tesla Model X. But Apple executives were reportedly concerned about profit margins at that price. The move is a rare setback for the company, which according to Bloomberg worked on “powertrains, self-driving hardware and software, car interiors and exteriors, and other key components” over the years.

One of the most successful horror movie franchises of the last 20 years is coming to a gaming system near you. Paramount Game Studios has teamed up with DreadXP and DarkStone Digital (aka solo developer Brian Clarke) to create Paranormal Activity: Found Footage. The horror game is slated to hit multiple platforms in 2026.

Paranormal Activity: Found Footage will build on the lore and the world that was established in the seven-film series, which debuted in 2007. It will be the first non-virtual reality Paranormal Activity game.

As the title suggests, the game will use the found-footage format of the movies. Details are otherwise slim for now, though Paranormal Activity: Found Footage will feature what's said to be an advanced "haunt system" that will dynamically change the intensity and kinds of scares players will face based on their actions. Several other games have used a dynamic scare system, including Don't Scream (an early access title that picked up some buzz a few months ago), so it'll be interesting to see how DarkStone Digital uses that here.

Clarke previously created the well-reviewed first-person horror game The Mortuary Assistant. "My latest project is a Paranormal Activity game," Clarke, who is also a co-director of publisher DreadXP, wrote on X. "I am beyond excited to be doing this as I have loved this series from the very beginning and it heavily shaped my style of horror."

The Google Nest Wi-Fi Pro, which we named the best pick for people new to mesh Wi-Fi systems, is on sale for $220 for the two-pack. That's a 27 percent discount, which is the best price it's been all year and just $20 more than the all time low it hit for Black Friday last November. The set of two should provide coverage for 4,400 square feet. If you've got a particularly large home or tricky areas due to thick walls or other interference, you might want the three-pack. That set is down to $319 after a 20 percent discount.

Mesh Wi-Fi systems let you add a distributed set of smaller nodes around your home, solving a lot of connectivity problems including sub-par ISP-provided equipment and dead zones in far off or awkward corners. The Wi-Fi 7 standard was just released, but few devices support it just yet, and the speeds the protocol can potentially deliver (along with the price tag) are likely overkill for the average household. Wi-Fi 6E, on the other hand, is mature and much more affordable. It's plenty capable of giving a home superior wireless performance for those coming from prior Wi-Fi generations. 

In our review, Engadget's Daniel Cooper noted that the Nest Pro system is neither faster (though it's plenty fast) nor more customizable than its competitors, but its one of the more affordable Wi-Fi 6E systems out there. It's also terribly simple to use, even for those who've never worked with mesh routers before. The Nest Pro should particularly appeal to anyone who has already bought into Google's smart home ecosystem, as it makes good use of the Home app, where many of your automated controls may already be living.

One of the bigger selling points is Google's promise of regular software updates, which means you should be able to set the system up and not have to think about your Wi-Fi configurations for several years. 

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In celebration of Pokémon Day (the first games launched on February 27, 1996), The Pokémon Company revealed the franchise’s latest “Legends” entry on Tuesday. Pokémon Legends: Z-A returns the series to Lumiose City, last seen as one of the regions in Pokémon X and Y on the Nintendo 3DS. The game arrives on Switch in 2025.

Developed by Game Freak, Pokémon Legends: Z-A’s trailer and press materials only provide a minimal glimpse at the upcoming title. The Pokémon Company describes it as “an exciting new adventure” and “an ambitious new entry” as the company tries to wrestle the narrative back from its guns-blazing off-brand counterpart Palworld. (That fast-growing title has already gotten the attention of The Pokémon Company’s legal team.)

The Pokémon Company

The trailer teases an urban redevelopment plan in a mysterious metro area, finally revealed as Lumiose City. Within the game world, a renovation project strives to help humans and Pokémon live together in the sprawling urban landscape. The trailer even teases Mega Evolutions, initially introduced in Pokémon X and Y.

The Pokémon Legends: Z-A trailer below — largely an extended teaser — doesn’t show any gameplay footage, and its shots of Lumiose City use wireframe models, suggesting an incomplete nature (or at least surprises reserved for another day). The game will have a simultaneous global launch when it arrives next year.

Pokémon Day also saw the announcement of a new digital trading card game. Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket is a new mobile app (Android and iOS) set to arrive later this year. It will allow players to “enjoy the thrill of opening booster packs and collecting cards,” which will include “immersive cards” and visual effects unique to the app (in addition to classic artwork). The app’s trailer showcases a satisfying ripping animation when “opening” the digital packs (gotta get you hooked!).

Players using the app will receive two free booster packs daily. The company hasn’t officially announced the availability of additional packs through in-app purchases. However, the Pokémon Company’s language describing the app as “free-to-start” may provide a hint about its plans. The app will support trades and “quick battles,” using streamlined rules based on the card game’s battle system.

TikTok is being forced to take down more music from its platform as a royalties spat with Universal Music Group (UMG) rumbles on. UMG recently yanked recordings it owns or distributes from TikTok including tracks from the likes of superstars Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and The Weeknd. The standoff is now impacting songs published by UMG, with millions more tracks expected to be muted on TikTok by the end of this week.

The latest step in this saga affects works by artists who have partnered with songwriters who are under contract to Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), according to Variety. Due to an issue called split copyrights, if a UMPG-contracted writer has contributed to a song in any way, that track may have to be removed from TikTok. So artists who have collaborated with the likes of Swift, Adele, Justin Bieber, Mariah Carey, Ice Spice, Elton John, Harry Styles and SZA may see their songs disappearing from TikTok and being muted on videos that currently use them. The move will prevent more artists from plugging their work on the most important platform for promoting music.

According to the BBC, UMG removed around three million songs from TikTok after an agreement over its recording catalog expired. UMG's deal with TikTok over its publishing catalog (which covers some four million songs) ends later this week, at which point all relevant tracks could vanish from the short-form video service.

It’s a question as old as time, or at least the early 2010s: Which iPhone should you buy? For most, the answer is simple: Buy the highest-end Apple phone you can afford. And if you’re happy with your current handset, don’t buy a new one at all. But if you’re sure it’s time to upgrade and need a hand, let us help. We at Engadget have tested and reviewed iPhones since their inception, including all eight models Apple sells today. Below, we’ve broken down the current iPhone lineup and named a few top picks.

Before we dig in, let’s be clear: There isn’t really a “bad” iPhone. Each model provides a similar set of core perks: tight integration with other Apple devices, premium hardware, lengthy software support, and services like iMessage, Apple Pay and FaceTime. With the latest iPhone 15 series, Apple has finally swapped its charging ports from Lightning to the more universal USB-C. Still, some models are better buys than others right now. Just note that we’ve based this guide on the prices for new unlocked iPhones at Apple’s online store. If you can find a good deal on a refurbished model or a heavy discount from a carrier or a third-party retailer, that could change the equation depending on your budget.

Other iPhones we tested

If you're looking to stock up on charging gear, a few Anker accessories we recommend are back on sale, including the Anker 622 Magnetic Battery down to $35 in various colors. Outside of a brief fall to $25 last year, that matches the lowest price we've seen for the wireless battery pack. The discount takes half off Anker's list price, though the device's actual street price has sat around $50 for most of the past year. This offer is also available at Anker's online store with an on-page coupon code.

We've previously highlighted the Anker 622 for those who want a compact power bank they can use to recharge their phone without any cables. It's compatible with Apple's MagSafe standard, so it can quickly snap onto the back of any recent iPhone and immediately start topping it up. It's a 5,000mAh (19.25Wh) battery that only supplies up to 7.5W of power, so it's not especially fast and can't completely refill most phones on its own. Instead, it's best viewed as a pocket-friendly security blanket, a thin and light pack you can use to keep your phone from dying before you make it back to an outlet. The device can also serve as a charging stand when you aren't out and about, as it has a foldable kickstand built in and a side-mounted USB-C port that allows for pass-through charging. Just be aware that it won't work with cases that aren't magnetic.

It's worth noting that Anker recently launched new wireless power banks that support the faster Qi2 standard, which can deliver up to 15W to compatible devices. But the closest analog to the 622 there is currently priced at $60. If you don't need the absolute fastest speeds, the older model is still a decent value when it's discounted to this extent.

If you want a charging station for your desk, the Anker 525 Charging Station is also worth a look at $40. That's about $20 off its usual street price and an all-time low. This is a stubby, 67W desktop charger with two USB-C ports and two USB-A ports on the front, plus three AC outlets on the back. It'll split that power if you connect multiple devices at once, so it won't refill every phone, tablet or small laptop at max speed, but it should be quick enough for most people looking for something on the cheap. 

Beyond that, the Lightning-based version of Anker's 621 Power Bank is down to $20 with an on-page coupon. That matches the lowest price we've seen for the ultracompact battery pack, which has a foldable plug that connects directly into the bottom of older iPhones and provide an emergency 12W charge. We recommend the USB-C version of this device in our guide to the best power banks.

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It’s another bleak day for the gaming industry as there’s more news of mass layoffs. This time around, its PlayStation that’s gutting its studios. Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) says it’s laying off around 900 staff from its PlayStation division, roughly 8 percent of that department’s headcount.

Insomniac (Spider-Man and Ratchet and Clank), Naughty Dog (The Last of Us) and Guerrilla (Horizon) are all affected by the cuts. Those studios are behind some of PlayStation's most important franchises. For instance, within three and a half months, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 had sold 10 million units.

Sony's London Studio, which had been working on a co-op multiplayer game for PlayStation 5, is shutting down entirely, while Firesprite will also lose some staff. In addition, PlayStation will lay off workers from its Technology, Creative, and Support teams.

PlayStation employees in the US who are losing their jobs will be informed today. Sony will adhere to local laws and regulations for carrying out layoffs in other territories — the company says people in all of its global regions will be affected.

"After careful consideration and many leadership discussions over several months, it has become clear changes need to be made to continue to grow the business and develop the company," outgoing SIE president and CEO Jim Ryan told staff in an email. "We had to step back, look at our business holistically, and move forward focusing on the long-term sustainability of the company and delivering the best experiences possible for our community. The goal is to streamline our resources to ensure our continued success and ability to deliver experiences gamers and creators have come to expect from us."

Meanwhile, Hermen Hulst, the head of PlayStation Studios, said that SIE leadership evaluated its studios and portfolio and looked at projects that are in various stages of development. Some of those projects have now been canceled. Hulst didn't provide more details, but the projects that have been canned surely include the one that London Studio was working on.

"I want to be clear that the decision to stop work on these projects is not a reflection on the talent or passion of team members," Hulst wrote in a memo. "Our philosophy has always been to allow creative experimentation. Sometimes, great ideas don’t become great games. Sometimes, a project is started with the best intentions before shifts within the market or industry result in a change of plan."

Hulst also noted that SIE is re-assessing its approach to delivering the kinds of expensive blockbuster single-player games that PlayStation has become known for over the last decade or so, and balancing that out with its desire to create long-tail multiplayer games. "Delivering the immersive, narrative-driven stories that PlayStation Studios is known for, at the quality bar that we aspire to, requires a re-evaluation of how we operate," Hulst wrote. "Delivering and sustaining social, online experiences — allowing PlayStation gamers to explore our worlds in different ways — as well as launching games on additional devices such as PC and mobile, requires a different approach and different resources."

Sony is working on multiple live-service games and had planned to release 10 of them by 2026. At least one of those — The Last of Us Online — was shelved. However, the company has seen some success on the live-service front, with Helldivers 2 becoming one of the biggest hits of the year so far.

However, it emerged this month that Sony doesn't plan to release any sequels for its major first-party franchises until at least April next year. It's relying on third-party titles such as Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and the Elden Ring expansion to help cover the gaps in its own pipeline. The company also lowered its PS5 sales forecast for the current fiscal year, which ends on March 31. It expects to sell 21 million consoles in fiscal 2023, down from the previous estimate of 25 million.

This slate of layoffs brings the total number of job losses in the games industry so far this year to more than 7,000 (we haven't even reached March yet). That's on top of the more than 9,000 people who were laid off from the industry in 2023.

Microsoft conducted sweeping cuts in its gaming division in January, laying off around 1,900 people. Riot Games, Unity, Twitch (which is games-adjacent instead of a gaming company), Supermassive Games, Dead by Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive and Sega of America are also among those who have carried out layoffs.