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Microsoft, a notoriously conservative and slow-moving giant, is bringing artificial intelligence right into the heart of Windows. But. after investing a total of $13 billion in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI (and acquiring a 49 percent stake in the process), will AI actually make its products better?

Microsoft went to town. Bing Chat officially kicked off its year of AI, while Copilot, assisting with its AI smarts, subsequently launched on Edge, Microsoft 365 products like Word and Powerpoint and eventually Windows 11.

While the AI interactions aren’t perfect, the one constant around AI is that everything is changing incredibly quickly. Microsoft has already announced Copilot will be upgraded with the more powerful GPT-4 Turbo and Dall-E 3 models.

– Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

How the EU forced tech companies to change in 2023

The best Xbox Series X and Series S accessories in 2024

CBS and Paramount’s parent company reports hack affecting over 80,000 people

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Amazon's Prime Video will start serving ads on January 29, 2023

You'll have to pay $3 a month on top of your subscription to get rid of commercials.

Amazon is telling its Prime Video subscribers that they have to pay extra if they don't want their viewing experience interrupted by commercials. It will start showing "limited advertisements" with its service's movies and shows starting on January 29. If they want to keep it ad-free, they’ll have to pay an extra fee of $3 a month on top of their Prime subscription or their standalone $9-a-month Prime Video membership. The company says it’s all for “increasing investment” in its shows and movies. Lord of the Rings doesn’t pay for itself.

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Apple appeals ban on Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2

It went into effect today, but the company says it's taking “all measures” to reverse course.

Engadget

Apple filed its appeal to the International Trade Commission (ITC), attempting to reverse a ban on US sales of the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2, according to court records. The company’s also requesting an emergency stay on the ban until a decision is reached regarding proposed redesigns of both smartwatch models. The matter even went before President Biden, with Apple hoping in vain for a veto. The ban officially goes into effect today, though Apple started pulling smartwatches from its digital and physical storefronts last week.

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Fan-made Fallout: London is finally coming this April

It has been described as a ‘DLC-sized mod for Bethesda’s Fallout 4’.

Team Folon

An impressive-looking Fallout: London mod has been on our radar for a couple of years, and now the fan-made adventure has an official release date of April 23. The team behind it claim it’s a “DLC-sized mod” for Bethesda’s Fallout 4, built from the bones of the 2015 sequel. The trailer shows off a post-apocalyptic London, with iconic locations like Big Ben, Shakespeare's Globe and Trafalgar Square,

Continue reading.​​

The holidays are over and all those great Nintendo Switch games you got aren't going to back themselves up. Fortunately, a well-timed sale has you covered, with SanDisk's 1TB microSD currently on sale for $90 from $150 — a solid 40 percent discount. It's designed specifically for the Nintendo Switch and features a Legend of Zelda design. 

SanDisk's 1TB microSD is Nintendo Switch system's official licensed microSD card, meaning you don't have to worry about any issues with compatibility. It offers write speeds of up to 90MB per second and read speeds up to 100MB per second. The Nintendo Switch only comes with 32GB of storage (part of which the system uses), so an extra 1TB can go a long way toward saving all your gaming data. 

If you're in need of a whole lot more storage, Western Digital's 4TB SN850X NVMe Internal Gaming SSD is also on sale. The Windows computer drive is currently down to $230 from $286 — a 19 percent discount. The WD_Black SSD offers speeds up to 7,300MB per second while regularly monitoring the drive's health. It also controls your RGB style and uses tools like predictive loading. Keep in mind this deal is available on the model without heatsink. 

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Apple's designer exodus continues as product design chief Tang Tan is leaving the company and joining Jony Ive's design firm LoveFrom, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. There, he'll reportedly work on a new artificial intelligence hardware project backed by OpenAI's Sam Altman with aim of creating devices deploying the latest deep learning technology. 

Tan was in charge of design for Apple's main products including the iPhone, Watch and AirPods, so his departure leaves a sizable hole. As part of LoveFrom, Tan will act as hardware design lead for the new AI project, with Altman providing the software running underneath. All products are supposedly in the early concept phases, with a focus on devices for the home. None of the parties (OpenAI, LoveFrom or Apple) have commented on the news. 

It was already known that Tan would be likely be leaving Apple, but it hadn't yet been revealed where he'd go. Earlier this year, Jony Ive's successor Evans Hankey left the company after just a few years in the product design chief role. In all, about 14 members of Ive's former team have left Apple since 2019, with only a half dozen or so remaining. Ive worked as a consultant for Apple until 2022, and more than 20 former Apple employees have joined Ive under LoveFrom. 

Altman was recently fired (and then rehired) by OpenAI, in part because he was raising funds for other endeavors. One of those was the team-up with Ive to create AI hardware backed by Softbank, according to a previous Bloomberg report. 

Amazon has started notifying Prime Video subscribers that they have to pay extra if they don't want their viewing experience interrupted by commercials. In an email the company has sent to customers, it said that it will start showing "limited advertisements" with its service's movies and shows starting on January 29. Those who want to keep their accounts ad-free will have to pay an extra fee of $3 a month on top of their Prime subscription or their standalone $9-a-month Prime Video membership. 

The company first announced that it was going to serve ads with its content — and that the initial regions to be affected are the US, UK, Germany and Canada — back in September. Customers in France, Italy, Spain, Mexico and Australia will have to make the decision whether to endure the advertisements it serves or pay extra by late next year. Amazon mentioned back then that it's aiming to "have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers." While "meaningfully fewer" is pretty vague, Variety said at the time that four minutes per hour seemed to be the lowest amount of ad time for a streaming platform. 

Amazon reiterated that goal in the email it sent to subscribers. It also explained that introducing ads to its service and charging more for an ad-free viewing experience will help it invest "in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time." The company told subscribers that they'll automatically start seeing ads by the end of January and linked to a website where they can pay for ad-free viewing. In an information page about the change, Amazon clarified that it will not be showing ads with rented or purchased content. It also said that Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam, the Mariana Islands and American Samoa are excluded from the rollout for now. 

National Amusements, CBS and Paramount’s parent company, reported a year-old hack this month affecting 82,128 people. TechCrunch first covered the breach, revealed in a company legal filing with Maine’s Attorney General under a 2005 state digital privacy law. National Amusements hasn’t commented publicly on the intrusion outside of the legal filing, and it isn’t clear if customer (or “only” employee) data was stolen.

Maine’s data breach notification says the hack occurred over a year ago, from December 13 to 15, 2022. It states 82,128 people were affected, 64 of whom were Maine residents. National Amusements’ senior vice president of human resources filed the notice, which may suggest (but not confirm) that it revolved largely or entirely around internal employee data. The filing says the company began notifying customers in writing on December 22, 2023 — 372 days after the breach.

“On or about December 15, 2022, National Amusements became aware of suspicious activity in our computer network,” the notification letter to victims reads. “We immediately took steps to secure our network and minimize any disruption to our operations.”

However, that last sentence contains an inconsistency, as the notice posted by Maine’s Attorney General’s office lists the “date breach discovered” as August 23, 2023. That suggests the company didn’t know about the intrusion until eight months after the incident, hardly qualifying as “immediately” taking steps.

The filing says hackers accessed financial information, including “account number or credit/debit card number (in combination with security code, access code, password or PIN for the account).” National Amusements wrote in Maine’s notice that it’s offering victims 12 months of Experian credit monitoring and identity theft services to customers whose social security numbers were taken.

Engadget contacted National Amusements for confirmation or additional info. We will update this article if we hear back.

National Amusements gained a controlling stake in Paramount and CBS in 2019 following the Viacom-CBS merger. This hack appears separate from one Paramount disclosed in August through Massachusetts’ Attorney General’s Office. The company listed that breach’s date as “between May and June 2023.”

If you’ve been planning on spending the tail-end of your holiday break revisiting the original Splatoon for Wii U or Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS, you could be out of luck. It looks like Nintendo has already begun to restrict the Wii U and 3DS’s ability to play online, according to multiple users and media outlets like Nintendo Life. This started just before Christmas Eve, which is a real Bowser move.

We knew this was coming, but Nintendo originally said the shutdown wouldn’t happen until early April. This may not impact every player just yet, so head online with your console to give it a shot. Jonathan Barrow of Pretendo, an “open-source Nintendo Network replacement," wrote that this is part of a “slow rollout” of Nintendo’s April plans. Pretendo hopes to eventually bring the two consoles back online.

To be fair, Nintendo never actually said that the April end-date was set in stone, as the company suggested that it could discontinue online services “earlier than planned.” It could’ve warned folks, however, so they could get one last round of multiplayer Kid Icarus: Uprising in.

This news follows Nintendo closing its 3DS and Wii U eShops back in March. So, now, you can’t buy new games or go online with your old games. The company’s silly-yet-engaging Miiverse social network, which operated on both consoles, was shut down in 2017, though there’s a post archive.

This is sad, but it happens. Out with the old and in with the new, and all of that. Being a gamer is weird that way. Entire generations of games simply disappear, like Goomba tears in the rain. On the plus side, maybe we’ll be able to shell out full-price for some more remakes, with a Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon refresh coming to the Switch next year.

Apple has filed an appeal to the International Trade Commission (ITC) attempting to reverse a ban on US sales of the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2, according to court records. The company’s also requesting an emergency stay on the ban until a decision is reached regarding proposed redesigns of both smartwatch models.

The company spoke to Reuters and said it’s “taking all measures to return” the smartwatches to US store shelves. The appeal is just one part of that. The matter even went before President Biden, with Apple hoping in vain for a veto. The ban officially goes into effect today, though Apple started pulling smartwatches from its digital and physical storefronts last week.

In today’s filing, Apple claims it will “suffer irreparable harm” if the ban continues. The Exclusion Order Enforcement Branch of U.S. Customs and Border Protection is scheduled to make a decision on Apple’s redesigned versions of the smartwatches on January 13.

This all started when the ITC ruled that Apple infringed on blood oxygen saturation tracking technology patented by a health tech firm called Masimo. This led to Apple scrambling to issue a software fix before a ban went into effect. However, the ITC and Masimo agreed that this is a hardware issue involving the actual sensor, so software fixes wouldn’t cut it. As such, Apple is busy redesigning the sensors for the two smartwatch models. The Apple Watch SE doesn’t have a blood oxygen sensor, so it remains unimpacted by the ban.

Masimo sued Apple back in 2021 over the aforementioned patient violations and even alleged that the company poached employees with high-level knowledge of blood oxygen monitoring capabilities. It’s still possible the two companies will come to a financial agreement, putting this issue to bed.

So what does this mean for consumers looking for a bit of wrist candy? You can still buy the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 in other parts of the world, as the ban only impacts the US. You can also buy the watches from third-party retailers in the US until the stock dries up. You cannot, however, purchase one of these smartwatches directly from Apple.

Apple Watch sales account for around half of the entire smartwatch market. So when the company says the ban will cause “irreparable harm”, it isn’t kidding.

Microsoft’s Copilot tool, the company’s AI chatbot that can do everything from help you write code to draft a marketing email, has made its way onto Android mobile devices. Copilot, which is powered by OpenAI's latest models GPT-4 and DALL-E 3, can also be used to generate images from simple text descriptions and requests. The app is available on the Google Play Store, is free to download and does not require a Microsoft account to sign in.

The rollout of a mobile version of Microsoft’s Copilot (formerly Bing Chat) was quiet — with little buzz and no formal announcements, unlike what we saw with the release of Bing Chat on mobile devices. The new Copilot app was released earlier this month and was initially spotted by Neowin when X users noticed it in the Play Store. Copilot is still not available on iOS though, and the company has yet to make any promises for a release date.

It only makes sense that Copilot has made its way to mobile devices (or at least on Android to start). Microsoft’s previous move to bring Copilot to Windows 10, after launching on Edge, Microsoft 365 products and Windows 11 — added an additional 1 billion devices that are eligible to use the AI assistant, signaling Microsoft’s deadset view on expansion. This coincides with the company’s recent updates to Copilot which include its video summarization capability and song creation feature.

The impressive-looking Fallout: London mod has been on our radar for a couple of years, and now the fan-made adventure has an official release date of April 23. The development team says the game's already finished, but it requires these last few months for testing, according to Eurogamer.

This is a “DLC-sized mod” for Bethesda’s Fallout 4, so it was built from the bones of the 2015 sequel. As you can guess, it gives players free rein over a post-apocalyptic London. The release date trailer shows iconic locations like Big Ben, Shakespeare's Globe and Trafalgar Square, among others. Of course, these areas have been warped by nuclear fallout and decades of chaos. You know the drill.

Developer Team Folon says the game’s European location isn’t just window dressing. The mod will lead players down story paths that “explore pre-war European history” and take a look at how Fallout’s Resource Wars impacted the “class structured society” of the region. It’s also a direct sequel to Fallout 4, being advertised as a “continuation of the base game.” So you’ll need a PC version of the original title to play the mod.

Fallout: London has been in development for more than three years and was expected to launch in 2022 or 2023. Team Folon says the delay was unavoidable, as many team members “come from a region affected by conflict”, potentially referring to Ukraine.

While the release date may have little significance to those of us in the good ole USA, April 23 is St. George’s Day across Britain. It’s a day filled with celebrations and parades, though not an official bank holiday. It’s also just a week after that Fallout show drops on Amazon Prime Video. In other words, April’s a big month for fans of Vault Boy.

This year, tech companies have made concessions that would have once been unthinkable. Apple agreed to adopt the RCS protocol, allowing for text message interoperability with Android devices, and, after more than a decade it ditched the lightning port in its latest iPhone. Meta offered some users the choice to opt out of targeted advertising for a monthly subscription. TikTok, Meta, and Snap allowed some users to opt out of their recommendation algorithms entirely.

None of these concessions would have happened without pressure from the European Union. The bloc has long taken the lead in regulating “Big Tech” (or attempting to), but 2023 saw some of those efforts finally come to fruition.

The most immediate result of increased EU regulations this year came with the arrival of the iPhone 15 lineup, which was the first phone from Apple to support USB-C rather than its proprietary lightning port. The company may have eventually made the switch on its own, but it came in 2023 as a direct result of a European law that made USB-C the common charging standard.

"We have no choice as we do around the world but to comply to local laws," Apple exec Greg Joswiak said about the rules last year. (The regulation requires all new phones and other mobile devices to adopt USB-C by the end of 2024.)

Likewise, it’s widely believed Apple’s decision to finally agree to support the RCS standard in iMessage was the result of political will within the EU. Apple had long been resistant to supporting RCS, which would finally modernize text messages between iPhone owners and their “green bubble” friends.

Apple hasn’t publicly said why it changed its stance. But Google and other companies were pressuring EU authorities to regulate iMessage like other “gatekeeper” services that fall under its authority thanks to the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Apple’s surprise announcement that it would support RCS after all came on the same day as the deadline for companies to challenge the EU’s gatekeeper rules. So Apple’s about face on RCS could reasonably be interpreted as an attempt to pacify EU regulators who could have taken more aggressive measures, like requiring iMessage to be fully interoperable with other chat apps like WhatsApp.

Notably, both of these changes will also benefit US users, even though they are a consequence of EU-specific regulations.“There's definitely a higher degree of protection to the consumer in Europe than there is in the US,” Carolina Milanesi, a consumer analyst with Creative Strategies, told Engadget. Those protections, she noted, often “cascade down” to other regions because it can be impractical to implement different standards across geographies.

In addition to the gains made under the DMA, most of the major social media apps — including Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram — fall under the purview of another EU law that went into effect this year, the Digital Services Act. Under this law, these companies are required to make detailed disclosures about disinformation and other harmful content, and explain how their recommendation algorithms work.

“If you force the social media industry to explain itself, to reveal to some degree its inner workings, it will have an incentive to not misbehave and/or incentive to self regulate more vigorously” explains Paul Barrett, deputy director of NYU’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.

Whether these measures will actually make these services better for those using them, however, is less clear. There are still open questions about how the rules will be enforced. But there have been a few notable changes for EU-based social media users.

Snapchat, Meta and TikTok all now allow European users to opt out of their recommendation algorithms entirely. Snapchat also ended most targeted advertising for 13- to 17-year-olds in the bloc. Additionally, Meta was forced to allow EU users to opt-out of targeted advertising or choose no advertising at all (in exchange for a hefty monthly subscription.)

While these may not seem like monumental changes, they do strike at the heart of all of these companies’ business models. And it’s unlikely, if left to self-regulate as US policymakers have been content to allow them to do, that any of these companies would have voluntarily acted against their own self-interest.