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Now that the Tears of the Kingdom dust has settled like one of those Korok dandelion leaf puzzles, Nintendo is starting to ramp up its efforts for the holiday season. You know what that means. Another Nintendo Direct is scheduled for August 31st at 10AM EST, according to a social media post from the company.

Nintendo promises that the streaming event will feature an “in-depth look” at the forthcoming 2D side-scrolling adventure Super Mario Bros. Wonder, with around 15 minutes of gameplay and information. More Mario is never bad, but this is a themed-direct that exclusively features Wonder. In other words, don’t get your hopes up for any trailers for other games, surprise reveals or anything like that. You’ll get plenty of juicy tidbits, however, about the first 2D Mario in over a decade.

Super Mario Bros. Wonderhas been described as the “next evolution” in the 2D franchise. We’ve only gotten one trailer so far but it was packed with discussion-worthy moments. Mario can turn into an elephant and the game world changes by devouring a psychedelic flower. The appropriately-named Wonder Flower looks to be unpredictable, making pipes come alive, creating hordes of new enemies or completely shifting the overall look and feel of a level. I’m sure the power up does a whole lot more, which should be revealed Thursday.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder launches for the Nintendo Switch on October 30th, just in time for that oh-so-important holiday season. Beyond the sidescroller, the Switch’s holiday release schedule looks pretty dry, compared to other years. There’s Detective Pikachu Returns, a remake of the SNES classicSuper Mario RPG and some Pokémon DLC, and that’s pretty much it for first-party releases. This is the console's seventh holiday season, which could have something to do with it.

Meta will not suspend Cambodia’s former Prime Minister from Facebook and Instagram, declining to follow a recommendation from its Oversight Board. The board, which functions independently from the social media company, had recommended Meta suspend then-Prime Minister Hun Sen's Facebook and Instagram accounts for six months for inciting violence.  

In a response to the case published Wednesday, Meta said a long-term suspension “would not be consistent” with its policies. “Upon assessing Hun Sen’s Facebook Page and Instagram account, we determined that suspending those accounts outside our regular enforcement framework would not be consistent with our policies, including our protocol on restricting accounts of public figures during civil unrest,” the company wrote.

Meta’s handling of the high-profile case has been closely watched around the world, with many viewing it as a test of the company’s policies governing speech from politicians, who have historically had more leeway on the platform.

The company had originally asked the Oversight Board to weigh in on a video posted by Sen. The video was of a speech in which Sen told political opponents he'd "gather CPP (Cambodia People's Party) people to protest and beat you up." Meta had opted to leave up the video, citing its controversial newsworthiness policy, despite concluding it had violated the company’s own rules.

The Oversight Board overruled Meta’s decision and said the video should come down. The board also said that Sen should face a lengthy suspension. “Given the severity of the violation, Hun Sen’s history of committing human rights violations and intimidating political opponents, as well as his strategic use of social media to amplify such threats, the Board calls on Meta to immediately suspend Hun Sen’s Facebook page and Instagram account for six months," it wrote.

Meta complied, removing the video in response to the board’s decision, which is binding under the organization’s rules. The company had 60 days to respond to the board’s non-binding recommendations.

Developing…

Several months after WhatsApp released a Windows desktop client, Mac users are getting to join the party with their own dedicated app for the service. The formal arrival of the client (which had been in beta since January) on Apple's desktops and laptops means users can take part in WhatsApp group calls on their Mac for the first time. 

WhatsApp for Mac supports up to eight people in video calls and as many as 32 in audio-only chinwags. You can hop into a group call after it's already started, view your call (and chat) history and opt to receive notifications about incoming calls even if you don't have the WhatsApp client open. Sharing files should be a cinch too, as you'll be able to simply drag and drop them into a conversation.

The WhatsApp team has spent quite some time making sure that the service supports end-to-end encryption (E2EE) across multiple devices with cross-platform syncing. So, it's not super surprising that WhatsApp for Mac includes E2EE protection for your chats and calls. The app is available from the WhatsApp website and it'll hit the Mac App Store soon.

Google took a step towards transparency in AI-generated images today. Google DeepMind announced SynthID, a watermarking / identification tool for generative art. The company says the technology embeds a digital watermark, invisible to the human eye, directly onto an image’s pixels. SynthID is rolling out first to “a limited number” of customers using Imagen, Google’s art generator available on its suite of cloud-based AI tools.

One of the many issues with generative art — apart from the ethical implications of training on artists’ work — is the potential for creating deepfakes. For example, the pope’s hot new hip-hop attire (an AI image created with MidJourney) going viral on social media was an early example of what could become more commonplace as generative tools evolve. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how something like political ads using AI-generated art could do much more damage than a funny image circulating on Twitter. “Watermarking audio and visual content to help make it clear that content is AI-generated” was one of the voluntary commitments that seven AI companies agreed to develop after a July meeting at the White House. Google is the first of the companies to launch such a system.

Google doesn’t go too far into the weeds about SynthID’s technical implementation (likely to prevent workarounds), but it says the watermark can’t be easily removed through simple editing techniques. “Finding the right balance between imperceptibility and robustness to image manipulations is difficult,” the company wrote in a DeepMind blog post published today. “We designed SynthID so it doesn’t compromise image quality, and allows the watermark to remain detectable, even after modifications like adding filters, changing colours, and saving with various lossy compression schemes — most commonly used for JPEGs,” DeepMind’s SynthID project leaders Sven Gowal and Pushmeet Kohli wrote.

Google DeepMind

The identification part of SynthID rates the image based on three digital watermark confidence levels: detected, not detected and possibly detected. Since the tool is embedded into the image’s pixels, Google says its system can work alongside metadata-based approaches, like the one Adobe uses with its Photoshop generative features, currently available in an open beta.

SynthID includes a pair of deep learning models: one for watermarking and the other for identifying. Google says the two trained on diverse images, culminating in a combined ML model. “The combined model is optimised on a range of objectives, including correctly identifying watermarked content and improving imperceptibility by visually aligning the watermark to the original content,” Gowal and Kohli wrote.

Google acknowledged that it isn’t a perfect solution, adding that it “isn’t foolproof against extreme image manipulations.” But it describes the watermark as “a promising technical approach for empowering people and organisations to work with AI-generated content responsibly.” The company says the tool could expand to other AI models, including those tasked with generating text (like ChatGPT), video and audio. 

Although watermarks could help with deepfakes, it’s easy to imagine digital watermarking turning into an arms race with hackers, with services that adopt SynthID requiring continual updating. In addition, the open-source nature of Stable Diffusion, one of the leading generative tools, could make industry-wide adoption of SynthID or any similar solution a tall order: It already has countless custom builds that can run on local PCs out in the wild. Regardless, Google hopes to make SynthID available to third parties “in the near future” to at least improve AI transparency industry-wide. 

Quirky game publisher Panic's first-ever digital games showcase is about to kick off. The event, dubbed the Panic Games Showcase, can be streamed directly on Panic’s YouTube channel starting today at 1PM ET, or you can come back right here to catch all the action.

The showcase will feature a 20-minute video presentation with Panic's games publishing roadmap, including new looks at previously announced games Nour: Play With Your Food and Despelote. During the event, you can also expect to hear about new unannounced titles, along with new game development partnerships. While there are no further details on upcoming games, we do know there will be no mention of the Playdate. It's likely that the games being discussed at this event will be for PC or more popular gaming consoles, like the PS5 and Nintendo Switch.

With this event, Panic is hoping to gain more recognition as a full-fledged game publisher by showing off the games in its pipeline. Despite its smaller size, Panic is known for pushing unconventional but interesting games that really capture players. Untitled Goose Game is one example of that, as is just about everything that’s been released for Panic’s Playdate hardware.

In a press release, co-founder Cabel Sasser expressed his excitement about the Panic Games Showcase. He also hinted at a wide variety of games, saying viewers will come away excited about at least one new game that piqued their interest.

"A lot of people out there know us as makers of Mac software like Transmit and Nova. And some people know us as the creators of the Playdate handheld video game system. And honestly, not very many people know us as the publisher of Firewatch and Untitled Goose Game”, Sasser said. “We thought it’d be fun to put on a little show and let the world know about the wonderful games we’ve been working on publishing, from amazing developers all around the world.”

Fed up of telling your friends and family not to buy an iPhone 14 right now? Me too, so here's some good news on that front: Apple has set a date for its annual September event, during which we'll surely learn all about the iPhone 15 lineup as well as new versions of other devices. You can set a calendar alert for September 12th at 1PM ET to remind yourself to come on back to Engadget to watch the livestream.

Almost as soon as last year's event ended, rumors started flying around about what Apple had in store for the iPhone 15 lineup. All models (save for perhaps a new SE) could ditch the notch and start using the Dynamic Island cutout that debuted in the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max. You may need to opt for an iPhone 15 Pro if you want WiFi 6E connectivity rather than WiFi 6, however. Reports suggest the 15 Pro and Pro Max will have thinner bezels and a titanium frame as well, but we may have to wait until next year to see the rumored iPhone Ultra.

Most intriguingly of all, Apple may finally start to phase out the Lightning port with the iPhone 15 lineup and make the long-awaited switch to USB-C. The company doesn't have much of a choice there, since all tablets and smartphones sold in the European Union will need to use that charging port starting next year. It'll be more straightforward for Apple to use the same connector for all new devices, rather than trying to cling onto the Lightning port in other markets.

In any case, we won't have to wait much longer to find out all about this year's new iPhones. It's likely that we'll learn about what's next for Apple Watch too. And there's always a chance that Apple has a "one more thing" surprise up its sleeve too. As ever, we'll have full coverage of this year's fall iPhone event as it happens.

Samsung made backyard barbecues a bit more fun when it unveiled the Terrace outdoor TV line in 2020 — now, it's going bigger and brighter. Today, the company announced an 85-inch Terrace Full Sun set which will retail for an eye-watering $20,000. For the money, you'll get a Neo QLED screen which should remain bright in direct sunlight, as well as "Direct-Sun Protection" to keep the TV safe. Samsung claims it's protected "up to six hours in sunlight at 700 watts and 104 degrees Fahrenheit," but it may decrease brightness to deal with higher temperatures and sun conditions. 

That heat threshold might seem high, but given that more than a dozen Southern US cities broke their high temperature records this year, it may not be enough to protect your $20,000 TV. The 85-inch Terrace also features an improved IP56 rating to deal with water and dust. (Maybe just think twice about having a movie night during a heat wave or summer storm.)

If you don't need such an enormous screen outside, you've also got some other options from Samsung. The 65-inch Full Sun Terrace is now on sale for $6,500, while the 75-inch goes for $9,000. You can also save a bit more with Partial Sun Terrace sets, which are meant for shaded areas and start at $3,000 for the 55-inch model.

Not since The Wizard hyped up an entire generation for Super Mario Bros. 3 has a film about video games felt as naked a marketing ploy as Gran Turismo. Based on an improbable true story, the movie follows Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe), a 20-something Gran Turismo fanatic who wins a Nissan-sponsored contest to race professionally. Even more improbable (and this is technically a spoiler, but hell, it's also real life), he manages to hold his own in the racing world. The original story was already a dream marketing win for Nissan and Sony, but now the two companies can milk it once again to bolster the mythology of Gran Turismo. Don't call it a game – it's a driving simulator.

Cynicism aside, the Gran Turismo film, directed by Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Chappie), successfully hits every mile marker you'd expect. Mardenborough doesn't have much support from his parents early on, but he ultimately proves them wrong. There's an entitled rival racer from the Cobra Kai school of villainy who you can't help but hate. And the movie sports genuinely thrilling race sequences, thanks to Blomkamp's inventive camera work and use of visual effects. Gran Turismo even manages to get some genuinely moving performances from David Harbour and Djimon Hounsou. It's the very definition of a crowd pleaser.

But the film also constantly reminds you that it's meant to sell you Sony products in an alien reality where Apple doesn't exist. No joke: One character is inexplicably attached to his Walkman cassette player, and he only moves on when he's gifted a modern Walkman digital music player in an overwrought emotional moment. (Outside of Hideo Kojima's Twitter feed, I've never seen a normal human use one of those things.) (Ed note: It’s debatable whether or not the guy who created Death Stranding is a “normal human”.)

Had Sony just relaxed a bit, the film would have seemed less like a desperate marketing ploy. But as it stands, I couldn't help but cringe every time we encountered another moment of corporate promotional synergy. Even before we're introduced to Mardenborough, the movie begins with a short promo reel hyping up Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi, who spent five years developing the first game in the series. It's the sort of over-produced clip you'd expect during one of Sony's PlayStation Showcase events or the Game Awards – not a theatrically released film.

Sony also doesn’t trust the audience to view actual footage from the Gran Turismo games. We see Mardenborough playing early on, but it looks far too sharp to be Gran Turismo 5 on the PS3 – the title he actually competed with in real life. Instead, we're shown footage that looks closer to the incredibly realistic PlayStation 5 version of the game (though I wouldn't be surprised if it's all CG generated, instead of showing us actual gameplay). Rather than lean into the incredible lengths Sony pushed the PlayStation 3 at the time, the film sells a beautiful lie.

Of course, you can argue that every adaptation is ultimately a marketing ploy. But even the incredibly safe Super Mario Bros. Movie didn't feel as desperate as Gran Turismo. Sure, Mario was filled with oodles of references for fans, but there was a level of confidence in that movie that Gran Turismo lacks. Nintendo didn't need to push new hardware or games through that movie, its mere existence promoted the company's overall brand.

Sony Pictures Entertainment

It’s almost a miracle that Gran Turismo still manages to be enjoyable. It’s more fun than the forgettable Uncharted movie, and you can’t help but root for Mardenborough. He achieves the ultimate gamer dream: What if you could actually bring your virtual skills to the real world? It’s just a shame that the true story is fundamentally a PlayStation ad, and Sony couldn’t help but use the film to sell itself even more.

Back at I/O, we got a sense of some of Google's big plans for generative artificial intelligence, including the integration of the Duet AI virtual assistant into Workspace productivity apps. The company is now starting to roll out Duet AI to those who pay for versions of Docs, Gmail, Sheets and so on that are geared toward professional use. The virtual assistant is also making its way to Google Meet and Google Chat.

There's a free trial of Duet AI for Google Workspace. However, to use the virtual assistant in the cloud-based apps after that, large organizations will need to pay $30 per month per user, according to The Verge. Microsoft charges the same for 365 AI Copilot in Office apps. Duet AI pricing for smaller organizations hasn't been finalized yet.

Duet AI has a lot of tools in its belt that are designed to lighten your workload. You can use it to generate an entire email draft in Gmail. It can pore over emails and a swathe of documents and spreadsheets to create a summary of recent work activities (such as your company's quarterly performance). The assistant can then build a presentation for you based on its findings — but definitely review the slides to make sure all the facts and figures are accurate before showing them to your bosses. And, of course, Duet AI can generate images as well.

The virtual assistant will be able to help you out on other fronts too, including in Google Meet and Chat. It has somewhat different functions in Meet, since it can help you "look and sound your best with studio look, studio lighting and studio sound," Google Workspace general manager and vice president Aparna Pappu wrote in a blog post. Duet AI can use face detection and dynamic tiles to give everyone in a meeting room their own video tile, perhaps with the idea of making all the participants feel more engaged and connected.

Meet will be able to offer translated captions in 18 languages. Google says the app can tell when someone is speaking in another language and display translated text in real time. (For comparison, Zoom has offered live transcription to free users for nearly two years.)

Duet AI's note-taking functions should prove useful too. A "take notes for me" feature will prompt the assistant to jot down action items and capture video snippets, then send a summary to attendees after the fact. If you're unable to join a meeting right at the beginning (or you slept in, we're not judging), Duet AI can catch you up on what you missed with an in-progress summary.

Google

If you can't make it to a meeting at all, you can send Duet AI on your behalf. The assistant can get your points across to other attendees and still make sure you get a summary afterwards. However, if all participants use Duet AI as their proxy, Meet will seemingly be able to detect that and end the meeting.

On top of all of that, the company is stuffing Duet AI into Google Chat too. Google is trying to make the app more of a competitor to Slack and Microsoft Teams, which could make a lot of sense for organizations that are already paying for Workspace for other productivity apps.

You'll be able to ask Duet AI questions about topics of discussion. The assistant will be able to get you up to speed on conversations you missed and summarize documents that others have shared. Google has refreshed Chat's user interface and added more shortcuts and an enhanced search function that includes suggested queries and autocomplete. Autocorrect could help you avoid typos in your messages too. Chat communities will also eventually be able to include up to 500,000 users, while those who need to talk something out using their voices will be able to hop into a Meet-powered huddle.

As for privacy, Google says that users' interactions with Duet AI will be private to them. "No other user will see your data and Google does not use your data to train our models without your permission," Pappu wrote. "Building on these core commitments, we recently announced new capabilities to help prevent cyber threats, provide safer work with built-in zero trust controls, and better support our customers’ digital sovereignty and compliance needs."

Generative AI tools have had a largely fraught relationship with privacy so far, with some companies reportedly restricting workers' ChatGPT use over concerns that they may accidentally leak proprietary data. Italy also briefly banned the chatbot due to privacy worries. Just this week, ChatGPT owner OpenAI debuted an Enterprise offering. The company says it won't train its AI models on Enterprise subscribers' usage of the service — a similar claim to the one Google just made with Duet AI.

Google will surely see Duet AI as a competitor to ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. It's letting third-party companies use the underlying tech for other apps, such as an upcoming GE Appliances app that can generate recipes based on the food in a fridge (it's hard to think of an AI-powered app that would improve my life more than this). Meanwhile, as The Wall Street Journal notes, Google will make its PaLM 2 language learning model more broadly available after only granting select customers access until now.

Google (and Alphabet) CEO Sundar Pichai told the publication that the company will offer Gemini — its direct answer to ChatGPT — to cloud customers when it's ready fro primetime. Google is also scaling up its infrastructure to handle the demands of AI functionality, but Pichai admitted that the company doesn't have a crystal ball in that regard. “It’s tough to fully predict the demand,” he told the Journal. “I think we will be OK, but does it keep me up at night? Yes.”

Google has been letting Android users set up locked folders in the Photos app for quite some time, giving them the option to keep sensitive images and screenshots safe from prying eyes. Now, the tech giant has started rolling out an update for the app that allows users to back up their locked folders, so they can access files saved in them from any of their devices. In addition, users can now access and set up locked folders — a feature that started as a Pixel exclusive — from the Photos app on iOS and the web. That means users don't even need an Android device to be able to enjoy the feature anymore. 

As a refresher, users can set up a locked folder by going into the Utilities section of the Photos app. They'll then see "cards" for potentially more than one feature, where they can directly create a locked folder for any image they want to keep safe. After they're done, they can choose whether to back up the folder or not. They can also easily add more images from their gallery by long pressing on one and then ticking the checkboxes that appear on their upper left corner. All images sent to locked folders will still be inaccessible anywhere else, and users can still only access them after confirming their identity using their device's password or biometric authenticaiton.

Google

Google has also started rolling out a simplified settings page for the Photos app. When users click on their account icon and check the settings page, they'll now see a new layout that makes it easier for them to find what they're looking for by navigating the new privacy, backup, sharing and notifications sections.