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Microsoft is doing more to tackle toxicity in multiplayer Xbox games. The company is introducing a feature that allows Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One players to capture a 60-second video clip of abusive or inappropriate voice chat and submit it for moderators to review.

"This feature is purpose-built to support the broadest arena of in-game interactions between players and works across thousands of games that offer in-game multiplayer voice chat, including Xbox 360 backward-compatible titles," Xbox Player Services corporate vice-president Dave McCarthy wrote in a blog post.

Microsoft designed the tool for both ease of use and to minimize the impact on gameplay. When you capture a clip for reporting, it will stay on your Xbox for "24 online hours." You'll have the option to submit it right away or wait until you finish your gaming session. You'll get a reminder before the 24 hours are up. If you opt not to report the clip, your Xbox will automatically delete it.

No one else will have access to the clip unless you submit it. "Xbox is not saving or uploading any voice clips without you, the player, choosing to start the reporting process," McCarthy said. Any clips you capture through the tool will not appear in your recent captures and it won't be possible to download, share or modify them. These clips will only be used for moderation purposes. After the safety team has reviewed your report, you'll receive a notification to tell you whether it took action against an abusive player.

An Xbox spokesperson told Engadget the safety team will use "a range of moderation tools that leverage AI and human moderators" to analyze the clips. Moderators will review audio and video to determine if someone has violated the community standards.

At the outset, the reactive voice reporting system allows a player to report up to three individuals at once. "If a moderator cannot determine who was talking at a given time and associate it with the reported Xbox Live player, the report will be closed as unactionable, no enforcement action will be taken and the captured video will be deleted within 90 days," the spokesperson said.

The advent of cross-platform play muddies the waters here too. The safety team won't take any action in cases of inappropriate voice chat from those who are on other platforms. "The announced reactive voice moderation feature is specifically for reporting Xbox players to the Xbox Safety Team," the spokesperson noted.

It's encouraging to see Xbox tackle the problem of toxic voice chat at a platform-wide level. The PlayStation 5 has had a similar feature since it debuted in 2020.

Several studios have adopted similar approaches in their own games. In 2021, Riot said it would record Valorant voice communications but only listen to them when a report was filed. It started testing the system last July.

Ahead of Overwatch 2 going live last October, Blizzard said it would automatically transcribe a recording of a match's voice chat following a report from a player. The company's chat review tools analyze the transcription for signs of abusive behavior and both the recording and text file are deleted. (Of note, Blizzard and Overwatch 2 may soon be Microsoft properties.)

To begin with, Xbox's voice reporting feature will be available for Alpha and Alpha-skip Xbox Insiders in the English-speaking markets of the US, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Microsoft hopes that insiders will provide feedback to help improve this feature. It plans to continue investing in voice moderation and to support more languages. Xbox will share data and updates on voice chat moderation in its bi-annual transparency report.

The immensely popular online game creation platform/thingamajig Roblox is coming to VR, thanks to the Meta Quest platform. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement, which was followed by an official Roblox blog post. A beta version of the app launches in just a few weeks, according to Zuckerberg, which will be accessible via the Quest platform’s dedicated App Lab.

The beta will be available for the Quest 2 and Quest Pro headsets, so OG Quest owners are out of luck. The recently-announced Quest 3 wasn’t mentioned, but that’s likely because it won’t be out in time for the beta release. A finished version of the game, however, would make for an extremely compelling launch title for the Quest 3, as Roblox boasts more than 66 million daily users across multiple platforms.

To that end, this is going to be a fully cross-platform title, so anything you interact with or make on your phone or console should be accessible in VR, though it depends on the developer. The Roblox team is actively encouraging developers to make experiences in VR with a forthcoming toolset accessible via the Creator Dashboard. You’ll soon see VR as a new device type on this dashboard, along with desktop, mobile, tablet and console.

Meta recently lowered the minimum age to operate a Quest headset from 13 to ten, but this change will not impact Roblox. You have to be at least 13 to use the app in VR. That’s probably for the best, given the addictive nature of the title and associated child safety concerns.

The Perseverance Rover has found evidence of organic compounds in the Jezero Crater on Mars. Although this isn’t the smoking gun proving once and for all that Mars once hosted life — these compounds could have also developed in nonbiological ways — the results hint at surprisingly complex organic conditions for the “key building blocks for life” on Earth’s neighbor. The study was published in Nature.

The Perseverance Rover, the first to explore the Jezero Crater, has been investigating the area since February 2021. Researchers believe the basin once housed an ancient lake, including a delta from a river that once flowed into it. It’s one of the most likely regions to reveal leftover signs of life on Mars.

Organic molecules like those observed in the Jezero Crater contain carbon and often hydrogen atoms. They’re the core components of life as we know it on Earth, although they can also develop abiologically. “They are an exciting clue for astrobiologists since they are often thought of as building blocks of life,” paper co-author Joseph Razzell Hollis, a postdoctoral fellow at London’s Natural History Museum, said toNewsweek. “Importantly, they can be created by processes not related to life as we know it, and so organic molecules are not evidence of life on their own without sufficient extra evidence that cannot be explained by nonbiological — or abiotic — processes.”

The rover observed the compounds using an instrument — the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) — that maps organic molecules and minerals on rock surfaces. Significantly, it found organic materials in all ten targets it observed on the crater floor. “Our results support observations by previous robotic missions to Mars that the Red Planet was once rich in organic material, compounds made primarily of carbon and hydrogen, and that some of that organic material can still be detected billions of years later,” co-author Joseph Razzell Hollis, a London-based astrobiologist, toldGizmodo. “Each detection, each observation, gives us a little bit more information that brings us closer to understanding the history of Mars and whether it could have supported life in the past.”

Now that the researchers have observed the molecules, they’ll need a better look at them in Earthbound labs to draw further conclusions about their origins. “If these samples are returned to terrestrial laboratories, a more diverse suite of tools can be used to study the samples, including at higher spatial resolution and with much greater specificity and sensitivity,” the authors wrote. They’ll have to wait for the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, which isn’t expected to launch from Earth until at least the late 2020s. Still, the trip should be worth the wait. “So far, the only Martian rocks we’ve ever been able to study on Earth have been meteorites. Getting our hands on intact Mars rocks, carefully stored and protected from contamination, will be invaluable to planetary science,” Razzell Hollis told Newsweek.

Chipotle isn't done experimenting with robots that could make life easier for restaurant staff. The chain has teamed up with robotics company Vebu to test a prototype Autocado robot (yes, that's the name) that cuts, cores and peels avocados to be used in guacamole. Kitchen workers only have to fill the bot with up to 25lbs of ripe avocados and choose a size. After the processing is done, they collect the fruit in a bowl, add remaining ingredients and start mashing.

As Autocado improves, Chipotle expects to cut guacamole prep time in half — no mean feat when it usually takes 50 minutes to make a batch. That could ensure a steady supply of guac while eliminating some of the drudgery for employees. The restaurant also believes the robot could reduce food waste (and thus costs) through more efficient processing.

Autocado is currently limited to a testing center in Irvine, California. This is the start of a "long term partnership" with Vebu, Chipotle adds. The two haven't said what comes next, but the focus will be on collaborative robots that "drive efficiencies" and "ease pain points" for workers. Last year, Chipotle began testing Miso Robotics' Chippy robot to aid in making tortilla chips.

Chipotle is far from alone. McDonald's and other restaurants are trying AI, robots and other automated solutions to streamline their experiences. These moves theoretically help employees concentrate on serving customers and other tasks where humans are still preferable. Of course, there are also lingering concerns among critics that restaurants might use this to automate people out of jobs. They may choose to shrink headcounts and cut costs instead of easing the workload. That isn't guaranteed to happen with Autocado when humans are still necessary, but the long-term future isn't quite so clear.

Just a year ago, Apple announced the biggest software update the iPad has ever seen. iPadOS 16 ushered in Stage Manager, a completely revamped multitasking mode that brought overlapping, resizable windows to the iPad, along with robust external display support (provided you had compatible hardware).

There were a host of other new features, as usual, but Stage Manager in particular brought the iPad closer than ever to a Mac or Windows PC experience. iPadOS 17, on the other hand, is a more subtle update. That’s usually the case, with one year bringing big new features and the next offering tweaks and stability improvements. And while there isn’t one singular headline feature in iPadOS 17, the totality of myriad smaller changes definitely adds up. I’ve been using iPadOS 17 in beta for a few weeks, and now that the public beta is live, you can do the same.

A note on stability: Even though this is a public beta, the “beta” still applies. It’s probably not ideal to install on a machine you rely on for daily use, as you’ll surely run into some bugs and crashes. And it’s always a bit of a crapshoot how well third-party apps work on a beta. All that said, I haven’t run into anything particularly severe. Occasionally, an app will just toss me back to the Home Screen, or you might find some weird UI issues where apps haven’t quite been optimized yet. But over the last few years, Apple has gained a reputation for releasing public betas in solid, usable states, and that’s the case here as well. Just remember that “downgrading” to iPadOS 16 final releases isn’t exactly a simple process.

Stage Manager updates

While Stage Manager opened up some major new multitasking features for the iPad, it was also a lot more rigid than the windows management system you’d find on a Mac. This year, Apple has tweaked things to make it easier to set up your ideal workspace. Previously, apps would snap to a handful of predetermined sizes to fit your display, and the specific placement of each individual window was up to iPadOS to decide. Now, app windows have a lot more granularity in how you can size and place them. For example, I can make the Notes app that I’m typing into right now a tiny window half of my screen’s height and about a quarter of its width. From there, I can make it as tall or wide as I want; there are still specific sizes that it snaps to, but there’s far more flexibility than there was last year.

iPadOS 17 is also a lot more flexible about how you arrange multiple apps, something that wasn’t the case last year. When you added a second app to a space, iPadOS automatically decided where the two windows should go. You could resize them both as you wanted, but it was basically impossible to show two apps side-by-side without any overlap, for example. That’s no longer the case. Now, it’s a simple matter of grabbing the top of a window and dropping it where you want.

These basic controls have been available on Windows and macOS for decades, but it’s still a new paradigm for the iPad. I’m definitely glad that Apple seems to be trusting its users more by giving them more flexibility rather than letting iPadOS make major decisions about how you lay out your screen. Stage Manager is still somewhat of a niche feature, given that lots of iPads can’t run it, but people who want to push their iPads further will definitely appreciate these updates.

Lock Screen and interactive widgets

Probably the most obvious user-facing update is the revamped Lock Screen. It should also be very familiar, because Apple first introduced it on the iPhone a year ago. Basically, you can now set up multiple lock screens, each with its own wallpaper, widgets and design elements (like fonts and color filters). To jump between different styles you’ve set up, you can just press and hold on the Lock Screen and then choose what suits you. Finally, you can also set a specific Focus setting for each Lock Screen, so you can set up a whole profile for work mode or vacation time.

There’s also a great new wallpaper picker – this, too, borrowed from the iPhone. There are some new styles here specifically for the iPad, though, including striking views of every planet in the solar system stem. And in a nod to the iPad’s history, they brought back the original Pyramid Lake wallpaper (shot by photographer Richard Misrach) from the first iPad back in 2010. I’m a sucker for nostalgia and love the photo, so Apple won me over here.

Beyond the aesthetics, having widgets on the Lock Screen makes the iPad’s large display more useful — there’s a ton of space, so why not show more than just the time and your notifications? But widgets are getting a big improvement beyond just being able to drop them on the Lock Screen. At long last, they’re interactive. That means if you have a Reminders widget, you can tap a specific item to check it off without having to open the app. Or, with the Apple Music widget, you can automatically start playing an album or playlist.

Previously, widgets let you tap specific parts to jump to that place in the app, so they weren’t just static information displays, but this takes their functionality a lot further. We’re going to need third-party developers to add this functionality to their widgets to really take full advantage of the feature, but I’m looking forward to seeing how apps incorporate it when iPadOS 17 is out in the wild.

Health

There aren’t many Apple apps on the iPhone that you can’t also get on the iPad. Health was one, but that’s been remedied this year. It’s just what you’d expect: Health data tracked from your iPhone and Apple Watch is available for you to review on the iPad, with a design that’s better suited to the larger screen. While there’s nothing revolutionary here, the Health app can include so much data that it’s actually a bit easier to dig through everything here.

Everything syncs from your iPhone, but so far that sync process hasn’t been the most reliable. Even though the Health app on my iPad says it synced two minutes ago, it hasn't pulled in updated steps data since 7AM this morning. My activity rings from my Apple Watch are similarly hours out of date. I wager this will get settled before iPadOS 17 is finished, though.

Apple announced a handful of features relating to mental health as part of the latest iPad and iOS updates, including a dedicated journaling app and mood trackers in the health app. While the journal app isn’t coming until “later this year,” sometime after iPadOS 17 and iOS 17 officially launch, the mood tracking features are available in the Health app. I’ve long been in the habit of tracking my daily mood, and this isn’t a bad place to do it. It’s pretty simple, with a slider to pick your overall mood and a few follow-up questions, but the idea is for it to be quick and painless so you do it repeatedly. There’s also a mental health questionnaire you can take that claims to assess your anxiety and depression levels that reminds me of questions I’ve answered from a doctor in the past. I did reach out to Apple to find out where they’re sourcing this set of questions from so we can know more about their validity and approach.

Safari, Messages, Notes and more

As always, Apple’s core apps are getting lots of little but potentially meaningful updates. Safari’s biggest new feature is arguably the ability to set up multiple profiles. Each profile can access all your bookmarks, saved passwords and reading list, but it keeps things like logins to sites and tab groups separate. I did the basic “personal and work” profiles, with logins to work-specific tools kept separate. It’s also pretty easy to move things between profiles if you accidentally open windows in your personal profile that you’d rather have with your work tabs. And, of course, this all syncs via iCloud to other devices — I have the macOS Sonoma beta installed as well, and things were shared seamlessly.

Messages is possibly Apple’s most important app, and every year it gets usability tweaks and new features. A bunch of those are focused around audio messages, which I haven’t really had a chance to check out much. One thing I do like, though, is that replying in a thread is a lot easier than it used to be. Now, swiping right on a message opens the reply interface, which is definitely quicker than holding down on a message, waiting for the menu to pop up and selecting the “reply” option.

The search experience has also been upgraded with filters. For example, you can first search for a specific contact, and then search just their conversation for keywords. The results naturally include specific messages as well as relevant links, images and more.

But the update I’ve had the most fun with so far is definitely Stickers. You can now easily create your own stickers from images in your photo gallery. If you tap on a subject in a photo, you can pull it out from the background and save it as a sticker, so you can easily use it again. Live Photos can be turned into live stickers — and let me tell you, the live sticker I made of my dog laying down is adorable and I will spam everyone with it.

Your own stickers can live alongside sticker packs from other apps, emoji and Memoji. And the stickers you’ve created will be available to use in third-party apps, as well. Basically, stickers you create as well as those from apps should be easier to share outside of just Apple’s Messages app, which is a nice change from the previously walled-off approach Apple took.

Notes, quietly one of Apple’s most useful apps, has gotten more improvements this year too. You can now embed PDFs right into a Notes doc and they display full-width, so you can easily browse through a PDF and make notes on it below. You can also naturally mark it up with an Apple Pencil or collaborate on it in a note shared with other people.

PDF support system-wide has been improved. For example, opening a PDF document from the Files app will open it in its own window, provided you’re running Stage Manager. This makes it easier to put a PDF side-by-side with another app while still having full access to the Files app. Auto-filling fields in PDFs has also been improved system-wide; Apple says it’s using an on-device neural network to identify documents that have fields that need to be filled in across the system, and you’ll be able to AutoFill details like names and addresses the same way you can on websites.

Another useful trick is the ability to link directly to a specific note in your library. Other note-taking apps like Bear have had this feature for a while, but it’s undeniably handy to link related notes together so you can easily jump between them instead of having to go back to the sidebar and search for the one you’re looking for.

The rest

This just scratches the surface of iPadOS 17. Lots of new features, like the changes to Messages, work best when other people you know are also running the new software. And other things, like the journal app, won’t be available to try for months to come. Finally, there are plenty of iOS 17 features like Facetime updates and a smarter keyboard will be in iPadOS 17 as well. If you want to give this all a shot months before Apple finalizes everything, you can install the iPadOS 17 public beta now. But as always, think hard about whether you’re up for some instability before you take the plunge.

Gone are the days when you contort yourself to try the latest iOS version before its official debut. Apple has released the iOS 17 public beta, and it’s easy to install the preview on your iPhone. So long as you know what you’re getting into, you can explore major features months before the finished software arrives this fall. These instructions should also work for the iPadOS 17 beta, too.

Before you start: iOS 17 beta requirements and risks

Apple

To begin, you’ll need to be sure your hardware supports iOS 17. Apple requires at least a 2018 or newer iPhone, including the XR, XS and second-generation SE. Notably, this release ends support for the iPhone 8 and X — if you own one of these older models, you’ll simply have to buy a new handset to run the updated platform.

The iPadOS 17 public beta clearly has different requirements. You’ll need at least a sixth-generation iPad, third-generation iPad Air, fifth-generation iPad mini, the 10.5-inch iPad Pro, any 11-inch iPad Pro or the second-generation 12.9-inch iPad Pro.

Whatever you’re installing, remember that this is pre-release code. The iOS 17 public beta is better-suited to everyday use than earlier developer versions, but you may still run into bugs, odd behavior or app compatibility issues. You’ll want to wait for the finished software if your phone has apps or data you simply can’t afford to lose. If you’re willing to accept the risks, it’s still a very good idea to backup your data through iTunes or a cloud service (such as iCloud) in case you need to restore your phone at some stage.

How to install the iOS 17 public beta

Apple

Be sure you’ve updated to iOS 16.4 or newer, as you’ll need it to walk through the public beta installation process. You can upgrade through the Settings app, choosing General, and then tapping Software Update. This screen will also tell you which version you’re running.

Once ready, you’ll want to sign up for the Apple Beta Software Program using the Safari web browser on your iPhone. Membership is free; you’ll need to log in using the main Apple ID you use on your phone and enroll that device in the program. Follow prompts, and be sure to read the agreement when it appears.

After that, installing the iOS 17 test is almost as simple as installing ordinary updates. You just have to visit Settings, tap General, tap Software Update and then select a new Beta Updates item underneath Automatic Updates. Be sure that the Apple ID displayed at the bottom is the one you used to join the beta program. You should see the option to install “iOS 17 Public Beta” from that screen. Go back one screen and you should get an offer to download and install the beta.

As with any other iOS upgrade, the installation may take a few minutes to complete and will involve restarts. At the end, the beta will add a Feedback Assistant app to your home screen that helps report bugs.

What you do (and don’t) get with the iOS 17 public beta

Apple

Apple revealed many of iOS 17’s features at the WWDC 2023 keynote in June. However, not all of those elements will be available in the public beta.

Most improvements are intact. Notably, there’s a redesigned phone experience that includes custom contact cards and live voicemail transcripts. A Messages app revamp includes a new sticker interface, simpler replies, audio message transcripts and location-based check-ins. Sharing is easier as well. You can share content just by bringing iPhones close together, and you can now share contacts. The keyboard has improved autocorrection, predictions and voice dictation. You can document your mood in the Health app, and StandBy turns your iPhone into an ad hoc smart display.

However, a few features won’t be present until after iOS 17 arrives. The life-logging Journal app isn’t in the public beta. You’ll also have to wait for AirDrop transfers that continue over the internet, and collaborative Apple Music playlists aren’t yet ready. We’d also expect Apple to make minor interface tweaks and additions in later revisions, and it won’t be surprising if one or two iOS 17 features will only be announced alongside future iPhones that use them.

Elon Musk has a new AI company. A website has appeared for xAI, which will embark on the self-described mission to “understand the true nature of the universe.” The announcement comes after filing documents revealed the existence of a company called “X.AI Corp” earlier this year. Musk also said in an April interview that he wanted to start a venture for “maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe” that “hopefully does more good than harm.”

Not much else is known yet about Musk’s latest venture. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO and Twitter Chairman tweeted today, “Announcing formation of @xAI to understand reality.” The company webpage notes that the team will host a Twitter Spaces chat on Friday, July 14th.

Musk’s previous comments about an AI startup were aimed at creating “a third option” to challenge ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Google. He reportedly bought thousands of GPUs earlier this year for a Twitter-related AI project. It isn’t yet clear whether the two projects are related.

The website lists veterans of DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Tesla and the University of Toronto as working on the project. “Collectively we contributed some of the most widely used methods in the field, in particular the Adam optimizer, Batch Normalization, Layer Normalization, and the discovery of adversarial examples,” the xAI website reads. “We further introduced innovative techniques and analyses such as Transformer-XL, Autoformalization, the Memorizing Transformer, Batch Size Scaling, and μTransfer. We have worked on and led the development of some of the largest breakthroughs in the field including AlphaStar, AlphaCode, Inception, Minerva, GPT-3.5, and GPT-4.”

In addition to Musk, the listed team members include Igor Babuschkin, Manuel Kroiss, Yuhuai (Tony) Wu, Christian Szegedy, Jimmy Ba, Toby Pohlen, Ross Nordeen, Kyle Kosic, Greg Yang, Guodong Zhang and Zihang Dai.

There's something exciting about trying out new versions of an operating system, especially when it's a test build. Suddenly a device you've gotten to know well becomes fresh again and useful (or at the very least entertaining) in all new ways. Now is that time for eager Apple users, with the company's iOS 17, iPadOS 17, watchOS 10 and macOS Sonoma public betas finally available to download.

The new iOS 17 will include a slew of updates from design to practical. You can customize what people see when you call them — whether it's a cute cartoon or your favorite selfie, put the call to voicemail with a live transcription across your screen and send someone a video or audio message if they don't pick up your FaceTime call. Plus, you can mute and unmute yourself right from your AirPods. "Ducking" should also be a thing of the past on iOS 17 with an improved autocorrect and you can utilize sentence predictions for quicker responses. Additional features include automatically checking in to let your friends know you've arrived home, locating real-time charging stations along your route on Maps and the ability to say how you're feeling on the Health app (so and so is pleasant does feel very early Facebook days).

iPadOS 17 is, to a degree, a catch-up release that adds a customizable lock screen, the Health app and interactive widgets. WatchOS 10 is a substantial Apple Watch revamp that revives the emphasis on widgets while overhauling core apps and improving fitness features. MacOS Sonoma, meanwhile, brings widgets to the Mac desktop while upgrading Safari, video calls and gaming.

Apple first announced these upgrades at its Worldwide Developers Conference and subsequently released the iOS 17, iPadOS 17 and macOS Sonoma betas for developers. Unlike in previous years, though, the developer betas were available free for anyone to try — developer accounts typically cost about $100 per year. The iOS 17 public beta should be a bit more polished than the developer builds, given the extra time to work out bugs and compatibility problems. The official versions will launch this fall, but you can sign up for the Apple Beta Software Program if you want to try the previews now.

The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences has announced this year's Emmy nominations and there's lots of good news for the team behind The Last of Us. HBO's massively successful series scored 24 nominations, more than any other show this year except Succession (27). The White Lotus (23) and Apple TV+ comedy Ted Lasso (21) followed closely behind.

The Last of Us is the first live-action video game adaptation for film or TV to make a serious dent at a major awards ceremony (League of Legends series Arcanewon the Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program last year). It's up for Outstanding Drama Series alongside Andor, Better Call Saul, House of the Dragon, Succession, The White Lotus and Yellowjackets.

Pedro Pascal (who has three nods in total this year) and Bella Ramsay picked up nominations for their lead roles in The Last of Us. So did guest stars Melanie Lynskey, Storm Reid, Anna Torv, Murray Bartlett, Lamar Johnson, Nick Offerman and Keivonn Montreal Woodard. Craig Mazin, the show's co-creator, and Peter Hoar are, respectively, nominated for writing and directing the show's stellar third episode, "Long, Long Time."

Elsewhere, reigning champ Ted Lasso will compete against Abbott Elementary, Barry, The Bear, Jury Duty, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Only Murders In The Building and Wednesday in the Outstanding Comedy Series category. On the Star Wars front, Andor scooped up eight nominations and The Mandalorian got nine. Obi-Wan Kenobi snagged five, including one for Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series.

Disney+ film Hocus Pocus 2 (three nominations in total) and Roku's Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (eight nods overall) are up for Outstanding Television Movie. Amazon's big-budget The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power landed six nominations, mostly in technical categories. 

Stranger Things, which isn't eligible for top honors this year, also has six nods in down-the-line categories. Meanwhile, Peacock's Poker Face snagged four nominatons, Star Trek: Picard has two in makeup categories and Netflix's brilliant I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson snagged a pair of nods.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given how many nominations Succession, The Last of Us and The White Lotus racked up, HBO leads the pack this year with 127 nominations overall. According to Deadline's tally, Netflix has the most of any streaming-only network with 103, followed by Apple (52), Amazon (46 between Prime Video and Freevee), Hulu (42 or 64 if you include FX shows), Disney+ (40), Peacock (eight) and Paramount+ (seven). By contrast, broadcast networks earned 86 nods between them.

This year's Emmy Awards ceremony is scheduled to take place on September 18th. However, amid the WGA writers' strike and pending action by the actors' union, reports suggest it may be delayed until November or even January.

At Google I/O in May, the company revealed its plans to go all-in on AI with the likes of PaLM 2, Bard, and a whole host of intelligent enhancement features for its myriad products. Tucked into that cavalcade of consumerism was a brief discussion of Google's Project Tailwind, an experimental product geared towards students as an "AI-first notebook" to help them stay organized. On Wednesday, Project Tailwind graduated development to become NotebookLM (NLM).

NLM is essentially note taking software with a large language model tacked onto the side, which is "paired with your existing content to gain critical insights, faster." Basically, it's a chatbot that is continually tuned to your specific data set, so when you ask it a question it pulls from just that information rather than the collective knowledge of whatever the underlying model was built with. This process of "source-grounding" ensures that the virtual assistant stays on topic and provides more relevant responses.

That virtual assistant can do all of the normal chatbot tasks including summarizing newly added documents, deeply answering questions about the text corpus, and generating new content from that information. NLM is being made immediately available to a small cadre of beta testers in the US to provide feedback for further development, though there's no word yet on when it will be made available to the general public. If you want to try it early for yourself, sign up on the waitlist.