YouTube has new AI features for creators on the way. AI-powered features the company announced at its Made on YouTube event on Thursday include a green screen feature, insights to stimulate ideas, automatic dubbing to other languages and a soundtrack search.

Dream Screen gives YouTube Shorts creators an AI-powered green screen, similar to a popular feature on TikTok. YouTube’s tool will automatically remove backgrounds from your videos, replacing them with AI-generated images or videos based on your prompts.

Although it’s yet to be seen how professional and convincing the generated content appears in practice, the idea is for Dream Screen to make it easier to illustrate fantasy scenarios or simply liven up otherwise ho-hum backdrops. YouTube suggests trekking through an enchanted forest or riding shotgun as your pug drives you to school as two oddball scenes Dream Screen can craft. The company says it will start to test the tool with “select creators” later this year before a broader rollout in 2024.

YouTube

YouTube Studio will get a new feature that brainstorms for you. Similar to asking ChatGPT for video ideas, the “insight recommendations” feature can draft outlines and help creators conceptualize projects. Similarly, assistive search in Creator Music will make it easier to find background tunes for your videos. “Simply type in a description of your content and AI will suggest the right music at the right price,” YouTube VP Toni Reid wrote today. Both Insights and assistive music search will be available for creators next year.

YouTube also showcased the AI-powered dubbing feature it began testing earlier this year. Developed at Google’s Area 120 incubator, it can generate a text-based translation into the selected target language. The company says it gives you a chance to double-check the output before choosing from different virtual narrators to read your content. The feature is currently being tested with select creators in English, Portuguese and Spanish.

The company is also launching a YouTube Create app to help video makers produce content on their mobile devices. It includes standard features like editing, trimming, automatic captioning, voiceovers, filters, effects and royalty-free music with beat matching. The free app is currently in beta for Android in select markets.

Rockstar announced on Thursday that GTA+ subscribers will now get access to a rotating selection of Rockstar Games. At launch, members can download and play Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition, the 2021 remaster of early 21st-century classics GTA III, GTA: Vice City and GTA: San Andreas.

The games will only be available for the console platform your GTA+ membership is tied to. Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition typically costs $60, so this could be a cheap and easy way to revisit the trio of open-world pioneers. The remastered trilogy polishes the original’s dated graphics with new lighting and environmental upgrades, high-res textures, greater draw distances, modern controls and refined targeting.

The 2021 remake starts with the highly influential Grand Theft Auto III (2001), which dazzled turn-of-the-millennium gamers with its vast (for its day) open-world sandbox of Liberty City. 2002’s GTA: Vice City built on that formula while adding a voiced protagonist, Tommy Vercetti (the late Ray Liotta), along with an abundance of 1980s nostalgia and satire. GTA: San Andreas capped off the trilogy in 2004 with a broader scope (it spans three cities) and a memorable 1990s hip-hop soundtrack; you walk in the shoes of Carl “CJ” Johnson (Christopher Bellard) as he returns to his Grove Street home after five years away.

GTA+ launched in 2022 for GTA Online players on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. In addition to the revolving assortment of games, the $6-per-month program offers perks like a monthly deposit of $500,000 in virtual currency, and rotating rewards like in-game vehicles, clothes, properties, weapons and bonus mission rewards.

Meta announced on Thursday that Facebook users can now create multiple profiles. The company will let you add an @username for up to four additional personal profiles attached to your main account. After creating a new alias, you won’t need to log out and back in to switch between them. Facebook first began testing the feature last July.

The company suggests picking profiles for your personal life, work and any specific interests or communities you want to spin out of your main account. “Whether you’re new to Facebook or a longtime user, you may want to keep your personal and professional relationships separate, or you may want to keep one profile tied to a community you’re a part of and another profile just for friends,” Meta wrote in its announcement blog post. “Creating multiple personal profiles lets you easily organize who you share with and what content you see for the various parts of your life.”

Meta says each profile will have its own unique feed with pertinent content based only on that profile’s interests. “Think one profile for the foodie scene you love and another one to keep up with your friends and family,” the company wrote. The company says Instagram’s success with a similar feature inspired the move, and beta testing the feature taught Facebook that many people like having a clearer organization of friends, groups and interests “to engage with the audience they believe is most relevant.”

Each new profile will start fresh with Facebook’s default privacy and notification settings, so you may want to change them manually for each one. In addition, your primary Facebook account won’t reveal that you have extra profiles.

The feature comes with some restrictions. First, Facebook’s Dating, Marketplace, Professional Mode and payments won’t be available to your secondary profiles at launch. In addition, messaging for extra usernames will only be available in the Facebook app and on the web. (Messenger support for additional profiles will arrive “in the coming months.”) Finally, only eligible adult accounts can make new profiles. Remember: Your new handles are bound by Facebook’s policies, meaning you can’t misrepresent your age or location.

The feature begins rolling out globally on Thursday and will continue over the coming months.

Amazon’s fall hardware event was chock full of updates. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the generative AI boom from the last year, the company began transforming Alexa into a much more versatile and conversational personal chatbot. But it also had plenty of new hardware to introduce, with new models of the Echo Show, security cameras, Echo Frames, a 10-gigabit router and more. Here’s everything Amazon unveiled on Wednesday.

Alexa with generative AI

Amazon

As generative AI has exploded in popularity during the last year, task-focused personal assistants like Siri, Google Assistant and Alexa now seem even more dated than they did before. Amazon began to rectify that on Wednesday with a new Alexa chat feature that responds to a much wider variety of requests by using generative AI. When saying, “Alexa, let’s chat,” the assistant switches to a chatbot mode built on a large language model (LLM).

Alexa’s new AI chat mode makes the assistant more conversational and expressive, and you won’t need to keep repeating “Alexa” each time you speak. If you enroll in the company’s Visual ID, you can start a conversation just by facing the screen on an Echo device with a camera. Alexa can now adjust its tone and “emotion” based on context. The company says it also works around your pauses and hesitations for a more free-flowing conversation. However, Amazon’s live presentation had a couple of hitches where the assistant forced presenter Dave Limp to repeat himself.

Amazon says Alexa will move further in this direction with an upcoming speech-to-speech update. “And we’re working on a new model—which we refer to as speech-to-speech,” said Amazon senior VP Rohit Prasad. “Instead of first converting a customer’s audio request into text using speech recognition, and then using an LLM to generate a text response or an action, and then text-to-speech to produce audio back—this new model will unify these tasks, creating a much richer conversational experience.”

Echo Show 8

Amazon

Amazon launched a new Echo Show 8 on Wednesday, boasting upgrades to its display, camera and microphones. Proximity sensing is a marquee feature on the new model, as it can adjust its UI depending on how close you are to it. For example, a demo showing the weather app used a larger font as the person stood farther away, but it shrunk the font and added finer details as they moved closer.

The device includes spatial audio capabilities for “a wider and more immersive sound experience,” as Limp described. The Echo Show 8 also has a centered camera, which should make video calls feel more natural for your partner, and upgraded audio that minimizes background noise. It also has a faster processor and a built-in smart home hub.

The new Echo Show 8 costs $150 and is available for pre-order now ahead of an expected October ship date.

Echo Frames

Amazon

Amazon updated its Echo Frames smart glasses for the first time in over two years. The wearable device has a longer battery life: up to six hours of continuous media playback. Perhaps even more importantly, the new models are 15 percent slimmer than the previous generation, making them look more like regular glasses and less like a bulky tech product strapped to your face.

The new Echo Frames also have a “redesigned audio experience,” including more balanced sound, better audio clarity and less distortion. Their onboard speech processing is also improved, which could lead to more reliable responses in different environments. They’ll ship in seven new styles, including both glasses and sunglasses variants. (There’s also a more expensive version through a partnership with Carrera called “Carrera Smart Glasses.”) 

The Echo Frames cost $270, while the Carrera Smart Glasses variant will cost $390. They’re available for pre-order.

Eero Max 7

Amazon

Amazon describes its new Eero Max 7 as a combined router, range extender and repeater. The device offers 10-gigabit Ethernet connections, with advertised download speeds of a 4K movie in 10 seconds or a 50 GB game in less than a minute.

The device supports the 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6 GHz radio bands with speeds up to 4.3 Gbps for wireless connections and 9.4 Gbps for wired connections. It includes four Ethernet ports and covers 2,500 square feet of wireless coverage, and you can link them together to create a mesh network to cover even more ground.

The Eero Max 7 costs $600 and will be available “soon.” It, too, is available for pre-order today.

Echo Hub

Amazon

The newly revealed Echo Hub is a new device for managing various smart home gadgets around your house. It has an 8-inch display and is meant to be mounted on a wall, although Amazon says it will also offer a stand accessory. “Today, smart home panels are expensive, they require professional installers, and they don’t age well. We set out to change that,” said Amazon smart home chief Charlie French.

Although it includes Alexa controls and can behave like standard Echo speakers, it also supports the major smart home protocols, including Matter and Thread — supporting over 140,000 smart home devices. The device supports Wi-Fi by default but can connect to compatible ethernet routers with an optional USB-C cable. The Echo Hub’s infrared sensors can even tell when someone is nearby and shift into a default clock mode when nobody is around.

The device lets you arm your security system with a quick tap, and it will display multiple live camera feeds simultaneously. It can control select smart home devices locally, leading to faster response times. “Now, when a customer taps to turn on a light from their Echo Hub, it can turn on in as little as 300 milliseconds—it feels like flipping a light switch,” the company said on Wednesday.

As with many Amazon devices, the Echo Hub’s killer feature may be its price. It will be available later this year for $180, and you can pre-order it today.

Ring and Blink security cameras

Amazon

The Ring Stick Up Cam Pro is a $180 indoor / outdoor camera with intelligent tracking features. The device adds 3D motion detection (already found in the Ring Video Doorbell 2, Floodlight Cam Pro and Spotlight Cam Pro) to provide what Amazon describes as more refined and accurate motion alerts. It employs radar technology to track people’s paths across the camera’s field of view. It can monitor where people in its frame are going and the route they took to get there. You can pre-order it today.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s other security camera unit, Blink, got several new accessories. First, the $50 Sync Module Pro extends the range of the Blink Outdoor 4, saying it will reach “the furthest corner of your property.” There’s also a new $160 wireless floodlight mount for the Blink Outdoor 4 that will blanket your yard in light with its motion-triggered LEDs. Finally, Amazon is launching a battery extender for the Outdoor 4 that can supposedly stretch its battery life to “up to four years.” The three accessories are available for pre-order and are slated to ship beginning on October 17.

Fire TV updates

Amazon

Amazon launched the new Fire TV Soundbar, a Bluetooth-enabled audio device compatible with “all Fire TV streaming products and TVs,” according to Amazon VP Daniel Rausch. The soundbar is available starting today for $120.

The Fire TV 4K Max received an incremental update on Wednesday, bumping its processing power by 0.2GHz and its Wi-Fi from 6 to 6E. The device supports HDR, HDR10+, Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision. It’s available for pre-order for $60 and is scheduled to ship on September 27. Amazon also updated the standard 4K Fire TV Stick with more processing power, 4K support and Wi-Fi 6. 

The company also rolled out a new Fire TV Ambient Experience for the device, making it easy to view info like your family calendar, reminders and local forecast. In addition, it’s adding “hundreds of new images” to its free “gallery-quality” art selection for TVs in standby mode.

Fire TV devices will add a new search experience that uses Amazon’s LLMs to make on-device search more natural and conversational. They’re also adding a unified Continue Watching row that aggregates favorite content (from providers like Prime Video, Disney+, Max, Peacock and more) in one spot. Amazon says it focuses on recency, making it easier to resume the last thing you checked out — regardless of the service.

Accessibility features

Amazon

Amazon’s Echo devices are receiving some new accessibility features later this year. Eye Gaze on Alexa is a new feature for the Fire Max 11 tablet that lets people with mobility or speech disabilities perform preset actions using only their line of sight. You can play music and shows, control smart home devices or call loved ones without using your hands or voice. The feature will arrive later this year.

Call Translation is a new feature for the Echo Show that will transcribe calls with onscreen captions. It can translate speech into over 10 languages, including English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. The feature will arrive later this year on Echo Show devices (and in the Alexa app) for users in the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

Map View

Amazon

To make homes full of smart home devices simpler to manage, Amazon introduced Map View. The feature lets you view and control your home devices using a digital floor plan.

Map View will let you create an indoor map of your home using your phone. (It will initially launch on LiDar-enabled iOS devices.) The idea is for the feature to serve as an alternative to the (often messy) Alexa app’s devices list, displaying them room-by-room. It lets you quickly glance at your setup, control devices and even view live camera feeds by glancing at the floor-plan layout.

The opt-in feature will launch in the US later this year.

Kids’ stuff

Amazon

Amazon is extending Alexa’s new generative AI powers to kids’ devices. However, as you may expect, it should be a heavily guardrailed version of the feature that supposedly protects children from unsavory material. The company says it “gracefully redirects kids back to the conversation at hand and away from inappropriate or sensitive content.”

The company also showcased the Echo Pop Kids, a new smart speaker for children. It ships in two variants: Avengers and Disney Princess. You can pre-order the $50 speaker now. It ships in October and includes six months of the Amazon Kids+ subscription service.

Alexa Emergency Assist

Amazon

A feature that could benefit seniors or people with disabilities, Alexa Emergency Assist lets you contact first responders by saying, “Alexa, call for help.” The feature will connect you with a “dedicated, professionally trained agent” available 24/7.

When you set up Alexa Emergency Assist, it will save your home address, medications, allergies and device info to save you from having to pass that on to the person on the line.

Alexa Emergency Assist will launch in the US and is “coming soon.” It will cost $6 per month or $59 annually when it arrives.

Amazon announced a new personal safety feature on Wednesday for Alexa devices. Building on the existing Alexa Guard, Emergency Assist sounds a bit like Life Alert for Echo devices. It allows people in trouble to call for assistance by saying, “Alexa, call for help.”

Alexa Emergency Assist can connect you with a “dedicated, professionally trained agent” available 24/7. When you sign up, it will save information like your home address, medications and allergies to pass them to first responders.

Amazon says the feature is “coming soon” in the US, and it will support all Echo devices. It will cost $6 monthly or $59 annually when it launches.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Follow all of the news live from Amazon’s 2023 Devices event right here.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), the philanthropic organization created in 2015 by Priscilla Chan and her husband Mark Zuckerberg, announced a bold new generative AI initiative today. The group is funding and building a high-end GPU cluster that will use AI to create predictive models of healthy and diseased cells; it hopes they’ll help researchers better understand the human body’s cells and cellular reactions. The group believes the collection of computers will help it achieve its incredibly lofty goal of helping to “cure, prevent, or manage all diseases by the end of this century.”

“Researchers are gathering more data than ever before about the trillions of cells within our bodies, and it’s too complex for our brains to grapple with,” Jeff MacGregor, CZI vice president of communications, wrote in an emailed statement to Engadget. He lists an example of imaging one cell at nanometer resolution, which would use the same amount of data as 83,000 photos on a smartphone. Sifting through the finer details of a cache of cellular models like that is where generative AI could play a role.

The system will use a cluster of over 1,000 GPUs to train AI large language models (LLMs) on human cells. “LLMs have done an impressive job at helping us understand protein structure, and we think they will be equally great at helping us understand more complex structures like cells,” MacGregor said. He expects the AI models to draw insights and conclusions beyond even the capabilities of a team of human experts. “But also, it’s about the speed at which they can do this. It would take that team of experts years to draw the types of insights rather than weeks that it will take for the models to do so.”

Chan lists other examples of how LLMs could tackle biomedicine’s problems. “AI models could predict how an immune cell responds to an infection, what happens at the cellular level when a child is born with a rare disease, or even how a patient’s body will respond to a new medication,” the co-founder and co-CEO said. “We hope that this collaborative effort will generate new insights about the fundamental characteristics of our cells.”

The group describes the GPU clusters as one of the first to power “openly available” models of human cells, suggesting the investment could yield dividends for under-funded researchers with bright ideas. Examples of data the models will train on include those integrated into the Chan Zuckerberg Cell by Gene tool (with its existing database of over 50 million cells), resources from CZ Science research institutes and publicly available datasets. CZI Head of Science Stephen Quake describes one of the project’s goals as creating a “virtual biology simulator.”

“AI is creating new opportunities in biomedicine, and building a high-performance computing cluster dedicated to life science research will accelerate progress on important scientific questions about how our cells work,” said Zuckerberg. “Developing digital models capable of predicting all cell types and cell states from the genome will help researchers better understand our cells and how they behave in health and disease.”

Logitech is updating its line of desktop microphones and lighting today with the Yeti GX microphone, Yeti Orb microphone and the G Litra Beam LX light. The products mark a break from the Blue brand, which Logitech acquired in 2018, as it drops the old naming and incorporates more gamer-focused RGB lighting into the series.

The $150 Logitech G Yeti GX is the company’s latest take on a “premium, broadcast-style gaming microphone” somewhat reminiscent of the Yeti Blue X. The GX uses a supercardioid pickup pattern, which focuses on sound in front of the microphone while reducing ambient noises from the sides and behind. It includes RGB lighting, customizable with the company’s LightSync, which synchronizes color and lighting across devices. It also has a scroll wheel for one-handed volume control; pressing it activates Smart Audio Lock, which the company says prevents clipping and reduces background noise.

Logitech

The Yeti GX is a USB-C to USB-A plug-and-play mic and is compatible with the Blue Compass boom arm and a (not yet available) updated Logitech Compass arm the company teased.

Meanwhile, the $60 Logitech G Yeti Orb is a ball-shaped mic similar to the company’s Snowball Ice model. The company pitches it as an entry-level microphone (“designed for gamers new to streaming”); it’s built with a custom condenser capsule and uses a cardioid pickup pattern. Like the more expensive Yeti GX, the Orb is compatible with the company’s Blue Voice software, which can apply voice filters and let you tweak levels.

Logitech

Finally, the $150 Logitech G Litra Beam LX is a new desktop light similar to the company’s Litra Beam. The new model still includes TrueSoft adjustable LED lighting (ranging from “warm candlelight to cool blue”) for streaming / video calls but also adds RGB lighting to the mix in sticking with the day’s theme.

All three models are available for pre-order today from Logitech’s website and Amazon, which lists them as available as soon as September 21.

The newly upgraded particle accelerator at the DoE’s Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) has produced its first X-rays. The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) upgrade, LCLS-II, can emit up to a million X-ray pulses per second (8,000 times more than the original) and an almost continuous beam 10,000 times brighter than its predecessor. Researchers believe it will enable unprecedented research into “atomic-scale, ultrafast phenomena” and shed new light on quantum computing, communications, clean energy and medicine.

One of the keys to the accelerator’s powerful upgrade is its cooling abilities. The original LCLS, which went online in 2009, was capped at 120 pulses per second because of the natural limits of how many electrons could simultaneously travel through the accelerator’s room-temperature copper pipes. But the updated version includes 37 cryogenic modules cooled to negative 456 degrees Fahrenheit (colder than outer space), allowing it to “boost electrons to high energies with nearly zero energy loss.” The new accelerator will work in parallel with the existing copper one.

SLAC researchers say the new capabilities will allow them to examine details of quantum materials with unprecedented resolution while enabling new forms of quantum computing and “reveal unpredictable and fleeting chemical events” to help advance clean energy tech. In addition, they say it could help scientists develop new pharmaceuticals by studying how biological molecules work on an unprecedented scale. Finally, they stated that its unmatched 8,000 flashes per second will “open up entirely new fields of scientific investigation.”

SLAC

SLAC researchers began envisioning upgrades to the original LCLS in 2010. The project has since gone through $1.1 billion and has involved “thousands of scientists, engineers, and technicians across DOE, as well as numerous institutional partners.” It required numerous “cutting-edge components,” including a new electron source, two cryoplants to produce refrigerant and two new undulators to generate X-rays from the beam. Multiple institutions contributed to the endeavor, including five US national labs (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory, among others) and Cornell University.

“Experiments in each of these areas are set to begin in the coming weeks and months, attracting thousands of researchers from across the nation and around the world,” said LCLS Director Mike Dunne. “DOE user facilities such as LCLS are provided at no cost to the users — we select on the basis of the most important and impactful science. LCLS-II is going to drive a revolution across many academic and industrial sectors. I look forward to the onslaught of new ideas — this is the essence of why national labs exist.”

It didn’t take long to learn Panos Panay’s new home. The industry veteran, instrumental in developing Windows 11 and the Microsoft Surface line of 2-in-1s and laptops, has reportedly been hired by Amazon, according toBloomberg. Microsoft’s former chief product officer will lead Amazon’s division responsible for Alexa and Echo smart devices.

Panay will replace Dave Limp, the Amazon executive previously in charge of Alexa and Echo, who announced his retirement last month. Panay’s move from one Seattle-based tech giant to another will have him overseeing a division hit by layoffs last year. Ironically, Amazon and Microsoft each have fall hardware events scheduled this week.

Microsoft brought on Panay in 2004 as a group program manager. He oversaw the development of Surface devices during their formative years, where he became an event mainstay with his passionate and detailed product launch keynotes. He was promoted in 2018 to chief product officer before landing his last Microsoft position as executive vice president in 2021. Panay said he “decided to turn the page and write the next chapter.” Yusuf Mehdi will replace him as Microsoft’s head of Windows and Surface teams.

We reached out to Amazon for comment and confirmation, and we’ll update this article when we hear something.

iPadOS 17 is available now. The annual update lacks a single headline-grabbing feature, but the sum of its smaller changes enhances the experience of using Apple’s tablet. Changes include Stage Manager refinements, along with Lock Screen additions and interactive widgets to match the iPhone’s new features from a year ago.

You can install iPadOS 17 on recent models. It supports the iPad Pro 12.9 (2nd-gen or later), iPad Pro 10.5, iPad Pro 11 (1st-gen or later), iPad Air (3rd gen or later), standard iPad (6th gen or later) and iPad mini (5th gen or later). If you don’t know which device you have, you can navigate to Settings > General > About > Model Name to determine which one it is.

Once you know your device is eligible, you can head to Settings > General > About > Software Update to manually initiate the download and installation. If you had auto-updates turned on, it would install eventually, but perhaps not until later in the week.

iPadOS 17 catches up on a couple of iOS 16 features that didn’t make it to the iPad last year, including a revamped and more customizable Lock Screen (including an easier and more robust wallpaper picker) and interactive widgets. In addition, the Health app makes its way to the bigger screen and you can more easily adjust Stage Manager to fit your needs. Finally, iOS 17’s FaceTime and Messaging updates are included on the tablet software as well. You can read more about iPadOS 17’s features in Engadget’s full preview.