For a product that its own creators, in a marketing pique, once declared “too dangerous” to release to the general public, OpenAI’s ChatGPT is seemingly everywhere these days. The versatile automated text generation (ATG) system, which is capable of outputting copy that is nearly indistinguishable from a human writer’s work, is officially still in beta but has already been utilized in dozens of novel applications, some of which extend far beyond the roles ChatGPT was originally intended for — like that time it simulated an operational Linux shell or that other time when it passed the entrance exam to Wharton Business School.

The hype around ChatGPT is understandably high, with myriad startups looking to license the technology for everything from conversing with historical figures to talking to historical literature, from learning other languages to generating exercise routines and restaurant reviews.

But with these technical advancements come with a slew of opportunities for misuse and outright harm. And if our previous hamfisted attempts at handling the spread of deepfake video and audio technologies were any indication, we’re dangerously underprepared for the havoc that at-scale, automated disinformation production will wreak upon our society.

NurPhoto via Getty Images

OpenAI’s billion dollar origin story

OpenAI has been busy since its founding in 2015 as a non-profit by Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Elon Musk and a host of other VC luminaries, who all collectively chipped in a cool billion dollars to get the organization up and running. The “altruistic” venture argues that AI “should be an extension of individual human wills and, in the spirit of liberty, as broadly and evenly distributed as possible.”

The following year, the company released its first public beta of the OpenAI Gym reinforcement learning platform. Musk resigned from the board in 2018, citing a potential conflict of interest with his ownership of Tesla. 2019 was especially eventful for OpenAI. That year, the company established a “capped” for-profit subsidiary (OpenAI LP) to the original non-profit (OpenAI Inc) organization, received an additional billion-dollar funding infusion from Microsoft and announced plans to begin licensing its products commercially.

In 2020, OpenAI officially launched GPT-3, a text generator able to “summarize legal documents, suggest answers to customer-service enquiries, propose computer code [and] run text-based role-playing games,” The company released its commercial API that year as well.

“I have to say I’m blown away,” startup founder Arram Sabeti wrote at the time, after interacting with the system. “It’s far more coherent than any AI language system I’ve ever tried. All you have to do is write a prompt and it’ll add text it thinks would plausibly follow. I’ve gotten it to write songs, stories, press releases, guitar tabs, interviews, essays, technical manuals. It’s hilarious and frightening. I feel like I’ve seen the future.”

2021 saw the release of DALL-E, a text-to-image generator; and the company made headlines again last year with the release of ChatGPT, a chat client based on GPT-3.5, the latest and current GPT iteration. In January 2023, Microsoft and OpenAI announced a deepening of their research cooperative with a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar ongoing investment.

“I think it does an excellent job at spitting out text that's plausible,” Dr. Brandie Nonnecke, Director of the CITRIS Policy Lab and Associate Professor of Technology Policy Research at UC Berkeley, told Engadget. “It feels like somebody really wrote it. I've used it myself actually to kind of get over a writer's block, to just think through how I flow in the argument that I'm trying to make, so I found it helpful.”

That said, Nonnecke cannot look past the system’s stubborn habit of producing false claims. “It will cite articles that don't exist,” she added. “Right now, at this stage, it's realistic but there's still a long way to go.”

What is generative AI?

OpenAI is far from the only player in the ATG game. Generative AI (or, more succinctly, gen-AI) is the practice of using machine learning algorithms to produce novel content — whether that’s text, images, audio, or video — based on a training corpus of labeled example databases. It’s your standard unsupervised reinforcement learning regimen, the likes of which have trained Google’s AlphaGo, song and video recommendation engines across the internet, as well as vehicle driver assist systems. Of course while models like Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion or Google’s Imagen are trained to convert progressively higher resolution patterns of random dots into images, ATGs like ChatGPT remix text passages plucked from their training data to output suspiciously realistic, albeit frequently pedestrian, prose.

“They're trained on a very large amount of input,” Dr. Peter Krapp, Professor of Film & Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine, told Engadget. “What results is more or less… an average of that input. It's never going to impress us with being exceptional or particularly apt or beautiful or skilled. It's always going to be kind of competent — to the extent that we all collectively are somewhat competent in using language to express ourselves.”

Generative AI is already big business. While flashy events like Stable Diffusion’s maker getting sued for scraping training data from Meta or ChatGPT managing to schmooze its way into medical school (yes, in addition to Wharton) grab headlines, Fortune 500 companies like NVIDIA, Facebook, Amazon Web Services, IBM and Google are all quietly leveraging gen-AI for their own business benefit. They’re using it in a host of applications, from improving search engine results and proposing computer code to writing marketing and advertising content.

Wikipedia / Public Domain

The secret to ChatGPT’s success

Efforts to get machines to communicate with us as we do with other people, as Dr. Krapp notes, began in the 1960s and ‘70s with linguists being among the earliest adopters. “They realized that certain conversations can be modeled in such a way that they're more or less self-contained,” he explained. “If I can have a conversation with, you know, a stereotypical average therapist, that means I can also program the computer to serve as the therapist.” Which is how Eliza became an NLP easter egg hidden in Emacs, the popular Linux text editor.

Today, we use the technological descendents of those early efforts to translate the menus at fancy restaurants for us, serve as digital assistants on our phones, and chat with us as customer service reps. The problem, however, is that to get an AI to perform any of these functions, it has to be specially trained to do that one specific thing. We’re still years away from functional general AIs but part of ChatGPT’s impressive capability stems from its ability to write middling poetry as easily as it can generate a fake set of Terms of Service for the Truth Social website in the voice of Donald Trump without the need for specialized training between the two.

This prosaic flexibility is possible because, at its core, ChatGPT is a chatbot. It’s designed first and foremost to accurately mimic a human conversationalist, which it actually did on Reddit for a week in 2020 before being outed. It was trained using supervised learning methods wherein the human trainers initially fed the model both sides of a given conversation — both what the human user and AI agent were supposed to say. With the basics in it robomind, ChatGPT was then allowed to converse with humans with its responses being ranked after each session. Subjectively better responses scored higher in the model’s internal rewards system and were subsequently optimized for. This has resulted in an AI with a silver tongue but a “just sorta skimmed the Wiki before chiming in” aptitude of fact checking.

Part of ChatGPT’s boisterous success — having garnered a record 100 million monthly active users just two months after its launch — can certainly be marked up to solid marketing strategies such as the “too dangerous” neg of 2020, Natasha Allen, a partner at Foley & Lardner LLP, told Engadget. “I think the other part is just how easy it is to use it. You know, the average person can just plug in some words and there you go.”

“People who previously hadn’t been interested in AI, didn't really care what it was,” are now beginning to take notice. Its ease of use is an asset, Allen argues, making ChatGPT “something that's enticing and interesting to people who may not be into AI technologies.”

“It's a very powerful tool,” she conceded. “I don't think it's perfect. I think that obviously there are some errors but… it'll get you 70 to 80 percent of the way.”

Leon Neal via Getty Images

Will Microsoft’s ChatGPT be Microsoft’s Taye for a new generation?

But a lot can go wrong in those last 20 to 30 percent, because ChatGPT doesn’t actually know what the words it’s remixing into new sentences mean, it just understands the statistical relationships between them. “The GPT-3 hype is way too much,” Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, warned in a July, 2020 tweet. “It’s impressive but it still has serious weaknesses and sometimes makes very silly mistakes.”

Those “silly” mistakes range from making nonsensical comparisons like “A pencil is heavier than a toaster” to the racist bigotry we’ve seen with past chatbots like Taye — well, really, all of them to date if we’re being honest. Some of ChatGPT’s replies have even encouraged self-harm in its users, raising a host of ethical quandaries (not limited to, should AI byline scientific research?) for both the company and field as a whole.

ChatGPT’s capability for misuse is immense. We’ve already seen it put to use generating spam marketing and functional malware and writing high school English essays. These are but petty nuisances compared to what may be in store once this technology becomes endemic .

“I'm worried because if we have deep fake video and voice, tying that with ChatGPT, where it can actually write something mimicking the style of how somebody speaks,” Nonnecke said. “Those two things combined together are just a powder keg for convincing disinformation.”

“I think it's gasoline on the fire, because people write and speak in particular styles,” she continued. “And that can sometimes be the tell — if you see a deepfake and it just doesn't sound right, the way that they're talking about something. Now, GPT very much sounds like the individual, both how they would write and speak. I think it's actually amplifying the harm.”

The current generation of celebrity impersonating chatbots aren’t what would be considered historically accurate (Henry Ford’s avatar isn’t antisemitic, for example) but future improvements could nearly erase the lines between reality and created content. “The first way it's going to be used is very likely to commit fraud,“ Nonnecke said, noting that scammers have already leveraged voice cloning software to pose as a mark’s relative and swindle money from them.

“The biggest challenge is going to be how do we appropriately address it, because those deep fakes are out. You already have the confusion,” Nonnecke said. “Sometimes it's referred to as the liars dividend: nobody knows if it's true, then sort of everything's a lie, and nothing can be trusted.”

Donato Fasano via Getty Images

ChatGPT goes to college

ChatGPT is raising hackles across academia as well. The text generator has notably passed the written portion of Wharton Business School’s entrance exam, along with all three parts of the US Medical Licensing exam. The response has been swift (as most panicked scramblings in response to new technologies tend to be) but widely varied. The New York City public school system took the traditional approach, ineffectually “banning” the app’s use by students, while educators like Dr. Ethan Mollick, associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania's prestigious Wharton School, have embraced it in their lesson plans.

"This was a sudden change, right? There is a lot of good stuff that we are going to have to do differently, but I think we could solve the problems of how we teach people to write in a world with ChatGPT," Mollick told NPR in January.

"The truth is, I probably couldn't have stopped them even if I didn't require it," he added. Instead, Mollick has his students use ChatGPT as a prompt and idea generator for their essay assignments.

UCI’s Dr. Krapp has taken a similar approach. “I'm currently teaching a couple of classes where it was easy for me to say, ‘okay, here's our writing assignment, let's see what ChadGPT comes up with,’’ he explained. “I did the five different ways with different prompts or partial prompts, and then had the students work on, ‘how do we recognize that this is not written by a human and what could we learn from this?’.”

Is ChatGPT coming for your writing job?

At the start of the year, tech news site CNET was outed for having used an ATG of its own design to generate entire feature-length financial explainer articles — 75 in all since November 2022. The posts were supposedly “rigorously” fact checked by human editors to ensure their output was accurate, though cursory examinations uncovered rampant factual errors requiring CNET and its parent company, Red Ventures, to issue corrections and updates for more than half of the articles.

BuzzFeed’s chief, Jonah Peretti, upon seeing the disastrous fallout CNET was experiencing from this computer generated dalliance, immediately decided to stick his tongue in the outlet too, announcing that his publication plans to employ gen-AI to create low-stakes content like personality quizzes.

This news came mere weeks after BuzzFeed laid off a sizable portion of its editorial staff on account of “challenging market conditions.” The coincidence is hard to ignore, especially given the waves of layoffs currently rocking the tech and media sectors for that specific reason, even as the conglomerates themselves bathe in record revenue and earnings.

This is not the first time that new technology has displaced existing workers. NYT columnist Paul Krugman points to coal mining as an example. The industry saw massive workforce reductions throughout the 20th century, not because our use of coal decreased, but because mining technologies advanced enough that fewer humans were needed to do the same amount of work. The same effect is seen in the automotive industry with robots replacing people on assembly lines.

“It is difficult to predict exactly how AI will impact the demand for knowledge workers, as it will likely vary, depending on the industry and specific job tasks,” Krugman opined. “However, it is possible that in some cases, AI and automation may be able to perform certain knowledge-based tasks more efficiently than humans, potentially reducing the need for some knowledge workers.”

However, Dr. Krapp is not worried. “I see that some journalists have said, ‘I'm worried. My job has already been impacted by digital media and digital distribution. Now the type of writing that I do well, could be done by computer for cheap much more quickly,’ he said. “I don't see that happening. I don't think that's the case. I think we still as humans, have a need — a desire — for recognizing in others what's human about them.”

“[ChatGPT is] impressive. It's fun to play with, [but] we're still here,” he added, “We're still reading, it's still meant to be a human size interface for human consumption, for human enjoyment.”

Fear not for someone is sure to save us, probably

ChatGPT’s shared-reality shredding fangs will eventually be capped, Nonnecke is confident, whether by congress or the industry itself in response to public pressure. “I actually think that there's bipartisan support for this, which is interesting in the AI space,” she told Engadget. “And in data privacy, data protection, we tend to have bipartisan support.”

She points to efforts in 2022 spearheaded by OpenAI Safety and Alignment researcher Scott Aaronson to develop a cryptographic watermark so that the end user could easily spot computer generated material, as one example of the industry’s attempts to self-regulate.

“Basically, whenever GPT generates some long text, we want there to be an otherwise unnoticeable secret signal in its choices of words, which you can use to prove later that, yes, this came from GPT,” Aaronson wrote on his blog. “We want it to be much harder to take a GPT output and pass it off as if it came from a human. This could be helpful for preventing academic plagiarism, obviously, but also, for example, mass generation of propaganda.”

The efficacy of such a safeguard remains to be seen. “It's very much whack-a-mole, right now,” Nonnecke exclaimed. “It's the company themselves making that [moderation] decision. There's no transparency in how they're deciding what types of prompts to block or not block, which is very concerning to me.”

“Somebody's going to use this to do terrible things,” she said.

Chinese search giant Baidu aims to introduce a ChatGPT-like AI service that gives users conversational results, Bloomberg has reported. It'll be based on the company's Ernie system, a large-scale machine-learning model trained over several years that "excels at natural language understanding and generation," Baidu said in 2021. 

Open AI's ChatGPT has taken the tech world by storm of late, thanks to its ability to answer fact-based questions, write in a human-like way and even create code. Microsoft invested $1 billion in Open AI back in 2019, and reportedly plans to incorporate aspects of ChatGPT into its Bing search engine. 

Google, meanwhile, likely sees the technology as a threat to its search business and plans to accelerate development of its own conversational AI technology. CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly declared a "code red" over ChatGPT and may be preparing to show off 20 or more AI-products and a chatbot for its search engine at its I/O conference in May. 

Baidu has reportedly seen lagging growth in search and sees ChatGPT-like apps as a potential way to leapfrog rivals. "I’m so glad that the technology we are pondering every day can attract so many people’s attention. That’s not easy," he said during a talk in December, according to a transcript seen by Bloomberg.

ChatGPT has largely drawn positive attention, but the downsides have come into focus as well. Technology news site CNET was forced to correct AI-written articles due to errors and concerns about plagiarism. And New York City public schools recently banned ChatGPT over cheating concerns, because it can create articles and essays that can be difficult to distinguish from student-created content. 

Facebook parent company Meta has removed the Azov Regiment, a controversial unit within the Ukrainian National Guard with far-right political leanings, from its list of dangerous individuals and organizations. The move, first reported by The Kyiv Independent, means members of the unit can now create Facebook and Instagram accounts and post without Meta automatically flagging and removing their content. Additionally, unaffiliated users can praise the Azov Regiment, provided they abide by the company’s Community Standards.

“The war in Ukraine has meant changing circumstances in many areas and it has become clear that the Azov Regiment does not meet our strict criteria for designation as a dangerous organization,” a company spokesperson told The Kyiv Independent. Meta did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request.

Sharing more information on the policy change, Meta told The Washington Post it recently began to view the Azov Regiment as a separate entity from other groups associated with the far-right nationalist Azov Movement. Specifically, the company pointed to Ukraine's National Corp political party and founder Andriy Biletsky, noting they’re still on its list of dangerous individuals and organizations. “Hate speech, hate symbols, calls for violence and any other content which violates our Community Standards are still banned, and we will remove this content if we find it,” Meta said.

The Azov Regiment was founded in 2014 by Biletsky following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the start of the Donbas War that same year. Before the unit was integrated into Ukraine’s National Guard in November 2014, it was controversial for its adherence to neo-Nazi ideology. In 2015, a spokesperson for the Azov Regiment said 10 to 20 percent of the unit’s recruits were self-professed Nazis. At the start of the 2022 conflict, Ukrainian officials said the Azov Regiment still had some extremists among its ranks but claimed the unit had largely become depoliticized. During the months-long siege of Mariupol, the Azov Regiment played a prominent role in the city’s defense. Russia captured many of the battalion’s fighters at the end of the battle.

The change underscores just how much Meta’s content moderation policies have changed since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Partway through last year, the company began temporarily allowing people in Ukraine and a handful of other countries to call for violence against Russian soldiers. After the decision created controversy, Meta said it would turn to the Oversight Board for policy guidance, a request the company later withdrew, citing “ongoing safety and security concerns” related to the war.

Microsoft's dual-screen Android phones have been less than successful, to put it mildly, and there are now hints the company is shaking up its mobile strategy. Windows Centralsources claim Microsoft has cancelled a twin-screen Surface Duo 3, which was reportedly slated for release late this year, and will instead focus on a "true" foldable phone. The new device's specs and name aren't known, but it would have a 180-degree hinge with an outside cover display akin to the Vivo X Fold.

The cancelled Surface Duo 3 was "finalized," according to the sources. It would have supposedly addressed some of its predecessor's shortcomings with narrower edge-to-edge screens and wireless charging. Microsoft isn't said to have settled on a release window for the foldable, suggesting that the product is unlikely to arrive in 2023.

The purported insiders also say Microsoft is planning to expand its Android phone offerings. It's apparently "exploring" other form factors, including prototypes of more conventional smartphones. A software initiative, "Perfect Together," would also provide tighter integration between Surface phones and Windows, much like the iPhone's close ties to the Mac.

We've asked Microsoft for comment and will let you know if we hear back. The Surface Duo series has struggled in the market between its high prices (up to $1,500), unreliable software and performance that frequently trails the latest Android flagships. While the dual-screen design has offered some clever multitasking features, it's been a tough sell when rivals like Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold line have generally been more powerful and trustworthy.

A foldable Surface phone would put Microsoft into more direct competition with brands like Samsung and Vivo. There's no guarantee it will stand out in a growing field. If the rumored pivot is real, however, it also indicates that Microsoft is still committed to Android devices — it's not giving up just because its first forays failed to gain traction.

Apple has reportedly canceled the development of a new iPhone SE. According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the company recently told suppliers it would not release a fourth-generation SE model sometime in 2024. In a Medium post spotted by MacRumors, Kuo said the device would have been the debut of Apple’s first in-house 5G modem, adding that the company had planned to test and fine-tune the chip on the SE before rolling it out more broadly to the iPhone 16 and beyond. Instead, Kuo suggests Apple is now more likely to continue using Qualcomm modems through 2024.

Kuo doesn’t say why Apple shelved the fourth-generation iPhone SE or if the performance of its own 5G chip had anything to do with the decision. For the better part of a decade, Apple has tried to reduce its dependence on Qualcomm. In 2019, the two ended their bitter patent feud and signed a “multiyear” wireless chip supply deal. Months later, however, Apple bought the majority of Intel’s mobile modem business. Then, at the end of 2020, the company disclosed it was working on its own cellular chipset. There’s been little news about the project since.

You'd think that after launching a ton of products in 2022, DJI would be finished for the year. However, that isn't quite the case, as it just announced the DJI Mini 3 drone aimed at the consumer market. It's a stripped down version of the Mini 3 Pro, with no forward or rear obstacle detection, no ActiveTrack and video that's limited to 4K 30p. Those compromises are reflected in the price, meaning you'll pay $469 for just the drone compared to $669 for the Mini 3 Pro. 

The company believes the Mini 3 Pro is ideal for first time users, in scenarios like "suburban outings, holiday travel, and urban shooting/exploration with family and friends." In that sense, it's more a spiritual successor to the DJI Mini 2 than a Mini 3 Pro-lite. That said, it's nearly identical to the Mini 3 Pro, apart from the front sensors being removed and replaced with grills and smooth plastic where the rear sensors would be located on the Pro. 

The Mini 3 weighs less than 249 grams so it doesn't require a special permit to fly in many countries. It has the same Type 1/1.3 (9.6 x 7.2 mm) f/1.7 sensor as the Mini 3 Pro, so you can film in 4K HDR and take 12-megapixel photos. However, video is limited to 4K 30p, rather than 4K 60p on the more expensive model. It also offers "true vertical" video and photo shooting, with the camera flips 90 degrees to allow for high quality social media content. 

DJI has ensured 2.7K and full HD captures max out at 60fps, so there's no 120fps as found on the Mini 3 Pro. You can shoot HDR at up to 30fps, and it has dual native ISO for decent low-light performance in a relatively small sensor. 

The Intelligent Flight Batteries provide long flight times, delivering up to 38 minutes with the standard and 51 minutes with the extended batteries (the latter are available in North America but not in Europe and other regions). Those times are under ideal conditions; you'll more likely see around 30-32 minutes. Still, that's excellent for this category and provides a cushion for beginners who may let the drone fly a bit too far away. Despite the small size it has "robust power," DJI says, which helps it handle reasonably stiff winds as well.

As with the Mini 3 Pro, you can get the Mini 3 with DJI's RC controller for an extra $230. That option is well worth it, because it's far more convenient than using a smartphone with the regular RC-N1 controller. It has a similar layout to DJI's other controllers, with the addition of photo and video triggers that automatically switch between those respective modes. The RC controller joysticks can be stowed underneath the controller chassis for travel and while the screen struggles a bit in bright sunlight, it is otherwise sharp and clear.

Steve Dent/Engadget

The Mini 3 has a key feature for social media users, namely DJI's QuickShots. That lets you take short and cute videos without the need to pilot, as the drone does all the work. Some of those include "Dronie" (starting tight on the subject and flying up and away to reveal the background) and "Circle," where the camera moves around the subject. 

However, it lacks many of the AI features found on the Mini 3 Pro like ActiveTrack (following a subject), Timelapse and Mastershots. The fact that it can track a subject with QuickShots suggests that its capable of ActiveTrack, but that the functionality may simply be disabled.

It has other intelligent functions to help beginners. Those include Auto Takeoff, Return to Home (RTH) including Smart RTH, Low Battery RTH and Failsafe RTH, instructing the aircraft to return to its starting point if the battery is low or signal drops. 

That brings us to one big issue with this drone. It does feature a downward vision system and infrared sensing for stable hovering, which is a big help for novice users. However, it lacks forward and rear obstacle detection sensors. That means a user can fly it directly into a tree or building more easily, and as it doesn't have DJI Avata-like propeller protection, you could end up with a broken drone. Even if you're careful, using the RTH function could be risky as the drone could automatically fly itself into an object when trying to navigate home. You'll also want to make sure the area is clear when doing a Dronie or other Quickshots maneuver. 

I received the Mini 3 from DJI, but it was a bit too late to do a video (we'll release a full review soon). However, my drone pilot friend and I had a day to test it, and we found it just as stable and easy to fly as the Mini 3 Pro. The footage quality looks sharp and clear with accurate colors, and I didn't really miss the 4K 60p, as I don't often use that mode anyway.

We were acutely aware of the lack of obstacle sensors, though. We didn't dare wander too far away from base, as a loss of signal could be disastrous — particularly in Europe where laws restrict the transmission distance significantly compared to the US. The lack of sensors also limit what you can shoot, as it would be foolhardy to get it too close to obstacles or fly in tight spaces. 

Steve Dent/Engadget

Lastly, I'm wondering about the Mini 3's pricing. If you don't already have a DJI drone, you'll need to pay $559 with the RC-N1 controller, compared to $759 for the Mini 3 Pro. The Fly More Combo (two extra batteries, RC-N1 controller, three-battery charger) costs $718, compared to $948 for the Mini 3 Pro. The Fly More Combo with the RC controller is $858, while the same kit for the Pro model is $1,098.

If you're just having fun or starting out and only need a battery, drone and controller, $559 might be a bit steep for many folks. For just a minor stepdown in capability, the Mini 2 is just $449 in the same configuration, for instance. And, if you want a more serious kit with more batteries and possibly the RC controller, it would make sense to cough up $240 more to get the Pro. 

That said, the Mini 3 Pro is perpetually out of stock, so this one will probably sell like hotcakes regardless of my misgivings. So far it looks like an easy-to-fly drone that takes better video than anything else in this price range — just keep it it well away from obstacles.

FTX won’t be rescued by its biggest rival. One day after announcing a proposed deal to buy the cryptocurrency exchange, Binance said it didn’t like what it found in the company’s books. “As a result of corporate due diligence, as well as the latest news reports regarding mishandled customer funds and alleged US agency investigations, we have decided that we will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX,” Binance tweeted on Wednesday afternoon. “Our hope was to be able to support FTX’s customers to provide liquidity, but the issues are beyond our control or ability to help.”

The abandoned takeover bid caps off a tumultuous week for FTX. On November 2nd, Coinbasepublished a report that revealed that the cryptocurrency exchange was facing a liquidity crisis. In response to the article, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announced that the company would sell about $529 million worth of FTX’s FTT token, a move that wiped out the value of the cryptocurrency and launched a public spat between the competing exchanges.

Even when the acquisition was first announced, the likelihood of it moving forward seemed uncertain at best, with Zhao stressing at the time that the deal was non-binding. “This is a highly dynamic situation, and we are assessing the situation in real time. Binance has the discretion to pull out from the deal at any time.” he said on Tuesday. By the following morning, The Wall Street Journal and Coinbase came out with separate reports claiming Binance was strongly leaning toward abandoning the rescue.

Less than an hour later, Bloomberg reported that the US Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating FTX to determine if the company had mishandled customer funds. It’s worth noting here that the Department of Justice and SEC are also investigating Binance.

Over the years, we've seen smartphone charging speeds going from the already-impressive 30 minutes down to 15 minutes, but apparently that's still too slow for Xiaomi. In the new Redmi Note 12 lineup unveiled earlier today, one model dubbed "Redmi Note 12 Discovery Edition" stood out with a whopping 210W HyperCharge capability. This feature is controlled by three 100W fast charging chips, which fully charge the phone's 4,300mAh battery in just 9 minutes. To put things into perspective, both Xiaomi's earlier 120W HyperCharge and Oppo's 150W SuperVOOC need 15 minutes to juice up a 4,500mAh battery.

The Redmi Note 12 Discovery Edition also sees the debut of MediaTek's mid-range Dimensity 1080 processor, and it's completed with a 6.67-inch OLED screen (2,400 x 1,080, 120Hz), a 200MP main camera (Samsung's brand new HPX sensor; with OIS), an 8MP ultra-wide camera, a 2MP macro camera and a 16MP selfie camera. You'll also find dual-SIM slots, dual speakers, a 3.5mm headphone jack, an in-display fingerprint sensor, NFC, and an infrared blaster on this Android 12 device. 

As for RAM and storage, this model only comes with one combo: 8GB LPDDR4x RAM and 256GB UFS 2.2 storage. Unlike last year's Redmi Note 11 Pro+, microSD expansion is missing here, which may be a deterrent for those who are considering an upgrade. Still, not bad for 2,399 yuan or $330.

Xiaomi

Despite the name, the Redmi Note 12 Discovery Edition is actually based on the Redmi Note 12 Pro+, with the main difference being the lesser charging power (120W) but bigger battery (5,000mAh) for the latter. This model starts from 2,199 yuan or about $304, which comes with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage; or you can pay 2,399 yuan or around $331 to bump the RAM up to 12GB.

Then there's also the lesser but similar-looking Redmi Note 12 Pro, which swaps the 200MP main camera for a 50MP one (using Sony's IMX766 sensor), and it only uses 67W charging for the same 5,000mAh battery. This starts from 1,699 yuan or about $235, which gets you 6GB of RAM with 128GB of storage; and you can max out at 12GB of RAM with 256GB of storage for the price of 2,199 yuan or around $304 — the same as the Pro+'s starting price, interestingly.

Xiaomi

Last but not least, the Redmi Note 12 is positioned as an affordable smartphone, starting at 1,199 yuan or about $166. It packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 chipset, a slightly lesser-grade OLED display of the same size (mainly lower brightness and contrast, as well as the lack of HDR support), less powerful cameras (48MP main, 2MP depth sensor and 8MP front), weaker charging power (33W) and just a mono speaker. In terms of variants, it starts from 4GB of RAM with 128GB of storage, going all the way up to 8GB with 256GB, respectively (1,699 yuan or around $235; same as the Note 12 Pro's base price).

As with recent Redmi phones, there's a good chance that these new models will make their way to international markets later, so we'll be keeping an eye out for further updates.

Ever had a great idea for a riff rattling around your head while you ride the bus or wait in line? Well, if you use Ableton Live, there’s now a way to capture those busts of inspiration wherever you are thanks to the new Note iOS app.

The name here is important. It’s not Ableton Live Mobile or Live Go or similar. The “Note” idea is as much about noting things down as it is a reference to semiquavers. Think of it as a scratch pad for ideas on the go. Ideas that can then be seamlessly picked up in Ableton Live proper once you get to your PC.

Users of Ableton’s Live desktop DAW will recognize Note’s main interface. It bears more than a striking resemblance to Live’s “Session” view – itself a sort of sandbox for experimentation. In Note, you can have up to eight tracks each with up to eight clips.

For those not familiar with Live or its Session View, each track can be considered a musical part (drums, synth, vocal and so on) and each “clip” represents a sequence or short arrangement using that part. From there you can build out different collections of clips that form the basis for different parts of a song.

Note comes preloaded with 261 of synth presets, 56 drum kits, melodic samples and more. Basically most things you need to put together a song. Everything found in the app is part of Ableton Live, too, which is what enables you to export it to Live so easily.

That said, you’re not limited to the sounds included in Note. You have the ability to sample into the app via your phone’s microphone. The good news is, that includes an external microphone and I was even able to sample into the app via a synth with a 3.5mm-to-lightning adapter. All that should mean this is plenty flexible when it comes to sound palettes.

Ableton

There’s a surprising amount of depth of control, too. Beyond sampling, there are all the essential edit tools like quantize, nudge and transpose. There are also two effects slots and each of those can have its own performance “automation” - if you alter a filter over time, that performance is recorded into the clip.

While there are many apps out there for making music, a true “DAW on a phone” is perhaps a little ambitious. It feels like Ableton has got the balance right here, it’s familiar, deep enough but also simple to use. Best of all, is the integration with Ableton Live proper – something that’s obviously unique to Note.

In Note there’s a setting for Ableton Cloud. Activate this, and your current Note projects will appear in Live’s browser on the desktop (providing that PC has an internet connection of course). This cloud functionality is free, but limited to five “ideas” or slots (which should be plenty for most).

While cloud functionality is free, the app is now. Note will cost $6 (£5/€7) and it requires Live 11.2 and onwards for sharing projects to the desktop.

LG was supposed to release another phone with an unusual form factor after The Wing as an answer to Samsung's foldables. At CES 2021, the company confirmed that it was working on a phone with a rollable display and that it was going to be available later that year. It never got to launch the device before shutting down its mobile business after its newest models, which included the Wing, failed to gain traction. But now, a hands-on video by Korean tech reviewer 뻘짓연구소 (BullsLab) shows just how close LG got to launching the phone that would've simply gone by the name "Rollable."

While the Wing featured a rotatable display on top of a smaller one underneath, the Rollable was designed to have a screen that stretches out until the phone becomes a small tablet. In the video, you'll see how responsive the device is and how quickly it starts expanding after the YouTuber swipes at the screen with three fingers. Whatever's displayed on screen — even the animated wallpapers — automatically adjusts itself. At one point, the reviewer places three books beside the phone to show that its motor is strong enough to move the pile as it stretches out.

In addition to the stretchable main display, the phone's back panel also functions as an extra screen that can house a handful of widgets, including ones for the camera, calendar and music. If you fire up the camera app from that extra screen, you'll be able to take selfies without powering on the main phone. 

Based on the device BullsLab reviewed, the Rollable would've launched with a Snapdragon 888 CPU, up to 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Those were top-level specs that would've put the Rollable in the same category as flagships, such as the Samsung Galaxy S21. 

Since LG's mobile business no longer exists, there's little to no chance for the Rollable to, well, roll out. It's worth noting that Oppo also showed off a rollable phone back in 2021, but it was just a prototype, and we haven't heard anything about it since then.