Here's what Facebook's metaverse isn't: It's not an alternative world to help us escape from our dystopian reality, a la Snow Crash. It won't require VR or AR glasses (at least, not at first). And, most importantly, it's not something Facebook wants to keep to itself. Instead, as Mark Zuckerberg described to media ahead of today's Facebook Connect conference, the company is betting it'll be the next major computing platform after the rise of smartphones and the mobile web.

After spending the last decade becoming obsessed with our phones and tablets — learning to stare down and scroll practically as a reflex — the Facebook founder thinks we'll be spending more time looking up at the 3D objects floating around us in the digital realm. Or maybe you'll be following a friend's avatar as they wander around your living room as a hologram. It's basically a digital world layered right on top of the real world, or an "embodied internet" as Zuckerberg describes.

Before he got into the weeds for his grand new vision, though, Zuckerberg also preempted criticism about looking into the future now, as the Facebook Papers paint the company as a mismanaged behemoth that constantly prioritizes profit over safety. While acknowledging the seriousness of the issues the company is facing, noting that it'll continue to focus on solving them with "industry-leading" investments, Zuckerberg said: 

Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

"The reality is is that there's always going to be issues and for some people... they may have the view that there's never really a great time to focus on the future... From my perspective, I think that we're here to create things and we believe that we can do this and that technology can make things better. So we think it's important to to push forward."

Given the extent to which Facebook, and Zuckerberg in particular, have proven to be untrustworthy stewards of social technology, it's almost laughable that the company wants us to buy into its future. But, like the rise of photo sharing and group chat apps, Zuckerberg at least has a good sense of what's coming next. And for all of his talk of turning Facebook into a metaverse company, he's adamant that he doesn't want to build a metaverse that's entirely owned by Facebook. He doesn't think other companies will either. Like the mobile web, he thinks every major technology company will contribute something towards the metaverse. He's just hoping to make Facebook a pioneer.

"Instead of looking at a screen, or today, how we look at the Internet, I think in the future you're going to be in the experiences, and I think that's just a qualitatively different experience," Zuckerberg said. It's not quite virtual reality as we think of it, and it's not just augmented reality. But ultimately, he sees the metaverse as something that'll help to deliver more presence for digital social experiences — the sense of being there, instead of just being trapped in a zoom window. And he expects there to be continuity across devices, so you'll be able to start chatting with friends on your phone and seamlessly join them as a hologram when you slip on AR glasses.

Facebook

But, of course, the metaverse won't be built in a day. At Facebook Connect today, the company announced several ways it's moving towards making it more accessible. For one, Facebook will be transforming the Oculus Quest's Home interface into "Horizon Home," a more fully featured environment where you can invite friends and hang out virtually. Eventually, you'll also be able to build and customize your home space. The Venues app is also becoming "Horizon Venues," where it'll continue to serve as Facebook's prime spot for live virtual events. (The company also says NBA games are coming back to Venues in early November.)

The company is also making a major push for developers: its new Presence Platform offers through APIs that'll allow devs to make more inventive VR apps. The Insight SDK will let them take advantage of the Quest 2's cameras to bring the real world into VR; the Interaction SDK opens up the door for more hand-tracking interactions; and the Voice SDK will — you guessed it — let you use your words in more ways.

The Insight SDK, in particular, could reshape what Quest VR experiences could look like. It includes Spatial Anchors, which will let virtual objects persist across sessions in a space. So if you placed a VR pet bunny on your coffee table, it should always be there every time you logged into an app. Additionally, there's a Scene Understanding feature, which can help developers get a better sense of your physical space. A character talking to you in VR could, for example, wander around your living room without bumping into furniture.

Facebook

When it comes to augmented reality, Facebook also has plenty of upgrades in store for its Spark AR platform. For one, it's planning to launch an iOS app called Polar that'll let people design their own AR effects and objects without any coding. It's aimed at creators, who could use it to build unique 3D signage or makeup effects that their followers can apply. More experienced devs will also be able to create Geo-anchored objects, which are tied to specific locations in the real world, as well as AR effects that track your hands and body. They can also try out building group video chats for Messenger, something that'll eventually be supported in other apps.  

Like HoloLens and HTC Vive, Facebook plans to make a bigger push into enterprises with Quest for Business. It's a way for employees to log into Quest 2 headsets with secure work accounts (it's probably not great for your boss to see how often you're playing Beat Saber, after all). Since they're meant for office environments, IT departments will also be able to manage work accounts, specific devices and integrate their own security features. The key is that it's all going to be accessible on consumer-grade Quest 2 headsets, Facebook won't have to make entirely new hardware for work environments.

The company plans to take it slow with Quest for Business. It's currently being tested with a few companies now, and a wider beta is expected to come next year. At this point, Facebook isn't planning to officially roll it out to every company until 2023. Quest for Business will replace the previous Oculus for Business program, which required a special $799 Quest 2 headset.

Facebook already showed off one way remote meetings could be handled better with Horizon Workrooms, and that app is going to get better later this year with customizable workrooms. And when it comes to productivity, the company is also opening up the Oculus Store to 2D apps like Slack, Dropbox, Instagram and Facebook. You'll be able to dive into those apps right from your Horizon Home screen. It's convenient, but it's also a cheeky way to keep you from taking off your headset just to answer a Slack message.

Not everyone would want to spend a whole workday wearing a VR headset, but it's not hard to imagine how future AR glasses could let you dive into Slack and Office apps just about anywhere. They'll just be 2D projections floating around you, things that nobody else would be able to see. That may seem like science fiction today, but 15 years ago, so did the idea of having a touchscreen-enabled supercomputer in your pocket with blazing fast wireless internet. 

As Zuckerberg sees it, the metaverse will ultimately lead to a more natural relationship with technology. "It's not about you spending more time on screens," he told press before making a hasty retreat. "It's about making the time we spend better and I think you know screens can't really convey the full sense of presence."

Following months of pressure from employees and workers, Activision Blizzard says it will no longer employ forced arbitration in sexual harassment and discrimination claims. CEO Bobby Kotick announced the policy change in a letter to employees the company shared on Thursday. Kotick said the publisher will also implement a new company-wide zero-tolerance harassment policy. In the future, any employee who is found to have violated the rule will be fired immediately. Additionally, they’ll forfeit any future compensation, including equity awards.

“Our goal is to have the strictest harassment and non-retaliation policies of any employer, and we will continue to examine and tighten our standards to achieve this goal everywhere we do business,” Kotick said.

The executive outlined three other steps Activision Blizzard will take to create a safer and more diverse workplace. Over the next 10 years, it will invest $250 million in programs that create opportunities in tech and gaming for under-represented communities. Additionally, the company to plans to hire more women and non-binary people. According to Kotick, approximately 23 percent of all employees at Activision Blizzard identify as part of those groups. Its goal is to increase that number by 50 percent to more than one-third across the entire company within the next five years. Kotick also promised the company will share annual reports on progress it makes toward pay equity.

Separately, the executive said he has asked Activision Blizzard’s board of directors to reduce his total compensation to $62,500 per year until it feels like he has met the diversity and safety goals outlined above.

Today’s announcement sees Kotick and Activision Blizzard meeting many of the demands employees put before the company when they began protesting its actions in the wake of California’s sexual harassment lawsuit. When employees first staged a walkout in July, they demanded the end of forced arbitration, greater pay transparency and new hiring policies designed to increase representation across the company. “This is a great start, and there’s still work to do,” said Jessica Gonzalez, one of the employees involved with the A Better ABK advocacy group. “We can lead the charge as an industry standard. Victories and still pushing.”

Google hasn’t given up on Android tablets. Even though, looking at the last few years, it probably should have. I’m (half) joking, but bigger-screened Android devices have felt like an afterthought for a while, as iPads or Windows-powered hybrids cleaned up at the high-end, and cheap devices for families and workplaces offered a mostly smartphone experience with more screen real estate.

Enter Android 12L. It’s designed for bigger screens, including foldables and even laptops. It boils down to a set of new features for the existing OS that are optimized for big screens. While Android can handle a (sort of) multi-window experience, parts of the interface still end up feeling like a blown-up version of a phone OS, rather than something that makes better use of the increased space. One of the things coming to Android 12L is a two-column layout for the notification shade and lockscreen when the system detects that the screen is above 600dps wide. Android is even adding a taskbar which is all very... Chromebook.

-Mat Smith

Intel's hybrid 12th-gen chips are a major strike against AMD

Alder Lake is finally here.

​​We've been hearing about Intel's powerful hybrid processors for so long, but finally the company is ready to launch those chips, previously codenamed "Alder Lake," as its 12th-gen desktop CPUs. And maybe, just maybe, it'll be able to steal the spotlight back from AMD and Apple.

Intel says 12th-gen chips are up to 19 percent faster than 11th-gen overall, and they're twice as fast in the Adobe After Effects Pulse benchmark. When it comes to multithreaded performance (tasks built specifically for more than one core, like video and 3D rendering), the company claims the top-end i9-12900K is 50 percent faster than last year's comparable chip from Intel while using less power. Better still, it can achieve performance parity using only around a quarter of the power. Basically, everyone who held off on upgrading over the last few years could be in for a treat.

The new hybrid core design will make Intel’s new chips look similar to AMD’s big.LITTLE technology found on smartphone CPUs, combining energy-efficient cores for lightweight tasks with heavy-lifting (but more energy-hungry) cores.

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How to use SharePlay on iOS 15.1

Apple's built a lot of tools into its new FaceTime feature.

iOS 15.1 was released yesterday, which means you can finally start checking out Apple's long-awaited SharePlay feature. The feature still only works with a small collection of apps at the moment, but it's coming soon to Disney+, while the NBA and TikTok apps will be updated today to support it. But, er, how do you use it? First step is: update your device.

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Sony Xperia 1 III review

Fine control for camera obsessives

Mat Smith/Engadget

The Xperia 1 III is another Sony phone aimed at camera fans. It sidesteps software processing tricks, popularized by phones like the Pixel series, instead showcasing Sony’s camera smarts in features like focus tracking and fine-grain controls. I put the phone through its paces, and while the gorgeous 4K screen can run at a smooth 120Hz, specs like this come at an almost prohibitive price ($1,300!), making it harder to recommend against the best smartphones from Samsung and Apple.

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Watch the first trailer for Pixar's 'Lightyear'

Buzz’s solo adventure.

Disney

With four movies under its belt, the Toy Story franchise remains the crown jewel in Pixar's portfolio. But after Toy Story 4 seemingly wrapped up Woody's story, the focus is now shifting to Buzz Lightyear. The first trailer for Lightyear has just arrived, and it seems less about ‘toy’ Buzz, and more about the titular character himself.

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The biggest news stories you might have missed

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The all-electric i4 is a no-compromise BMW that happens to be an EV

DJI's Action 2 is small rugged camera with a magnetic mounting system

Pokimane is starting a talent management company for streamers

ESA will try to fetch data from China's Mars rover with a new method: listening

Alienware's redesigned Aurora gaming desktop is now available

Adidas launches three new sets of true wireless earbuds

'Call of Duty: Vanguard' install size maxes out at 93GB on consoles, thankfully

As promised at WWDC earlier this year, Apple today will start letting developers highlight their in-app events on the App Store. You'll need iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 to see the event listings, and they work as you'd expect, allowing you to see seasonal competitions, livestreams and more. It's a pretty straightforward feature, but it's the sort of thing that could encourage more people to install and use their apps. 

Hopefully, developers won't rely on it as a spammy way to rack up engagement. Many mobile gamers would love to know when they can log on for special item drops, for example. And if you encounter a particularly intriguing upcoming event, you can also create a notification or calendar reminder of when it begins. You'll also be able to share events to get your friends on board too.

iOS 15.1 was released yesterday, which means you can finally start checking out Apple's long-awaited SharePlay feature. After seeing how buggy it was on the iOS 15 beta, I was able to check out SharePlay this week during a briefing with Apple, and the experience was surprisingly smooth. Though SharePlay works with just a small collection of apps at the moment, it's also coming soon to Disney+, while the NBA and TikTok apps will be updated today to support it. I watched a few videos and a Milwaukee Bucks game via these apps on my demo, and beyond being impressed by how much more stable everything is since the beta, I also found some tips particularly useful.

Setup and starting a SharePlay session

First, make sure you and your friends all update your devices to iOS 15.1 or iPadOS 15.1. Just like we observed in the beta, you need to start a FaceTime call before you can SharePlay anything. Once you're on a call, open a supported app and you'll see an alert at the top of the screen asking if you want to stream your content. When you start a session, your callers will see a box pop up at the top of the screen to join you. 

For the most part, everyone you're SharePlaying with will need to have the relevant apps installed (i.e. TikTok, HBO Max, Showtime, Paramount, Apple TV etc). In some cases, they'll also need to have a subscription or at least an account. 

While you watch a show together, anyone on the call can pause, skip forward or rewind, and that will bring everyone to the same point on the stream. As you watch something, FaceTime will run in picture-in-picture mode on top of your display, and whoever on your call is talking will appear in that box. 

Share your screen

If you want to share your screen instead of watching a show, though, you'll need to tap on the screen while on your FaceTime call to pull up the commands panel and press the button on the right that resembles a person in front of a rectangle. 

While you're sharing your screen, your friend can pinch to zoom on what you're showing them. But during a screen share session, your alerts (or other notices that pop up) won't appear on their screen, in case there's sensitive info you don't want others seeing. The pill on the top left of your screen will also turn purple to let remind you you're screen-sharing. 

When I was watching someone share their screen, by the way, I could still go back to my own phone and open another app. FaceTime's picture-in-picture tile showed my caller's screen with their face in an embedded picture-in-picture. Inception!

Other features

The controls box also lets you access the iMessage window for everyone on the call. You can continue to watch a game on the NBA app with your family without your camera or mic on, and send texts instead. That's particularly helpful when you need a toilet break when a game runs long.

Apple also built a feature called smart volume to automatically lower the streaming audio when you're speaking so everyone can hear you. This works best with AirPods, but it'll also work with your device's speaker.

Depending on each app's developers, other tools can be embedded to make them more useful. In Apple Music, for example, you can look at the song's lyrics as they play in real time, and tapping on a specific lyric will bring you and your callers to that point in the track. When you're all on TikTok together, each person can like the videos they want, too. The popular game Heads Up will also be coming to SharePlay so you can guess the word on your face while your friends act it out for you. 

SharePlay works with iPhones, iPads and Apple TVs, and most playback features are the same across Apple's ecosystem. Those with Apple Watches will also be able to use this feature for group workouts or meditations on Fitness+ with up to 32 callers. So far, SharePlay works with just a few apps, but as more developers integrate it, iOS users could find more ways to socialize and digitally gather with loved ones soon.

In case there wasn't enough news this week, Google is revealing a new version of Android that's designed for larger screens like tablets and foldables. It's called Android 12L, and is really just a set of new features for the existing OS that are optimized for big screens. The developer preview is available today as an SDK on Google's site so app makers can begin taking in some of the new features that should make for a more cohesive experience on devices with bigger displays. The public version of 12L will arrive early next year, "in time for the next wave of Android 12 tablets and foldables," the company said. The preview will also be "coming soon to the Lenovo P12 Pro."

While Android already supports a sort of multi-window experience, there are still areas of the interface that feel more like a blown up version of a phone OS, rather than something that makes better use of the increased space. One of the things coming to Android 12L is a two-column layout for the notification shade and lockscreen when the system detects that the screen is above 600dps wide. Google said other system surfaces and apps will adopt this look too, though it didn't specify which yet. 

Android 12L will also feature a taskbar at the bottom of larger screens that will let you more easily open apps. This will also simplify the process of launching things in split-screen mode: just drag and drop an icon from the taskbar. Google is also enabling all apps to run in split screen, regardless of whether they are resizable. 

Google

Cosmetically, Google is also adding tools that let developers make their apps look better in various windows or views. They'll be able to use custom letterbox colors or treatments, apply custom rounded corners and adjust the position of inset windows. 

The above features are already available for preview in the developer software, but there are also changes coming that app creators have to apply for users to experience them. Google recommends that developers create versions of their UI tailored to the window size class of each device, and it's added reference devices for programmers to see their layouts across phones, tablets, foldable's larger internal displays and desktops. 

For devices that can fold, Android 12L will offer an API that will allow developers to make their apps aware of hinges or other boundaries, and use them "as natural separators." This means that when supported, you might be able to use an app like Kindle and have it show a two-column layout when your device is folded and expand to fullscreen when you open your phone completely flat.

Google is also adding ways to make adopting this easier for developers with a new Activity embedding tool and other updates in the Jetpack Window Manager library. The interface will be backward-compatible, so those using older versions of Android can still use apps that are optimized for 12L. 

Google

The company is also releasing its Material You design system to Jetpack Compose, so that developers can add the adaptive theming capabilities to their apps. This means that, when supported, third-party apps can also take on the color scheme that Google derived from your wallpaper, and buttons or menu highlight hues can reflect the palette for a more cohesive look throughout Android 12. 

Finally, to give developers a reason (or disincentive) to get their apps optimized for Android 12L, Google is updating the Play Store. It will check each app against its large screen app quality guidelines and take the results into ranking and search listing considerations. It'll go even further by warning people on bigger devices with notices on an app's Play Store page if it's not been optimized for 12L. 

Android has long faced criticism over being a poor OS for tablets and bigger displays, and 12L does appear promising. Google also announced some updates to make it easier for developers to code for WearOS, including offering Jetpack Compose support for the platform. It looks like the company is working hard to improve areas that it's been behind Apple on, and we'll have to see how developers take to these changes to know if Google's tablet, foldable and smartwatch dreams might succeed.

We've been hearing about Intel's powerful hybrid chips for so long, they've achieved almost mythical status. The idea behind them is intriguing: they feature both performance-cores (P-cores) and and efficient-cores (E-cores) on a single die, giving you chips that can be beefy and a bit more power-conscious, depending on the task. Previously, all of Intel's CPU cores were pretty much the same, which led to the energy-hungry designs we've seen over the last few years. 

Now the company is ready to launch those chips, previously codenamed "Alder Lake," as its 12th-gen desktop processors. And maybe, just maybe, it'll be able to steal the spotlight back from AMD and Apple.

In addition to their hybrid configuration, these 12th-gen chips are also the first under the "Intel 7" process technology, which was previously seen as a refined 10nm design. When Intel revised its product roadmap in July with new names, it seemed to just be steering us away from its 7nm delays. But the performance of these 12th-gen chips may be enough to justify the new branding.

Intel

Intel is throwing some major numbers around: it says 12th-gen chips are up to 19 percent faster than 11th-gen CPUs overall, and they're twice as fast in the Adobe After Effects Pulse benchmark. When it comes to multithreaded performance (tasks built specifically for more than one core, like video and 3D rendering), the company claims the top-end i9-12900K is 50 percent faster than last year's 11900K while using less power. And even better, it can achieve performance parity while using only around a quarter of the power. Basically, everyone who held off on upgrading over the last few years is in for a treat, as these chips promise to be a big leap forward.

Intel's 12th-gen Core chips can fit in up to 16 cores on the i9-12900K. That's a combination of 8 P-cores and 8 E-cores, with a total of 24 process threads (every P-core counts double, since they support hyper-threading, but the E-cores don't). Given that this is an entirely new way of designing its chips, the company also worked together to develop a new Thread Director with Microsoft, which intelligently assigns tasks to the appropriate core. That way you don't have to manually assign a background thread to an E-core, or start mucking about your settings once you start working on concurrent tasks. (If the hybrid core design seems familiar, it's because ARM has been pushing something similar for the past decade with its big.LITTLE technology on mobile CPUs.)

Intel

Intel claims P-cores can perform up to 28 percent faster than its 10th-gen Comet Lake S chips in single-threaded performance. The E-cores, meanwhile, are just as fast as the 10th-gen hardware on their own. As you'd expect, these chips shine best when you're throwing serious workloads at them. Intel says the i9-12900K can get around up to 84 percent higher framerates while playing Mount and Blade II and streaming over OBS, compared to the previous generation chip. Similarly, it's 47 percent faster while multi-tasking with Adobe Lightroom Classic and Premiere Pro.

Intel

Intel's figures sound impressive when compared to its own hardware, but the company also noted that its Ryzen benchmarks were run before AMD and Microsoft deployed Windows 11 updates to fix some performance bugs. At the time of its testing, the i9-12900K appeared to have a commanding lead over the Ryzen 5950X in many games, like Troy: A Total War Saga and Grid 2019. But it'll be interested to see what those numbers look like now. And of course, AMD could easily come back with speedier hardware of its own early next year.

The new 12th-gen chips are also looking towards the future, with support for up to 16 lanes of PCIe 5.0 and DDR5-4800 RAM. Intel's new 600-series chipset will feature PCIe 4.0 support, integrated WiFi 6E, and an updated Direct Media Interface (DMI) that'll offer "double and faster bandwidth between the chipset and the processor." There's also support for up to 4 USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 ports, as well as far more USB 3.2 Gen 2 connections in general.

As you'd expect, it'll cost a bit more to jump into Intel's 12th-gen chips. The Core i9-12900K will go for $589, compared to the 11900K's $539 to $549 price range. You could always save $20 or so by getting the "KF" chip without onboard graphics, but in general I'd recommend keeping graphics in case your GPU gets fried. The more approachable Core i7-12700K, thankfully, hasn't budged from its predecessor's $409 price, while the Core i5-12600K is around $20 more than before if you want onboard graphics.

The real question for Intel is how this new hardware stacks up against what AMD and Apple have coming. Benchmark leaks suggest that the i9-12900K is faster than Apple's M1 Max chip, but that's also a power-sipping laptop part. A faster, desktop-focused chip from Apple would likely leave Intel lagging behind again. Still, this uncertainty is a good thing for the PC industry as a whole. Now we've got several companies producing powerful processors. Their attempts to one-up should ultimately be a very good thing for consumers.

At its annual design conference each year, Adobe shows off the new features coming to its range of Creative Cloud apps. The company also has a tradition of previewing experimental tools that may make it to the likes of Photoshop and others. As part of its "sneaks" session today, Adobe will demo Project In-Between: an AI-based tool that creates what the company calls "living photos" from separate still images. 

Using Adobe Sensei AI, the tool makes an animation between two or more photos with a single click. Project In-Between will also let you choose the number of transition frames with a higher number creating faster motion. Once it's done, you can access the in-between frames individually as well. There is a big caveat though: your images have to be similar. For example, you could use an image of a person smiling and one of them not in the same general pose. If the images are too different, the results get weird quickly as the transitions become more like transformations. Adobe says the feature can also be applied to video to create slow-motion clips. 

Adobe sees Project In-Between as a way to make photos you take on your phone more interesting. The company explains that the results of the tool could be posted as GIFs to social channels and various other places. With that in mind, it will be interesting to see if Adobe can bake this technology into a mobile app so that you can do all of the editing on your phone, and keep the results there for easy posting. 

Adobe has shown off dozens of experimental features over the years at its Max event. In fact, the Sneaks portion of the festivities has become so popular, the company schedules a dedicated session entirely devoted to previews of technology that's in development. Of course, not all "sneaks" make the leap to full-on features in Creative Cloud apps. However, some of them do, with Photoshop's powerful Content Aware Fill perhaps being the most famous example, demoed long before "sneaks" became as popular as they are today. 

You can expect to see a demo of Project In-Between and this year's other "sneaks" during an Adobe Max session at 12PM ET today.

Adobe

On top of announcing a Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot and a Doom Eternal update yesterday, Stadia appears to have added support for free game trials starting with its own exclusive title, 9to5Google has reported. Spotted by YouTuber Gem, the feature allows users on the free tier to get access to a 30-minute trial for Hello Engineer, before deciding whether to spend $20 buying it. 

Hello Engineer is a new free game for Pro tier subscribers, but it costs $20 if you're on the free tier. Below buy/claim with Pro options, however, is a a new "Free trial" button that allows for 30 minutes of free play. Once launched, it starts a countdown timer from when you start the trial, rather than active playtime. At the end, Google asks if you'd like to purchase the game while saving your current progress, according to 9to5Google. 

Google has yet to officially mention the new option and there's no word on whether it may expand to other games. You could, of course, trial any game available for free on the Pro tier with Google's 30-minute free trial of Stadia Pro. It would be nice, though, for all users to be able to try any game before deciding to buy it. 

If you're going to buy NFT art, it's important to know that you're buying the real thing — and Adobe thinks it can help. It's updating Photoshop on the desktop with a beta Content Credentials feature that, among other upgrades, helps you establish the authenticity of your NFTs. Once artists link their crypto wallets and social media accounts to Content Credentials, buyers can check that the wallet used to produce artwork is the same wallet that minted it.

Adobe has partnered with a handful of NFT marketplaces to enable the feature, including KnownOrigin, OpenSea, Rarible and SuperRare. There's no mention of whether or not other marketplaces will participate in the future.

Content Credentials can be helpful even if you're uninterested in NFTs. An opt-in Photoshop feature attaches edits and identity info to images, adding transparency and (hopefully) quashing concerns about deception. Adobe Stock assets now include credentials, and they'll be visible in Behance. Adobe also hopes to release an open source developer kit that lets anyone fold Content Credentials into their products, expanding its use well beyond Creative Cloud users.

There's little doubt Adobe wants to become a mainstay of the NFT world with this move. All the same, it could be genuinely important if the technology continues to grow. The value of NFT art is highly dependent on its authenticity. The Photoshop addition could help more artists 'stamp' their projects, not to mention save time.