Depending on who you ask, AI can be mesmerizing, terrifying or some combination of both. But Adobe’s accessibility-focused artificial intelligence is a use case that (I hope) any reasonable person can get behind. The company’s new Auto-Tag API can remove the tedium from making accessibility-friendly PDFs for people with disabilities.

PDFs have built-in metadata providing structural information — headings, paragraphs, lists and tables — in documents for assistive tech like screen readers. But tagging digital documents for compatibility can be time-consuming, especially for those with complex layouts or companies with backlogs of old files lacking the proper metadata. Adobe estimates that over 90 percent of PDFs are at least partially inaccessible for people with disabilities, sometimes “appearing blank, blurry or as lines of distorted text.”

Adobe’s PDF Accessibility Auto-Tag API automates the tagging process. The company says its Sensei-powered software will indicate the correct reading order for assistive technology, saving companies time and — more to the point — making PDFs more readable for people with disabilities. Adobe says the AI can quickly go through stockpiles of old documents lacking the proper structure.

The company is also launching a PDF Accessibility Checker, which will “enable organizations to quickly and easily evaluate the accessibility of existing PDFs at scale.”

In addition to the developer-facing API, Auto-Tag is coming to Acrobat Pro in June, offering automated metadata structuring within the app at no additional cost for all subscribers. The feature will also make its way to Acrobat Reader this fall.

It's no secret that, regardless of skill level, women's sports are broadcast and funded a whole lot less than men's sports. While serious structural shifts are needed to rectify this, small changes are always welcome. In that vein, Roku is launching the Women's Sports Zone, a hub for accessing live matches, alongside content like documentaries and movies that focus on women's sports, all in one place. The streaming platform credits a general spike in interest toward watching women's sports as responsible for the move. 

Roku users can access the Women's Sports Zone in one of two ways, the first being by searching directly for "women's sports" or the name of a team or a league. Otherwise, users on the TV or mobile app can scroll to the sports section to find it. On the TV, the zone will pop up under the "Browse by Sport" category — yes, implying women's sports are one entity versus being just as multifaceted as men's sports, again, small changes. Once inside the zone, there's a breakdown of current games streaming live and upcoming matches with their dates listed. 

The hub's launch is neatly timed to the WNBA season's imminent start, with live broadcasts currently including professional and collegiate basketball, soccer and golf. Supporting channels are responsible for providing each offering, and, according to Roku, additional content will be available in "the coming months." 

It can cost billions of dollars to develop drugs and a large percentage fail at the trial stage, so a number of companies are deploying AI to help in that area. Google's Cloud division is the latest to join that race with two new suites aimed at addressing drug discovery while advancing precision medicine, it announced. 

The Target and Lead Identification Suite aims to help drug companies better understand proteins and amino acids that are key to drug development. Specifically, it's designed to help scientists identify biological targets that researchers can develop treatments around. This could effectively speed up drug discovery and lower costs. 

Early adopters for the suite "include multinational pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and industry-leading biotech companies including Cereval," Google Cloud wrote in a press release. "We are partnering with Google on exploring how AlphaFold2 can potentially accelerate our drug discovery process, speeding up our researchers' ability to conduct their experiments on Google Cloud's scalable, accelerator-optimized compute platform," said Pfizer's principal computational scientist, Nicholas Labello. 

Meanwhile, the Multiomics Suite is designed to tackle genomic data analysis. The idea is to find out how genetic variations affect disease in order to create appropriate and even personalized treatments. Genomic databases tend to be enormous, so the suite would give researchers fast access to the appropriate data, helping accelerate treatments. 

"We would not be anywhere near where we are today" without the tool, Colossal Biosciences CEO Ben Lamm told CNBC. That company has been an early adopter of Multiomics, and Lamm said it would have been a "massive burden" for Colossal to try to build something similar itself. 

Samsung and LG have a long-running rivalry, both Korean corporations, both make TVs, speakers, freezers, toothpaste (maybe?) and the rest. It’s a frosty relationship, with many trade shows revealing new TV products from both companies with nigh-on identical specifications and sizes. So it’s a bit of a shock to hear from Reuters​ that Samsung has inked a deal with LG to buy its white OLED (WOLED) TV panels.

The plan, according to the report, is for LG Display to supply two million panels next year, then three million and five million, respectively in 2025 and 2026. These high-end white OLED panels would be 77 and 83 inches, so they’re likely to be in Samsung’s most premium TVs.

Samsung could do with the OLED help: It has 6.1 percent of the OLED TV market, according to market research firm Omdia. LG Display's sibling LG Electronics is out in front with a 54.6 percent market share, while Sony has 26.1 percent. For the record, Sony also uses LG parts.

– Mat Smith

The Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.

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Apple's Assistive Access simplifies iOS 16 for people with cognitive disabilities

It also introduced new speech and vision accessibility features.

Apple

With Global Accessibility Awareness Day just days away, Apple has detailed a raft of new iOS features for cognitive accessibility. These include Live Speech, Personal Voice and more. ​​The biggest update is Assistive Access, designed to support users with cognitive disabilities. Essentially, it provides a custom, simplified experience for the phone, FaceTime, Messages, Camera, Photos and Music apps. That includes a "distinct interface with high contrast buttons and large text labels."

Continue reading.

A third former Apple employee has been charged with stealing self-driving car tech

'Large quantities' of Apple data was found at his home.

A federal court in the Northern District of California has unsealed charges against Weibao Wang, a former Apple software engineer. Wang started working at the company in 2016, developing hardware and software for autonomous systems — technology that could conceivably wind up in self-driving cars.

According to the indictment, in November 2017, Wang accepted a job with a US subsidiary of a Chinese company that was developing self-driving cars but waited more than four months to tell Apple he was quitting. After Wang left Apple in April 2018, the company found he "accessed large amounts of sensitive proprietary and confidential information" in the lead up to his departure, the Department of Justice said.

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YouTube’s recommendations are leading kids to gun videos, report says

Researchers posing as nine-year-olds were flooded with gun-related content.

YouTube’s recommendations are leading young kids to videos about school shootings and other gun-related content. According to the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), a nonprofit watchdog, YouTube’s recommendation algorithm is “pushing boys interested in video games to scenes of school shootings, instructions on how to use and modify weapons” and other gun-centric content. As the report notes, several of the recommended videos appeared to violate YouTube’s own policies. Recommendations included videos of a young girl firing a gun and tutorials on converting handguns into “fully automatic” weapons and other modifications. Some of these videos were even monetized with ads.

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The best SSD for your PS5

And a step-by-step guide on how to upgrade.

Engadget

Has that Horizon: Forbidden West DLC put you at your PS5 storage limits? Need space for Final Fantasy XVI this summer? We’ve got you covered. Here are the best SSD expansion options – and how to install them. Yep, it’s a little more complicated than a plug-in USB drive.

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Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has failed to convince the court to let her stay out of prison while she's appealing her 11-year sentence. According to The Wall Street Journal, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said Holmes' appeal doesn't raise legal issues or questions that could impact the outcome of the case. Further, even if it does raise questions, they still wouldn't be enough to overturn her fraud conviction. 

Holmes had asked the court to pause her sentence a couple of days before she was supposed to report to prison on April 27th, with her lawyers arguing that she wasn't a flight risk. The appeals court delayed her reporting date while it considered her request, but it has ultimately decided that she has to start serving her sentence. A district court that previously denied the same request from her camp recommended that she serve her time at a Bryan, Texas federal prison camp, which allows family visitations. The appeals court will now decide on a new reporting date for the former executive. 

In addition to her request being denied, Holmes and former Theranos CEO Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani have also been ordered to pay $452 million in restitution to the blood startup's investors. If you'll recall, Theranos promised to revolutionize healthcare with a technology that could diagnose hundreds of diseases with just a few drops of blood. It soon came out, however, that its technology didn't work and that it was using traditional machines modified to use lesser amounts of blood to run its tests. Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of News Corp, will get the biggest share at $125 milli. Meanwhile, Walgreens, which was once Theranos' biggest partner and even provided tests in its drugstores, is getting $40 million. 

Immersion Corporation has been suing companies over its rumble haptic technology since at least (checks archives) 2004, and now it has a new company in its sights. Immersion has accused Valve of infringing its patents with the Steam Deck handheld, the Valve Index VR platform, Steam VR software and games including Half-Life: Alyx, The Verge has reported.

Immersion wants an injunction against Valve "from deploying, operating, maintaining, testing and using the Accused Handheld Instrumentalities and Accused VR Instrumentalities," it stated in some fine legalese, and is asking for damages and royalties as well. It cited seven specific patents dating from 2002 to 2016.

If Valve wants to fight this, they've got a mountain of precedent to overcome. Both Sony and Microsoft ended up licensing Immersion's patents after settling lawsuits, and Apple, Google, Motorola and Fitbit did the same. Nintendo and Sony use a different form of rumble tech, but both elected to license Immersion's patents. Valve uses the same type of rumble tech as Nintendo and Sony.

It appears that Immersion didn't sue Valve for its Steam Controller, which was killed back in 2019. The Steam Deck appears to be a much bigger success in terms of sales, however, and has generally been a hit with both critics and gamers.

Tesla is known for being ad-averse and hasn't really ran traditional advertising since it launched in the early 2000's, choosing to rely on word of mouth to promote its vehicles instead. Now things could change for the automaker. During the company's latest shareholder meeting, Tesla chief Elon Musk replied to an audience question regarding advertising with: "We will try a little advertising and see how it goes." Apparently, the executive changed his mind about advertising after acquiring Twitter, which makes most of its money from ads. 

"It's indeed ironic that Twitter is highly dependent on advertising. Here I am, never used advertising really before, and now I have a company that’s highly dependent on advertising. So, I guess I should say advertising is awesome, and everyone should do it." That's a total reversal from the executive's previous stance. He said a few years ago that he hated advertising and that Tesla uses money other automakers set aside for ads and endorsements "to make the product great."

In his response during the shareholder meeting, Musk said Tesla vehicles have functionalities and features that most people don't know about. The company does post them on its Twitter account, but he acknowledges that doing so is like preaching to the choir. In a follow-up interview with CNBC, he said ads could be "informative and entertaining" so that they're more content than typical advertisements. He suggested that future Tesla ads could take on that format and highlight its vehicles' lesser-known features. 

Musk has also teased two new EVs during the shareholder meeting, where he said that the vehicles' design and manufacturing techniques "are head and shoulders above anything else that is present in the industry." He said that the company is already in the process of "building a new product," which could mean that Tesla is already working on a prototype for at least one of the EVs.

YouTube’s recommendations are leading young kids to videos about school shootings and other gun-related content, according to a new report. According to the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), a nonprofit watchdog group, YouTube’s recommendation algorithm is “pushing boys interested in video games to scenes of school shootings, instructions on how to use and modify weapons” and other gun-centric content. 

The researchers behind the report set up four new YouTube accounts posing as two 9-year-old boys and two 14-year-old boys. All accounts watched playlists of content about popular video games, like Roblox, Lego Star Wars, Halo and Grand Theft Auto. The researchers then tracked the accounts’ recommendations during a 30-day period last November.

“The study found that YouTube pushed content on shootings and weapons to all of the gamer accounts, but at a much higher volume to the users who clicked on the YouTube-recommended videos,” the TTP writes. “These videos included scenes depicting school shootings and other mass shooting events; graphic demonstrations of how much damage guns can inflict on a human body; and how-to guides for converting a handgun to a fully automatic weapon.”

As the report notes, several of the recommended videos appeared to violate YouTube’s own policies. Recommendations included videos of a young girl firing a gun and tutorials on converting handguns into “fully automatic” weapons and other modifications. Some of these videos were also monetized with ads.

In a statement, a YouTube spokesperson pointed to the YouTube Kids app and its in-app supervision tools, which “create a safer experience for tweens and teens” on its platform.

“We welcome research on our recommendations, and we’re exploring more ways to bring in academic researchers to study our systems,” the spokesperson said. “But in reviewing this report’s methodology, it’s difficult for us to draw strong conclusions. For example, the study doesn’t provide context of how many overall videos were recommended to the test accounts, and also doesn’t give insight into how the test accounts were set up, including whether YouTube’s Supervised Experiences tools were applied.”

The TTP report is far from the first time researchers have raised questions about YouTube’s recommendation algorithm. The company has also spent years working to reduce so-called “borderline” content — videos that don't break its rules outright but may otherwise be unsuitable for mass distribution — from appearing in recommendations. And last year, the company said it was considering disabling sharing altogether on some such content.

At long last, you can respond to posts on Instagram with GIFs. Company head Adam Mosseri announced the feature addition in his recent Instagram Channels chat with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “This is a bit of ‘finally feature,’ but we’re launching GIFs in comments today,” Mosseri told his boss.

The feature, as you would expect, allows you to comment on a post, or something someone else said, with a GIF from Giphy. That’s the same Giphy the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority ordered Meta to sell last year. Mosseri said Instagram is also testing lyrics in Reels. The feature appears to build on the auto-caption sticker Meta introduced back in 2021. Judging from the screenshot Mosseri shared, a timeline at the bottom of the interface will make for user to sync the captions properly. So there you have it, you can finally comment on a post with a GIF. Maybe this means Instagram will finally get around to making a dedicated iPad app at some point.

Blizzard has revealed the Overwatch 2 roadmap for the rest of 2023, including details on when the first story missions are coming to the game. They'll be available in season six, which should start in mid-August.

Story missions are part of the long-awaited co-op side of the game. When Blizzard released Overwatch 2 last October, the player vs. environment (PvE) aspects of the game that it first showed off at BlizzCon in 2019 were not available. That's because the team needed more time to work on the PvE modes. 

The studio didn't want to keep fans waiting much longer for an overhaul of the traditional, competitive (or PvP) side of Overwatch 2 after what was effectively a two-year content drought. So, Blizzard split development of the two halves so it could get the sequel out faster. There have been PvE experiences in Overwatch 2, but so far they've been constrained to limited-time events.

It's worth noting that this won't be the full PvE vision that Blizzard laid out almost four years ago. "Development on the PvE experience really hasn't made the progress that we would have hoped," Overwatch 2 executive producer Jared Neuss said. The team had created "a bunch of amazing content," including "ridiculous" gameplay augmentations for heroes. "Unfortunately, the effort required to pull all of that together into a Blizzard-quality experience that we can ship to you is huge," Neuss said. "With everything we've learned about what it takes to operate this game at the level you deserve, it's clear that we can't deliver on that original vision for PvE."

Hero missions have been cut in order to not pull too many resources away from the live game, which is the priority for Blizzard. As such, talent trees, an RPG-style feature of hero missions that would have enabled players to customize hero abilities, have been scrapped. 

That's not to say there aren't intriguing PvE features coming. A single-player version of a PvE experience with a leaderboard is in the works. A ton of co-op features are planned and Blizzard will continue to add content on a frequent basis, including more story missions.

Before the story missions debut in a few months, there's a whole new season in between. Season five will arrive in June with what appears to be a fantasy theme. Fans can expect a new limited-time event called Questwatch, a new cinematic, the Summer Games event and updates for the Workshop mode, in which players can create custom games. The On Fire system, which lets everyone in a match see when certain players are performing especially well, will return in season five too.

Story missions aren't the only big change on the docket for season six. The developers say this season will mark the biggest update since launch. Blizzard will add another support hero, a firing range and an overhauled player progression system. The Anniversary event will return as well. Perhaps most intriguingly, there will be a new map type for the PvP modes called Flashpoint, which will debut with two new maps.

There will be a bigger focus on building out the story of Overwatch 2 as well. For one thing, seasons will be named and, with the help of in-game cinematics, season six will "push the narrative arc of Overwatch forward for the first time since the original game release."

Looking ahead to season seven and beyond, Blizzard is promising reworks for Sombra (yes, another one) and Roadhog. Also in the pipeline are another collaboration following the One-Punch Man crossover, a fresh tank hero, a control map, a winter event, a lore database and, most excitingly for me, the return of competitive Mystery Heroes.