Back in May, Google announced it was working on a feature called “about this image” that gives users verified data regarding any photo on the internet. Well, it just rolled out as part of search, so you won’t be able to get away with passing off somebody else’s photo of a 1988 Burger King Alf plushie as your own.

Here’s how it works. Just use Google Search, select an image and click on the three dots on the right-hand corner to access the tool. You’ll receive a whole gob of useful information, including when the image was originally published, if it’s been published since then and where it’s popped up throughout the years. A veritable cornucopia of metadata.

Google

The obvious use case scenario for this is verifying whether or not an image used to accompany a news event is legit, or if it’s been taken out of context from something that happened in 2007 to drum up misinformation. To that end, the tool also shows you how other sites use and describe the image, similar to how search already handles factual information via the “perspectives” filter and the “about this result” tab. Google says you can also access the feature by clicking on the “more about this page” link, with more options to come.

Of course, there’s a little thing sweeping the world right now called artificial intelligence. The images generated by AI platforms can be tough to distinguish from the genuine article, so Google’s tool also lets you know if an image has been AI-generated or not. However, this depends on the metadata including this information, so the original image creators would have to opt-in. Google says its own AI-generated images will always feature the appropriate metadata.

That’s not the only tool Google’s rolling out to provide increased nuance for image searches. Fact Check Explorer, a handy app for journalists, will soon expand to include images. As for non-image based searches, the tech giant also announced software that creates AI-generated descriptions of websites, helping users research lesser-known entities.

Motorola showcased some wacky concepts at Lenovo Tech World ’23 that may or may not ever see the light of day. The smartphone maker (a subsidiary of Lenovo since 2014) unveiled an “adaptive display” prototype that can be rolled into a phone, stand or smart bracelet. (It looks like a more advanced version of a prototype Lenovo exhibited in 2016.) In addition, the company highlighted several developmental AI-powered features for the Lenovo devices you can already buy.

The display concept is a rollable smartphone with an FHD+ pOLED display. The prototype “can be bent and shaped into different forms depending on users’ needs,” the company wrote in its announcement blog post. The device can stretch out entirely flat to use as a traditional smartphone, or you could bend it partway to sit on a desk (similar to foldable phones). You can even wrap the concept device partway around your wrist as it transforms into something akin to a smart slap bracelet.

Motorola / Lenovo

The conceptual prototype has a 6.9-inch display and runs “a full Android experience, just like any smartphone” (well, except for iPhones). When upright in a stand mode, it switches to a compact form of Android on a 4.6-inch section of its display.

As fun as it can be to gawk at futuristic concepts, we wouldn’t recommend holding your breath for this gadget to become an available consumer product anytime soon. However, Lenovo has repeatedly proven that it isn’t afraid to go zany with shipping consumer products, so who knows?

In addition to its flexible prototype, Motorola also introduced several AI-powered concepts since that’s what corporations do in 2023. The company is tapping into generative AI’s powers to supply the people with… better wallpaper?

Motorola / Lenovo

“With this concept, users can upload or capture a picture of their outfit to produce multiple unique AI-generated images that reflect their style,” the company wrote. You can then transform those AI-made images into a custom wallpaper for your device. A video the company published on its blog post shows a person taking a selfie of an outfit (using the rollable display device, of course), which the software then turns into a variety of wallpaper options for the bendy phone.

The company also announced that it’s working on a personal voice / text assistant for PCs and smartphones that runs on a large language model (LLM). Dubbed MotoAI, the company says the assistant could “answer questions, draft messages, schedule tasks, and so much more.” MotoAI would emphasize privacy, processing data and running tasks locally rather than in the cloud. The company says the tool could uniquely personalize your device as it learns more about you, becoming more useful over time.

Motorola also tackled document scanning, teasing a feature that can minimize wrinkles and shadows when scanning physical images or documents with a phone’s camera. “This innovation aims to improve final image quality by minimizing wrinkles and shadows to ensure documents or images appear as crisp and clear as possible,” the company wrote.

YouTube’s rolling out a whole bunch of new features and design updates, three dozen in total. Some of these tools are for the web app, while others are for the smartphone app and smart TV software. These features aren’t game-changers by themselves, but they add up to an improved user experience. Let’s go over some of the more interesting ones.

It’s now easier to speed up videos for those who just can’t get enough of really fast podcast clips. Just hold your finger down on the video and it’ll automatically bump up the playback speed to 2x. This feature is also useful for searching through a video for a relevant portion, in addition to fast-paced playback. The tool’s available across web, tablets and mobile devices.

The app’s launching bigger preview thumbnails to help with navigation. There’s also a new haptic feedback component that vibrates when you hover over the original start point, so you never lose your place. This will help when perusing videos with your finger on a smartphone or tablet, as the current way to do this isn’t exactly accurate.

One of the more useful updates here is a new lock screen tool to avoid accidental interruptions while you watch stuff on your phone or tablet. This should be extremely handy for those who like to take walks or exercise while listening to YouTube, as the jostling typically interrupts whatever’s on-screen. In other words, your quiet meditation video won’t accidentally switch to some guy yelling about the end of masculinity as your phone sits in a pocket, purse or handbag.

Speaking of guys yelling about the end of masculinity, the company’s finally (finally) added a stable volume feature, which ensures that the relative loudness of videos don’t fluctuate too much. This tool’s automatically turned on once you snag the update.

Even the humble library tab has gotten a refresh. It’s now called “You” and relays a bit more data than before. You’ll have access to previously watched videos, playlists, downloads and purchase all from one place. Again, this change impacts the app on both web and mobile devices. 

The rest of the updates are design related, with on-screen visual cues that appear when creators ask you to subscribe complete with dopamine-enhancing sparkles when you finally “smash that like button.” There’s even a new animation that follows the view count and like count throughout a video’s first 24 hours. Some design elements extend to the smart TV app, including a new vertical menu, video chapters, a scrollable description section and more.

YouTube’s latest update is a tiered release and the company says it could be a few weeks before it reaches every user throughout the globe. The popular streaming platform says more features are forthcoming, including a redesign of the YouTube Kids app.

YouTube’s constantly changing up its core features. The past year has seen an enhanced 1080p playback option for web users and the company's even announced a spate of AI-enhanced creator tools, among other updates. Evolve or die right? The social media landscape, after all, is currently in the midst of something of a sea change.

We’re not quite done with the busy fall season of tech events. It’s Baidu’s turn to reveal what it has been cooking up. The company will host its Baidu World showcase on October 16th at 10PM ET.

After several years of holding the event entirely virtually, Baidu is returning to an in-person format with "real-world demos and experiences" for the first time since 2019. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the direction almost every major tech company has gone in recent times, there will be a significant focus on artificial intelligence.

Baidu says it will discuss “a range of AI-native applications and the latest advances in foundation models.” That suggests we’ll learn more about what’s next for ERNIE Bot, its large language model and generative AI chatbot. The company may also have more to share about the impact of artificial intelligence on its self-driving initiatives.

The two-hour event will open with a keynote address from Baidu co-founder and CEO Robin Li. You can watch a live stream of Baidu World 2023 below.

Threads is now rolling out a pair of useful updates as Meta tries to give the app some more momentum. One of the new features is an edit button, which will help folks avoid having to repost something when they want to correct a mistake.

X (formerly Twitter) took 16 years to add an edit button, and then it placed it behind the Twitter Blue/X Premium paywall. Threads took just over three months to introduce a similar option, which is free to all users and will be available on mobile and the web.

After you post something on Threads, you'll have five minutes to edit it, as 9to5Google points out. That's a reasonable enough timeframe (X users have up to an hour to tweak their tweets). On the downside, Threads doesn't show the edit history for a post. That's bad for transparency, especially if someone significantly changes the substance of a post that gains traction very quickly.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also noted that Threads is adding the option to post voice clips. That's another welcome update, especially for those who prefer speaking to typing (or using voice-to-text features). Meanwhile, it appears that Threads is working on a trending topics feature.

Back in the olden days of last December, we had to go to specialized websites to have our natural language prompts transformed into generated AI art, but no longer! Google announced Thursday that users who have opted-in for its Search Generative Experience (SGE) will be able to create AI images directly from the standard Search bar.

SGE is Google’s vision for our web searching future. Rather than picking websites from a returned list, the system will synthesize a (reasonably) coherent response to the user’s natural language prompt using the same data that the list’s links led to. Thursday’s updates are a natural expansion of that experience, simply returning generated images (using the company’s Imagen text-to-picture AI) instead of generated text. Users type in a description of what they’re looking for (a Capybara cooking breakfast, in Google’s example) and, within moments, the engine will create four alternatives to pick from and refine further. Users will also be able to export their generated images to Drive or share them via email.

Google

What’s more, users will be able to generate images directly in Google Images. So, if you’re looking for (again, Google’s example) “minimalist halloween table settings” or “spooky dog house ideas,” you’ll be able to type that into the search bar and have Google generate an image based on it. What’s really cool is that you can then turn Google Lens on that generated image to search for actual, real-world products that most closely resemble what the computer hallucinated for you. 

There are, of course, a number of limitations built into the new features. You’ll have to be signed up for Google Labs and have opted-in to the SGE program to use any of this. Additionally, the new image generation functions will be available only within the US, in English-language applications and for users over the age of 18. That last requirement is a just bit odd given that Google did just go out of its way to make the program accessible to teens.

The company is also expanding its efforts to rein in the misuse of generative AI technology. Users will be blocked from creating photorealistic images of human faces. You want a photorealistic capybara cooking bacon, that’s no problem. You want a photorealistic Colonel Sanders cooking bacon, you’re going to run into issues and not just in terms of advertising canon. You’ll also be prevented from generating images of “notable” people, so I guess Colonel Sanders is out either way. 

Finally, Google is implementing the SynthID system developed by DeepMind announced last month. SythID is a visually undetectable metadata watermark that denotes a generated image as such, as well as provides information on who, or what, created it and when. The new features will be available through the Labs tab (click the flask icon) in the Google app on iOS and Android, and on Chrome desktop to select users today and expanding to more in the coming weeks.

With Roku facing increased competition from rivals, especially Google, the company has just unveiled its latest OS 12.5 update with a raft of new features. Those include expanded sports content with favoriting and highlights, enhancements to the live TV channel guide, music playlists, expert picture settings and more. 

A feature that'll be high on the list for videophiles is "Expert Picture Setting." That lets users customize key pictures settings like color temperature, color space, gamma correction and noise reduction, adding to the current, more basic picture settings already available. This feature is already available on the mobile app, but it's now debuting for TVs. 

Roku is also expanding what you can do with sports. It'll offer expanded content including motorsports coming in early 2024 and new content from Max "in the coming weeks." It's also introducing favoriting, letting users track live and upcoming events by adding teams to a curated "My Favorites" row by clicking the favorite button on the game page. It's also launching highlights, letting users catch key moments they may have missed or want to relive. 

Roku

The OS update is making it easier to find live TV shows among the 400+ channels as well, letting you personalize the order of channels in the Guide and remove channel numbers. It's also introducing "What to Watch Categories" that let you browse by TV Shows, Movies, New & Popular, Free and more, along with "Experiences" related to a genre or topic like food or home. The update will also bring Visual Search to the Roku mobile app, "in a more visual and immersive way." The company is also launching Music Playlists, adding more than 250 video playlists from partners including Stingray, Vevo and Warner Music Group.

Away from the entertainment side, Roku is also introduce smart home features, including "Event History" that shows Camera subscription users a history of who was at their front door, along with Notifications that will tell you if a package has arrived, for example. Finally, the new app now supports Google Photos, making it easier to do slideshows for friends more easily. Roku OS 12.5 will roll out to customers in the coming weeks, but some of the features may take awhile to arrive after that. 

On the outskirts of London’s Olympic Village, a crowd has formed. All are staring at Bo’s first production e-scooter, the Bo M. Company CEO Oscar Morgan is peppered with questions about range, speed, price and if he’ll give a freebie to a tween whose nickname is Bo. All of this is taking place while I’m trying to photograph the new model, but I can’t blame them for getting in my way. After all, this sublime e-scooter of the future can’t help but turn heads.

Bo was co-founded by Morgan, Harry Wills and Luke Robus – the first two met as engineers for the Williams F1 team. They worked on a number of other brands’ EVs and scooters before striking out on their own to build something better with Robus, a Jaguar Land Rover designer. All three bring an automotive sensibility to the company, and a desire to build a scooter a generation or two beyond the state of the art. Less a toy, (or a niche tool) but a vehicle, engineered so well that e-scooters’ widely known and accepted flaws were polished away.

I first rode the prototype a year ago and was blown away by how much better than every other scooter it was. The team has spent years developing technologies to improve and maintain its balance, and while the motor is powerful it’s not aggressive. And then there are the refinements like the centrally-mounted load hook that ensures you can carry a bag without harming stability. (It pulls double duty as a mounting point, should you need to securely lock your scooter when you’re out and about.) While it lacks active suspension, the deck has 11mm of elastomer foam to act as a shock absorber, evening out the bumps in the road.

Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget

The Bo M looks unlike anything else on the market, with a thick, high-strength aluminum body that seamlessly curves into its deck. Removing the ability to fold down the neck means it’s harder to stow and transport, but provides more space to craft a thicker monocoque body. Morgan mentions, several times, that Bo M is more a vehicle you can park outside your home like a car; a secure solar charging dock for your driveway is already in the works.

Compared to the prototype, the new Bo M has a thicker cowl and a taller, longer deck, but not by a lot. Its unique silhouette remains unchanged and it’s only when you look at the prototype and its successor side-by-side that you can spot the few millimeters of added heft. Inside, however, there have been so many internal changes and refinements over the last year that it’s effectively a new machine.

For instance, during an intense period of user testing in Bo’s Bristol base, the team noticed users dropped their scooters off the sidewalk and onto the road. The edge of the curb was banging against the underside of the monocoque, so the whole body was redesigned to be less prone to grind against the concrete and better able to take the stress.

Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget

The rest of the spec list has been re-written as well, with more powerful motors now with a peak power of 1,200W and a rated top power of 500W, the legal limit. The Bo M has a top speed of 35 kph, or around 22mph, more than enough for an e-scooter you’re going to be primarily using on your commute. Nestled in the deck is a bigger, 655Wh battery from LG Chem with the promise of 31 miles or so worth of range. Given the innumerable horror stories about hoverboards and scooters catching fire, Morgan spared no expense to avoid the risk. There are bigger wheels, now with 10-inch pneumatic tyres, more refined brakes – including the regenerative e-brake – a better throttle controller and a more refined version of Safesteer.

And as for Safesteer, Morgan and Wills were naturally cagey to go into too much detail about how it worked during my first test ride. But now, with the machine so close to launch, Morgan explained that it uses a series of opposing torsion springs to keep the hardware vertical in spite of what a rider might do. I’ve even inadvertently put this to the test: I hit a fairly massive rock and the scooter’s refusal to tip to the side helped me avoid an accident.

The one downgrade has been the death of the electrically-powered load hook that was shown in plenty of the initial concept videos. Instead, much like recessed door handles, you’ll need to flip the lock out from its position hidden in the cowl by pressing on one end. As much as the power version was cool, the beefy hinge actually helps give you the confidence that this thing won’t be easily separated from the hardware should an enterprising thief try to make off with it.

Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget

Bo was meant to launch at the start of 2023, and there are two reasons why it’s taken so much longer to reach users. Part of that was the usual vagaries of product development, but more so, the UK’s failure to implement a proper framework to make private e-scooter use legal. Morgan was reluctant to talk about the issue given the political sensitivities at play, but the issue clearly frustrates the country’s sizable e-scooter industry.

At present, private ownership of an e-scooter is legal, but it’s illegal to ride one on public roads. The only exception are sharing scheme scooters, which were authorized as part of a trial in a number of locations. Consequently, the UK micromobility industry hangs in limbo, issuing pleas to the country’s lame-duck government to ask for some sort of action. If nothing happens before May 2024, then even those trial operators will be required to shut up shop, too.

The extra development time has enabled the team to ensure the unit is as repairable as possible. Morgan didn’t outline specifics, but said plenty of components will be easy enough for a user to fix. It’s likely the battery and drivetrain won’t be part of that, with users instead expected to return their scooter to a trained technician for service. But Morgan outlined a vision in which users would keep hold of their Bo for tens of thousands of miles, with regular services to ensure things remained perfectly operational.

Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget

A few weeks after our jaunt around London, Morgan arrived with the Bo M at my home, 110 miles north east in Norwich. We’d been speaking about my usual testing environment for mobility gear, including a hill with a 12-degree incline on one side, and a 22 degree climb on the other. On a particularly damp Thursday morning, we took the Bo M on one of my usual test runs to see if it could cover terrain that plenty of other units have failed on. To my surprise, not only did the Bo M make it up the 22 degree climb, it did so without breaking a sweat despite the fact that I’m actually heavier than the company’s specified maximum rider weight.

I’m rarely prone to evangelizing, but even before all of Bo’s refinements, I was already of the belief that Bo was category-defining. It is, I think, the first e-scooter I could see myself buying and using on a daily basis, because it’s easy and convenient and safe.

The Bo M is the first in a series of Bo scooters that will be released across the next few years, and the company has already started dropping hints about what’s to come. But, for now, the focus is on the Bo M which has entered production from today, with the earliest pre-order customers due to take ownership of their units towards the end of the year. It will then open up to general customer orders in February 2024, with the UK being the first territory available. Not long after that, however, the Bo M will be available to buy in the US, where there has already been a massive spike in interest for the scooter.

From the start, the Bo team was clear that its first products would be sold as high-end products at the top of what people might expect to pay. Brace yourself, then, when you learn that the Bo M will cost £2,249 (around $2,754) and, while I’m often the first to balk at how much stuff costs, that feels pretty reasonable. If you’re currently paying to get to work and back each day, then it’s likely that the Bo will pay itself off in a year or two, not to mention the fact that you’re driving the most advanced e-scooter on the market. And, as I said before, it can’t help but turn heads.

ChatGPT is getting some significant updates that will enable the chatbot to deal with voice commands and image-based queries. Users will be able to have a voice conversation with ChatGPT on Android and iOS and to feed images into it on all platforms. OpenAI is rolling out the features now. They'll be available to Plus and Enterprise users at first, with other folks gaining access to the image-based features later.

You'll need to opt in to voice conversations in the ChatGPT app (go to Settings then New Features) if you'd like to try them out. By tapping the microphone button, you'll be able to choose from five different voices.

OpenAI says the back-and-forth voice conversations are powered by a new text-to-speech model that can generate "human-like audio from just text and a few seconds of sample speech." It created the five voices with the help of professional actors. Going the other way, the company's Whisper speech recognition system converts a user's spoken words into text.

The image-based functions are intriguing too. OpenAI says you can, for instance, show the chatbot a photo of your grill and ask why it won't start, get it to help plan a meal based on a snap of what's in your fridge or prompt it to solve a math problem you take a picture of. As it happens, Microsoft highlighted the Copilot AI's ability to solve math problems in Windows during its Surface event last week.

OpenAI is using GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 to power the image recognition features. To use ChatGPT's image-based functions, tap the photo button (you'll need to tap the plus button first on iOS or Android) to take a snap or choose an existing image on your device. You can ask ChatGPT about multiple photos and use a drawing tool to focus on a specific part of the image.

In a blog post announcing the updates, OpenAI noted the potential for harm. It's possible for bad actors to mimic the voices of public figures (and everyday folks) and perhaps commit fraud. That's why OpenAI is focusing on ChatGPT voice conversations with this technology and working with select partners on other limited use cases (more on that in a moment).

As for images, OpenAI worked with Be My Eyes, a free app that blind and low-vision people can use to help them better understand their surroundings thanks to volunteers who hop into video calls with them. "Users have told us they find it valuable to have general conversations about images that happen to contain people in the background, like if someone appears on TV while you’re trying to figure out your remote control settings," OpenAI said. The company noted that it has also limited how ChatGPT can analyze and make direct statements about people that appear in images, "since ChatGPT is not always accurate and these systems should respect individuals’ privacy." It has published a paper on the safety properties of the image-based functionality, which it calls GPT-4 with vision.

ChatGPT is more effective at understanding English text in images than other languages. OpenAI says the chatbot "performs poorly" in other languages for the time being, particularly when it comes to those that use non-Roman scripts. As such, it suggests that non-English users avoid using ChatGPT to deal with text in images for now.

Meanwhile, Spotify has teamed up with OpenAI to use the voice-based technology for an interesting purpose. The former has announced a pilot of a tool called Voice Translation for podcasters. This can translate podcasts into different languages using the voices of the folks who appear on the show. Spotify says the tool can retain the speech characteristics of the original speaker after converting their voice into other languages.

To start with, Spotify is converting select English-based shows into a few languages. Spanish versions of some Armchair Expert and The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett episodes are available now, with French and German variants to follow.

1Password, the popular password manager, is finally rolling out support for passkeys, the company announced in a blog post on Wednesday. The login technology, which does not require links or two-factor authentication codes, has been available to 1Password users in beta form since June.

To use passkeys on a desktop device, you’ll need to download the 1Password extension, which works with Chrome and Safari, as well as some less popular browsers like LinuEdge and Brave. Firefox is still not supported, unfortunately, though the company said in its blog post that it’s “coming soon.”

When it comes to mobile compatibility, 1Password users can enable passkeys on an iPhone or iPad so long as the device is running iOS 17 or iPadOS 17. Google is still working on making passkey available on Android 14 and via APIs, 1Password explained in its blog post, although it’s unclear how soon Google will be ready to roll this out.

As The Verge notes, this update does not include the ability to replace your account’s master password with a passkey, even though 1Password has been saying since February that this feature is in the works. However, you can find out which third-party sites support the protocol by scanning through this public directory. Some popular platforms that are compatible with the login tech include Adobe, Amazon, Nintendo, PayPal, and Okta, just to name a few.

An individual 1Password subscription, which starts at $3 a month, gives you access on all of your devices with 1GB of storage. If you have multiple users or up to five relatives who will share a plan, you can opt for a family subscription for $5 a month. Additionally, as part of its official rollout, 1Password is allowing business clients using the 1Password Business version to manage when their team members can start saving and using the tool. This feature, which is part of the $8-a-month business subscription, can be controlled in the policies tab from within the platform’s settings menu.