Big changes are coming to the Peloton app. As of today, the software offers three different standalone subscription tiers. To start, there’s a new free option, with no credit card required, that comes with access to more than 50 classes – though live workouts are off the table. It joins Peloton’s existing service, which will be known as App One. For $13 per month, App One grants you access to nine of Peloton’s 16 “modalities,” meaning you can watch the company’s pilates, yoga and outdoor running classes. However, the tier limits you to just three equipment-based cycling, treadmill and rowing classes per month, with scenic and lanebreak variants excluded. For unlimited access to those, you will need to pay for Peloton’s new App+ subscription, which costs $24 per month.

Effectively, the change means those who used the Peloton App to enjoy the company’s cycling and treadmill on their non-Peloton equipment will need to pay more to keep doing that. If you’re a current annual subscriber, you will continue to have access to all of the classes Peloton offers through its app until your membership renews. At that point, you will need to decide if you want to upgrade to the App+. Even with today’s change, it’s worth noting the Peloton App won’t replace the company’s equipment subscription, which will you will still need to access its classes on your Bike, Tread or Row machine.

Separately, Peloton is adding tutorials for strength training. The company says the app’s new “Gym” component features “self-paced, whiteboard-style” classes for those who prefer exercising outside of their home. The service will be available in the coming days, with the new App+ tier launching in the US, Canada, Australia, German and UK.

Unlike Meta, Microsoft doesn't need to change its name to prove it's committed to an entirely new tech platform: It's doing so through action. After debuting its AI-infused Bing search engine earlier this year, the company unveiled the Microsoft 365 Copilot for Office apps. And even before those consumer reveals, Microsoft delivered an AI tool for developers in 2021 with GitHub Copilot. Today at its Build developer conference, Microsoft is making the inevitable next step: It's making AI an integral part of Windows 11.

The new Windows Copilot tool lives in the Windows sidebar and, just like Bing's AI chat, you can use it as a super-powered search engine by typing in general questions. But true to its name, it's also deeply integrated with Windows. You can ask it to accomplish tasks within the OS — like turning on the night light mode, or changing your desktop background — without fishing around for specific settings. Windows Copilot can also function as a genuine virtual assistant by summarizing documents, or launching a photo app to accomplish a few edits before sending it off to a group of your coworkers. Cortana would never.

Lucas Jackson / reuters

"I think about Windows and the role of AI as such an opportunity," said Panos Panay, Microsoft Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer, in an interview with Engadget ahead of Tuesday’s launch. "We have hundreds of millions of people [using Windows], bringing the power of AI to Windows 11 gives you the opportunity to not only get more creative and get more productive, but ultimately just let every Windows user become a power user."

Windows Copilot, which will be available to preview in June, also has the potential to reach far more users than the revamped Bing. The company's search engine clearly received plenty of buzz thanks to AI — Microsoft said it hit 100 million daily active users a month after the AI chat feature launched — but according to StatCounter, Bing has also lost market share over the past few months. It hit 7.2 percent in April, down from a recent high of 9.92 percent last October.

That's not entirely surprising, though. Microsoft's battle against Google has always seemed like a hopeless endeavor. The company launched its first attempt, MSN Search, in 1998 soon after Google arrived, and amid Yahoo's dominance as the go-to web portal. MSN Search turned into Live Search, which ultimately evolved into Bing in 2009.

Microsoft has always been a company that's dabbled in search, but it's not a search company. But Windows is another matter entirely. It's a product with a devoted user base, many of whom have decades of experience with the OS. According to Microsoft, there are over 1.4 billion monthly active devices running Windows 10 or 11. (And of course, that doesn't include the PCs running older Windows versions.) Microsoft previously tried to bring Bing's AI capabilities into the Windows taskbar in February, but that ultimately just amounted to a shortcut that launched Bing's AI chat in the Edge browser. Windows Copilot actually weaves AI into the core Windows 11 experience.

"There's so much depth in this product from the '90s on," said Panay. "Our job is to responsibly, of course, push it forward to users that need both the past and need to get to the future [...] We have so many kinds of users that use Windows in its simplest form, like browsing, Mail, and Office [...] And then we've got the hardcore devs who get right down to the depth of the product. And I think both are so vital to the platform. But now I think every developer can move forward as an AI developer and every user can be a power user on Windows. I think it just makes Windows that much better."

Windows Copilot is currently a text-only tool, but Panay envisions it evolving into something you can interact with on your own terms. It has the potential to be the powerful voice assistant that Cortana, the Siri competitor Microsoft pushed for years, never amounted to. (And to be fair, pretty much every virtual assistant ended up being a disappointment. Siri remains confounding and inaccurate, while Google's Assistant is mainly useful for preemptively delivering information, rather than dealing with voice commands.)

Microsoft

The simple, text-based approach to AI also makes sense for Microsoft. For many users, Windows Copilot will be the first time they've interacted with any sort of generative AI product. Better to let general users warm up with a few text strings before overwhelming people with voice commands. And hopefully by the time Microsoft adds voice support, it'll be closer to the Star Trek computer than the frustrating assistants of yore. (I'm dreaming of the day when I can shout at my computer to look up information as I'm writing feverishly on deadline, or ask it to transcribe and summarize a meeting.)

Windows Copilot, just like Bing Chat, will also support the same third-party plugins that OpenAI's ChaptGPT uses. That means any developer will be able to easily connect their apps to AI, an essential move to make these products more useful. Every software platform needs a thriving third-party ecosystem to survive — just think of what iOS or Android would be like if you were stuck using only Apple or Google's apps.

"AI is going to be the single largest driver of innovation for Windows in the years to come," said Panay. "It's going to change the way you work, change your interaction models to make it easier. It's going to understand so much about what you need."

Microsoft

Panay stressed that Microsoft is also focused on making your AI interactions secure and private. Windows Copilot could end up juggling some sensitive information if you start asking questions about specific health questions, for example. A potentially bigger concern is misinformation: Windows Copilot and Bing Chat can answer your questions confidently, but it may not always be accurate. And it's a bigger problem than standard web searches since it's unclear where AI chatbots are pulling information from.

"We have to approach AI with innovation but also optimism," Panay said when I asked about how Microsoft is planning to deal with AI misinformation. "To your point, we have to prioritize both people’s safety and privacy. Also, at the end of the day, if you do it in a frame of humility, where we're always learning, this is going to be vital to your point."

It's clear that Microsoft still has plenty to learn from Windows Copilot. The preview period, which kicks off next month, is a chance for the company to see how it's used in the wild, and to make adjustments before it's officially released. Panay says that the Bing team is already working to make sure its results come from grounded references, and that they're also holding to Microsoft's responsible AI standards.

Microsoft

According to Shilpa Ranganathan, a Microsoft Corporate Vice President leading the Windows team, the company has been talking a lot about how Copilot results are displayed, as well as communicating the uncertainty of some answers to customers. “We're going to build it into the experience as a learning experience for us as well […] I don't want to take a path that allows us to lose trust with customers,” she said. “We believe that's most important. I'd rather say, hey, we're not 100 percent sure. Help us make this better or if this didn't help you, I would like feedback now so that we never show this to another customer again.”

Panay hopes to get to a point where "as a product maker, I have the confidence that what we're handing to our customers is exactly what they need when we launch into the full availability [of Windows Copilot]." He added, "It's about humility. If you give it time and the right innovation, then we can get to that point of creating the guardrails needed to keep it safe and remove the misinformation."

Given the state of the web today, where less reputable websites employ a variety of SEO tricks to rank higher in search results, it’s unclear if we’ll ever be truly rid of AI misinformation. The next content war will be entirely focused on websites vying for placement within AI search results. The problem for users is that it’ll be harder to tell if bad information is coming from a seemingly reputable source, rather than an obviously scammy website filled with junk content.

Windows Copilot has the potential to fundamentally reshape the way we use Windows. But hopefully, it won’t erode user trust in the process.

As Microsoft unveiled more of its plans for AI domination at its Build developer conference today, no aspect of its business will be left untouched by AI. In addition to bringing its "Copilot" to Windows 11 and Edge, the company also shared details on how it will be infusing the Store with AI, beginning with the new AI Hub. 

This is a "new curated section in the Microsoft Store where we will promote the best AI experiences built by the developer community and Microsoft," the company said in a press release. It will use this area to "educate customers on how to start and expand their AI journey, inspiring them to use AI in everyday ways to boost productivity, spark creativity and more." Examples include apps like Luminar Neo, Descript, Podcastle, Copy.ai, Kickresume, Play.ht and other services that let users tap AI to help them create content. 

The Store will also get AI-generated review summaries that takes feedback left by other users on apps and games and generates a concise rundown of what was said. This way, people won't have to sift through the "thousands of reviews," that Microsoft says some popular apps have. 

If you're a Windows Insider, you'll be able to try out a new feature in preview that will restore your Store app icons when you're transitioning to a new Windows 11 device. You'll have to be moving from a Windows 10 or 11 setup to begin with, and when you switch over, icons for your Store apps will "automatically get restored right where [you] had them — on the Start menu and Taskbar."

Developers will also be getting some AI support, like automatically generated keywords and suggested Search Tags in the Partner Center. This will use AI to "consumer your metadata, as well as other signals, and help you improve the discoverability of your app in the Microsoft Store search results." The company is also adding the ability to list your app in multiple categories.

Microsoft Store Ads are also expanding in a few ways. First, they'll be added to search results on Bing starting next month, so people using their browsers to look for stuff will also be aware of relevant Windows apps. Next month, they'll also be reaching outside the US market to more than 150 regions around the world. Developers will also get the option to display rich advertising in the spotlight section of the Store.

Most of the consumer-facing features announced for the Microsoft Store today will be available "soon," and more specific timeframes have yet to be shared. Still, it's clear the company is intent on bringing AI to every part of its business and all its products and the onslaught is nigh. 

Microsoft has a lot of news at this year's Build conference around its AI "copilots" for Windows 11 and other products, but it wants third-party developers in on the action too. The company announced that it has expanded its AI plugin ecosystem and provided a framework for building AI apps and copilots. At the same time, it's adopting the same open plugin standard that OpenAI uses for ChatGPT to ensure it'll work alongside its Windows 11, 365 and other copilots. 

Microsoft introduced the idea of copilots nearly two years ago. Those are applications that use AI and LLMs (large language models) to help users with complex cognitive tasks like writing sales pitches, generating images and more. For example, ChatGPT on Bing is actually a copilot, and Microsoft has also launched copilots for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Security, among others. 

Now, it's adding features that let developers build their own using new "plugins" that allow copilots to interact with other software and services. "You may look at Bing Chat and think this is some super magical complicated thing, but Microsoft is giving developers everything they need to get started to go build a copilot of their own," said Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott. "I think over the coming years, this will become an expectation for how all software works."

Microsoft

In addition, Microsoft said it's adopting the same open plugin standard used by Open AI so that all of Microsoft's copilots can potentially work with ChatGPT. "That means developers can now use one platform to build plugins that work across both business and consumer surfaces, including ChatGPT, Bing, Dynamics 365 Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Windows Copilot," it wrote. 

As part of that platform, Bing is adding plugin support for third-party companies including Instacart, Kayak, Klarna, Redfin and Zillow. That's on top of those previously announced by Open AI including OpenTable and Wolfram. Developers can also extend Microsoft 365 Copilot using ChatGPT and Bing plugins, as well as Teams message extensions and Power Platform connectors. Developers will also be able to build their own plugins with the Microsoft Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio. 

Finally, Microsoft announced that Azure AI Content Safety is now in preview. It's designed to ensure copilots avoid creating outputs that are "biased, sexist, racist, hateful, violent" or encourage self-harm, said Microsoft product manager Sarah Bird. The models detect inappropriate content across images and text, then flag them and assign severity scores so that human moderators can see anything that requires urgent action. "It’s part of the safety system that’s powering the new Bing... [and] we're now launching it as a product that third-party customers can use," said Bird. 

There are vanishingly few places in Microsoft's business ecosystem that remain untouched by January's OpenAI deal, with GPT-4 backed chatbot and generative capabilities coming to Office products like Word and Excel, Bing Search, and integrated directly into the Edge browser. During the Microsoft Build 2023 conference on Tuesday, company executives clarified and confirmed that its 365 Copilot AI — the same one going into Office — will be "natively integrated" into the Edge browser. 

Microsoft 365 Copilot essentially takes all of your Graph information — data from your Calendar, Word docs, emails and chat logs — and smashes them together, using the informatic slurry in training an array of large language models, to provide AI-backed assistance personalized to your business. 

"You can type natural language requests like 'Tell my team how we updated the product strategy today,'" Lindsay Kubasik, Group Product Manager, Edge Enterprise wrote in a Tuesday blog post. "Microsoft 365 Copilot will generate a status update based on the morning’s meetings, emails and chat threads."

By integrating 365 Copilot into the browser itself, users will be able to request additional context even more directly. "As you’re looking at a file your colleague shared, you can simply ask, 'What are the key takeaways from this document?'” and get answers from 365 Copilot in real-time. Even on-page search (ctrl+F) is getting smarter thanks to the deeper integration. The company is also incorporating the same open plugin standard launched by OpenAI, ensuring interoperability between ChatGPT and 365 Copilot products. 

But it's not ready for rollout just yet and there's no word on when that will change. "Microsoft 365 Copilot is currently in private preview," a Microsoft rep told Engadget. "Microsoft 365 Copilot will be natively integrated into Microsoft Edge, and we will have more to share at a later date." 

On the other hand, Microsoft's digital co-working product, Edge Workspaces, will be moving out of preview altogether in the coming months, Kubasik noted. Workspaces allows teams to share links, project websites and working files as a shared set of secured browser tabs. Furthermore, the company is "evolving" its existing work experience into Microsoft Edge for Business. This will include unique visual elements and cues — which should begin rolling out to users today — along with "enterprise controls, security, and productivity features" designed to help keep remote workers' private lives better separated from their work lives.  

The company recognizes the need for "a new browser model that enhances users’ privacy while maintaining crucial, enterprise grade controls set at the organizational level," Kubasik wrote. "Microsoft Edge for Business honors the needs of both end users and IT Pros as the browser that automatically separates work and personal browsing into dedicated browser windows with their own separate caches and storage locations, so information stays separate."

Microsoft Edge for Business enters preview today on managed devices. If your organization isn't already using the Edge ecosystem, fear not, a preview for unmanaged devices is in the works for the coming months.

It'll be some time before we have a full picture of what the next version of Windows looks like, but that's not stopping Microsoft from rolling out a few updates to Windows 11 amid this year's Build developer conference. Today the company announced a list of feature updates for the operating system focusing on privacy, security and accessibility. Although most of the new tools are aimed at businesses and IT departments, there are some handy features average users may want to know about.

To start, Microsoft says that Bluetooth Low Energy Audio is coming to compatible devices, starting with the May 2023 non-security preview release. The company said its working with Intel and Samsung to bring the audio standard to the PC ecosystem for the first time, specifically calling out the Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro as a potentially compatible set of earbuds.

Speaking of audio content, you'll be able to understand more of it than ever. Starting this week, live captions for Windows 11 will support 10 new languages, including simplified and traditional Chinese, Danish, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portugueses and Spanish.

Most of the update focuses on "new and improved features for businesses," but there's still one last item you might want to pay attention to: the glanceable VPN icon. This feature will be available in the quick settings menu, and enables a new shield icon that will hover over the active network connection in the taskbar to help users check to see if they're connected to a recognized VPN service.

Other new features hitting Windows soon include a larger widget page, a Windows 365 boot feature that automatically logs users into Cloud PCs, new privacy controls for managing presence sensor data, QR code verification for document printing, autopatch updates and new messaging tools for IT teams. You can check out the full rundown of the new features on the Microsoft Blog.

It’s hard to believe, but iconic synth manufacturer Moog is turning 70. Synthesizers didn’t become mainstays in popular music until the 1970s, but Bob Moog started manufacturing and selling theremins in 1953, with actual synths following in 1963. To celebrate the anniversary, the company launched a web app filled with interactive experiences for music historians and casual fans alike.

The app places a distinct focus on the company’s iconic Model D synthesizer, which was first released in 1970 and recently reissued for $5,000. To that end, there’s a jukebox with nearly 50 of the most influential songs that feature the synthesizer, including disco, reggae, hip-hop, pop and more. The theater page goes a step further by showing a full range of videos of the 50-year-old synth in action, with both live stage performances and in-studio sessions. The archives section is for true historians, with interactive information chronicling the entire history of the Model D and the people who designed it.

History is nice and all, but synthesizers are made to be played. The app’s practice room let you do just that, choosing from famous leads, bass sounds and percussion sounds via a faithful digital recreation of the Model D. You can fool around with sounds, sure, but the app even lets you save and share original recordings using riffs from famous songs as a starting point. These creations can only be around a minute long. For the ultimate digital Model D experience, there’s a $30 app for iOS devices, though it sometimes goes on sale.

Finally, the app includes a couple of quirky little add-ons. You can print out a PDF for making your own Minimoog decoration, so long as you have enough tape. The Instagram filter, codenamed Face Synth, quite literally turns your face into a musical instrument. Use facial expressions and body movement to trigger the Model D’s control parameters. The web app’s available today, so have at it.

Bluesky, the Jack Dorsey-backed decentralized Twitter alternative, isn’t even out of beta yet but it’s already drawing the attention of more mainstream platforms. Now, Flipboard is adding Bluesky to its news reading app so users can browse their feeds alongside the app’s curated magazines.

The update is part of a broader effort by the company to embrace the growing crop of decentralized social media platforms in the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. The company released a similar integration with Mastodon earlier this year, and will soon add PixelFed, an open source Instagram alternative, to its app as well.

At a basic level, the changes make Flipboard an increasingly useful utility for people who want to keep up with the happenings on decentralized platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky. Flipboard, which has long been praised for its design, could also serve as a more intuitive way to browse newer services that are sometimes criticized for being confusing to newcomers. It could also help increase the visibility of posts on Bluesky, which is still limiting new sign-ups, as users can “flip” content from their Bluesky feeds into Flipboard magazines.

But for Flipboard CEO Mike McCue, embracing these upstart social platforms — sometimes collectively referred to as the Fediverse — is also a more fundamental shift. McCue, an early Twitter advisor and board member, has become disillusioned with the company he once advised. He now believes that decentralized platforms, and the protocols that power them, will define the future of social media just as closed platforms like Twitter and Facebook did more than a decade ago.

“I was one of the early people helping to build the business model, and was a big believer in Twitter, and I think it's very sad,” McCue says of the current state of the Musk-owned company. “On the other hand, I think that this kind of change is extremely positive for the industry.”

Among Silicon Valley insiders, McCue may be one of the most vocal advocates for this vision. But Flipboard isn’t the only legacy social app paying attention to the rise of decentralized platforms. Tumblr has said it plans to adopt ActivityPub, the protocol that powers Mastodon, PixelFed and other federated platforms. Meta, known for watching potential rivals closely, is also working on a decentralized Twitter alternative that will tie into Instagram. The effort, reportedly codenamed P92, is rumored to run on ActivityPub. Meanwhile Bluesky is building out its own protocol, the AT Protocol, which could eventually power multiple other services as well.

All of these efforts are still in a very early stage, but it could be the start of something much bigger. “This is a really important moment when the death of Twitter is going to lead to the birth of the social web,” McCue says.

For the first time, Apple has published an App Store transparency report. You can read the full two-page document on the company’s website. It reveals several interesting tidbits about the App Store, including the fact that, as of 2022, there were 1,783,232 apps on the storefront.

In the document, first spotted by 9to5Mac (via The Verge), Apple also reveals that it reviewed 6,101,913 submissions last year (submissions can include updates to existing apps, not just new releases). Of those, it rejected 1,679,694. Surprisingly, the majority of submissions, more than 1 million, didn’t make it to the App Store for failing to comply with Apple’s performance guidelines. The company also rejected 441,972 submissions on legal grounds.

Apple also removed 186,195 apps removed from the App Store in 2022. Last year, the company fielded 1,474 takedown requests, with the vast majority (1,435, to be exact) coming from mainland China. In a distant second was India, with 14 requests. Over that same time frame, Apple says it fielded 5,484 appeals involving apps removed from the App Store in China. Following successful appeals, it also restored 169 apps to the Chinese App Store. Last year, iPhone, iPad and Mac users downloaded an average of 747,873,877 apps every week, which would be an even more impressive number if they didn’t also redownload an average of 1,539,274,266 apps every week.

Apple agreed to begin publishing App Store transparency reports as part of a settlement the company came to with App Store developers in 2021. At the time, the company said the reports would “share meaningful statistics about the app review process, including the number of apps rejected for different reasons, the number of customer and developer accounts deactivated, objective data regarding search queries and results, and the number of apps removed from the App Store.”

Every third Thursday of May, the world commemorates Global Accessibility Awareness Day or GAAD. And as has become customary in the last few years, major tech companies are taking this week as a chance to share their latest accessibility-minded products. From Apple and Google to Webex and Adobe, the industry’s biggest players have launched new features to make their products easier to use. Here’s a quick roundup of this week’s GAAD news.

Apple's launches and updates

First up: Apple. The company actually had a huge set of updates to share, which makes sense since it typically releases most of its accessibility-centric news at this time each year. For 2023, Apple is introducing Assistive Access, which is an accessibility setting that, when turned on, changes the home screen for iPhone and iPad to a layout with fewer distractions and icons. You can choose from a row-based or grid-based layout, and the latter would result in a 2x3 arrangement of large icons. You can decide what these are, and most of Apple’s first-party apps can be used here.

The icons themselves are larger than usual, featuring high contrast labels making them more readable. When you tap into an app, a back button appears at the bottom for easier navigation. Assistive Access also includes a new Calls app that combines Phone and FaceTime features into one customized experience. Messages, Camera, Photos and Music have also been tweaked for the simpler interface and they all feature high contrast buttons, large text labels and tools that, according to Apple, "help trusted supporters tailor the experience for the individual they're supporting." The goal is to offer a less-distracting or confusing system to those who may find the typical iOS interface overwhelming.

Apple also launched Live Speech this week, which works on iPhone, iPad and Mac. It will allow users to type what they want to say and have the device read it aloud. It not only works for in-person conversations, but for Phone and FaceTime calls as well. You'll also be able to create shortcuts for phrases you frequently use, like "Hi, can I get a tall vanilla latte?" or "Excuse me, where is the bathroom?" The company also introduced Personal Voice, which lets you create a digital voice that sounds like yours. This could be helpful for those at risk of losing their ability to speak due to conditions that could impact their voice. The setup process includes "reading alongside randomized text prompts for about 15 minutes on iPhone or iPad."

For those with visual impairments, Apple is adding a new Point and Speak feature to the detection mode in Magnifier. This will use an iPhone or iPad's camera, LiDAR scanner and on-device machine learning to understand where a person has positioned their finger and scan the target area for words, before reading them out for the user. For instance, if you hold up your phone and point at different parts on a microwave or washing machine's controls, the system will say what the labels are — like "Add 30 seconds," "Defrost" or "Start."

The company made a slew of other smaller announcements this week, including updates that allow Macs to pair directly with Made-for-iPhone hearing devices, as well as phonetic suggestions for text editing in voice typing.

Google's new accessibility tools

Meanwhile, Google is introducing a new Visual Question and Answer (or VQA) tool in the Lookout app, which uses AI to answer follow-up questions about images. The company's accessibility lead and senior director of Products For All Eve Andersson told Engadget in an interview that VQA is the result of a collaboration between the inclusion and DeepMind teams. 

Google

To use VQA, you'll open Lookout and start the Images mode to scan a picture. After the app tells you what's in the scene, you can ask follow-ups to glean more detail. For example, if Lookout said the image depicts a family having a picnic, you can ask what time of day it is or whether there are trees around them. This lets the user determine how much information they want from a picture, instead of being constrained to an initial description. 

Often, it is tricky to figure out how much detail to include in an image description, since you want to provide enough to be helpful but not so much that you overwhelm the user. For example, "What’s the right amount of detail to give to our users in Lookout?" Andersson said. "You never actually know what they want." Andersson added that AI can help determine the context of why someone is asking for a description or more information and deliver the appropriate info. 

When it launches in the fall, VQA can present a way for the user to decide when to ask for more and when they've learned enough. Of course, since it's powered by AI, the generated data might not be accurate, so there's no guarantee this tool works perfectly, but it's an interesting approach that puts power in users' hands. 

Google is also expanding Live Captions to work in French, Italian and German later this year, as well as bringing the wheelchair-friendly labels for places in Maps to more people around the world. 

Microsoft, Samsung, Adobe and more

Plenty more companies had news to share this week, including Adobe, which is rolling out a feature that uses AI to automate the process of generating tags for PDFs that would make them friendlier for screen readers. This uses Adobe's Sensei AI, and will also indicate the correct reading order. Since this could really speed up the process of tagging PDFs, people and organizations could potentially use the tool to go through stockpiles of old documents to make them more accessible. Adobe is also launching a PDF Accessibility Checker to "enable large organizations to quickly and efficiently evaluate the accessibility of existing PDFs at scale." 

Microsoft also had some small updates to share, specifically around Xbox. It's added new accessibility settings to the Xbox app on PC, including options to disable background images and disable animations, so users can reduce potentially disruptive, confusing or triggering components. The company also expanded its support pages and added accessibility filters to its web store to make it easier to find optimized games.

Meanwhile, Samsung announced this week that it's adding two new levels of ambient sound settings to the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro, which brings the total number of options to five. This would let those who use the earbuds to listen to their environment get greater control over how loud they want the sounds to be. They'll also be able to select different settings for individual ears, as well as choose the levels of clarity and create customized profiles for their hearing.

We also learned that Cisco, the company behind the Webex video conferencing software, is teaming up with speech recognition company VoiceITT to add transcriptions that better support people with non-standard speech. This builds on Webex's existing live translation feature, and uses VoiceITT's AI to familiarize itself with a person's speech patterns to better understand what they want to communicate. Then, it'll establish and transcribe what is said, and the captions will appear in a chat bar during calls. 

Finally, we also saw Mozilla announce that Firefox 113 would be more accessible by enhancing the screen reader experience, while Netflix revealed a sizzle reel showcasing some of its latest assistive features and developments over the past year. In its announcement, Netflix said that while it has "made strides in accessibility, [it knows] there is always more work to be done."

That sentiment is true not just for Netflix, nor the tech industry alone, but also for the entire world. While it's nice to see so many companies take the opportunity this week to release and highlight accessibility-minded features, it's important to remember that inclusive design should not and cannot be a once-a-year effort. I was also glad to see that despite the current fervor around generative AI, most companies did not appear to stuff the buzzword into every assistive feature or announcement this week for no good reason. For example, Andersson said "we're typically thinking about user needs" and adopting a problem-first approach as opposed to focusing on determining where a type of technology can be applied to a solution.

While it's probably at least partially true that announcements around GAAD are a bit of a PR and marketing game, ultimately some of the tools launched today can actually improve the lives of people with disabilities or different needs. I call that a net win.