OpenAI is gearing up to roll out the third version of DALL-E, its text-to-image AI system, which reportedly improves its predecessor's capabilities and can generate results within the ChatGPT app. The company demonstrated how the new iteration integrates with ChatGPT to The Verge, and it showed the publication how users can ask the chatbot to write a lengthy and detailed prompt the image AI can use. 

OpenAI told Axios that DALL-E 3 is "significantly better" at being able to grasp a user's intention, especially if the prompt is long and detailed. If a user can't articulate what they want in a way that can maximize the image generator's abilities, then ChatGPT can help them write a comprehensive prompt for it. In the demo to The Verge, DALL-E produced four results for a prompt asking for a ramen restaurant logo in the mountains within ChatGPT. 

DALL-E 3 was also designed to be better at creating elements its predecessors and other AI generators are having trouble with, such as depictions of hands and texts in images. And it's supposed to have better security measures — the company said it trained the new DALL-E ignore certain words in prompts that could lead to explicit or hateful images.

In addition, OpenAI has implemented measures that could prevent future potential lawsuits. The current version of DALL-E can generate images in the style of living artists, but the next version was designed to decline requests asking it to mimic their work. Artists will also be able to submit work they own through a form on the website and ask for it to be removed.

OpenAI plans to release DALL-E 3 next month to ChatGPT Plus and enterprise customers. The new image generator will then make its way to OpenAI's research labs and API customers sometime this fall, but the company has yet to announce its general public availability. 

Amazon’s fall hardware event was chock full of updates. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the generative AI boom from the last year, the company began transforming Alexa into a much more versatile and conversational personal chatbot. But it also had plenty of new hardware to introduce, with new models of the Echo Show, security cameras, Echo Frames, a 10-gigabit router and more. Here’s everything Amazon unveiled on Wednesday.

Alexa with generative AI

Amazon

As generative AI has exploded in popularity during the last year, task-focused personal assistants like Siri, Google Assistant and Alexa now seem even more dated than they did before. Amazon began to rectify that on Wednesday with a new Alexa chat feature that responds to a much wider variety of requests by using generative AI. When saying, “Alexa, let’s chat,” the assistant switches to a chatbot mode built on a large language model (LLM).

Alexa’s new AI chat mode makes the assistant more conversational and expressive, and you won’t need to keep repeating “Alexa” each time you speak. If you enroll in the company’s Visual ID, you can start a conversation just by facing the screen on an Echo device with a camera. Alexa can now adjust its tone and “emotion” based on context. The company says it also works around your pauses and hesitations for a more free-flowing conversation. However, Amazon’s live presentation had a couple of hitches where the assistant forced presenter Dave Limp to repeat himself.

Amazon says Alexa will move further in this direction with an upcoming speech-to-speech update. “And we’re working on a new model—which we refer to as speech-to-speech,” said Amazon senior VP Rohit Prasad. “Instead of first converting a customer’s audio request into text using speech recognition, and then using an LLM to generate a text response or an action, and then text-to-speech to produce audio back—this new model will unify these tasks, creating a much richer conversational experience.”

Echo Show 8

Amazon

Amazon launched a new Echo Show 8 on Wednesday, boasting upgrades to its display, camera and microphones. Proximity sensing is a marquee feature on the new model, as it can adjust its UI depending on how close you are to it. For example, a demo showing the weather app used a larger font as the person stood farther away, but it shrunk the font and added finer details as they moved closer.

The device includes spatial audio capabilities for “a wider and more immersive sound experience,” as Limp described. The Echo Show 8 also has a centered camera, which should make video calls feel more natural for your partner, and upgraded audio that minimizes background noise. It also has a faster processor and a built-in smart home hub.

The new Echo Show 8 costs $150 and is available for pre-order now ahead of an expected October ship date.

Echo Frames

Amazon

Amazon updated its Echo Frames smart glasses for the first time in over two years. The wearable device has a longer battery life: up to six hours of continuous media playback. Perhaps even more importantly, the new models are 15 percent slimmer than the previous generation, making them look more like regular glasses and less like a bulky tech product strapped to your face.

The new Echo Frames also have a “redesigned audio experience,” including more balanced sound, better audio clarity and less distortion. Their onboard speech processing is also improved, which could lead to more reliable responses in different environments. They’ll ship in seven new styles, including both glasses and sunglasses variants. (There’s also a more expensive version through a partnership with Carrera called “Carrera Smart Glasses.”) 

The Echo Frames cost $270, while the Carrera Smart Glasses variant will cost $390. They’re available for pre-order.

Eero Max 7

Amazon

Amazon describes its new Eero Max 7 as a combined router, range extender and repeater. The device offers 10-gigabit Ethernet connections, with advertised download speeds of a 4K movie in 10 seconds or a 50 GB game in less than a minute.

The device supports the 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6 GHz radio bands with speeds up to 4.3 Gbps for wireless connections and 9.4 Gbps for wired connections. It includes four Ethernet ports and covers 2,500 square feet of wireless coverage, and you can link them together to create a mesh network to cover even more ground.

The Eero Max 7 costs $600 and will be available “soon.” It, too, is available for pre-order today.

Echo Hub

Amazon

The newly revealed Echo Hub is a new device for managing various smart home gadgets around your house. It has an 8-inch display and is meant to be mounted on a wall, although Amazon says it will also offer a stand accessory. “Today, smart home panels are expensive, they require professional installers, and they don’t age well. We set out to change that,” said Amazon smart home chief Charlie French.

Although it includes Alexa controls and can behave like standard Echo speakers, it also supports the major smart home protocols, including Matter and Thread — supporting over 140,000 smart home devices. The device supports Wi-Fi by default but can connect to compatible ethernet routers with an optional USB-C cable. The Echo Hub’s infrared sensors can even tell when someone is nearby and shift into a default clock mode when nobody is around.

The device lets you arm your security system with a quick tap, and it will display multiple live camera feeds simultaneously. It can control select smart home devices locally, leading to faster response times. “Now, when a customer taps to turn on a light from their Echo Hub, it can turn on in as little as 300 milliseconds—it feels like flipping a light switch,” the company said on Wednesday.

As with many Amazon devices, the Echo Hub’s killer feature may be its price. It will be available later this year for $180, and you can pre-order it today.

Ring and Blink security cameras

Amazon

The Ring Stick Up Cam Pro is a $180 indoor / outdoor camera with intelligent tracking features. The device adds 3D motion detection (already found in the Ring Video Doorbell 2, Floodlight Cam Pro and Spotlight Cam Pro) to provide what Amazon describes as more refined and accurate motion alerts. It employs radar technology to track people’s paths across the camera’s field of view. It can monitor where people in its frame are going and the route they took to get there. You can pre-order it today.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s other security camera unit, Blink, got several new accessories. First, the $50 Sync Module Pro extends the range of the Blink Outdoor 4, saying it will reach “the furthest corner of your property.” There’s also a new $160 wireless floodlight mount for the Blink Outdoor 4 that will blanket your yard in light with its motion-triggered LEDs. Finally, Amazon is launching a battery extender for the Outdoor 4 that can supposedly stretch its battery life to “up to four years.” The three accessories are available for pre-order and are slated to ship beginning on October 17.

Fire TV updates

Amazon

Amazon launched the new Fire TV Soundbar, a Bluetooth-enabled audio device compatible with “all Fire TV streaming products and TVs,” according to Amazon VP Daniel Rausch. The soundbar is available starting today for $120.

The Fire TV 4K Max received an incremental update on Wednesday, bumping its processing power by 0.2GHz and its Wi-Fi from 6 to 6E. The device supports HDR, HDR10+, Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision. It’s available for pre-order for $60 and is scheduled to ship on September 27. Amazon also updated the standard 4K Fire TV Stick with more processing power, 4K support and Wi-Fi 6. 

The company also rolled out a new Fire TV Ambient Experience for the device, making it easy to view info like your family calendar, reminders and local forecast. In addition, it’s adding “hundreds of new images” to its free “gallery-quality” art selection for TVs in standby mode.

Fire TV devices will add a new search experience that uses Amazon’s LLMs to make on-device search more natural and conversational. They’re also adding a unified Continue Watching row that aggregates favorite content (from providers like Prime Video, Disney+, Max, Peacock and more) in one spot. Amazon says it focuses on recency, making it easier to resume the last thing you checked out — regardless of the service.

Accessibility features

Amazon

Amazon’s Echo devices are receiving some new accessibility features later this year. Eye Gaze on Alexa is a new feature for the Fire Max 11 tablet that lets people with mobility or speech disabilities perform preset actions using only their line of sight. You can play music and shows, control smart home devices or call loved ones without using your hands or voice. The feature will arrive later this year.

Call Translation is a new feature for the Echo Show that will transcribe calls with onscreen captions. It can translate speech into over 10 languages, including English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. The feature will arrive later this year on Echo Show devices (and in the Alexa app) for users in the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

Map View

Amazon

To make homes full of smart home devices simpler to manage, Amazon introduced Map View. The feature lets you view and control your home devices using a digital floor plan.

Map View will let you create an indoor map of your home using your phone. (It will initially launch on LiDar-enabled iOS devices.) The idea is for the feature to serve as an alternative to the (often messy) Alexa app’s devices list, displaying them room-by-room. It lets you quickly glance at your setup, control devices and even view live camera feeds by glancing at the floor-plan layout.

The opt-in feature will launch in the US later this year.

Kids’ stuff

Amazon

Amazon is extending Alexa’s new generative AI powers to kids’ devices. However, as you may expect, it should be a heavily guardrailed version of the feature that supposedly protects children from unsavory material. The company says it “gracefully redirects kids back to the conversation at hand and away from inappropriate or sensitive content.”

The company also showcased the Echo Pop Kids, a new smart speaker for children. It ships in two variants: Avengers and Disney Princess. You can pre-order the $50 speaker now. It ships in October and includes six months of the Amazon Kids+ subscription service.

Alexa Emergency Assist

Amazon

A feature that could benefit seniors or people with disabilities, Alexa Emergency Assist lets you contact first responders by saying, “Alexa, call for help.” The feature will connect you with a “dedicated, professionally trained agent” available 24/7.

When you set up Alexa Emergency Assist, it will save your home address, medications, allergies and device info to save you from having to pass that on to the person on the line.

Alexa Emergency Assist will launch in the US and is “coming soon.” It will cost $6 per month or $59 annually when it arrives.

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.

Amazon's smart glasses have yet to impress us, but the company made big changes for its third-gen Echo Frames that could go along way in changing our minds. First, the company has upgraded the design, slimming down the area around your temples that houses all of the components. Amazon has also changed the look, continuing to make the glasses and sunglasses options look more like something you'd actually want to wear. What's more, it's working with the more fashion-minded Carrera Eyewear on smart glasses with a refined touch — in addition to its own versions.

First, there's the improved sound quality. Amazon claims the new Echo Frames have three times more bass than the previous model. Additionally, the company says that the audio is more accurately directed to your ear. While the audio is better than previous models, the bass is still lacking, so I'm not sure these will replace a set of earbuds or headphones for music. I can see a compelling use case for podcasts or calls, and Echo Frames are still a solid way to interact with Alexa without reaching for your phone. 

The battery life has also expanded to six hours, so you can nearly get through a full work day now without needed to charge the wearable device. Lastly, the reconfigured speakers that target your ears don't spill as much sound out in the open as before. In Amazon's demo space, I couldn't hear the audio from the person next to me until they turned it way up. People nearby will still hear it at times, but it shouldn't be as much of a distraction for them as before. 

New speech-processing tech improves Alexa's ability to hear your voice in noisy or windy conditions, according to Amazon. The company says it's ten times better than the previous version, and in the company's raucous demo area I found that to be true. My fellow reporters and I had no trouble summoning the assistant in the confines of the loud space as it consistently heard and executed our cues. And calling on Alexa is hands-free, so you don't even have to press a button on the Echo Frames to prime the mics. 

Photo by Billy Steele/Engadget

One issue I did encounter has to do with fit. I have a huge head, and during my demo I had trouble keeping the Echo Frames in place. They kept wanting to slide down my nose even with minimal movement. Of course, I could only try what was available in the demo area, so maybe Amazon plans to offer options for people with wider faces. For the regular frames and the sunglasses I wore today, fit was a problem for both.

The third-gen Echo Frames start at $270 while the Carrera models cost $390. Both prescription and blue light lens options are available. Right now, though, Amazon hasn't said when the new versions will be available. 

Follow all of the news live from Amazon’s 2023 Devices event right here.

With Amazon pushing further and further into smart home integration, during a press event on Wednesday the company announced a new device designed to manage all the various devices in your house called the Echo Hub. 

Instead of being a traditional tablet or a portable smart display, the $180 Echo Hub is an eight-inch display meant to be mounted on a wall. Just like an Alexa-powered smart speaker, users can control connected devices using their voice while also being able to view live feeds from security cameras and toggle settings via a customizable dashboard. The Echo Hub was also designed to support Amazon's upcoming Map View UI, which will be added to the device sometime in early 2024. 

The Echo Hub includes support for all the major smart home protocols including Matter and Thread. And while by default it relies on Wi-Fi, there will also be an optional USB-C adapter that allows it to connect to power-over-ethernet routers like those from Eero. 

This story is still developing...

Follow all of the news live from Amazon’s 2023 Devices event right here.

During its fall hardware event on Wednesday, Amazon showed off a new way for folks to control all of their compatible smart home products. It's called Map View and it will first be available on select phones in the US later this year.

You'll be able to create a digital floor plan of your home using your phone. Map View will display all the devices you add to it. Rather than using Alexa or another app to manage a device, you can see its location in your home and tap on it to switch on a light, bump up the volume of an Echo speaker or change the temperature. It looks like a fairly straightforward and intuitive user interface.

Amazon says it's an opt-in experience — you'll have control over which rooms of your home to add to the floor plan and which devices to include. You can delete your floor plan at any time soon.

On a related note, Amazon is attempting to buy iRobot. Several Roomba devices are capable of mapping out your home to help with cleaning them. It's not difficult to imagine how that might integrate into Map View.

Follow all of the news live from Amazon’s 2023 Devices event right here.

During this morning's Amazon hardware event, the tech giant announced a slate of devices and software updates to the Fire TV line. Brand new to the lineage is the Fire TV Soundbar.

The Fire TV Soundbar is "Bluetooth enabled, simple to set up and compatible with all Fire TV streaming products and TVs," according to Daniel Rausch, Amazon's VP of Alexa and Fire TV. It's is available starting today for sale today at a $120 price point.

Rausch also announced a minor refresh of the ubiquitous Fire TV line of streaming sticks. The new 4K Max, which is now nearly two years old, received a 0.2GHz bump in processing power and an upgrade from WiFi 6 to WiFi 6E. There's some other niceties as well, including support for HDR, HDR10+, Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision. The new Fire TV 4K Max is up for preorder now for $60, and will begin shipping to customers on September 27th. The standard model Fire TV stick also gets a bump in processing power, 4K support and WiFi 6. Preorders for that also start today (though Amazon has not yet confirmed a ship date), and it'll run a slightly cheaper $50. Purchases of new Fire sticks and TVs will now also come with six free months of the MGM+ streaming service. 

Given the focus on AI and large language models (LLM) throughout Amazon's hardware presentation, it was a foregone conclusion some aspect of those buzzy product categories would be finagled into the Fire lineup. Forthcoming improvements to the Alexa voice search feature will draw from Amazon's LLM (as well as data on IMDB, which Amazon bought in 1998) to supposedly understand nuanced questions about what to watch, and supply relevant recommendations. These recommendations will also, according to Rausch's demo of the feature, be personalized to individual user profiles. The new voice search functionality will arrive via an over-the-air update later this year.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Follow all of the news live from Amazon’s 2023 Devices event right here.

Amazon has used today’s hardware event to go all-in on Alexa’s new LLM-infused capabilities, touting how easy it’ll soon be to have a natural sounding conversation with the bot. This also extends to kids, as the company just announced Explore With Alexa. This is a pared-down and kid-friendly version of the updated chatbot that specializes in topics like animals and nature. It’ll even play trivia games with your tykes and disperse daily fun facts.

Of course, this is for kids, so the tech has been developed with guard rails to protect them from the more sinister parts of the Internet. Amazon says Explore With Alexa will launch at some point before the holidays and will eventually extend beyond the pre-approved topics of animal and nature.

To accompany this new Alexa technology, there are some forthcoming kid-friendly devices. The Echo Pop Kids is a smart speaker designed for the younger members of your family. It ships in two SKUs that fall along typically accepted notions of gender. There’s an Avengers one and a Disney princess one. The Avengers one specializes in conversational tidbits about Earth’s mightiest heroes and the Disney princess model specializes in Mulan, Cinderella and the like. The Echo Pop Kids releases next month for $50 and includes six free months of Amazon’s Kids+ subscription service. Preorders start today.

Amazon

There’s also a pair of forthcoming tablets. The new Fire Kids tablet is aimed at younger children and the Fire Kids Pro is being marketed to older kids. These are 10-inch tablets that are 25-percent faster than the previous generation, with 1080p FHD screens, 3GB of RAM and access to specialized kid-centric apps. Each tablet costs $190 and ships with a year of Amazon’s Kids+ subscription service. You also get a two-year warranty out of the box that covers the kind of accidental mishaps that parents deal with every single day. Preorders start today and shipments begin next month.

Both tablets boast access to the company’s new Play Together feature that gives kids access to online multiplayer titles, like checkers, and an app called Music Maker. This experience lets children become “composers, blending instruments and other sound effects together, to create a unique composition with the help of AI, all through touch.”

Follow all of the news live from Amazon’s 2023 Devices event right here.

After spending a chunk of its event today talking about Alexa upgrades, Amazon announced two new accessibility features coming to its devices later this year. First is Eye Gaze on Alexa, which will let those with mobility or speech disabilities use their gaze to perform a set of preset actions on the Fire Max 11 tablet. 

This is the first time Amazon is working on gaze-based navigation of its devices, and it will use the camera on the Max 11 to keep track of where a user is looking. The preset actions include smart home controls, media playback and making calls. Eye Gaze will be available on the Max 11 later this year at no additional cost. The company said during its event that this is "still day one for this technology — we're very excited about its potential." More details on how Eye Gaze actually works are not available yet.

Amazon is also adding a new Call Translation feature that will transcribe Alexa calls on Echo Show devices and display onscreen captions. It can convert them into over 10 languages including English, French, Spanish and Portuguese and will launch later this year on Echo Show devices and the Alexa app for those in the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Call captioning is also being expanded to Europe. 

Follow all of the news live from Amazon’s 2023 Devices event right here.

Apple’s iPhone 15 lineup isn’t even out yet, but you can already save on the company's cases and other accessories for the devices, as well as earlier models. While there aren't enormous discounts in this sale on Amazon, you'll be able to save a few bucks if you prefer to go the first-party route with iPhone cases (though there are cheaper third-party options). For instance, the Apple iPhone 15 Plus FineWoven Case with MagSafe has dropped by five percent to $56, which marks an early record low for the product.

FineWoven is a new material Apple is using in place of leather, which it is no longer employing in its accessories in order to make them more sustainable. FineWoven uses 68 percent post-consumer recycled content. The material looks fairly similar to leather in images that we're seen so far. Here's hoping it's just as durable. Meanwhile, MagSafe compatibility gives you more options for charging the device.

If you're going to pick up an iPhone 15 Pro, you might like to consider a clear case with MagSafe functionality. That will run you $47, which is six percent off the usual $50.

There's now a FineWoven version of the iPhone wallet with MagSafe support. This attaches to the back of any iPhone with MagSafe (iPhone 12 or later) and you can store your cards and ID in it. It works when you have a MagSafe case installed too. The wallet has Find My compatibility, which should make it easier to find if it's separated from your phone. The wallet costs $56, or five percent off the usual price.

Elsewhere, you might need a new adapter to charge your iPhone. Apple has ditched the Lightning port in favor of USB-C charging in the iPhone 15 lineup. However, it's not including a USB-C adapter in the iPhone's box. If you need one, you can opt for Apple's 35W Dual USB-C Port Compact Power Adapter. You can use this to charge two devices at once (say, your iPhone and iPad or MacBook). The prongs can fold back into the body when you're not using the adapter for easier storage. The accessory currently costs $45, or 25 percent off the usual price.

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