Author Archives: Lawrence Bonk

Google sent an AI-generated push alert that included a racial slur

Posted on by

Google sent out an AI-generated news alert that included the N-word, according to reporting by Deadline. The push notification featured a link to a story by The Hollywood Reporter regarding an incident at the recent BAFTA Film Awards. The word appeared in the notification under the link.

This was first spotted by Instagram user Danny Price, who accompanied a screengrab with a caption reading "what an interesting Black History Month this has turned out to be." Google has since apologized and said that it has "removed the offensive notification" and is "working to prevent this from happening again."

This story follows the aforementioned BAFTA incident, in which an audience member with Tourette syndrome shouted the N-word when Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo took to the stage to present an award. Tourette syndrome activist John Davidson, who made the comment, said he was "deeply mortified if anyone considers my involuntary tics to be intention or to carry any meaning." The incident has sparked outrage and a renewed discussion on the realities of living with vocal tics.

AI makes lots of high-profile errors and this isn't the first time it has ruined a news alert. Apple actually scrapped its own AI push notifications last year when the tool made a series of embarrassing mistakes, including wrongly telling readers that the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, Luigi Mangione, had shot himself.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/google-sent-an-ai-generated-push-alert-that-included-a-racial-slur-195951493.html?src=rss

For All Mankind’s latest trailer teases a war on Mars

Posted on by

Apple just dropped a full trailer for the fifth season of its hit sci-fi show For All Mankind. This is the first real look at the upcoming batch of episodes, which premiere on March 27. We got an extremely short teaser trailer last month but that only showed a guy on a motorcycle riding across Mars.

This is the first real-deal trailer and it's absolutely stuffed with footage indicating where the next season will take viewers. I'm going to get into some spoilers here, so read at your own risk.

For the uninitiated, For All Mankind is an alternate history show that started with a simple premise. What if Russia landed on the moon before America? That has since ballooned into all kinds of stuff which include, as mentioned above, a potential war on Mars.

For All Mankind is a show famous for its time jumps, and season five takes us all the way to an alternate version of 2012. Many of the show's original surviving characters are still kicking around, but they are old as paste and not exactly fit for high-octane space travel. Remember, the first episode started in the 1960s. Franchise lead Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnamen) looks particularly dusty.

Much of the footage features newer characters, including the grandson of Baldwin. Season four ended with a Mars colony asserting its independence via asteroid theft. Now it looks like Earth is striking back, which could lead to a full-scale war. This is giving me The Expanse vibes, which is never a bad thing.

The show must be clocking good numbers for Apple TV+, as the streamer recently announced a spinoff called Star City. Details are scant, but it looks to cover similar events of the mainline show from Russia's perspective.

New episodes of For All Mankind air each Friday. This season will feature ten episodes and concludes on May 29.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/for-all-mankinds-latest-trailer-teases-a-war-on-mars-174822481.html?src=rss

Blizzard finally revealed its long-rumored Overwatch mobile game

Posted on by

Blizzard is finally bringing Overwatch to mobile devices, but not exactly in the way you think. The company isn't making a port of the mainline game. Rather, it just announced a spinoff called Overwatch Rush, which is being described as a "top-down hero shooter designed specifically for mobile set in the Overwatch universe."

There have been rumors about an Overwatch mobile game for what seems like a lifetime. Most people assumed this would appear as a straight port, but a brand-new game is also great. It's not being developed by Team 4, the group that works on the mainline game, but is being made internally.

Overwatch Rush features many of the heroes of Overwatch battling on familiar-looking maps, according to a gameplay video. The game offers 4v4 matches, though the characters are more cartoonish and stylized than the mainline game. This is likely to accommodate smaller screens and the top-down view.

This is a mobile game, so the battles are described as "bite-sized" and the controls are touchscreen-based. Blizzard says it's still in the early stages of development but that it's going to offer "fast-paced, on-the-go play, with hero-centric combat and playstyle customization that suits both team and solo players."

Overwatch Rush will be playable soon, as part of a beta testing process. It'll be free to play and available for both Android and iOS whenever the full game is ready to go.

Blizzard says that a "new, separate, dedicated team" will be "focused exclusively" on Overwatch Rush. That's industry code for "we aren't draining resources from the main game to make the mobile spinoff." Oddly, the company recently held a series of panels to discuss the future of its franchises and didn't mention this mobile game.

This isn't the company's first foray into mobile game development. It's had a hand in stuff like Diablo Immortal and Warcraft Rumble.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/blizzard-finally-revealed-its-long-rumored-overwatch-mobile-game-162938590.html?src=rss

Summer Game Fest runs from June 5-8

Posted on by

It's getting to be that time of year again. Summer Game Fest officially kicks off on June 5 and will go until June 8. The Live Kickoff show will once again be hosted by Geoff Keighley and takes place on June 5 at 5PM ET. This is where we'll see all of those juicy reveals and trailers.

The opening event will be streamed globally on just about every digital platform, including YouTube, Twitch, X and even Steam. Those in the Los Angeles area will be able to pick up tickets for the live show sometime in the Spring.

The kickoff event is just the beginning. There's something called Play Days, which is an expo in downtown LA produced by iam8bit. This invite-only event promises "immersive exhibits and hands-on experiences from the industry's leading publishers and developers." Coverage of this will be shared across digital and social platforms.

There is, of course, another Day of the Devs livestream scheduled for immediately after the kickoff. Day of the Devs: SGF Edition should provide us with even more trailers and reveals, this time for indie games.

Finally, there's a "thought leadership event" on June 8 that's primarily for developers and publishers. Game Business Live "brings together top industry voices on one stage for insightful discussions on key changes, challenges and opportunities shaping the global video game industry."

We'll be covering the event live and will have all of those trailers ready to go. After all, that's pretty much the main reason people watch these things.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/summer-game-fest-runs-from-june-5-8-193054418.html?src=rss

Nothing reveals the Phone 4a ahead of schedule

Posted on by

Nothing has been slow-dripping news about the upcoming Phone 4a for a few days now, with a promise to reveal the handset on March 5. However, the company jumped the gun a bit and just posted an actual photo of the hardware. It looks pretty nifty, even if we don't have any real-deal specs just yet.

The image shows the handset from behind, displaying the company's trademark transparent design. The picture also features the redesigned Glyph Bar, which was first teased last week. This is a light-based notification system that features individually controlled mini-LEDs that light up in various ways to notify the user of missed calls and stuff like that. You can spot it next to the camera bump.

That's about all we know right now, though there are plenty of industry rumors. It's been reported that the Nothing Phone 4a will feature a Snapdragon 7-series chip and that the reveal will be accompanied by a Pro model with a more powerful camera. The Nothing Phone 3a was also launched alongside the 3a Pro.

We loved the 3a and 3a Pro, calling both "an easy recommendation." Let's hope this carries through for the 4a. Also, you didn't miss a release of the actual Nothing Phone 4. The company likes to release the a-series handsets before the flagship. Past as prologue, we'll likely see that one in early summer.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/nothing-reveals-the-phone-4a-ahead-of-schedule-181905011.html?src=rss

A new Evangelion series is coming from Studio Khara and Yoko Taro, creator of NieR

Posted on by

Anime fans rejoice, as there's a new Neon Genesis Evangelion series on the horizon. This was announced during a 30th anniversary event held in Japan. The bad news? Franchise creator Hideaki Anno won't be writing the scripts.

However, his replacement will be Yoko Taro, the guy who created the video game NieR. He also wears a giant and rather unsettling moon mask for some reason. The NieR franchise is known for rich and complex lore, with a story spanning thousands of years that occasionally dips into a parallel universe.

It's him in a moon mask.
Wikimedia Commons

Evangelion veteran Kazuya Tsurumaki will be on hand to direct episodes, which is nice for long-time fans. He directed the Rebuild of Evangelion films and the recent Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX anime. Composer Keiichi Okabe, from the NieR franchise, is scoring the new show. The new series will be produced by Studio Khara and Cloverworks.

While we know a fair bit about who's behind the scenes of the upcoming show, we don't know anything about the plot. We don't know if it's yet another remake of the original story, a sequel or some kind of spin-off like the chibi-inspired Petit Eva: Evangelion@School. There's a trailer, but it's light on details.

With Taro on board, it could really go in any direction. It's worth remembering, after all, that NieR is actually a spin-off of a PS2 game called Drakengard. In one of the multiple endings of that game, a final boss is transported from a fantasy realm to modern-day Tokyo. Slaying this beast releases a virus that plagues humankind, which is what eventually leads to the post-apocalyptic setting of NieR. This is sort of like if the events of a Dragon Quest game somehow led to the world of Resident Evil.

If there's anyone who can breathe fresh life into the Evangelion franchise, it's Taro. Did I mention he wears a gigantic moon mask? Also, this isn't his first time penning TV scripts. He co-wrote the NieR: Automata anime spinoff.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/a-new-evangelion-series-is-coming-from-studio-khara-and-yoko-taro-creator-of-nier-170916543.html?src=rss

13-hour AWS outage reportedly caused by Amazon’s own AI tools

Posted on by

A recent Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage that lasted 13 hours was reportedly caused by one of its own AI tools, according to reporting by Financial Times. This happened in December after engineers deployed the Kiro AI coding tool to make certain changes, say four people familiar with the matter.

Kiro is an agentic tool, meaning it can take autonomous actions on behalf of users. In this case, the bot reportedly determined that it needed to "delete and recreate the environment." This is what allegedly led to the lengthy outage that primarily impacted China.

Amazon says it was merely a "coincidence that AI tools were involved" and that "the same issue could occur with any developer tool or manual action." The company blamed the outage on "user error, not AI error." It said that by default the Kiro tool “requests authorization before taking any action” but that the staffer involved in the December incident had "broader permissions than expected — a user access control issue, not an AI autonomy issue."

Multiple Amazon employees spoke to Financial Times and noted that this was "at least" the second occasion in recent months in which the company's AI tools were at the center of a service disruption. "The outages were small but entirely foreseeable," said one senior AWS employee.

The company launched Kiro in July and has since pushed employees into using the tool. Leadership set an 80 percent weekly use goal and has been closely tracking adoption rates. Amazon also sells access to the agentic tool for a monthly subscription fee.

These recent outages follow a more serious event from October, in which a 15-hour AWS outage disrupted services like Alexa, Snapchat, Fortnite and Venmo, among others. The company blamed a bug in its automation software for that one.

However, Amazon disagrees with the characterization of certain products and services being unavailable as an outage. In response to the Financial Times report, the company shared the following statement, which it also published on its news blog:

We want to address the inaccuracies in the Financial Times' reporting yesterday. The brief service interruption they reported on was the result of user error—specifically misconfigured access controls—not AI as the story claims.

The disruption was an extremely limited event last December affecting a single service (AWS Cost Explorer—which helps customers visualize, understand, and manage AWS costs and usage over time) in one of our 39 Geographic Regions around the world. It did not impact compute, storage, database, AI technologies, or any other of the hundreds of services that we run. The issue stemmed from a misconfigured role—the same issue that could occur with any developer tool (AI powered or not) or manual action. We did not receive any customer inquiries regarding the interruption. We implemented numerous safeguards to prevent this from happening again—not because the event had a big impact (it didn't), but because we insist on learning from our operational experience to improve our security and resilience. Additional safeguards include mandatory peer review for production access. While operational incidents involving misconfigured access controls can occur with any developer tool—AI-powered or not—we think it is important to learn from these experiences. The Financial Times' claim that a second event impacted AWS is entirely false.

For more than two decades, Amazon has achieved high operational excellence with our Correction of Error (COE) process. We review these together so that we can learn from any incident, irrespective of customer impact, to address issues before their potential impact grows larger.

Update, February 21 2026, 11:58AM ET: This story has been updated to include Amazon's full statement in response to the Financial Times report. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/13-hour-aws-outage-reportedly-caused-by-amazons-own-ai-tools-170930190.html?src=rss

Meta is shuttering Messenger’s standalone website, which is a thing that exists

Posted on by

Meta is shutting down the standalone Messenger website, according to a company help page. The website will disappear in April, though web users will still be able to send and receive messages within Facebook.

"After messenger.com goes away, you will be automatically redirected to use facebook.com/messages for messaging on a computer," the help page reads. "You can continue your conversations there or on the Messenger mobile app."

Users will be able to restore their chat history after switching to the app by entering a PIN number. This is the same PIN that was used to initially create a backup on Messenger. It can be reset for those who simply don't have the bandwidth to remember yet another six-digit code.

Many users have expressed discontent over the decision to shut down the standalone website, according to a report by TechCrunch. This is particularly true for those who have deactivated their Facebook accounts but continued to use Messenger.

This comes just a few months after Meta shut down Messenger's standalone desktop apps. At that time, Meta directed existing users to Facebook to continue using the service and not the dedicated Messenger website. In other words, the writing has likely been on the wall since October.

Messenger has had a long and storied history. The platform first launched as Facebook Chat all the way back in 2008. Facebook Messenger became a standalone app in 2011. The company has long-tried to make Messenger a thing outside of Facebook. It removed messaging capabilities from the main Facebook app in 2014 and began directing users to the Messenger app. Meta began reintegrating Messenger back into the Facebook app in 2023 and now here we are.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/meta-is-shuttering-messengers-standalone-website-which-is-a-thing-that-exists-191808134.html?src=rss

Ring could be planning to expand Search Party feature beyond dogs

Posted on by

Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff has indicated that the company's controversial Search Party feature might not always be just for lost dogs, according to emails obtained by 404 Media. A creepy surveillance tool being used to surveil. Who could have predicted that?

"I believe that the foundation we created with Search Party, first for finding dogs, will end up becoming one of the most important pieces of tech and innovation to truly unlock the impact of our mission," Siminoff wrote in an email to staffers. "You can now see a future where we are able to zero out crime in neighborhoods. So many things to do to get there but for the first time ever we have the chance to fully complete what we started."

The words "zero out crime in neighborhoods" are particularly troubling. It is, however, worth noting that this is just an email and doesn't necessarily indicate a plan by the company. Siminoff wrote the email back in October when Search Party first launched, which was months before the public backlash started. He did end the thread by noting he couldn't "wait to show everyone else all the exciting things we are building over the years to come."

One of those things could be the recently-launched "Familiar Faces" tool, which uses facial recognition to identify people that wander into the frame of a Ring camera. It seems to me that a combination of the Search Party tech, which uses the combined might of connected Ring cameras, with the Familiar Faces tech could make for a very powerful surveillance tool that excels at finding specific individuals.

Siminoff also suggested in an earlier email to staffers that Ring technology could have been used to catch Charlie Kirk's killer by leveraging the company's Community Requests feature. This is a tool that allows cops to ask camera owners for footage, thanks to a partnership with the police tech company Axon.

Ring had planned an expansion of this program via a partnership with a surveillance company called Flock Safety. The companies canceled this partnership after a Super Bowl ad spotlighting the Search Party tool triggered public outcry. Ring didn't cite public sentiment for this decision, rather saying the integration would require "significantly more time and resources than anticipated."

Ring has responded to 404 Media's reporting, saying in an email that Search Party "does not process human biometrics or track people" and that "sharing has always been the camera owner's choice." This response did not provide any information as to what the future will hold for the company's toolset.

The organization has been friendly with law enforcement since inception. "Our mission to reduce crime in neighborhoods has been at the core of everything we do at Ring," founding chief Jamie Siminoff said when Amazon bought the company for $839 million back in 2018. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/ring-could-be-planning-to-expand-search-party-feature-beyond-dogs-175805706.html?src=rss

Cyberpunk platformer Replaced has once again been delayed

Posted on by

The long-awaited cyberpunk platformer Replaced just got hit with a short delay. The pixel-art game was supposed to come out on March 12, but will now be released on April 14. That's just a month, which isn't that big of a deal considering this game has been on our radar for five years.

Why the delay? Developer Sad Cat Studios notes that the game is "technically finished" but the team needs a few more weeks for polish. The company says it wants the day-one release to be "polished, stable and true to the vision" of the original concept. This is something to be commended, in my opinion, given the sad state of many game launches in recent years.

This is just the latest delay for the game. However, previous delays have been for a very good reason. The development team had to relocate from Belarus to Cyprus after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Replaced is an absolutely gorgeous-looking 2.5D platformer set in a dystopian alternative 1980s America. You play as an AI unwillingly trapped in a human body. There looks to be plenty of cinematic action, with a blurb promising a combination of "precise melee strikes with satisfying ranged attacks."

The game will be available for Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG and the Microsoft Store. It'll also be a day-one Xbox Game Pass release.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/cyberpunk-platformer-replaced-has-once-again-been-delayed-190621246.html?src=rss