Uber has teamed up with UK self-driving car startup Wayve and Nissan to launch a pilot program for a robotaxi service in Tokyo in late 2026. The program will use Nissan Leaf EVs powered by Wayve’s AI Driver automated vehicle technology, which will then be connected to Uber’s platform. Trained drivers will be behind the wheel at first, as the deployed vehicles gather real-world data to be able to navigate Tokyo’s driving conditions and complex streets that are also a lot narrower than the roads in the US.
Another company backed by Uber, Nuro, will also test its vehicles on Tokyo’s challenging streets soon. Nuro has been trialing its self-driving tech in the US for years now and plans to launch a robotaxi service, as well. They’re not the first companies to take on Tokyo streets, however: Waymo deployed its Jaguar I-PACE autonomous vehicles in the metropolis last year to collect data on its roads and the driving patterns of locals.
The pilot program in Tokyo is just part of Wayve’s and Uber’s plan to roll out a robotaxi service in more than 10 cities around the world. In the future, the companies are planning to offer self-driving vehicles as an option in the city through a licensed taxi partner in Japan.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/uber-is-piloting-a-robotaxi-service-in-tokyo-112133871.html?src=rss
US self-driving startup Nuro, which is backed by the likes of NVIDIA, Toyota and Uber, has started testing its autonomous vehicles on Tokyo's challenging streets, Bloomberg reported. The company, which plans to launch a robotaxi service with Uber and Lucid in San Francisco this year, will be testing a "handful" of vehicles in the city. Human safety drivers will be at the wheel, as is required by Japanese law.
Tokyo presents a challenge for autonomous vehicles, given its narrow, crowded streets and left side of the road driving. "Testing the capability of the autonomy system in such an interesting market with some international complexity really is a good pressure test of what the system is capable of," said CEO Andrew Chapin. The company's ultimate goal is to achieve Level 4 autonomy, which allows full self-driving under limited conditions.
Waymo is the other major robotaxi operator testing vehicles in Tokyo in collaboration with Japanese taxi operators Nihon Kotsu and the country's leading taxi app, Go. It has been operating in the nation since April 2025 in collaboration with Toyota.
Nuro has yet to announce which operators or vehicle manufacturers it will be partnering with, but Chapin said it may not limit itself to autonomous rides. "A universal autonomy platform that can be extended to a lot of different applications and form factors is a bit different than the approach Waymo is taking," he told Bloomberg. The company previously teamed with 7-Eleven on autonomous deliveries in Mountain View, California.
Uber plans to have up to 100,000 autonomous vehicles including 20,000 robotaxis powered by Lucid and Nuro, with a rollout starting in 2027. It introduced its new vehicle design recently at CES 2026. Uber is also collaborating with Nissan and Wayve with the aim to introduce pilot cars in Tokyo by late 2026.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/nvidia--and-uber-backed-nuro-is-testing-autonomous-vehicles-in-tokyo-081200366.html?src=rss
Google Play has introduced a new feature called Game Trials, which will let you play a portion of paid games for free before you commit to buying them. It’s now rolling out to select paid games on mobile, and it’s coming soon to Google Play Games on PC. Titles that offer Game Trials will show a button marked “Try” on their profile pages. When you click it, you’ll see how long you can play the game before you have to buy it. In Google’s example, the survival and horror game Dredge will give you 60 minutes of free play time, after which you’ll get the option to either buy the game or delete it from your device.
Google has also announced that it’s releasing more paid indie games over the coming months, including Moonlight Peaks, Sledding Game and Low-Budget Repairs. It has launched a new section in the Play store, as well, to feature games optimized for Windows PCs. You can wishlist the games from that section to get a notification when they’re on sale.
Finally, the company is rolling out Play Games Sidekick, the Gemini-powered Android overlay it announced last year, to select games downloaded from Play. Sidekick can show you relevant info and tools for whatever game you're playing without having to do a search query. But if you’d rather ask other people for gaming advice instead of an AI, you can also look at a game’s Community Posts, a feature now available in English for select titles on their Play pages.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/google-play-will-let-you-try-a-game-before-you-buy-it-051854016.html?src=rss
In 2024, Microsoft caused a lot of head-scratching and general bemusement with the launch of its "This is an Xbox" marketing campaign. Now, though, it appears the quandary over what is and isn't an Xbox has been resolved. Game Developer noticed that the original blog post on Xbox Wire that kicked off the whole affair has been removed. It seems Xbox will be going a new direction with its future promotions.
Maybe since the new Project Helix hardware it has in the works is more definite attempt to blur console and PC gaming, "This is an Xbox" might have been truly confusing as a tagline. Maybe with the recent changing of the guard at the company, the top brass decided that it was the right time to start fresh with a less meme-able marketing plan. Whatever the reason, we have enjoyed this opportunity to learn about the existential philosophy behind being an Xbox. And fortunately, although the blog post may be gone, the video trailer still exists whenever we need to remind ourselves of the many things that can be Xbox-ified.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/i-guess-this-wasnt-an-xbox-after-all-230154314.html?src=rss
Superhuman has taken its writing assistant Grammarly on quite the merry-go-round ride regarding its approach to AI tools. In August, the company launched a feature called Expert Review that would offer feedback on your writing, offering AI-generated feedback that would appear to come from a famous writer or academic of note. These recreations were based on "publicly available information from third-party LLMs," which sounds a lot like web crawlers of dubious legality were involved.
The suggested experts would be based on the subject matter and could be anyone from great scientific minds to bestselling fiction authors to your friendly neighborhood tech bloggers. Living or dead, these writers' names appeared on Grammarly without their permission or knowledge. "References to experts in this product are for informational purposes only and do not indicate any affiliation with Grammarly or endorsement by those individuals or entities," the company hedged in a disclaimer on the service.
As one might imagine, once people took notice, a large number of the living contingent of those writers were none too pleased. In fact, there's an attempted class action suit already underway against Superhuman. The company initially attempted to address the complaints by allowing writers to opt out of the platform. Which I'm sure was a big relief to the deceased contingent and to those living ones who aren't closely following AI news and might still not know they were being cited by the tool.
Today, Superhuman CEO Shishir Mehrotra wrote in a LinkedIn post that the company will disable Expert Review while it reassesses the feature. "The agent was designed to help users discover influential perspectives and scholarship relevant to their work, while also providing meaningful ways for experts to build deeper relationships with their fans," he said. Yes, Carl Sagan must be bemoaning the lack of deep relationships with his fans from the afterlife.
Update, March 11, 2026, 5:34PM ET: Updated to note pending class action lawsuit filed against Superhuman over this feature.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/grammarly-has-disabled-its-tool-offering-generative-ai-feedback-credited-to-real-writers-201614257.html?src=rss
It must be 2017 because loot boxes are back in the news again. Two weeks after New York's attorney general sued Valve over its use of the gimmick, the company has responded. In short, the Steam maker essentially said, "See you in court."
New York's lawsuit accuses Valve of promoting illegal gambling through its games. AG Letitia James called the loot boxes found in titles like Counter-Strike 2, Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2 "addictive, harmful and illegal." The state seeks to "permanently stop Valve from continuing to promote illegal gambling in its games" and pay relevant fines.
In its defense posted on Thursday, Valve likened its mystery boxes to kids buying packs of physical trading cards. "Players don't have to open mystery boxes to play Valve games," the company wrote. "In fact, most of you don't open any boxes at all and just play the games — because the items in the boxes are purely cosmetic, there is no disadvantage to a player not spending money."
That last point, while applicable within the game itself, isn't quite that cut and dry once you zoom out beyond that. As James pointed out, players can trade the cosmetic items they win from loot boxes on Steam's marketplace or sell them on third-party marketplaces. Rarer ones can sometimes fetch lucrative sums.
A CS2 gun skin listed for $20,000 on DMarket
DMarket
Here, too, Valve defended the profitable practice by rolling out the trading card comparison. "We think the transferability of a digital game item is good for consumers — it gives a user the ability to sell or trade an old or unwanted item for something else, in the same way an owner can sell or trade a tangible item like a Pokémon or baseball card," the company wrote. "NYAG proposes to take away users' ability to transfer their digital items from Valve games. Transferability is a right we believe should not be taken away, and we refuse to do that."
Some of Valve's points land a bit more than its righteous defense of a gaming gimmick that, well, isn’t exactly beloved. The company accused the NYAG of proposing that Valve collect additional user information to prevent VPN use. In addition, the state allegedly "demanded that Valve collect more personal data about our users to do additional age verification." Privacy experts have been sounding the alarm about the recent push for online age verification.
Valve also addressed James's erroneous and outdated statement that video games encourage real-world violence. "Those extraneous comments are a distraction and a mischaracterization we've all heard before," the company wrote. "Numerous studies throughout the years have concluded there is no link between media (movies, TV, books, comics, music and games) and real world violence. Indeed, many studies highlight the beneficial impact of games to users."
The company says that, while it may have been cheaper to settle the suit, it deemed the NYAG's demands user-hostile. "Ultimately, a court will decide whose position — ours or NYAG's — is correct. In the meantime, we wanted to make sure you were aware of the potential impact to users in New York and elsewhere."
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/valve-defends-loot-boxes-in-response-to-new-yorks-lawsuit-190655554.html?src=rss
TikTok will soon let you stream full songs in its app via a new integration with Apple Music. The company's new Play Full Song feature makes it possible to link your Apple Music account toTikTok, and play any song that strikes your fancy directly in the app while you're scrolling.
Starting a song is as simple as tapping a button in the Sound Details page or your For You page. Assuming you pay for Apple Music, TikTok will then open up a streamlined version of Apple's music player, which you can use to listen to the song, save it for later or add it to a playlist.
TikTok says that Play Full Song is built using Apple's MusicKit APIs, which let developers surface elements of the Apple Music streaming service in their apps. TikTok has previously offered integration with multiple music streaming services through a feature it calls Add to Music App, which made it possible to save songs you heard on TikTok to your streaming library. What's particularly interesting about this new integration is that because it's using Apple's APIs, songs streamed with Play Full Song count as normal streams for the artists in Apple Music, so they don't lose out on any money.
Alongside the new feature, TikTok and Apple are also introducing a way for fans to listen to music live with their favorite artists. TikTok's Listening Party feature creates a live "shared environment" where people can listen to music and interact with artists directly, in what effectively sounds like an audio-only livestream. TikTok livestreams are a whole ecosystem in their own right, and Listening Party seems like a way to leverage some of the same technology for a more controlled, music promotion-focused end.
TikTok is already a popular tool for music discovery and launching the career of new artists, and the platform also briefly dabbled in offering a streaming service of its own in 2023. The company abandoned those plans in 2024, but under new owners, TikTok's ambitions could ultimately be bigger than just offering nice integrations with existing streaming services.
TikTok says Play Full Song and Listening Party are rolling out worldwide “in the weeks ahead,” so if you don’t see either feature now, you may soon.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/tiktok-will-let-you-stream-full-songs-in-its-app-if-youre-an-apple-music-subscriber-183333143.html?src=rss
Xbox Mode will only be available in select markets at first, and Microsoft describes it as bringing "a controller-optimized experience to your Windows 11 device, letting players browse their library, launch games, use Game Bar and switch between apps." You know, just like Steam Big Picture mode. Microsoft didn't have much else to share about optimizations in Xbox Mode, but when it debuted the feature for Windows 11 Insiders last fall, the company noted that its task switcher will let people quickly move between games, as well as their apps.
Microsoft also has some geekier developer-focused news for the Games Developer Conference. Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD), which first appeared on the Xbox ROG Ally, will be made available to all developers on the Xbox store. ASD allows delivers to pre-compile shaders, so you're not stuck waiting for them to get processed on your system. That should also help to avoid the shader stuttering so common when playing a new title, since shader processing often occurs in the background too.
DirectStorage, Microsoft's technology for speeding up game loading on NVMe SSDs, is also getting support for Zstandard compression, as well as a tool called the "Game Asset Conditional Library." According to Microsoft, that tool enables "improving compression efficiency while simplifying asset conditioning across production pipelines." Microsoft also plans to give developers a glimpse at how next-generation Machine Learning will be implemented in its DirectX gaming API.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/microsofts-full-screen-xbox-mode-will-roll-out-to-windows-11-pcs-in-april-181000289.html?src=rss
Microsoft plans to begin shipping early units of its next generation console, codenamed Project Helix, to game studios starting sometime next year. “We're sending alpha versions of Project Helix to developers starting in 2027,“ said Jason Ronald, vice-president of next generation for Xbox, according to IGN, which was present at the company’s GDC 2026 presentation where it shared early details about the new device. Ronald did not clarify what he meant by “alpha version,” but given the keynote’s developer focus, presumably he meant devkits, which studios could use to start creating games for the new console.
Additionally, Ronald reiterated that the new system would be capable of playing both Xbox console games and PC games, and said it would incorporate a custom AMD-made system-on-a-chip capable of rendering graphics with path tracing. Judging from a slide the company shared, Microsoft and AMD are working on many of the same technologies and capabilities AMD is co-designing with Sony for next PlayStation console. For instance, Ronald said Helix would be capable of ray regeneration, a technique designed to produce better-looking ray-traced effects. The new console will also offer multi-frame frame generation and machine learning-based upscaling.
“It delivers an order of magnitude leap in ray tracing performance and capability, integrates intelligence directly into the graphics and compute pipeline, and drives meaningful gains in efficiency, scale, and visual ambition. The result is more realistic, immersive, and dynamic worlds for players,” Ronald wrote in a blog post published after his presentation.
Ronald didn’t speak to any specific compute numbers, likely due to the fact Microsoft has yet to finalize the Helix hardware. We’ll likely learn more of those details the closer we get to 2027.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/microsoft-will-start-providing-game-studios-with-project-helix-consoles-in-2027-180352458.html?src=rss
A new company called Musical Beings has officially unveiled the Tembo, which might be the cutest drum machine ever made. Just look at this thing! It's got a wooden chassis that resembles a standard drum machine, but with one key difference. The sequencer is tactile. Users arrange beats by placing magnetic pucks that trigger samples.
This seems like a really good way to introduce the basics of sequencing and beatmaking to kids and young adults, being that DAWs and grooveboxes can feature a steep learning curve. The sequencer isn't all that different from what's found on a typical groovebox, but the analog nature of it seems novel.
The company says it designed Tembo to "enable everyone to create music from the very first touch." Co-founder David Davidov told MusicRadar that most instruments take "so long to get to the fun part" and that Musical Beings wanted to "help people experience music as something they do, not just something they listen to."
Just because it's accessible to kids and amateurs doesn't mean it's not for seasoned musicians. This is a real-deal drum machine with plenty of nifty features. There's a five-channel, 16-step sequencer that's controlled via the aforementioned circular magnets. The machine includes knobs for swing, tempo, effects and pattern length.
It has two USB-C MIDI connections, so it can easily be hooked up to a DAW or synced with external gear. Sessions can be recorded via USB audio or a stereo output. There's also a dedicated companion app to help with that sort of thing.
The Tembo is battery-powered, making it relatively portable, and there's a built-in speaker. The integrated sampler lets users lay down musical ideas in addition to beats, making it something of a junior groovebox. This is assisted by a built-in microphone.
The Kickstarter just launched, but has already soared past the initial goal. The price ranges from around $360 to $450 depending on the tier. It's worth noting that Musical Beings is a new company and Kickstarter projects are never guaranteed to come out. However, a number of units have already been built, as some musicians and studios have already gotten their hands on them.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/tembo-might-just-be-the-worlds-cutest-drum-machine-173926914.html?src=rss
