The CEOs of Meta, Snap, Discord, X and TikTok testified at a high-stakes Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on child exploitation online. During the hearing, Mark Zuckerberg, Evan Spiegel, Jason Citron, Linda Yaccarino and Shou Chew spent nearly four hours being grilled by lawmakers about their records on child safety.
Judiciary Committee Chair, Senator Dick Durbin, noted Discord’s Citron “only accepted services of his subpoena” after US Marshals went to the company’s headquarters. Compared to previous hearings with tech CEOs, it was a heavier setting. The room was filled with parents of children who had been victims of online exploitation.
“Discord has been used to groom, abduct and abuse children,” Durbin said. “Meta’s Instagram helped connect and promote a network of pedophiles. Snapchat’s disappearing messages have been co-opted by criminals who financially extort young victims. TikTok has become a, quote, platform of choice for predators to access, engage and groom children for abuse. And the prevalence of CSAM (child sexual abuse material) on X has grown as the company has gutted its trust and safety workforce.”
Of course, it wouldn’t be a US Senate hearing without politicians also embarrassing themselves: Senator John Kennedy asked Snap’s Evan Spiegel if he knew the meaning of “yada yada yada” (Spiegel claimed he was “not familiar” with the phrase). “Can we agree… what you do is what you believe and everything else is just cottage cheese,” Kennedy asked. (… What?)
X’s Yaccarino, who repeatedly claimed X was a “brand new company” (and not Twitter with a poorly received rebrand), said the platform was considering adding parental controls. “Being a 14-month-old company, we have reprioritized child protection and safety measures,” she said. “And we have just begun to talk about and discuss how we can enhance those with parental controls.”
Twitter launched in 2006.
— Mat Smith
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Universal Music Group is threatening to pull all of its music from TikTok today following a breakdown in negotiations over royalties. The company wrote in an open letter that TikTok wanted to pay a “fraction” of the rate paid by other social media sites. “As our negotiations continued, TikTok attempted to bully us into accepting a deal worth less than the previous deal, far less than fair market value and not reflective of their exponential growth.”
The sides have reportedly been in negotiations for the past year. Such deals are worth billions annually to music publishing companies – and Universal is the world’s largest record label. If a deal isn’t struck, TikTok creators would lose access to songs from stars including Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, the Weeknd, Drake and others.
With Persona 3 Reload, developer Altus chose the most confusing (and influential) entry in the series to remake. There are some big changes you may not even notice if you haven’t played the 2006 original recently, with new English language voice actors (all the Japanese VAs return from the original) and, interestingly, the most voiced scenes from any game in the Persona series. Oh, it’s also incredibly gorgeous at times. But damn, it makes me feel old.
Hideo Kojima appeared on PlayStation’s State of Play not only to give Death Stranding 2 another nudge but also to say he’s developing a brand-new game for PlayStation. It’ll be an action-espionage title codenamed PHYSINT — so nothing to do with the Metal Gear Solid series that made his name. Kojima Productions has started early work on the project, but it won’t go into full production until the team finishes Death Stranding 2. Which is looking bonkers.
The Xbox Design Lab is neat. You can customize the colors of your controller pretty much however you like, with more options for the Vapor series. The six top case options have swirling color patterns more typically seen at your local bowling alley. If that still exists.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-senate-tells-social-media-ceos-they-have-blood-on-their-hands-133101841.html?src=rss
Universal Music Group (UMG) is threatening to pull all of its music from TikTok today following a breakdown in negotiations over royalties, the company wrote in an open letter. That would mean TikTok creators would lose access to songs from stars including Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, the Weeknd, Drake and others.
With UMG's deal with TikTok set to expire, the sides have reportedly been in negotiations for the past year. Such deals are worth billions annually to music publishing firms and are typically negotiated every few years. Universal is the world's largest record label, and if does pull it's music from TikTok, it would be the first time this has happened in recent memory.
Universal said TikTok wanted to pay a "fraction" of the rate paid by other social media sites. "As our negotiations continued, TikTok attempted to bully us into accepting a deal worth less than the previous deal, far less than fair market value and not reflective of their exponential growth."
In its own post, TikTok said that it serves as a valuable marketing tool for artists and publishers. "Despite Universal's false narrative and rhetoric, the fact is they have chosen to walk away from the powerful support of a platform with well over a billion users that serves as a free promotional and discovery vehicle for their talent."
TikTok also benefits greatly from access to Universal's catalog and being cut off from access to ultra-popular artists like Taylor Swift would be a blow to creators and users. TikTok's Chinese parent ByteDance has more than 3 billion monthly active users and made $29 billion in revenue in a single quarter ending June 2023, according to The Financial Times. Warner Bros. Music, the number three record label behind Sony Music and UMG, recently struck a deal with TikTok.
Universal said it does "not underestimate what this will mean for artists and their fans" but that it will not shirk its responsibilities. "TikTok’s tactics are obvious: use its platform power to hurt vulnerable artists and try to intimidate us into conceding to a bad deal that undervalues music and shortchanges artists and songwriters as well as their fans." The company added that payments from TikTok amount to "only about 1 percent of our total revenue."
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/universal-music-threatens-to-pull-songs-from-tiktok-over-payment-terms-101528365.html?src=rss
A Microsoft manager claims OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 has security vulnerabilities that could allow users to generate violent or explicit images (similar to those that recently targeted Taylor Swift). GeekWirereported Tuesday the company’s legal team blocked Microsoft engineering leader Shane Jones’ attempts to alert the public about the exploit. The self-described whistleblower is now taking his message to Capitol Hill.
“I reached the conclusion that DALL·E 3 posed a public safety risk and should be removed from public use until OpenAI could address the risks associated with this model,” Jones wrote to US Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA 9th District), and Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson (D). GeekWirepublished Jones’ full letter.
Jones claims he discovered an exploit allowing him to bypass DALL-E 3’s security guardrails in early December. He says he reported the issue to his superiors at Microsoft, who instructed him to “personally report the issue directly to OpenAI.” After doing so, he claims he learned that the flaw could allow the generation of “violent and disturbing harmful images.”
Jones then attempted to take his cause public in a LinkedIn post. “On the morning of December 14, 2023 I publicly published a letter on LinkedIn to OpenAI’s non-profit board of directors urging them to suspend the availability of DALL·E 3),” Jones wrote. “Because Microsoft is a board observer at OpenAI and I had previously shared my concerns with my leadership team, I promptly made Microsoft aware of the letter I had posted.”
A sample image (a storm in a teacup) generated by DALL-E 3
OpenAI
Microsoft’s response was allegedly to demand he remove his post. “Shortly after disclosing the letter to my leadership team, my manager contacted me and told me that Microsoft’s legal department had demanded that I delete the post,” he wrote in his letter. “He told me that Microsoft’s legal department would follow up with their specific justification for the takedown request via email very soon, and that I needed to delete it immediately without waiting for the email from legal.”
Jones complied, but he says the more fine-grained response from Microsoft’s legal team never arrived. “I never received an explanation or justification from them,” he wrote. He says further attempts to learn more from the company’s legal department were ignored. “Microsoft’s legal department has still not responded or communicated directly with me,” he wrote.
An OpenAI spokesperson wrote to Engadget in an email, “We immediately investigated the Microsoft employee’s report when we received it on December 1 and confirmed that the technique he shared does not bypass our safety systems. Safety is our priority and we take a multi-pronged approach. In the underlying DALL-E 3 model, we’ve worked to filter the most explicit content from its training data including graphic sexual and violent content, and have developed robust image classifiers that steer the model away from generating harmful images.
“We’ve also implemented additional safeguards for our products, ChatGPT and the DALL-E API – including declining requests that ask for a public figure by name,” the OpenAI spokesperson continued. “We identify and refuse messages that violate our policies and filter all generated images before they are shown to the user. We use external expert red teaming to test for misuse and strengthen our safeguards.”
Meanwhile, a Microsoft spokesperson wrote to Engadget, “We are committed to addressing any and all concerns employees have in accordance with our company policies, and appreciate the employee’s effort in studying and testing our latest technology to further enhance its safety. When it comes to safety bypasses or concerns that could have a potential impact on our services or our partners, we have established robust internal reporting channels to properly investigate and remediate any issues, which we recommended that the employee utilize so we could appropriately validate and test his concerns before escalating it publicly.”
“Since his report concerned an OpenAI product, we encouraged him to report through OpenAI’s standard reporting channels and one of our senior product leaders shared the employee’s feedback with OpenAI, who investigated the matter right away,” wrote the Microsoft spokesperson. “At the same time, our teams investigated and confirmed that the techniques reported did not bypass our safety filters in any of our AI-powered image generation solutions. Employee feedback is a critical part of our culture, and we are connecting with this colleague to address any remaining concerns he may have.”
Microsoft added that its Office of Responsible AI has established an internal reporting tool for employees to report and escalate concerns about AI models.
The whistleblower says the pornographic deepfakes of Taylor Swift that circulated on X last week are one illustration of what similar vulnerabilities could produce if left unchecked. 404 Mediareported Monday that Microsoft Designer, which uses DALL-E 3 as a backend, was part of the deepfakers’ toolset that made the video. The publication claims Microsoft, after being notified, patched that particular loophole.
“Microsoft was aware of these vulnerabilities and the potential for abuse,” Jones concluded. It isn’t clear if the exploits used to make the Swift deepfake were directly related to those Jones reported in December.
Jones urges his representatives in Washington, DC, to take action. He suggests the US government create a system for reporting and tracking specific AI vulnerabilities — while protecting employees like him who speak out. “We need to hold companies accountable for the safety of their products and their responsibility to disclose known risks to the public,” he wrote. “Concerned employees, like myself, should not be intimidated into staying silent.”
Update, January 30, 2024, 8:41 PM ET: This story has been updated to add statements to Engadget from OpenAI and Microsoft.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsofts-legal-department-allegedly-silenced-an-engineer-who-raised-concerns-about-dall-e-3-215953212.html?src=rss
As generative AI (and access to AI tools) continues to grow, expect to see more things like the tumult over “George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead.” Released on (then pulled from) YouTube, it’s framed as an hour of new “material” by the comedian, who died in 2008. Of course, it's not that. It isn't based on old notes or lost routines, either, like recent releases from the Beatles, and George Carlin’s estate has filed a lawsuit against the makers.
Initial reports from NPR said the AI was trained on thousands of hours of Carlin routines to create the material. Dudesy, the channel that created and posted the video, was later approached byThe New York Times, and their spokesperson said the video was “completely written by Chad Kultgen” — one of the channel’s hosts.
Both hosts, comedian Will Sasso and writer Kultgen, are named in the suit. They claim the AI-created Carlin is like an impressionist. (Although, it’s really not a great one…)
The complaint seeks unspecified damages and the immediate removal of “any video or audio copies” of the special.
Fossil is officially out of the smartwatch business. Its Wear OS smartwatch lineup hasn’t seen a new model since 2021, and the company has now confirmed it’s getting out of wearables. If you own a Fossil-branded watch (which covers several fashion brands like Skagen, Michael Kors, Diesel and even Emporio Armani), you should get updates for the next few years.
But let’s be clear: It probably wasn’t the Pixel Watch that landed the finishing blow.
A software issue keeps it from activating when vehicles are in reverse.
Tesla is recalling 200,000 vehicles in the US, following reports the backup cameras wouldn’t engage when cars were put in reverse — which is the whole point of the things. Tesla has processed 81 warranty claims potentially related to the issue, according to Autoblog. The recall includes certain Model Y, Model S and Model X vehicles from 2023. Tesla says it delivered 1.8 million vehicles last year, so this recall accounts for more than 10 percent of the company’s yearly output. If this sounds familiar, well, it comes six weeks after Tesla recalled over two million vehicles after serious safety issues with its Autopilot feature.
X confirmed it’s preventing users from searching Taylor Swift’s name after pornographic deepfakes of the artist began circulating on the platform. Visitors to the site started noticing on Saturday that some searches containing Swift’s name would only return an error message.
The platform’s handling of the issue has been slow. After the images went viral last Wednesday, Swifties took matters into their own hands (of course!) mass-reporting the accounts that shared the images and flooding the hashtags relating to the singer with positive content. Do you not remember the snake emoji saga?
Thoughts, feelings and facts this week on the Mac hitting middle age, the modular laptop capable of gaming and the realization that the Apple car dream is still alive. This week, Devindra is joined by News Editor Nathan Ingraham.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-that-ai-generated-george-carlin-comedy-special-was-written-by-humans-121501471.html?src=rss
X has confirmed it’s preventing users from searching Taylor Swift’s name after pornographic deepfakes of the artist began circulating on the platform this week. Visitors to the site started noticing on Saturday that some searches containing Swift’s name would only return an error message. In a statement to the Wall Street Journal on Saturday night, Joe Benarroch, X’s head of business operations, said, “This is a temporary action and done with an abundance of caution as we prioritize safety on this issue.” This step comes days after the problem first became known.
X’s handling of the issue from the start has drawn criticism that it’s been slow to curb the spread of nonconsensual, sexually explicit images. After the images went viral on Wednesday, Swift’s fans took matters into their own hands to limit their visibility and get them removed, mass-reporting the accounts that shared the images and flooding the hashtags relating to the singer with positive content, NBC News reported earlier this week. Many of the offending accounts were later suspended, but not before they’d been seen in some cases millions of times. The Verge reported on Thursday that one post was viewed more than 45 million times.
In a statement posted on its platform later that day, X said, “Posting Non-Consensual Nudity (NCN) images is strictly prohibited on X and we have a zero-tolerance policy towards such content. Our teams are actively removing all identified images and taking appropriate actions against the accounts responsible for posting them. We're closely monitoring the situation to ensure that any further violations are immediately addressed, and the content is removed. We're committed to maintaining a safe and respectful environment for all users.”
But it was still possible to find the images in days after. 404Media traced the likely origin of the images to a Telegram group known for creating nonconsensual AI-generated images of women using free tools including Microsoft Designer. In an interview with NBC News’ Lester Holt on Friday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the issue highlights what is the company’s responsibility, and “all of the guardrails that we need to place around the technology so that there’s more safe content that’s being produced.” He continued to say that “there’s a lot to be done there, and a lot being done there,” but also noted that the company needs to “move fast.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/x-confirms-it-blocked-taylor-swift-searches-to-prioritize-safety-153136902.html?src=rss
Hold onto your cabbages. Netflix just dropped a full trailer for its forthcoming live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender. It actually looks pretty cool, surprising fans who have been dreading a repeat of the disastrous 2010 film adaptation. The vibe is on point, calling to mind the source material, and the casting department looks to have done a fantastic job. Just look at Sokka, as portrayed by Ian Ousley.
This is the second trailer for the show, but the first was more of a teaser. The new trailer features two and a half minutes of footage, complete with jokes, action set-pieces and plenty of appearances by the franchise’s resident cutie-pies, the air bison Appa and winged lemur Momo. They are both CGI, but look pretty good to me.
You also get a deeper glimpse into both the world itself and the show’s primary characters. Gordon Courmier and Kiawentiio Tarbell look great as Aang and Katara, respectively. The trailer also boasts a shirtless Firelord Ozai, as played by Lost’s Daniel Dae Kim. Of course, it wouldn’t be Avatar without Prince Zuko and General Iroh, both of whom are featured prominently. Iroh is played by Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, fresh off his stint in a galaxy far, far away (he’s in a bunch of Star Wars shows.)
Netflix’s version of Avatar: The Last Airbender premieres with all episodes on February 22. Original series creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko aren’t involved with this adaptation, but are making an animated movie to further the adventures of Aang and the gang, in addition to more projects set in the Avatar universe.
As for Netflix, this is just the latest live-action adaptation of a pre-existing cartoon. The anime One Piece got a show earlier this year, preceded by Cowboy Bebop, Death Note, Fullmetal Alchemist and several more.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/netflixs-full-avatar-the-last-airbender-trailer-nails-the-vibe-of-the-cartoon-195539387.html?src=rss
As promised, Xbox offered the first details on MachineGames' Indiana Jones project during its Developer Direct stream on Thursday. It also confirmed the game's title — Indiana Jones and the Great Circle — and revealed that it's coming to Xbox Series X/S, PC and Xbox Cloud Gaming later this year.
No prizes for those who guessed that it's an action-adventure game that will see Indy try to stop some bad guys who are in pursuit of a mysterious power. The story takes place in 1937, between the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. The McGuffin powerful force in question is connected to something called The Great Circle — a perfect circle around the globe that links human-built ancient sites of "great spiritual significance."
The first gameplay trailer shows Indy from a first-person perspective as he explores the pyramids of Egypt, traverses snowy mountain tops, sneaks around enemy strongholds and generally tries to stay alive in the face of mortal doom. He also uses his whip to trip up a bad guy (who lets out a Wilhelm scream in the process), punches some Nazis in the face and leaps from one airborne biplane to another.
In cutscenes and some platforming sequences, the camera will pull back to let you get a better look at the legendary archaeologist. The game uses Harrison Ford's likeness, but video game stalwart Troy Baker provides the character's voice.
It's early days but MachineGames, with the help of Bethesda's Todd Howard as executive producer, seems to have gotten the look, feel and sound of an Indiana Jones adventure just about right. We'll find out just how well they've pulled off that tough task when the game comes out later this year, but Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has just become one of my most anticipated games.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/indiana-jones-and-the-great-circle-is-coming-to-xbox-and-pc-later-this-year-212759483.html?src=rss
As promised, Xbox offered the first details on MachineGames' Indiana Jones project during its Developer Direct stream on Thursday. It also confirmed the game's title — Indiana Jones and the Great Circle — and revealed that it's coming to Xbox Series X/S, PC and Xbox Cloud Gaming later this year.
No prizes for those who guessed that it's an action-adventure game that will see Indy try to stop some bad guys who are in pursuit of a mysterious power. The story takes place in 1937, between the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. The McGuffin powerful force in question is connected to something called The Great Circle — a perfect circle around the globe that links human-built ancient sites of "great spiritual significance."
The first gameplay trailer shows Indy from a first-person perspective as he explores the pyramids of Egypt, traverses snowy mountain tops, sneaks around enemy strongholds and generally tries to stay alive in the face of mortal doom. He also uses his whip to trip up a bad guy (who lets out a Wilhelm scream in the process), punches some Nazis in the face and leaps from one airborne biplane to another.
In cutscenes and some platforming sequences, the camera will pull back to let you get a better look at the legendary archaeologist. The game uses Harrison Ford's likeness, but video game stalwart Troy Baker provides the character's voice.
It's early days but MachineGames, with the help of Bethesda's Todd Howard as executive producer, seems to have gotten the look, feel and sound of an Indiana Jones adventure just about right. We'll find out just how well they've pulled off that tough task when the game comes out later this year, but Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has just become one of my most anticipated games.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/indiana-jones-and-the-great-circle-is-coming-to-xbox-and-pc-later-this-year-212759483.html?src=rss
With pre-orders for the Apple Vision Pro headset opening this week, the company is getting ready to launch one of its most significant products ever. It announced this morning an “entertainment format pioneered by Apple” called Apple Immersive Video, as well as new viewing environments in the Disney+ app featuring scenes from the studio’s beloved franchises like the Avengers and Star Wars.
We already got hands-on once back at WWDC when the headset was first announced, but two of our editors, Dana Wollman and Cherlynn Low, had a chance to go back and revisit the device (and in Dana’s case, experience it for the first time). Since we’ve already walked you through some of the basic UI elements in our earlier piece, we decided to focus on some of the more recently added features, including Apple Immersive Video, the new Disney+ environments, a built-in “Encounter Dinosaurs” experience, as well as the floating keyboard, which didn’t work for us when we first tried the device in June of last year. Here, too, we wanted to really get at what it actually feels like to use the device, from the frustrating to the joyful to the unintentionally eerie. (Yes, there was a tear, and also some screaming.)
Fit, comfort and strap options
Cherlynn: The best heads-up display in the world will be useless if it can’t be worn for a long time, so comfort is a crucial factor in the Apple Vision Pro’s appeal. This is also a very personal factor with a lot of variability between individual users. I have what has been described as a larger-than-usual head, and a generous amount of hair that is usually flat-ironed. This means that any headgear I put on tends to slip, especially if the band is elastic.
Like the version that our colleague Devindra Hardawar saw at WWDC last year, the Vision Pro unit I tried on today came with a strap that you stretch and ends up at the back of your head. It was wide, ridged and soft, and I at first thought it would be very comfortable. But 15 minutes into my experience, I started to feel weighed down by the device, and five more minutes later, I was in pain. To be fair, I should have flagged my discomfort to Apple earlier, and alternative straps were available for me to swap out. But I wanted to avoid wasting time. When I finally told the company’s staff about my issues, they changed the strap to one that had two loops, with one that went over the top of my head.
Apple
Dana: The fitting took just long enough — required just enough tweaking — that I worried for a minute that I was doing it wrong, or that I somehow had the world’s one unfittable head. First, I struggled to get the lettering to look sharp. It was like sitting at an optometrist's office, trying out a lens that was just slightly too blurry for me. Tightening the straps helped me get the text as crisp as it needed to be, but that left my nose feeling pinched. The solution was swapping out the seal cushion for the lighter of the two options. (There are two straps included in the box, as well as two cushions.) With those two tweaks — the Dual Loop Band and the light seal cushion — I finally felt at ease.
Cherlynn: Yep, that Dual Loop band felt much better for weight distribution, and it didn’t keep slipping down my hair. It’s worth pointing out that Apple did first perform a scan to determine my strap size, and they chose the Medium for me. I also had to keep turning a dial on the back right to make everything feel more snug, so I had some control over how tightly the device sat. Basically, you’ll have quite a lot of options to adapt the Vision Pro to your head.
Apple Immersive Video and spatial videos
Dana: Sitting up close in the center of Apple Immersive and spatial videos reminded me of Jimmy Stewart’s character in It’s A Wonderful Life: I was both an insider and outsider at the same time. In one demo, we saw Alicia Keys performing the most special of performances: just for us, in a living room. In a different series of videos — these meant to demonstrate spatial video — we saw the same family at mealtime, and a mother and daughter outside, playing with bubbles.
As I watched these clips, particularly the family home videos that reminded me of my own toddler, I felt immersed, yes, but also excluded; no one in the videos sees you or interacts with you, obviously. You are a ghost. I imagined myself years from now, peering in from the future on bygone videos of my daughter, and felt verklempt. I did not expect to get teary-eyed during a routine Apple briefing.
Cherlynn: The Immersive Video part of my demo was near the end, by which point I had already been overwhelmed by the entire experience and did not quite know what more to expect. The trailer kicked off with Alicia Keys singing in my face, which I enjoyed. But I was more surprised by the kids playing soccer with some rhinos on the field, and when the animals charged towards me, I physically recoiled. I loved seeing the texture of their skin and the dirt on the surface, and was also impressed when I saw the reflection of an Apple logo on the surface of a lake at the end. I didn’t have the same emotional experience that Dana did, but I can see how it would evoke some strong feelings.
Apple
Disney+ app
Dana: Apple was very careful to note that the version of the Disney+ app we were using was in beta; a work in progress. But what we saw was still impressive. Think of it like playing a video game: Before you select your race course, say, you get to choose your player. In this case, your “player” is your background. Do you want to sit on a rooftop from a Marvel movie? The desert of Tatooine? Make yourself comfortable in whatever setting tickles your fancy, and then you can decide if actually you want to be watching Loki or Goosebumps in your Star Wars wasteland. It’s not enough to call it immersive. In some of these “outdoor” environments in particular, it’s like attending a Disney-themed drive-in. Credit to Disney: They both understand – and respect – their obsessive fans. They know their audience.
Cherlynn: As a big Marvel fangirl, I really geeked out when the Avengers Tower environment came on. I looked around and saw all kinds of easter eggs, including a takeout container from Shawarma Grill on the table next to me. It feels a little silly to gush about the realism of the images, but I saw no pixels. Instead, I looked at a little handwritten note that Tony Stark had clearly left behind and felt like I was almost able to pick it up. When we switched over to the Tatooine environment, I was placed in the cockpit of Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder, and when I reached out to grab the steering controls, I was able to see my own hands in front of me. I felt slightly disappointed to not actually be able to interact with those elements, but it was definitely a satisfying experience for a fan.
Typing experience
Cherlynn: Devindra mentioned that the floating keyboard wasn’t available at his demo last year, and was curious to hear what that was like. I was actually surprised that it worked, and fairly well in my experience. When I selected the URL bar by looking at it and tapping my thumb and forefinger, the virtual keyboard appeared. I could either use my eyes to look at the keys I wanted, then tap my fingers together to push them. Or, and this is where I was most impressed, I could lean forward and press the buttons with my hands.
It’s not as easy as typing on an actual keyboard would be, but I was quite tickled by the fact that it worked. Kudos to Apple’s eye- and hand-tracking systems, because they were able to detect what I was looking at or aiming for most of the time. My main issue with the keyboard was that it felt a little too far away and I needed to stretch if I wanted to press the buttons myself. But using my eye gaze and tapping wasn’t too difficult for a short phrase, and if I wanted to input something longer I could use voice typing (or pair a Bluetooth keyboard if necessary).
Apple
Dana: This was one of the more frustrating aspects of the demo for me. Although there were several typing options – hunting and pecking with your fingers, using eye control to select keys, or just using Siri – none of them felt adequate for anything resembling extended use. It took several tries for me to even spell Engadget correctly in the Safari demo. This was surprising to me, as so many other aspects of the broader Apple experience – the pinch gesture, the original touch keyboard on the original iPhone – “just work,” as Apple loves to say about itself. The floating keyboard here clearly needs improvement. In the meantime, it’s harder to imagine using the Vision Pro for actual work. The Vision Pro feels much further along as a personal home theater.
Meditation
Cherlynn: As someone who’s covered the meditation offerings by companies like Apple and Fitbit a fair amount, I wasn’t sure what to expect of the Vision Pro. Luckily, this experience took place in the earlier part of the demo, so I wasn’t feeling any head strain yet and was able to relax. I leaned back on the couch and watched as a cloud, similar to the Meditation icon in the Apple Watch, burst into dozens of little “leaves” and floated around me in darkness. As the 1-minute session started, soft, comforting music played in the background as a voice guided me through what to do. The leaves pulsed and I felt enveloped by relaxing visuals and calming sounds and altogether it felt quite soothing. It’s funny how oddly appropriate a headset is for something like meditating, where you can literally block out distractions in the world and simply focus on your breathing. This was a fitting use of the Vision Pro that I certainly did not anticipate.
Dana: I wanted more of this. A dark environment, with floating 3D objects and a prompt to think about what I am grateful for today. The demo only lasted one minute, but I could have gone longer.
Encounter Dinosaurs
Cherlynn: Fun fact about me: Dinosaurs don’t scare me, but butterflies do. Yep. Once you’ve stopped laughing, you can imagine the trauma I had to undergo at this demo. I’d heard from my industry friends and Devindra all about how they watched a butterfly land on their fingers in their demos at WWDC, before dinosaurs came bursting out of a screen to roar at them. Everyone described this as a realistic and impressive technological demo, since the Vision Pro was able to accurately pinpoint for everyone where their fingers were and have the butterflies land exactly on their fingertips.
I did not think I’d have to watch a butterfly land on my body today, and just generally do not want that in life. But for this demo, I kept my eyes open to see just how well Apple would do, and, because I had a minor calibration issue at the start of this demo, I had to do this twice. The first time this happened, I… screamed a bit. I could see the butterfly’s wings and legs. That’s really what creeped me out the most — seeing the insect’s legs make “contact” with my finger. There was no tactile feedback, but I could almost feel the whispery sensation of the butterfly’s hairy ass legs on my finger. Ugh.
Then the awful butterfly flew away and a cute baby dinosaur came out, followed by two ferocious dinosaurs that I then stood up to “pet”. It was much more fun after, and actually quite an impressive showcase of the Vision Pro’s ability to blend the real world with immersive experiences, as I was able to easily see and walk around a table in front of me to approach the dinosaur.
Dana: Unlike Cher, I did not scream, though I did make a fool of myself. I held out my hand, to beckon one of the dinosaurs, and it did in fact walk right up to me and make a loud sound in my face. I “pet” it before it retreated. Another dinosaur appeared. I once again held out my hand, but that second dino ignored me. As the demo ended, I waved and heard myself say “bye bye.” (Did I mention I live with a toddler?) I then remembered there were other adults in the room, observing me use the headset, and felt sheepish. Which describes much of the Vision Pro experience, to be honest. You could maybe even say the same of any virtual reality headset worth their salt. It is immersive to the point that you will probably, at some point, throw decorum to the wind.
Apple
Final (ish) thoughts
Cherlynn: I had been looking forward to trying on the Vision Pro for myself and was mostly not disappointed. The eye- and hand-tracking systems are impressively accurate, and I quickly learned how to navigate the interface, so much so that I was speeding ahead of the instructions given to me. I’m not convinced that I’ll want to spend hours upon hours wearing a headset, even if the experience was mind-blowing. The device’s $3,500 price is also way out of my budget.
But of all the VR, AR and MR headsets I’ve tried on in my career, the Apple Vision Pro is far and away the best, and easily the most thought-out. Apple also took the time to show us what you would look like to other people when using the device, with a feature called EyeSight that would put a visual feed of your eyes on the outside of the visor. Depending on what you’re doing in visionOS, the display would show some animations indicating whether you’re fully immersed in an environment or if you can see the people around you.
Dana: The Vision Pro was mostly easier to use than I expected, and while it has potential as an all-purpose device that you could use for web browsing, email, even some industrial apps, its killer application, for now, is clearly watching movies (home videos or otherwise). I can’t pretend that Apple is the first to create a headset offering an immersive experience; that would be an insult to every virtual reality headset we’ve tested previously (sorry, Apple, I’m going to use the term VR). But if you ask me what it felt like to use the headset, particularly photo and video apps, my answer is that I felt joy. It is fun to use. And it is up to you if this much fun should cost $3,500.
Update, January 17 2024, 3:04PM ET: This article was edited to clarify the TV shows you can view in the Disney+ app's immersive environment. You can only watch Disney+ shows in the environments, like the Avengers Tower or the landspeeder on Tatooine. A previous misspelling of the word Tatooine was also edited, as well as clarification around the head strap option that was available at the WWDC demo.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-vision-pro-hands-on-redux-immersive-video-disney-app-floating-keyboard-and-a-little-screaming-180006222.html?src=rss
Hulu led the pack, winning six Primetime Emmys thanks to its dark comedy, The Bear. The Hulu and FX production won for outstanding overall, along with writing and directing for a comedy series. The cast also continued their award season winning streak. Jeremy Allen White won for outstanding lead actor in a comedy series, while Ayo Edeberi won for outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series — notably she took best actress (not supporting) at the Golden Globes. Ebon Moss-Bachrach won in the supporting actor counterpart.
Max (formerly HBO Max) also left with six awards, all coming from the final season of Succession. The Television Academy awarded outstanding directing and writing for a drama series for the same episode, "Connor's Wedding" (if you know, you know). The show's three male leads competed for outstanding actor in a drama series, with Kieran Culkin once again taking home the trophy. Sarah Snook won for outstanding actor in a drama series, while Matthew Macfayden received the supporting actor award for that category. Succession also won as a whole for outstanding drama series.
Like its fellow streamers, Netflix's wins all came from the same series: Beef. The show took home five awards, including outstanding limited or anthology series. Its lead actors, Steven Yeun and Ali Wong, won for outstanding actor and actress in the same category, respectively. Beef rounded out its awards with outstanding writing and directing wins for two separate episodes across the show's ten parts.
The Emmys were originally scheduled to take place in September, but The Television Academy and Fox postponed it to January due to the writers and actors strikes. The Creative Arts Emmys took place on January 6 and 7, competing with Golden Globes weekend, while the Primetime Emmys took place only a day after the Critics Choice Awards — it's a busy month for Hollywood folks.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/hulu-and-max-win-big-at-75th-primetime-emmys-biggest-winners-104409101.html?src=rss