In an unexpected twist, humans have taken some jobs back from AI. Embark Studios' CEO Patrick Söderlund recently told GamesIndustry.biz that the studio "re-recorded" some of the AI-generated voice lines in Arc Raiders with human voices, only after its successful launch in October.
"There is a quality difference," Söderlund told GamesIndustry.biz. "A real professional actor is better than AI; that's just how it is."
With Arc Raiders' player count peaking at nearly half a million users on Steam, the game's breakout success was still marred by its use of text-to-speech AI. While there was no generative AI used for the visuals of the extraction shooter, Embark Studios paid its actors for approval to license their voices for text-to-speech AI, according to Söderlund. Even though Söderlund said that the text-to-speech AI was reserved for lines "that aren't as essential to the immersion of the experience," many players weren't happy with this creative decision.
Responding to the criticism, Embark Studios is seemingly reversing course and relying more on its voice actors. Söderlund said that the studio pays its voice actors for their time in the recording booth and will "continue to bring many of them back as we carry on updating the game." However, it's important to note that Söderlund told GamesIndustry.biz that "some" of the AI-generated lines were replaced by voice actors, which could indicate that the studio isn't looking to completely ditch its text-to-speech AI anytime soon.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/arc-raiders-replaced-some-of-its-ai-generated-voice-lines-with-professional-actors-184915627.html?src=rss
OpenAI plans to add its Sora video generation model directly into ChatGPT, The Information reports . The standalone Sora app was seen as a smash hit when it launched alongside Sora 2 in September 2025, but interest in the video generation app has fallen in the time since as users ran into limits on the amount and kinds of videos they could create.
Adding Sora to the ChatGPT could give the model a second life, and ideally grow the ChatGPT app's weekly active users from the 900 million OpenAI reported in February, to a billion or more. According to The Information, the standalone Sora app will stick around after the model is integrated, even though the app has fallen out of the App Store's top 100 free apps and only a small number of users reportedly share their videos publicly in the app.
It’s hard to pin down an exact number for what generating a video costs OpenAI, but the company charges API customers $0.10 per second for a 720p video, and in 2025, it was willing to give away 30 free video generations per account per a day in the Sora app. When you consider the even larger audience that could use the model in the ChatGPT app, things could get expensive fast. That could be one reason The Information reports OpenAI has projected it could spend over $225 billion on inference — the cost of running the company's models — between 2026 and 2030.
The company has attempted to monetize the Sora app by having users pay for credits to generate new videos, and could deploy something similar once the model comes to ChatGPT. Maybe giving customers the ability to generate videos with Disney characters could even get people to pay for more videos once they run out of free generations. Whether or not adding Sora to ChatGPT moves the needle for OpenAI, though, the company will likely be spending even more money than it was before.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/openai-reportedly-plans-to-add-sora-video-generation-to-chatgpt-222611439.html?src=rss
In the mad dash many companies have made to incorporate AI features into their phones, Nothing arrived at one of the better ideas with Essential Space on the Nothing Phone 3a in 2025. The AI-powered app turns screenshots and voice recordings into actionable to-do lists and transcriptions, and now Nothing is rolling out an update to make the app easier to search and capable of recognizing new kinds of content.
As part of the update, Essential Space now recognizes "Events," displaying them in their own card with fields for the date, time and location. That means, for example, if you add a photo of a flyer for pottery class to the app, Essential Space will be able to pull the details of when and where it's happening, and track it in much the same way it does tasks or to-dos. Nothing foresees events being such a big part of how people will use Essential Space that it's also changing the layout of the app's interface and listing things like Events and Tasks in a new For You page you see when you open the app.
To make everything you've stored in Essential Space easier to find, the app now also supports semantic search, surfacing results that don't just match the text you've entered, but try to match the meaning of what you're looking for. Semantic search should be particularly useful when you're looking for an image, because you can enter a description of what you're looking for and Essential Space should still be able to surface it.
Sorting and indexing digital ephemera like voice notes and screenshots with AI is a popular use for the technology. Google offers Pixel Screenshots, and even Apple gave iOS and iPadOS the ability to automatically recognize events in images and add them to your calendar. Essential Space might be less unique now, but the fact that Nothing continues to update it bodes well for its future.
Nothing's new Essential Space update is available starting today on "all 2025–2026 Nothing and CMF phones that support Essential Key," the company says. Essential Space should automatically update, but you also manually update the app in the Google Play Store.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/nothing-updates-its-ai-app-with-semantic-search-and-a-new-way-to-track-events-202500495.html?src=rss
Parallels, the company best known for making the virtualization software that enables you to run Windows and other operating systems on a Mac, has confirmed that Parallels Desktop is compatible with the MacBook Neo.
At launch it was unclear if Apple's new $600 laptop possessed the under-the-hood heft to run Windows apps, but in a recently updated post on its website, Parallels said that initial tests show its software running "stably," although performance is still being assessed.
The MacBook Neo uses an A18 Pro chip, which debuted in the iPhone 16 Pro. However, as this chip is based on the same ARM architecture as M-series chips for Mac, it’s still capable of running Parallels’ Windows virtual machine.
But there is a caveat to all this. Just because you can do something, it doesn’t necessarily mean you should. While Parallels Desktop could theoretically be a viable option for Neo owners who are only interested in light Windows use, anything that puts a significant strain on the CPU or GPU is going to present a problem.
This is because the MacBook Neo only ships with 8GB of RAM, and as Parallels highlights, Windows 11 requires a minimum of 4GB of RAM to run. That leaves a very small amount of remaining headroom for macOS and your Mac apps to run alongside Windows, which is going to noticeably hurt the laptop’s performance. Add to that the lack of a cooling fan, meaning the chip will reduce clock speeds when it detects a heavy CPU or GPU load, and this definitely isn’t a device for power users.
If you really want to dabble with Windows on a Mac, Parallels recommends picking up an Apple laptop with 16GB of unified memory or more, like the new MacBook Air M5 or a MacBook Pro. And for those content with macOS and looking to save some money, we dubbed the MacBook Neo the best $600 laptop we’ve ever used in our recently published review.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/parallels-desktop-creators-say-macbook-neo-does-indeed-have-enough-muscle-to-run-windows-apps-164525546.html?src=rss
Inevitably, the more you use something — your Mac included — the more dirty and cluttered it’s likely to become. At that point, you can buy a new machine, but the more economical move is to make what you have already work better. To help your computer feel new, or at least a little cleaner and less chaotic, we put together this guide with techniques and useful apps that have helped us maintain a more organized computer. I’ve been using these tips since before I first published this guide in 2021, and they’ve helped keep my 2018 MacBook Air looking and running (almost) like brand new.
How to clean your Mac’s screen and body
While there are many products out there from manufacturers claiming their one does it best, my advice is to keep things simple. It’s also the one Apple recommends. To start, you will need some water in a spray bottle and a clean microfiber cloth. You can use regular water from the tap but I've found distilled water works best; it’s far less likely to leave residue behind on your Mac, particularly on the display. You can buy distilled water at a grocery store or make it yourself with some simple cookware. Either way, it’s more affordable than dedicated cleaning solutions. If you don’t already own any microfiber towels, Amazon sells affordable 24-packs you can get for about $10.
One other product I would recommend is a Giottos Rocket Blower. I can’t say enough good things about this little tool. It will save you from buying expensive and wasteful cans of compressed air.
As for the actual process of cleaning your Mac, remember to start with a clean cloth (that’s part of the reason we recommend buying them in bulk). You’ll save yourself time and frustration this way. Begin by turning off your computer and unplugging it. If you bought a Rocket Blower, use it now to remove any dust. If not, take a dry microfiber cloth and go over your computer. Take special care around the keys, particularly if you own an older Mac with a butterfly keyboard.
Next, dampen one side of your cleaning cloth with water. Never spray any liquid directly on your computer. You’ll have more control this way and you’ll avoid getting any moisture into your Mac’s internals. I always clean the display first since the last thing I want to do is create more work for myself by transferring dirt from some other part of my computer to the screen.
The last step is to buff and polish your computer with the dry side of the cloth. Be gentle here as you don’t want to scratch the screen or any other part of. That’s it. Your Mac should be looking clean again.
How to organize your hard drive
Igor Bonifacic / Engadget
One of the trickiest parts of cleaning your Mac’s hard drive is knowing where to start; most of us have apps on our computers we don’t even remember installing in the first place. Thankfully, macOS comes with a tool to help you with that exact issue.
Navigate to System Settings > General > Storage. Here you’ll find a tool that separates your storage into broad categories like "Applications," "Documents," "Music," "Photos" and so on. Either double-click on an item in the list or click the circled i icon to see the last time you used an app and how much space it’s taking up. You can delete the apps from the same window.
The applications section is particularly helpful since you can see the last time you used a program, as well as if it’s no longer supported by the operating system or if it’s outdated thanks to a more recent release.
You don’t need me to tell you to uninstall programs you don’t use, but what you might not know is that there’s a better way to erase them than simply dragging them to the trash can. A free program called AppCleaner will help you track down any files and folders that would get left behind if you were just to delete an application.
Igor Bonifacic / Engadget
After deleting any apps you don’t need, move to the Documents section. The name is somewhat misleading here since you’ll find more than just text files and Keynote spreadsheets. In this case, documents turns out to be the tool’s catch-all term for a variety of files, including ones that take up a large amount of space. You can also safely delete any DMGs (disc image files with the extension .dmg) for which you’ve installed the related app.
The other sections in the storage space are self-explanatory. The only other thing I’ll mention is if you’ve been using an iPhone for a while, there’s a good chance you’ll have old iOS backups stored on your computer. You can safely delete those, too.
Tips and tricks for keeping a neat Desktop and Finder
Igor Bonifacic
Let’s start with the menu bar. It may not technically be part of the desktop, but a tidy one can go a long way toward making everything else look less cluttered. My recommendation here is to download an app called Bartender. At first glance, it’s a simple program allowing you to hide unwanted menu bar items behind a three-dots icon, but the strength of Bartender is that you get a lot of customization options. For example, you can set a trigger that will automatically move the battery status icon out from hiding when your computer isn’t connected to a power outlet.
While we’re on the subject of the menu bar, take a second to navigate to System Settings > General > Login Items & Extensions and look at all the apps that launch when you boot up your system. You can speed up your system by paring down this list to only the programs you use frequently.
When it comes to the desktop itself, less is more. Nothing will make your computer look like a cluttered mess more than a busy desktop. Folders and stacks can help, but for most people, I suspect part of the problem is they use their desktop as a way to quickly and easily find files that are important to them.
If you’ve ever struggled to find a specific file or folder on your computer, try using your Mac’s tagging capabilities instead. Start by opening the Finder Settings menu (Command + ,) and click the Tags tab. You can use the default ones provided by macOS or make your own. Drag the ones you think you’ll use most often to the favorites areas at the bottom of the preferences window. This will make it so that they’re easily accessible when you want to use them. To append a tag to a file or folder, click on it while holding the ctrl key and select the one you want from the dropdown menu. You can also tag a file while working on it within an app. Keep in mind you can apply multiple tags to a single file or folder, and you can even apply them to applications.
Igor Bonifacic / Engadget
What makes tags so useful in macOS is that they can appear in the sidebar of the Finder window, and are easily searchable either directly with Finder or using Siri. As long as you have a system for organizing your files, even a simple one, you’ll find it easier to keep track of them. As one example, I like to apply an Engadget tag to any files related to my work. I’ll add an “Important” tag if it’s something that’s critical and I want to find quickly.
One tool that can help supercharge your Finder experience is Alfred. It’s effectively a more powerful version of Apple’s Spotlight feature. Among other things, you can use Alfred to find and launch apps quickly. There’s a bit of a learning curve, but once you get a hang of it, Alfred will change how you use your Mac for the better.
How to organize your windows and tabs
Igor Bonifacic / Engadget
If you’ve used both macOS and Windows 10, you’ll know that Apple’s operating system doesn’t come with the best window management tools. You can click and hold on the green full-screen button to tile a window to either the left or right side of your screen, but that’s about it and the feature has always felt less precise than its Windows counterpart.
My suggestion is to download an app that replicates Windows 10’s snapping feature. You have several competing options that more or less offer the same functionality. My go-to is a $5 program called Magnet. If you want a free alternative, check out Rectangle. Another option is BetterSnapTool, which offers more functionality than Magnet but doesn’t have as clean of an interface. All three apps give you far more ways to configure your windows than what you get through the built-in tool in macOS. They also come with shortcut support, which means you can quickly set up your windows and get to work.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/how-to-clean-your-mac-macbook-cleaning-supplies-digital-organization-153007592.html?src=rss
Apple is lowering its developer fees in China following discussions with the Chinese regulator. From March 15, the commission rate for standard in-app purchases (IAPs) will be reduced from 30 percent to 25 percent on its mainland China App Store storefront for both iOS and iPadOS.
In a Developer blog, Apple also said that developers belonging to its App Store Small Business or Mini Apps programmes will also have their fees reduced by 3 percent, from 15 to 12 percent. This applies to the commission rate for IAPs and in-app subscription renewals after the first year.
"We strive for iOS and iPadOS to be the best app ecosystem and a great business opportunity for developers in China," Apple said in the post. "We are committed to terms that remain fair and transparent to all developers, and to always offering competitive App Store rates to developers distributing apps in China that are no higher than overall rates in other markets."
Apple says developers are not required to agree to the terms by March 15 to start receiving their benefits, seemingly making the transition as smooth as possible to avoid further regulatory intervention. It will no doubt be taken as a significant win for Chinese businesses, and comes a year after reports that a state watchdog was investigating the fees Apple enforces on developers it hosts on the App Store.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/apple-is-reducing-its-app-store-commission-fees-in-china-131221192.html?src=rss
Bumble is testing an AI dating assistant called "Bee" that it hopes will get users on dates without them having to swipe through profiles, Bloomberg writes. The company announced the AI assistant during its fourth quarter earnings, and intends to use the AI in a new experience it calls "Dates."
When a user opts in to Bumble's Dates feature, Bee performs an onboarding chat where it learns about the users' "values, relationship goals, communications style, lifestyle and dating intentions," and then attempts to find other users who share some or all of those traits. Once Bee finds someone compatible, both users are notified in the app that they could be a great match, and receive a summary generated by Bee explaining why. From there, they can chat and see if things lead to a real-life date.
As is often the case with pie-in-the-sky AI features, Bumble has even bigger plans for how Bee could be used in its app, including as a tool for collecting anonymous feedback from user's previous matches or as a way to receive suggestions for dates ideas. AI will also apparently enable Bumble to move away from binary yes or no swipes on profiles and towards a system where users connect over "chapter-based" profiles that are more reflective of their life story.
Bumble is testing Bee internally and plans to launch the AI and its Dates feature in beta soon. The company is far from the only dating app experimenting with integrating AI recommendations and summaries. Tinder uses AI to recommend profile pictures to users, and now offers another feature called "Chemistry" that combines insights gained from personal questions and access to users' Camera Roll to make more informed matches. Meanwhile, Grindr's "Edge" subscription tier offers AI summaries of past chats and connections, and stats on whether a user is actually compatible with a new match.
It's too early to tell whether AI makes a meaningful difference in the dating experience for users, but if it keeps them using an app or paying for a subscription, it's likely a worthwhile experiment for Bumble, Tinder and Grindr.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/bumble-is-the-latest-dating-app-to-add-an-ai-assistant-181729994.html?src=rss
With Claude enjoying a moment of newfound popularity among regular people, Anthropic is previewing an update designed to make its chatbot better at explaining some concepts. Starting today, Claude can generate charts and diagrams as part of its responses, either when asked directly or when it decides visuals might be helpful to the user.
For example, try asking Claude what's the best way to fold a paper plane. Where previously it was limited to text, now it can show you step by step how to fold a Nakamura lock plane. Anthropic is quick to point out what it's introducing today isn't image generation. When producing visual aids, Claude will use HTML code and XML vector graphics. Anthropic likens it to giving Claude access to its own whiteboard.
The new feature is available to all Claude users, regardless of whether you pay for one of Anthropic's subscriptions. However, the company does warn it's releasing beta software, so expect some quirks along the way. The feature also isn’t available on mobile just yet. This release comes just days after OpenAI made ChatGPT capable of generating interactive visuals when explaining science and math concepts.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/claude-can-now-generate-charts-and-diagrams-160000369.html?src=rss
Flash floods are notoriously difficult to predict, but Google might have a novel solution. The company just revealed Groundsource, a prediction tool for flash floods that uses Gemini to source data from old news reports. This is the first time it has used a language model for this type of work.
Flash flood prediction models need historical data and model training that often doesn't exist. Our solution: Groundsource, a new AI-powered methodology that uses Gemini to transform 5M+ global reports into a precise dataset of 2.6M+ flood events.
Google tasked Gemini with sorting through 5 million news articles from around the world and isolating flood reports. It transformed this data into a geo-tagged series of chronological events. Next, researchers trained a model to ingest current weather forecasts and leverage the Groundsource data to determine the likelihood of a flash flood in a given area.
We don't have any concrete information as to how accurate Google's forecast model is, though that should come over time. One trial user did say it helped his organization respond quicker to localized weather events. For now, the company is highlighting risks for urban areas in 150 countries via its Flood Hub platform. Google is also sharing its data with emergency response agencies in these locations.
Google
There are some limitations here. The model can only identify risk across a 20-square-kilometer area. It's also not quite as precise as the US National Weather Service's flood alert system, because Google's model doesn't integrate local radar data. This data typically enables real-time tracking of precipitation. However, the platform's been designed to work in areas that don't typically have access to that kind of weather-sensing infrastructure.
Juliet Rothenberg, a program manager on Google's Resilience team, hopes that this technology can eventually be used to predict other tricky phenomena. This includes stuff like heat waves and mudslides.
"We’re aggregating millions of reports,” she told reporters this week. "It enables us to extrapolate to other regions where there isn’t as much information."
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/google-built-a-flash-flood-prediction-tool-using-gemini-and-old-news-reports-154542963.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