Google is launching a new advertising network that serves targeted ads to Google TV-powered streaming boxes and smart TVs. The ads service, known as the Google TV network, lets advertisers place unskippable in-stream ad spots across more than 125 live channels — many that are FAST, or free ad-supported streaming TV channels that Google’s been hell-bent on getting users to notice.

Google says there are 20 million monthly active Google TV and Android TV OS devices, a significant figure for advertisers to consider. The reach can go even further when including YouTube, which reaches over 150 million monthly active viewers in the living room. Google Ads and Google Display & Video 360 users can expand their campaigns to include the Google TV network by checking a new box under YouTube & Google. Google Ads can spread across networks on Google TV, and include Google-owned ad inventory in third-party apps.

According to Google, viewers of Google TV’s free channels watch on average 75 minutes per day. FAST channels are growing fast since it’s the closest thing to paid cable service without the bill, and while the content is mostly reruns, sometimes people just want that old-school background noise — a perfect place for ads.

Ubisoft announced in April that Star Wars Outlaws will launch on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on August 30th. If you’ve been on the fence about buying it in advance, then there’s some new material to help you make the decision. We recently got a closer look at its open-world gameplay at Ubisoft Forward 2024, including the title’s combat, space travel, and branching story dialogue. And, thankfully, there’s still plenty of time to secure various exclusive preorder incentives.

Developed by Massive Entertainment, Outlaws follows main character Kay Vess and her trusty alien companion Nix as they navigate a galactic criminal underworld. It takes place throughout a range of familiar locales, including Tatooine and Canto Bight, along with Kijimi, Akiva, and an all-new planet named Toshara. The original trailer suggests Vess is looking to score a large heist from the opulent Zerek Besh family to buy her freedom.

It’s rare to see a Star Wars game with a female protagonist as the lead, and it’s equally rare to see one take place in an open world — Outlaws is the first, in fact. If the work Ubisoft and Massive did on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is any indication, we should be in for a treat. Keep reading for a quick summary of all the preorder details, including the skins, post-launch DLC, and other goodies that come with each edition.

Preordering the Standard Edition of Star Wars Outlaws

Preordering any edition of Star Wars Outlaws from any retailer unlocks the Kessel Runner Bonus Pack, which includes a skin for both your speeder and Trailblazer spaceship. The Standard Edition costs $69.99, and you can currently preorder physical copies for the PS5 and Xbox Series X / S.

If you preorder at Amazon (PS5 / Xbox), you’ll get cosmetics for Kay and Nix in the Rogue Infiltrator Character Pack, which is exclusive to Amazon for the physical copies and otherwise only available in the digital-only Ultimate Edition (more on that below).

As for other retailers, Best Buy is currently offering a $10 gift card with each purchase and Target an exclusive steel box. GameStop shoppers, meanwhile, will get the Sabacc Shark Character Pack, which is exclusive to physical copies and includes character and blaster cosmetics that are normally limited to the Ultimate Edition. You can also preorder it at Walmart (PS5 / Xbox), but the retailer isn’t offering any exclusive incentives.

If you prefer a digital copy, you can preorder it directly from PlayStation or Microsoft, or on Ubisoft’s website for Windows PCs.

Preordering the Gold Edition of Star Wars Outlaws

The Gold Edition of Star Wars Outlaws lets you play three days early and bundles the season pass for $109.99. The pass offers two post-launch pieces of downloadable content that expand the story with new missions and environments. You’ll also get the Jabba’s Gambit bonus mission at launch, plus the Kessel Runner Character Pack that contains additional skins for Kay and Nix.

Best Buy and Target (PS5 / Xbox) are your top choices for retailer-exclusive bonuses, with the former throwing in the same $10 gift card as the Standard Edition and the latter a physical steelbook case. You can also buy copies for the PS5 and Xbox Series X / S at Amazon (PS5 / Xbox), Walmart (PS5 / Xbox), and GameStop; it’s also available for preorder digitally via Microsoft, PlayStation, and Ubisoft’s online storefront (for PC).

Preordering the Ultimate Edition of Star Wars Outlaws

The Ultimate Edition of Star Wars Outlaws retails for $129.99 and contains everything from the Gold Edition as well as two more cosmetic packs with new looks for Kay, Nix, your speeder, and the Trailblazer. It also comes with a digital art book featuring the concept art and cinematic storyboards its developers used to design the game.

As of this writing, physical copies of the ultimate edition aren’t up for preorder, but you can preorder the digital version for the PS5 and Xbox Series X / S through their respective storefronts and for Windows PCs at Ubisoft’s website. You can also subscribe to Ubisoft Plus Premium for $17.99 a month, which includes day-one access to the full Ultimate Edition for no additional cost on PC, Xbox, and Amazon’s Luna cloud gaming service.

Apple will let you record and transcribe phone calls in iOS 18. The company announced the feature during its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday and says it will automatically tell call participants that they’re being recorded.

The image shared by Apple shows a new recording option on the Phone app, which displays a soundwave, along with how long you’ve been recording. It then transcribes your call in the Notes app, where you can generate a summary using the new Apple Intelligence AI system. You’ll be able to record and transcribe audio from within the Notes app as well.

As noted in the footnote on Apple’s iOS 18 preview page, audio transcription will only be available in English, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, and Portuguese. Bringing audio recording to the Phone app should at least make it easier for journalists and other users to record and transcribe their calls, all while letting the recipient know.

Apple Intelligence took the main stage during WWDC, but there are many other neat features coming to iOS 18, including a customizable homepage, changes to Control Center, improvements to Tapback responses, and more.

The hype is real, the hype is here, but Geoff Keighley has warned viewers not to get too hyped for what to expect during the showcase.

After months of teases and speculation, Summer Game Geoff is finally here kicking off a weekend full of presentations and special announcements. Even though the showcase is essentially a hype trailer for the video game industry, filling in the marketing hole E3 left behind, Summer Game Fest got its own hype trailer reminding us of what games to expect.

The main keynote took place on June 7th, and featured a handful of big reveals: Civilization 7, Lego Horizon Adventures, a first look at the Among Us animated series, and news that Riot’s shooter Valorant is finally coming to Xbox and PlayStation. It’s followed by a number of indie-focused events, as well as big showcases from the likes of Xbox and Ubisoft.

Stay tuned right here for all of the latest trailers and announcements as they happen.

The WWDC keynote may be over, but we still have lots of questions about the state and future of Apple Intelligence. And in a somewhat unusual move, Apple is here to answer some of them: Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea, two of the executives in charge of all of Apple’s AI efforts, are taking the stage in the Steve Jobs Theater to talk about everything Apple announced on Monday.

Federighi, of course, is Apple’s software chief, overseeing nearly all the platforms and features we saw at WWDC. Giannandrea is Apple’s SVP of machine learning and AI strategy and has been an important figure in the AI world for a long time. (Before coming to Apple, he was an engineering VP at Google, overseeing a lot of the same stuff.) Together, they’ve overseen Apple’s work revamping Siri, partnering with OpenAI, bringing machine learning to devices and the cloud, and practically everything else Apple announced.

We’re in the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple Park and will be live-blogging the event as it happens. Rest assured: there will be Siri questions.

The reveal of Assassin’s Creed Shadows mostly focused on its story, characters, and setting. But a new trailer gives a better idea of how the game will actually play. The lengthy gameplay overview, which clocks in at around 12 minutes long, shows off the game’s sprawling rendition of Japan, while also detailing the different skills and approaches of its two playable leads. It’s also very bloody.

This is the game’s second gameplay trailer in as many days. Ubisoft also released a shorter clip during the Xbox Games Showcase on Sunday:

Shadows is the latest entry in the series to have dual protagonists (see: Assassin’s Creed Syndicate), as players can choose between the samurai Yasuke and the shinobi assassin Naoe. It follows last year’s Mirage, which took the franchise back to its more straightforward assassination roots. Shadows is launching on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X / S on November 15th. At WWDC 2024 earlier today, Ubisoft confirmed that the game would be coming to Mac as well.

Adobe is overhauling the terms customers must agree to when using its apps in an effort to win back trust — and clarify that it won’t train AI on their work. The change, announced via a new blog post, comes after a week of backlash from users who feared that an update to Adobe’s terms of service would allow their work to be used for AI training.

The new terms of service are expected to roll out on June 18th and aim to better clarify what Adobe is permitted to do with its customers’ work, according to Adobe’s president of digital media, David Wadhwani.

“We have never trained generative AI on our customer’s content, we have never taken ownership of a customer’s work, and we have never allowed access to customer content beyond what’s legally required,” Wadhwani said to The Verge.

Adobe faced widespread scrutiny from creatives over the last week after its customers were alerted to language in its terms of service update that discussed AI. Customers interpreted Adobe’s vague language to mean the company was allowing itself to freely access and use customers’ work to train Adobe’s generative AI models. That wasn’t the case — and Adobe’s policies around training weren’t changing — but Adobe’s chief product officer, Scott Belsky, acknowledged that the wording was “unclear” and that “trust and transparency couldn’t be more crucial these days.”

Wadhwani says that the language used within Adobe’s TOS was never intended to permit AI training on customers’ work. “In retrospect, we should have modernized and clarified the terms of service sooner,” Wadhwani says. “And we should have more proactively narrowed the terms to match what we actually do, and better explained what our legal requirements are.”

A chunk of the creative community has long-standing beef with Adobe over its alleged industry monopoly, its subscription-based pricing models, and its use of generative AI. The company trained its own Firefly AI model on Adobe Stock images, openly licensed content, and public domain content to avoid some of the ethical concerns surrounding generative AI, but several artists have found images that reference their work on Adobe’s stock platform — making it hard to trust the protections in place.

“We feel very, very good about the process,” Wadhwani said in regards to content moderation surrounding Adobe stock and Firefly training data but acknowledged it’s “never going to be perfect.” Wadhwani says that Adobe can remove content that violates its policies from Firefly’s training data and that customers can opt out of automated systems designed to improve the company’s service.

Adobe said in its blog post that it recognizes “trust must be earned” and is taking on feedback to discuss the new changes. Greater transparency is a welcome change, but it’s likely going to take some time to convince scorned creatives that it doesn’t hold any ill intent. “We are determined to be a trusted partner for creators in the era ahead. We will work tirelessly to make it so.”

We’re getting very close to the launch of Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft’s Grand Theft Auto-style take on a galaxy far, far away. Which means it’s a good time for another trailer detailing the sorts of criminal escapades players can get into. The new overview focused primarily on the different Star Wars locations you’ll be exploring and the various not exactly legal missions you’ll take on. Among various aspects featured are dealing with the Hutts, riding a speeder bike, and finding new recruits for your scoundrel gang.

You can get a quicker taste of the gameplay in the video above, or check out this 10-minute-long deep dive:

These aren’t the only Outlaws trailers from the last few days: Ubisoft released a very brief teaser during the Summer Game Fest keynote on Friday:

Developed by Massive Entertainment, the same team behind The Division series and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Outlaws was first announced during last year’s Summer Game Fest at the Xbox Games Showcase. It’s set between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi and puts players in the role of an outlaw named Kay who finds herself caught up in a complex web of crime in the Star Wars underworld.

Star Wars Outlaws launches on August 30th on the PS5, Xbox Series X / S, and PC. And it comes at a busy time for the franchise: The Acolyte just premiered on Disney Plus, while the arena shooter Star Wars: Hunters recently debuted on mobile and the Nintendo Switch.

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote has come to a close — and the company had a whole lot to share. We got our first look at the AI features coming to Apple’s devices and some major updates across the company’s operating systems.

If you missed out on watching the keynote live, we’ve gathered all the biggest announcements that you can check out below.

Apple’s first AI system is coming to the iPhone, iPad, and Mac

Screenshot: Apple

With almost all of big tech getting in on the AI boom, it’s no surprise that Apple is launching an AI system of its own. Apple Intelligence is the company’s new personal intelligence system “that puts powerful generative models right at the core of your iPhone, iPad, and Mac.” That enables a ton of new capabilities across Apple’s native apps, such as the ability to generate images or summarize text.

Apple Intelligence comes with a big emphasis on security, as the system will automatically decide whether it needs to use on-device processing or contact Apple’s private cloud computing server to fulfill your request. The system will be available for free and on the iPhone 15 Pro as well as on iPads and Macs with an M1 chip and later.

Siri gets a big AI boost

Screenshot: Apple

Apple’s big push into AI also includes Siri. The upgraded voice assistant will now be integrated more deeply into the iPhone, appearing as a pulsating light on the edge of your device. It will give you more control over your apps, allowing you to ask the voice assistant to find information inside a particular email or even surface a photo of one of your friends. Apple is relying on LLMs to help Siri better understand what you say and keep track of follow-up requests and questions.

Apple is building ChatGPT into Siri

Image: Allison Johnson / The Verge

Siri’s big AI upgrade also includes an integration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot. With the new integration, Siri will automatically determine whether a query would be better suited for ChatGPT. It will then ask for your permission before sending its request to ChatGPT. You’ll be able to use ChatGPT through Siri for free and without an account.

New AI features in Mail, Messages, Photos, and more

Screenshot: Apple

Apple is rolling out a bunch of new AI features across its apps in iOS 18, including a way to summarize emails and generate responses. The company showed off its new Genmoji feature, letting you create custom emoji based on a text prompt, along with a new AI image generator called Image Playground.

Apple is bringing AI to the Photos app, too, giving you the ability to search for photos using natural language. You can also clean up objects in the background of your pictures, similar to Google’s Magic Eraser. Additionally, Apple is adding AI-powered transcriptions and summaries to Notes and the Phone apps.

The iPhone gets more customizable in iOS 18

Screenshot: Apple

Aside from all the AI, Apple is introducing a new and more customizable Control Center in iOS 18. It’s also launching a way to freely place app icons on your homescreen. The company will also let you lock certain apps with the coming update, preventing other people from using them when you hand them your phone.

Other major changes include a Photos app redesign and a new Game Mode for iPhone that minimizes background activity to optimize gameplay.

The iPhone is finally getting RCS support

Image: Apple

After announcing support for RCS last year, Apple confirmed that it’s arriving with iOS 18. It didn’t expand on any other details beyond that, though.

iMessage is getting some other upgrades, too, including the ability to schedule texts and support for SMS messaging via satellite. Apple is also rolling out colorful Tapback options and will let you bold, underline, and italicize text.

Apple TV Plus adds “inSights” to tell you which actor is onscreen

Screenshot: Apple

Apple TV Plus is getting a new feature that will let you swipe down on your remote to show the actors and their characters in the movie or TV show that you’re watching. You can also find out the current song that’s playing and add it to your Apple Music playlist. Apple TV Plus will automatically show subtitles when you mute a show and will support 21:9 projectors.

A Passwords app to keep track of your logins

Screenshot: Apple

As rumored last week, Apple has revealed a new Passwords app that will let you keep track of your login details across different devices. The app will let you generate and store passwords similar to other password managers like LastPass and 1Password. Passwords will be available on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, visionOS, and even Windows.

iPadOS 18 adds a Calculator app with Apple Pencil support

Image: Allison Johnson / The Verge

The iPad is finally getting a Calculator app more than a decade after its release. It comes with a new feature called Math Notes, which lets you use the Apple Pencil to write equations on your iPad and have the app solve it for you.

Apple is launching a Smart Script feature as well, which uses machine learning to improve the appearance of your handwriting and spell-check your notes.

macOS 15 will let you mirror your iPhone

Screenshot: Apple

Apple’s next macOS update will let you mirror your iPhone on your Mac. You’ll be able to interact with your iPhone directly from your Mac, letting you view notifications and hear the audio playing from your mobile device.

There’s also a new Highlights feature coming to Safari, which uses machine learning to pick out interesting parts of a page.

Apple will automatically surface widgets in watchOS 11

Image: Allison Johnson / The Verge

There are a ton of new features coming to watchOS 11, too, including a new capability that automatically adds widgets based on when you need them. Apple is launching a new Vitals app that will let you “explore your most important health metrics with just a glance” as well as new cycle tracking features, Live Activities, and support for Check In, allowing your loved ones to track you during your workout.

visionOS 2 adds spatial photos and an ultrawide Mac display

Screenshot: Apple

Apple has announced visionOS 2, its first major update for the operating system. One of the new features coming to the Vision Pro uses machine learning to bring depth to an existing photo. The update will also introduce support for an ultrawide virtual Mac display, more intuitive gestures, and support for travel mode on trains.

Apple is also planning to bring the Vision Pro to more countries, including China, Singapore, Australia, Canada, France, and the UK.

The next AirPods Pro update will let you quietly respond to Siri

Apple is launching Siri Interactions in its next AirPods Pro software update, letting you shake your head yes or no to respond to Siri’s announcements. The AirPods Pro are also getting Voice Isolation to enhance voice quality and reduce background noise.

Apple has announced that Apple Home will finally support robot vacuums with iOS 18. This was one of just a few updates to its smart home platform that Apple announced at WWDC 2024. The company also revealed that hands-free unlocking is coming to compatible smart door locks as well as the ability to share guest codes for access to your home (another thing we’ve been impatiently waiting for). Plus, there’s a new electricity usage feature coming to the Home app, although it’s limited to Pacific Gas & Electric users in California at launch.

Apple said that the “Home app now supports the core functionality of robot vacuum cleaners, such as power control, cleaning mode, vacuum, mop, and charge status.” The floor cleaning devices can also participate in automations and scenes and be activated with voice control using Siri, so you can tell it to go clean your kitchen.

The feature most likely comes through Apple Home’s support of Matter, which added support for robot vacuums / mops in Matter 1.2. The Matter spec enables starting and stopping the robot, adjusting cleaning modes (dry vacuum, wet mopping), and receiving progress notifications and alerts.

However, Matter doesn’t support advanced features — like room mapping and keep-out zones (areas the robot shouldn’t go). This means that while Apple Home users should be able to add their robot directly to the Home app without using the manufacturer’s app or cloud, to access more advanced features, you’ll need to download that third-party app.

Image: Apple

Apple is bringing hands-free unlocking to compatible UWB-enabled locks with Home Key, allowing you to have the door unlock automatically when you’re six feet away. You’ll need to be carrying your iPhone or have your Apple Watch on to authenticate yourself. The feature will work with Apple Watch Series 6 and later and iPhone 11 and later.

Auto-unlocking was first developed by August and is now in most Yale locks, too. A number of other manufacturers have also introduced similar features. This should bring the ability to any Home Key-compatible lock that supports UWB.

You’ll also be able to finally share access with guests to control locks, garage doors, and security systems as well as customize access based on time and other factors.

Image: Apple

A new electricity usage page in the Home app’s Energy section will show your electricity usage through a connection to your utility. It will launch with a partnership with PG&E in California but hopefully expand to more utilities in the future.

Home energy management is an important ability of smart home devices, giving you tools to understand how your home uses energy and potentially allowing you to control it more efficiently. There are two main approaches: install devices that can monitor their energy usage, something the Apple Home app doesn’t currently support, or use an app that can communicate with your utility directly to get the information, which is what Apple is doing here.

Ultimately, a combination of the two is likely to be the best path. But what will really make the difference is a service that can do a lot of the management for you. Hopefully, this is Apple’s first step in that direction.

Image: Apple

WWDC is traditionally where Apple has announced new features for its Apple Home smart home platform, giving developers time to integrate them into its devices ahead of the launch of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS 15, watchOS 11, tvOS 18, and HomePod OS in the fall. The energy usage and robot vacuum features announced for Apple Home are listed as coming “later this year,” so they may not arrive with the first rollout of iOS 18.

While the updates are often minor, we sometimes get things like an all-new Apple Home app. This year was a relatively minor update. I, for one, had hoped to see support for many more of the device types Matter supports, including TVs, washing machines, and fridges. I hope we don’t have to wait until the fall for those to arrive.

Apple Home has undergone a significant shift in the last few years as Apple transitions its smart home platform from purely HomeKit to an architecture where HomeKit runs on Matter. Apple is a founding member of the new smart home standard and contributed HomeKit as the “foundation of this new standard.” For Apple Home users, Matter opens the platform to more device types than it has supported to date.

Matter is an interoperability and communication standard that allows any Matter-enabled smart home device to work with any Matter platform, meaning all Matter devices should work with Apple Home. However, the platforms have to add support for the new device types, and Apple has been slow to do so. With robot vacuums now on the map, though, let’s hope there are more devices coming soon.

---

Related: