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AI

Artificial intelligence is more a part of our lives than ever before. While some might call it hype and compare it to NFTs or 3D TVs, generative AI is causing a sea change in nearly every part of the technology industry. OpenAI’s ChatGPT is still the best-known AI chatbot around, but with Google pushing Gemini, Microsoft building Copilot, and Apple adding its Intelligence to Siri, AI is probably going to be in the spotlight for a very long time. At The Verge, we’re exploring what might be possible with AI — and a lot of the bad stuff AI does, too.

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Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
The next movie “enhanced” for James Dolan’s Sphere will be The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

After The Wizard of Oz at Sphere topped $400 million in ticket sales over the last year, Sphere Studios says it “will use its advanced technologies” to present The Rocky Horror Picture Show at Sphere.

There are no details on how much that process will resemble the Google AI-powered approach to Oz, which Indiewire’s David Ehrlich called “…less a celebration of the original than an Emerald City-sized version of Cecilia Giménez’s Jesus fresco.”

An aerial picture of The Sphere in Las Vegas showing on the outside of the building a pair of lips and the words “The Rocky Horror Picture Show at Sphere coming 2027”
Image: Sphere Entertainment
David Pierce
David Pierce
Today’s Vergecast: The Mythos mess and your AI questions, answered.

Anthropic and the US government are once again at odds, this time over the Claude Fable 5 model that either is, or is not, or might be, far too dangerous to release to the world. The Verge’s Hayden Field explains what’s going on with Fable, Mythos, and the whole idea of American AI exceptionalism, before also answering your questions about how WhatsApp and Siri might one day work together, and whether Apple messed up by calling it Siri AI.

Lauren Feiner
Lauren Feiner
xAI’s gas-powered data center is necessary for national security, DOJ argues.

The Justice Department is trying to intervene and dismiss a case from the NAACP alleging xAI’s use of gas turbines in Mississippi are illegally polluting the air. Preventing xAI from using them would endanger national security, DOJ argues, because “Grok provides critical support for the Department of War’s military operations.”

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Disney is using Adobe AI for theme park Imagineering.

The R&D team at Walt Disney Imagineering has embraced Adobe’s Firefly Foundry platform to “accelerate the design and pre-production visualization pipeline” for Disney Parks and Experiences. The partnership will use AI models trained on Disney assets to turn sketches into fully rendered concept art, 2D images into 3D prototypes, and more.

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Epic lays out how it uses generative AI in Fortnite.

In this video detailing the company’s concept and character design process, Epic says that AI tools like Google’s Nano Banana and its own internal GenMedia Bridge, allows “creative control to stay in the hands of the creator.” Given artists also have to fix stuff that AI generates without being asked to, we’ll let you be the judge of that.

Inside the fight over Claude Mythos 5

The government torpedoed Anthropic’s newest, most powerful model. Sources tell The Verge that the AI lab and other AI boosters spent the weekend trying to explain that Fable 5 wasn’t too powerful.

Hayden Field
Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Elon Musk loses against OpenAI in court, again.

A month after a jury dismissed Elon’s claims in the Musk v. Altman case, US District Judge Rita Lin dismissed an xAI lawsuit accusing OpenAI of stealing trade secrets and poaching employees. This time, it was dismissed with prejudice, meaning it can’t be refiled, unlike when she dismissed the case in February.

The judge wrote in her ruling that continuing the case “would be futile.”

Skydio CEO Adam Bry on why Silicon Valley shouldn’t draw red lines for drone use
Play

The head of the top US autonomous drone maker on China, mass surveillance, and why he thinks drones can make us safer.

Nilay Patel
China may have accessed MythosChina may have accessed Mythos
Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Former Andreessen Horowitz partner John O’Farrell says his colleagues are trying to buy our democracy.

In a New York Times op-ed, the venture capitalist accused his Silicon Valley colleagues of using their vast wealth to shut down debate around regulating AI. He says there needs to be a conversation about how to use AI to benefit all of society, not just the wealthy few.

A.I. is not just another technology. It could drive productivity to new heights while automating away work for millions. It could find a cure for cancer, while accelerating biological risks we’re not prepared for. It could transform how our children learn, while leaving them unable to tell real from fake. It could concentrate economic power in ways that would make the Gilded Age look quaint.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Gore Verbinski says we need an AI “rating system” for movies.

The director of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die says he’s not totally against AI and wouldn’t fault a young indie filmmaker for turning to it if they couldn’t otherwise afford to create a key portion of a film. But he is concerned about its impact. According to Variety, saying:

You almost need a rating system. If you use AI to write a script, you get an F. What people are most afraid of is that there is no transparency. People are afraid of what is real and what isn’t.”

My yard is dying, so I made an app for that

How a yard work to-do list turned into a vibe-coding project.

Allison Johnson
Apple’s new AI photo editing tools mostly work, for better and worse

What is a photo, iOS 27 edition.

Allison Johnson
The future of Hollywood isn’t feeding prompts into vanilla gen AI models 

AI wasn’t just slop at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Charles Pulliam-Moore
Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
SpaceX reportedly rented out Colossus 1 AI data center after it ran into latency issues.

While SpaceX plans satellite-based AI servers, Bloomberg reports it ran into trouble trying to develop and run Grok AI in Memphis, citing unnamed sources. They claim that deals renting capacity to Anthropic ($15 billion annually) and Google ($920 million per month) happened following hardware variation and lag issues:

Elon Musk’s company had planned to train its most cutting-edge AI models on a massive amount of computing power by using a cluster of three data center campuses. However, the firm encountered latency issues when connecting Colossus 1 with two other sites located more than 10 miles away, the people said, compounded by aging network infrastructure.

Siri is good now??Siri is good now??
David Pierce
Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Meta is donating its AI glasses to the more than 130,000 blind veterans in the US.

Smart glasses, like the Ray-Ban Meta, have become a resource for people with disabilities. Meta says the company and its partners will provide hands-on training for all the veterans who receive a free pair of AI glasses through the Blinded Veterans Association or TechSoup.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
SPCX opens at $150 per share.

As reported by CNBC, the New York Times, and others, trading commenced at a price 11 percent above the $135 IPO price, but lower than the $175 shown in some earlier indications. It’s already spiked as high as $167, before falling back to $155. As long as the share price remains above $138, that is enough to make Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire.

It also gives SpaceX a market cap of over $2 trillion, making it currently the 6th most valuable public company in the US.

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
TCL TVs have new Gemini voice controls.

The upgraded Gemini for Google TV experience lets you speak to open settings, adjust sound and picture, and fix issues by describing them, such as by saying “the screen is too dark.” It’s exclusive to select 2025 and 2026 TCL Google TV models for 60 days, and rolling out now in the US.

Charles Pulliam-Moore
Charles Pulliam-Moore
Get ready for AI generated shorts from Lionsgate.

Lionsgate’s partnershuip with Runway seemed to have hit a major snag last fall when the companies couldn’t get their AI model to generate footage suitable to be turned into a full-on movie. And now, they’re reportedly putting more energy into producing “short episodic series using existing Lionsgate IP.”

Hayden Field
Hayden Field
Seattle officially enacted an emergency one-year moratorium on new data centers.

Among the moratorium’s fiercest supporters were Amazon employees, who joined others to testify in support of the policy in multiple Seattle city council hearings.