Jay Peters

Senior Reporter

Jay PetersMar 21, 2023

Roblox sees a lot of potential in generative AI.

Roblox’s AI-powered code suggestion tool previewed last month is now available, and the company’s head of its development platform spoke more about Roblox’s plans for AI at GDC, as reported by Ars Technica. One part jumped out to me as something that could be potentially transformative for Roblox creators:

In an “extreme example” of a future use case, Corazza suggested someone might be able to type “Scene with a forest, a river, and a large rock” and get a completely interactive, realistic 3D world matching the prompt. “It’ll feel like nuclear fusion,” he said. “I’ll say two years [until it’s ready].”

Are Roblox’s new AI coding and art tools the future of game development?

[Ars Technica]

Comedians are trying to make the metaverse cool, but it won’t let them

Dedicated creators have built their own communities and spaces in Meta’s Horizon Worlds. But they feel the company isn’t supporting them as well as it could.

Jay PetersMar 21, 2023

Zack Snyder teases ‘ridiculous scale’ RPG set in the universe of his new Netflix film

Jay PetersMar 20, 2023

TikTok now has 150 million monthly active users in the US.

The company confirmed the new stat to Reuters, and it’s a number that’s up from 100 million in 2020. TikTok is confirming the number as all eyes are on the company: CEO Shou Zi Chew is set to appear for congressional testimony on March 23rd, and the Biden administration is reportedly demanding the company be sold off from parent ByteDance or face a ban in the US.

TikTok to tell US Congress it has 150 mln monthly active U.S. users

[Reuters]

Jay PetersMar 20, 2023

Amazon’s layoffs included ‘just over 400’ job cuts at Twitch.

Twitch CEO Dan Clancy, who just stepped into the role on Thursday, shared the number as part of a new blog post shortly after the announcement of Amazon’s next huge wave of layoffs.

“Like many companies, our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment, and user and revenue growth has not kept pace with our expectations,” according to Clancy. “In order to run our business sustainably, we’ve made the very difficult decision to shrink the size of our workforce.”

You can read more about Amazon’s layoffs in our post from earlier today.

Amazon’s latest layoffs cut 9,000 more jobs in divisions including Twitch and AWS

Emma Roth

Mar 20

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s new story trailer shows fighting, friends, and the Force

Jay PetersMar 20, 2023

New iPhone 15 Pro renders show that rumored mute button.

The fancier iPhones will apparently switch from a mute switch to a mute button this year, and new renders in a video spotted by leaker ShrimpApplePro reveal that it, well, looks like a button. If this is the real deal, I’m curious if it will be an improvement over the switch, which has been an iPhone staple since the very first one.

In the video, you can also see the iPhone 15 Pro’s rumored unified volume button and that the iPhone 15 will apparently keep the mute switch and separate volume buttons.