Google is many things, but most of the time it’s a verb: It is what it is to search the internet for information. But what if it’s an AI agent doing the searching? And it’s doing it proactively? Without even telling you about it? In the world Google imagines, in which so much of the […]
Spotify is releasing the new desktop app as a research preview in more than 20 markets
Today I’m talking with Liz Lopatto, who spent the last month covering the Musk v. Altman trial in all its chaos. You’ll hear her describe the courthouse as a “zoo” and explain that there were protests of one kind or another happening outside every day. Both Elon Musk and Sam Altman are big personalities, and […]
What better way to unwind from a two-hour keynote presentation than to pore over the weirdest and wildest details, from a Gmail bot you can converse with to DeepMind’s leader saying the singularity is near. The Vergecast went live right after the show, with senior AI reporter Hayden Field joining me to discuss the highlights. […]
Amazon has launched a feature that uses artificial intelligence to generate entire podcast episodes on demand. Called Alexa Podcasts, the tool allows users to ask Alexa+ to create a podcast on any topic, and the system will research the subject, prod…
Amazon’s Alexa+ can now generate custom AI podcasts on demand, as the company expands its assistant into a personalized AI content platform.
Today, I’m talking with Jonah Peretti, who is, technically, the CEO of BuzzFeed — although that will be coming to an end very soon. Just days before we spoke, Jonah agreed to sell 52 percent of BuzzFeed for a total of $120 million to Byron Allen, who owns The Weather Channel, a number of broadcast […]
Spotify will let creators distribute and monetize video podcasts on Apple Podcasts using Apple’s HLS streaming technology, without changing their existing workflows.
Today, I’m talking with Brendan Ballou, founder of the Public Integrity Project and author of a new book, called When Companies Run the Courts, about the rise of forced arbitration. Brendan’s actually been on the show before — his previous book, Plunder, was about private equity taking over huge swaths of American life, and that conversation […]
In the ongoing fight for content and talent, YouTube is pitching itself as the connector between the creators and advertisers – and marketing its creators not just as the future of social media, but also of advertising, TV, streaming, and entertainment more broadly. At the company’s annual advertiser event in New York on Wednesday, YouTube […]