Alexa Plus’ AI upgrades cost $19.99, but it’s all free with Prime Amazon announced a new version of its smart assistant today. Alexa Plus comes with expanded capabilities, the company appeared to demonstrate, like finding concert tickets on your behalf or ordering an Uber to pick up someone at the airport. The upgraded smart assistant will also make it easier to have more natural conversations with it,

Alexa Plus leaves behind Amazon’s earliest Echo devices Amazon is bringing the new AI-powered Alexa Plus to a wide range of its existing Echo devices — but the upgrade will skip many of the earliest models. The majority of the company’s first-generation Echos won’t get support, according to the Alexa Plus FAQ page, though Amazon says they will continue to work with the standard

Doctor Who returns in April with an evil new cartoon villain Ncuti Gatwa’s version of the Doctor will be back pretty soon. Disney Plus and the BBC announced that the next season of Doctor Who will start streaming on April 12th, with new episodes dropping weekly. The season will span eight episodes total. Perhaps more interesting than the date, though, is a pair of new characters

Amazon Alexa event live blog: all the news from the keynote Amazon is set to announce new Alexa features beginning at 10AM ET this morning — and we hope a few devices accompany them. There isn’t a way to watch the event remotely, but our team is here in person to bring you all of the updates as they happen. We’re expecting Amazon to announce its

Lucid’s CEO steps down, as EV maker aims to double production Lucid Motors founder and CEO Peter Rawlinson will step down, as the luxury EV company sets its sights on doubling production over the next year. Rawlinson won’t be leaving the company. Instead, he’ll be assuming the role of “Strategic Technical Advisor to the Chairman of the Board,” the company said. Chief operating officer Marc Winterhoff

Amazon announces AI-powered Alexa Plus Amazon is finally launching the long-awaited generative AI version of Alexa — Alexa Plus — that, if all goes well, will take away much of the friction that comes with talking to a speaker to control your smart home or getting info on the fly. Some of the new abilities coming to Alexa Plus include

How to hide faces and scrub metadata when you photograph a protest While showing up at a protest can demonstrate your opinion to the world, you may not want your face — or the faces of other protesters — to be included, especially when there is the possibility that authorities will collect and use that information (as they did for tracking movements during COVID-19 social distancing). As

All of the announcements from Amazon’s 2025 Alexa Plus event The Verge is live blogging Amazon’s big Alexa event in New York City. It kicks off at 10AM ET on February 26th, and the company was focused on its new subscription-based Alexa Plus, beefed up with a bunch of generative AI features. We didn’t get news about new hardware, instead the AI features, and a

Amazon is launching Alexa.com and new app for Alexa Plus Amazon is launching an alexa.com website and a new mobile app where Alexa Plus subscribers will be able to use the AI-powered voice assistant. We don’t have many details beyond that, but the website and the app could be handy new ways to interact with the revamped Alexa, which was announced at an event this

Volvo ES90 will charge faster, drive farther than other Volvo EVs Volvo is continuing to drop hints about its upcoming high-tech electric sedan, the ES90, ahead of the EV’s official reveal next month. Today, the Swedish automaker provided new details about the ES90’s range and battery efficiency, calling it “a car that goes further and charges faster than any electric Volvo before.” That’s mostly thanks to

How to secure your phone before attending a protest Back in June 2020, when this article was first written, people were taking to the streets to organize for justice and protest against systemic racism and police brutality. It was revised two years later when people were taking to the streets to protest the possibility that the Supreme Court might overturn Roe v. Wade (and we

Apple is fixing a voice dictation bug that substitutes ‘Trump’ for ‘racist’ Apple has acknowledged a peculiar bug with the iPhone’s dictation feature that briefly displays “Trump” when someone says the word “racist.” The Verge has been unable to reproduce the issue, but it picked up attention on Tuesday after a video demonstrating the strange substitution went viral on TikTok and other social media. The company provided…

We finally know who’s legally running DOGE The White House has named Amy Gleason as the acting administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The news, delivered by an unnamed White House official to CNBC and other media outlets, follows days of obfuscation in courtrooms, the press, and the pseudo-department itself. It designates Gleason a likely target for the nigh-con…

Samsung’s first Pro series Gen 5 PCIe SSD arrives in March The first PCIe Gen 5 SSDs from the likes of Seagate and Crucial began hitting the market nearly two years ago, but Samsung has been notably absent with its own model. That will change in March with the arrival of the Samsung 9100 Pro series, its first consumer-ready pure PCIe Gen 5 SSD built with

Razer’s new Blade 18 offers Nvidia RTX 50-series GPUs and a dual mode display Razer is adding a fresh gaming laptop to the pile of new models up for preorder today: the Blade 18. Like its smaller (but far from small) Blade 16 cousin, the new Razer Blade 18 will come with Nvidia’s RTX 50-series GPUs and Intel Arrow Lake CPUs. But one major way it differs is its

‘We’re nowhere near done with Framework Laptop 16’ says Framework CEO Two years ago, the last time Framework had an event in San Francisco, California, the highlight was the Framework Laptop 16 — a laptop promising the “holy grail” of upgradable graphics cards, and easily one of the most ambitious laptops ever made. But today, the Framework Laptop 16 got little mention at its new event,

Three years later, the Steam Deck has dominated handheld PC gaming Today is the third anniversary of Valve’s Steam Deck, the handheld gaming PC that all but created the market for handheld gaming PCs. It was a mess to start! But three years later, The Verge has data showing how it has dominated the nascent market. While Valve told us in November 2023 that it had

Microsoft is testing free Office for Windows apps with ads Microsoft has started testing a free version of Office for Windows that includes ads. Right now, you have to pay for a monthly Microsoft 365 subscription to get access to the full desktop version of Office, but Microsoft has been quietly testing an ad-supported version in certain countries. Beebom first noticed that the ad-supported version

Google Gemini’s AI coding tool is now free for individual users A free version of Gemini Code Assist, Google’s enterprise-focused AI coding tool, is now available globally for solo developers. Google announced today that Gemini Code Assist for individuals is launching in public preview, aiming to make coding assistants “with the latest AI capabilities” more accessible for students, hobbyists, freelancers, an…

Powerplay 2: Logitech made its magic mousepad cheaper instead of better I’ve never reviewed a perfect product, but Logitech’s Powerplay Wireless Charging System comes close. For over three years and counting, I’ve never even had to think about charging my wireless mouse. It’s so dead simple, it feels like magic, and it’s shame that most people probably can’t afford it at $120. The good news: Logitech