OpenAI popularized the modern generative AI chatbot, but as its 2026 DevDay event approaches, it’s fallen behind in one of the industry’s hottest categories: continuously running, consumer-facing AI agents. On Tuesday, it will likely try to capture the lead in that race. Rumors abound that OpenAI will release its own AI agent, dubbed Aeon –…
President Donald Trump announces plans to weaken fuel efficiency and emissions rules for cars and trucks in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, on December 3rd, 2025. | Photo: Getty Images The US Department of Transportation finalized its plans today to weaken fuel efficiency standards, calling it “among the largest deregulatory…
In March, Janice Malone began getting calls about suspicious activity from her nonprofit organization, Vivian’s Door. Vivian’s Door, headquartered in Alabama, typically provided training, resources, and community to underserved and minority-owned businesses. The work sometimes put it in close contact with these companies’ financial data, which was stored on its systems. But suddenly, concerned callers…
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is calling for a judge to block OpenAI from “giving ChatGPT false human attributes,” a few months after Florida sued the AI company over safety concerns. According to Uthmeier, users are lulled into a false sense of security by the AI bot, as “ChatGPT’s use of language, including first-person pronouns…
The United Nations logo on a gate outside the UN headquarters in New York. | AFP via Getty Images Security researcher Rowan Howard-Jones says that OpenAI agents scanned the UN Conference on Trade and Development’s (UNCTAD) statistics site over 16,000 times between April and June. While the incident doesn’t quite rise to the level of…
The idea was big, exciting, and inspiring: What if we could get every kid in the world access to a computer? For a bunch of thinkers and executives in Silicon Valley, it felt like the way to fix everything. But the One Laptop Per Child initiative, and the XO-1 laptop designed to be given away,…
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the fragile state of your connected devices, follow Jennifer Pattison Tuohy. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes on Sunday at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started A decade ago, a…
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 145, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, I’m happy to be done traveling for a bit, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I flew to San Francisco to try out…
Haptics tech company Taction sued Apple in 2021, alleging it infringed two of its patents. Now a federal jury in San Diego has awarded Taction over $5.7 billion in damages. According to CNBC, “The lawsuit centered around U.S. Patent Nos. 10,659,885 and 10,820,117, which both involve vibration-based, tactile transducer technology that helps users feel a…
Drums on film. | Image: Decap I don’t think I’m going to hurt anyone’s feelings by pointing out that Decap doesn’t have the name recognition of Kendrick Lamar, Olivia Rodrigo, or Charli XCX. But his fingerprints are all over tracks from them, as well as many other artists, including Freddie Gibbs, Bad Bunny, Mac Miller,…
