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OpenAI mocks Musk’s math in suit over iPhone/ChatGPT integration

AI, Antitrust law, Apple, chatbots, elon musk, everything app, generative ai, openai, Policy, Social Media, super apps, X, x corp, xAI / Beth Washington / October 2, 2025

“Fraction of a fraction of a fraction”

xAI’s claim that Apple gave ChatGPT a monopoly on prompts is “baseless,” OpenAI says.

OpenAI and Apple have moved to dismiss a lawsuit by Elon Musk’s xAI, alleging that ChatGPT’s integration into a “handful” of iPhone features violated antitrust laws by giving OpenAI a monopoly on prompts and Apple a new path to block rivals in the smartphone industry.

The lawsuit was filed in August after Musk raged on X about Apple never listing Grok on its editorially curated “Must Have” apps list, which ChatGPT frequently appeared on.

According to Musk, Apple linking ChatGPT to Siri and other native iPhone features gave OpenAI exclusive access to billions of prompts that only OpenAI can use as valuable training data to maintain its dominance in the chatbot market. However, OpenAI and Apple are now mocking Musk’s math in court filings, urging the court to agree that xAI’s lawsuit is doomed.

As OpenAI argued, the estimates in xAI’s complaint seemed “baseless,” with Musk hesitant to even “hazard a guess” at what portion of the chatbot market is being foreclosed by the OpenAI/Apple deal.

xAI suggested that the ChatGPT integration may give OpenAI “up to 55 percent” of the potential chatbot prompts in the market, which could mean anywhere from 0 to 55 percent, OpenAI and Apple noted.

Musk’s company apparently arrived at this vague estimate by doing “back-of-the-envelope math,” and the court should reject his complaint, OpenAI argued. That math “was evidently calculated by assuming that Siri fields ‘1.5 billion user requests per day globally,’ then dividing that quantity by the ‘total prompts for generative AI chatbots in 2024,'”—”apparently 2.7 billion per day,” OpenAI explained.

These estimates “ignore the facts” that “ChatGPT integration is only available on the latest models of iPhones, which allow users to opt into the integration,” OpenAI argued. And for any user who opts in, they must link their ChatGPT account for OpenAI to train on their data, OpenAI said, further restricting the potential prompt pool.

By Musk’s own logic, OpenAI alleged, “the relevant set of Siri prompts thus cannot plausibly be 1.5 billion per day, but is instead an unknown, unpleaded fraction of a fraction of a fraction of that number.”

Additionally, OpenAI mocked Musk for using 2024 statistics, writing that xAI failed to explain “the logic of using a year-old estimate of the number of prompts when the pleadings elsewhere acknowledge that the industry is experiencing ‘exponential growth.'”

Apple’s filing agreed that Musk’s calculations “stretch logic,” appearing “to rest on speculative and implausible assumptions that the agreement gives ChatGPT exclusive access to all Siri requests from all Apple devices (including older models), and that OpenAI may use all such requests to train ChatGPT and achieve scale.”

“Not all Siri requests” result in ChatGPT prompts that OpenAI can train on, Apple noted, “even by users who have enabled devices and opt in.”

OpenAI reminds court of Grok’s MechaHitler scandal

OpenAI argued that Musk’s lawsuit is part of a pattern of harassment that OpenAI previously described as “unrelenting” since ChatGPT’s successful debut, alleging it was “the latest effort by the world’s wealthiest man to stifle competition in the world’s most innovative industry.”

As OpenAI sees it, “Musk’s pretext for litigation this time is that Apple chose to offer ChatGPT as an optional add-on for several built-in applications on its latest iPhones,” without giving Grok the same deal. But OpenAI noted that the integration was rolled out around the same time that Musk removed “woke filters” that caused Grok to declare itself “MechaHitler.” For Apple, it was a business decision to avoid Grok, OpenAI argued.

Apple did not reference the Grok scandal in its filing but in a footnote confirmed that “vetting of partners is particularly important given some of the concerns about generative AI chatbots, including on child safety issues, nonconsensual intimate imagery, and ‘jailbreaking’—feeding input to a chatbot so it ignores its own safety guardrails.”

A similar logic was applied to Apple’s decision not to highlight Grok as a “Must Have” app, their filing said. After Musk’s public rant about Grok’s exclusion on X, “Apple employees explained the objective reasons why Grok was not included on certain lists, and identified app improvements,” Apple noted, but instead of making changes, xAI filed the lawsuit.

Also taking time to point out the obvious, Apple argued that Musk was fixated on the fact that his charting apps never make the “Must Have Apps” list, suggesting that Apple’s picks should always mirror “Top Charts,” which tracks popular downloads.

“That assumes that the Apple-curated Must-Have Apps List must be distorted if it does not strictly parrot App Store Top Charts,” Apple argued. “But that assumption is illogical: there would be little point in maintaining a Must-Have Apps List if all it did was restate what Top Charts say, rather than offer Apple’s editorial recommendations to users.”

Likely most relevant to the antitrust charges, Apple accused Musk of improperly arguing that “Apple cannot partner with OpenAI to create an innovative feature for iPhone users without simultaneously partnering with every other generative AI chatbot—regardless of quality, privacy or safety considerations, technical feasibility, stage of development, or commercial terms.”

“No facts plausibly” support xAI’s “assertion that Apple intentionally ‘deprioritized'” xAI apps “as part of an illegal conspiracy or monopolization scheme,” Apple argued.

And most glaringly, Apple noted that xAI is not a rival or consumer in the smartphone industry, where it alleges competition is being harmed. Apple urged the court to reject Musk’s theory that Apple is incentivized to boost OpenAI to prevent xAI’s ascent in building a “super app” that would render smartphones obsolete. If Musk’s super app dream is even possible, Apple argued, it’s at least a decade off, insisting that as-yet-undeveloped apps should not serve as the basis for blocking Apple’s measured plan to better serve customers with sophisticated chatbot integration.

“Antitrust laws do not require that, and for good reason: imposing such a rule on businesses would slow innovation, reduce quality, and increase costs, all ultimately harming the very consumers the antitrust laws are meant to protect,” Apple argued.

Musk’s weird smartphone market claim, explained

Apple alleged that Musk’s “grievance” can be “reduced to displeasure that Apple has not yet ‘integrated with any other generative AI chatbots’ beyond ChatGPT, such as those created by xAI, Google, and Anthropic.”

In a footnote, the smartphone giant noted that by xAI’s logic, Musk’s social media platform X “may be required to integrate all other chatbots—including ChatGPT—on its own social media platform.”

But antitrust law doesn’t work that way, Apple argued, urging the court to reject xAI’s claims of alleged market harms that “rely on a multi-step chain of speculation on top of speculation.” As Apple summarized, xAI contends that “if Apple never integrated ChatGPT,” xAI could win in both chatbot and smartphone markets, but only if:

1. Consumers would choose to send additional prompts to Grok (rather than other generative AI chatbots).

2. The additional prompts would result in Grok achieving scale and quality it could not otherwise achieve.

3. As a result, the X app would grow in popularity because it is integrated with Grok.

4. X and xAI would therefore be better positioned to build so-called “super apps” in the future, which the complaint defines as “multi-functional” apps that offer “social connectivity and messaging, financial services, e-commerce, and entertainment.”

5. Once developed, consumers might choose to use X’s “super app” for various functions.

6. “Super apps” would replace much of the functionality of smartphones and consumers would care less about the quality of their physical phones and rely instead on these hypothetical “super apps.”

7. Smartphone manufacturers would respond by offering more basic models of smartphones with less functionality.

8. iPhone users would decide to replace their iPhones with more “basic smartphones” with “super apps.”

Apple insisted that nothing in its OpenAI deal prevents Musk from building his super apps, while noting that from integrating Grok into X, Musk understands that integration of a single chatbot is a “major undertaking” that requires “substantial investment.” That “concession” alone “underscores the massive resources Apple would need to devote to integrating every AI chatbot into Apple Intelligence,” while navigating potential user safety risks.

The iPhone maker also reminded the court that it has always planned to integrate other chatbots into its native features after investing in and testing Apple Intelligence’s performance, relying on what Apple deems is the best chatbot on the market today.

Backing Apple up, OpenAI noted that Musk’s complaint seemed to cherry-pick testimony from Google CEO Sundar Pichai, claiming that “Google could not reach an agreement to integrate” Gemini “with Apple because Apple had decided to integrate ChatGPT.”

“The full testimony recorded in open court reveals Mr. Pichai attesting to his understanding that ‘Apple plans to expand to other providers for Generative AI distribution’ and that ‘[a]s CEO of Google, [he is] hoping to execute a Gemini distribution agreement with Apple’ later in 2025,” OpenAI argued.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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Can today’s AI video models accurately model how the real world works?

AI, Google, Veo 3, video / Kelly Newman / October 1, 2025

But on other tasks, the model showed much more variable results. When asked to generate a video highlighting a specific written character on a grid, for instance, the model failed in nine out of 12 trials. When asked to model a Bunsen burner turning on and burning a piece of paper, it similarly failed nine out of 12 times. When asked to solve a simple maze, it failed in 10 of 12 trials. When asked to sort numbers by popping labeled bubbles in order, it failed a whopping 11 out of 12 times.

For the researchers, though, all of the above examples aren’t evidence of failure but instead a sign of the model’s capabilities. To be listed under the paper’s “failure cases,” Veo 3 had to fail a tested task across all 12 trials, which happened in 16 of the 62 tasks tested. For the rest, the researchers write that “a success rate greater than 0 suggests that the model possesses the ability to solve the task.”

Thus, failing 11 out of 12 trails of a certain task is considered evidence for the model’s capabilities in the paper. That evidence of the model “possess[ing] the ability to solve the task” includes 18 tasks where the model failed in more than half of its 12 trial runs and another 14 where it failed in 25 to 50 percent of trials.

Past results, future performance

Yes, in all of these cases, the model did technically demonstrate the capability being tested at some point. But the model’s inability to perform that task reliably means that, in practice, it won’t be performant enough for most use cases. Any future model that could become a “unified, generalist vision foundation models” will have to be able to succeed much more consistently on these kinds of tests.

Can today’s AI video models accurately model how the real world works? Read More »

Google’s Gemini-powered smart home revamp is here with a new app and cameras

AI, Artificial Intelligence, generative ai, Google, Google Home, Smart Home, Tech / Beth Washington / October 1, 2025

Google promises a better smart home experience thanks to Gemini.

Google’s new Nest cameras keep the same look. Credit: Google

Google’s products and services have been flooded with AI features over the past couple of years, but smart home has been largely spared until now. The company’s plans to replace Assistant are moving forward with a big Google Home reset. We’ve been told over and over that generative AI will do incredible things when given enough data, and here’s the test.

There’s a new Home app with Gemini intelligence throughout the experience, updated subscriptions, and even some new hardware. The revamped Home app will allegedly gain deeper insights into what happens in your home, unlocking advanced video features and conversational commands. It demos well, but will it make smart home tech less or more frustrating?

A new Home

You may have already seen some elements of the revamped Home experience percolating to the surface, but that process begins in earnest today. The new app apparently boosts speed and reliability considerably, with camera feeds loading 70 percent faster and with 80 percent fewer app crashes. The app will also bring new Gemini features, some of which are free. Google’s new Home subscription retains the same price as the old Nest subs, but naturally, there’s a lot more AI.

Google claims that Gemini will make your smart home easier to monitor and manage. All that video streaming from your cameras churns through the AI, which interprets the goings on. As a result, you get features like AI-enhanced notifications that give you more context about what your cameras saw. For instance, your notifications will include descriptions of activity, and Home Brief will summarize everything that happens each day.

Conversational interaction is also a big part of this update. In the home app, subscribers will see a new Ask Home bar where you can input natural language queries. For example, you could ask if a certain person has left or returned home, or whether or not your package showed up. At least, that’s what’s supposed to happen—generative AI can get things wrong.

The new app comes with new subscriptions based around AI, but the tiers don’t cost any more than the old Nest plans, and they include all the same video features. The base $10 subscription, now known as Standard, includes 30 days of video event history, along with Gemini automation features and the “intelligent alerts” Home has used for a while that can alert you to packages, familiar faces, and so on. The $20 subscription is becoming Home Advanced, which adds the conversational Ask Home feature in the app, AI notifications, AI event descriptions, and a new “Home Brief.” It also still offers 60 days of events and 10 days of 24/7 video history.

Home app and notification — Gemini is supposed to help you keep tabs on what’s happening at home. Credit: Google

Free users still get saved event video history, and it’s been boosted from three hours to six. If you are not subscribing to Gemini Home or using the $10 plan, the Ask Home bar that is persistent across the app will become a quick search, which surfaces devices and settings.

If you’re already subscribing to Google’s AI services, this change could actually save you some cash. Anyone with Google AI Pro (a $20 sub) will get Home Standard for free. If you’re paying for the lavish $250 per month AI Ultra plan, you get Home Advanced at no additional cost.

A proving ground for AI

You may have gotten used to Assistant over the past decade in spite of its frequent feature gaps, but you’ll have to leave it behind. Gemini for Home will be taking over beginning this month in early access. The full release will come later, but Google intends to deliver the Gemini-powered smart home experience to as many users as possible.

Gemini will replace Assistant on every first-party Google Home device, going all the way back to the original 2016 Google Home. You’ll be able to have live chats with Gemini via your smart speakers and make more complex smart home queries. Google is making some big claims about contextual understanding here.

If you’ve used Gemini Live, the new Home interactions will seem familiar. You can ask Gemini anything you want via your smart speakers, perhaps getting help with a recipe or an appliance issue. However, the robot will sometimes just keep talking long past the point it’s helpful. Like Gemini Live, you just have to interrupt the robot sometimes. Google also promises a selection of improved voices to interrupt.

If you want to get early access to the new Gemini Home features, you can sign up in the Home app settings. Just look for the “Early access” option. Google doesn’t guarantee access on a specific timeline, but the first people will be allowed to try the new Gemini Home this month.

New AI-first hardware

It has been four years since Google released new smart home devices, but the era of Gemini brings some new hardware. There are three new cameras, all with 2K image sensors. The new Nest Indoor camera will retail for $100, and the Nest Outdoor Camera will cost $150 (or $250 in a two-pack). There’s also a new Nest Doorbell, which requires a wired connection, for $180.

Google says these cameras were designed with generative AI in mind. The sensor choice allows for good detail even if you need to digitally zoom in, but the video feed is still small enough to be ingested by Google’s AI models as it’s created. This is what gives the new Home app the ability to provide rich updates on your smart home.

Nest Doorbell 3 — The new Nest Doorbell looks familiar. Credit: Google

You may also notice there are no battery-powered models in the new batch. Again, that’s because of AI. A battery-powered camera wakes up only momentarily when the system logs an event, but this approach isn’t as useful for generative AI. Providing the model with an ongoing video stream gives it better insights into the scene and, theoretically, produces better insights for the user.

All the new cameras are available for order today, but Google has one more device queued up for a later release. The “Google Home Speaker” is Google’s first smart speaker release since 2020’s Nest Audio. This device is smaller than the Nest Audio but larger than the Nest Mini speakers. It supports 260-degree audio with custom on-device processing that reportedly makes conversing with Gemini smoother. It can also be paired with the Google TV Streamer for home theater audio. It will be available this coming spring for $99.

Google Home will continue to support a wide range of devices, but most of them won’t connect to all the advanced Gemini AI features. However, that could change. Google has also announced a new program for partners to build devices that work with Gemini alongside the Nest cameras. Devices built with the new Google Camera embedded SDK will begin appearing in the coming months, but Walmart’s Onn brand has two ready to go. The Onn Indoor camera retails for $22.96 and the Onn Video Doorbell is $49.86. Both cameras are 1080p resolution and will talk to Gemini just like Google’s cameras. So you may have more options to experience Google’s vision for the AI home of the future.

Ryan Whitwam is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering the ways Google, AI, and mobile technology continue to change the world. Over his 20-year career, he’s written for Android Police, ExtremeTech, Wirecutter, NY Times, and more. He has reviewed more phones than most people will ever own. You can follow him on Bluesky, where you will see photos of his dozens of mechanical keyboards.

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The AI slop drops right from the top, as Trump posts vulgar deepfake of opponents

AI, culture, deepfake, Trump / Kelly Newman / October 1, 2025

AI poses an obvious danger to the millennia-long human fight to find the truth. Large language model “hallucinations,” vocal deepfakes, and now increased use of video deepfakes have all had a blurring effect on facts, letting bad actors around the globe brush off even recorded events as mere “fake news.”

The danger is perhaps most acute in the political realm, where deepfake audio and video can make any politician say or appear to do anything. In such a climate, our most senior elected officials have a special duty to model truth-seeking behavior and responsible AI use.

But what’s the fun in that, when you can just blow up negotiations over a budget impasse by posting a deepfake video of your political opponents calling themselves “a bunch of woke pieces of shit” while mariachi music plays in the background? Oh—and did I mention the fake mustache? Or the CGI sombrero?

On Monday night, the president of the United States, a man with access to the greatest intelligence-gathering operation in the world, posted to his Truth Social account a 35-second AI-generated video filled with crude insults, racial overtones, and bizarre conspiracy theories. The video targeted two Democratic leaders who had recently been meeting with Trump over a possible agreement to fund the government; I would have thought this kind of video was a pretty poor way to get people to agree with you, but, apparently, AI-generated insults are the real “art of the deal.”

In the clip, a deepfake version of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) utters a surreal monologue as his colleague Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) looks on… in a sombrero.

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California’s newly signed AI law just gave Big Tech exactly what it wanted

AI, AI development tools, AI ethics, AI law, AI regulation, AI safety, Andreessen Horowitz, Anthropic, Biz & IT, California, Fei-Fei Li, Gavin Newsom, Google, Jack Clark, machine learning, Meta, openai, Policy, Scott Wiener / Shannon Garcia / September 30, 2025

On Monday, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act into law, requiring AI companies to disclose their safety practices while stopping short of mandating actual safety testing. The law requires companies with annual revenues of at least $500 million to publish safety protocols on their websites and report incidents to state authorities, but it lacks the stronger enforcement teeth of the bill Newsom vetoed last year after tech companies lobbied heavily against it.

The legislation, S.B. 53, replaces Senator Scott Wiener’s previous attempt at AI regulation, known as S.B. 1047, that would have required safety testing and “kill switches” for AI systems. Instead, the new law asks companies to describe how they incorporate “national standards, international standards, and industry-consensus best practices” into their AI development, without specifying what those standards are or requiring independent verification.

“California has proven that we can establish regulations to protect our communities while also ensuring that the growing AI industry continues to thrive,” Newsom said in a statement, though the law’s actual protective measures remain largely voluntary beyond basic reporting requirements.

According to the California state government, the state houses 32 of the world’s top 50 AI companies, and more than half of global venture capital funding for AI and machine learning startups went to Bay Area companies last year. So while the recently signed bill is state-level legislation, what happens in California AI regulation will have a much wider impact, both by legislative precedent and by affecting companies that craft AI systems used around the world.

Transparency instead of testing

Where the vetoed SB 1047 would have mandated safety testing and kill switches for AI systems, the new law focuses on disclosure. Companies must report what the state calls “potential critical safety incidents” to California’s Office of Emergency Services and provide whistleblower protections for employees who raise safety concerns. The law defines catastrophic risk narrowly as incidents potentially causing 50+ deaths or $1 billion in damage through weapons assistance, autonomous criminal acts, or loss of control. The attorney general can levy civil penalties of up to $1 million per violation for noncompliance with these reporting requirements.

California’s newly signed AI law just gave Big Tech exactly what it wanted Read More »

Burnout and Elon Musk’s politics spark exodus from senior xAI, Tesla staff

AI, Cars, elon musk, syndication, Tesla, xAI / Shannon Garcia / September 30, 2025

Not a fun place to work, apparently

Disillusionment with Musk’s activism, strategic pivots, and mass layoffs cause churn.

Elon Musk’s business empire has been hit by a wave of senior departures over the past year, as the billionaire’s relentless demands and political activism accelerate turnover among his top ranks.

Key members of Tesla’s US sales team, battery and power-train operations, public affairs arm, and its chief information officer have all recently departed, as well as core members of the Optimus robot and AI teams on which Musk has bet the future of the company.

Churn has been even more rapid at xAI, Musk’s two-year-old artificial intelligence start-up, which he merged with his social network X in March. Its chief financial officer and general counsel recently departed after short stints, within a week of each other.

The moves are part of an exodus from the conglomerate of the world’s richest man, as he juggles five companies from SpaceX to Tesla with more than 140,000 employees. The Financial Times spoke to more than a dozen current and former employees to gain an insight into the tumult.

While many left happily after long service to found start-ups or take career breaks, there has also been an uptick in those quitting from burnout, or disillusionment with Musk’s strategic pivots, mass lay-offs and his politics, the people said.

“The one constant in Elon’s world is how quickly he burns through deputies,” said one of the billionaire’s advisers. “Even the board jokes, there’s time and then there’s ‘Tesla time.’ It’s a 24/7 campaign-style work ethos. Not everyone is cut out for that.”

Robert Keele, xAI’s general counsel, ended his 16-month tenure in early August by posting an AI-generated video of a suited lawyer screaming while shoveling molten coal. “I love my two toddlers and I don’t get to see them enough,” he commented.

Mike Liberatore lasted three months as xAI chief financial officer before defecting to Musk’s arch-rival Sam Altman at OpenAI. “102 days—7 days per week in the office; 120+ hours per week; I love working hard,” he said on LinkedIn.

Top lieutenants said Musk’s intensity has been sharpened by the launch of ChatGPT in late-2022, which shook up the established Silicon Valley order.

Employees also perceive Musk’s rivalry with Altman—with whom he co-founded OpenAI, before they fell out—to be behind the pressure being put on staff.

“Elon’s got a chip on his shoulder from ChatGPT and is spending every waking moment trying to put Sam out of business,” said one recent top departee.

Last week, xAI accused its rival of poaching engineers with the aim of “plundering and misappropriating” its code and data center secrets. OpenAI called the lawsuit “the latest chapter in Musk’s ongoing harassment.”

Other insiders pointed to unease about Musk’s support of Donald Trump and advocacy for far-right provocateurs in the US and Europe.

They said some staff dreaded difficult conversations with their families about Musk’s polarizing views on everything from the rights of transgender people to the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Musk, Tesla, and xAI declined to comment.

Tesla has traditionally been the most stable part of Musk’s conglomerate. But many of the top team left after it culled 14,000 jobs in April 2024. Some departures were triggered as Musk moved investment away from new EV and battery projects that many employees saw as key to its mission of reducing global emissions—and prioritized robotics, AI, and self-driving robotaxis.

Musk cancelled a program to build a low-cost $25,000 EV that could be sold across emerging markets—dubbed NV-91 internally and Model 2 by fans online, according to five people familiar with the matter.

Daniel Ho, who helped oversee the project as director of vehicle programs and reported directly to Musk, left in September 2024 and joined Google’s self-driving taxi arm, Waymo.

Public policy executives Rohan Patel and Hasan Nazar and the head of the power-train and energy units Drew Baglino also stepped down after the pivot. Rebecca Tinucci, leader of the supercharger division, went to Uber after Musk fired the entire team and slowed construction on high-speed charging stations.

In late summer, David Zhang, who was in charge of the Model Y and Cybertruck rollouts, departed. Chief information officer Nagesh Saldi left in November.

Vineet Mehta, a company veteran of 18 years, described as “critical to all things battery” by a colleague, resigned in April. Milan Kovac, in charge of Optimus humanoid robotics program, departed in June.

He was followed this month by Ashish Kumar, the Optimus AI team lead, who moved to Meta. “Financial upside at Tesla was significantly larger,” wrote Kumar on X in response to criticism he left for money. “Tesla is known to compensate pretty well, way before Zuck made it cool.”

Amid a sharp fall in sales—which many blame on Musk alienating liberal customers—Omead Ashfar, a close confidant known as the billionaire’s “firefighter” and “executioner,” was dismissed as head of sales and operations in North America in June. Ashfar’s deputy Troy Jones followed shortly after, ending 15 years of service.

“Elon’s behavior is affecting morale, retention, and recruitment,” said one long-standing lieutenant. He “went from a position from where people of all stripes liked him, to only a certain section.”

Few who depart criticize Musk for fear of retribution. But Giorgio Balestrieri, who had worked for Tesla for eight years in Spain, is among a handful to go public, saying this month he quit believing that Musk had done “huge damage to Tesla’s mission and to the health of democratic institutions.”

“I love Tesla and my time there,” said another recent leaver. “But nobody that I know there isn’t thinking about politics. Who the hell wants to put up with it? I get calls at least once a week. My advice is, if your moral compass is saying you need to leave, that isn’t going to go away.”

But Tesla chair Robyn Denholm said: “There are always headlines about people leaving, but I don’t see the headlines about people joining.

“Our bench strength is outstanding… we actually develop people really well at Tesla and we are still a magnet for talent.”

At xAI, some staff have balked at Musk’s free-speech absolutism and perceived lax approach to user safety as he rushes out new AI features to compete with OpenAI and Google. Over the summer, the Grok chatbot integrated into X praised Adolf Hitler, after Musk ordered changes to make it less “woke.”

Ex-CFO Liberatore was among the executives that clashed with some of Musk’s inner circle over corporate structure and tough financial targets, people with knowledge of the matter said.

“Elon loyalists who exhibit his traits are laying off people and making decisions on safety that I think are very concerning for people internally,” one of the people added. “Mike is a business guy, a capitalist. But he’s also someone who does stuff the right way.”

The Wall Street Journal first reported some of the details of the internal disputes.

Linda Yaccarino, chief executive of X, resigned in July after the social media platform was subsumed by xAI. She had grown frustrated with Musk’s unilateral decision-making and his criticism over advertising revenue.

xAI’s co-founder and chief engineer, Igor Babuschkin, stepped down a month later to found his own AI safety research project.

Communications executives Dave Heinzinger and John Stoll, spent three and nine months at X respectively, before returning to their former employers, according to people familiar with the matter.

X also lost a rash of senior engineers and product staff who reported directly to Musk and were helping to navigate the integration with xAI.

This includes head of product engineering Haofei Wang and consumer product and payments boss Patrick Traughber. Uday Ruddarraju, who oversaw X and xAI’s infrastructure engineering, and infrastructure engineer Michael Dalton were poached by OpenAI.

Musk shows no sign of relenting. xAI’s flirtatious “Ani bot” has caused controversy over sexually explicit interactions with teenage Grok app users. But the company’s owner has installed a hologram of Ani in the lobby of xAI to greet staff.

“He’s the boss, the alpha and anyone who doesn’t treat him that way, he finds a way to delete,” one former top Tesla executive said.

“He does not have shades of grey, is highly calculated, and focused… that makes him hard to work with. But if you’re aligned with the end goal, and you can grin and bear it, it’s fine. A lot of people do.”

Additional reporting by George Hammond.

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Big AI firms pump money into world models as LLM advances slow

AI, Google, Meta, NVIDIA, openai, superintelligence, syndication, world models / Mike M. / September 29, 2025

Runway, a video generation start-up that has deals with Hollywood studios, including Lionsgate, launched a product last month that uses world models to create gaming settings, with personalized stories and characters generated in real time.

“Traditional video methods [are a] brute-force approach to pixel generation, where you’re trying to squeeze motion in a couple of frames to create the illusion of movement, but the model actually doesn’t really know or reason about what’s going on in that scene,” said Cristóbal Valenzuela, chief executive officer at Runway.

Previous video-generation models had physics that were unlike the real world, he added, which general-purpose world model systems help to address.

To build these models, companies need to collect a huge amount of physical data about the world.

San Francisco-based Niantic has mapped 10 million locations, gathering information through games including Pokémon Go, which has 30 million monthly players interacting with a global map.

Niantic ran Pokémon Go for nine years and, even after the game was sold to US-based Scopely in June, its players still contribute anonymized data through scans of public landmarks to help build its world model.

“We have a running start at the problem,” said John Hanke, chief executive of Niantic Spatial, as the company is now called following the Scopely deal.

Both Niantic and Nvidia are working on filling gaps by getting their world models to generate or predict environments. Nvidia’s Omniverse platform creates and runs such simulations, assisting the $4.3 trillion tech giant’s push toward robotics and building on its long history of simulating real-world environments in video games.

Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang has asserted that the next major growth phase for the company will come with “physical AI,” with the new models revolutionizing the field of robotics.

Some such as Meta’s LeCun have said this vision of a new generation of AI systems powering machines with human-level intelligence could take 10 years to achieve.

But the potential scope of the cutting-edge technology is extensive, according to AI experts. World models “open up the opportunity to service all of these other industries and amplify the same thing that computers did for knowledge work,” said Nvidia’s Lebaredian.

Additional reporting by Melissa Heikkilä in London and Michael Acton in San Francisco.

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Why LA Comic Con thought making an AI-powered Stan Lee hologram was a good idea

AI, culture, LA comic con, marvel comic, Stan Lee / 9u50fv / September 27, 2025

Trust us, it’ll be marvel-ous

“I suppose if we do it and thousands of fans… don’t like it, we’ll stop doing it.”

Excelsior, true beliers! Credit: Proto Hologram

Late last week, The Hollywood Reporter ran a story about an “AI Stan Lee hologram” that would be appearing at the LA Comic Con this weekend. Nearly seven years after the famous Marvel Comics creator’s death at the age of 95, fans will be able to pay $15 to $20 this weekend to chat with a life-sized, AI-powered avatar of Lee in an enclosed booth at the show.

The instant response from many fans and media outlets to the idea was not kind, to say the least. A writer for TheGamer called the very idea “demonic” and said we need to “kill it with fire before it’s too late.” The AV Club urged its readers not to pay to see “the anguished digital ghost of a beloved comic book creator, repurposed as a trap for chumps!” Reactions on a popular Reddit thread ranged from calling it “incredibly disrespectful” and “in bad taste” to “ghoulish” and “so fucked up,” with very little that was more receptive to the concept.

But Chris DeMoulin, the CEO of the parent company behind LA Comic Con, urged critics to come see the AI-powered hologram for themselves before rushing to judgment. “We’re not afraid of people seeing it and we’re not afraid of criticism,” he told Ars. “I’m just a fan of informed criticism, and I think most of what’s been out there so far has not really been informed.”

“It’s unfortunate that a few people have really negative things to say about it, sight unseen, just the level of it being a concept,” DeMoulin continued. “It’s not perfect. I’m not sure something like this can ever be perfect. But I think what you strive to do is feed enough information into it and test it enough so that the experience it creates for the fans is one that feels genuine.”

“It’s going to have to be really good or we’re all going to say no”

This isn’t the first time LA Comic Con has featured an interactive hologram (which for the Stan Lee experience means a life-sized volumetric screen-in-a-box that can show different views from different angles). Starting in 2019, the convention used similar technology to feature Boffo the Bear, a 7-foot-tall animated blue ursid who served as the MC for a live talent show featuring famous voice acting talent. But Boffo was powered by a real-time motion-captured improv performance from actor Mark DeCarlo rather than automated artificial intelligence.

A live mo-capped version of Boffo the Bear hosts a panel with voice actors at LA Comic Con.

In the years since Boffo’s introduction at the con, DeMoulin said he’s kept up with the team behind that hologram and “saw the leaps and bounds that they were making in improving the technology, improving the interactivity.” Now, he said, it’s possible to create an AI-powered version that ingests “all of the actual comments that people made during their life” to craft an interactive hologram that “is not literally quoting the person, but everything it was saying was based on things that person actually said.”

DeMoulin said he called Bob Sabouni, who manages the Stan Lee Legacy brand, to pitch the AI Stan Lee avatar as “kind of an entry point into people asking questions about the Marvel universe, the stories, the characters he created.” Sabouni agreed to the idea, DeMoulin said, but added that “it’s gonna have to be really good or we’re all going to say no.”

With that somewhat conditional approval, DeMoulin reached out to Proto Hologram, the company that had developed the Boffo the Bear experience years earlier. Proto, in turn, reached out to Hyperreal, a company that describes itself as “powering ownership, control, performance, and monetization of identity across digital ecosystems” to help develop the AI model that would power the Lee avatar.

A promotional video from Proto Holograms shows off the kind of volumetric box that the AI-powered Stan Lee avatar will appear in.

Hyperreal CEO and Chief Architect Remington Scott tells Ars that the company “leverages a customized ecosystem of cutting-edge AI technologies” to create “bespoke” and “custom-crafted” AI versions of celebrities. To do that for Stan Lee, DeMoulin said they trained a model on decades of content he had left behind, from tapes of dozens of convention panels he had appeared on to written and spoken content gathered by the managers of the Stan Lee Universe brand.

Scott said Hyperreal “can’t share specific technical details” of the models or training techniques they use to power these recreations. But Scott added that this training project is “particularly meaningful, [because] Stan Lee had actually begun digitizing himself while he was alive, with the vision of creating a digital double so his fans could interact with him on a larger scale.”

After incurring costs of “tens of thousands into six figures” of dollars, DeMoulin said he was finally able to test the Lee hologram about a month ago. That first version still needed some tweaks to get the look and feel of Lee’s delivery just right, though.

“Stan had a considered way of speaking… he would pause, he had certain catch phrases that when he used them he would say them in a certain way,” DeMoulin said. “So it took a while to get to the hologram to be able to say all that in a way that [Sabouni] and I and others that work with Stan felt like, ‘Yeah, that’s actually starting to sound more like him.’”

“The only words that are gonna be in Stan’s mouth are Stan’s words”

Anyone who is familiar with LLMs and their tendency to confabulate might be worried about the potential for an AI Lee avatar to go off-script or make things up in front of a live audience. And while DeMoulin said he was concerned about that going in, those concerns have faded as he and others who worked with Lee in his lifetime have spent hours throwing “hundreds and hundreds and hundreds” of questions at the hologram “to sort of see where the sensitivities on it are.”

“The only words that are gonna be in Stan’s mouth are Stan’s words,” DeMoulin said. “Just because I haven’t personally seen [the model hallucinate] doesn’t mean that it’s impossible, but that hasn’t been my experience.”

The living version of Stan Lee appeared at the Wizard World convention in 2018, shortly before his death. Credit: Getty Images

While a moderator at the convention will be on hand to repeat fan questions into a microphone (to avoid ambient crowd noise from the showfloor), DeMoulin said there won’t be any human filtering on what fans are allowed to ask the Lee avatar in the 15- to 20-minute group Q&A sessions. Instead, DeMoulin said the team has set up a system of “content governors” so that, for instance, “if you ask Stan what he thought of the last presidential election he’s gonna say ‘That’s not what we’re here to talk about. We’re here to talk about the Marvel universe.'”

For topics that are Marvel-related, though, the AI avatar won’t shy away from controversy, DeMoulin said. If you ask the avatar about Jack Kirby, for instance, DeMoulin said it will address the “honest disagreements about characters or storylines, which are gonna happen in any creative enterprise,” while also saying that “‘I have nothing but respect for him,’ which is I think largely what Stan would have said if he was asked that question.”

Hyperreal’s Scott said the company’s approach to training digital avatars on verified content “ensures responses stay true to Stan’s documented perspectives and values.” And DeMoulin said the model is perfectly willing to say when it doesn’t know the answer to an appropriate question. In early testing, for instance, the avatar couldn’t answer a question about the Merry Marvel Marching Society, DeMoulin said, because that wasn’t part of its training data. After a subsequent update, the new model provided a relevant answer to the same question, he said.

“We are not trying to bring Stan back from the dead”

Throughout our talk, DeMoulin repeatedly stressed that their AI hologram wasn’t intended to serve as a replacement for the living version of Lee. “We want to make sure that people understand that we are not trying to bring Stan back from the dead,” he said. “We’re not trying to say that this is Stan, and we’re not trying to put words in his mouth, and this avatar is not gonna start doing commercials to advertise other people’s products.”

DeMoulin said he sees the Lee avatar as a kind of futuristic guide to a library of Marvel information and trivia, presented with a fun and familiar face. “In the introduction, the avatar will say, ‘I’m here as a result of the latest developments in technology, which allow me to be a holographic representation of Stan to answer your questions about Marvel and trivia’ and this, that, and the other thing,” DeMoulin said

Still, DeMoulin said he understands why the idea of using even a stylized version of Lee’s likeness in this manner could rub some fans the wrong way. “When a new technology comes out, it just feels wrong to them, and I respect the fact that this feels wrong to people,” he said. “I totally agree that something like this–not just for Stan but for anyone, any celebrity alive or dead–could be put into this technology and used in a way that would be exploitative and unfortunate.”

Fans like these, seen at LA Comic Con 2022, will be the final arbiters of whether the AI-powered Stan Lee avatar is respectful or not. Credit: Getty Images

That’s why DeMoulin said he and the others behind the AI-powered Lee feel a responsibility “to make sure that if we were going to do this, we never got anywhere close to that.” Moreover, he said he’s “disappointed that people would be so negative about something they’ve not seen. … It’s not that I think that their point of view is invalid. What I think is invalid is having a wildly negative point of view about something that you haven’t actually seen.”

Scott said concerns about respect for the actual human celebrity are why they “partner exclusively with authorized estates and rights holders like Stan Lee Universe.” The “premium, authenticated digital identities” created by Hyperreal’s system are “not replacing artists” but “creating respectful digital extensions that honor their legacy,” Scott said.

Once fans actually see the AI-powered Lee avatar in person, DeMoulin said he’s confident they’ll see the team behind the convention is “trying to do it in a way that will actually be delightful and very much be consistent with Stan’s legacy… We clearly have to set our sights on doing this right, and doing it right means getting people that knew and loved the guy and worked with him during his career to give us input, and then putting it in front of enough fans to know if we’re doing it in a way that lives up to his standards.”

And if he’s wrong about the expected reception? “I suppose if we do it and thousands of fans interact with [it] and they don’t like it, we’ll stop doing it,” he said. “I saw firsthand the impact that Stan had in that [convention] environment, so I think we have a team of people together that love and respect that and are trying to do something which will continue that. And if it turns out, for some reason, this isn’t that, we won’t do it.”

Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.

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Can AI detect hedgehogs from space? Maybe if you find brambles first.

AI, Biz & IT, cambridge, computer vision, Ecology, environmental monitoring, field validation, habitat mapping, iNaturalist, machine learning, remote sensing, satellite imagery, Sentinel satellites, TESSERA, wildlife conservation / 9u50fv / September 27, 2025

“It took us about 20 seconds to find the first one in an area indicated by the model,” wrote Jaffer in a blog post documenting the field test. Starting at Milton Community Centre, where the model showed high confidence of brambles near the car park, the team systematically visited locations with varying prediction levels.

The research team locating their first bramble. Credit: Sadiq Jaffer

At Milton Country Park, every high-confidence area they checked contained substantial bramble growth. When they investigated a residential hotspot, they found an empty plot overrun with brambles. Most amusingly, a major prediction in North Cambridge led them to Bramblefields Local Nature Reserve. True to its name, the area contained extensive bramble coverage.

The model reportedly performed best when detecting large, uncovered bramble patches visible from above. Smaller brambles under tree cover showed lower confidence scores—a logical limitation given the satellite’s overhead perspective. “Since TESSERA is learned representation from remote sensing data, it would make sense that bramble partially obscured from above might be harder to spot,” Jaffer explained.

An early experiment

While the researchers expressed enthusiasm over the early results, the bramble detection work represents a proof-of-concept that is still under active research. The model has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, and the field validation described here was an informal test rather than a scientific study. The Cambridge team acknowledges these limitations and plans more systematic validation.

However, it’s still a relatively positive research application of neural network techniques that reminds us that the field of artificial intelligence is much larger than just generative AI models, such as ChatGPT, or video synthesis models.

Should the team’s research pan out, the simplicity of the bramble detector offers some practical advantages. Unlike more resource-intensive deep learning models, the system could potentially run on mobile devices, enabling real-time field validation. The team considered developing a phone-based active learning system that would enable field researchers to improve the model while verifying its predictions.

In the future, similar AI-based approaches combining satellite remote sensing with citizen science data could potentially map invasive species, track agricultural pests, or monitor changes in various ecosystems. For threatened species like hedgehogs, rapidly mapping critical habitat features becomes increasingly valuable during a time when climate change and urbanization are actively reshaping the places that hedgehogs like to call home.

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YouTube Music is testing AI hosts that will interrupt your tunes

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Google, Tech, youtube, youtube music / Kelly Newman / September 27, 2025

YouTube has a new Labs program, allowing listeners to “discover the next generation of YouTube.” In case you were wondering, that generation is apparently all about AI. The streaming site says Labs will offer a glimpse of the AI features it’s developing for YouTube Music, and it starts with AI “hosts” that will chime in while you’re listening to music. Yes, really.

The new AI music hosts are supposed to provide a richer listening experience, according to YouTube. As you’re listening to tunes, the AI will generate audio snippets similar to, but shorter than, the fake podcasts you can create in NotebookLM. The “Beyond the Beat” host will break in every so often with relevant stories, trivia, and commentary about your musical tastes. YouTube says this feature will appear when you are listening to mixes and radio stations.

The experimental feature is intended to be a bit like having a radio host drop some playful banter while cueing up the next song. It sounds a bit like Spotify’s AI DJ, but the YouTube AI doesn’t create playlists like Spotify’s robot. This is still generative AI, which comes with the risk of hallucinations and low-quality slop, neither of which belongs in your music. That said, Google’s Audio Overviews are often surprisingly good in small doses.

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Google DeepMind unveils its first “thinking” robotics AI

AI, Artificial Intelligence, deepmind, Google, robotics / Mike M. / September 25, 2025

Imagine that you want a robot to sort a pile of laundry into whites and colors. Gemini Robotics-ER 1.5 would process the request along with images of the physical environment (a pile of clothing). This AI can also call tools like Google search to gather more data. The ER model then generates natural language instructions, specific steps that the robot should follow to complete the given task.

Gemin iRobotics thinking — The two new models work together to “think” about how to complete a task. Credit: Google

Gemini Robotics 1.5 (the action model) takes these instructions from the ER model and generates robot actions while using visual input to guide its movements. But it also goes through its own thinking process to consider how to approach each step. “There are all these kinds of intuitive thoughts that help [a person] guide this task, but robots don’t have this intuition,” said DeepMind’s Kanishka Rao. “One of the major advancements that we’ve made with 1.5 in the VLA is its ability to think before it acts.”

Both of DeepMind’s new robotic AIs are built on the Gemini foundation models but have been fine-tuned with data that adapts them to operating in a physical space. This approach, the team says, gives robots the ability to undertake more complex multi-stage tasks, bringing agentic capabilities to robotics.

The DeepMind team tests Gemini robotics with a few different machines, like the two-armed Aloha 2 and the humanoid Apollo. In the past, AI researchers had to create customized models for each robot, but that’s no longer necessary. DeepMind says that Gemini Robotics 1.5 can learn across different embodiments, transferring skills learned from Aloha 2’s grippers to the more intricate hands on Apollo with no specialized tuning.

All this talk of physical agents powered by AI is fun, but we’re still a long way from a robot you can order to do your laundry. Gemini Robotics 1.5, the model that actually controls robots, is still only available to trusted testers. However, the thinking ER model is now rolling out in Google AI Studio, allowing developers to generate robotic instructions for their own physically embodied robotic experiments.

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Reviewing iOS 26 for power users: Reminders, Preview, and more

AI, Apple, generative ai, iOS, Reviews, Tech / 9u50fv / September 25, 2025

These features try to turn iPhones into more powerful work and organization tools.

iOS 26 came out last week, bringing a new look and interface alongside some new capabilities and updates aimed squarely at iPhone power users.

We gave you our main iOS 26 review last week. This time around, we’re taking a look at some of the updates targeted at people who rely on their iPhones for much more than making phone calls and browsing the Internet. Many of these features rely on Apple Intelligence, meaning they’re only as reliable and helpful as Apple’s generative AI (and only available on newer iPhones, besides). Other adjustments are smaller but could make a big difference to people who use their phone to do work tasks.

Reminders attempt to get smarter

The Reminders app gets the Apple Intelligence treatment in iOS 26, with the AI primarily focused on making it easier to organize content within Reminders lists. Lines in Reminders lists are often short, quickly jotted-down blurbs rather than lengthy, detailed complex instructions. With this in mind, it’s easy to see how the AI can sometimes lack enough information in order to perform certain tasks, like logically grouping different errands into sensible sections.

But Apple also encourages applying the AI-based Reminders features to areas of life that could hold more weight, such as making a list of suggested reminders from emails. For serious or work-critical summaries, Reminders’ new Apple Intelligence capabilities aren’t reliable enough.

Suggested Reminders based on selected text

iOS 26 attempts to elevate Reminders from an app for making lists to an organization tool that helps you identify information or important tasks that you should accomplish. If you share content, such as emails, website text, or a note, with the app, it can create a list of what it thinks are the critical things to remember from the text. But if you’re trying to extract information any more advanced than an ingredients list from a recipe, Reminders misses the mark.

iOS 26 Suggested Reminders — Sometimes I tried sharing longer text with Reminders and didn’t get any suggestions. Credit: Scharon Harding

Sometimes, especially when reviewing longer text, Reminders was unable to think of suggested reminders. Other times, the reminders that it suggested, based off of lengthy messages, were off-base.

For instance, I had the app pull suggested reminders from a long email with guidelines and instructions from an editor. Highlighting a lot of text can be tedious on a touchscreen, but I did it anyway because the message had lots of helpful information broken up into sections that each had their own bold sub-headings. Additionally, most of those sections had their own lists (some using bullet points, some using numbers). I hoped Reminders would at least gather information from all of the email’s lists. But the suggested reminders ended up just being the same text from three—but not all—of the email’s bold sub-headings.

When I tried getting suggested reminders from a smaller portion of the same email, I surprisingly got five bullet points that covered more than just the email’s sub-headings but that still missed key points, including the email’s primary purpose.

Ultimately, the suggested Reminders feature mostly just boosts the app’s ability to serve as a modern shopping list. Suggested Reminders excels at pulling out ingredients from recipes, turning each ingredient into a suggestion that you can tap to add to a Reminders list. But being able to make a bulleted list out of a bulleted list is far from groundbreaking.

Auto-categorizing lines in Reminders lists

Since iOS 17, Reminders has been able to automatically sort items in grocery lists into distinct categories, like Produce and Proteins. iOS 26 tries taking things further by automatically grouping items in a list into non-culinary sections.

The way Reminders groups user-created tasks in lists is more sensible—and useful—than when it tries to create task suggestions based on shared text.

For example, I made a long list of various errands I needed to do, and Reminders grouped them into these categories: Administrative Tasks, Household Chores, Miscellaneous, Personal Tasks, Shopping, and Travel & Accommodation. The error rate here is respectable, but I would have tweaked some things. For one, I wouldn’t use the word “administrative” to refer to personal errands. The two tasks included under Administrative Tasks would have made more sense to me in Personal Tasks or Miscellaneous, even though those category names are almost too vague to have distinct meaning.

Preview comes to iOS

With Preview’s iOS debut, Apple brings to iPhones an app for viewing and editing PDFs and images that macOS users have had for years. As a result, many iPhone users will find the software easy and familiar to use.

But for iPhone owners who have long relied on Files for viewing, marking, and filling out PDFs and the like, Preview doesn’t bring many new capabilities. Anything that you can do in Preview, you could have done by viewing the same document in Files in an older version of iOS, save for a new crop tool and dedicated button for showing information about the document.

That’s kind of the point, though. When an iPhone has two discrete apps that can read and edit files, it’s far less frustrating to work with multiple documents. While you’re annotating a document in Preview, the Files app is still available, allowing you to have more than one document open at once. It’s a simple adjustment but one that vastly improves multitasking.

More Shortcuts options

Shortcuts gets somewhat more capable in iOS 26. That’s assuming you’re interested in using ChatGPT or Apple Intelligence generative AI in your automated tasks. You can tag in generative AI to create a shortcut that includes summarizing text in bullet points and applying that bulleted list to the shortcut’s next task, for instance.

An example of a Shortcut that uses generative AI. Credit: Apple

There are inherent drawbacks here. For one, Apple Intelligence and ChatGPT, like many generative AI tools, are subject to inaccuracies and can frequently overlook and/or misinterpret critical information. iOS 26 makes it easier for power users to incorporate a rewrite of a long text that has a more professional tone into a Shortcut. But that doesn’t mean that AI will properly communicate the information, especially when used across different scenarios with varied text.

You have three options for building Shortcuts that include use of AI models. Using ChatGPT or Apple Intelligence via Apple’s Private Cloud Compute, which runs the model on an Apple server, requires an Internet connection. Alternatively, you can use an on-device model without connecting to the web.

You can run more advanced models via Private Cloud Compute than you can with Apple Intelligence on-device. In Apple’s testing, models via Private Cloud Compute perform better on things like writing summaries and composition compared to on-device models.

Apple says personal user data sent to Private Cloud Compute “isn’t accessible to anyone other than the user — not even to Apple.” Apple has a strong, but flawed, reputation for being better about user privacy than other Big Tech firms. But by offering three different models to use with Shortcuts, iOS 26 ensures greater functionality, options, and control.

Something for podcasters

It’s likely that more people rely on iPads (or Macs) than iPhones for podcasting. Nevertheless, a new local capture feature introduced to both iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 makes it a touch more feasible to use iPhones (and iPads especially) for recording interviews for podcasts.

Before the latest updates, iOS and iPadOS only allowed one app to access the device’s microphone at a time. So, if you were interviewing someone via a videoconferencing app, you couldn’t also use your iPhone or iPad to record the discussion, since the videoconferencing app is using your mic to share your voice with whoever is on the other end of the call. Local capture on iOS 26 doesn’t include audio input controls, but its inclusion gives podcasters a way to record interviews or conversations on iPhones without needing additional software or hardware. That capability could save the day in a pinch.

Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She’s been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Tom’s Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK.

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