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Apple’s first HomePod in 2018 was late to the smart speaker game. Sure, it sounded good, but it lacked a lot of the basic functionality of its rivals. Yet again, with its second-generation $299 HomePod, the company delivers stellar sound quality, but this time, expanded smart home tools show Apple has learned from that first attempt.

The new HomePod can easily pair with HomeKit and Matter accessories and has temperature and humidity sensors. You can use that data to create automated triggers for other smart home devices. Even without a compatible smart thermostat, you can successfully trigger a smart plug, once the HomePod detects a certain temperature.

The most notable new feature on the HomePod isn’t even ready yet. Sound Recognition can listen for smoke or carbon monoxide alarms and notify your other Apple devices. Unfortunately, it won’t arrive in an update until later this spring. Check out our full HomePod review right here.

– Mat Smith

The Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.

The biggest stories you might have missed

Google’s experimental ChatGPT rivals include a search bot and a tool called ‘Apprentice Bard’

Twitter is killing off co-authored tweets after less than a year

Spotify reaches 205 million Premium subscribers as losses mount

US labor regulator says Apple violated employee’s rights with restrictive work rules

SpaceX astronauts will receive the Congressional Space Medal of Honor

343 is reportedly ‘starting from scratch’ on Halo development after layoffs

Vrbo’s Super Bowl ‘risk scores’ try to detect house parties before they happen

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The best wireless earbuds for 2023

A new AI voice tool is already being abused to deepfake celebrity audio clips

That was quick.

A few days ago, speech AI startup ElevenLabs launched a beta version of its platform, which can create entirely new synthetic voices for text-to-speech audio or to clone somebody’s voice. Well, it only took the internet a few days to make a mess. The company is seeing an “increasing number of voice cloning misuse cases.” Motherboard found 4chan posts with clips featuring generated voices that sound like celebrities reading or saying something questionable. One clip, for instance, reportedly featured a voice that sounded like Emma Watson reading a part of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Users also posted voice clips that feature homophobic, transphobic, violent and racist sentiments. It’s not entirely clear if all the clips used ElevenLab’s technology, but a post with a wide collection of the voice files on 4chan included a link to the startup’s platform. The company is now gathering feedback on how to prevent users from abusing its technology. It may even drop its Voice Lab tool altogether and have users submit voice cloning requests that it can verify manually.

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‘Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’ is delayed to April 28th

Respawn says it will use the extra six weeks to polish the game.

Electronic Arts and Respawn Entertainment announced the delay of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor to April 28th. The game was previously slated to arrive on March 17th. “In order for the team to hit the Respawn quality bar, provide the team the time they need and achieve the level of polish our fans deserve, we have added six crucial weeks to our release schedule – Star Wars Jedi: Survivor will now launch globally on April 28th,” Respawn posted on Twitter. The studio said it would use the extra time to fix bugs and polish the game to improve performance, stability and the player experience.

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Paramount+ Premium will absorb Showtime and rebrand as ‘Paramount+ With Showtime’

Rolls right off the tongue.

Paramount Global is combining two of its services. It will fold Showtime into the Premium tier of Paramount+ later this year. The combined offering will be known as Paramount+ With Showtime. Showtime’s linear TV network will be rebranded with the same name in the US. As part of the move, some Paramount+ original programs will air on the cable network – so maybe more people will finally recognize the brilliance of The Good Fight – which is getting a spin-off pilot, too. (The Good Fight itself was already a spin-off.) While the move may come as a disappointment to those who are only interested in Showtime’s content and aren’t sold on Paramount+, the move makes sense from a business perspective. There’s a wave of consolidation across the media industry, including in streaming, where HBO Max and Discovery+ will combine in the coming months.

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EU wind and solar energy production overtook gas last year

A report from UK clean-energy think tank Ember projects the gap to widen.

Energy generated from solar and wind power reportedly overtook natural gas in the EU for the first time last year. The data comes from UK clean-energy think tank Ember and projects the gap to grow. Solar and wind energy rose to an all-time high of 22 percent of the EU’s 2022 electricity use. Meanwhile, Ember projects fossil-fuel generation to drop by 20 percent this year – with gas falling the fastest. The clean energy industry had some unwanted assistance. The shift stems from reduced reliance on gas and coal after Russia invaded Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin ordered the cutoff of natural gas exports to the EU as retaliation for Western sanctions.

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YouTube TV has dropped the MLB Network from its service after failing to renew its agreement, according to a statement from YouTube given to The Streamable. “You will also lose access to any previous Library recordings from this channel,” the streamer wrote. “Members will be able to continue watching select national MLB games via coverage on FOX, ESPN, and TBS through our Base Plan.”

The dispute appears to be over compensation, according to a statement from MLB Network. “YouTube TV has been unwilling to negotiate a fair carriage agreement… consistent with what close to 300 other US providers have agreed to for distribution.” MLB Network was part of YouTube’s $65 Base Plan and one of the few that carried 4K content as part of YouTube TV’s 4K Plus add-on. 

The news isn’t too tragic yet, as baseball season is still a couple of months away. YouTube TV has previously lost access to other channels including Disney’s ESPN and ABC, but in the case of the latter, they were restored just a day later. That lends some hope that the streaming company can reach an agreement with MLB Network ahead of any disruption to games next season. 

In the meantime, “MLB Network remains widely available throughout the US, including on Altice USA (Optimum), AT&T U-verse, Charter Communications (Spectrum), Comcast, Cox Communications, DIRECTV, DIRECTV Stream, DISH, fuboTV, Sling TV, Verizon Fios and many others,” MLB Network wrote. 

 

Last month, Amazon failed to overturn a Staten Island warehouse’s vote to unionize and now it has taken another loss. A National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) judge has ruled that the the company broke federal labor laws in an effort to push back a unionization drive at that facility and another that voted against the union, The New York Times has reported. Amazon can still appeal the ruling to the NLRB’s Washington board.

Federal administrative judge Benjamin Green ruled that Amazon supervisors unlawfully threatened wage increases and benefits if workers formed a union. The company also violated the law by removing a worker’s post on a digital message board inviting co-workers to sign an Amazon Labor Union petition to make Juneteenth a paid holiday, the judge said. 

Several other complaints by the union were dismissed, however. Those include accusations that Amazon said take-home pay would fall in the case of unionization, and that it promised improvements in an educational subsidy program if workers voted against the union. The union also protested Amazon saying workers would be fired if they formed a union but failed to pay union dues. The latter was not illegal, the judge ruled, and the other complaints were overstated.

Amazon took all that as a positive. “We’re glad that the judge dismissed 19 — nearly all — of the allegations in this case,” said spokesperson Mary Kate Paradis in a statement to the NYT. “The facts continue to show that the teams in our buildings work hard to do the right thing.”

The judge set aside one decision brought by the labor board as to whether employers can force workers to attend anti-union meetings. That puts the ball in the court of the NLRB, which can overturn a 75-year old ruling. “I believe that the NLRB case precedent, which has tolerated such meetings, is at odds with fundamental labor-law principles,” the labor board’s lawyer Jennifer Abruzzo wrote in a memo last year. 

 

Google has notified customers of its Fi mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) service that hackers were able to access some of their information, according to TechCrunch. The tech giant said the bad actors infiltrated a third-party system used for customer support at Fi’s primary network provider. While Google didn’t name the provider outright, Fi relies on US Cellular and T-Mobile for connectivity. If you’ll recall, the latter admitted in mid-January that hackers had been taking data from its systems since November last year.

T-Mobile said the attackers got away with the information of around 37 million postpaid and prepaid customers before it discovered and contained the issue. Back then, the carrier insisted that no passwords, payment information and social security numbers were stolen. Google Fi is saying the same thing, adding that no PINs or text message/call contents were taken, as well. The hackers only apparently had access to users’ phone numbers, account status, SMS card serial numbers and some service plan information, like international roaming. 

Google reportedly told most users that they didn’t have to do anything and that it’s still working with Fi’s network provider to “identify and implement measures to secure the data on that third-party system and notify everyone potentially impacted.” That said, at least one customer claimed having more serious issues than most because of the breach. They shared a part of Google’s supposed email to them on Reddit, telling them that that their “mobile phone service was transferred from [their] SIM card to another SIM card” for almost two hours on January 1st. 

The customer said they received password reset notifications from Outlook, their crypto wallet account and two-factor authenticator Authy that day. They sent logs to 9to5Google to prove that the attackers had used their number to receive text messages that allowed them to access those accounts. Based on their Fi text history, the bad actors started resetting passwords and requesting two-factor authentication codes via SMS within one minute of transferring their SIM card. The customer was reportedly only able regain control of their accounts after turning network access on their iPhone off and back on, though it’s unclear if that’s what solved the issue. We’ve reached out to Google for a statement regarding the customers’ SIM swapping claim and will update this post when we hear back. 

 

Google employees have been testing several potential ChatGPT competitors as part of the tech giant’s bid to launch a response to OpenAI’s technology, according to CNBC. A previous New York Times report said that Google CEO Sundar Pichai declared “code red” and accelerated AI development to be able to unveil at least 20 AI-powered products this year. Now, CNBC has detailed several of the products the company is working on, including a chatbot called “Apprentice Bard” that uses Google’s LaMDA conversation technology.

Apparently, Google management asked the LaMDA team to prioritize working on a ChatGPT competitor, telling them that it takes precedence over any other project and even warning them not to attend unrelated meetings. Apprentice Bard reportedly looks and functions like ChatGPT in that a user can type a question or a prompt in a text box and then get a written response. 

CNBC says it saw samples proving the bot’s answers include information from recent events — something ChatGPT isn’t capable of, because it only has limited knowledge about anything that happened after 2021. In one example, Apprentice Bard was able to answer whether there will be another round of layoffs at Google. (Unlikely for this year, it said, seeing as the company is doing well financially.) If you’ll recall, Google’s LaMDA tech had gotten a former company engineer fired after he claimed that it had gained sentience.

Google is also reportedly testing a new search page that uses a question and answer format. The experimental home page features five potential question prompts replacing “I’m feeling lucky” under the search bar. After a user types in their query, the page generates human-like responses in gray bubbles. Underneath those responses are suggested follow-up questions, followed by the typical search results with links and headlines. In addition, Alphabet is working on a project called “Atlas” under its cloud unit. While CNBC didn’t have details on what it is, it’s still reportedly part of Google’s “code red” efforts.

It’s unclear at this point which of Google’s projects are going to be released to the public. Google AI chief Jeff Dean told employees during an all-hands meeting to discuss the company’s response to ChatGPT that it’s moving “more conservatively than a small startup.” Providing people wrong information will have a much bigger impact for a known company like Google, after all. Indeed, The Times previously said that the tech giant is prioritizing safety, accuracy and blocking out misinformation when it comes to the development of its search chatbot. If reports that Microsoft is incorporating ChatGPT’s technology into Bing as soon as this March are true, however, we’ll also likely see Google’s search chatbot in the near future. 

 

Rode only dipped into headphones last year, but now it’s ready to unveil its first headset — and this time it’s courting gamers in addition to creatives. The NTH-100M takes the familiar design of the NTH-100 but adds a detachable condenser microphone. It’s too early to say if the hardware is truly “broadcast-grade,” as Rode claims, but the company’s reputation for mics bodes well if you want quality audio when you’re chatting with teammates or hosting a livestream. You can even buy the boom mic separately (as the NTH-Mic) if you already have the headphones.

The design will otherwise seem familiar. Rode claims the 40mm dynamic drivers are designed for accurate frequency response with minimal distortion. The NTH-100M might be your pick if you want a neutral sound for editing podcasts and videos. You won’t get perks like noise cancellation or Bluetooth, but the headset will be surprisingly comfortable. When we tried the NTH-100, we found the cooling gel and other design touches to help for extended listening sessions.

The NTH-100M will retail for $189 which is $50 more than the headphones it’s based on. If you already have the NTH-100, you can snag the NTH-Mic separetely for $69. This means if you were holding out and can make use of the mic, the combo deal represents a $20 saving. Or, for that matter, you could always buy the base 100 for listening and upgrade when you’re ready to create content.

The NTH-100M is also a unique product in Rode’s lineup. While it’s not part of the company’s Rode X gaming brand, it’s clearly aimed as much at gamers and Twitch streamers as it is musicians and podcasters. In that sense, it straddles the line between consumer and creative in a way that even the headphones didn’t quite manage.

 

PayPal is about to become the latest tech company to lay off a substantial part of its workforce. The payments firm announced Tuesday plans to cut approximately 2,000 employees, a number that equates to about seven percent of its total staff. According to PayPal president and CEO Dan Schulman, the layoffs will occur over the next few weeks, with some parts of the company affected more than others.

“We will treat our departing colleagues with the utmost respect and empathy, provide them with generous packages, engage in consultation where required and support them with their transitions,” Schulman said. “I want to express my personal appreciation for the meaningful contributions they have made to PayPal.”

The company joins a growing list of tech companies that have announced layoffs in recent months. Earlier this month, Google disclosed plans to lay off 12,000 employees, or about around six percent of its global workforce. Before that, Microsoft said it would cut 10,000 jobs. Schulman, like his counterparts at Microsoft, Google and other tech firms, blamed PayPal’s layoffs on the “challenging macro-economic environment” the company finds itself in recently. “While we have made substantial progress in right-sizing our cost structure, and focused our resources on our core strategic priorities, we have more work to do,” he said.

It’s worth noting the US economy has not entered into a recession yet. At 3.5 percent, the national unemployment rate is at a 50-year low, and the gross domestic product grew over the last quarters. Turning specifically to PayPal, the company beat Wall Street expectations during its most recent earnings call, with revenue and income increasing by 11 percent and 7 percent year on year, respectively.

 

OpenAI has released a tool to help you determine whether text was more likely written by a human or AI. However, the ChatGPT maker warns that its equivalent of Blade Runner’s Voight-Kampff test can also get it wrong.

The tool includes a box where you can paste text that’s at least 1,000 characters long. It will then spit out a verdict, like “The classifier considers the text to be very unlikely AI-generated” or “The classifier considers the text to be possibly AI-generated.”

I tested it by prompting ChatGPT to write an essay about the migratory patterns of birds, which the detection tool then described as “possibly AI-generated.” Meanwhile, it rated several human-written articles as “very unlikely AI-generated.” So although the tool could raise false flags in either direction, my (tiny sample size) test suggests at least a degree of accuracy. Still, OpenAI cautions not to use the tool alone to determine content’s authenticity; it also works best with text of 1,000 words or longer.

The startup has faced pressure from educators after the November release of its ChatGPT tool, which produces AI-written content that can sometimes pass for human writing. The natural-language model can create essays in seconds based on simple text prompts — even passing a graduate business and law exam — while providing students with a tempting new cheating opportunity. As a result, New York public schools banned the bot from their WiFi networks and school devices.

While ChatGPT’s arrival has been a buzzed-about topic of late, even extending into media outlets eager to automate SEO-friendly articles, the bot is big business for OpenAI. The company reportedly secured a $10 billion investment earlier this month from Microsoft, which plans to integrate it into Bing and Office 365. OpenAI allegedly discussed selling shares at a $29 billion valuation late last year, which would make it one of the most valuable US startups.

Although ChatGPT is currently the best publicly available natural language AI model, Google, Baidu and others are working on competitors. Google’s LaMDA is convincing enough that one former researcher threw away his job with the search giant last year by claiming the chatbot is sentient. (The human tendency to project feelings and consciousness onto algorithms is a concept we’ll likely hear much about in the coming years.) Google has only released extremely constricted versions of its chatbot in a beta, presumably out of ethical concerns. With the genie out of the bottle, it will be interesting to see how long that restraint lasts.

 

Star Wars fans will need to wait an extra month and a half to play the next chapter of Cal Kestis’ story. On Tuesday afternoon, Electronic Arts and Respawn Entertainment announced the delay of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor to April 28th. The game was previously slated to arrive on March 17th. 

“In order for the team to hit the Respawn quality bar, provide the team the time they need, and achieve the level of polish our fans deserve, we have added six crucial weeks to our release schedule — Star Wars Jedi: Survivor will now launch globally on April 28th,” Respawn posted on Twitter. The studio said it would use the extra time to fix bugs and polish the game to improve performance, stability and the player experience. The delay means Star Wars Jedi: Survivor will arrive on the same day as Dead Island 2, provided that title doesn’t suffer a last-minute delay.   

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor picks up five years after the events of Fallen Order, and features an older, harder Cal Kestis. Respawn has promised the game will feature new worlds in the Star Wars galaxy for players to explore. Cal, now a Jedi Knight, also has new skills and weapons in his arsenal to take on the Galactic Empire.   

 

Peacock has stopped offerings its free tier to new customers. As first reported by The Streamable, potential subscribers who visit Peacock’s website will now only see two ways to access the platform: Peacock Premium and Premium Plus. Either way, if you’re new to Peacock, you’ll need to pay to access the service’s library of content. According to The Streamable, the free tier still exists but is only available to current users who cancel their Premium subscription or those who had access to a paid tier for free (for example, Cox internet customers). NBCUniversal did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request.

The Streamable reports the removal is the result of a strategy shift within the company. NBCUniversal plans to release approximately 100,000 hours of new content to Peacock Premium through the end of 2023, including live sports content from the Premier League and Women’s World Cup. The platform’s subscriber total grew to 20 million in 2022, up from 9 million the year before. However, Peacock has yet to generate a profit for NBCUniversal owner Comcast. The company expects the service to start inching toward profitability in 2024. Presumably, it hopes to accelerate that timeline by doubling down on Peacock’s Premium tiers. 

To make up for the removal, Peacock is offering a promotion to new subscribers. You can get an annual subscription to the ad-supported Premium tier for $30, down from $50 normally. We’ll update this article with more information when we hear back from NBCUniversal.