Long-time World of Warcraft players have been waiting 21 years for the new in-game housing features that Blizzard officially announced last year and which launched in early access last week. Shortly after that launch, though, players quickly discovered a way to make their houses float high above the ground by exploiting an unintended, invisible UI glitch.

Now, Blizzard says that the overwhelming response to that accidental house hovering has been so strong that it’s pivoting to integrate it as an official part of the game.

“We were going to fix flying houses to bring them back to terra firma, but you all made such awesome stuff, so we made it possible with the base UI instead.” WoW principal designer Jesse Kurlancheek posted on social media Tuesday. Lead producer Kyle Hartline followed up on that announcement with some behind-the-scenes gossip: “Like no joke we had an ops channel about how to roll out the float fix but folks shared like 5 of the dopest houses and we all kinda immediately agreed this was way too cool to change,” he wrote.

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During the company’s first “Autonomy & AI Day” event today, Rivian unveiled a major autonomy push featuring custom silicon, lidar, and a “large driving model.” It also hinted at a potential entry into the self-driving ride-hail market, according to CEO RJ Scaringe. TechCrunch reports: Rivian said it will expand the hands-free version of its driver-assistance software to “over 3.5 million miles of roads across the USA and Canada” and will eventually expand beyond highways to surface streets (with clearly painted road lines). This expanded access will be available on the company’s second-generation R1 trucks and SUVs. It’s calling the expanded capabilities “Universal Hands-Free” and will launch in early 2026. Rivian says it will charge a one-time fee of $2,500 or $49.99 per month.

“What that means is you can get into the vehicle at your house, plug in the address to where you’re going, and the vehicle will completely drive you there,” Scaringe said Thursday, describing a point-to-point navigation feature. After that, Rivian plans to allow drivers to take their eyes off the road. “This gives you your time back. You can be on your phone, or reading a book, no longer needing to be actively involved in the operation of vehicle.” Rivian’s driver assistance software won’t stop there; the EV maker laid out plans on Thursday to enhance its capabilities all the way up to what it’s calling “personal L4,” a nod to the level set by the Society of Automotive Engineers that means a car can operate in a particular area with no human intervention.

After that, Scaringe hinted that Rivian will be looking at competing with the likes of Waymo. “While our initial focus will be on personally owned vehicles, which today represent a vast majority of the miles driven in the United States, this also enables us to pursue opportunities in the ride-share space,” he said. To help accomplish these lofty goals, Rivian has been building a “large driving model” (think: an LLM but for real-world driving), part of a move away from a rules-based framework for developing autonomous vehicles that has been led by Tesla. The company also showed off its own custom 5nm processor, which it says will be built in collaboration with both Arm and TSMC.

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This is a video of the tomato soup pizza made by the famed Vinnie’s Pizzeria in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The sauce is tomato soup based and the pizza comes topped with a ring of mini grilled cheese sammies. There is no doubt in my heart or stomach that I would absolutely crush that pizza. By the time my girlfriend gets out of the shower and lifts the box lid there would just be dust bunnies in there I would have eaten that pizza so hard. She’ll be pissed, and I’ll have to take her anywhere she wants for food to make up for my culinary indiscretion. I will also try to order something for myself there, but she won’t allow it.

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The pace of AI technology is so rapid, it’s tough to keep up with everything. At Google I/O back in May, Google rolled out an AI-powered shopping feature that let you virtually try on clothes you find online. All you needed to do was upload a full-length photo of yourself, and Google’s AI would be to dress you up in whatever article of clothing you liked. I still can’t decide whether the feature sounds useful, creepy, or a little bit of both.

Google’s virtual try on feature only needs a selfie to work

What I can say, however, is that the feature is getting a little creepier. On Thursday, Google announced an update to its virtual try on feature, that takes advantage of the company’s new AI image model, Nano Banana. Now, you don’t need a full-length photo of yourself: just a selfie. With solely a photo of your face, Nano Banana will generate a full-length avatar in your likeness, which you can use to virtually try on your clothes.

I’m not exactly sure who this particular update is for: Maybe there are some of us out there who want to use this virtual try-on feature, but don’t have a full-length photo of ourselves to share. Personally, I wouldn’t really want to send Google my photo—selfie or otherwise—but I don’t think I’d prefer to have Google infer what I look like from a photo of my face alone. I’d rather just send it the full photo, and give it something to actually work off of.

Here’s the other issue: While Google asks you to only upload images of yourself, it doesn’t stop you if you upload an image of someone else. Talk about creepy: You can upload someone else’s selfie and see how they look in various clothes. There is a system in place to stop you from uploading certain selfies, like celebrities, children, or otherwise “unsafe” items, but if the system fails, this feature could be used maliciously. I feel like Google could get around this by verifying the selfie against your Google Account, since you need to be signed in to use the feature anyway.

How to upload a selfie to Google’s virtual try on feature

If you are interested in trying the feature out—and, subsequently, trying on virtual clothes with your AI-generated avatar—you can head over to Google’s try on feature, sign into your Google Account, and upload your selfie. When it processes, you choose one of four avatars, each dressed in a different fit, to proceed. Once through, you can virtually try on any clothes you see in the feed.

Again, I see the potential usefulness of a feature that lets you see what you might look like in a certain piece of clothing before buying it. But, at the same time, I think I’d rather just order the item and try it on in the comfort (and privacy) of my own home.

This morning Disney and OpenAI announced a three-year licensing agreement: Starting in 2026, ChatGPT and Sora can generate images and videos incorporating Disney IP, including more than 200 characters from the company’s stable of Star Wars, Pixar and Marvel brands. To say these companies make for strange bedfellows is an understatement.  

The agreement brings together two parties with very different public stances on copyright. Before OpenAI released Sora, the company reportedly notified studios and talent agencies they would need to opt out of having their work appear in the new app. The company later backtracked on this stance. Before that, OpenAI admitted, in a regulatory filing, it would be “impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials.” 

By contrast, Disney takes copyright law very seriously. In fact, you could argue no other company has done more to shape US copyright law than Disney. For example, there’s the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which is more derisively known as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. The law effectively froze the advancement of the public domain in the United States, with Disney being the greatest beneficiary. It was only last year that the company’s copyright for Steamboat Willie expired, 95 years after Walt Disney first created the iconic cartoon.

On the face of it, it’s unclear OpenAI is getting much value out of the deal. As part of the pact, Disney will host a “curated” selection of Sora-generated videos on its streaming platform Disney+, legitimizing the medium of AI-generated video in a way it hasn’t been before, but it would appear Disney has the option to spotlight as much or little of it as it sees fit.

Additionally, the $1 billion Disney agreed to invest in OpenAI is a drop in the ocean for a company that’s expected to burn through more cash in five years than Uber, Tesla, Amazon and Spotify did combined before they became profitable. If anything, the addition of Disney characters is likely to make operating ChatGPT and Sora more expensive for OpenAI; the company will now need to pay a licensing fee on top of the cost of running its servers to generate images and videos. At this stage, it’s also hard to put a value on Disney’s pledge to use OpenAI’s APIs. The company has said those tools will “enable new products, tools and experiences,” including some found inside of Disney+, but beyond that it hasn’t shared specifics.

Bob Iger might be feckless, but he’s not stupid. Sometime this week or soon after, President Trump is expected to sign an executive order that makes good on part of his AI Action Plan from July. Specifically, the president has promised to fight against “burdensome” state-level regulation of AI. According to CNN, a recent draft of Trump’s order calls for the creation of an AI Litigation Task Force to challenge and preempt state AI laws in favor of the president’s own more lax regulatory regime. 

It’s unclear how successful the administration will be in that effort, but clearly Disney is thinking ahead. It’s banking on the fact that this time it won’t be able to count on the federal government to shape copyright law in its interest, so instead it’s making a deal with an industry pushing the boundaries of intellectual property rights as we know them. More importantly, it has partnered with the one AI company it can actually leverage. 

As I argued in a recent piece, OpenAI is in a far different and more precarious position now than it was at the end of 2022 following the release of ChatGPT. The company is just one AI provider in a sea of competition, and you can’t even argue its models are the best, based either on benchmarks or user feedback. Moreover, OpenAI has yet to turn a profit, and has adopted an extremely risky investment strategy. In recent months it has signed more than $1.4 trillion worth of infrastructure deals, hoping to outmuscle the competition that’s already beating it through scale.  

It’s not an accident Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google a day before its agreement with OpenAI became public. OpenAI might be the most valuable private company in the world, but Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is worth more than $3 trillion. In any negotiations between the two, at best Disney would be on equal footing, and certainly not in a position where it could demand some amount of control over Google’s AI projects. 

And yet by accounts it won exactly that from OpenAI. According to Axios, the deal gives Disney a fair amount of control over how its intellectual property is used. The two will form a joint steering committee designed to monitor the content users create on ChatGPT and Sora. As you surf the web today, you’ll likely see a lot of opinions on how this legitimizes AI video. And while that’s true, far more important is the fact Disney has secured a seat at the table to decide how the technology evolves over the coming years. 

Much like with news publishers, OpenAI and other chatbots concerns took a stance of begging forgiveness rather than asking permission towards copyright. It seems to have paid off. Most of the highest-profile news organizations have signed licensing deals to at least be paid a little rather than be ripped off until reaching an uncertain verdict in court. Disney seems to be signalling that the same speculation rush is about to begin for audiovisual licensing, and it may have already secured the most favorable terms. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/disneys-deal-with-openai-is-about-controlling-the-future-of-copyright-213009504.html?src=rss

On Thursday, OpenAI released GPT-5.2, its newest family of AI models for ChatGPT, in three versions called Instant, Thinking, and Pro. The release follows CEO Sam Altman’s internal “code red” memo earlier this month, which directed company resources toward improving ChatGPT in response to competitive pressure from Google’s Gemini 3 AI model.

“We designed 5.2 to unlock even more economic value for people,” Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s chief product officer, said during a press briefing with journalists on Thursday. “It’s better at creating spreadsheets, building presentations, writing code, perceiving images, understanding long context, using tools and then linking complex, multi-step projects.”

As with previous versions of GPT-5, the three model tiers serve different purposes: Instant handles faster tasks like writing and translation; Thinking spits out simulated reasoning “thinking” text in an attempt to tackle more complex work like coding and math; and Pro spits out even more simulated reasoning text with the goal of delivering the highest-accuracy performance for difficult problems.

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Google’s Chrome team has built an experimental browser called Disco that takes a query or prompt, opens a cluster of related tabs, and then generates a custom application tailored to whatever task the user is trying to accomplish. The browser launched Thursday as an experiment in Google’s Search Labs.

GenTabs, the core feature powering Disco, are information-rich pages created by Google’s Gemini AI models — ask for travel tips and the system builds a planner app; ask for study help and it creates a flashcard system. Disco — named partly for fun and partly as shorthand for “discovery” — started as a hackathon project inside Google before catching the team’s imagination.

Parisa Tabriz, who leads the Chrome team, said that Disco is not intended as a general-purpose browser and is not an attempt to cannibalize Chrome. The experiment aims to test what happens when users move from simply having tabs to generating personalized, curated applications on demand. The capability relies on features in the recently launched Gemini 3, which can create one-off interactive interfaces and build miniature apps on the fly rather than just returning text or images.

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The latest AirPods Pro are a big step up from the first generation buds. The third (and newest) generation comes with OTA updates that the AirPods Pro 2 also got to enjoy—but considering the second and third generations are the same price right now, why not go with the newer version? If you want the latest Apple has to offer, this is a great time to do so. The AirPods Pro 3 are down to $199 (originally $249.99) for the first time since their September release—the lowest price yet, according to price tracking tools.

Apple AirPods Pro 3 Noise Cancelling Heart Rate Wireless Earbuds

$199.00
at Amazon

$249.00
Save $50.00

$199.00
at Amazon

$249.00
Save $50.00

Apple AirPods Pro 3 Noise Cancelling Heart Rate Wireless Earbuds

$199.00
at Walmart

$249.00
Save $50.00

$199.00
at Walmart

$249.00
Save $50.00

The AirPods Pro 3 improve on already great premium earbuds with new features (like a heart rate sensor) without increasing the list price. You’ll get Personalized Spatial Audio (so you can hear sounds seemingly coming from different directions as you move your head) and the ability to use head gestures to tell Siri “yes” or “no” (this also works for answering or denying calls). Apple added a live translation feature to both the second- and third-generation AirPods Pro when iOS 26 rolled out earlier this year. You’ll also get features like Conversation Awareness, which lowers your music volume when your AirPods detect that you’re talking to someone; Transparency Mode, which lets you better hear your surroundings while your earbuds are in; and Adaptive Audio, which combines ANC and Transparency mode to adjust ANC levels based on the noise around you.

Since these are in-ear earbuds (as supposed to regular earbuds like the AirPods 4) the ANC is much better since it naturally blocks out the noise with a tight seal, but the ANC technology itself has also improved—as has the sound quality, thanks to the new H3 chip, as PCMag detailed in its “exemplary” review. You can expect about eight hours of juice, depending on your usage, and another 24 hours from the charging case.

A director who was charged with defrauding Netflix out of millions of dollars has been found guilty, Business Insider reports. Carl Rinsch, director of the 2013 Keanu Reeves movie 47 Ronin, now faces up to 90 years in prison.

Rinsch began filming the project, White Horse (later renamed Conquest), around 2017. (Its premise: A scientist creates an organic humanoid species that turns on its creators.) The director completed six short-form episodes with his own money and investor funds. He then used those episodes to pitch studios for the money to complete the first season. Netflix ended up buying the rights for over $61 million.

In 2020, after spending $44 million of Netflix’s money on the series, Rinsch petitioned for another $11 million to complete the season. The company agreed.

Then things got weird. Instead of using Netflix’s investment to finish the series, Rinsch transferred the funds to personal accounts. Within two months, he lost over half of it on seven-figure stock trades. He spent the rest on cryptocurrency.

Then, lo and behold, Rinsch got a second chance: The crypto trades turned a profit. Did the director seize the opportunity to right his ship and finish the series? No, he didn’t. Instead, he used the crypto profits to go on a $10 million shopping spree. According to prosecutors, he spent nearly $4 million on furniture and antiques, $2.4 million on five Rolls-Royces and a Ferrari, almost $1 million on mattresses and linens and $650,000 on luxury watches and clothes.

The series was never completed. By 2021, Netflix had canceled the project and written off over $55 million in costs.

Rinsch’s charges included one count of wire fraud, one count of money laundering and five counts of engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity. During the trial, he took the stand in his own defense, claiming that Netflix’s millions were intended as reimbursement for the personal funds he invested in the series.

After less than five hours of jury deliberation, Rinsch was found guilty on all seven counts. Although he could face up to 90 years, he’s expected to receive a much shorter sentence.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/47-ronin-director-found-guilty-of-defrauding-netflix-out-of-11-million-205519293.html?src=rss

Cisco’s stock price touched $80.25 on Wednesday, finally eclipsing its dotcom-era peak of $80.06 set on March 27, 2000 — when the networking giant briefly surpassed Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable company. The journey back took 25 years, eight months and 13 days. The company’s fundamentals improved dramatically over that period, of course. Revenues have nearly quintupled since 1999, profits have quadrupled, earnings per share have grown eightfold, and margins have remained healthy throughout. Investors who bought at the peak still lost money to inflation for a generation.

Cisco’s trajectory draws obvious comparisons to Nvidia, today’s dominant “picks and shovels” supplier for the AI boom. Nvidia trades at a price-to-earnings ratio above 45 and an enterprise value-to-sales ratio near 24. At its 2000 peak, Cisco traded at a P/E above 200 and EV/sales of 31.

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OpenAI is having a hell of a day. First, the company announced a $1 billion equity investment from Disney, alongside a licensing deal that will let Sora users generate videos with characters like Mickey Mouse, Luke Skywalker, and Simba. Shortly after, OpenAI revealed its latest large language model: GPT-5.2.

OpenAI says that this new GPT model is particularly useful for “professional knowledge work.” The company advertises how GPT-5.2 is better than previous models at making spreadsheets, putting together presentations, writing code, analyzing pictures, and working through multi-step projects. For this model, the company also gathered insights from tech companies: Supposedly, Notion, Box Shopify, Harvey, and Zoom all find GPT-5.2 to have “state-of-the-art long-horizon reasoning,” while Databricks, Hex, and Triple Whale believe GPT-5.2 to be “exceptional” with both agentic data science and document analysis tasks.

But most of OpenAI’s user base aren’t professionals. Most of the users who will interact with GPT-5.2 are using ChatGPT, and many of those for free, at that. What can those users expect when OpenAI upgrades the free version of ChatGPT with these new models?

How GPT-5.2 performs in ChatGPT

OpenAI says that GPT-5.2 will improve ChatGPT’s “day to day” functionality. The new model supposedly makes the chatbot more structured, reliable, and “enjoyable to talk to,” though I’ve never found the last part to be necessarily true.

GPT-5.2 will impact the ChatGPT experience differently depending on which of the three models you happen to be using. According to OpenAI, GPT-5.2 Instant is for “everyday work and learning.” It’s apparently better for questions seeking information about certain subjects, how-to questions and walkthroughs, technical writing, and translations—maybe ChatGPT will get you to give up your Duolingo obsession.

GPT-5.2 Thinking, however, is supposedly made for “deeper work.” OpenAI wants you using this model for coding, summarizing lengthy documents, answering queries about files you send to ChatGPT, solving math and logic problems, and decision making. Finally, there’s GPT-5.2 Pro, OpenAI’s “smartest and most trustworthy option” for the most complicated questions. The company says 5.2 Pro produces fewer errors and stronger performance compared to previous models.

GPT-5.2’s safety policy

OpenAI says that this latest update improves how the models responds to distressing prompts, such as those showing signs of suicide, self-harm, or emotional dependence on the AI. As such, the company says this model has “fewer undesirable responses” in GPT-5.2 Instant and Thinking compared to GPT-5.1 Instant and Thinking. In addition, the company is working on an “age prediction model,” which will automatically place content restrictions on users who the model think are under 18.

These safety improvements are important—critical, even—as we start to understand the correlations between chatbots and mental health. The company has admitted its failure in “recognizing signs of delusion,” as users turned to the tool for emotional support. In some cases, ChatGPT fed into delusional thinking, encouraging people’s dangerous beliefs. Some families have even sued companies like OpenAI over claims that their chatbots helped or encouraged victims commit suicide.

Actively acknowledging improvements to user safety is undoubtedly a good thing, but I think companies like OpenAI still have a lot to reckon with—and a long way to go.

OpenAI says GPT-5.2 Instant, Thinking, and Pro will all roll out today, Thursday, Dec. 11, to paid plans. Developers can access the new models in the API today, as well.

Disclosure: Lifehacker’s parent company, Ziff Davis, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in April, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.

New York is taking steps to regulate the use of AI in the state’s entertainment industry. NY State Governor Kathy Hochul passed two pieces of legislation on Thursday that forces certain productions to disclose the use of AI-generated performers, and defines rules around how someone’s likeness can be used after their death.

Assembly Bill A8887B, now known as S.8420-A, specifically covers the use of AI performers in advertisements. Per Hochul’s announcement, the law “requires persons who produce or create an advertisement to identify if it includes AI generated synthetic performers.” S.8391, meanwhile, “requires consent from heirs or executors if a person wishes to use the name, image, or likeness of an individual for commercial purposes after their death.”

“By signing these bills today, we are enacting common sense laws that will ensure we are fully transparent when using images generated by artificial intelligence and also prevent the unauthorized commercial use of a deceased individual’s name or likeness,” Governor Hochul said in the announcement. “In New York State, we are setting a clear standard that keeps pace with technology, while protecting artists and consumers long after the credits roll.”

The use of AI performers and deepfakes made using the likenesses of actors were major focuses of the contract SAG-AFTRA won during its strike in 2023. The union ultimately agreed to allow for the use of things like digital replicas and AI-generated performers, with some key carveouts. For example, actors have to give their explicit consent for a digital replica to be made in their image. They also have to give their consent each time the replica is used and are supposed to receive a pre-negotiated rate every time the replica appears in a production.

New York’s new regulations put further safeguards around both practices, and join a growing collection of state AI laws that have passed or are currently being considered this year. Because of the close relationship between tech companies and the Trump administration, though, multiple attempts have been made to prevent such laws from existing at all. A decade-long ban on state AI regulation was included in early drafts of the Big Beautiful Bill, and David Sacks, venture capitalist and White House Special Advisor, has reportedly gone to great lengths to try and get President Donald Trump to sign an executive order banning state AI regulation. The effort may have been worth it: The president posted on Tuesday that he would sign a new executive order focused on AI this week.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/new-york-passes-law-requiring-ads-to-disclose-the-use-of-ai-performers-202619826.html?src=rss

Warner Bros. has been hinting all week that it was coming and finally dropped the long-awaited first extended teaser trailer for Supergirl, directed by Craig Gillespie and starring Milly Alcock in the title role.

Plans for a Supergirl movie date all the way back to 2018, but the merger that produced Warner Bros. Discovery scuttled the original concept. James Gunn and Peter Safran came in as co-CEOs of the new DC Studios and announced plans for a “soft reboot” of the DC universe, starting with this summer’s Superman. Sasha Calle played Supergirl for a brief appearance in 2023’s The Flash, but despite having signed a multi-year contract, Gunn and Safran decided to go in a different direction for their standalone film and cast Alcock (House of the Dragon) instead.

Gunn particularly wanted to distance this new version of Supergirl from earlier incarnations, especially how the character was portrayed by Melissa Benoist in the Arrowverse series that ran from 2015–2021. He wanted someone less earnest, more of a contrast to David Corenswet’s wholesome Superman. “This is a story-based medium; we want stories to be in theaters that are cool and different from each other,” Gunn said at a media briefing. “And this movie is not exactly just a female clone of Superman. It’s its own thing entirely. And with a character who’s equally worthy of this treatment.”

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