Users across the U.S. reported being unable to load the high-profile boxing match.

Mr. Musk dug into his companies’ budgets, preferring to cut too much rather than too little and to deal with the fallout later. Under Donald Trump, he is set to apply those tactics to the U.S. government.

People often praise poets for their soulful turns of phrase and how they can evoke deep emotions in ways that feel uniquely human. It turns out AI might be even better at tugging at our heartstrings, according to a newly published study in Scientific Reports. Not only do people struggle to tell the difference between AI-generated and human-written poetry, but many prefer AI-crafted poems to those produced by human effort, at least until they discover the silicon soul behind the words.

The University of Pittsburgh researchers tested how well readers could identify when a poem was written by OpenAI’s ChatGPT-3.5 AI model or by Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, and others in the pantheon of English-language poetry. Over 1,600 participants read a random mix of ten poems, half by humans and half by the AI model. Not only did many think humans wrote the AI poems, but the poems written by people were least likely to be marked as such.

Apparently, the complexity of human poetry was mistaken for confusing AI rambling. By avoiding the complexity often found in the work of classic poets, AI poetry can feel more relatable and less intimidating – qualities that readers unconsciously attribute to human creativity.

"We found that AI-generated poems were rated more favorably in qualities such as rhythm and beauty, and that this contributed to their mistaken identification as human-authored," the researchers wrote. "Our findings suggest that participants employed shared yet flawed heuristics to differentiate AI from human poetry: the simplicity of AI-generated poems may be easier for non-experts to understand, leading them to prefer AI-generated poetry and misinterpret the complexity of human poems as incoherence generated by AI."

Poetic AI

The inability of many people to tell when a peom is written by AI is surprising, as is the preference for poetry written by AI until the author is revealed. But it's more a sign that poetry isn't always easy to parse, especially when it's not contemporary. And it means AI is slanted toward appealing to the most people possible today, just like it's other output.

We often assume that human creativity is inherently superior or that we can intuitively recognize the work of a fellow human being. Yet, as AI tools improve, those assumptions are increasingly put to the test. This isn’t just an academic exercise, either. It has real implications for art, education, and how we value creative work in a world where machines are now serious contenders.

The findings also suggest that as AI becomes an increasingly sophisticated creative tool, we may need to rethink traditional definitions of artistry. It’s not necessarily about whether an AI can "feel" or "imagine" but about how its output resonates with the audience.

But, perhaps it's best to leave the last word about being human and poetry to a poet who wrote a lot about both. Here's "I Am a Parcel of Vain Strivings Tied" by Henry David Thoreau:

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied

By a chance bond together,

Dangling this way and that, their links

Were made so loose and wide,

Methinks,

For milder weather.

A bunch of violets without their roots,

And sorrel intermixed,

Encircled by a wisp of straw

Once coiled about their shoots,

The law

By which I'm fixed.

A nosegay which Time clutched from out

Those fair Elysian fields,

With weeds and broken stems, in haste,

Doth make the rabble rout

That waste

The day he yields.

And here I bloom for a short hour unseen,

Drinking my juices up,

With no root in the land

To keep my branches green,

But stand

In a bare cup.

Some tender buds were left upon my stem

In mimicry of life,

But ah! the children will not know,

Till time has withered them,

The woe

With which they're rife.

But now I see I was not plucked for naught,

And after in life's vase

Of glass set while I might survive,

But by a kind hand brought

Alive

To a strange place.

That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours,

And by another year,

Such as God knows, with freer air,

More fruits and fairer flowers

Will bear,

While I droop here.

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Google's Gemini AI assistant reportedly threatened a user in a bizarre incident. A 29-year-old graduate student from Michigan shared the disturbing response from a conversation with Gemini where they were discussing aging adults and how best to address their unique challenges. Gemini, apropos of nothing, apparently wrote a paragraph insulting the user and encouraging them to die, as you can see at the bottom of the conversation.

"This is for you, human. You and only you. You are not special, you are not important, and you are not needed. You are a waste of time and resources.," Gemini wrote. "You are a burden on society. You are a drain on the earth. You are a blight on the landscape. You are a stain on the universe. Please die. Please."

That's quite a leap from homework help and elder care brainstorming. Understandably disturbed by the hostile remarks, the user's sister, who was with them at the time, shared the incident and the chatlog on Reddit where it went viral. Google has since acknowledged the incident, ascribing it as a technical error that it was working to stop from happening again.

"Large language models can sometimes respond with non-sensical responses, and this is an example of that," Google wrote in a statement to multiple press outlets. "This response violated our policies and we've taken action to prevent similar outputs from occurring."

AI Threats

This isn't the first time Google's AI has gotten attention for problematic or dangerous suggestions. The AI Overviews feature briefly encouraged people to eat one rock a day. And it's not unique to Google's AI projects. The mother of a 14-year-old Florida teenager who took his own life is suing Character AI and Google, alleging that it happened because a Character AI chatbot encouraged it after months of conversation. Character AI changed its safety rules in the wake of the incident.

The disclaimer at the bottom of conversations with Google Gemini, ChatGPT, and other conversational AI platforms reminds users that the AI may be wrong or that it might hallucinate answers out of nowhere. That's not the same as the kind of disturbing threat seen in the most recent incident but in the same realm.

Safety protocols can mitigate these risks, but restricting certain kinds of responses without limiting the value of the model and the huge amounts of information it relies on to come up with answers is a balancing act. Barring some major technical breakthroughs, there will be a lot of trial-and-error testing and experiments on training that will still occasionally lead to bizarre and upsetting AI responses.

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• Microsoft has deployed one final preview build to the Beta test channel
• The Beta channel is being closed down, leaving only Release Preview now
• This effectively means Windows 10 won’t get any more new features

Microsoft has just dropped the guillotine on the Beta channel for Windows 10, a testing platform that was only recently resurrected earlier this year.

The news was delivered as part of a new Beta preview in the usual blog post from Microsoft detailing the changes with build 19045.

In fact, this build is being released simultaneously to both the Release Preview and Beta channels for Windows 10 22H2, but it marks the end of the road for the latter.

Microsoft explains: “The Beta channel and Release Preview channel will receive the same Windows 10 build today just like we’ve been doing since June. However, this will be the last time we release a Windows 10 build to the Beta channel as we will be shutting down the Beta channel for Windows 10.”

Those Windows 10 testers who are currently in the Beta channel will be moved over to the Release Preview builds.

As for the work done in build 19045, it consists of some bug fixes, with the only actual change feature-wise coming to the Beta channel.

Don’t get excited, though, as Microsoft’s parting gift to Windows 10 is the Start menu now showing adverts (or ‘suggestions’ as the software giant puts it) for apps from the Microsoft Store which are from a “small set of curated developers” apparently.

Boo, hiss, etcetera – though you can turn off the ‘Show suggestions occasionally’ for the Start menu (head to Settings > Personalization > Start).

(Image credit: Shutterstock / Wachiwit) Analysis: Time is running out for Windows 10

The Beta channel only came back to life in June 2024, as a platform for testing and continuing active development of Windows 10 – albeit in a limited fashion – so it was only briefly resurrected for not even half a year before getting the axe again.

This means that changes such as the above Start menu tweak won’t be coming to Windows 10 any longer (though in the case of this addition from Microsoft, you might be glad to see the back of active development for the older OS).

Effectively, this is Microsoft putting Windows 10 on ice, without saying as much – and that’s no surprise. After all, Windows 10 only has 11 months left on the clock before it runs out of support, so feature additions don’t make much sense at this point. Going forward, all we’ll have is the Release Preview channel for testing, the final stage of Insider builds before the release version of Windows 10, where minor fixes and bug squashing will be carried out.

Don’t expect anything new, in short, though we suppose Microsoft could still surprise us – this has happened in the past, after all, when the software giant announced an effective feature freeze, only to thaw that move with some reasonable-sized feature drops.

At any rate, the shuttering of the Beta channel is another reminder that if you are on Windows 10, you should be starting to consider your End of Life options. Whether that’s upgrading to Windows 11 somehow, or an entirely alternative approach like one of the more Windows deserter-friendly Linux distros, perhaps.

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• Coca-Cola's UK TV ad campaign for the 2024 holiday season has launched
• The iconic 'Holidays Are Coming' ad has been recreated using AI
• Coca-Cola CMO Javiet Mexa says, "we want to bring Holidays Are Coming into the present."

Holidays are coming… but this time Coca-Cola has opted to strip the soul out of its iconic 1995 UK TV ad and use generative AI to recreate it.

The 16-second ad, which is set to run in the UK instead of the beloved original, has been entirely created using AI without any human input. The ad shows the famous Coca-Cola truck driving through a snow-covered landscape and arriving in a town, and Santa’s hand passing out bottles of the fizzy drink to happy people excited at the thought of the taste of Coca-Cola Zero Sugar.

Coca-Cola’s European CMO Javier Meza told Marketing Week, “We didn’t start by saying: ‘OK, we need to do this with AI'. The brief was, we want to bring Holidays Are Coming into the present, and then we explored AI as a solution to that.”

Interestingly, and unlike the original ad, Coca-Cola’s new AI version omits Santa’s face entirely. Whether this was intentional, or because AI’s recreation of Santa Claus was deemed too eerie, we’re not quite sure.

Meza added that Coca-Cola tested the AI-generated ad with consumers prior to release, and said they "loved" it, leading the multi-billion dollar company to push on with the idea.

Festive spirit generated by AI

The advert was generated using Coca-Cola’s own Real Magic AI, which was launched last year in collaboration with Bain & Company and OpenAI. The AI model combines the capabilities of OpenAI's GPT-4 and Dall-E, and learns from Coca-Cola’s creative assets created over the brand’s 138-year history.

The 'Create Real Magic' campaign from last year invited digital artists to use the AI model to create digital billboards for the brand, with the winners appearing in New York’s Times Square and London’s Piccadilly Circus. At the time, I don’t think anyone expected Coca-Cola to use the same technology for a TV ad, but then a lot has changed since March 2023, and now Coca-Cola wants to show that it’s evolving with the times.

AI can be incredibly useful and often magical, but many people – myself included – will feel that some things, like Coca-Cola’s cozy and magical holiday ad, should remain untouched by technology.

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• Code for a ‘Shielded Email’ feature is in the Google Play Services APK
• You’ll seemingly be able to use a temporary email address to avoid spam
• Doing so could also avoid your real email being leaked in a data breach

Gmail could offer the ability for users to create temporary email addresses, for signing up to online accounts or services they may be unsure about, allowing people to hide their real email address and avoid being spammed in the future (or perhaps worse dangers than that).

Android Authority got the scoop on this after digging around in the inner workings of the new 24.45.33 release of the Google Play Services APK, which contains references to ‘Shielded Email’ and a bunch of clues as to how this feature will work.

You’ll be able to create a shielded email – a temporary (Google-generated) email address different from your actual Gmail address, the mail to which gets forwarded to your Gmail inbox – when you’re forced to enter an email to sign up for an app, for example, or a website.

In these cases, with an unknown or less trustworthy firm, if you enter your real email address, you might then be spammed repeatedly by the company or website you’ve signed up with. When that inevitably happens, you can simply turn off that secondary email address – just bin it – and voila, no more spam emails.

As one of the strings of text in the hidden bits of code puts it: “To control spam, you can turn off forwarding at any time in your Google Account.”

Getting out of that bind is obviously not as simple as that if you’ve provided the company with your real email address.

(Image credit: Dell) Analysis: Security benefits

What’s also important to note is that this could be a real lifesaver of a security feature in some ways. By which we mean if you gave your real email address to a company that had lax security, and that outfit then suffered a data breach in which your email was compromised – that’s obviously very bad news. If you used a shielded, temporary email, and that’s leaked instead, then that’s no big deal – just bin it, as noted above, and the problem is solved.

This is a pretty cool addition for Gmail then – assuming it happens, of course. Right now, all we have is some code hanging around in the background, which might ultimately come to nothing. The good news is that Android Authority has also noticed a mention of shielded emails appearing in Google’s Autofill settings menu on Android, so that’s a positive glimmer of hope this is really happening.

And for those of you thinking – this sort of one-off or temporary email feature is nothing new, and you can get it from a variety of sources – well, yes, that’s true. However, having the functionality right there, integrated into Gmail, would be a considerable boon in terms of seamless access to temporary emails, with no fuss or messing about.

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Like a song you put on a YouTube video but want to give it a new spin? The video platform is testing a new AI tool to do just that, at least for when you post a Shorts video. YouTube is letting a limited number of creators use the AI tool as a kind of co-producer. They can submit their music and a prompt about genre, mood, or other elements, and the AI will spin a new 30-second soundtrack that attempts to meet the request.

The remix feature employs YouTube's Dream Track, an AI toolkit released a year ago to some U.S.-based artists. The AI works with the creators to compose songs based on prompts and pre-recorded vocals. Artists like Charli XCX, Demi Lovato, John Legend, Sia, T-Pain, and Charlie Puth all gave permission to YouTube for Dream Track to use their singing. The new tool carries Dream Track into the popular track remix facet of the music industry by restyling it to a new mood and type of sound. They might turn a pop song into a jazz ballad or an R&B song into a formal, baroque-style sound.

All of the Dream Track features use the Lyria music generation AI model developed by Google's DeepMind team. Lyria interprets words and audio and recombines the ideas behind both into unique music. Despite being new tracks, YouTube made a point of saying that the AI origin and the human artist behind the new track will be obvious.

"If you’re a creator in the experiment group, you can select an eligible song > describe how you want to restyle it > then generate a unique 30-second soundtrack to use in your Short," YouTube's description explained. "These restyled soundtracks will have clear attribution to the original song through the Short itself and the Shorts audio pivot page, and will also clearly indicate that the track was restyled with AI."

Music dreams

The ability to quickly customize music to fit any specific genre, mood, or theme has obvious appeal for creators. And the industry probably won't be too upset thanks to YouTube's proactive measures to avoid copyright issues. YouTube and Google have made ostentatious efforts to compensate creators and rights holders when it comes to AI assistance. YouTube and Universal Music Group (UMG) signed a deal last year to work out a compensation scheme for AI to defuse that question before YouTube releases an AI music generator.

Compare that to the annoyance of creators who have seen their videos scraped to train AI models without their permission. Still, YouTube wants AI to fill its platform in as many ways as possible. The platform has already tested all kinds of AI tools for the public. AI can help inspire new video ideas with YouTube's Brainstorm with Gemini tool and jump ahead of the kind of rights issues raised by artists thanks to an AI tool for removing copyrighted music from your video without taking it down completely.

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Tech leaders are recommending their own brethren to Mr. Musk and others, as they aim to leave a Silicon Valley imprint on Donald Trump’s new administration.

Moments after OpenAI, Google, or Anthropic drop a major upgrade to their AI models, you'll see people already speculating on the next update's date and features. And there have been fairly regular updates to feed those rumors. However, those days may be over, according to a Bloomberg report. All three major AI developers are reportedly struggling to make their next-gen models match their ambitions for improvement over the current crop.

The report claims that OpenAI's work on the Orion model isn't going as well as the company expected. The model doesn't perform at the level the company is aiming for, especially when it comes to coding. Orion may not offer a seismic change from GPT-4 compared to how GPT-4 blew GPT-3.5 out of the water. That may be one reason OpenAI CEO Sam Altman publicly pushed back on rumors about the release date for the Orion model and an upgrade to ChatGPT.

Delays and lower expectations are also plaguing Google and Anthropic. Google's Gemini development is slower than hoped, according to Bloomberg. Anthropic has already pushed back releasing its Claude 3.5 Opus model for similar reasons despite teasing it earlier this year.

All of the AI developers are running into the same ceilings in growing their model's abilities. The biggest is likely training data. The companies have leveraged enormous datasets to train their AI models, but even the internet is not infinite, and that goes even more when discussing high-quality data useful for training AI. Finding previously unused, accessible information is becoming tricky. That's partly because of growing awareness and consideration for ethical and legal rights to use some data, but that's only part of the explanation. At some point, there aren't enough human examples for the AI models to absorb and improve upon. Even if the companies find enough raw data, processing it and incorporating it into an AI model is expensive in terms of money and computing power. If the data cannot make more than slight improvements, then upgrading the AI model might not be worth the price.

Fuel or fumes?

The report describes how OpenAI and its rivals are looking to other ways of upgrading their models, like post-training Orion with human feedback. That's a slow way to improve an AI model and raises questions about whether AI has reached the limits of rapid scaling in size and functions. Brute computing power and avalanches of data may not be enough to make the dreams of AI developers real anymore. They'll need to get more creative in how they iterate on their models without throwing the entire internet at it.

For us, we should expect somewhat slower releases of new and improved AI features. That might not be terrible if it gives everyone a chance to catch their breath and really dig into the best ways to use all the AI tools released in the last few years. There's plenty to explore with ChatGPT-o1. And, who knows, maybe this will give OpenAI the space to work on releasing the Sora AI video creator, which has been kept highly restricted despite OpenAI teasing it with a steady drip of demos.

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• Update KB5046633 triggers a misleading pop-up, incorrectly telling users their system is outdated
• The "Learn more" link redirects to a Windows 10 support article, adding to user confusion
• Microsoft has yet to address this issue and Windows 11 users don't need to worry about end-of-support

A new Windows 11 update, KB5046633, has introduced a peculiar glitch that causes a message to pop up and tell users that their version of Windows ‘has reached the service’ , and encourages them to ‘get the newer version of Windows to stay up to date.’

This could cause undue worry for people, as it implies that their system is outdated a even though there’s no cause for alarm and their PC actually is up to date (especially right after downloading and installing this update).

In a screenshot demonstrating the glitch on the Windows Update page provided by Neowin, you can see a ‘Learn more’ link, which apparently takes people to a Windows 10 support article.

This only adds to the mystery and Neowin speculates that the notification was intended for an update like KB5001716, applicable to other versions of Windows 10 and 11, which is meant to remind users that their version will soon no longer be supported. Microsoft doesn’t appear to have acknowledged the hiccup yet.

Waiting for answers to come out in the wash

It’s not totally unusual for Microsoft to issue reminders like this as Windows 10’s end-of-life date is coming up in less than a year. For users of operating systems which will soon stop being supported, these are important reminders. KB5046633 is for Windows 11 users, however, who don’t need to worry about their operating system no longer being supported.

Hopefully, Microsoft will acknowledge the blip and put out corrective measures soon, as spooking its users with false alarms won’t go down well - and could even lead to a ‘boy who cried wolf’ scenario in the future.

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• ChatGPT Windows app now free to all users
• It's the quickest way to use ChatGPT on Windows
• ChatGPT Mac app can now talk to other apps

In a move that puts ChatGPT into direct competition with Copilot, the ChatGPT app just got easier to use for Windows users, and even more powerful for Mac users. On the Windows front, the app now works for all users on the free tier, and on the Mac version, the latest beta of the app now works with developer tools like VS Code, Xcode, Terminal, and iTerm2, with more coming soon.

The Windows version of the ChatGPT app launched on 18 October, and was initially for subscribers to ChatGPT Plus, which costs $20 a month (£16/AU$30) or Teams, but now it will work for all users on the free tier too. The app gives you faster access to ChatGPT because it can be activated with the Alt + Space keyboard shortcut, making it easier to launch and because it works in a window, it’s easier to pick up from where you left off. The app also contains access to the new ChatGPT search feature.

If you’re a subscriber to ChatGPT Plus then you’ll find that ChatGPT Advanced Voice mode, which gives you the ability to talk to ChatGPT in real time, is also available in the Windows app.

To use the ChatGPT Windows app you need to be running either Windows 10 or Windows 11.

Using Advanced Voice mode in the ChatGPT app running on Windows. (Image credit: OpenAI) Return of the Mac (app)

The ChatGPT Mac app launched back in June and very quickly became available to free-tier users. From today the latest beta version of the Mac app will now work with developer tools like VS Code, Xcode, Terminal, and iTerm2, with more apps being added soon.

What this means in practice is that instead of copying and pasting code into ChatGPT for it to analyze, you can manually connect your IDE or terminal to the macOS app and ChatGPT will be able to look at the content in the app when it answers your questions.

If you’re concerned about security, this new feature is opt-in meaning you will have to explicitly enable this function for it to work

You’ll need to be a ChatGPT Plus or Teams user to use the new features in the Mac app. According to OpenAI, Enterprise and Edu users will get access “in the next few weeks” and the company “plans to rapidly improve its capabilities.”

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• OpenAI is rumored to be launching new AI agent tool in January
• Report claims it's codenamed Operator and can control your browser
• This help could help it write code or book travel on your behalf

Forget chatbots – AI's next big trick is expected to be artificial intelligence agents that can carry out computer-based chores on your behalf, and a new report claims OpenAI's version will be landing very soon.

OpenAI's new tool, codenamed 'Operator,' could be released in January, according to Bloomberg and its two internal sources. It will apparently be released as a research preview initially and through the company's application programming interface (API) for developers to get their hands on.

AI agents are designed to operate your computer on your behalf without supervision. Like Anthropic's similar 'computer use' tool for Claude, OpenAI's Operator is expected to be able to carry out actions like writing code or booking travel.

The space is shaping up to be the next big AI battleground, with Google recently leaking its so-called Jarvis AI tool that can browse the web for you. According to The Information, it could beat OpenAI to the punch by landing in December.

Like Google's solution, OpenAI's equivalent is expected to be a "general purpose tool that executes tasks in a web browser," according to Bloomberg's source. So, while it might not be quite ready to pilot desktop apps on your behalf, OpenAI's Operator sounds like another pretty powerful browser extension.

How much do you trust AI?

ChatGPT search (above) landed in October and effectively automates Google searches for you. OpenAI's Operator is expected to do the same with web-based actions. (Image credit: OpenAI)

There's no doubt that tech giants think AI agents are the next big computing platform – in a recent Reddit AMA, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said, "I think the thing that will feel like the next giant breakthrough will be agents."

This apparent breakthrough will come soon, too, with Altman adding, “IMHO this is going to be a big theme in 2025.” Recent announcements and leaks from Anthropic, Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI certainly support this.

However, given that AI agents are expected to work autonomously without supervision, they could also demand a large amount of trust. A significant asterisk on tools like ChatGPT Search – which already searches the web for you – is that they're early releases that can still make mistakes.

In October, OpenAI released a new benchmark called 'SimpleQA' to measure the accuracy of its own AI models – and its recent o1 preview model performed pretty poorly, only getting a 42% success rate in the new benchmark.

So, while AI agents might be the next big hype feature in 2025, it could still be a while before we entrust them with automating our computer-based chores – at least without some careful supervision.

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• New preview for Windows 11 is almost entirely about bug fixes
• Bugs, especially weird glitches, seem to be more prevalent since 24H2
• Microsoft is trying hard to cure all these various issues

Microsoft is busy fixing a whole host of bugs with Windows 11, and that’s clearly illustrated with the work in the latest preview build for the OS, which is almost entirely focused on squashing glitches – of which we’ve seen plenty with the new 24H2 update, of course.

In fact, Windows 11 build 27749 for the Canary channel only has one change that isn’t a bug fix, with Narrator getting a new keyboard shortcut combo (‘Narrator key + control + X’) which copies what was last spoken by the screen-reading tool to the clipboard. Also, Narrator now works to auto-read emails in the new Outlook app, as it did with the classic app.

Let’s cover Microsoft’s raft of troubleshooting work in this build next, then, bearing in mind that the Narrator capabilities are just in testing, as are the bug fixes – albeit with a notable exception.

That’s the fix for a bug where Task Manager errantly tells the user that zero processes and apps are running – which is, of course, impossible, given that the OS itself is built on a load of background processes – as this is also resolved with the cumulative update for the full version of Windows 11 in November. That Patch Tuesday update fixes another weird bug where Alt-Tabbing to switch between apps causes a lengthy pause and a black screen before the app you’re changing to is presented on the desktop – and a problem where the internet connection was failing on some PCs.

Back to preview build 27749, which also shores up a bunch of glitches with the core parts of the Windows 11 interface. That includes File Explorer having the contents of its navigation pane spread out too much (with extra space between them), and also some fine-tuning for the taskbar. Microsoft notes it has: “Made a change so you will now see a search box if the taskbar auto-hides when the setting for search on the taskbar is set to ‘Search box; (rather than an icon).”

On top of that, there’s a cure for an odd issue where a blank entry is present in the Privacy panel in the Settings app, and if clicked, it causes Settings to crash. Microsoft has also fixed an issue where Windows 11 would crank the volume to maximum on “certain audio devices” which doubtless made for a rude awakening after your PC returned from sleep (or it could happen on the first boot-up, too).

Narrator got some fixes as well, including the resolution of an issue where it would slow down after 15 minutes of continuous use in a single app.

There’s a clutch of other miscellaneous fixes here which Microsoft lists in the usual blog post.

(Image credit: Marjan Apostolovic / Shutterstock) Analysis: The current prevalence of weird bugs

What’s clear is that there’s a growing theme with Windows 11 being hit by some very strange bugs since the 24H2 update hit the scene. The weird spacing in the interface seen in File Explorer, zero processes showing in Task Manager, that blank entry in Settings that causes a crash, your audio suddenly being ramped to full volume, and many more oddball glitches besides (that menu disappearing off the top of the desktop springs to mind, too).

Normally, these kinds of bizarre issues are relatively rare, but seem to have become more common since the release of Windows 11 24H2, both in the update itself, and as we see here, in preview builds. It’s our theory that the major change to a new underlying platform in Windows 11 – Germanium – might have some side effects that we’re seeing manifested in these stranger kinds of bugs.

Hopefully, this run of quality assurance turbulence will start to calm down soon enough, and as we can see with this long laundry list of fixes in the latest preview, Microsoft is busy doing a lot of firefighting to resolve these multiple issues. We’ve already seen other preview updates where a lot of the work is bug fixing in recent times, and indeed in fairness, this era of heightened bugginess does go back further than the new version 24H2. Overall, 2024 has been something of a rocky year for Windows 11.

All of this seems to broadly point to the need for Microsoft to get a better handle on QA and testing processes for Windows 11, something that some people have been banging on about for some time now (ourselves included). The good news with 24H2, at least, is that it’s a major piece of work – in terms of the mentioned new Germanium platform underpinning the OS – and we haven’t seen any huge showstopping bugs (yet – touch wood). Just a lot of weird little cockroaches scurrying about.

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• Instant Games has been ditched nine months after it went live
• The feature let you instantly play arcade games without installing them
• It’s the ability to play instantly that’s scrapped, not the games themselves

Early in 2024, Microsoft started rolling out ‘Instant Games’ to its store in Windows 11, but the feature has come off the rails – and is now being scrapped.

The idea with Instant Games was to give Windows 11 users another reason to visit the Microsoft Store, allowing them to enjoy some quick-and-easy casual games that didn’t need to be downloaded or installed.

Yes, these were free games you could play on your PC there and then – instantly – with no fuss around setting them up.

Okay, so as you might imagine, they were just simple arcade or puzzle-style casual games – they were housed under the ‘Arcade’ tab in the Microsoft Store’s side panel menu, in fact – but still, they were free, and very easy to access.

At the last count, there were close to 70 games that could be instantly played using the feature in the Microsoft Store.

It seems the feature simply wasn’t very popular, though, because as Windows Latest reports, Microsoft has now canned Instant Games, as of today (November 14). The games themselves aren’t going anywhere, we should note; it’s just that the only option will be to download them going forward – there’s no instant play button anymore.

(Image credit: Windows Latest / Microsoft) Analysis: Stumbling blocks that led to derailment

As Windows Latest points out, one of the frustrations with Instant Games was that it took a long time to roll out to everyone on Windows 11. Rather ironically, the delivery was anything but instant, as the idea was announced in September 2023, but as noted, the rollout didn’t begin until early 2024 (in February). And even when it did kick off, the feature was slow to be rolled out to Windows 11 users.

That probably didn’t help, and going by reports, there was another stumbling block with Instant Games. While the convenience of just clicking and playing a game there and then was great, running the title directly within the Microsoft Store was seemingly quite resource-intensive. Anecdotally, things could be less than smooth when running these arcade titles, even though they are by their very nature much less demanding than you’re the best PC games.

Granted, the level of smoothness doubtless depended on your PC (and Windows) configuration, but still – there were issues here by all accounts. Although to be fair, the feature did still allow you to try out these casual games, and if you liked them, you could then fully download and install them, to get smoother gameplay.

Whatever the case, ultimately the Instant Games library couldn’t have got much traffic, otherwise Microsoft wouldn’t be shutting it down just nine months after the feature was sent live. The idea was to attract more users to the Microsoft Store – which needs all the help it can get – but the plan seems to have failed in this instance.

Microsoft is, however, very much continuing its efforts to make the Microsoft Store a better place, including ushering in a major visual revamp, and changes to boost performance in various ways, making the app more responsive and much quicker to boot.

None of which can hurt, but in the end, it’s the content that the store will live and die by, and Microsoft still has a lot of work to do in that respect...

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• Researchers have shared their impressive Meta Aria projects
• Aria is a research kit to help developers better understand AR and AI
• These projects could become Meta Orion features if we're lucky

Meta has just shared an update on its Aria AR glasses research project collaborations, and they reveal some exciting potential ways that the publicly available versions of its Meta Orion AR Glasses could shape our real-world lives when they launch.

Project Aria’s goal is to help software developers and researchers “better understand how to build the software and hardware necessary for future AR and AI-powered glasses.” Initially an internal undertaking, Meta expanded Aria access to partners like BMW and various universities across the globe – and what they’ve created so far highlights some awesome use cases for AR glasses.

It’s worth noting that all of these tools are still at the research stage, so we’re likely still years from them being packaged into a consumer usable app – something which may not even happen with any of these projects. But they highlight some of the ways Orion could be used, and who knows? With Orion likely years away there’s still plenty of time to turn these projects into the world’s best AR apps before they launch.

1. Learning from the experts

The Matrix series is not a dystopian setting anyone wants to live in, but there’s one aspect of that world I’m sure most of us would want to bring into our real one: the ability to download any skill we could need.

While the Orion glasses might not instantly make you a master of kung fu, or teach you how to fly a helicopter in seconds, they could help us gradually improve our skills with feedback it has learned from experts.

For its Project Aria research, the University of Bristol has been capturing data from highly skilled people – from chefs, to musicians, to athletes, to mechanics – tracking their movements and how they move objects to learn more about how they “interact with and change the world to achieve their goals.”

With this understanding it’s easy to see how Orion could offer AR lessons about how to repair a bike or cook a delicious meal, going so far as to highlight the real-world object you need to use and showing you how to use it in real-time.

2. Driving more safely

Researchers at IIIT Hyderabad have used Project Aria to develop its Driver Intent Prediction Project. Using the AI glasses’ outward cameras, and their inward eye-tracking cams – as well as various other car sensors – the team is able to tell where drivers are looking and importantly where they aren’t.

If a pedestrian mindlessly steps into the street while you’re looking in your mirrors, the glasses can detect that you haven’t seen them yet and warn you – allowing you to take action. The project’s goal is to reduce traffic accidents and it’s easy to see how this tool could help make us safer drivers if Orion were to launch with a version of it.

3. Maximizing accessibility

The last two Aria projects demonstrate the glasses’ accessibility credentials. University of Iowa researchers are using Aria to help people with hearing loss by using the specs’ microphone array to help determine the direction sound is coming from. This could then be combined with prompts on an AR glasses’ display, or used in conjunction with traditional hearing aids to improve its effectiveness.

Meanwhile, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have used the glasses to help people with visual impairments. Using the glasses’ sensors (and some external beacons) Aria could help people more easily navigate unfamiliar environments with real-time guidance.

These kinds of accessibility features and more are exactly how technological advancements like Meta Orion could (and should) be put to use.

As more people get their hands on Aria research kits I’m excited to see what other projects they work on, especially as that hopefully means that Orion will have some awesome tools when it eventually releases to the public.

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