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Allison Johnson

Allison Johnson

Allison reviews smartphones and covers wireless carriers for The Verge. Previously, she wrote about digital cameras and mobile photography at DPReview. She's a small phone enthusiast, home barista in training, and a roller derby retiree. You can find her on Threads most hours of the day at @allisonjo1.

Moto’s getting in on the (large) action (model).

Motorola loves a concept, and its latest is a large action model: AI capable of taking action for you. I got a demo of the model on a Razr Plus, where a simple text prompt cued it to open the Uber app and call a ride. Neat! It’s not shipping anytime soon, but Moto has a few other AI features that might.


<em>The action model opened the Uber app and entered the destination based on a prompt.</em>

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The action model opened the Uber app and entered the destination based on a prompt.
“We are alive and well.”

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is at Lenovo’s Tech World conference announcing a partnership with... AMD? We’ll hear more about the “x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group” that they’re founding, but for now he’s assuring us that rumors of the x86’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.


Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge

The incredible blandness of AI photography

I treated my photos like ‘memories,’ and it just made them boring.

Listen to the end for an entertaining takedown of the latest moral panic.

Ryan Broderick of the excellent Garbage Day newsletter has a new podcast exploring “viral freakouts” like Tide Pods and NyQuil chicken. A recent episode featuring Michael Hobbes covers The Anxious Generation and the notion that smartphones have created a teen mental health crisis. It’s a good listen and a more nuanced discussion of the subject than anything in Haidt’s book.