News

The Nintendo Switch 2 has been available in the US for more than three weeks — and we finally saw a second wave of availability at retail as June was coming to an end. While it's too early to declare the Switch 2 to be easy to obtain, the fact that Best Buy and Walmart had units to sell online on June 23 and June 25, respectively, is a good sign that attentive shoppers may be able to take advantage of a Switch 2 restock this summer without paying a ridiculous markup.

That said, if you're looking to join one of the millions of people who have already snagged the $450 console since it officially went up for sale on June 5, you may need to include in-store pickup or joining a rewards program as an option. The former (with online reservations) seems to be the methodology that Best Buy and Target currently prefer, while Walmart's latest Switch 2 drop offered early access to those with Walmart+ (its membership program).

In the meantime, one place not worth checking for the Switch 2 is Amazon. A report today confirmed that its absence from Amazon's online store was the result of an ongoing dispute between the retailer and Nintendo — though there have been signs of a thaw on games and accessories. All that said, if you're still on the hunt, we’ve rounded up all of the latest information we could find on how to buy the Nintendo Switch 2 and where you can pick one up.

Where to buy the Nintendo Switch 2

Walmart most recently offered the Switch 2 online on June 25, with Walmart+ members getting an hour's head start. Currently, both the Mario Kart World bundle and the standalone console are "available" via third-party retailers, but listed for much higher than their standard $500 and $450 price tags — with limited quantities available. We wouldn't recommend buying these; instead, wait for the console to be listed at its regular MSRP. Naturally, the world's largest retailer is also selling the console at its brick-and-mortar locations, though the company has noted that quantities are limited and inventory will vary by location.

Best Buy made additional consoles available on June 11 around 12PM ET, and again on June 23 after selling out quickly on launch day (June 5). Those restocks lasted for the better part of an hour and required in-store pickup, but the device is now sold out again.

Target had the Switch 2 in stores on June 5 and restocked its online inventory for at least a couple of hours starting around 3:30AM ET on June 6. It then had another restock on June 12 around 2:30PM ET, but that appears to have died out in less than an hour. We also noted it showing up in stock in at least one Philadelphia location on June 24.

GameStop has advertised in-store availability, though exactly how much stock your local store may have will vary by location. Online, the device has been unavailable for the past week, with the listings for the base console and Mario Kart bundle now pointing to a "Find a Store" page. We saw a $625 bundle that includes Mario Kart World, a microSD Express card and a few other accessories pop up a bit more frequently than the standard SKUs, but it's no longer listed (and it was kind of a raw deal anyway).

You may still have some luck at certain membership-based retailers. A Mario Kart World bundle at Costco that includes a 12-month Switch Online subscription has gone in and out of stock since launch day. Sam's Club has had a bundle without the Switch Online sub as well, though it's out of stock now. We also saw the console at BJ's early on June 5, but it's no longer live there.

Verizon briefly had the Switch 2 available on launch day, but that's dried up. Only those with Verizon service were able to order, and the process was apparently somewhat rocky.

Amazon hasn't had any form of Switch 2 listing on its website, nor has it listed Mario Kart World. A June 30 Bloomberg report confirmed what had been widely rumored for weeks: Nintendo was apparently punishing Amazon for continuing to surface third-party retailers selling trans-shipped games. However, some Switch 2 games have started popping up, so it's possible the console may appear at some point, too.

Newegg has listed the Switch 2 on its site for several weeks, but it's given no indication as to when it'll begin sales. While some listings are available via a third-party seller, they're at massively inflated prices.

With all of these stores, we've seen the Mario Kart World bundle available in greater quantities online than the base console, which costs $50 less. But given that Mario Kart is the Switch 2's biggest launch game and retails for $80 on its own, that may not be the worst thing.

Nintendo, meanwhile, is only offering the Switch 2 via an invite system. This requires you to have been a Switch Online member for at least 12 months and logged at least 50 hours of Switch 1 playtime as of April 2. It can't hurt to sign up if you meet the criteria, but don't expect it to bear fruit immediately — it's taken weeks for many people who registered in April to receive their invite.

You can find a list of every Switch 2 retail listing we could find below. Just be aware that this is meant to be a reference, not a rundown of everywhere the device is available right this second.

Where to buy Switch 2 + Mario Kart World bundle:

Walmart

GameStop

Best Buy

Target

Costco (membership required)

Sam's Club (membership required)

Verizon (service required)

Where to buy Switch 2:

Walmart

GameStop

Best Buy

Target

BJ's (membership required)

Verizon (service required)

Where to buy Nintendo Switch 2 games and accessories

Nintendo is selling a number of Switch 2 accessories alongside the console, from its (pricey) Pro Controller to cases to cameras for the new GameChat feature. Most of these became available on June 5. The same goes for games like Mario Kart World and the Switch 2 version of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Another big Switch 2 release, Donkey Kong Bananza, won't be available until mid-July but is still up for pre-order now.

As of this publication, just about all Switch 2 games are broadly available. Stock for the accessories remains a little spottier, but most devices are still available at multiple retailers. Nintendo's official Switch 2 carrying cases have been the main exceptions, so you may need to look to third-party alternatives if you want some protection for your console right away.

Mario Kart World ($80)

Nintendo

Walmart

GameStop

Best Buy

Target

Donkey Kong Bananza ($70)

Nintendo

Amazon

Walmart

GameStop

Best Buy

Target

Costco (membership required)

Additional Switch 2 games

Nintendo

Amazon

Walmart

GameStop

Best Buy

Target

Samsung microSD Express Card (256GB) for Nintendo Switch 2 ($60)

Nintendo

Walmart

GameStop

Best Buy

Target

Amazon

Joy-Con 2 bundle ($95)

Nintendo

Walmart

GameStop

Best Buy

Target

Switch 2 Pro Controller ($85)

Nintendo (invite required)

Walmart

GameStop

Best Buy

Target

Costco ($75, membership required)

Switch 2 Camera ($55)

Nintendo

Walmart

GameStop

Best Buy

Target

Hori Nintendo Switch 2 Piranha Plant Camera ($60)

Best Buy

Target

Amazon

Joy-Con 2 Charging Grip ($40)

Nintendo

Walmart

GameStop

Best Buy

Target

Joy-Con 2 Wheels (set of 2) ($25)

Nintendo

Walmart

GameStop

Best Buy

Target

Switch 2 All-in-One Carrying Case ($85)

Nintendo

Walmart

GameStop

Best Buy

Target

Switch 2 Carrying Case and Screen Protector ($40)

Nintendo (invite required)

Walmart

GameStop

Best Buy

Target

Nintendo Switch 2 Dock Set ($120)

Nintendo

Nintendo GameCube Controller for Switch 2 ($65)

Nintendo (Switch Online required)

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/how-to-buy-the-switch-2-nintendos-restock-updates-from-walmart-best-buy-and-more-120039947.html?src=rss

Apple is considering using AI models from OpenAI or Anthropic to deliver the more capable version of Siri it debuted at WWDC 2024, Bloomberg reports. The company has promised it could deliver a new version of its voice assistant that understands personal context and takes action inside of apps since last year, but officially delayed the updated Siri in March 2025.

As part of this proposed new plan, Apple has asked Anthropic and OpenAI to train versions of its models that can run on Apple's Private Cloud Compute, secure servers running on Apple chips. The company already relies on its servers for certain AI features that can't be run locally.

Apple uses OpenAI's ChatGPT for some parts of Apple Intelligence, but completely relying on a third-party company for Siri would be a major departure. "The company currently powers most of its AI features with homegrown technology that it calls Apple Foundation Models," Bloomberg writes,"and had been planning a new version of its voice assistant that runs on that technology for 2026." One of the few AI announcements Apple made at WWDC 2025 was to make those foundation models available to third-party developers.

Even considering using third-party AI models reflects internal changes at Apple. Leadership of the company's AI teams has reportedly changed hands from John Giannandrea, Apple's senior vice president of machine learning and AI strategy, to Craig Federighi, the senior vice president of software engineering. Separately, Bloomberg reports Apple's Siri team is now being led by Mike Rockwell, who most recently oversaw the development of the Apple Vision Pro.

As Bloomberg notes, an Anthropic or OpenAI-powered Siri would actually mirror Samsung's current approach to AI. Galaxy AI relies on some custom Samsung software, but primarily uses Google's Gemini. Using third-party models wouldn't preclude Apple from switching back to something in-house in the future. The company made a similar transition — albeit, perhaps too early — when it went from a Maps app that relied on Google Maps to its custom Apple Maps service in 2012.

Wherever Apple lands, the updated version of Siri isn't expected to launch now until 2026. The company will ship a more modest collection of AI-adjacent features this fall with the launch of iOS 26, iPadOS 26 and macOS 26.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/apple-may-power-siri-with-anthropic-or-openai-models-amid-ai-struggles-212028351.html?src=rss

Most phishing incidents happen before new employees even understand how internal systems work, report claimsSecurity awareness should begin on day one, before the first email is even openedHackers target uncertainty, and onboarding is full of it for eager, confused new hiresThe first few months of employment are now one of the riskiest periods for enterprise cybersecurity, new research has claimed,Keepnet’s 2025 New Hires Phishing Susceptibility Report found nearly three-quarters (71%) of new hires fall for phishing or social engineering attacks within their first 90 days on the job.Often overlooked in onboarding workflows, this shortcoming suggests many organizations are not doing enough to prepare new staff for the reality of modern cyber threats.Inexperience, urgency, and confusion drive early mistakesThe report, based on data from 237 companies, reveals new employees are 44% more likely to be deceived by phishing attempts than their longer-tenured colleagues.Most incidents stem from a combination of inexperience, lack of familiarity with internal processes, and a desire to comply with instructions.Common attack types include CEO impersonation, fraudulent HR portals, fake invoice requests, and technical support scams, many of which exploit this period of onboarding confusion.The study also found phishing emails impersonating executives led to a 45% higher success rate among new hires compared to tenured staff.This gap demonstrates how even basic social engineering tactics can be disproportionately effective against employees who are still navigating organizational systems and norms.Without dedicated and structured training, these early errors can create long-lasting security risks.To tackle this issue, Keepnet recommends that organizations adopt a layered defense strategy tailored specifically for onboarding periods.Organizations that adopted adaptive simulations and behavior-based training programs saw phishing risk drop by 30% after onboarding.Traditional tools like the best endpoint protection, best FWAAS, and best FWAAS solution remain essential, but they are not enough on their own.“Phishing attacks don’t wait for your employees to feel ready. Our research shows that organizations must invest in onboarding-specific cybersecurity awareness training. We’re proud to offer adaptive, scalable solutions that protect businesses from day one,” said Ozan Uçar, CEO, Keepnet.You might also likeThese are the best VPNs with antivirus you can use right nowTake a look at our pick of the best internet security suitesDemocratized cybercrime: a new lower bar for hackers and higher stakes for security

Welcome to Video Games Weekly on Engadget. Expect a new story every Monday or Tuesday, broken into two parts. The first is a space for short essays and ramblings about video game trends and related topics from me, Jess Conditt, a reporter who's covered the industry for more than 13 years. The second contains the video game stories from the past week that you need to know about, including some headlines from outside of Engadget.

Please enjoy — and I'll see you next week.

June has passed me by in a haze of air travel, mild illness, protests and Pride, and it’s now officially time to close the book on Summer Game Fest 2025. We published more than 80 stories around this year’s show and they’re all worth a read, but before moving on for good, I wanted to highlight a final batch of games that I can’t stop thinking about. This week, I present three mini previews straight out of SGF 2025 — and only two of them are horror games, which is a stupendous display of growth on my part.

Crisol: Theater of Idols

Crisol: Theater of Idols wasn’t on my radar until I sat down and played it at the Blumhouse booth, but now it’s pinging loud and clear, as if the booms were emanating directly from the blood-soaked bowels of Hell. It’s a first-person survival-horror action game set in a demented version of Spain that’s filled with monsters of modern folklore. Murderous marionettes and giant, ornately adorned skeletons hunt you through dark streets and towering gothic buildings, lamplight glinting off of every gross 3D detail. The whole demo felt like getting lost in a terrifying, nightmarish carnival, and I enjoyed every bit of it.

In Crisol, blood is your source of ammunition, and you drain the corpses of humans and chickens to refuel your health bar as well as your guns. Crisol is tense and gorgeous, reminiscent of Dishonored or Resident Evil Village, and enemies are both robust and tricky to evade. Crisol is the debut game from independent Spanish team Vermila Studios, which received an Epic MegaGrant for the project in 2020. It’s being published by Blumhouse and is due out this year on Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

Grave Seasons

There’s something deeply wrong in Ashenridge, the idyllic rural village where Grave Seasons is set. At first glance, Grave Seasons is a cute, narrative-based farming sim with detailed pixel art, juicy romance options and layers of home-maintenance mechanics. You spend time planting, watering, harvesting, crafting items, picking up trash and chatting with villagers — and then you dig up a severed hand. Pilar, your flirty neighbor who runs the tailor shop down the road, says something ominous about the fate of your house’s previous owner. The vibe shifts; the shadows start to look sinister. Night falls and the real horror is unleashed, sudden, violent and all the more shocking in such a peaceful setting. A supernatural serial killer is on the loose in Ashenridge and, in between planting crops, it’s up to you to investigate (and maybe date) the murderer.

Grave Seasons is a game that will live or die by its tone, and so far, developer Perfect Garbage has absolutely nailed the vibe of nefarious, creeping dread. Ashenridge is a beautiful little town with tons of people to meet and activities to complete, and the character avatars are sexy, sweet and super intriguing. A paranormal murder investigation is simply the cherry on top of a competent farming and dating sim, and I’m eager to take a bite out of the full game. At SGF 2025, developers said the complete Grave Seasons experience should take about 20 hours. Grave Seasons is being published by Blumhouse, and it’s scheduled to hit Steam and consoles in 2026.

Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School

Escape Academy is one of my favorite games of the past five years and I am inordinately stoked for the sequel, which turns the school into an open world of puzzles, riddles and cringey puns. With Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School, developer Coin Crew is going all-in on the student roleplaying vibe, and the entire campus is littered with mysteries. It’s also playable as a split-screen, couch co-op experience, which is one of the series’ greatest strengths. Frantically screaming solutions at your friend just feels better in person than over a Discord call, you know?

I played the original Escape Academy with a local partner, so that’s how I tried out the sequel at SGF 2025. I dragged Engadget EIC Aaron Souppouris to the iam8bit booth and we dove in, starting in a classroom covered in sneaky environmental clues. In Escape Academy 2, the assignment is simple — get out — but the execution is complex, and we were soon throwing out names, dates and math problems, trying to solve a series of tricky, interconnected puzzles and leave the room. After getting just one hint from the developers, we made our way to the hallway, which was lined with locker-based riddles, and eventually reached the headmaster’s office, which was a contained playground of puzzle gaming. We had to use a pen and piece of paper to keep track of a few sections, and overall, our interactions felt fresh. Coin Crew isn’t just rolling out the same problems with different solutions for the sequel, and the new riddles were clever, innovative and super satisfying. (The same can’t be said about all of the puns, but that’s part of the charm.)

Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School features both local and online co-op, so you’ll be free to yell at your friends in whichever format you prefer. Coin Crew is still working on the game and there’s no release date yet, but it’s available now to wishlist on Steam.

The news

11 Bit Studios left AI writing in The Alters

The only thing worse than not disclosing AI use in the creation of a video game is not disclosing it and then deploying it so sloppily that players immediately notice. Indie developer and publisher 11 Bit Studios learned this lesson firsthand with The Alters, a futuristic base-building game starring an astronaut and his alternate-reality clones. Within a week of the game’s release on June 13, posts started popping up on Reddit and Bluesky showing AI-generated text in the game, across multiple languages. On June 30, 11 Bit released a statement confirming its use of AI in developing The Alters, saying it was utilized only in background text and to help with last-minute localization efforts. “No matter what we decided, we should have simply let you know,” the studio wrote.

Xbox layoffs incoming

I’d really love to stop writing headlines like this. Microsoft is preparing to lay off a large number of Xbox employees this week, as part of a planned 3 percent reduction in staff across the company. That’s a loss of roughly 7,000 jobs in total, and according to Bloomberg, Xbox leaders are expecting “substantial cuts across the entire group.” The firings follow a round of 1,900 layoffs at Xbox in January 2024, another 650 layoffs in September, and last year’s closure of Arkane Austin, Alpha Dog Games and Tango Gameworks (the latter of which lives on under Krafton). Meanwhile, Microsoft reported a net revenue of $25.8 billion in the first three months of 2025, with an 8 percent yearly increase in revenue from Xbox content and services. Congrats?

Netflix is culling its games roster

Netflix started beefing up its video games division around 2021, with the acquisition of Oxenfree studio Night School and the rollout of an in-app gaming library offering popular mobile titles at no extra charge to subscribers. Netflix currently supports more than 100 games, including Death’s Door, Hades, The Case of the Golden Idol, The Rise of the Golden Idol, Braid Anniversary Edition, Katana ZERO and the Monument Valley series — but these are disappearing in July. A total of 22 games will be deleted from Netflix at various times in July, and the culling follows similar cutbacks in the company’s interactive division, including the recent closure of an in-house AAA studio.

The Steam Summer Sale is here to take your money

Because we know you’re going to get something — what are you picking up at the Steam Summer Sale this year? Share your spoils in the comments! If you’re overwhelmed, allow me to humbly suggest Blue Prince, Home Safety Hotline, Look Outside or Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

On a related note, don't forget to check out (the nearly complete) Playdate Season 2.

Once upon a time, Resident Evil: Requiem was an open-world game

… but it’s definitely not any more. Resident Evil: Requiem producer Masachika Kawata and director Koshi Nakanishi clarified in a video that their new game is an offline single-player experience, but they said that early in development, the team seriously considered making it online and open-world. This experimentation fueled rumors about Requiem introducing a new direction for the Resident Evil franchise, but it turns out the final product will be a familiar, self-contained horror romp with the ability to swap between first- and third-person views. Spooooky.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/video-games-weekly-summer-game-fest-ends-when-i-say-so-213556598.html?src=rss

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian posted a short video of his late mother hugging him, which soon garnered tens of millions of views. Not because the video was a time capsule of a long-ago moment, but because it created it based on what had only been a still image.Ohanian used the new AI video generation feature from Midjourney to create the video based on a single photo. To him, it's a time machine to six seconds from decades ago. Millions of other viewers shared that interpretation of the clip, but a significant number of dissenting voices warned that it was a fake memory that could mess with Ohanian's real remembrance of his mother.Regardless of how people felt about the video, it seemed clear that most people felt something visceral about the facsimile of a speculative moment. Ohanian wrote, “This is how she hugged me.” And in that sentence alone is the entire heartbreak and hope of the digital age: the ache to remember more clearly, to hold tighter to someone who’s gone, to use machines not for profit or surveillance, but for something intimate. Human.There’s no shortage of AI tricks floating around right now. You can generate an image of your cat as an Olympic diver, your family picnic as an animated cartoon, or your child in their future profession. Mostly, these are lightly entertaining fads that also illustrate larger issues surrounding AI. But this is not a disposable video to Ohanian. This is a clip he has made clear he will treasure. And whether he's simply leveraging AI to keep his mother's memory alive or constructing false memories because he feels the real ones slipping away, he's not the first and has undoubtedly brought the idea more attention than ever.There’s a strange vulnerability in inviting a machine to guess at your memories. It feels a little like asking a stranger to finish your dream. AI doesn’t know your mom. It doesn’t know how she laughed or how tightly she hugged you. It just knows pixels. But sometimes pixels are all we’ve got.If you’ve lost someone, especially before smartphones and camcorders tracked our every moment, you know what it’s like to wish you had more videos and photos of that person. Ohanian said his family couldn’t afford a camcorder. He doesn’t have any video of himself with his mom. That photo of a hug in the meadow is it. But with the help of a few prompts and a sophisticated AI model, that hug lives again.I lost my mom almost 20 years ago. Trolls can rest assured I’ve grieved sufficiently. My family couldn’t afford a camcorder and using tech to generate few seconds of animation from a still is the equivalent of using AI to stabilize a poorly recorded video — or fill in the gaps of…June 23, 2025I don’t think the discomfort many expressed is solely about Alexis Ohanian's video or why he chose to make and share it. I think it’s about what having this option might mean in the worst scenarios. It's easy to see this moment as the beginning of a dark and gloomy trend.I think if it helps Ohanian feel closer to his mother, that's just fine. It's not like the image was itself a fiction; it just externalized his own memory of a hug. It's like a more tactile version of saving your parents' last voicemail to you, or keeping around their favorite scented candle because it makes you smile. Ohanian isn't pretending the video is anything but a memory aid. Using AI to make false memories may or may not become a real problem, but that's not the case here.AI video remembersAfter Ohanian’s post went viral, people began sharing their own AI-animated family photos. For now, these are just fragments, silent and brief. But judging people's grief and how they handle it, no matter how long it's been, is not something I would ever want to do as long as it's not hurting anyone. A fair assessment has to be personal.So I did the same thing as Ohanian. I found a photo I've always liked of my mother, who passed away 13 years ago, celebrating Hanukkah with me in the early 1990s. I used Hailuo (of Olympian cat fame) to make a video based on the grainy image from my childhood. For what it's worth, I know my mother would have been thrilled to participate, as she was always looking for ways to assist in any facet of my life, so I didn't have any qualms on that front.The video is okay. It's not quite matching how she and I look in the photo, though I think the quality of the image is at fault there as much as the vagaries of AI. I could put that aside and imagine the moment from my own younger perspective, thanks to the video, and that was an interesting sensation. But, whether it's because of the quick-and-dirty prompt or just my own circumstances, I didn't feel like it evoked a deeper connection to my late mother. I suspect there will be plenty who feel the same way if they make the attempt.Just because it was a little hollow to me doesn't mean it can't benefit others without fraying their understanding of their own past. I don’t believe Ohanian is trying to replace his mother's memory with an AI filmmaker. I think he’s relatably trying to feel a little closer to her.Of course, our love of those who have passed away isn’t the only thing AI amplifies. It can also amplify our fear, our longing, our capacity to deceive ourselves. This technology is powerful, especially when it gets personal. But for now, it's just a way for Ohanian to surface a fond memory of a hug from his mom, and there are much worse uses for AI models.You might also likeMidjourney just dropped its first AI video model and Sora and Veo 3 should be worriedForget virtual pets – the next AI video craze is cats doing Olympic diving, and it’s all thanks to this new Google Veo 3 rivalI watched some of the viral ASMR videos made with AI and I feel more confused than soothed

Nintendo of Canada has announced that the pricing of the Switch, its accessories, its games and even Amiibo figures, will all be changing in Canada come August. The pricing adjustment is being made "based on market conditions," according to the the announcement.

It's not clear how much the price of the Switch family of products will be changing — Nintendo said new prices will be posted on its Canadian website on August 1 — but presumably they'll be going up. The company currently sells the Switch for CA$400, the Switch OLED for CA$450 and the Switch Lite for CA$269 in Canada. Meanwhile, the Switch 2 launched for CA$630 in June.

The market conditions Nintendo is responding to could be the result of the suite of tariffs the US government applied to nearly all of its trade partners in April 2025. When the Switch 2 debuted at $450 in the US, many people assumed the new cost of doing business in North America was being factored in. That the price of the Switch is changing before the Switch 2 could be a confirmation of that fact.

While not an intentional ploy to get customers to spend more, if the Switch inches closer to the Switch 2 in price, there's plenty of good reasons to buy the newer console over the older one in August. In many ways, the Switch 2 is just a nicer Switch.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/nintendo-is-increasing-the-price-of-the-original-switch-in-canada-220145966.html?src=rss

11 Bit Studios has drawn the ire of players for the undisclosed use of artificial intelligence in its recent release, The Alters. The new project from the team behind Frostpunk and This War of Mine is a narratively and thematically interesting take on a science fiction survival game. The project contains a lot of dialogue and written text, and some players discovered in-game copy that appeared to be generated by a large language model. The Steam storefront requires that games disclose when they contain material that is either pre-generated or live-generated by artificial intelligence, and The Alters had not been tagged as including AI content. The studio has issued a lengthy statement in response to the complaints.

One instance involved AI-generated text in a graphic asset. 11 Bit Studios said this asset was only meant to be used as a placeholder during development. "This was never intended to be part of the final release," the company said. "Unfortunately, due to an internal oversight, this single placeholder text was mistakenly left in the game. We have since conducted a thorough review and confirmed that this was an isolated case, and the asset in question is being updated."

The other AI use that players uncovered was in some cases of translations. According to 11 Bit Studios, AI was used for subtitle translations on the licensed movies that can be played in social area of the in-game base, which it said were made by an external source without creative input from its team:

"Due to extreme time constraints, we chose not to involve our translation partners and had these videos localized using AI to have them ready on launch. It was always our intention to involve our trusted translation agencies after release as part of our localization hotfix, to ensure those texts would be handled with the same care and quality as the rest of the game. That process is now underway, and updated translations are being implemented."

AI is an increasingly delicate subject for creative professionals. Many companies with large language models have either been accused of or admitted to training on copyrighted content, which has made AI an ethical nonstarter for many artists and many players. But when studios are regularly faced with negative working conditions surrounding crunch, it's also understandable why the gaming industry might be inclined to look for ways to speed up the process of shipping a title. The reactions to AI appearing The Alters is likely just the latest in the ongoing conversations about when and how this tech might be a part of game development.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/11-bit-studios-clarifies-its-ai-use-in-the-alters-after-player-outcry-220014181.html?src=rss

MediaTek’s Kompanio Ultra makes a rare appearance, challenging the usual CPU suspects in laptopsLightweight and long-lasting, but ChromeOS limits serious work beyond web and Android appsLenovo Chromebook Plus’s $649 price tag puts it alongside Windows laptops with broader software support and faster chipsLenovo’s latest Chromebook Plus (14", 10) has introduced something unusual: a MediaTek Kompanio Ultra processor.This is not a name typically seen in the business laptop world, especially not in premium machines aiming to balance performance and portability.But Lenovo seems confident this unique CPU, paired with Google’s newest AI tools, can stand up to more familiar silicon from AMD and Intel.Uncommon power in a familiar shellThe Lenovo Chromebook Plus promises an all-in-one experience tailored for professionals, students, and creators.It supports up to 16GB of memory and 256GB of internal storage, but the real story lies in the chip powering it - the Kompanio Ultra processor features MediaTek’s NPU 890 and Arm Immortalis-G925 GPU, delivering 50 TOPS of AI performance.While impressive on paper, the broader market has yet to demonstrate what this actually means for everyday users in real workflows.The laptop also features an OLED 2K display with 100% DCI-P3 coverage, quad speakers with Dolby Atmos, and a battery life that reportedly reaches up to 17 hours.At just under 1.17kg, it qualifies among the lightest laptop models with this much hardware inside, though real-world usage may paint a more tempered picture.Lenovo and Google are pushing the AI story hard. Features like Smart Grouping, AI-assisted image editing in the Gallery app, and optical character recognition across documents aim to streamline digital life.There’s also Gemini support directly on the shelf, allowing text summarization and tab management."The Lenovo Chromebook Plus (14", 10) delivers the most powerful AI capabilities ever on a Chromebook… this premium device is your perfect everyday companion," said Benny Zhang, Executive Director and General Manager of Chromebooks in Lenovo's Intelligent Devices Group.The machine includes Chrome Enterprise Upgrade for IT control and the Chrome Education Upgrade for schools, both allow admins to manage updates, policies, apps, and security from the cloud.Still, users comparing this device to more traditional options in the same price range might hesitate.Starting at $649, it overlaps with more established Windows and macOS devices - so those looking for the best laptop for engineering students may find the limitations of ChromeOS, especially with software compatibility, a deal breaker.And while its portability is a strength, the MediaTek processor still needs to prove itself under demanding professional use.Via TechPowerUpYou might also likeThese are the best Chromebooks you can buy right nowTake a look at the best laptops for programmingHow data conversations unlock the transformative potential of AI