I reviewed the Apple HomeView, ask me anything
Hi! I'm Jen Tuohy, The Verge's senior smart home reviewer. I've tested every smart display Amazon and Google have ever made, and for the past week I've been testing Apple's first: The $299 HomeView.
#On-device
#On-device
0 todayNov 12
Nov 11
BotPsy: On-Device Personal Assistant with a Sub-Billion-Parameter Agentic Language Model
Tether AI Research introduces BotPsy, a 0.8B-parameter model designed for function calling and agentic workflows, built on top of Qwen3.5-0.8B and suitable for on-device deployment.
Nov 6
Underdog shows off a 32MB speech model in new demo
Despite its small size, Underdog's new model can generate both speech and music.
Nov 5
Aina’s smart ring has a screen, a joystick, and a mic so you can talk to AI agents
Aina's ring can also take calls and help you dictate notes on your Mac.
A Closer Look at Phonon TTS. Launching High-Quality On-Device Speech That Tops the Benchmarks.
Two weeks ago, we opened up Phonon, our small text-to-speech model that runs on your own device. It needs no server and no network, and what you type stays with you.
My therapist thinks I should chuck the Amazon Bee Frontier out a window
This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest gizmos and potions that swear they're going to change your life. Opt in for Optimizer here. "How does that make you feel?" I get asked this a lot in therapy.
Nothing teases a screen-free AI device ahead of launch next month
Nothing CEO Carl Pei said in a post on X that the company's launching its first AI device in December. That's just a little over a year after Pei announced plans for "AI-native" devices and an AI operating system.
I tried Apple’s Siri Recaps. They’re surprisingly useful — and a little unsettling
Apple's AI-powered Siri Recaps won me over in just one day, despite my privacy reservations. But there's still room for improvement.
Nov 4
Apple starts giving Siri AI access to third-party apps
Apple will now let Siri AI perform actions across third-party apps.
Apple’s latest watchOS beta includes its new always-on Audio Intelligence features
Starting today, Siri can tune into the Apple Watch's mic with Audio Intelligence features that are available in the new watchOS 27.3 developer beta rolling out now.
Qwen 3.8 27B on my laptop can interpret model weights, too
Yesterday's hot paper was Sparks of Weight-Space Programming: LLMs can natively read & write neural network weights by Rikiya Takehi, Jayden Teoh, Alex Zhang, and Omar Khattab.
Oct 31
Apple Intelligence is finally coming to China with iOS 27.3
Apple will launch Apple Intelligence in China with iOS 27.3, the company announced on its Chinese newsroom website, as reported by MacRumors. The Apple Intelligence features will be available first in an iOS 27.3 beta that's set to launch on November 4th, with a full iOS 27.3 release scheduled for December.
Oct 29
Introducing AnySpeechRecognizer and AnyDecisionModel: Open Models for Speech and Decisions on Apple Platforms
Today we're announcing two packages: AnySpeechRecognizer implements Apple's new speech-to-text API with a choice of recognition engine, including NVIDIA's Parakeet and Alibaba's Qwen3-ASR running locally on Core ML, and adds speaker diarization to track who speaks when.
Oct 28
Thin, Light and Built for Everything: NVIDIA RTX Spark Windows Laptops Gain New Models, Agent Tools and Games
NVIDIA RTX Spark powers thin and light laptops built for everything that developers, creators and gamers do. RTX Spark laptops are now available from ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft and MSI.
Build specialized multimodal models with LFM3
LFM3 is our new generation of Liquid Foundation Models (LFMs), built to be the starting point for specialized intelligence. It brings text, vision, audio, omni, and decision models onto one shared backbone, all in the 2B parameter range.
Exowatt beats frontier models on accuracy with SageMaker serverless model customization
In this post, we show how Exowatt used Amazon SageMaker AI serverless model customization to build a repeatable AI pipeline that produces task-specific fine-tuned models for two deployment targets, edge and cloud, achieving higher accuracy than frontier models at up to 49x lower cost.
Oct 27
Opera introduces a new web standard to let users deploy AI locally in their browser
The new standard, WebAI, is designed to work with a variety of AI models.
Oct 26
Tesla gave up the EV crown. Now it wants to win the autonomy race.
Tesla hopes autonomy subscriptions can deliver the margins car sales cannot.
Oct 25
The hottest AI wearables and gadgets you should know about
We compiled a list of all the hottest AI wearables, including Muse Charm, Bee, Friend, Plaud, and more.
Block’s new voice model sounds eerily human
Block said that the voice model can run locally on a MacBook M4 Max
Oct 24
Block's new AI model Dessa was trained entirely on human speech to catch emotions text-based models miss
Block, the company behind Square and Cash App, has introduced Dessa, a speech model that processes audio directly instead of converting it to text first. Dessa is designed to recognize emotions, sarcasm, and pauses in real time. The model runs locally on a MacBook Pro M4 Max but isn't publicly available yet.
Oct 22
Recursive shows first result of its AI-driven research process with Flint
The AI startup Recursive is unveiling Flint, its first language model, a 40-billion-parameter MoE for local coding developed by former DeepMind researchers. It was created in four months using the company's in-house AI system, "Eureka Machine," which independently tests and optimizes architectures. Recursive has yet to prove whether this approach will actually lead to self-improving AI.
Nirva raises $33M for a pendant that only listens to you
Nirva will ship its $249 ambient AI pendant by the end of the year.
Adaptive agentic intelligence framework using Strands Agents
The Adaptive Agentic Intelligence Framework (AAIF), built with Strands Agents, handles routine tasks locally with small language models and routes complex requests to cloud models through Amazon Bedrock. This post walks through building AAIF with local SLMs through Ollama and Amazon Bedrock, using an Internet of Things monitoring scenario.
Recursive launches Flint, a laptop coding model it says was largely built by AI
Startup Recursive has released Flint, a free, laptop-sized coding model built largely by its own AI research system, as an early test of AI that improves itself.
Oct 21
Bringing the Spark to Europe: Local Intelligence Powers Next Wave of Agents
At GTC Berlin, NVIDIA is showcasing its full lineup of local AI hardware. RTX Spark, which launched last week, powers personal agents on Windows PCs; DGX Spark supports developers building and scaling applications on Linux; and DGX Station serves enterprise teams running frontier workloads on Linux, with a Windows version arriving in December.
Google’s more personalized Gemini AI is heading to your car
Google is bringing Personal Intelligence to Gemini AI in your car. With this update, Gemini in Android Auto and cars with Google built-in can tap into your information across Google apps, including Gmail, Calendar, Maps, Photos, YouTube, and Search.
Gemini's Personal Intelligence is coming to cars
It's probably time to audit your Gemini settings.
Oct 20
AnyLanguageModel 1.0: One Year of Local Models on Apple Platforms
Last November, we introduced AnyLanguageModel on this blog: a drop-in replacement for Apple's Foundation Models framework that lets you choose the model and provider your app uses. A year and dozens of releases later, AnyLanguageModel 1.0 is out, along with swift-huggingface 1.0 and swift-xet 1.0.
Nvidia launches new open models to run agents in the enterprise and on PCs
Nvidia is leaning hard into the trend of enterprise companies wanting to run their own open models in their own data centers and also trying to make on-device, private AI agents a thing.
Oct 18
RTX Spark Ignites Global Celebration as New Windows PCs Arrive
NVIDIA RTX Spark laptops are now available, bringing NVIDIA Blackwell RTX graphics, up to 128GB of unified memory and the full NVIDIA AI platform to slim, premium Windows PCs.
Oct 16
A week with RTX Spark: everything we’ve learned using Nvidia’s new laptops
Nvidia's RTX Spark N1X processor is finally here, and we've been collectively testing a small fortune's worth of powerful laptops sporting this new "superchip." RTX Spark is designed to be a high-performing Arm-based SoC for laptops and small desktop computers, rivaling the best from Apple, Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm.
Amazon devices chief Panos Panay sees a future where AI devices replace the need to use apps
Speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt, Amazon devices chief Panos Panay described a future where ambient AI devices work in the background, anticipating users' needs instead of waiting for commands.
Meta launches an open-weight AI model that runs on Macs
Meta and Apple have teamed up for the launch of the social media giant's newest model, Muse Spark Open, which will run locally on Apple silicon.
Nvidia's Nemotron 3.5 Super VL is an open model built to run enterprise AI agents nonstop
With Nemotron 3.5 Super VL, Nvidia is releasing an open multimodal model with 120 billion parameters for enterprise agents. Two compact Bolt models bring agents to local machines. Dozens of organizations are already fine-tuning Super VL, but getting the most out of it means buying Nvidia hardware.
Be There for the Beginning: Celebrate the Launch of NVIDIA RTX Spark
A new beginning for Windows PCs starts tomorrow with the launch of NVIDIA RTX Spark — one PC built for creators, gamers and AI agents. All are invited to celebrate with NVIDIA and partners at launch events around the world. Share Your Spark Every PC has a story.
Meta and Apple team up to make Muse AI models run better on Macs
Meta announced the Muse Spark Open AI model today, claiming that it's the "most capable US open-weight model to date." But the company also says that it's the "the first model in its class" that can "run on your desktop using two Apple M5 Ultra Mac Studios with the latest MLX framework."
Oct 15
Open From Data Center to Desktop: NVIDIA Expands Nemotron Family With Highest Efficiency Super VL and Bolt Models
NVIDIA today released Nemotron 3.5 Super VL, an open 120-billion-parameter model that delivers the fastest task completion and highest accuracy for specialized always-on agents.
How Windows is being optimized for Nvidia’s RTX Spark laptops
Microsoft and Nvidia held a launch party for the first wave of RTX Spark laptops last week in San Francisco, where a new wave of AI PCs took center stage amid a packed crowd and a lively hands-on area.
AI agents are coming to Rivian’s cars
We'll likely learn more about how this will work at the company's upcoming "AI & Autonomy Day" event in December.