Meta | The Verge

Mark Zuckerberg is planning a big push into personal AI agents

2026-07-29T17:48:07-04:00

Meta is all-in on AI, and sometime soon, the company is going to make a big push into personal AI agents that can do things on your behalf.

On Wednesday's Q2 2026 earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg previewed a high-level vision of how the company is thinking about personal agents and what it will do to make them viable for users - and how it will convince less technical people to give them a shot:

Soon we will have agents that can work 24/7 on your behalf to help you achieve your goals and improve your life, your health, your relationships, your finances, whatever you want. The first domain that agents have really taken off in is coding. …

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AI leaders sign a statement asking the government to do something about automated AI

2026-07-28T19:14:53-04:00

Employees of OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as Google, Meta, Thinking Machines, Microsoft, Mistral, and other leading AI labs, have written a statement to the US government supporting a potential slowdown of sorts for frontier AI development - or at least a speed-up of global coordinated governance efforts.

"Al could help create a dramatically better future, but that outcome is not guaranteed," the employees wrote in the statement. "The world's leading Al companies believe they could be close to automating Al research. It is hard to predict exactly how much this will accelerate Al progress, but there is a real risk that capability developmen …

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Meta is royally screwing up its smart glasses rollout

2026-07-28T10:46:42-04:00

We’re leaning in with the playing card metaphor.

Across New York City, London, and Washington, DC, ads for Meta's smart glasses have been plastered over with satirical posters from activist groups. One guerrilla ad calls these "the biggest advancement in pervert technology since the trenchcoat." Another transposes the words "mass surveillance predator glasses" over influencer Kylie Jenner's face, calling her out for partnering with the company as a glasses ambassador.

The message of these ads is clear. These glasses may violate your privacy - and would you trust Meta?

Meta seems spooked. For so long, the company's privacy efforts for smart glasses have essentially relied on a single LE …

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The vertical video takeover is here

2026-07-24T13:29:13-04:00

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on all things vertical video, follow David Pierce. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes on Sunday at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.

How it started

For a while, every social and media platform had its own identity. YouTube was for clips of TV shows and movies, and the home of so many members of a burgeoning creator community. Instagram was mostly pictures. Netflix was trying to be the on-demand HBO. Facebook was about friends. Twitter was about news. Snapchat was a messaging app.

All these apps did have one important …

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After backlash, Meta pauses plan to ‘rate limit’ its smart glasses

2026-07-27T07:22:22-04:00

Remember when Meta was planning to charge a $20 monthly subscription fee for the smart glasses feature that lets people hear each other more clearly - even though that feature runs locally on your glasses and doesn't require the cloud? Meta has paused those plans, spokesperson Tyler Yee confirms to The Verge.

The company is not giving up on the idea of a subscription fee for certain features - that's still moving forward. Yee confirms that "some premium features will be subscription-based over time."

But Conversation Focus, the accessibility feature, "will remain available for free through our Early Access Program for early testers while w …

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Meta just created a moderation nightmare for its smart glasses

2026-07-24T15:23:44-04:00

Meta's smart glasses have been a PR headache for the company. Public backlash has been swift, and fierce; people are concerned about the erosion of privacy and expansion of surveillance. Some especially bad actors are using the glasses to film themselves "pranking" random strangers. Women have become unsuspecting social media content for men filming themselves hitting on them without their knowledge. When your product is being referred to as "pervert glasses," you have a problem on your hands.

On Thursday, Business Insider reported that Meta was taking the fairly extraordinary step of banning some content filmed with Meta glasses from the c …

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Meta is making its AI chatbot more like an assistant

2026-07-24T13:01:54-04:00

Meta says its AI chatbot is going beyond just answering questions and generating images. | Image: Meta

Meta is upgrading its AI chatbot with new productivity features in a bid to compete with rivals like Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude. The update will allow Meta AI to tap into your calendar to help you plan events and generate daily briefings, as well as perform in-depth research that you can steer as it progresses.

In a blog post, Meta says this update marks its "next step toward personal superintelligence," something CEO Mark Zuckerberg has touted as the future of AI. Meta is powering the update with its newly released Muse Spark 1.1 model, which the company says will allow its chatbot to go beyond its current capabilities of answering questi …

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Facebook considers giving up and becoming TikTok

2026-07-24T07:07:17-04:00

Facebook is planning some big changes to try and keep its users from jumping to rival social platforms like TikTok - changes that sound dubiously similar to becoming a TikTok clone. Facebook head Tom Alison announced today that the platform will begin testing a "reimagined experience" later this year that will put a subset of users into a "full-screen video the moment they open the app."

Meta didn't share examples of what its experimental new interface will look like, only that it will initially roll out to countries with a noted preference for video content, with a potential expansion planned for the US next year. These tests are driven by …

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Meta won’t have to face the next planned social media addiction trial

2026-07-22T18:03:53-04:00

Less than a week before Meta's lawyers were set to return to a Los Angeles courtroom, the plaintiff accusing the platform of inflicting harm dropped the case. Brought by 15-year-old Florida plaintiff going by initials R.K.C., the case was set to be the second in a set of bellwether trials meant to test legal arguments that social media giants allegedly broke the law by creating features that hooked and harmed teens.

TikTok, Snap, and YouTube previously settled claims brought by R.K.C. for undisclosed amounts. "In light of the overall successful result of the litigation and his concerns about enduring a grueling weekslong trial, he has elect …

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Meta made its own AI detection system. It should have just used Google’s

2026-07-22T05:29:02-04:00

Content Seal sounds a lot like a less accessible and reliable version of SynthID. | Image: Meta / The Verge

IIn March, Meta's Oversight Board called on the company to "meet its public commitments and employ its own tools" to help quell the spread of deceptive generative AI content across platforms. Meta responded in July by introducing Content Seal - an invisible watermarking technology that flags images generated by the company's new AI model. But it was basically a footnote buried in the company's announcement for its Muse image and video generation tools.

As someone who spends a lot of time scrutinizing AI labeling systems, Content Seal doesn't fill me with confidence. There are already more established solutions, like C2PA Content Credentials …

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