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Meta Quest 3 owners check the phone app as 12 free games might be waiting for you
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If you own a Meta Quest 3 you should check your Meta Quest smartphone app as you might have a six-month free trial of Meta Quest Plus waiting for you.

Previously this offer was an exclusive order incentive for people who bought the 512GB Meta Quest 3 model, but Quest 3 owners on Reddit have noticed that the 6-month trial is available to them even if they bought the 128GB version. This means rather than saving only $ 7.99 / £7.99 from a one-month trial everyone can get $ 47.94 / £47.94 worth of subscription value for no cost.

Meta Quest Plus is like a Netflix for Quest VR games. Each month you’ll get 2 free VR titles that you can add to your Quest library, and for as long as you are subscribed you can play them. If you unsubscribe, you’ll lose access to your free games until you rejoin Meta Quest Plus.  So with this trial that’s 12 free games, which is a pretty excellent deal that rivals this year’s best Black Friday deals.

To see if you can get this free six-month trial you’ll need to open open the Meta Quest app on your smartphone. Use Search to look for Meta Quest Plus, then on the Quest Plus store page tap the blue button at the bottom of your screen that says “Start your six-month trial.”

Meta Quest Plus advert showing Pistol Whip and Pixel Ripper 1995

(Image credit: Meta)

This offer doesn’t appear to be exclusive to new subscribers either. Comments on the original Reddit post suggest that people can get the six-month trial if they’ve tried the one-month trial before, and even if they’re subscribed – with the six free months being added on top of the subscription they already have.

It also appears to be available in every region, though some users have reported they can only see the one-month trial; that said it’s not clear if they’re Meta Quest 3 or Oculus Quest 2 owners.

If you’re looking to expand your VR library then Meta Quest Plus is a good way to do it, as the two games you get are worth more than the monthly $ 7.99 / £7.99 fee. However, you don’t get to pick which games you get so you might prefer to spend more but get the games you actually want.

The two free titles at the time of writing are NFL Pro Era and Angry Birds: Isle of Pigs. We've not tried either but both titles have been fairly well received with a four and four-and-a-half star rating, respectively, on the Quest Store.

If you don’t have a Meta Quest 3, or an Oculus Quest 2, then you can check out our Black Friday Oculus Quest 2 deals guide to see the latest and greatest offers. If it’s still available you might want to go after Amazon’s incredible Quest 2 deal as it gets you $ 50 / £50 off the headset and free $ 50 / £50 Amazon credit too.

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OpenAI’s reported ‘superintelligence’ breakthrough is so big it nearly destroyed the company, and ChatGPT
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It now seems entirely possible that ChatGPT parent company OpenAI has solved the 'superintelligence' problem, and is now grappling with the implications for humanity.

In the aftermath of OpenAI's firing and rehiring of its co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, revelations about what sparked the move keep coming. A new report in The Information pins at least the internal disruption on a significant Generative AI breakthrough that could lead to the development of something called 'superintelligence' within this decade or sooner.

Superintelligence is, as you might have guessed, intelligence that outstrips humanity, and the development of AI that's capable of such intelligence without proper safeguards is, naturally, a major red flag.

According to The Information, the breakthrough was spearheaded by OpenAI Chief Scientist (and full-of-regrets board member) Ilya Sutskever. 

It allows AI to use cleaner and computer-generated data to solve problems the AI has never seen before. This means the AI is trained not on many different versions of the same problem, but on information not directly related to the problem. Solving problems in this way – usually math or science problems – requires reasoning. Right, something we do, not AIs.

OpenAI's primary consumer-facing product, ChatGPT (powered by the GPT large language model [LLM]) may seem so smart that it must to be using reason to craft its responses. Spend enough time with ChatGPT, however, and you soon realize it's just regurgitating what it's learned from the vast swaths of data it's been fed, and making mostly accurate guesses about how to craft sentences that make sense and which apply to your query. There is no reasoning involved here.

The Information claims, though, that this breakthrough – which Altman may have alluded to in a recent conference appearance, saying, “on a personal note, just in the last couple of weeks, I have gotten to be in the room, when we sort of like push the sort of the veil of ignorance back and the frontier of discovery forward,” – sent shockwaves throughout OpenAI.

Managing the threat

While there's no sign of superintelligence in ChatGPT right now, OpenAI is surely working to integrate some of this power into, at least, some of its premium products, like GPT-4 Turbo and those GPTs chatbot agents (and future 'intelligent agents').

Connecting superintelligence to the board's recent actions, which Sutskever initially supported, might be a stretch. The breakthrough reportedly came months ago, and prompted Sutskever and another OpenAI scientist, Jan Leike, to form a new OpenAI research group called Superaligment with the goal of developing superintelligence safeguards.

Yes, you heard that right. The company working on developing superintelligence is simultaneously building tools to protect us from superintelligence. Imagine Doctor Frankenstein equipping the villagers with flamethrowers, and you get the idea.

What's not clear from the report is how internal concerns about the rapid development of superintelligence possibly triggered the Altman firing. Perhaps it doesn't matter.

At this writing, Altman is on his way back to OpenAI, the board is refashioned, and the work to build superintelligence – and to protect us from it – will continue.

If all of this is confusing, I suggest you ask ChatGPT to explain it to you.

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Google Bard can now watch YouTube videos for you (sort of)
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Google has bolstered the powers of Bard AI regarding YouTube videos, with the AI now capable of tapping into a better level of understanding such content.

Google posted about the latest update for Bard and how these are the ‘first steps’ in allowing the AI to understand YouTube videos, and pull out relevant info from a clip as requested.

The example given is that you’re hunting out a YouTube explainer on how to bake a certain cake, and you can ask Bard how many eggs are required for the recipe in the video that pops up.

Bard is capable of taking in the whole video and summarizing it, or you can ask the AI specific questions as mentioned, with the new feature enabling the user to have ‘richer conversations’ with Bard on any given clip.

Another recent update for Bard improved its maths powers, specifically for equations and helping you solve tricky ones – complete with straightforward step-by-step explanations (just in English to begin with). Those equations can be typed in or supplied to Bard via an uploaded image.

Analysis: YouTube viewing companion

These are some useful new abilities, particularly the addition for YouTube, which builds on Google’s existing extensions for Bard that hook up to the company’s services including the video platform.

It’s going to be pretty handy to have Bard instantly pull up relevant details such as the mentioned quantities for recipes. Or indeed specifics you can’t recall when having just watched a video, to save you having to rewind back through to try and find those details.

The maths and equation-related skills are going to be a boon, too. The broad idea here is not just to show a solution, but teach how that solution was arrived at, thus equipping you to deal with other similar problems down the line.

Via Neowin

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Generative AI could get more active thanks to this wild Stable Diffusion update
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Stability AI, the developer behind the Stable Diffusion, is previewing a new generative AI that can create short-form videos with a text prompt.

Aptly called Stable Video Diffusion, it consists of two AI models (known as SVD and SVD-XT) and is capable of creating clips at a 576 x 1,024 pixel resolution. Users will be able to customize the frame rate speed to run between three and 30 FPS. The length of the videos depends on which of the twin models is chosen. If you select SVD, the content will play for 14 frames while SVD-XT extends that a bit to 25 frames. The length doesn’t matter too much as rendered clips will only play for about four seconds before ending, according to the official listing on Hugging Face.

The company posted a video on its YouTube channel showing off what Stable Video Diffusion is capable of and the content is surprisingly high quality. They're certainly not the nightmare fuel you see on other AI like Meta’s Make-A-Video. The most impressive, in our opinion, has to be the Ice Dragon demo. You can see a high amount of detail in the dragon’s scales plus the mountains in the back look like something out of a painting. Animation, as you can imagine, is rather limited as the subject can only slowly bob its head. The same can be seen in other demos. It’s either a stiff walking cycle or a slow panning shot. 

In the early stages

Limitations don’t stop there. Stable Video Diffusion reportedly cannot “achieve perfect photorealism”, it can’t generate “legible text”, plus it has a tough time with faces. Another demonstration on Stability AI’s website does show its model is able to render a man’s face without any weird flaws so it could be on a case-by-case basis.

Keep in mind that this project is still in the early stages. It’s obvious the model is not ready for a wide release nor are there any plans to do so. Stability AI emphasizes that Stable Video Diffusion is not meant “for real-world or commercial applications” at this time. In fact, it is currently “intended for research purposes only.” We’re not surprised the developer is being very cautious with its tech. There was an incident last year where Stability Diffusion’s model leaked online, leading to bad actors using it to create deep fake images.

Availability

If you’re interested in trying out Stable Video Diffusion, you can enter a waitlist by filling out a form on the company website. It’s unknown when people will be allowed in, but the preview will include a Text-To-Video interface. In the meantime, you can check out the AI’s white paper and read up on all the nitty gritty behind the project. 

One thing we found interesting after digging through the document is it mentions using “publicly accessible video datasets” as some of the training material. Again, it's not surprising to hear this considering that Getty Images sued Stability AI over data scraping allegations earlier this year. It looks like the team is striving to be more careful so it doesn't make any more enemies.

No word on when Stable Video Diffusion will launch. Luckily, there are other options. Be sure to check out TechRadar's list of the best AI video makers for 2023.

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You’ve all missed the best Oculus Quest 2 deal of the year, but please don’t buy a different one until Black Friday
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Sorry folks, you’ve all missed out on Amazon’s best Oculus Quest 2 Black Friday deal – possibly the one of best Black Friday deals in general – that would have got you $ 50/£50 off the 128GB model and a free $ 50/£50 gift card to spend on anything at Amazon. But please don’t panic buy a different Quest 2 deal yet.

The gift card deal is currently sold out at both Amazon US and Amazon UK, but there’s a chance it may rematerialize on Black Friday itself – which is November 24 this year.  It’s not uncommon for deals to appear, disappear then return in the build-up to the biggest sales event of the year; I’m hoping this incredible Quest 2 will continue this trend and show up on Friday.

If it does reappear then you’re in the money; you’ll get a great bargain on Meta’s budget VR headset. If it doesn’t then you’ll still be able to grab one of the other excellent (but not quite as excellent) Quest 2 deals out there. In the US you can get the Oculus Quest 2 (128GB) for $ 249 at Walmart instead of $ 299, while in the UK you can get the Quest 2 (128GB), Elite Strap and case for £249 at Currys, saving you £140. So unless you are absolutely desperate to get a VR headset as soon as possible hold out a few days longer as you might be able to save big.

The best Black Friday Quest 2 deals

Oculus Quest 2 + Amazon Gift Card: was $ 349.99 now $ 249.00 at Amazon
This incredible Black Friday deal on Meta’s Oculus Quest 2 is currently sold out, but it might reappear on November 24 (Black Friday itself). Check this link every so often and worst case you can pick up one of the other great Quest 2 deals on this page.View Deal

Oculus Quest 2 (128GB): was $ 299 now $ 249 at Walmart
Meta’s Oculus Quest 2 was, until recently, our favorite VR headset and this Black Friday you can get it for its lowest-ever price of just $ 249. You’ll then be able to jump into an incredible selection of VR games and apps available on the Quest platform and finally see how much fun VR can be.
You can also find the same deal at Amazon and Best Buy if you’d rather shop somewhere else.View Deal

Meta Quest 2 and £50 gift card: was £349.99 now £249 at Amazon
This deal is sold out at the time of writing but there’s a chance it may return on Black Friday. When November 24 comes around follow this link and see if Amazon has put it live again because this sale hasn’t been beat.View Deal

Oculus Quest 2 (128GB), Elite Strap and case: was £389 now £249 at Currys
Currys’ bundle deal has just got better. Now you’re saving £50 on Meta’s Oculus Quest 2 VR headset and getting the official Elite Strap and a carry case for free. This is one of the best deals we’ve seen this Black Friday, and one you definitely don’t want to miss out on.

Preferred partner (What does this mean?)View Deal

Admittedly, I think you should just ignore all of the Oculus Quest 2 deals, no matter how good they are. 

I love my Quest 2, it’s a super solid VR gadget that doesn’t break the bank. But the Meta Quest 3 is the new kid on the block, and it’s more than worth the added cost. It’s more powerful, offers better graphics, and has full-color mixed reality. If you’re looking for a VR headset, get this one – for the vast, vast majority of people, you don’t need anything else.

Though at $ 499 / £479 it’s twice (or almost twice) as pricey as a Quest 2 while it’s on sale for Black Friday. If you’re on a tight budget the Quest 2 will definitely serve you well, but those of you who can stretch to the Quest 3 should splash out.

Meta Quest 3: $ 499 & get a free game at Amazon
The Meta Quest 3 isn’t currently discounted, and likely won’t be for Black Friday as it’s so new, but you can get a free digital copy of Asgard’s Wrath 2 when it launches later this year.
If you’d rather not shop at Amazon the same offer is available from Walmart, Best Buy, and Target as well as others. View Deal

Meta Quest 3: £479.99 & get a free game at Amazon
The Meta Quest 3 only just launched so it was extremely unlikely it would see much of a discount for Black Friday. There is still a deal on though; if you order the headset before January 27, 2024, and activate it before February 9, 2024, you’ll get Asgard’s Wrath 2 for free when the game releases.
If you’d rather shop elsewhere the same deal is available at Very, Currys, and Game among others. View Deal

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You can now talk to ChatGPT like Siri for free, but it won’t reveal OpenAI’s secrets
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ChatGPT has conveniently distracted us from OpenAI's boardroom drama, which has just seen Sam Altman return to the company as CEO, by making its Voice chat feature available to all free users.

The AI chatbot got its impressively conversational voice powers in September, but this feature was limited to the paid Plus and Enterprise tiers. But now OpenAI, which is looking for a shiny object to take eyes away from its recent meltdown, has made 'ChatGPT with voice' available to all users.

To use it, you just need the latest version of ChatGPT's iOS or Android app. Tap on the headphones icon at the bottom of the screen and you can start quizzing the chatbot about anything you like – as long as your question isn't about recent events, like OpenAI's CEO merry-go-round.

That's because the GPT-3.5 model that's available to free users has only been trained on data going up to January 2022. So when you ask it, for example, 'Why was Sam Altman fired from OpenAI?', it answers that there are “no public reports or indications” of this happening. How convenient.

Still, if you're looking for a voice assistant that's a bit chattier and more knowledgeable than the likes of Apple's Siri, then the ChatGPT voice function is a fun new tool (assuming the service hasn't gone down, like it did at around 2pm PT / 10pm GMT yesterday).

You can choose from five different voices and your chats (but not the audio clips) are saved just like your text-based conversations. It'll also auto-detect languages, though you can also choose this in the Settings menu.

 A Siri replacement?

A phone on a pink background showing ChatGPT's voice feature

(Image credit: Future)

Given it's now possible to use ChatGPT with Siri, the arrival of voice powers on the chatbot's free version is a potentially big deal. That's particularly the case for owners of the iPhone 15 Pro, who can map ChatGPT to the new Action button (by going to Settings > Action Button > Shortcut).

Siri and ChatGPT still have notable differences though. For example, Siri is deeply integrated with the iPhone, allowing it to perform actions like setting timers and controlling your phone's volume.

But ChatGPT's depth of knowledge and more conversational style is arguably better when it comes to general knowledge questions – as long as you're aware of its propensity to hallucinate.

It's certainly a fun, free feature to play with and will no doubt take some of the attention off OpenAI's Succession-like boardroom tussles, which could ultimately have a big impact on how the AI chatbot tussle plays out in 2024.

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Watch out, Google – Bing search now uses AI to hone its results
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Bing, Microsoft's search engine, has been powered up using AI.

Windows Central noticed that Microsoft penned a blog post about the generative AI captions which have been introduced to Bing search.

Normally, when you search for something on Bing, Microsoft’s engine returns results accompanied by a small snippet of text pulled from the page based on relevant key words.

Generative AI captions are different in that they offer a more context-based summary tailored to your search query.

Microsoft explains: “By analyzing a search query, [generative AI] extracts the most pertinent insights from web pages, and skillfully transforms them into highly relevant and easily digestible snippets.”

Every search query will prompt Bing to return a different snippet with the result, so even searching on the same topic, but with changed wording for the query, will mean generative AI (if it’s involved, of course) returning a different summary.

Analysis: A revolution in web search?

For those wary of having their website dealt with in this way, Microsoft further notes that while the generative AI-powered captions “may not mirror the exact wording on the webpage,” Bing employs a whole load of signals to ensure a precise and high-quality summary.

Those who remain unconvinced can opt their website out of generative AI captions if they wish.

Microsoft believes this initiative will “revolutionize the way people explore the web,” so the company is talking a pretty big game on this one.

It’s still early stages for the feature, of course, and a lot will depend on whether that promise of high-quality summaries is consistently realized.

Google isn’t standing still in this area, mind you, and already instigated its own program bringing generative AI to search, highlighting the key points of a web page in a similar vein (and more besides). This has been in testing throughout this year (since May), with it being rolled out much more broadly earlier this month.

AI is pretty much creeping into every area of computing, of course, and web searches will doubtless prove to be a rich avenue to explore.

Thus far, the addition of the Bing chatbot hasn’t helped drive traffic to Bing search, as Microsoft hoped – but perhaps generative AI will have more success in this respect. It’s a hugely uphill struggle against the might of Google, though, which has effectively become a verb meaning to search the web.

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I review VR headsets for a living, and I’ve never seen a better Oculus Quest 2 deal
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Amazon is offering a fantastic Oculus Quest 2 deal that not only scores you the impressive VR headset for $ 51 off, but you’ll also get a $ 50 gift card. It’s one of the best Black Friday deals I’ve seen.

Right now the Meta’s Quest 2 (128GB) model is down to $ 249 at Amazon – instead of its MSRP of £299. But if you act fast the holiday bundle will score you the discount and a free $ 50 Amazon voucher; effectively, this will save you $ 100 on the popular VR headset which we gave four–and–a–half stars in our Oculus Quest 2 review. 

I say you should act fast, because an identical deal was available in the UK for a few days – but it has now sold out. If history repeats itself in the US you don’t have long left to nab yourself one of the best Oculus Quest 2 Black Friday deals this year. 

I've been writing about VR for years and I haven't seen a better deal; so there's no point waiting for something better to come around this Black Friday if you're after a VR headset.

Get the best ever Oculus Quest 2 deal here:

Meta Quest 2 + Amazon Gift Card: was $ 349.99 now $ 249.00 at Amazon
Right now you can save $ 51 on the Meta Quest 2 (128GB) and get a free $ 50 Amazon gift card as well as part of this holiday bundle. I’ve never seen a better Meta Quest 2 deal, and I expect this may sell out before Black Friday, so act fast.View Deal

The only VR headset deal I think you should consider instead of this Oculus Quest 2 offer is the Meta Quest 3 deal that's available everywhere. That is you get the Meta Quest 3 for $ 499 and a free copy of Asgard's Wrath 2.  Alongside Amazon, you can find the same deal at  Walmart, Best Buy, and Target among others.

While this isn't the best deal (the headset is full price) I think the Meta Quest 3 is a massive step up over the Quest 2; that's why I awarded it five stars in our Meta Quest 3 review. Yes, it's pricier, but it's worth the extra cost if you can afford it.

If you are on a tight budget then Meta's Oculus Quest 2 is still fine, and the above deal is a fantastic offer to take advantage of. But if you can afford to splash out on a Meta Quest 3 then I'd strongly suggest doing so.

For more on this topic, check out my guide to whether you should buy an Oculus Quest 2 or Meta Quest 3 this Black Friday.

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Windows 11 fixes this bewildering flaw that’s bugged PC gamers for a decade
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Windows 11 gamers rejoice, get out the party poppers, and crack the champagne open – for you can now specify a drive location to install your purchases from the Microsoft Store.

As you’re likely aware – if you have any truck with the store – if you buy a game, you’re stuck with having to install it on your system drive. Meaning that if you have a secondary drive, there’s no possibility of choosing to put a game on there at installation.

Until now, that is. With version 22310 of the Microsoft Store app, you can now select a drive to install your game, as flagged by a Microsoft engineer on X (formerly Twitter).

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As the engineer further points out, you can even specify an external drive, should you want to.

Analysis: Back to basics

This is a pretty basic option, of course, and one that could be very necessary if you don’t have much space on the main drive where Windows 11 sits. Or you don’t want to clutter that system drive with games, and would prefer to keep those separate from all the serious stuff.

Given that, it’s pretty jaw-dropping that it has taken a decade for Microsoft to make it possible to specify an installation drive and folder. (Yes, the store was first launched way back in 2012, before Windows 10 was even around).

Speaking of Windows 10, it remains to be seen if this upgrade will be visited on the older operating system – but you’d hope so.

Time will tell, as Microsoft has said it isn’t making any further feature updates to Windows 10 – just very minor tweaks (whether this install option counts as that, or not, well, we’ll see). Except, rumor has it, Copilot may be incoming for Windows 10, but perhaps not out of the goodness of Microsoft’s heart (there might be an ulterior motive for that move, if it happens).

Microsoft has been busy making the store better in recent times, as you may have seen, with one improvement of late being to massively speed up the time it takes the app to load.

Via Tom’s Hardware

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