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All of the updates from Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s battle over OpenAI

Graphic photo collage of Sam Altman and Elon Musk.

Sam Altman and Elon Musk are facing off in a high-stakes trial that could alter the future of OpenAI and its most well-known product, ChatGPT. In 2024, Musk filed a lawsuit accusing OpenAI of abandoning its founding mission of developing AI to benefit humanity and shifting focus to boosting profits instead.

After nearly a month, with the trial featuring testimony from Musk, Altman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman, former OpenAI board member and mother of several of Musk’s children Shivon Zilis, and a few others, the jury deliberated for a couple of hours before returning to the “room full of untrustworthy, unreliable people all fighting with each other” with a verdict, deciding to dismiss all charges due to the statute of limitations.

A stylized illustration including both Elon Musk and Sam Altman

Musk was a cofounder of OpenAI and claims that Altman and Brockman tricked him into giving the company money, only to turn their backs on their original goal. However, OpenAI claimed that “This lawsuit has always been a baseless and jealous bid to derail a competitor” in a bid to boost Musk’s own SpaceX / xAI / X companies that have launched Grok as a competitor to ChatGPT.

In his lawsuit, Musk asked for the removal of Altman and Brockman, and for OpenAI to stop operating as a public benefit corporation.

People to Know

Plaintiff

Elon Musk — plaintiff, OpenAI cofounder and now CEO of rival xAI

Steven Molo — lead counsel for the plaintiff

Jared Birchall — manager of Musk’s family office

Shivon Zilis — former OpenAI board member who shares multiple children with Musk

Defendant

Sam Altman — defendant, CEO of OpenAI 

William Savitt — lead counsel for the defendant

Greg Brockman — president of OpenAI as well as a cofounder 

Ilya Sutskever — former chief scientist at OpenAI and a cofounder

Judge

Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers — aka YGR, trial judge

Here’s all the latest on the trial between Musk and Altman:

Firefox is working on a rounded redesign with easy-to-find controls for privacy and AI

Screenshots of the Firefox browser with its Project Nova redesign

Firefox is getting a drastic visual overhaul with a redesigned Settings section that will make it easier to find and use privacy settings, including the switch for turning off all present and future AI features. Mozilla calls the redesign "Project Nova" and plans to begin rolling it out later this year. It features rounded UI elements throughout, including bubble-like tabs, along with a refreshed, fire-inspired color palette. Mozilla says it's also updating icons so they're more visually consistent across light and dark themes.

A screenshot of the Firefox toolbar with the new Project Nova design A screenshot of Firefox 151 with a default new tab page

Firefox's AI features and models aren't downloaded to your computer unless you choose to use them, e …

Read the full story at The Verge.

In desperate times, graduates find hope in humiliating tech CEOs

University graduates are booing and heckling corporate executives who praise AI during their commencement ceremonies, and the only people who seem to be genuinely surprised by this are the executives themselves.

In a procession of viral videos, 2026 commencement speakers like former Google CEO Eric Schmidt face loud and sustained jeers from students after praising AI and describing the technology as both inevitable and mandatory. The videos have clearly struck a chord among young people entering a bleak job market in an increasingly unstable world.

"They deserve everything they're getting," Penny Oliver, who recently graduated with a poli …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Who gets to own the Luigi Mangione story?

Luigi Mangione, accused of the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, attends a court hearing on May 18, 2026. | POOL/AFP via Getty Images

On Monday morning, a judge overseeing the New York state case on the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO ruled that some evidence collected by police could not be shown to a jury.

It wasn't the only news coming out of the hearing. Outside the courthouse, Molly Crane-Newman, a New York Daily News reporter, captured on video several attendees giving incendiary remarks to the press. One of the attendees, Lena Weissbrot, said the children of Brian Thompson, who was shot and killed in December 2024, were "better off without him" and that they "needed to learn to not be like their dad." Another attendee who identified themselves only as Ashley c …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Philips’ new display has a screen on both sides

Two people at a front desk look at one side of a monitor while an employee looks at the other.
Front desk staff will no longer have to turn their displays to show customers or clients. | Image: Philips

Its name might be dull and uninspired, but the Philips 24B2D5300 Business Monitor brings a novel feature I've never seen on a display before: screens on either side. The design will primarily benefit people who are constantly angling their computer screen so those on both sides of a desk can see it, like a car salesperson walking a buyer through configuration options or a doctor conferring with a patient. But there are some potential co-working applications, too.

Starting next month, the dual-sided monitor will be released in parts of Europe for £359.99 (around $484), according to Digital Camera World. It's currently listed on both the UK a …

Read the full story at The Verge.

One of Meta’s big legal reckonings just ended in a settlement

Mark Zuckerberg wearing sunglasses leaving a court house in a black SUV.

After back-to-back losses in trials grappling with its impact on teens' mental health, Meta just settled what was supposed to be its next legal battle with Kentucky's Breathitt County School District. Google's YouTube, Snap, and TikTok all recently settled similar claims brought by the school district, which was seeking payment from the companies to cover the cost of combatting social media-related mental health harms.

The trial had been set to begin in June as the first bellwether trial of the federal multidistrict litigation (MDL) cases, which include claims from school districts, state attorneys general, and individuals against the soci …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Bungie gives up on Destiny

Bungie is moving on from Destiny 2. The studio announced Thursday that it's releasing the last major update for the game on June 9th as its focus "turns towards a new beginning for Bungie." After that final update, the game will remain playable, much like the first Destiny.

"Many changes in this final update will aim to ensure that Destiny 2 is a welcoming place for players to return to," Bungie says.

The announcement post has a lot of information about what will be added to this final update, and up to and shortly after launch, Bungie will share more details about the changes. But after that, its weekly blog entries will "be entering a …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Sonos’s pint-sized Roam 2 speaker is 25 percent off for Memorial Day

A marketing image of three Sonos Roam 2 speakers.
The Sonos Roam 2 is about the size of a small water bottle and comes in multiple colors. | Image: Sonos

If your summer plans involve spending any time outdoors, whether on the trail or at a pool party, a good portable Bluetooth speaker can go a long way. The latest Sonos Roam is built precisely for those moments, and right now, it’s on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart for $134 ($45 off) for Memorial Day, matching its lowest price to date.

The second-gen Roam builds on what made the original such an impressive Bluetooth speaker for its size. Most notably, it’s much easier to use right out of the box. Unlike the first-gen model, which required you to set it up using the Sonos app over Wi-Fi before you could start listening to music, the newer version lets you pair it over Bluetooth immediately. It now also sports a dedicated Bluetooth pairing button on the back, making it easier to connect to various Bluetooth devices than the OG model, which relied on a single, multi-use button.

Otherwise, though, the Sonos Roam 2 is very similar to the original model. The lightweight speaker stands 6.61 inches tall and is roughly the size of a small water bottle, so it’s easy to toss in a backpack. It’s also IP67-rated for dust and water resistance and lasts 10 hours on a single charge, which should be enough for an afternoon at the pool or park.

Just as importantly, it sounds great. The second-gen model delivers the same clear sound as the original, with the ability to automatically adjust to your surroundings using Sonos’s Trueplay feature. You can also easily switch between listening to the Roam 2 and other Sonos speakers, too, or even stream audio from a Bluetooth-connected device across the rest of your Sonos system. Its tiny size means you’re not going to get the kind of rich bass you’d get from a dedicated party speaker or the new Sonos Play, but you can pair it with another Roam over Wi-Fi for more robust, stereo sound. 


Other Memorial Day Sonos deals

Sonos Move 2

With double the battery life of its predecessor and better-sounding stereo audio, the Sonos Move 2’s improvements don’t stop there. It supports line-in audio, can stream Bluetooth audio to other Sonos speakers, and more. Read our review.
A photo of the Sonos Move 2 portable speaker.

Where to Buy:

Sonos Era 100

The Era 100 is Sonos’s most affordable in-home smart speaker. Offering pleasant sound at a relatively compact size, it improves upon the prior Sonos One with stereo audio, line-in support, and Bluetooth support. Read our review.
A photo of the Sonos Era 100 speaker in a kitchen setting beside an iPad and toaster.

Where to Buy:

This AI guitar pedal let me roll my own effects

Two Polyend Endless pedals with different effects “Plates” on them: ARP and Endless Delay.
You can buy physical plates to pair with your AI effects. | Photo: Terrence O’Brien / The Verge

I'm not sure anyone was really asking for an AI guitar pedal. But it was inevitable that someone would build one. One of the first to take the plunge is Polyend, a well-respected music gear maker with a reputation for building niche, idiosyncratic devices. The company has built grooveboxes around old-school trackers and a multi-effect pedal that you can step sequence. So there was at least some hope that if anyone could do an AI effect pedal right, it would be Polyend.

Polyend's Endless is a $299 programmable guitar pedal running an ARM processor. It's paired with Playground, a number of interconnected AI agents that turn any text prompt i …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Uber is deploying its own self-driving cars again, just not as robotaxis

Uber’s Hyundai Ioniq 5
The project is starting small with just one Hyundai Ioniq 5, though Uber says its not wedded to that model. | Image: Balaji Krishnamurthy / X

Uber is putting its own autonomous vehicles back on the road as part of its new AV Lab project to collect data for its dozens of robotaxi partners. The cars will be fitted with all the sensors typical of self-driving cars, like cameras, lidar, and radar. But notably the vehicles will not be operating as robotaxis, just gathering data for Uber's dozens of robotaxi partners.

That's an important distinction, especially if you know anything about Uber's fraught history with self-driving cars. Uber sold off its AV division in 2020 after one of its self-driving cars killed a woman in Tempe, Arizona. Since then, the company has formed partnership …

Read the full story at The Verge.