What the leaked AI executive order tells us about the Big Tech power grab
Hello and welcome back to Regulator. It's been a very long two weeks away from your inboxes, but luckily for us, Big Tech and Big Government did not stop fighting. In fact, it's gotten even spicier. Let's get into it.
Last week, I was following up on several rumors that Donald Trump would sign an executive order that would fulfill a longstanding goal of the AI industry: legal preemption that would prevent states from passing their own AI laws. Mostly, I was calling sources trying to get a sense of how the Trump administration planned to approach it: Which agency would be spearheading it? What legal arguments would they use? How would it int …
The best gaming headset I tried this year is $30 off for Black Friday
Earlier this year, I reviewed the Fractal Scape, a wireless gaming headset made for PC (also compatible with Switch 2) that really wowed me. Frankly, I wasn’t expecting much in this debut headset from a company known mostly for making PC cases, but it’s one of the most thoughtfully-designed models that I’ve tried recently.
If you’re in the market for an elegant headset that sounds great and docks to recharge (keeping cable clutter to a minimum on your desk), I suggest checking out the Black Friday special on the Scape. Amazon has the black and gray models available for $169.99, which is $30 off the usual price. Walmart, B&H Photo, and Newegg are also honoring this price.
Fractal Scape gaming headset
Where to Buy:
The Scape doesn’t do it all; it lacks active noise cancellation, it can’t pair via 2.4GHz and Bluetooth simultaneously, and its ear cups don’t swivel. That all would have been nice, but I’m still eager to recommend it for its great sound quality, sharp Scandinavian design, and because its browser-based settings customization is very good. Also, I have a soft spot for its Digital Crown-like knob used for adjusting volume and for pausing or skipping songs. At $170, it’s hard to do better than the Scape.
Character.AI launches Stories for teens after banning them from chats
Character.AI, under threat from several lawsuits over its alleged negative impact on teen mental health, is banning underage users from open-ended chats on its site. Instead, teens will be allowed to use a new “Stories” format that, unlike regular chats, offers “structured” choose-your-own-adventure-style experiences with the AI characters on its platform.
The feature is available to everyone, but Character.AI is pitching it as a way to “enhance” the experience for users under 18. In October, Character.AI announced that it would shut down chats for teens on November 25th while it develops an age assurance feature that will automatically place underage users into “more conservative” AI chats.
Character.AI is currently facing a lawsuit that accuses the AI platform of contributing to a teenager’s death by suicide, along with other cases that claim teens’ conversations with the AI characters on its platform harmed their mental health.
Stories works by allowing users to choose from two or three AI characters, select a genre, and then either write their own premise or use AI to create one for them. Character.AI will then create a “guided narrative” where users can make frequent choices that change the course of the story. The experience also includes AI-generated images, with “richer multimodal elements coming soon.”
You’re buying a Frame TV? It’s okay to cheap out a little
Let's get this out of the way: The Samsung Frame is not a good TV. None of the displays that I'd classify as art TVs are - at least not in the ways that we usually think about TVs. They only get a fraction as bright as comparably priced TVs, picture quality is middling, black level performance is bad (even for an LCD TV), and color accuracy out of the box leaves a lot to be desired. But that's not why people buy art TVs.
Close friends of mine love The Frame on their living room wall and have asked me about Black Friday sales so they can buy another for the bedroom, even after I gave them a list of cheaper TVs that are better at being actual …
ChatGPT and Copilot are being booted out of WhatsApp
OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot are both leaving WhatsApp thanks to upcoming changes to the messaging app’s terms of service that will prohibit using it to distribute AI chatbots not made by Meta.
OpenAI announced its planned departure a few weeks ago, with Microsoft following it this week. Both companies attributed the departures to Meta’s new terms of service for WhatsApp Business Solution, which come into effect on January 15th, 2026, and said the chatbots will remain accessible in WhatsApp until that date. ChatGPT users can link their accounts to WhatsApp to make sure their chat history carries over, though Copilot users won’t have that option.
WhatsApp announced the update to its terms in October, banning AI companies from using its business API as a distribution platform for chatbots. Other companies will still be permitted to use WhatsApp for customer service or support chatbots, with the terms only prohibiting cases where the AI itself is the product — a simple way of stopping Meta’s AI rivals using its own platform to reach customers.
“The purpose of the WhatsApp Business API is to help businesses provide customer support and send relevant updates,” an anonymous Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch at the time. “Our focus is on supporting the tens of thousands of businesses who are building these experiences on WhatsApp.”
The change means that other third-party AI chatbots, including Perplexity, are likely to announce departures from WhatsApp soon, leaving Meta AI the only option available from next January.
First there was nothing, then there was Hoto and Fanttik
Hoto exists because someone got bored.
CEO Lidan Liu, the company's founder and a notable industrial designer, tells The Verge she was tired of advising from her consultancy Designaffairs China. I have to build something on my own, she thought. And back then, she was spending a lot of time in her workshop surrounded by the same old tools.
"The tool industry, it never changes, the products are boring, very masculine and very much designed for professional users," Liu thought. "We can start something new." So she founded iMonkey Technology, which later became Hoto, short for "Home Tools."
She didn't have to build it alone. She knew a cofou …
Poco partners with Bose to put a subwoofer in its latest phone
Xiaomi spin-off brand Poco has partnered with Bose to help its new F8 phones stand out in an increasingly crowded market. Both the F8 Pro and F8 Ultra feature stereo speakers designed collaboratively with the audio company, and the Ultra goes one step further by including a subwoofer too.
Both new F8 phones feature the same dual stereo speakers tuned by Bose, though you’ll have to buy the Ultra if you want the benefits of the subwoofer as well, which Poco says delivers “deeper, more impactful bass.” Additionally, there are two sound profiles tuned by Bose engineers: a Dynamic mode that delivers extra bass, and a Balanced option that emphasizes vocals and a more even soundstage.
“By combining Bose’s expertise in acoustic engineering with Poco’s innovation in design and technology, Poco F8 Series achieves a level of clarity and depth that redefines what’s possible in mobile sound,” said Nick Smith, president of audio technology and chief strategy officer at Bose.
The two phones are otherwise fairly typical affordable flagships. The F8 Ultra has a more powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, with a large 6.9-inch OLED display, triple 50-megapixel rear camera, and wireless charging. The F8 Pro uses last year’s Snapdragon 8 Elite, a smaller 6.59-inch screen, and downgrades to each of the three rear lenses. Both have IP68 ratings though, plus batteries bigger than 6,000mAh, which should deliver decent longevity.
The F8 Pro starts from $579, while the Ultra is available from $729, though a $50 early bird discount is available at launch. The two phones were announced alongside a pair of sub-$400 tablets, the Pad X1 and Pad M1, both of which lean on high resolution displays and Dolby Atmos speakers to serve as good value entertainment options.
Uber’s robotaxi service in UAE now includes fully driverless vehicles
Uber and WeRide are now deploying fully driverless vehicles as part of its robotaxi service in the United Arab Emarites. Customers in Abu Dhabi who request an UberX or Uber Comfort may be matched with a fully autonomous WeRide vehicle if the route is part of the company’s service area.
Uber and Chinese autonomous vehicle operator WeRide first launched their robotaxi service with safety drivers back in December 2024. At the time, the companies they anticipated pulling safety drivers out of the vehicles the following year.
Initially, the fully autonomous vehicles will only be available in select locations throughout the 12 square miles of Yas Island, a popular tourist destination in Abu Dhabi. Uber and WeRide say they will expand its fully driverless territory in the future. Customers interested in riding in a driverless car can select the “Autonomous” option in the Uber app for a better chance of being matched.
The vehicles are WeRide’s GXR equipped with over 20 sensors and cameras, and can seat up to five passengers. The GXR is based on Geely’s Farizon SuperVan, which is also being used as a WeRide robotaxi in Beijing. Similar to Uber’s partnership with Waymo in the US, the ridehailing company oversees fleet operations for WeRide’s robotaxis in collaboration with taxi operator Tawasul Transport. This includes vehicle cleaning, maintenance, inspections, charging, and depot management. WeRide remains responsible for vehicle testing and sensor calibration.
In addition to its service in the UAE, Uber and WeRide have said they plan on launching in an additional 15 cities over the next five years, including some cities in Europe. Uber has been on an absolute streak of partnering with new AV companies over the past few years as it seeks to become a one-stop shop for robot cars and robot delivery of any brand (except Tesla, for now).
Qualcomm reveals its not-so-elite Snapdragon 8 Gen 5
When Qualcomm announced its high-end Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset in November, it mentioned that a non-Elite version was on the way, designed to power a more affordable tier of flagship phones. Now, that chip has finally arrived, with some drops in performance but the same core feature set.
Qualcomm compares the 8 Gen 5 to 2023’s 8 Gen 3, boasting a 36 percent improvement in CPU performance and 11 percent improvement in GPU performance compared to that chip, along with efficiency improvements. But since the 8 Gen 3 is two years old, and Qualcomm has changed CPU architecture in the meantime, the recent 8 Elite Gen 5 is a more useful comparison.
The 8 Gen 5 has a similar Oryon CPU structure to the Elite, but at slower clock speeds — its six performance cores cap at 3.32GHz, with its two prime cores at 3.8GHz, compared to 3.62GHz and 4.6GHz respectively in the Elite. On paper, that also sets its performance below last year’s Snapdragon 8 Elite, though we’ll have to wait to see how actual smartphones compare in practice.
There are a few other downgrades from the new Elite. The regular Gen 5’s X80 modem has slightly slower peak 5G speeds, though Bluetooth and Wi-Fi performance should be the same, and both satellite and ultra wideband (UWB) are supported. It also has slightly downgraded specs on its Adreno GPU and Hexagon AI NPU, though Qualcomm has gone into less detail on the exact comparisons there, and it can’t use the latest UFS 4.1 storage. But other specs are identical across the two chipsets, including charging capabilities, display support, and the vast majority of the camera hardware options.
Qualcomm says that several manufacturers, including Motorola, OnePlus, and Vivo, have already agreed to use the chip in new phones, with devices due to appear “in the coming weeks.” OnePlus has announced that it will be the first to do so, featuring the new chipset in the OnePlus 15R, which will launch in the US on December 17th.
Update, November 26th: Added confirmation that the OnePlus 15R will use the 8 Gen 5.
Campbell’s promises its soups are not made with 3D printed meat
Campbell’s is insisting that its soups aren’t made with 3D-printed chicken, lab-grown chicken, or bioengineered meat. The food giant issued the explanation on its website after leaked audio allegedly captured Campbell’s vice president of information technology saying the company’s meat “came from a 3D printer.”
“A recent video contained false comments about our ingredients,” Campbell’s writes. “The comments heard on the recording about our food are not only inaccurate, they are absurd. We do not use lab-grown chicken or any form of artificial or bioengineered meat in our soups.” It adds that the company only uses chicken from “reputable” suppliers in the US that meet USDA standards.
The audio was released as part of a lawsuit filed against Campbell’s by a former employee, who claims to have recorded a conversation with IT VP Martin Bally. During the conversation, the person purported to be Bally makes racist remarks, while calling Campbell’s food “bioengineered” and for “poor people.”
“Even in a can of soup, I look at it — and look at bioengineered meat,” the person in the recording says. “I don’t want to eat a fucking piece of chicken that came from a 3D printer, do you?”
3D-printed chicken isn’t entirely something out of a sci-fi movie. KFC, which has had to deal with its own chicken-related conspiracies, said it was working with a Russian firm in 2020 to develop a way to “print” lab-grown chicken nuggets using chicken cells and plant material.
Campbell’s has put Bally on leave while it investigates the alleged comments. “Keep in mind, the alleged comments heard on the audio were made by a person in IT, who has nothing to do with how we make our food,” Campbell’s says.