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Banijay is launching the Black Mirror Experience, starting with Montreal in May with additional locations to be announced in the future. Specifically, it will be produced by Banijay Live Studio, the new subsidiary of the production company that owns Black Mirror, in partnership with VR firm Univrse. The studio describes it as an interactive virtual reality experience that blends “physical space and VR… designed to blur the lines of fiction and reality in which you become the main character.” While it is based on the hit TV show, you apparently don’t need any prior knowledge of the series to be able to enjoy it. The experience, which will span 60 minutes, can accommodate one person and groups of up to six people. Players 12-years-old and above are welcome to participate. It puts the players in the showroom of a fictional tech giant called Phaethon that’s unveiling the LifeAgent, a robotic AI companion that’s supposed to make their owners’ life easier. LifeAgent does a full-body scan of its owner so it would know their needs before they do. But in true Black Mirror fashion, “once it sees through [their] eyes, it knows exactly how to help… whether [they] asked it to or not.” You can take part in the event at Infinity Experiences in Montreal, where you’ll be able to play it in French, English and Spanish.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/an-immersive-black-mirror-experience-is-launching-in-montreal-115915992.html?src=rss

WWDC 2026, the latest version of Apple's yearly developer conference, runs from June 8-12, and by all appearances the company has some important updates to outline. In comparison to Liquid Glass, the design material Apple introduced last year and now uses across all its operating systems, the new features the company is rumored to announce might not be aesthetic, but they could make just as big of a splash. Namely because Apple might finally be ready to show off its second stab at an overhauled version of Siri.If you're curious to see the company's new plans for yourself, you can watch Apple's WWDC 2026 keynote live on its website, YouTube channel or the Apple Developer Bilibili channel in China. Apple will also host its Platforms State of the Union stream and individual developer workshops on its developer website if you want to learn even more details about the software updates the company will release later this year. Luckily, we do have some sense of what Apple has in store, and it looks like stability improvements and AI are the company's big focuses for the updates coming to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, visionOS and tvOS this fall.A Snow Leopard-esque approach to stability and performanceApple released Mac OS X Snow Leopard in 2009, primarily as a way to clean up the performance and refine the new features the company released with Mac OS X Leopard two years prior. The decision to essentially "take a year off" to focus on making everything about the company's desktop operating system feel better was well-received, and Apple is apparently planning to have iOS 27 serve a similar role.Bloomberg reports that Apple's upcoming update will be "focused on improving the software’s quality and underlying performance" and that the company's "engineering teams are now combing through Apple's operating systems, hunting for bloat to cut, bugs to eliminate and any opportunity to meaningfully boost performance and overall quality." Those fixes will presumably extend to the company's other operating systems, too.Some of this effort may also be focused on cleaning up the visual changes introduced in Apple's big switch to Liquid Glass. The design overhaul has been controversial among the company's diehard fans, and Apple has already introduced tweaks in updates that arrived after the release of iOS 26 to make Liquid Glass interfaces more legible. Bloomberg reports the company could go a step further in its next updates and add a system-wide slider that will allow users to adjust the intensity of Liquid Glass (visual effects like translucency and reflectivity) they want in the interface.The chatbot-ification of SiriWhile stability and performance improvements will be a major focus of this year's updates, Apple is also rumored to be making some major changes to Siri. When the company first introduced Apple Intelligence at WWDC 2024, it promised to launch an updated version of the voice assistant that could use your personal context (like the information securely stored on your iPhone) to act across apps. Apple delayed those features in March 2025 and then announced a partnership with Google in January 2026 to use Gemini models to presumably make them possible. Those features might finally arrive in this year's updates, but Apple is reportedly also changing how users interact with Siri by making the assistant more like a chatbot, according to Bloomberg. This would make the assistant more interactive and natural to speak to, and could open up other possibilities, like letting users direct Siri to perform two actions at the same time. Developers will reportedly also be able to integrate their own AI assistants with Siri, much like OpenAI has with ChatGPT.New places to talk to AIThe chatbot version of Siri will be accessible in the usual ways, but also reportedly through a standalone Siri app. The new app will let users prompt the assistant to take care of tasks on their device, search the web and even access news, not unlike current Gemini and ChatGPT apps. Bloomberg writes that the app will also be a way to review past conversations with Siri and receive suggestions of prompts to try with the new chatbot version of the assistant.Users will also be able to interact with Siri inside Apple's other apps via a new feature called "Ask Siri." This may appear as an option in app menus, and allow you to ask the AI assistant questions about content in the app. It's not clear if this will be as in-depth or capable as Google's Ask Maps or Ask Photos features, but it at least seems like Apple's thinking along the same lines as its partner.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/what-to-expect-from-wwdc-2026-110000086.html?src=rss

Salesforce has unveiled the newest version of Slack, which comes with a whole host of new AI features to add to its ever-growing catalog. Naturally, many of these tools are embedded into Slackbot, which the company had already pledged to turn into a “personalized AI companion.” The new features include the stuff you’d expect, such as transcription, note taking and deep research, as well as integrations with the rest of the Salesforce family. But it’ll also get “reusable skills,” which sound a lot like automations, where a team can define a task from start to finish, and then the bot will run it whenever it’s called for.
In fact, there’s a big focus on sharing and co-developing tools within organizations, so if you find a prompt that actually gets useful data out of Slackbot, you can share that with your team. And Slackbot will now analyze how you work as it attempts to discern your preferences, workflows and shortcuts. Which, if you read it in one way, sounds as if it’s actively looking to work out how to do your job so it can just replace you. Of course, that probably won’t happen, right? Right?
Salesforce is also using these new Slack tools as a way to gently upsell small businesses toward its bigger products. New Slackbot is equipped with “native customer management,” reading your channels, learning what goes on, and keeping your “deals, contacts and call notes up to date automatically.” In its release, it even says that growing firms can “start simple inside Slack, scale up to Salesforce when ready.” Similarly, every Salesforce customer will now be getting Slack bundled in, to help ensure all of your relationships and work remain in the same place under Slackbot’s helpful eye.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/slacks-upgraded-ai-can-analyze-how-you-work-103007261.html?src=rss

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority is once more turning its lens on Microsoft. The tech company will be the focus of an investigation by the regulator to see if it can be assigned strategic market status (SMS). The CMA already has "a major concern" with Microsoft's alleged limiting of competition in the cloud space via productivity software like Word and Excel, chat app Teams, AI companion Copilot and even Windows itself. The SMS designation "would allow the CMA to act" against the company. The investigation will begin in May.In addition, the UK regulator is also following up on an inquiry into Microsoft and Amazon from 2025, where it sought to exert more control over the domestic cloud services market. As a result of that action, the CMA said Amazon and Microsoft have agreed to a plan involving egress fees and interoperability around cloud services. "These changes will reduce expense and effort for UK customers when using more than one cloud provider," the CMA bulletin states.The CMA has frequently had Microsoft in its sights. The company sparked an investigation in 2023 for its relationship with OpenAI and in 2024 for its actions hiring staff from Inflection AI.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/the-uks-antitrust-regulator-is-looking-into-microsofts-possible-monopoly-power-182221704.html?src=rss

Meta has agreed to "substantially reduce” its use of the PG-13 ratings system in relation to its Teen Accounts on Instagram starting April 15.
Last year, the Motion Picture Association objected to Meta directly referencing its movie content rating, which cautions parents against letting their pre-teens engage with certain media. In a cease-and-desist letter seen by The Wall Street Journal at the time, the MPA said that Meta claiming its teen accounts were comparable to PG-13 ratings was "literally false and highly misleading."
The MPA argued that its guidelines for the established movie-ratings system and Meta’s own explanation of the revamped accounts for minors did not align, and that drawing a link could have a detrimental effect on the MPA’s public image by association. It also said that Meta’s system seemingly relies heavily on AI to determine what younger users see on the social media platform.
When introducing the changes in 2025, Meta said that the risk of seeing "suggestive content" or hearing certain language in a movie rated 13+ was a good way of framing something similar happening on an Instagram teen account. It added that it was doing all it could to keep such instances to a minimum. 
Meta has now updated that initial blog post about the changes after coming to an agreement with the MPA, adding a lengthy disclaimer that reads, in part, "there are lots of differences between social media and movies. We didn’t work with the MPA when updating our content settings, they’re not rating any content on Instagram, and they’re not endorsing or approving our content settings in any way."
Meta goes on to explain that it drew "inspiration" from the MPA guidance given its familiarity with parents, as well as feedback it had received from parents, and will continue to do so. The difference is that it won’t make the connection so explicitly in its communications going forward.
"Today’s agreement clearly distinguishes the MPA’s film ratings from Instagram’s Teen Account content moderation tools," said Charles Rivkin, Chairman and CEO of the MPA. "While we welcome efforts to protect kids from content that may not be appropriate for them, this agreement helps ensure that parents do not conflate the two systems – which operate in very different contexts. The MPA is proud of the trust we have built with parents for nearly sixty years with our film rating system, and we will continue to do everything we can to protect that trust."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-will-substantially-reduce-describing-instagram-teen-accounts-as-pg-13-175912683.html?src=rss

Adults of a certain age will no doubt remember The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, a cartoon from 1989 that starred our favorite sibling plumbers decades before they would take over multiplexes with an animated film franchise. The broadcast channel MeTV Toons has begun airing old episodes of the show, likely to trade on the buzz emanating from the pending theatrical release of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. There's just one problem. The episodes seem to have been sloppified by an AI upscaling algorithm, according to a report by Kotaku.
The Super Mario Super Show has started airing on MEtv using some kind of AI upscaling ,and the results are as good as you'd expect pic.twitter.com/WrdFbOe2iW— Super Mario Wiki (@SMWikiOfficial) March 31, 2026

The original series wasn't exactly a visual delight. It was a cash grab cartoon from the 1980s. However, it looks even worse now. MeTV seems to have run the footage through a bargain bin AI upscaler and the results are, in a word, weird.
Everything looks smoothed over in an off-putting way, with some characters looking markedly different from the original footage. Many of the episodes are available on YouTube, so it's easy to do your own comparisons.
The upscaler also seems to have changed the title card to "The Suele Mario Bros. Super Show." These AI tools have never been great with visual representations of written text, but you'd think someone at the station would have given things a look over. Engadget has reached out to MeTV to ask what happened and we'll update this post when we find out.

For the uninitiated, The Super Mario Bros. Super Show ran for just a single season. But this was 1989, so a full 65 episodes aired throughout the year. Seasons didn't mess around back then. It was famous for its live-action segments that starred professional wrestler "Captain" Lou Albano as Mario. It also turned into a Legend of Zelda cartoon every Friday. There's where the famous "well, excuse me princess" meme comes from.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/the-super-mario-bros-cartoon-is-back-but-looks-really-weird-thanks-to-ai-171536332.html?src=rss

The Roblox-like VR title Rec Room is shutting down after operating for a decade. The free-to-play social game is closing its doors because the developers "never quite figured out" how to make it profitable, despite attracting 150 million players.
"We spent a long time trying to find a way to make the numbers work," the team wrote in a blog post. "But with the recent shift in the VR market, along with broader headwinds in gaming, the path to profitability has gotten tough enough that we’ve made the difficult decision to shut things down."

The shut down officially happens on June 1, but the platform is already making serious changes. Starting today, users will no longer be able to make friends, create new accounts or subscribe to the premium service. However, many features locked behind that subscription paywall will be free from now until June.
The devs are also allowing users to download some of the assets connected to rooms they created. This could, in theory, let them port their creations to other platforms in the future. Snapchat owner Snap has already bought up a bunch of Rec Room's assets and some employees will join the social media company, according to a report by GeekWire.

Rec Room first appeared all the way back in 2016, years before the standalone Meta Quest entered the VR scene. It was a massive hit on the PSVR platform before being ported to other hardware. There's even a traditional version of the game available for non-VR platforms. Just like Roblox, it lets folks design their own spaces to hang out in.
VR is in a tough spot right now. Meta was an industry leader, but the company has been laying off hundreds of people from its Reality Labs division. This is the team that makes VR/AR hardware and software. It's been reported that, instead, the company has been funneling more money into ongoing AI efforts. Sony's PSVR2 was also not a gigantic hit.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/rec-room-a-roblox-style-vr-game-is-shutting-down-154350384.html?src=rss

Another day, another announcement of game industry job cuts. The latest restructuring is happening at Eidos Montreal, which stated that 124 people are being laid off. As with so many similar cuts, the studio's LinkedIn post credited the downsizing to "a result of changing project needs and impacts across production and support teams." The company is also parting ways with its studio head, David Anfossi. Eidos Montreal has worked on titles within the Deus Ex and Tomb Raider franchises, as well as Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy and Marvel's Avengers games. It is one of the many companies owned by Embracer Group, which snapped up a bunch of studios but has been stuck in a downsizing in a loop following an expensive restructuring of its own gaming empire during 2023 and 2024. That activity reportedly included axing a planned new Deus Ex game that Eidos Montreal was working on.The post from Eidos Montreal didn't specify what projects it is currently active on, although it has said it is involved with the upcoming Grounded 2 from Obsidian Entertainment and the reimagined Fable from Playground Games.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/deus-ex-game-studio-eidos-montreal-cuts-124-jobs-205057796.html?src=rss