Would you like Siri more if it had a face? This week on The Vergecast, we’re talking about AI assistants getting smarter… and uncomfortably personal. The Verge’s Jennifer Pattison Tuohy joins the show to talk about her early tests of Alexa Plus, which is finally AI-powered and a lot more capable. Jake shares his uncomfortable first interaction with Grok’s anime girlfriend. And Waveform cohost David Imel is here to talk about Sony’s RX1R III and other premium “compact” cameras.

Finally, the THUNDER ROUND is back. New, improved, and still loud.

Further reading:

• 24 hours with Alexa Plus: we cooked, we chatted, and it kinda lied to me
• Alexa Plus launches to “small number” of people More than a million people now have Alexa Plus
• Elon Musk’s AI bot adds a ridiculous anime companion with ‘NSFW’ mode
• I spent 24 hours flirting with Elon Musk’s AI girlfriend
• System prompt dump of xAI / Grok’s new AI anime girlfriend
• Elon Musk teases AI anime boyfriend based on Edward Cullen
• “We will, of course, have another character inspired by Mr. Darcy”
• xAI has open roles for building AI “waifus.”
• US government announces $200 million Grok contract a week after ‘MechaHitler’ incident
• Grok will no longer call itself Hitler or base its opinions on Elon Musk’s, promises xAI
• Sony’s pocket-sized RX1R camera returns with its first update in 10 years
• Original RX1R 
• RX1R II
• Google exec: ‘We’re going to be combining ChromeOS and Android’
• Our biggest questions about ChromeOS and Android merging
•  Ikea goes all in on Matter/Thread
• Eric Migicovsky 
• Texts.com
• Google Nest subscription
• The next batch of emoji includes Bigfoot

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Email us at vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you.

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