Technologies

Amazon Has a Real-World Fitting Room, and It Makes Me Want to Shop

Commentary: Amazon’s concept clothing store eliminates a lot of the awkwardness of shopping.

I hate shopping for clothes. Shopping online means never really knowing if that shirt or those pants will fit. But going into the store means, well, physically going to a mall. It also means awkward moments in a fitting room where I need to get the attention of a clerk to bring me a different size or color. Often I don’t even bother, and I often go years between buying new pants.

Yet here I was at the Americana at Brand in Glendale, California, the weekend before Christmas, doing a bit of last-minute holiday shopping with my family. Mostly out of curiosity and some cynicism, I stepped inside Amazon Style, the online retail giant’s concept clothing store, and actually found myself having a fun time.

By merging its online shopping experience with a revamped, high-tech fitting room, it made me actually want to spend more time looking at clothes. For once, I didn’t feel the awkwardness or rushed anxiety that comes with trying things on in a changing room. This store is just one of two in the world (the other being in Columbus, Ohio), but I hope this is less an experiment and more the way all retailers start to think about their clothes shopping experience.

Amazon’s forays in the brick-and-mortar world have been varied and, at times, puzzling. There are the fully automated Amazon Go stores, where you grab an item and are automatically charged when you leave. Amazon also has its own supermarket concept which sits alongside its chain of Whole Foods Markets. Then there were the bookstores and pop-up shops, which the company shuttered this year.

Amazon declined to comment on its future plans for the Amazon Style store.

Like Amazon’s other stores, the key to the experience lies in its shopping app. At first glance, Amazon Style looks like any other clothing shop, with a few knick-knacks in the front and sections for men and women’s clothing.

But upon closer inspection, there are some subtle differences. Each article of clothing appears once – there are no different sizes. The prices are the same as what you’d pay online, although there are discounts if you spend more. Flanking one side of the store are a row of fitting rooms – with more rooms taking up the entire second floor.

It’s those fitting rooms where Amazon Style really sets itself apart. Rather than randomly find an empty room, I use the app to scan a few articles of clothing that I want to try, and tell it that I want to «start a room.» An employee then gathered the selections and put them in a fitting room. After about seven minutes, the app notified me that one was ready and directed me to a specific fitting room number, which I unlocked using my app.

Once inside, I saw the various shirts and jackets I scanned hanging on a rack or neatly folded on top of the shelf below. In addition, there were a few extra items added based on what Amazon thought I might like. Curiously, there was a Calvin Klein shirt on top of the pile, a «sponsored item» that was essentially a pop-up ad come to life (I didn’t bother to try it on).

On the wall to my right was a large touchscreen that displayed my selections and offered recommendations for other items I might like. I could also request different sizes and styles and have them delivered to my fitting room.

Rather than have a store clerk knock on my door and hand me the clothes, the items are delivered through the closet to the right of the clothes rack. It takes a few minutes, but when the items are ready, the closet door locks and a red light flashes. Inside, the back of the closet opens up, allowing an Amazon Style employee to hang the new clothes. Once the red light goes off, I open the door and there they are.

The touchscreen and the fitting room take the best parts of the physical shopping experience and the online and mash them into an effective hybrid. It’s so simple, yet removes so much of the hassle from the shopping experience. I came into the store on a whim, but left with a white Adidas jumper.

It actually has me looking forward to the next time I need a new pair of pants. Maybe in 2024?

Technologies

AI Notification Summaries Come Back to iPhone News Apps, but With a Warning

Apple disabled these summaries for most of 2025.

Apple brought AI notification summaries for news and entertainment apps back to Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhones when the company released iOS 26 in September. Apple disabled these summaries in early 2025 after the BBC pointed out in December 2024 that the feature twisted the media organization’s notifications and displayed inaccurate information.

What’s different now about these summaries is that your device’s settings warn you that the summaries might be inaccurate. Your device will also note that you should verify the information in these summaries, and the best way I can think of to do this is to tap into the notification and read the story. This might defeat the purpose of the summaries for some people, but it could also ensure people read past a headline.

Here’s what to know about those AI summaries and the new warning.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

iOS 26 warns about summary inaccuracies

When I updated to iOS 26, I was greeted by some splash screens asking for various permissions. One splash screen was for the AI notification summaries. When you see this screen, you have two options: Choose Notifications to Summarize or Not Now. If you tap Not Now, the splash screen goes away.

If you tap Choose Notifications to Summarize, you’re taken to a new page where you’ll see three categories: News & Entertainment, Communication & Social and All Other Apps. Tapping one of these categories allows notification summaries for apps in that category. Beneath the News & Entertainment category, there’s a warning that gets outlined in red if you tap it.

«Summarization may change the meaning of the original headline,» the warning reads, adding, «Verify information.»

There’s also a warning across the bottom of the screen that reads, «This is a beta feature. Summaries may contain errors.»

After tapping the categories you want, tap Summarize Selected Notifications across the bottom of your screen. If you selected all the categories, this button will read Summarize All Notifications.

And if you don’t want these summaries, you can tap Do Not Summarize Notifications. If you allow these summaries and don’t like them, you can easily turn them off. Here’s how.

How to turn off AI notification summaries

1. Tap Settings.
2. Tap Notifications.
3. Tap Summarize Notifications.

4. Tap the Summarize Notifications toggle in the new menu.

You can also follow the above steps to turn AI notification summaries back on. You’ll have to select which categories you want these summaries for again, too.

For more iOS news, here’s what to know about iOS 26.2 and what was included in iOS 26.1. You can also check out our iOS 26 cheat sheet for other tips and tricks.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for Jan. 7, #471

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for Jan. 7, No. 471.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition is a bit tricky. The blue category was a real stumper for me, though I found the purple group easy today for a change. If you’re struggling with today’s puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: On the ice.

Green group hint: Run and jump.

Blue group hint: Baseball bosses.

Purple group hint: Golden State schools.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: NHL teams with singular nicknames

Green group: A bit of track and field equipment.

Blue group: MLB managers.

Purple group: Mascots for University of California schools in the singular.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is NHL teams with singular nicknames. The four answers are Avalanche, Kraken, Lightning and Mammoth.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is a bit of track and field equipment. The four answers are baton, hurdle, javelin and pole.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is MLB managers. The four answers are Cash, Counsell, Marmol and Vogt.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is mascots for University of California schools, in the singular. The four answers are Banana Slug, Bruin, Gaucho and Golden Bear.

Technologies

Yes, This Swimming RoboTurtle Is Adorable. It Also Has an Important Environmental Mission

Beatbot is best known for making pool-cleaning robots, but it was its swimming robot turtle that won our hearts at CES 2026.

Few things in life have made me feel more privileged and awestruck than the opportunity to swim with sea turtles in their natural environment. The way in which these gentle creatures navigate through their underwater world with their deliberate and careful fin strokes is utterly mesmerizing to watch.

It’s a distinctive style of movement — so much so that when I saw Beatbot’s RoboTurtle swim across a water tank on the show floor at CES 2026, I knew that this wasn’t simply just a pool cleaner robot with turtle features tacked on. This was a studied example of biomimicry in action.

The reason for this is that the company’s engineers went on a two-month expedition to study sea turtles in their natural environment, Beatbot’s Eduardo Campo told me as we watched Turtini (the team’s affectionate nickname for RoboTurtle) splash around in its pool. «We did a lot of motion capture, like the things they use in movies, because we need to develop those joints that it has,» he said.

This isn’t RoboTurtle’s first time at CES — it also appeared in 2025 as a static concept. This is the year, however, it’s found its fins, so to speak. Not only can it swim, but it can also respond to hand gestures: I throw it an OK gesture, and it dances in response. But as cute and limber as it is, RoboTurtle is a robot with an important mission.

RoboTurtle is an environmental research tool, built with input from researchers and NGOs, which can go where humans or other machines cannot for fear of disturbing complex and delicate underwater ecosystems, particularly coral reefs. It can move silently and naturally in a way that won’t scare wildlife, monitoring water quality and fish numbers with its built-in camera.

«One of the groups that we’re working with, they want to study the coral reefs in near Indonesia,» said Campo. «There was a very big incident over there with a boat that came up onto a coral reef and it disrupted the environment, [so] they want the least intrusive robot possible.»

The group wants to deploy RoboTurtle for certain periods every year to monitor the recovery of the coral and monitor the fish population, he added. Beatbot is currently training the built-in AI to give RoboTurtle monitoring and recognition skills.

At CES, I watched RoboTurtle paddle about only on the surface of the pool, but it can also dive down up to five meters. However, it needs to resurface to send data and its GPS signal back to base, much like a real turtle that needs to come to the surface to breathe. This also gives it a chance to recharge via the solar panel on its back.

Even though I was impressed with RoboTurtle’s swimming ability, Campo estimates that the Beatbot team is still a year and a half away from perfecting its technique, with the robot ready for full deployment in between three to five years.

CES 2026 is a show where tech with a real purpose feels scarce, so it sure is refreshing to see a company use its expertise to build something designed with a sustainable future in mind. It might be a while until we see RoboTurtle take to the seas, but I’m glad that I got to witness it at this stage of its journey.