Technologies
iOS 17 at WWDC: Everything Apple Is Adding to Your iPhone
The iPhone software adds new features to the Phone app, FaceTime calls and iMessage chats.
Apple’s debut of iOS 17 is going to change to how you call, text and glance at information on your iPhone. iOS 17 will bring updates to FaceTime, Messages and the phone app to make your iPhone feel more intuitive and personal, the company revealed Monday during its Worldwide Developers Conference.
Last year’s software update, iOS 16 introduced the ability to edit or «unsend» messages you send via iMessage, Apple Pay Later, a major overhaul to the lock screen, revamped notifications and Live Activities. These additions didn’t all come out at once and were actually scattered over the course of smaller iOS software updates throughout the year.
We can expect the same for iOS 17, which will likely be released just before the rumored iPhone 15 goes on sale.
More from WWDC 2023
Contact Posters
Contact Posters aim to make your contact cards more compelling.
Last year we got customizable lock screens in iOS 16. This year, iOS 17 has a similar change for your iPhone’s contact cards, to make them look more eye-catching. Contact Posters are beautiful treatments for contact photos and emoji paired with slick-looking fonts that show up when you get calls and for other services on your phone where you communicate and share.
You can customize your Contact Poster similar to how you personalize your lock screen. Pick a photo, font and color and that’s it.
AirDrop gets easier to use
iOS 17 brings an overhaul to AirDrop. You just need to bring your iPhone close to someone else’s to share a Contact Poster, photos, videos or kick off a shared activity using Share Play. Of course, being Apple, there’s a word for sharing your Contact Poster with someone new: NameDrop. What’s nice, is that you can choose what contact info is shared. NameDrop works between iPhones or with an Apple Watch, too. It reminds me of «bumping» a contact in the early days of the iPhone.
Standby turns your iPhone into an Amazon Echo Show
iOS 17 adds an attractive screen that shows photos, widgets and info when your iPhone is charging.
One of the biggest additions in iOS 17 is for when your iPhone isn’t in your hand. When your iPhone is on its side while MagSafe charging, you get a new full screen experience with glanceable information. The feature is called Standby and mimics what many smart home devices can do, such as the Amazon Echo Show.
The new screen shows the time, photos, widgets and Live Activities; nearly all of which can be personalized. It’s a bit of a cross between the iPhone 14 Pro’s always-on display and nightstand mode on the Apple Watch.
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When you swipe to the side on the Standby screen, you can look at your favorite photos or moments. iOS 17 will also automatically shuffle images to find the one that take the best advantage of the screen.
Standby can also show glanceable widgets. For example, you can see the weather, your Apple Home smart controls or your favorite third-party widget. With support for live activities, you can also see the score of sporting events or the status of a food delivery.
One of the more curious features is that Standby can remember your preferred view «setup» for each place you charge via MagSafe.
The new Journal app
iOS 17 brings a new Apple app called Journal that creates personalized suggestions to inspire writing. These suggestions are curated from information on your iPhone, like photos, location, music and workouts.
Journal gives you the option to select a moment, like «morning visit, Ocean Beach,» and start writing. You can also schedule notifications to remind you to write and get new prompts. You can flag important moments so that you can reflect on them later.
Live Voicemail
Live Voicemail lets you preview a transcription in real time as a voicemail is being recorded.
Another new talent iOS 17 has involves your voicemail. When someone calls you and leaves a message, you’ll see a live transcription in real time as they speak. The new service is called Live Voicemail and it kind of feels like the days of answering machines, when my dad would screen a call. For Live Voicemail, you’ll see the voicemail right on your screen so you can decide whether to step out and take the call. The feature is powered by your iPhone’s neural engine in order to preserve your privacy. Live Voicemail seems identical to Call Screen on Google Pixel phones which isn’t a bad thing.
FaceTime messages
iOS 17 will let you record a video message in FaceTime. It’s a heavily requested feature that will ensure you can document and share important moments, even if someone misses your call.
Messages Check In
iOS 17 comes with a new location-sharing tool called Check In.
Apple is expanding and simplifying its location sharing via Messages. The new feature, called Check In, is for letting a loved one know you made it to your destination safely. Whether you’re walking home after dark or going for an early morning run, you can start a Check In with a family member or friend and as soon as you arrive home, it will automatically let your friend know. But if something unexpected happens, it can recognize that you’re not near your destination and check in with you. If you don’t respond, Check In can automatically share your current location, the route you took, your iPhone’s battery level and cell service status; all of which is end-to-end encrypted.
Messages get a handful of fixes and additions
The Messages app will get transcriptions for audio messages in iOS 17.
The tried-and-true Messages app gets a handful of updates, including a visual overhaul of your iMessage apps which will no longer live above your keyboard and instead be accessible via a plus sign on the bottom left.
Searching through your Messages becomes a lot easier on iOS 17 with the addition of filters. When you start a search in the Messages app, you will be able to add terms to narrow the results.
Another welcome addition is transcription for audio messages. If you’re someone who has friends or family members who send you audio messages, you’ll be able to read a transcription of the recording right in the Messages app.
There’s also a new «catch up arrow» in Messages. It sits in the top right of your conversation and lets you jump to the first message you haven’t read. This could be a killer feature for managing group chats. Apple also made inline replies faster. In iOS 17, you’ll be able to just swipe to reply on any message bubble.
Apple fixes ‘ducking’ autocorrect
Autocorrect will become more intelligent and can fix more grammatical mistakes. Reverting words back to what you typed is easier. And apparently, autocorrect will learn and let you use curse words. Duck, yeah!
Messages adds a bunch of Sticker features.
iMessage stickers get a new drawer to bring all the stickers you’ve used into one place. And now emoji are stickers. You can peel and stick an emoji sticker to a message bubble, rotate and resize it. Last year in iOS 16, Apple introduced the ability to lift a subject from the background of a photo as part of Visual Lookup. With iOS 17, you can turn a photo’s subject into a sticker in Messages.
The Stickers drawer also has a Live Stickers tab that lets you create a Sticker animation (aka a GIF) from a Live Photo. Stickers can be accessed system wide in things like Tapback, Markup and third-party apps; basically anywhere you can access emoji.
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But wait, there are more iOS 17 features
As is typical with WWDC, there are a lot more additions and improvements to iOS 17 than Apple showed during the keynote. Some notable highlights include:
- Triggering Siri by just saying, «Siri» instead of «Hey, Siri»
- Download offline maps in the Maps app
- New profiles for Safari and your passwords
- Auto retrieval of one-time verification codes from the Mail app
- Interactive widgets (which was featured in-depth during the iPadOS portion)
iOS 17 will be out in full this fall and work on the iPhone XS, XR and newer, including the 2020 iPhone SE.
Technologies
Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt Trade Blows in Latest AI Slop Video, and Hollywood Won’t Stand for It
While some Hollywood icons are feeling doom and gloom over the AI-generated clip, labor unions are fighting back with legal threats.
Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise are trading blows in a viral AI-generated clip on social media, sparking backlash from the film industry. Chinese company ByteDance’s new video generation model, Seedance 2.0, allowed people to create fictional videos of real likenesses with short prompts. Irish filmmaker Ruairi Robinson used two lines to generate the clip of Pitt and Cruise fighting.
If ByteDance sounds familiar to you, it’s because the company also owns TikTok internationally, though it recently sold its US ownership of the social media and video-sharing platform to US companies. Oracle, MGX and Silver Lake each hold a 15% stake.
The actors in this latest viral AI slop video still don’t look like perfect re-creations — close-up shots of the fake Brad Pitt’s face, especially, have an «uncanny valley,» dreamlike AI look where the cuts blend into his flesh a little too smoothly. However, a CNET survey from earlier Tuesday showed that while 94% of US adults believe they encounter AI slop on social media, just 44% say they’re confident they can tell real videos from AI-generated ones.
One of the most inflammatory parts of the Pitt-Cruise video is the dialogue, as the computerized facsimiles of the actors fight over a supposed assassination plot regarding Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who maintained ties to rich and powerful people worldwide. The two actors’ likenesses became a vehicle to push conspiracy theories that have been picking up steam as the millions of pages of redacted emails, receipts and other documents that make up the Epstein files continue to trickle out of the US Department of Justice.
Hollywood is fighting back as AI-generated content consumes and spits out actor likenesses and copyrighted content alike. Major studios and their labor forces alike have united to push back against the precedent set by the viral AI video.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Motion Picture Association demanded that ByteDance «immediately cease its infringing activity» through Seedance. SAG-AFTRA, the labor union that represents Hollywood performers, released a statement on Friday saying it «stands with the studios» in condemning the Seedance video generation model.
The Screen Actors Guild specifically pointed to Seedance’s unauthorized use of members’ faces, likenesses and voices as a threat that could put actors out of work.
«Seedance 2.0 disregards law, ethics, industry standards and basic principles of consent,» the actors’ guild said in its statement.
Representatives for the MPA and SAG-AFTRA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Similar videos generated by Seedance have depicted Star Wars characters dueling with lightsabers as well as Marvel superheroes Spider-Man and Captain America brawling. Disney issued a cease-and-desist order to ByteDance on Friday in response to these videos, which it alleges constitute copyright infringement, according to the BBC.
A representative for ByteDance didn’t immediately respond to CNET’s request for comment, but issued a statement to the BBC saying it is «taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent the unauthorized use of intellectual property and likeness by users.»
Following the viral incident, ByteDance updated its tool to prevent people from uploading images of real people for AI-generated content, but it remains to be seen how effective that policy will be. Certainly, it won’t curb the output of videos depicting fictional masked or anthropomorphic characters like Spider-Man or Mickey Mouse.
As AI models continue to create mediocre copies of cultural icons, this won’t be the first — or last — legal battleground for AI video generation.
Technologies
Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for Feb. 18, #983
Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for Feb. 18 #983.
Looking for the most recent 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, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.
Today’s NYT Connections puzzle was great fun for me, as I’m the co-author of two pop-culture encyclopedias, one about the 1970s, and 1980s and the other about the 1990s. Two of the categories are retro-themed! Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.
The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.
Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time
Hints for today’s Connections groups
Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.
Yellow group hint: Farrah hair.
Green group hint: Totally tubular!
Blue group hint: Bock-bock!
Purple group hint: Can refer to a dairy product or a cosmetic.
Answers for today’s Connections groups
Yellow group: Retro hair directives.
Green group: Retro slang for cool.
Blue group: Chicken descriptors.
Purple group: ____ cream.
Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words
What are today’s Connections answers?
The yellow words in today’s Connections
The theme is retro hair directives. The four answers are crimp, curl, feather and tease.
The green words in today’s Connections
The theme is retro slang for cool. The four answers are bad, fly, rad and wicked.
The blue words in today’s Connections
The theme is chicken descriptors. The four answers are bantam, crested, free-range and leghorn.
The purple words in today’s Connections
The theme is ____ cream. The four answers are heavy, shaving, sour and topical.
Technologies
Today’s Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for Feb. 18, #1705
Here are hints and the answer for today’s Wordle for Feb. 18, No. 1,705.
Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.
Today’s Wordle answer is a word I thought I’d seen in Wordle before, but I guess not. The letters aren’t super common, so it may take a few guesses. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.
Read more: New Study Reveals Wordle’s Top 10 Toughest Words of 2025
Today’s Wordle hints
Before we show you today’s Wordle answer, we’ll give you some hints. If you don’t want a spoiler, look away now.
Wordle hint No. 1: Repeats
Today’s Wordle answer has no repeated letters.
Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels
Today’s Wordle answer has two vowels.
Wordle hint No. 3: First letter
Today’s Wordle answer begins with M.
Wordle hint No. 4: Last letter
Today’s Wordle answer ends with L.
Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning
Today’s Wordle answer can refer to an important or powerful person.
TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER
Today’s Wordle answer is MOGUL.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer
Yesterday’s Wordle answer, Feb. 17, No. 1704 was SQUAD.
Recent Wordle answers
Feb. 13, No. 1700: MOOCH
Feb. 14, No. 1701: BLOOM
Feb. 15, No. 1702: SKULL
Feb. 16, No. 1703: ROOST
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