Microsoft continues so as to add AI options to its Bing search engine, even exterior of the GPT-powered chat options it’s been pushing. Based on a feature roundup blog post, Bing will now “craft AI-generated tales” for some searches, supplying you with a small multimedia presentation concerning the factor you appeared up. The corporate says it’s a solution to allow you to “eat bite-sized data” whereas looking out sure matters.

The tales look just like those you’d discover on social media platforms like Instagram or Snapchat, with a progress bar to let you know when it’s going to advance to the following slide. Slides have textual content explaining the factor you’ve searched in addition to associated pictures and movies. You may as well unmute the story to have a voice learn out the textual content to you, full with background music.

The tales don’t present up in each search — when a co-worker and I attempted it, we acquired them to seem after we appeared up “cubism,” “impressionism,” and “tai chi,” however not for phrases like “iPhone,” “Apple,” or “greatest eating places Spokane.” To be honest, not each search wants a narrative; if I’m simply on the lookout for dinner, I don’t suppose I’d like having a robotic voice learn out the historical past of my native eating scene.

Microsoft says tales will probably be accessible to folks looking out in English, French, Japanese, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, and Arabic.

The corporate additionally introduced that it’s upgrading the “information playing cards” that present as much as the fitting of search outcomes, saying that it’s “expanded the richness and breadth of information playing cards supported by Bing utilizing generative AI.” The playing cards can embrace tales of their very own (I looked for Seattle, and it provided up two tales) in addition to components like timelines a couple of nation, metropolis, or occasion’s historical past.

Graphics {hardware} producer Xencelabs has introduced the Pen Display 24 Studio Series, a brand new show drawing pill designed for inventive professionals. The 24-inch show is the corporate’s first drawing pill with a built-in show to hitch its vary of ordinary pen tablets and comes geared up with options that rival Wacom’s Cintiq collection.

The most important benefit that Xencelabs has in opposition to Wacom is affordability — at $1,899, the Pen Show 24 is significantly cheaper than the $3,500 Wacom Cintiq Professional 27 and contains equipment like a stand and a shortcut distant that Wacom doesn’t embrace as commonplace.

Just like the Cintiq Professional 27, the Xencelabs Pen Show 24 options edge-to-edge tempered glass that’s been etched to supply friction for a extra pure drawing expertise and to cut back glare in brightly lit environments. The glass display is bonded to the sensor with out an air hole to cut back parallax (that hole between the pen nib and the cursor), and there are three buttons with customizable LED backlighting positioned on the highest of the pill’s in any other case uninterrupted floor, every of which may be programmed to shortly entry gadget settings like pen sensitivity.

The display contains a 3840 x 2160 decision, a 60Hz refresh charge, and 330 nits of brightness. It’s able to delivering as much as 1.07 billion colours, with 99 % Adobe RGB and 93 % DCI-P3 colour gamut protection. That’s fairly near what’s provided on the Wacom Cintiq Pro 27, which might make this a good various for people on a tighter funds. The colour accuracy and Pantone help may equally imply some creatives may get away with not needing a devoted reference monitor. And just like the Cintiq Professional 27, the Xencelabs Pen Show 24 can also be validated for Pantone and Pantone SkinTone for accuracy when reproducing Pantone colours and numerous pores and skin tones.

The big bezels across the show aren’t precisely attractive in comparison with these discovered on trendy standalone reference screens, however they serve an necessary objective, offering a large wrist relaxation and permitting customers to clip the included Quick Keys accent — Xencelabs’ various to Wacom’s ExpressKey Remote — on any aspect of the pill with out overlaying the workspace space. The Fast Keys accent is actually a specialised, detachable macro pad that options an OLED show, eight programmable keys, and a programmable dial that may scroll by means of as much as 40 shortcuts in inventive functions.

There are additionally two totally different pens included within the field to help totally different hand sizes and drawing preferences: the “3-Button Pen v2,” which resembles the Wacom Professional pen, and the “Skinny Pen v2,” which contains a slimmer design nearer to that of an Apple Pencil. Each pens have a built-in eraser on the top, 8192 ranges of stress sensitivity, and an preliminary activation stress that may be adjusted to as little as three grams.

The Pen Show 24 is fanless, comparatively light-weight (13 kilos versus the Cintiq Professional 27’s 16 kilos), and comes with a tilt stand that may be single-handedly adjusted between the angles of 16 and 72 levels. The pill can be mounted on an ordinary VESA mount arm, and Xencelabs stated a multi-axis stand that may freely orientate the pill vertically or horizontally will probably be out there to buy individually (although no value or launch date has been talked about). Ports are positioned on the rear and embrace each HDMI and DisplayPort connections. Drivers can be found for Home windows, Mac, and Linux.

There’s nothing right here that’s particularly revolutionary. The Xencelabs Pen Show 24 shares lots of the identical options because the Wacom Cintiq Professional 27, and Wacom has been setting the trade commonplace for show graphics tablets for years because it first launched the Cintiq collection. Rivals have been making an attempt to match Wacom on high quality ever since, usually being extra reasonably priced however not fairly as dependable or function packed.

However Xencelabs is value keeping track of. Its commonplace pen drawing tablets have been extremely well received, and if its first show pill can ship related outcomes, then Wacom may lastly have an actual market rival to take care of. The Xencelabs Pen Display 24 prices $1,899 and may be preordered at present, with full availability and transport anticipated within the second quarter of 2023.

It wasn’t a great signal when Funko announced earlier this month its plans to straight up destroy someplace between $30 and $36 million value of its collectible vinyl collectible figurines as a consequence of dwindling demand that’s tanked their worth. However Funko’s latest determination to put off about half of the staffers at subsidiary Mondo paints a transparent image of an organization struggling to safe its monetary footing.

Although Funko solely acquired Mondo — the Austin-based nostalgic memorabilia outfit recognized for its small-batch film posters and vinyl information — from Alamo Drafthouse final summer season, The Wrap reports that “most of” Mondo’s workers, together with co-founders Rob Jones and Mitch Putnam, have been laid off this week. Together with the layoffs, Funko is claimed to be shuttering Mondo’s poster division fully, though io9 reports that the corporate intends to proceed producing posters “beneath totally different management” sooner or later.

In the meanwhile, Mondo’s toy and record-producing branches will stay to see one other day, and there are nonetheless a handful of posters up on the market on Mondo’s web site. The choice is kind of restricted, although, and it greater than looks like the Mondo folks as soon as knew and beloved is gone.