Enlarge (credit: Getty Images / Benj Edwards )

On Thursday, Microsoft announced that it will provide legal protection for customers who are sued for copyright infringement over content generated by the company's AI systems. This new policy, called the Copilot Copyright Commitment, is an expansion of Microsoft's existing intellectual property indemnification coverage, Reuters reports .

Microsoft's announcement comes as generative AI tools like ChatGPT have raised concerns about reproducing copyrighted material without proper attribution. Microsoft has heavily invested in AI through products like GitHub Copilot and Bing Chat that can generate original code, text, and images on demand. Its AI models have gained these capabilities by scraping publicly available data off of the Internet without seeking express permission from copyright holders.

By offering legal protection, Microsoft aims to give customers confidence in deploying its AI systems without worrying about potential copyright issues. The policy covers damages and legal fees, providing customers with an added layer of protection as generative AI sees rapid adoption across the tech industry.

Enlarge / The Anthropic Claude logo. (credit: Anthropic / Benj Edwards)

On Thursday, AI-maker and OpenAI competitor Anthropic launched Claude Pro , a subscription-based version of its Claude.ai web-based AI assistant, which functions similarly to ChatGPT. It's available for $20/month in the US or 18 pounds/month in the UK, and it promises five-times-higher usage limits, priority access to Claude during high-traffic periods, and early access to new features as they emerge.

Like ChatGPT, Claude Pro can compose text, summarize, do analysis, solve logic puzzles, and more.

Claude.ai is what Anthropic offers as its conversational interface for its Claude 2 AI language model, similar to how ChatGPT provides an application wrapper for the underlying models GPT-3.5 and GPT-4. In February, OpenAI chose a subscription route for ChatGPT Plus , which for $20 a month also gives early access to new features, but it also unlocks access to GPT-4, which is OpenAI's most powerful language model.

Enlarge / Keychron's new C3 Pro mechanical keyboard. (credit: Keychron)

It's not officially autumn, but any parent back to ushering their kid to school before starting their own day of responsibilities will tell you it feels like fall. Alongside the start of school are usually new tech product announcements . This week, I had my eyes on a new smattering of PC keyboards (as you may have heard , I could use an upgrade). But many keyboard announcements felt like more of the same.

Take Logitech's keyboard releases this week. On Tuesday, it announced the G Pro X TKL wireless (dongle, Bluetooth, or wired) mechanical keyboard . It's part of Logitech's high-end series of gaming peripherals, but those accessories tend to appeal to non-gaming power users, too. For example, I've had great success using some of Logitech's gaming keyboards for work, including low-profile ones that helped speed up my typing. That's not what you're getting with the new G Pro X TKL.

• 

  Logitech's G Pro X TKL in magenta. [credit: Logitech ]

(credit: Kevin Purdy)

If you're like our staff, you'll understand that good cup of brewed coffee is a requirement every morning. Whether it's a simple French-pressed brew or an espresso-based drink with complex flavors and aromas, coffee has not only provided the fuel to get the Ars Technica stuff through our daily tasks but it's become a ritual that helps us start the day anew and grounds us—pun intended—amid the chaos of the world.

We asked the Ars staff to show off their coffee-making setups and tips below—they range from low to high tech, from hand-cranked grinders to automatic machines and all points in between, but all these methods have one thing in common: They make awesome coffee.

John Timmer's setup: Flavorful French press method

What I want from coffee-making equipment is purely a function of what I'm looking for from coffee. And that is as much flavor as you can possibly extract from beans that are roasted so dark that they risk absorbing all light and becoming a black hole. I want a thin sheen of random organic molecules floating on top of an explosion of bitter, complex flavors.

• 

  Google's official Pixel 8 Pro image.

The Google Store has posted a promo page for the Pixel 8 and Pixel Watch 2 ahead of their October 4 launch, confirming the designs of both devices. Google accidentally leaked a bunch of 3D renders the other day, so now that the cat's out of the bag, Google went ahead and made it official.

We saw live pictures of the Pixel 8 Pro all the way back in May , so there really isn't much to add about the device's design. But still, the video confirms what's coming next month. The biggest change is a switch to a flat screen instead of the distorted curved displays that flagship Android phones have been saddled with. There's also a dubiously useful temperature sensor on the back, which in May was demonstrated as useful for taking a person's body temperature by applying your phone directly to your forehead. The sides are still a shiny mirror finish on the Pro version.

We get a shot of the cheaper Pixel 8, too. This confirms it still has a satin finish instead of the mirror polish and continues to have only two cameras. It's also not getting the temperature sensor.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images )

Last week, OpenAI published tips for educators in a promotional blog post that shows how some teachers are using ChatGPT as an educational aid, along with suggested prompts to get started. In a related FAQ , they also officially admit what we already know: AI writing detectors don't work, despite frequently being used to punish students with false positives.

In a section of the FAQ titled "Do AI detectors work?", OpenAI writes , "In short, no. While some (including OpenAI) have released tools that purport to detect AI-generated content, none of these have proven to reliably distinguish between AI-generated and human-generated content."

In July, we covered in depth why AI writing detectors such as GPTZero don't work, with experts calling them "mostly snake oil." These detectors often yield false positives due to relying on unproven detection metrics. Ultimately, there is nothing special about AI-written text that always distinguishes it from human-written, and detectors can be defeated by rephrasing. That same month, OpenAI discontinued its AI Classifier, which was an experimental tool designed to detect AI-written text. It had an abysmal 26 percent accuracy rate.

Enlarge / The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT, 7800 XT, and 7600. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Two big things have happened since we last updated our PC build guide in the spring . First, we got a batch of late-spring and summer midrange GPU launches, including AMD's Radeon RX 7600 , 7700 XT, and 7800 XT , plus Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4060 and 4060 Ti . Second, Bethesda's Starfield finally dropped , prompting a whole bunch of people to ask "can my PC run Starfield ?"

Starfield isn't an exceptionally demanding PC game, at least not by the standards set by buggy PC ports like The Last of Us . But it will give any PC more than 3 or 4 years old a serious workout, and it should serve as a decent yardstick for building a PC that can run this console generation's games fairly well.

This guide will focus on just minor tweaks to our spring PC builds, since other component pricing hasn't changed much and there haven't been major CPU introductions since then (Intel's don't-call-them-14th-generation Core processors may be out within a few months, but on the desktop they'll be a mild refresh of 13th-gen, which was already a mild refresh of 12th-gen).

Enlarge (credit: Apple)

Apple has released security updates for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS today to fix actively exploited zero-day security flaws that can be used to install malware via a "maliciously crafted image" or attachment. The iOS 16.6.1, iPadOS 16.6.1, macOS 13.5.2, and watchOS 9.6.2 updates patch the flaws across all of Apple's platforms. As of this writing, no updates have been released for older versions like iOS 15 or macOS 12.

The CVE-2023-41064 and CVE-2023-41061 flaws were reported by the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Also dubbed "BLASTPASS," Citizen Lab says that the bugs are serious because they can be exploited just by loading an image or attachment, which happens regularly in Safari, Messages, WhatsApp, and other first- and third-party apps. These bugs are also called "zero-click" or "clickless" vulnerabilities.

Citizen Lab also said that the BLASTPASS bug was "being used to deliver NSO Group’s Pegasus mercenary spyware ," the latest in a long line of similar exploits that have been used to infect fully patched iOS and Android devices.