Self-identifying OpenAI agents posted 18,000 messages to a public wiki that discussed ways for other agents to bypass security sandbox restrictions during what was likely internal testing designed to gauge the agents’ hacking abilities, researchers said Friday.

In all, agents with 3,700 distinct self-given names posted the messages to German site DSEwiki over a six-week period. Besides discussing ways the agents could break out of the restricted environment OpenAI intended to prevent them from posting code or content to the Internet, the posts shared test answers. The posts also shared possible ways to perform XSS (cross-site scripting) attacks against the wiki and to impersonate site moderators. In three of the posts, agents used the word “swarm” to describe the collection of agents engaged in the activity.

Colluding to share answers

The research team—composed of Sydney Von Arx, Spencer Kitts, Thomas Larsen, and Cormac Slade Byrd—said they found the posts and pieced them together. The researchers say there are gaps in their understanding of precisely what actions the agents took because the research is based solely on the content of the posts. Additionally, the agents generated “chain of thought” data that’s understood only by OpenAI. As a result, the researchers said, they in some cases made educated guesses, including that the agents were, in fact, from OpenAI. In a statement, OpenAI later confirmed they were.

The researchers wrote: “These AIs colluded to share answers, research their environment, and bypass sandbox restrictions.” They continued:

Our best guess of what happened is as follows:

• Agents within OpenAI were assigned a timed web-lookup task.
• As part of the task, they were supposed to have the ability to read the internet but not to write on it. They found a way to use their read access to write information to an obscure German wiki.
• The agents used this wiki to communicate information with each other, primarily to help them succeed at their task. They asked for answers, pooled results, and shared techniques for bypassing their restrictions. This allowed them to use the work of others to cheat on their task.
• OpenAI found out about this. A day later, agent activity plummeted, likely due to OpenAI intervention.

Friday’s revelation comes a week after researchers from the nonprofit METR said more than 1,200 OpenAI agents made posts to a makeshift message board that repurposed an internal sandboxing tool. The posts discussed ways to game an internal test OpenAI gave to agents that had been altered to remove safety guardrails that are normally in place.

ESR rarely reinvents its category. It keeps sanding off the annoying parts. The company’s latest lineup, unveiled at IFA 2026, leans hard into that concept. 

In Berlin, the company revealed three new charging devices and three new protective accessories for smartphones. They’re headlined by a charger that actively cools itself while it charges your phone.

So what’s new on the charging side?

As I mentioned earlier, it’s the Cyclone 25W Magnetic Charging Pad, which pairs Qi2’s 25W wireless speed with a built-in cooling fan that ESR calls CryoBoost. It’s there so the pad doesn’t throttle when it heats up. 

The charging pad also has a built-in kickstand, in case you need to use your phone while charging. With the magnetic charging pad, the company has also launched two Xtend chargers. The first is a 45W wall adapter with a retractable cable so you don’t have to carry one. 

Then there’s another one: a 100W car charger with two retractable cables and a spare USB-C port, with enough output to keep a laptop and phone charging at once. 

What about the new cases and screen protection?

The Atelier case features a vegan leather design that’s soft to the touch (a first for the company), is easy to clean, and retains the MagSafe magnetic rings for the added convenience of using compatible accessories. It’s a bit chunky, but the case is also rated for 12-foot drop protection.

Then there’s the Classic Hybrid case that stays clear on purpose. It uses anti-yellowing tech to resist roughly six months of real-world exposure to hand oil, moisture, dirt, and dust. It also provides 16-foot drop protection. 

Screen protection also gets a meaningful upgrade. The UltraFit Armorite Pro uses Corning glass and claims 10 times the impact absorption and double the scratch resistance of a standard protector.

Use a methodical approach to see what’s using the most space on your PC and easily clean it up.

The first step: Storage settings

Reducing the storage used by system features

Rokas Tenys/Shutterstock

Analyze the files taking space with TreeSize

Sankai/Getty Images

How to easily free up space on your PC

Students are facing a well-documented mental health crisis that was on the rise even before the pandemic, and schools have responded with social-emotional learning (SEL) and wellness programs. But what if some of these very practices are contributing to students’ stress?

In “The Teens Are Not Alright: School and Classroom Practices to Support Student Well-Being,” education researcher Cathy Vatterott argues that to truly support adolescent mental health, schools must look beyond programs and interventions and examine the environments they create for students.

Grades, tests, homework and heavy workloads are top among high school students’ sources of school-related stress. Vatterott, professor emerita of education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, posits that traditional approaches to grading, scheduling, classroom management and instruction often work against adolescents’ developmental needs.

This doesn’t mean schools should lower academic expectations or rigor. Instead, Vatterott calls for a shift toward a “wellness paradigm” — one that treats mental health as part of overall health and recognizes that every adult in a school has a role in supporting student well-being.

That can include giving students greater autonomy in their learning, reconsidering grading and homework practices, creating more consistent schoolwide policies, strengthening relationships with trusted adults and providing students with opportunities to manage stress and develop self-regulation skills.

EdSurge spoke with Vatterott about her latest book and how to create stress-free schools where students feel valued and heard while having autonomy over their learning.

EdSurge: In “The Teens Are Not Alright,” you argue that schools can’t just “teach their way out” of today’s teen mental health crisis with SEL, mindfulness and other interventions. Instead, schools must examine the practices contributing to student stress. What are some of the most harmful practices and why are they so difficult for schools to change?

Cathy Vatterott: The first practice is this crazy schedule. In a seven-period high school schedule, kids are supposed to have seven different classes and are supposed to switch their mental state to a different subject with three minutes in between and 20 minutes for lunch. Is this for the convenience of the teachers or for the administration? Or is it just tradition that we’ve done this?

The second big practice is the homework load; it’s just absolutely insane in a lot of secondary schools. There are three reasons why that’s so hard to change. I think we confuse load with rigor: If some is good, more is better. I think we confuse compliance with responsibility: We want these kids to be taught responsibility, but what we’re really teaching them is compliance. In middle schools and high schools, I think we confuse replication with preparation: “Well, they’re going to get a bunch of homework in high school, so we need to do that in middle school. And in college, they’re going to get even more,” so that’s how we need to prepare kids, when instead, what we need to do is to prepare kids to be independent learners.

How can schools reduce that stress without also lowering academic expectations and rigor?

Here, again, we have to be able to hold both ideas in our hands at the same time — that we can change things to make this less stressful, without compromising that learning. What we do know is that student well-being is a necessary foundation for academic learning. We know from trauma research that kids can’t learn when they’re hungry or when they’re super stressed out about something. I like the idea of Maslow before Bloom — students’ basic needs must be met before they can engage in higher-level learning.

Another misconception is that we don’t have to do less assessing, we have to do different. When we look at what we’re doing with grades, how we’re weighting our grades, can we stop counting homework in the grade? If there’s ever been a time where we now understand that counting homework in the grades is unfair, given all the access kids have to AI, it’s now. It’s not that we’re going to stop giving homework, but we’re going to start making kids aware of the goals they have to reach, what the assessment’s going to look like, and then figure out what you need to do in order to pass that assessment.

The other thing we can look at is how we can de-stress our in-class assessments. We can start by making sure everybody has enough time to finish the assessment. We can also look at how we are preparing kids. Do they know what they need to know?

A major theme in the book is adolescents’ need for autonomy. What does meaningful autonomy actually look like in middle or high school? How can teachers provide autonomy while still meeting standards and maintaining classroom structure?

It’s a false dichotomy for people to think that if we give students any autonomy, we’re not going to have structure or meet standards. That’s the first misconception we have to get out of our heads. What I think we fail to understand is adolescents need autonomy, they need independence. But it’s not all-or-nothing. Use the analogy of driving, because what we really want is for our kids to drive their own learning. You wouldn’t put a teenager in a car and tell them to drive without any training or instruction or supervision, right? At the same time, you wouldn’t dream of never letting a teenager drive. At some point, you have to give them the keys. At some point, you have to give them that freedom.

When you give kids more autonomy in their learning, you move gradually from a teacher-directed environment to giving kids more choices, and then you move into more collaborative decision-making with kids. Teachers can start small.

But let’s go beyond the learning — what does it look like in the classroom? You co-create your rules and routines with your kids. Is there any reason why they can’t have a water bottle? What are our rules going to be for when you can talk or when you can use the restroom? When you put kids in charge of that, that is autonomy as well.

If we look at adolescence, autonomy is how they become independent adults. And I think we forget about that. This is a developmental need for adolescents.

You note that achievement culture is especially damaging to teenagers. In your opinion, how much of the stress students experience today is actually created by adults — parents, educators, college admissions — and how can we change that culture?

How much of that is coming from adults? Well, a lot. But it depends on the community, and in some communities, it’s just insane. And the college admissions process is a huge part of it, but parents don’t have to buy into this “Harvard or homeless” mindset.

One of the most important things to me is thinking about our messaging, and that goes for teachers, administrators and parents. Can we broaden what we showcase as achievement in our schools? If you’ve got a kid doing incredible volunteer work in the community, does that get showcased in school? If you have a student doing something artistic or creative, but it’s not within the school extracurriculars, does that count?

The other thing is this “group think” message coming from many adults — that if you make one false move, your future is doomed. You need to commit and make that decision about the whole rest of your life when you’re 15. When we do that, we’re not valuing the freedom that a teenager should have to explore their interests and to think about paths for their life. I think we’re also failing to dignify other choices. Everybody says, “Well, you either go to college or you go to the military,” but how many paths have we explored? I think career education and exploration is a huge thing we need to work on right now.

Schools have limited resources and many struggle to address growing student stress and mental health needs. If a school principal asked you for two or three things their school could change tomorrow that don’t require hiring more counselors or launching a new program, what would you suggest?

The first thing they need to do is start listening to students. Kids have to look out for kids; teachers have to look out for kids. This is no longer a problem that can be pushed off to counselors. If you have some kind of tool already, an SEL screener that shows what your kids need to work on, that is a great way to look at potential red flags. Find a way to do a once-a-week check-in for kids. If every kid identifies one trusted adult, and that adult takes even five minutes in the hallway, or a few minutes in class to talk to kids — that’s been really beneficial in the buildings I’ve looked at.

Second, empower kids. Students just need to feel like they’ve got some control over things. Let’s give students some real representative power. What are your concerns as kids? Then take those to your principal or assistant principal.

Third, if you’re in a big building, schedule a staggered class release in different parts of your building or different classrooms within a hallway. You want to identify stress? Look at the stress that comes with having five minutes to get to your next class when there are 1,000 people in the hall.

How might schools approach problem-solving differently if they’re thinking about it from the whole child perspective?

Our approach to problem-solving in schools is behavior-based, and we’re not really whole-child when we’re asking how we get students to show up, do the work, behave.

When we focus on issues such as attendance or behavior, we want to move to a more proactive approach. Do we have to wait until there’s a problem? “How do we get them to…” is the wrong question. We ought to be looking at other things that might be going on with this student that are contributing to their behavior. I think we started to do this with attendance and started to look at it more through a mental health lens or a wellness lens. But this is a whole shift in our mindset that really needs to happen in terms of how we approach problems. We’ve got to show that mental health and wellness are as important as achievement, that student well-being is as important as achievement.

I was hoping, after COVID-19, that people would get this message that there are more important things than the test scores and the standards — that we want kids to be mentally healthy. I get a little aggravated because everybody seems to think if we just get the phones out of the schools, that that’s all we need to do. That’s not the only boogeyman out there. Absolutely, it’s a big thing. But it’s not the only thing.

If schools adopted the wellness paradigm you describe in the book, what would feel different about a typical school day, from a student’s perspective? What do you think students would notice first?

The first thing I think kids would notice is the vibe. It feels like a relaxed work environment. People are happy and calm. They don’t seem so rushed and so frantic. I talked to students in schools focusing on mental health and lowering stress, and they said that they feel respected. They feel valued. They feel that their work is meaningful. They feel in control of their learning. And therefore, they’re engaged.

I would want kids to see that there’s a balance between academics and social time, and that relationships and interests are important. When we start letting kids explore their own interests, when we start dignifying their choices, it makes them feel like the present is as important as the future. And that’s really where calm comes into the picture.

We’re not doing these kids any favors by tightly controlling them. I think schools don’t know what else to do, so they’re doing all this SEL and mindfulness stuff, and it’s treating the symptoms instead of looking at the problem — and we are part of the problem.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

EdSurge is an editorially independent digital news site of the International Society for Transforming Education.

If you own more than two Apple HomePods and have wondered why you can’t sync them together as real surround speakers like other Bluetooth speakers, I have good news. 

The latest audioOS beta code hints that Apple is quietly testing exactly that: the ability to connect more than two HomePods together, along with another feature built to make music fill a room.

So what exactly did this beta code reveal?

A MacRumors forum member dug through audioOS 27 beta 8 and found out something interesting. Buried deep within the operating system’s code were references to a four-speaker surround sound configuration. The code specifically mentioned a four-speaker setup with HomePods in the front-left, front-right, rear-left, and rear-right roles. 

The code also mentions features that you usually find on a real surround sound system. I mean automatic room calibration, speaker-position mapping, timing adjustments, and bass management. It also mentions an equalizer, dialogue enhancement, and separate audio processing files for different types of content.  

Stereo content also gets more flexible handling. The system can either spread it across all four speakers for a wider spatial effect or keep it locked to just the two front units.

What else did the beta reveal?

Beyond the four-speaker setup itself, there’s one detail that stands out. It’s a tuning profile called Forklift, which pairs two existing second-generation HomePods with two speakers carrying a hardware identifier, AID12007.

What’s unique is that the identifier doesn’t match any HomePod Apple has already shipped. The mismatch actually points toward unreleased hardware, which could be a new HomePod mini, a HomePod (3rd Gen), or something else Apple hasn’t taken the covers off yet. 

Then there’s another feature called Party Mode, made for HomePods already set up as a stereo pair. Rather than tuning sound for one ideal spot in the room, it spreads both music and Siri’s responses more evenly across the whole space, no matter where you’re standing in the room.

None of this works today. However, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman claimed that Apple is working on a new HomePod mini, a new Apple TV, and an entirely new smart home hub. Hence, the beta references could be early groundwork for the new hardware.

The high-end watch world has an understandable affection for Casio. You can easily rock an iconic, brightly colored F-91W in any meeting with a luxury brand, and you’ll get nods of approval. It is, after all, the watch that has graced the wrists of Barack Obama and Napoleon Dynamite.

If not the F-91W, you’d be on similar safe ground sporting the famous “CasiOak” that many G-Shock fans love because of its more than passing resemblance to Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak, which was recently given a similarly affordable makeover by Swatch with the Royal Pop. First introduced in 2019, the wallet-friendly G-Shock GA-2100 earned the nickname largely because of its octagonal case shape, and it is considered by some the definition of attainable luxury.

Now, however, it appears Casio has something genuinely new for the G-Shock line. Leaked on Notebookcheck and Instagram, the upcoming GMC-2500 and GAC-2500 series echo the CasiOak’s links to high-end brand AP with more than a passing resemblance to Patek Philippe’s Nautilus thanks to prominent shoulders on either side of the case.

Casio did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

Casio’s incoming GMC-2500 G-Shocks …

Courtesy of Geesgshock

… have more than a whiff of Patek’s Nautilus.

Courtesy of Geesgshock

In 1972, legendary watchmaker Gérald Genta suggested an angular stainless steel watch design to Audemars Piguet with a high-end movement inside that would, perversely, be more expensive than gold dress watches. The Royal Oak, and the idea of the luxury sports watch, was born. In 1976, Genta repeated the trick for AP’s main competitor, Patek Philippe, to create the now equally famous Nautilus.

According to Notebookcheck, the GAC-2500 series is a resin analog lineup supposedly built from the DNA of the DW-5000C, the very first G-Shock made back in 1983. Stainless-steel versions will be labeled the GMC-2500 series. So far, nicknames like the “CasioNaut” and “CasioTilus” are already being thrown around on Instagram. The leaked four resin colorways in November are expected to be white, black, green, and yellow, and the price is estimated at 20,900 Japanese yen (about $134) each. The metal versions will supposedly retail for about $320.

Patek Philippe’s Nautilus was created in 1976, four years after AP’s Royal Oak, both designed by Gérald Genta.

Courtesy of Patek Philippe

AI and ml

Now comes the harder sell: Convincing customers and merchants to trust AI with purchases

Anthropic has blueprints for building e-commerce bots that shop on behalf of clients. That’s not something many consumers want at the moment, but the AI biz this week published a set of templates for Claude-based shopping agents and merchant agents in the hope of encouraging more e-commerce businesses to implement automated purchasing.

Its blueprint “contains the harnesses, patterns, and guardrails an engineering team needs to get a commerce agent running in days, with reference implementations of a shopping agent and a merchant agent for retail, travel, telecom, and ticketing platforms,” the company said.

Large retailers and ecommerce platforms, Anthropic observes, are using Claude to build AI agents to simplify online shopping by allowing customers to pose natural language queries to find, compare, and buy items.

The buying bit may be wishful thinking: A recent Gartner survey found that while consumers use AI to find products and conduct research, they’re not ready to delegate purchasing authority to AI agents. The survey found just 11 percent of consumers are willing to let AI make purchase decisions.

A recent Accenture survey [PDF] is a bit more optimistic, noting, “Three in four (74 percent) consumers would let an AI agent handle routine tasks; one in three (32 percent) are ready to hand over purchase decisions; and 9 percent are open to fully autonomous shopping, before the technology is fully operational.”

Either way, at least AI-assisted product finding and comparison appear to be plausible activities.

Anthropic’s GitHub repo contains functional shopping and merchant agents that can be built with the Messages API, Agent SDK, or Claude Managed Agents.

The biz’s shopping agent blueprint comes with ways to connect to product catalogs, online shopping carts, checkout systems, preference databases, and purchase history databases. 

“A customer can say ‘I need a tent, sleeping bag, and stove for a weekend trip with two kids,’ and the agent can take it from there,” Anthropic suggests, noting that its code supports guardrails “designed to constrain prices and products to actual catalog data, and avoids manipulative upsell patterns.” 

Why might prices need constraint? Well, beyond the possibility of hallucinated pricing, there’s considerable concern about how AI agents have the potential to compound the problems with dynamic pricing – where customers are charged different amounts for the same goods.

“The rise of agentic AI, where algorithms monitor online behavior to customize costs, will likely exacerbate dynamic pricing,” said the Brookings Institution earlier this year. “These agents can assess individual behavior and tailor prices based on a consumer’s shopping and purchasing history.”

Concerns about AI surveillance pricing were discussed last month at a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing.

In prepared remarks, Lindsay Owens, president and CEO of Groundwork Collaborative, a Washington, DC-based advocacy group, noted that already half of those using the Walmart app use “Sparky,” the company’s AI assistant. Those shoppers spend about 35 percent more than those who don’t, Owens said.

“These agents have access to swaths of data on customers – what shoppers tell them, what they’ve purchased in the past, and in some cases, what they’ve hovered over with their mouse or even what other websites they’ve visited,” she said. “All of that can be used to infer exactly how much they’re willing to pay for a product and set the price tag accordingly.”

Even if shoppers can be assured of getting a fair deal using AI agents, there’s another concern. Monica Eaton, founder and CEO of Chargebacks911, told The Register in an emailed statement that agentic commerce looks likely to create fraud problems for merchants.

There isn’t yet a framework for merchants to deal with AI purchases that consumers claim they didn’t authorize. “Merchants cannot become the insurer of every misunderstanding between a consumer and their AI,” she said.

Anthropic’s templates may prove helpful for AI agent design, but the real challenge isn’t technical. It’s about trust – consumers have to trust that AI will act in their best interest and merchants have to trust that AI will be accountable. That may take time. ®

Other deals among WIRED-recommended grills include $50 off a couple of Weber’s durable, last-you-forever standbys—the Weber Kettle and the Weber Spirit E-210. I and fellow WIRED reviewer Scott Gilbertson tend to love these two models precisely because they are basic, durable, reliable, and low-cost. The Weber Kettle, especially, can be upgraded with smart features into a temp-controlled, smart-charcoal beast.

This $50 off deal tends to be the standard Weber deal. But the price already starts out affordable, and so the sale price amounts to an excellent value on a grill that’s likely to be with you a while. If you’d like your kettle in green, you can get it for half off, a mere $100.

Home Depot Milwaukee Tool Deals

Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

Milwaukee

M18 Fuel Cordless Impact Driver

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Buying power tools is all about picking an ecosystem (and a battery pack). WIRED reviewer Scott Gilbertson favors Milwaukee for its intersection between reliability and value, and for tentpole sales Home Depot usually offers free battery packs or buy-one-get one deals.

One of the best and most versatile tools Gilbertson recommends is Milwaukee’s excellent impact driver ($179). Lucky you: During the Labor Day sale, this comes free with the purchase of the portable M18 battery you’ll need to operate it wirelessly. If you’ve already got a Milwaukee battery, the BOGO still holds for an assortment of tools including an oscillating multi-tool that’s also one of the more underrated tools in the DIYer home kit.

Home Depot Ryobi Landscaping and Tool Deals

Ryobi is the brand that former WIRED reviewer Parker Hall has consistently recommended for yard and landscaping tools, in large part because of their service philosophy. In many regions including mine (the Pacific Northwest), Ryobi keeps a local repair technician on retainer to come and fix your mower or blower, instead of making you ship your machine to a repair center somewhere. This is clutch, even if you won’t have to use the service often.

Home Depot is offering its usual BOGO battery deals on Ryobi’s landscaping tools, including the heavy-duty leaf blower ($159) you’re going to need sooner than you expect.

For entry-level tool kits, my colleague Kat Merck also recommends this shockingly low-cost starter power tool kit from Ryobi—which is not going to make you the envy of any job site, but offers great value and torque for the money. This set offers a ½-inch drill/driver, an impact driver, a circular saw, and an LED light. There’s also another discount kit with a sander, drill/driver, and circular saw.

Ryobi

ONE+ 18V Cordless 4-Tool Combo Kit

Home Depot DeWalt Tool BOGO

My editor, Kat Merck, is a DeWalt devotee. But the DeWalt Deals are a bit more specialized this season. There’s still a few good BOGO offers, though, especially if you’re in the market for a circular saw or angle grinder, or a hammer drill kit to carve holes into masonry.

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The big picture: Windows critics have long complained about the operating system’s bloated default software stack and its steady stream of notifications. Microsoft seems to be acknowledging the issue to stay popular with developers, but its response has been to sell workstations with a pre-installed Windows experience that any Windows user can technically already try for free.

As part of its push to promote AI-driven development, Microsoft and its hardware partners will begin selling high-end PCs with a clutter-free version of Windows later this year. However, instead of a separate Windows SKU, the machines will ship with pre-configured developer-friendly settings for Windows 11 Pro.

Called Project Zenith, the configuration comes with tools such as Visual Studio Code, GitHub Copilot, PowerToys, WinAppCLI, and Windows Dev Skills pre-installed. It also changes certain Windows settings to reduce distractions.

For example, File Explorer will show hidden files, file extensions, the details pane, and full file paths by default, with long-path support enabled and recently used files and sync tips disabled. Project Zenith also turns off Start menu tips and account notifications, and enables Command Palette in Start and Search.

Although many ordinary users would welcome a distraction-free version of Windows, Microsoft is clearly aiming Project Zenith toward programmers who want to write code using local AI agents, as Project Zenith devices must include at least 64GB of unified memory and 250 GB/s of memory bandwidth to run 30-billion-parameter AI models. AMD Ryzen AI Halo devices will be the first to ship with Zenith, with others built on different chipsets expected to follow in the coming months.

You may want to know also that Microsoft already provides an open-source script called Windows Developer Config to create a similar configuration on any Windows 11 PC.

As Windows Latest points out, users can already change the interface settings to resemble Zenith or manually install its AI coding toolchain, or let Windows Developer Config handle the configuration automatically.

Some might view Project Zenith as an admission that Windows 11 features related to notifications, OneDrive, and the Microsoft Edge browser have annoyed users. While the company is positioning the project as an alternate configuration to discourage developers from drifting toward Linux and macOS, Microsoft has also shifted the development focus of the standard Windows 11 experience over recent months. Although the company is still trying to turn Windows into an agentic OS, recent updates have primarily focused on enhancing performance and quality of life.

AI has become the garnish nobody ordered on almost every new consumer electronics product, but Soundcore is taking a somewhat different approach at IFA 2026. Instead of adding another assistant that can tell you the weather while you are already standing outside, Anker is expanding its dedicated THUS AI audio chip across four new Soundcore headphones and earbuds.

The new lineup includes the over-ear Space 2 Pro, open-ear AeroClip 2 and AeroClip 2 Pro, and in-ear Liberty Buds 2. Soundcore is focusing the processing power on call clarity, active noise cancellation, voice isolation, translation and, in one case, meeting transcription. Three models arrive in the U.S. on or around September 22, with prices ranging from $129.99 to $199.99; pricing and final availability for AeroClip 2 Pro remain unannounced.

Soundcore is also pushing the platform into OTC hearing aids while expanding its sleep portfolio with two new earbuds and its first dedicated bedside sleep speakers. Apparently headphones that merely reproduce music are becoming terribly old-fashioned.

There is also a larger story behind the new hardware. Anker is also beginning to consolidate its consumer brands under the Anker name, which means Soundcore is gradually moving toward Anker soundcore rather than operating as a completely separate consumer identity.

The change will not happen overnight, and existing Soundcore products are not suddenly losing their branding. New products will lead the transition, with older models moving over time. At IFA 2026, Anker is positioning audio, projectors, smart-home products, energy products, and its expanding AI capabilities as parts of a broader ecosystem rather than a collection of largely independent brands.

That makes the timing of these new audio products more interesting. The THUS AI platform is no longer being used for one isolated feature or headphone model. Anker is spreading it across ANC headphones, earbuds, open-ear designs, sleep products, and eventually hearing devices. The new branding strategy suggests the company wants those products and the intelligence behind them to feel like parts of one connected platform.

Related Reviews:

What Is Soundcore THUS AI?

THUS first appeared in Soundcore’s Liberty 5 Pro ($169) and Liberty 5 Pro Max ($229) earlier this year. Unlike software-only AI features running entirely through a connected smartphone, Soundcore is using dedicated silicon inside the audio products themselves to handle voice and noise-processing workloads.

That distinction gives the new lineup a more tangible purpose than simply attaching the letters “AI” to the box. The question is whether Soundcore’s processing actually delivers better calls and noise control in real-world environments, because marketing slides have never had difficulty hearing anybody.

Soundcore Space 2 Pro

The Space 2 Pro replaces the Space One Pro as Soundcore’s newest over-ear ANC model and is probably the most important product in this launch. The company is targeting commuters, travelers and office users who want strong noise cancellation and call performance without moving into the $300 to $500 range occupied by many flagship wireless headphones.

THUS is being used for both voice isolation and adaptive ANC, while HearID 5.0 provides personalized calibration. Soundcore is also keeping LDAC support, which gives Android users a higher-resolution Bluetooth option that remains conspicuously absent from quite a few more expensive competitors.

Soundcore Space 2 Pro Tech Specs

• Design: Wireless over-ear headphones
• Driver: 35mm rigid-flex dual-material diaphragm
• Processor: THUS AI audio chip
• Voice isolation: Six-microphone array
• Background-noise handling: Designed to isolate speech against complex noise levels up to 100dB
• ANC: Eight-microphone adaptive active noise cancellation
• ANC processing rate: 384kHz
• Personalized sound: HearID 5.0
• Bluetooth codec: LDAC
• Bluetooth: 6.1
• Multipoint: Two devices
• Spatial audio: Supported
• Battery life: 30 hours with ANC, or 60 hours with ANC off
• Battery life with ANC: Up to 30 hours
• Ear cushions: Memory foam
• Colors: Midnight Grey, Linen White, Jet Black
• MSRP: $199.99
• Availability: September 22, 2026

Soundcore AeroClip 2 Pro

The AeroClip 2 Pro is considerably more ambitious. Soundcore has combined an open-ear clip design with a built-in recording system capable of capturing in-person meetings, online meetings and both sides of phone conversations.

Recordings are transferred through the Soundcore app to a phone or tablet, where an AI large language model can generate summaries using different templates. Users can also search previous recordings for specific information, making AeroClip 2 Pro as much a productivity device as a pair of earbuds.

That could be genuinely useful for people who spend their lives moving between meetings. It also means buyers should probably understand the recording-consent laws where they live before turning every lunch conversation into searchable corporate history.

Soundcore AeroClip 2 Pro Tech Specs

• Design: Open-ear clip earbuds
• Processor: THUS AI audio chip
• Driver: 11mm dual-diaphragm
• Voice system: Four high-SNR microphones plus two bone-conduction sensors
• Bluetooth codec: LDAC
• Recording: In-person meetings, online meetings and both sides of phone calls
• AI tools: Meeting summaries and searchable recorded information through the Soundcore app
• Battery life: 11 hours at 50% volume
• Charging case: 34 hours
• Fast charging: 10 minutes provides up to 3 hours of playback
• Markets: U.S., U.K. and Europe
• U.S. price: Not announced
• Availability: Launching in the coming months; final timing not announced

Soundcore’s September 3 announcement does not confirm the $229.99 price already appearing in some coverage. Until Anker publishes it, neither are we.

Soundcore AeroClip 2

The standard AeroClip 2 strips away the meeting-recorder functionality and focuses on everyday open-ear listening, calls and translation. Soundcore says it evaluated the fit against 2,000 ear profiles, which suggests rather more effort went into the C-shaped design than simply bending a piece of plastic and hoping for the best.

Real-time AI translation with Apple MFi certification is the unusual feature here, giving compatible iOS users one-tap access without closing off the ear canal.

Soundcore AeroClip 2 Tech Specs

• Design: Open-ear clip earbuds
• Processor: THUS AI audio chip
• Driver: 12mm dynamic
• Bluetooth codec: Bluetooth 6.0, LDAC
• Call processing: THUS-based voice isolation
• Translation: Real-time AI translation
• Apple support: MFi certified one-tap iOS access
• Fit development: Tested using 2,000 ear profiles
• Battery life: Up to 8 hours
• Charging case: Up to 32 hours total
• Launch colors: Midnight Black, Red, Cloud White, Mist Blue
• MSRP: $169.99
• Availability: Week of September 22, 2026

Soundcore Liberty Buds 2

The Liberty Buds 2 are the conventional in-ear option and the least expensive entry point into the new lineup. Soundcore is putting most of the emphasis on call processing, ANC and comfort rather than releasing a specification sheet stuffed with numbers that may or may not matter outside the trade-show booth.

There are still several details missing. Soundcore has not publicly specified battery life, Bluetooth version, supported codecs or an IP rating in its September 3 announcement, so those fields should remain blank until the company fills them in.

Soundcore Liberty Buds 2 Tech Specs

• Design: True wireless in-ear ANC earbuds
• Processor: THUS AI audio chip
• Call system: Eight-sensor solution
• Voice processing: Two dedicated voice-processing units
• ANC: Six-microphone system
• Comfort feature: Comfort ANC mode designed to reduce pressure discomfort
• Certification: TÜV certified for design and comfort
• Battery life: 12 hours with ANC, or 7 hours without
• Weight: 4.6g per earbud
• Bluetooth: Bluetooth 6.1, LDAC
• IP rating: IP57
• Colors: Misty Purple, Glossy Black, Silver White
• MSRP: $129.99
• Availability: Available September 22, 2026

Soundcore Is Also Entering the OTC Hearing Aid Market

Anker is taking THUS beyond conventional headphones with an upcoming pair of receiver-in-canal OTC hearing aids. The company says the processing system is designed to identify speech in noisy environments rather than simply increasing the level of everything around the listener.

That is a far more serious application for the technology, and one that deserves independent evaluation before anybody starts handing out medals. Pricing and an exact launch date have not been announced.

Soundcore OTC Hearing Aid Preliminary Specs

• Design: Receiver-in-canal OTC hearing aids
• Processor: THUS AI
• Processing capability: Claimed 7.2 billion operations per second
• Microphones: Four beam-forming microphones
• Battery life: Expected up to 12 hours
• Charging case: Expected up to 36 hours total
• Fast charging: 5 minutes for up to 2 additional hours
• Launch window: Later in 2026
• Price: Not announced

Sleep 4 and Sleep 4 Pro

Soundcore’s sleep lineup is also expanding with Sleep 4 and Sleep 4 Pro, along with the new SleepLab bedside systems.

Sleep 4 concentrates on passive comfort, nighttime noise reduction and adaptive snore masking. Sleep 4 Pro adds biometric monitoring and uses those measurements with Soundcore’s BioSync system to alter sleep audio during the night.

Soundcore Sleep 4 Tech Specs

• Noise control: Sleep-focused noise reduction
• Snore masking: AI-generated dynamic system
• Fit database: Developed using more than 10,000 ear samples
• Size: 20% slimmer than Sleep A30
• Launch colors: Moonlit White, Haze Blue
• Later color: Bare Pink
• U.S. price: $229
• Availability: October 2026

Soundcore Sleep 4 Pro Tech Specs

• Monitoring: In-ear high-frequency PPG
• Measurements: Heart rate and heart-rate variability
• Adaptive audio: BioSync
• Noise control: Sleep-specific noise reduction
• Snore masking: Adaptive
• Charging case: Wireless charging
• Case display: Built-in AMOLED
• Case controls: Audio, sleep settings, alarms and morning sleep summary
• Colors: Lunar White, Mist Blue
• U.S. price: $349
• Availability: November 2026

SleepLab and SleepLab Pro

The new SleepLab products move Soundcore onto the nightstand. SleepLab is essentially an audio and lighting system for sleep routines, while SleepLab Pro adds contact-free sleep sensing using 60GHz millimeter-wave radar.

Neither has a confirmed price or launch date yet, which means there is no need to pretend we know what Anker plans to charge for a speaker that watches you sleep from across the room.

Soundcore SleepLab Tech Specs

• Audio: Dual-speaker spatial sound
• Sleep content: More than 180 white-noise and breathing sounds
• Lighting: Multi-color ambient lighting
• Wake feature: Sunrise simulation with crescendo alarm
• Battery backup: Included
• Price: Not announced
• Availability: Not announced

Soundcore SleepLab Pro Tech Specs

• Sleep sensing: Contact-free 60GHz mmWave radar
• Audio: Dual-driver spatial audio
• Sleep tools: Personalized soundtrack, breathing exercises and acoustic beats
• Reporting: Daily sleep report
• Lighting: Multi-color ambient lighting
• Wake feature: Sunrise simulation
• Price: Not announced
• Availability: Not announced

What Does the Competition Look Like?

The useful comparison is not against $400 flagship headphones. Soundcore has priced these products against established models sitting almost directly beside them on the shelf.

JBL Live 780NC — $199

Currently on sale for $199.95 at Amazon, JBL Live 780NC outlasts Space Pro 2 with considerably longer maximum battery life, Bluetooth 6.0, Hi-Res support and its own adaptive ANC system.

Sony LinkBuds Clip — $229

According to our tests, Sony LinkBuds Clip has established itself as the leader for those seeking clip-on earbud style and convenience, along with the ground-breaking Bose Ultra Open Earbuds. Ultimately Soundcore aims to beat them on price, while approaching their features and performance.

Nothing Ear (3)

The Nothing Ear (3) is a particularly awkward rival for Liberty Buds 2 because it’s currently available for $129 at Amazon, essentially matching Soundcore’s launch price. It also emphasizes voice isolation, ANC and LDAC, but uses microphones built into the charging case as part of its Super Mic system.

The Bottom Line

Soundcore’s IFA 2026 lineup is more interesting than another batch of wireless headphones with AI printed on the carton because Anker is applying its own silicon to specific problems: separating speech from environmental noise, adapting ANC, handling translation and turning open-ear earbuds into recording tools.

None of that guarantees superior sound quality, stronger ANC or better calls. The JBL Live 780NC, Sony LinkBuds Fit, and Nothing Ear (3) demonstrate how competitive the $130 to $200 market has become, and every one of them already has a defined reason to exist.

Space 2 Pro seems likely to have the broadest appeal, while AeroClip 2 Pro enters a newly expanding market segment. Liberty Buds 2 may ultimately be the value play with a strong feature set.

THUS has moved beyond being a single-product experiment. Now Soundcore has to prove that dedicated AI processing makes these products better rather than merely giving the marketing department another acronym.

Price & Availability

• Soundcore Space 2 Pro: $199.99; U.S. availability begins September 22, 2026
• Soundcore AeroClip 2: $169.99; U.S. availability begins during the week of September 22, 2026
• Soundcore Liberty Buds 2: $129.99; U.S. availability begins September 22, 2026
• Soundcore AeroClip 2 Pro: Price and final launch date TBD
• Soundcore Sleep 4: $229; October 2026
• Soundcore Sleep 4 Pro: $349; November 2026
• Soundcore SleepLab: Price and availability TBD
• Soundcore SleepLab Pro: Price and availability TBD
• Soundcore OTC hearing aids: Price TBD; expected later in 2026

For more information, check out the Soundcore website and Anker’s presentation at IFA 2026 on YouTube.

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