Monday morning, the Roman Catholic Church made its biggest foray yet into the discourse on artificial intelligence and the role it should play in human life as the technology develops.
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Nevada Court Latest To Say Mandatory Detention Of Migrants Is Illegal
from the can’t-pretend-rights-just-don’t-exist dept
More of the same for the Trump administration — one that seems incapable of achieving its goals without breaking the law or disregarding the Constitution.
Hundreds of judges handling thousands of cases have already told the administration it can’t do the things it thinks it can when it comes to satisfying its anti-migrant bloodlust/Stephen Miller’s 3,000-arrests-per-day quota (they’re the same thing!). And, outside of the Fifth Circuit, where the majority seems to believe Trump should get whatever he wants, this steady stream of judicial rejections continues.
Yet another class-action suit alleging the wholesale violation of Constitutional rights has resulted in a ruling siding with the Constitution. This case is one of several being handled by the ACLU. This particular one originates in Nevada, which at least keeps it out of the hands of the Fifth Circuit. (Unfortunately, the administration knows who’s buttering its bread, which is why detainees are often shipped immediately to detention centers in Texas and Louisiana.)
The administration has only a single argument to present in its defense of its unconstitutional mandatory detention activities. It involves selectively quoting two related (yet distinct!) immigration statutes and pretending that 1+1=whatever the fuck we say it does.
One of the most concise explanations of the administration’s deliberate misreading of these statutes was delivered by Judge Dale Ho of the Southern District of New York last year. The government wants to pretend people who encounter immigration agents while crossing the border are indistinct from migrants who have already been in this country for weeks, months, or years. They’re not the same thing, but the administration insists they are, despite having only convinced the Fifth Circuit that the laws don’t actually say the things they say.
Given that detention under § 1225(b)(2) is essentially mandatory and that detention under § 1226(a) is largely discretionary, it follows that whichever statute Mr. Lopez Benitez is subject to is potentially dispositive here. That is, if Mr. Lopez Benitez was detained as a noncitizen “seeking admission” to the country under § 1225(b)(2) (as Respondents argue), his detention would be mandatory. If, instead, he was detained as a noncitizen “already in the country” under § 1226(a), then his detention is discretionary and he would be, at a minimum, entitled to an appeal before an immigration judge.
To be sure, the line between when a person is “seeking admission” as opposed to being “already in the country” is not necessarily obvious. For instance, someone who has just crossed the border may technically be “in” the country but is still treated as “an alien seeking initial entry.” Thuraissigiam, 591 U.S. at 114, 139 (holding that a noncitizen detained “within 25 yards of the border” is treated as if stopped at the border). But there is no dispute that the provisions at issue here are mutually exclusive—a noncitizen cannot be subject to both mandatory detention under 1225 and discretionary detention under § 1226, a point that Respondents conceded.
These are not the same thing. Section 1226 deals with people already in the country, who are given Constitutional protections. Section 1225 deals with people crossing the border who are met immediately by immigration agents, who don’t have access to the same due process rights.
As the court points out in this case, the language of the statutes makes it clear Section 1225 is “temporally and geographically limited to the border” by other language contained in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The government, however, wants to pretend it’s indistinct from Section 1226, which deals with people who are already in the country and have been there for a significant amount of time.
The only way the government can present its defense of indefinite detention of migrants without bond hearings is to twist the wording of both statutes. The Nevada court [PDF] isn’t going to let that happen. It calls out Trump’s DOJ for its cut-and-paste antics.
The government contends that the plain language of § 1225(b)(2) requires DHS to detain all noncitizens like Plaintiffs, who are present in the U.S. without admission or parole and subject to removal proceedings, regardless of how long they have been in the country or how far from the border they are apprehended. But this Court finds that the government reads § 1225(b)(2 (A) as a fragment of statutory text in isolation.
Context matters. The government knows this, which is why its arguments remove the parts of the law it wants to use from the context that indicates its actions are illegal.
The Court finds the government’s reading of the statutory text inapposite for severalreasons. First, the government distorts the statutory text, including terms of art specially defined by Congress. Second, the government isolates and abstracts the phrases it favors in § 1225(b)(2)(A) from their context within § 1225 and the statutory scheme, while rendering language it finds inconvenient within § 1225(b)(2)(A) both contrary to ordinary meaning and needless surplusage. Finally, the government’s interpretation unnecessarily renders provisions of § 1226(c) superfluous in all but the rarest cases, unjustifiably construes Congress’ addition of § 1226(c)(1)(E) through the 2025 Laken Riley Act to be utterly ineffectual, and creates unnecessary tension between the relevant provisions, §§ 1225 and 1226.
This is what it looks like when you know you can’t win on the merits. This is the government pretending the law says what it wants it to say and hoping to slip it past a judge and under the skirts of Lady Liberty.
Courts aren’t as dumb as the Trump administration hopes. Let’s look at the statutes, the court says, but the whole thing rather than just the things the government thinks might be usable.
The Court cannot accept such a fraught interpretation when a reading devoid of such conflict, which gives each statutory phrase and section independent meaning and force, is far more plausible.
What follows is a few dozen pages making everything summarized above granular and specific. And if Trump doesn’t like it, he can always ask the legislators he treats as extraneous to rewrite the law in his favor. Take it up with Congress if you don’t like the way the law is actually written, the court says without actually saying it:
[E]ven with regards to removal proceedings as opposed to custody determinations, Congress explicitly reflected its understanding of longstanding due process precedent that recognizes the more substantial due process rights of noncitizens already present and residing in the U.S. compared to the minimal rights of noncitizens seeking to enter.
Even a Congress loaded with MAGA bitchboys isn’t going to be able to erase Constitutional protections for migrants no one really seemed to have a problem with until white Christian nationalists took over the West Wing (on two non-consecutive occasions). The current Congress is merely an afterthought in service to Federalist Society theories of unitary executive power — something that surely won’t come back to haunt them when America decides it’s time to hand the reins to the opposition party.
And that’s not all of the bad news for Trump and his enablers. The due process thing is already a known issue and one that has resulted in hundreds of losses for the administration’s lawyers. This court also points out the Fourth Amendment implications of its actions. While this doesn’t necessarily create the sort of precedent that would shut down the DHS’s extremely creative interpretation of the Constitution, it will provide plenty of citation pull-quotes for litigants challenging ICE’s warrantless arrests and home entries.
[N]o administrative warrant requirements exist in the text of § 1225(b)(2)(A) or its implementing regulations. The government’s interpretation of that provision as geographically unlimited is thus in tension with the application of the Fourth Amendment within the country’s interior, which “requires that immigration stops must be based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence, stops must be brief, arrests must be based on probable cause, and officers must not employ excessive force.”
I’m sure this quotation of Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence in Trump v. Illinois is deliberate. The guy behind “Kavanaugh stops” (TL;DR: looking foreign is probable cause when it comes to immigration enforcement) is being directly quoted to reject the government’s reliance on administrative warrants to bypass the Constitution. [Chef’s kiss gesture.]
Great stuff. But, as always, tempered by the realization that this administration will not stop doing illegal things just because a court has directly told them these actions are illegal. The old equation — asking forgiveness > asking permission — doesn’t really apply. This administration will do neither. It will simply DO until it becomes impossible to continue.
Don’t let that discourage you, though. Even if the co-equal branches don’t seem to be living up to the “checks and balances” hype, we’re a nation of millions spread across a considerable number of square miles. They can’t take us all at once.
Filed Under: 14th amendment, bigotry, dhs, due process, ice, mass deportation, nevada, trump administration
Companies: aclu
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In the first encyclical of his papacy, titled Magnifica humanitas (Latin for “magnificent humanity”), Pope Leo XIV argued that AI is not intrinsically immoral, but that its adoption needed to be slowed in order to build moral guardrails, to establish better social safety nets for those displaced by economic and labor disruptions, and to create democratic processes that will ensure the public remains in control of these developments, rather than a small subset of tech oligarchs. The document also contended that the “intelligence” in artificial intelligence was a misnomer: Intelligence is something only human persons possess, and technology will never be human.
- The first encyclical, or official teaching letter, of Leo XIV’s papacy, dropped Monday.
- It centers the uniqueness of humanity, the dignity of work, and the challenges that artificial intelligence poses to the world order and humans’ relationships with each other and God.
- The Catholic Church has a long tradition of reasserting authority in the modern era, starting with the current pope’s namesake, Leo XIII, who confronted the rise of the Industrial Revolution and changing global economies.
- There are deeper spiritual and material reasons the pope, and the church, are so concerned with AI now.
Encyclicals are official teaching documents of the Catholic Church: letters issued by popes to bishops after consultation with theologians, historians, and experts on pressing matters that affect humanity or the church, with the expectation that all people, faithful or secular, can learn from them and help shape their consciences and lives. Magnifica humanitas is Leo’s first encyclical since becoming pope last year, and its release now underscores the focus the new pope is putting on AI and technology. Notably, Leo also used the occasion to make a historic formal apology for the Church’s previous defense and justification of slavery — a reminder that the Catholic Church has not always been on the right side of social ills.
Though popes are traditionally not present during the release of these documents, which first began in the 18th century, Leo XIV was in attendance at its presentation, and delivered his own comments — something Vatican observers indicated reflected his desire to make sure the Church’s stance was properly understood. The Chicago-born pontiff spoke in English and was joined by AI experts and industry leaders, including Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, who consulted on the document.
So how should the public process and think about this new document? It’s helpful to first understand the context in which the Church is speaking up about this at all.
Why the Catholic Church cares so much about AI’s development
Magnifica humanitas is dropping more than a week after Pope Leo XIV actually signed it on May 15. The timing matters.
That day marked 135 years since the release of Rerum Novarum, the seminal work of Pope Leo XIII, the current pope’s namesake, who was leading the church during the late stages of the Industrial Revolution. As they are today, the faithful, and the clergy, were facing a rapidly changing world. And the Church, the world’s leading moral authority at the time, had yet to establish its place in it.
That 19th-century document made philosophical arguments about the relationship between labor and capital, warning about the perils of communism. But it also redefined the church’s relationship to the modern world, with the papacy reasserting itself as both a source of power and a moral authority in an era of rapid change. The encyclical set a template for how a 2,000-year-old institution could still remain relevant in a modern age.
In presenting this encyclical, Pope Leo XIV made this parallel clear. He sees the rise of artificial intelligence as the defining global challenge of the day, and of his pontificate: “Like the earlier Leo, I feel entrusted to look upon another huge transformation with eyes of faith, with lucidity of reason, with openness to mystery and with cries of the poor and the earth resounding in my heart,” the pope said while presenting his encyclical.
The newer encyclical builds off his predecessor’s tradition, and the various arguments popes have made about the importance of preserving the dignity of the human person and valuing modern technology only so long as it benefits everyone, not just its creators or the rich.
In 2015, Pope Francis, for example, wrote about “the technocratic paradigm” that has taken root in modern capitalism: the sense that technological progress is unstoppable, that it will demand unlimited concessions from nature and from people, and that the world had no choice but to submit to change.
“Leo is concerned that we don’t just submit to inevitability on questions of AI, but ask critical questions and push back in ways that are necessary before it’s too late to push back, before damage is done that can’t easily be undone,” Dan Rober, an associate professor of Catholic Studies at Sacred Heart University, told me.
That role of questioning, pausing, and coming to consensus has defined the Catholic Church’s leadership and operation for the last two papacies: the notion of synodality, or teaching and making decisions based on consensus. Before AI and the technologists who have created it become the sole determinants of how politics, the economy, and society operates, the Church is asserting itself as a counterweight — even as it includes some of those leaders in the process.
“Pope Leo is trying to clearly walk in those footsteps, and I think he’s very concerned, as are a lot of people, about the possible implications, particularly for job markets and for people’s lifestyles being sustainable day to day with the rise of AI systems that may render a certain significant amount of jobs able to be automated very rapidly,” Rober said.
This kind of reflection has become standard procedure for the Vatican. Since at least the turn of the century, the Church has found itself increasingly weighing in on the crises of the day, albeit often a bit too late.
As the Catholic writer Christopher Hale has noted, “Francis took up the climate fight with Laudato Si in 2015, after decades of scientific consensus had been ignored. Benedict XVI took up the global economic order with Caritas in Veritate in 2009, after the financial system had already collapsed. Both documents arrived in the long shadow of the crises they addressed.”
In Magnifica humanitas, Pope Leo XIV may be seeking to intervene early in the development or takeover of a new technology this time, and show that the Church wants to both work with Silicon Valley and assert itself as a powerful defender of modern values, as it has done in its defense of the liberal international order and aspects of humanism, like human autonomy and reason.
In the background, there’s also a more sci-fi element: the notion that AI could end up coming between the Church and the people — serving as a filter or layer between regular people and God, and perhaps even usurping the role of the Church itself. The Catholic Church, famously, is concerned with the proper interpretation of scripture, Biblical truths, ethics, and God. Bloody wars waged and hard-fought reformations turned on this central question of who and how one can commune with God. Now, AI enters as another middleman.
“That’s closely related to the question of people using AI as a therapist,” Rober told me. “You could see a way in which AI becomes its own kind of religion, and certainly the way a lot of the Silicon Valley founders talk about it, it does have religious overtones to it. You listen to the Google founders talk about the singularity, and that sounds a lot like religion.”
It’s in this context that this document, and its specific teachings, lands.
What the Church is teaching about AI
Magnifica Humanitas is not the Vatican’s first examination of the role of AI in modern life.
Just last year, in the twilight of Pope Francis’s pontificate, the Vatican released a teaching note, Antiqua et nova, that laid the groundwork for Leo’s encyclical. That 2025 document established that the Church is not opposed to the development of AI: technological progress and scientific discoveries are part of the natural way that humans are meant to honor God, his creation of humanity in his image, and the natural outpouring of God’s gift of reason and rationality.
But it also established a distinction between human intelligence and machines that analyze data and perform processes. It insisted that artificial intelligence, like all technology, should serve humanity, not the other way around. And it emphasized the risk that new technology poses to the ability to, right to, and dignity of work, especially for the least well off in society.
In the encyclical, Leo uses the biblical parable of the Tower of Babel — a warning about human hubris — to make this case: “We must, then, avoid the ‘Babel syndrome,’ namely the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak,” he writes. “The risk of dehumanization — of building a future that excludes God and reduces the other to a means — is an ancient and ever-new temptation that today takes on a technical guise.”
This builds off of a long tradition of focusing on not just the dignity of work and workers, but also more recent concerns that modern capitalism facilitates a “throwaway culture” that views people and things as, at best, cogs in the service of a greater machine.
“He wants to talk about the idea that our humanity is meaningful in and of itself and that work is part of that, even if AI systems are able to allow for more leisure and even if something like universal basic income were to be made available, people need to find to have work of some kind to have meaning in their lives,” Rober said.
The encyclical’s teachings can be broken up into three broad categories: regulations on how AI is developed and how individuals adopt it, the responses required to handle the economic effects of AI, and limits on AI’s usage in war.
The practical recommendations and concerns Leo outlines include:
- The need for a “more active” democratic process for people to decide how AI will develop, “that is capable of slowing things down when everything is accelerating, and of protecting the opportunities for communities still to be able to participate and ask questions.”
- Regulation of how companies collect and use personal data, which “should not be treated as something to be sold off or entrusted to a select few.”
- Better education of adults, teachers, and young people for using AI in their daily lives, specifically to avoid sexual exploitation, blackmail, grooming, and disinformation.
- Environmental regulations, given AI infrastructure’s impact on the natural world.
- A duty for governments to protect access to, and the dignity of, work, to provide job training and professional help to workers affected by AI disruptions, and to redistribute the wealth and value created by AI to those it displaces.
- Flexibility from labor unions and organizations to “be open to new types of employment and the corresponding needs of workers, in order to represent and defend them.”
- New rules of war and accountability for AI usage in combat, given that “just war” theory is being made obsolete by the growing automation of warfare. “When a decision to strike becomes automated or opaque, the risk of abdicating responsibility increases,” the encyclical says. “For this reason, the chain of responsibility must be identifiable and verifiable; those who design, train, authorize and employ technology must be held accountable for their decisions.”
- A new international compact on how AI should be used to avoid “the technological arms race and ensure robust protection for civilians and the infrastructures necessary for their survival.”
From an eagle-eye view, the document is fairly wonky and detailed: concerned with very practical matters and specific recommendations that could have come from academia, or a secular background — underscoring just how much Leo may hope it can provide guidance for leaders and individuals, as opposed to remaining siloed to the intellectual class. So as this technology continues to develop, the pope and the church want to help shape it. They want the faithful to be reminded that whatever AI offers is not reality, not personhood, and not God. It is a tool that should not dominate or determine the lives of its users. And it should not replace the role of the Church in teaching morality and ethics.
For the greater secular world, the Church wants to remind the public that they should have a say in how AI shapes their world; they should not allow business and tech leaders to define the terms of existence through their machines; and that they have a powerful ally in the Roman Catholic Church in the effort to preserve human dignity in the face of unprecedented technological change.
I’ve been covering deals since 2013, and I still think Memorial Day sales are worth checking out. There are so many made-up shopping holidays these days that it can be difficult to ascertain when items are actually cheaper than usual. Now is one of those times. To help you out, I’ve scoured through our buying guides full of hand-tested items to find gadgets and gizmos that are discounted—and worth buying. If you’re in the market for something we’ve tested, keep checking in through May 26 to see if you can snag a deal. We’ll update this post again between now and then.
Make sure to check out our various buying guides for recommendations on the best laptops, the best printers, and more. You might also be interested in the rest of our Memorial Day deals coverage.
Updated May 25: I’ve added 5 new deals, removed expired discounts, and checked for accuracy throughout.
WIRED Featured Deals:
Birdfy Lite Smart Bird Feeder (Lifetime AI, No Solar) for $120 ($110 off)
Netvue
Birdfy Lite Smart Bird Feeder
A few different combinations of our favorite smart bird feeder are on sale. You can choose a version with or without solar charging. There’s also the option of buying a model that comes with lifetime AI bird identification; otherwise, if you decide you want it later, it’ll cost you $5 per month, but it isn’t required for enjoyment. This bird feeder is equipped with a 1080p camera that can capture decent footage of whoever comes to snack. It has a wide field of vision as well, and the feeder is easy to clean and refill.
Last week, the US government announced $2 billion in investments in quantum computing companies, allocating $100 million each to a range of startups in exchange for equity in the companies. Those could be make-or-break investments for many companies that are likely years away from a product that could see widespread use. But a member of the US Congress is now arguing that those deals are illegal, as Congress did not allocate the money for this purpose—instead, it was meant to support public research in semiconductors.
But the biggest chunk of money would go to a company that likely wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the government’s backing. Anderon will be set up with a billion dollars each from IBM and the government and will inherit personnel and IP from IBM. It will serve as a foundry for fabricating quantum processing units and will contract its services out to IBM and any other company that wants access to cutting-edge hardware.
Is any of this legal?
Zoe Lofgren (D–Calif.), the ranking member of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, made it clear that she is not happy with how the government is using its money to support this technology.
“This announcement is illegal and troubling on so many levels,” Lofgren said one day after the announcement, pointing out that the money being used for the deal comes from the CHIPS and Science Act, which was passed during the Biden administration and was allocated “specifically for microelectronics R&D, with a focus on semiconductor technology.”
That technology overlaps only partially, at best, with what’s used in quantum processors. In addition, Lofgren says the money was allocated to foster public/private research partnerships, which these deals most decidedly are not. Finally, she noted that the largest sum of money will go to IBM, and she suggested that a former IBM executive (Dario Gil, current Under Secretary for Science at the Department of Energy) was involved in the negotiations that led to this deal.
None of this, she noted, means that quantum processing technology is a bad investment or that any of these companies are unworthy of support. She just argues that doing so would require Congress to allocate the money to do so.
Gemini wants to talk. All the time.
Google I/O 2026 kicked off this week, and to no one’s surprise, it was almost completely about AI.
To start with, Google is rolling out its “intelligent, AI-powered Search box” globally. Instead of just autocompleting your text, it uses AI to anticipate your intent and help you formulate questions. You will be able to use images, video files and entire Chrome tabs as direct search inputs. Its AI Mode, now powered by the new Gemini 3.5 Flash, will still live alongside it, for your follow-up questions/corrections.
Google also introduced Gemini Spark. Running in the cloud, Spark is a digital assistant that can autonomously monitor credit card statements for hidden subscriptions, track updates from your kid’s school emails, or pull notes together into a Google Doc. It can even interact with third-party apps like OpenTable and Instacart to complete tasks—though it promises to ask for your confirmation before making any final purchases or sending emails. Google may have figured out a way to take the fun out of shopping.
There were glimpses of future hardware: Google and Samsung teased a collaboration with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker and offered the first look at two models of Android XR smart glasses. The glasses will allow you to chat with Gemini, get real-time audio translation in the speaker’s voice, translate real-world text in your line of sight and snap photos on the go.
Naturally, with all these new features, Google adjusted its AI subscription tiers, adding a new $ 100-per-month mid-range (hah!) tier. The AI Ultra Plan will offer five times higher usage limits than the standard $20 Pro plan, as well as priority access to Google’s Antigravity coding tool and 20TB of cloud storage.
Meanwhile, down from its original $250 price tag, Google’s top-tier Ultra plan features 20 times higher usage limits and exclusive access to Project Genie — Google’s experimental research preview that lets you build interactive 3D worlds using real-world Google Street View imagery.
We dig further into a few more of the biggest announcements below.
— Mat Smith
Xreal’s Project Aura smartglasses are a maximalist take on Android XR
Instead of subtle, normal-looking glasses with some smart features, Xreal’s smartglasses aim for an immersive AR experience, with a focus on entertainment. That approach is very much the same as the company’s Android XR-powered Project Aura, but based on Karissa Bell’s time with these new smartglasses, they may offer more than just another wearable screen.
Compared with the low-key (arguably lower-spec) audio-only smartglasses from Warby Parker and Gentle Monsters, Xreal’s Project Aura packs in three cameras, a 70-degree field of view and hand-gesture navigation. The main gesture is a pinching motion that will feel pretty familiar to anyone who has used other AR setups, such as Apple’s Vision Pro.
Speaking of which, Project Aura comes with a tethered puck, just like Apple’s wearable display. It comes with a trackpad and a fingerprint sensor, although neither worked on the demo model we tested. The company hasn’t revealed pricing details yet (expect those alongside the formal launch later this year), but they’re likely to exceed Xreal’s One Pro glasses, which cost $650.
Continue reading.
Google’s Gemini Omni can generate ‘anything from any input,’ starting with video
Gemini Omni is Google’s new gen-AI model that can “create anything from any input”. Gemini Omni Flash is rolling out now to the Gemini app, Google Flow and YouTube Shorts. It’s apparently the next evolution of Nano Banana and, presumably, its current video generator, Veo 3.1. It lets you “combine images, audio, video and text as input and generate high-quality videos grounded in Gemini’s real-world knowledge.”
Apparently, Omni also better understands physical forces such as gravity, kinetic energy and fluid dynamics, making scenes more realistic.
Spotify is adding more AI gunk for podcasts and audiobooks
Announced on its investor day, Spotify is expanding a feature that enables users to generate “personal podcasts.” It announced this tool last month, with the option to use AI agents such as OpenClaw and Claude Code to whip up synthetic audio. The company says it’s adding a feature that lets users generate personal podcasts directly within Spotify. It notes that after you enter a prompt, it will generate audio that draws on factors such as your Spotify taste profile and world knowledge. You can also feed in text, PDFs and links to give the tool more context for what you’d like to hear about. Spotify says eligible Premium users in the US will get access to personal podcasts next month. The Roman Empire, Final Fantasy VII Remake and Liverpool FC, please. In under 30 seconds. Go.
Continue reading.
Meta’s latest attempt to copy its rivals is a Reddit clone
Meta has launched a new app called Forum. Social media consultant and analyst Matt Navarra spotted Forum in the App Store, where it is described as “a dedicated space for the conversations that matter most to you,” created specifically for Facebook Groups. As Navarra notes, Meta seems to be pushing the idea that the app can help users get “real answers” from “real people,” making it sound very similar to Reddit, offering an escape from the atrocious genAI search results we’ve all been suffering from recently. (Did we mention Google I/O was this week?)
Continue reading.
The consumer A/V industry keeps consolidating, and the headphone category is no longer watching from the cheap seats. Sony’s acquisition of Audeze made that clear in 2023, AXPONA changed ownership almost before the elevators at the Schaumburg Renaissance had recovered from the 2026 show, and now Fidelity Collective has acquired Westone Audio and Etymotic. That puts two of the most respected names in professional and enthusiast IEMs under one newly formed company, and it is another reminder that even niche audio brands with fiercely loyal followings are now very much in play.
Who is Fidelity Collective?
This is where the story gets more interesting.
Most recent A/V industry acquisitions have followed a familiar pattern: one established company, investment group, or brand owner buying or partnering with another established player. This one appears to be different. Fidelity Collective is not an old name with a deep catalog of legacy brands. It is a newly formed holding company that seems to have been created specifically to bring Westone Audio and Etymotic under one roof.
Fidelity Collective is led by CEO Sam Roney, known for his work with Dekoni Audio and Grell Audio, and COO Tal Kocen. The deal was finalized on Friday, May 15, 2026, with both Westone Audio and Etymotic now operating under their leadership.
That distinction matters. This is not simply another large A/V company adding a respected audio brand to the shelf. It is a new entity built around two very specific names in the IEM and earphone categories. That suggests a more targeted play, and one that could have real consequences for professional audio users, hearing-health customers, musicians, and personal audio enthusiasts who have followed these brands for decades.
What Westone Audio and Etymotic Bring To The Table
This strategic move opens a new chapter for Westone Audio and Etymotic, two brands with deep roots in in-ear audio, hearing protection, professional monitoring, and precision listening. Together, they represent decades of work in products used by touring musicians, audio professionals, hearing specialists, and serious listeners who care about what actually reaches their ears. Imagine that.
The new leadership team also brings direct familiarity with both brands, which matters. Tal Kocen previously worked with Westone Audio and Etymotic, while Gary Boyer will remain on board as EVP, providing some continuity as both companies move under the Fidelity Collective umbrella.
CEO Sam Roney also brings broader audio industry experience through his involvement with Dekoni Audio, Grell Audio, and Dark Matter Audio Labs. Combined, the leadership team appears to understand the history, product philosophies, and customer bases behind both Westone Audio and Etymotic. That does not guarantee success, but it is a better starting point than handing two specialist IEM brands to people who think “balanced armature” sounds like a yoga injury.
Westone Audio was founded in 1959 and has been a major influence in the development and manufacturing of custom in-ear monitors for musicians, with its background in hearing protection and acoustics helping shape products used on stage, in studios, and by serious listeners.
Etymotic, founded in 1983, is known for its research-led approach to hearing and sound. They helped define the category for high-isolation, precision in-ear listening, with products developed from a foundation in auditory research, diagnostics, and hearing protection. Its ER4SR and XR series became a reference point for accurate in-ear sound, while its wider product range continues to serve musicians, professionals, and listeners who value clarity and faithful sound reproduction. Etymotic’s hearing protection products are also widely recognized for providing solutions for one of the biggest frustrations with traditional earplugs by maintaining clarity and balance while simply reducing volume.
The Fidelity Collective Umbrella
Under Fidelity Collective umbrella, Westone, and Etymotic will continue their research and product heritage. The company’s focus will be on maintaining the distinct identities and core values that made Westone Audio and Etymotic trusted names.
At the same time, the new group is expected to bring fresh energy, expanded R&D, renewed product development, and long-term investment into both brands and their passionate user base.
Fidelity Collective says the goal is not to abandon or reinvent what made the brands successful, but to build on their foundation with new momentum, modern innovation, and long-term vision across both professional and consumer audio categories.
“Westone Audio and Etymotic are brands with genuine history and credibility,” said Sam Roney, CEO of Fidelity Collective. “Tal and I share a vision of bringing startup-level energy to these epic legacy brands while fully respecting the heritage they’ve built over decades serving musicians, audio professionals, and hearing protection users.”
Tal Kocen, COO of Fidelity Collective, added: “For me, this is incredibly personal because these are brands I already know closely. There’s already a strong foundation here, and our role is to build on that with fresh ideas, modern product development, and long-term commitment to the communities around both brands.”
Fidelity Collective also confirmed that they will be investing in staffing, engineering, product development, and operational infrastructure as both brands move into this next phase, including the re-establishment of sales operations in Dallas and engineering and lab facilities in Chicago.
Both brands will continue serving existing users, including professional musicians, stage performers, engineers, hearing-conscious listeners, and music enthusiasts, while expanding into new product categories and market opportunities.
Further product announcements from both Westone Audio and Etymotic are expected in the coming months of 2026 and beyond.
The Bottom Line
Fidelity Collective’s acquisition of Westone Audio and Etymotic matters because it gives a newly formed company two established IEM brands at a time when wired earphones are clearly gaining momentum again.
Recent CanJam shows in New York, Singapore, and Dubai made that obvious, with brands like Noble, Shure, DUNU, Astell&Kern, Meze Audio, and Sennheiser fighting for the same serious listener. Westone brings professional IEM credibility, while Etymotic brings accuracy, isolation, and hearing-focused design.
What is missing are the details: new products, updated lineups, and how much engineering or distribution overlap we will actually see. But the intent is clear. Fidelity Collective is not entering the IEM market quietly. It now has two respected names, and the rest of the category should be paying attention.
Pricing & Availability
While we wait to see what new initiatives and products result from these new company relationships, here are some currently available products from Westone and Etymotic.
Westone Audio Earphones
Etymotic Earphones
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The Blackbird, built by the Drone Pro Hub duo, hit 730 km/h, or about 453.6 mph, during a downwind run on the second day of testing. Its return leg into heavy wind topped out at 640 km/h, giving the pair a two-way average of 685 km/h, or about 425.6 mph.
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Amgen’s Helena Mulvihill explores how organisations in 2026 are navigating issues of environment, health and safety in the workplace.
“I often hear EHS (environment, health and safety) described as a broad discipline, but it really comes down to protecting people while supporting safe and reliable operations,” explained Helena Mulvihill, an EHS manager at biotech Amgen.
She told SiliconRepublic.com, “It brings together environmental compliance, occupational health and safety, and in practice connects every part of the site. That means working closely with operations and support teams, often across multiple departments in the same day.”
Her work largely involves the implementation of EHS management systems such as risk assessments, incident management, training, auditing and performance metrics; a big part of the role is also communication, making sure expectations are clear and that teams feel supported in applying EHS principles.
She said, “There isn’t really a typical day, which is something I enjoy. While I can plan my week, priorities often shift depending on operational needs. That balance between planned and reactive work keeps things varied and means I need to stay adaptable.”
How important is it to involve everyone in EHS and does that work in practice?
Involving everyone is essential because EHS cannot operate in isolation. It must be embedded across all levels of the organisation, from leadership to the people carrying out day-to-day tasks. I’ve found that the colleagues closest to the work have the clearest understanding of how tasks are actually performed. They’re making real-time decisions, so their input is critical.
While EHS teams provide guidance and structure, it’s important that individuals take ownership of applying those principles in practice. That’s what makes procedures meaningful.
I build that through collaboration and engagement. I spend time in operational areas, listen to feedback and learn about challenges from different perspectives. When people feel involved and see the reasoning behind decisions, EHS becomes part of how work is done rather than something separate.
What does a strong EHS culture feel like when you’re part of it?
You really notice it in the everyday decisions people make. Safety and operational impact are considered as part of the task, rather than something that’s addressed afterwards. It also comes down to trust. People need to feel comfortable raising concerns, asking questions or even stopping work if something doesn’t seem right. That openness is what allows issues to be picked up and addressed early.
When that culture is in place, you see people take responsibility, look out for one another and think about the wider impact of what they’re doing. Over time, that consistency makes a real difference to both safety performance and how effectively the site operates.
How can employees support EHS in their day-to-day roles, even if it’s not their main focus?
Supporting EHS often comes down to simple, consistent behaviours. One approach used at Amgen is ‘Take Five’, which encourages people to pause before starting a task and assess the situation. That might mean reviewing the environment, thinking through the task, identifying potential risks and choosing the safest way to complete the work. It also involves putting the right controls in place and communicating clearly with anyone who could be affected.
I’ve seen how effective that can be in practice. It helps people stay aware of their surroundings and think about the impact of their actions. Even if EHS isn’t their main role, those small actions make a real difference in reducing risk and supporting a safer workplace.
How does the work you do in EHS contribute to wider organisational goals at Amgen?
My role focuses on implementing the EHS management system onsite, which supports wider organisational goals by helping the site operate safely, consistently and in line with regulatory expectations. A key part of the role is anticipating and controlling risks before they lead to incidents, while working closely with different teams to identify and implement improvements effectively. Strengthening the EHS management system, while helping to build an inclusive, high-performing safety culture, supports reliable manufacturing operations and continuous improvement.
What kind of opportunities are there for people working in this field?
One of the most appealing things about EHS is the range of opportunities it offers. You have the chance to specialise in areas like safety, environmental compliance, industrial hygiene or process safety, depending on where your interests lie. It also gives you exposure to various parts of the business from manufacturing and laboratory environments to supply chain and supporting functions. That helps build a broader understanding of how everything connects, and over time, many people move between these areas to develop a well-rounded skill set. You also get the chance to collaborate with global colleagues and learn from other sites, which brings fresh perspectives and helps you continue developing over time.
What skills are best suited to professionals in this space?
I’ve come to realise that adaptability and patience are core skills because priorities can change quickly and you’re often responding to different situations. Being able to adjust and stay focused is key. Communication is just as important. A large part of the role involves listening, asking questions and understanding how work is conducted in practice so risks can be identified early. It also means explaining things clearly, so expectations are aligned.
Curiosity and initiative are also central. Taking the time to engage with people, understand processes and build relationships makes a real difference. Combined with a willingness to keep learning, these skills help you develop in a field that is constantly evolving.
Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.
In December of last year, Microsoft told thousands of its engineers, product managers and designers that they could use Claude Code, Anthropic’s command-line coding agent, on the company dime.
By spring, the tool had spread well beyond engineering: into the kind of non-technical roles that, in earlier waves of enterprise software, would have waited years for a seat. Inside Microsoft, the rollout was framed as a learning exercise. Outside it, the surface signal was simpler.
The world’s largest software company, the one with its own foundation models and its own coding assistant, had just paid a competitor to put a rival product in front of its workforce.
Six months later, that experiment is being wound down. According to reporting in Windows Central and other outlets following The Verge’s original scoop, Microsoft is cancelling most direct Claude Code licences inside its Experiences and Devices group, the division that builds Windows, Microsoft 365, Outlook, Teams and Surface.
Affected engineers have been told to migrate to GitHub Copilot CLI by 30 June, the last day of Microsoft’s fiscal year. The official reason is toolchain unification. The unofficial reason is in the calendar.
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The Claude pullback is the most credible signal yet that the unit economics of enterprise AI coding do not, at current token prices, work. Not because the tools are bad. The opposite: they are good enough that engineers use them constantly, and the constant use is what breaks the maths.
The clearest evidence is at Uber, which is not Microsoft and does not have Microsoft’s financial cushion. Praveen Neppalli Naga, Uber’s chief technology officer, told The Information in April that the company had burned through its entire planned 2026 AI coding budget in four months.
By March, Naga’s own figures had Claude Code use jumping from 32 per cent to 84 per cent of his roughly 5,000-engineer organisation. Individual engineers were spending between $500 and $2,000 a month on tokens. Around 70 per cent of code committed at Uber now originates with AI, and on the order of one in ten live backend updates is shipped by an agent with no human in the loop.
“I’m back to the drawing board,” Naga said, “because the budget I thought I would need is blown away already.”
That sentence is the whole story in miniature. The forecast was wrong because the variable being forecast, token consumption, behaves nothing like the licences and seats that finance teams know how to model. A traditional enterprise software deal is denominated in users.
A token-priced deal is denominated in how much the model has to think. Agentic coding makes the model think a lot. Sessions run for hours, spawn parallel threads and generate volumes of context that bear no resemblance to the autocomplete interactions that shaped the original pricing structure.
We have been tracking this fracture for months. In November, GitHub paused new Copilot Pro and Pro+ sign-ups because the agentic workloads of paying customers were generating costs that exceeded their monthly plan price.
Cost structures built for lightweight assistance, the company conceded, no longer held.
This is not an Uber problem or a Microsoft problem. It is an industry condition. Bryan Catanzaro, vice-president of applied deep learning at Nvidia, told Axios in April that, for his team, the cost of compute is now far beyond the cost of the employees using it.
This is the chip company saying it. Fortune followed in May with reporting that token-based AI tooling, when used heavily, can cost more per task than the human engineer it was supposed to augment.
A 2024 MIT analysis circulated widely in finance circles since then suggests that, on current pricing, AI automation pencils out as cheaper than human labour for roughly a quarter of the jobs people thought it would replace.
Set that against the spend forecasts. Gartner expects worldwide AI spending to reach $2.5 trillion this year, up 69 per cent on 2025.
The same firm now places generative AI squarely in what it calls the trough of disillusionment, predicting in a May press release that 25 per cent of planned 2026 AI budget will slip into 2027 as proofs of concept die in the procurement pipeline.
A separate Gartner read from April found that only 28 per cent of AI infrastructure projects fully deliver against their business case. That is not the curve of a technology going through an awkward adolescence. That is the curve of a market repricing itself.
Microsoft’s retreat lands inside this repricing, and not by accident. There are two ways to read the move. The first is the one Microsoft has briefed: that Copilot CLI is the strategic destination, that engineers will continue to have access to Claude models inside Copilot, and that the company simply wants a product it can shape directly with GitHub. That story is true.
It is also a story that Microsoft could have told at any point in the past six months and chose not to. What changed was not the strategic logic. What changed was the bill.
The second reading is harder to discount. Microsoft is uniquely positioned to know what enterprise-scale Claude usage actually costs, because its own engineers were the heaviest users outside Anthropic’s customer base. Inside Experiences and Devices, Claude Code had become, by several accounts, the preferred tool.
If the maths had improved with scale, this would be the moment Microsoft locked in a multi-year deal at favourable terms. Instead, it is unwinding the experiment in a window that conveniently closes the books on a fiscal year.
When the company with the most leverage in the room walks away from a vendor whose product its own staff prefer, the signal is not about preference.
Whether this constitutes a bubble depends on definitions. Token-level pricing will fall, as it has fallen at roughly a factor of ten every eighteen months for the past three years. The more interesting question is whether per-task token consumption falls faster than per-token cost.
The evidence so far runs the other way. Each generation of agentic system, by design, consumes more tokens per unit of work, because it reasons longer, plans more elaborately and verifies itself against the world.
Anthropic’s own infrastructure team has spoken publicly about reasoning workloads generating order-of-magnitude more compute per query than chat. That is the bet baked into the next twelve months of model releases. It is also the bet that put Uber back at the drawing board.
There is a worked example in TNW’s own coverage. In April, Anthropic banned a popular open-source agentic framework called OpenClaw from running on consumer Claude subscriptions, after discovering that single instances could chew through the equivalent of $1,000 to $5,000 in API costs in a day of autonomous operation. The framework was running on a $200-a-month Max plan.
The economic transfer was so blatant that Anthropic had to write a new clause into its terms of service. Multiply that pattern across a Fortune 500 engineering organisation, and you have the Uber budget memo.
The counterargument is real and worth stating. The cost of a working AI coding agent compared to the cost of an additional senior engineer is, even at current prices, often favourable on a per-feature basis. The productivity uplift is documented; the substitution is happening. What is breaking is not the value proposition.
It is the procurement model. Companies that signed up for a productivity tool are discovering they signed up for a metered utility, and the meter runs when nobody is looking. The fix may be straightforward: capped budgets per engineer, tiered access for high-leverage roles, agent runtime quotas.
Many of the larger buyers are already there. But the implication is that the era of “give every employee a Claude Code seat” is closing, and what replaces it will look more like AWS billing than like Office licences.
That is what Microsoft’s quiet email to its Windows and Surface teams really announces. Not the end of AI coding. Not even the end of Anthropic at Microsoft, given that Claude models will continue to be reachable through Copilot CLI.
It announces the end of the experimental phase, the phase in which the world’s largest software companies were willing to absorb arbitrary token costs in exchange for learning. The learning is done.
What comes next is the harder part. Enterprises will keep buying AI coding tools, because the productivity is real and the competitive pressure is unforgiving. But they will buy them the way they buy electricity, with usage caps, with shadow meters, with a finance team in the room.
Somewhere in a Microsoft conference room earlier this spring, someone looked at a Claude Code invoice and did the arithmetic against a Copilot CLI roadmap, and made a decision.
The same arithmetic is now being done in every CFO’s office that bought into the December 2025 rollout. The retreat will not be loud. It will be a series of fiscal-year-end emails, sent on a deadline nobody noticed until the budget was already gone.
Pope Leo XIV has taken a stronger stand against AI. On Monday, Leo released his first papal encyclical — an almost 400-year-old tradition in which the Catholic Church shares its perspective on an issue. In this case, over about 42,300 words (in the English version), the Pope warned of “the misconception of equating this type of ‘intelligence’ with that of human beings.”
“These systems merely imitate certain functions of human intelligence. In doing so, they often surpass human intelligence in speed and computational capacity, offering tangible benefits across many fields,” Pope Leo stated.
He continued: “So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate language, behavior and analytical skills, or even simulate empathy and understanding, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom.”
Notably, the Pontiff presented the remarks alongside Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah.
The Pope stated that it’s necessary to “establish adequate regulatory tools capable of upholding justice and curbing the distorting effects of technological power.” He emphasized that wealth is already concentrated in the hands of very few people and that it’s up to governments to ensure it doesn’t become even more so. In that vein, he added that leaders must ensure that humans, not AI, make all decisions related to weapons in the future.
He also called for “an educational alliance for the digital age” that encourages teaching young people to think critically about AI, to guard against “apathy for seeking the truth.” Regulations should also protect young people against “violent or degrading” AI-generated content, along with grooming and sexual exploitation.
Leo warned that such technology — and any profits that come with it — shouldn’t be used to justify systematic job loss. As such, he encouraged retraining and employment protections for workers whose jobs are at risk due to AI.
Pope Leo’s remarks weren’t made against AI as a whole, stating that it shouldn’t be seen “as a force antagonistic to humanity.” If carefully managed, he said, it could “open up a horizon extending in all directions.” In February, the Vatican teamed up with language service provider Translated to offer AI-powered live translations to Holy Mass attendees.
This webinar explores how AI‑based virtual sensors can be used to estimate signals that are difficult or costly to measure, such as battery state of charge (SOC) in Battery Management Systems. Using a practical example, the session demonstrates how AI models can be integrated into system‑level design and validated against performance, resource, and deployment constraints.
The workflow shows how to design, verify, compress, and deploy AI‑based virtual sensors to embedded processors within a single environment.
You will learn how to:
- Integrate AI models into Simulink® for system‑level simulation and verification
- Apply formal verification to assess neural network behavior
- Optimize models for memory footprint and execution speed
- Generate and profile library‑free C code for embedded deployment
- Evaluate design tradeoffs across accuracy, performance, and deployment targets
Click ‘Watch Now’ to explore this webinar.
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