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Now that iOS 18.1 is available to the masses, Apples new hearing aid feature is ready for use. The tool is one of three hearing health items the company announced alongside the iPhone 16 in September. Another one of those, the clinically-validated hearing test, is an essential part of being able to use the AirPods Pro 2 as a hearing aid. With an up-to-date iPhone and those earbuds, you can employ hearing assistance tools without visiting a doctor or buying off-putting hearing aids. Simply take a five-minute test, and if the software determines you have mild to moderate hearing loss, you can immediately enable Apples FDA-approved hearing aid. Heres a step-by-step guide on how to use it. Update your iPhone and AirPods Pro 2 Billy Steele for Engadget Before you can access Apples hearing aid, youll need to make sure your iPhone is updated to iOS 18.1 and your AirPods Pro 2 have the latest firmware (7B19). None of the new hearing health features will show up in the AirPods settings or in the Apple Health app if you dont have both of those updates. Whats more, you wont be able to run the hearing test or use the hearing aid feature on the first-gen AirPods Pro. You can check your current iOS version from the iPhone Settings menu. Scroll down to General and tap Software Update. From here, you can see which version of iOS youre running and if youve got a pending update thats ready to download and install. Once again, youre looking for iOS 18.1 here since this is the software version that delivers the suite of hearing health features. To check the firmware on your AirPods Pro 2, connect the earbuds to your iPhone and navigate to the Settings menu. Here, your AirPods Pro 2 should appear near the top of the list and tapping that option will take you into the settings. You can also access AirPods Pro 2 details from the Bluetooth menu by tapping the i icon next to the device name. Once youre in the AirPods settings menu, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the main screen. One of the last things youll see is a bunch of firmware info, including the current version for the AirPods Pro 2. If you see 7B19, youre good to go. If not, your earbuds havent updated yet, but you can try to force them to do so instead of waiting for the over-the-air process to take place on its own. To do this, connect the AirPods Pro 2 to your iPhone for at least 30 seconds and play music to confirm the connection is stable. Then put the earbuds back on in the charging case and close the lid, keeping the AirPods Pro 2 in range of the iPhone. Now check Bluetooth settings, and if you see the AirPods Pro 2 stay connected for more than 10 seconds while in the charging case with the lid closed, then that should indicate that the update is in progress. Take Apples hearing test Billy Steele for Engadget After youve confirmed that you have the necessary updates for your phone and earbuds, youll have to take Apples hearing test before the hearing aid features will show up. The only way around this is to upload an audiogram from your doctor in the Apple Health app. Either way, youll need to exhibit mild to moderate hearing loss (26-60 dBHL) for the Hearing Assistance section of the AirPods Pro 2 menu to be available to you. Apple gives you two places to access its hearing test, and both of them are easy to find. The first is in the AirPods menu, which you can get to from the main Settings menu or from the Bluetooth menu. The Hearing Health section is prominently displayed on the main screen, just under the Noise Control options. In Hearing Health, Take a Hearing Test will be the third item after Hearing Protection and Hearing Assistance, and it will appear in blue. In the Health app, the fastest way to get to the hearing test is to tap Browse on the menu on the main Summary screen. From there, select Hearing with the blue ear icon and scroll down to Get More From Health. Here, youll see the option to take the hearing test with the AirPods Pro 2. Using the hearing aid feature Billy Steele for Engadget After you take Apples hearing test, or upload your results from your doctor in the Health app, youll be able to access the Hearing Assistance section of the Hearing Health features in the AirPods settings. The hearing aid feature resides here, where you can turn it on or off as needed. Its worth noting that Apple will ask if you want to set up Hearing Assistance immediately if your hearing test results meet the criteria for mild to moderate hearing loss. On the main Hearing Assistance screen, youll see options for enabling/disabling the hearing aid and Media Assist. There are options for adjusting the hearing aid feature and choosing how the system applies Media Assist. The later tool uses your hearing profile to improve the sound for music, videos and calls. You can choose to have it only apply the personalization to either music and videos or calls and FaceTime. By default, it will re-tune the audio for all of them. Under Adjustments beneath the hearing aid toggle, youll have the ability to tweak amplification, balance, tone and ambient noise reduction via individual sliders. You can also nable/disable the swipe gesture on AirPods Pro 2 that will adjust amplification when hearing aid mode is active (versus volume control for normal use). At the bottom of this menu, you can enable/disable Conversation Boost, the tool that specifically targets human voices that Apple debuted in 2021. When the hearing aid is enabled, youll see a second slider in the Control Center with an ear icon where you can adjust amplification and you can also tweak this setting on an Apple Watch. Hearing aid will only be enabled when Noise Control is set to transparency, but Media Assist will still work in Adaptive, ANC and off modes. Whats more, the hearing aid and hearing protection features can be used simultaneously in transparency mode, with the later being active by default. And once again, you can turn the hearing aid tool off entirely at any time in the Hearing Assistance menu from the AirPods settings. It could take a few days, or even a few weeks, for you to acclimate to the hearing aid feature. You can use the AirPods Pro 2 as hearing aids for up to six hours on a charge, and youll want to wear them as much as possible when you first start using them for this purpose. Once your hearing profile is enabled on the AirPods Pro 2, you shouldnt share the earbuds with anyone else. This is due to the fact that adjustments have been made to compensate for the specific frequencies you have trouble hearing. That personalization would lead to weird tuning for someone else.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/headphones/how-to-use-apples-airpods-pro-2-as-a-hearing-aid-173049967.html?src=rss
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ChatGPT Search is here to try to combine the best of chatbots and web searches. OpenAIs latest feature searches the web in response to your natural language queries, delivering fast, timely answers with links to relevant web sources. When using ChatGPT, the bot will search the web depending on what you ask. Or, if you want to manually override its decision-making, you can tap a new web search icon below the input bar. OpenAI says the feature looks for original, high-quality content from the web, integrating it into conversational answers. This includes trusted news media sources and data providers like AccuWeather. The data will encompass things like weather, stocks, sports, news and maps. Under each ChatGPT Search reply, youll see a Sources button. Click that, and a sidebar with references and links will open. OpenAI OpenAI says ChatGPT Search uses a fine-tuned version of GPT-4o, post-trained using novel synthetic data generation techniques. This included distilling outputs from the companys OpenAI o1-preview. That model is much slower than GPT-4o, so perhaps training on it (rather than directly using it) will help the new feature to pinch some of its reasoning skills without laboring as long over answers. The company used feedback from its SearchGPT test run to help tune the feature. We brought the best of the SearchGPT experience into ChatGPT, the company wrote. The feature will be available today for ChatGPT Plus and Team subscribers. It will be available in the ChatGPT mobile and desktop apps and on the web. OpenAI says Enterprise and Edu users will get access in the next few weeks and trickle down to free users in the coming months.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/chatgpt-search-will-do-the-legwork-for-you-171912610.html?src=rss
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Temu is the latest platform the European Commission (EC) has fixed its regulatory gaze upon. Europes top consumer enforcement authority said Thursday its opening a formal investigation into the online retailer for enabling the sale of illegal products, including limiting the reappearance of previously suspended rogue traders with a history of hawking prohibited goods. In addition to the illegal product allegation, the EC is also investigating Temus potentially addictive design, the platforms systems that recommend products and data access for researchers. The alleged violations fall under the Digital Services Act (DSA), which empowers the EC to levy fines of up to six percent of Temus annual revenue. In a statement to Engadget, a company spokesperson said it plans to cooperate fully. Temu takes its obligations under the DSA seriously, continuously investing to strengthen our compliance system and safeguard consumer interests on our platform, the Temu spokesperson wrote. We will cooperate fully with regulators to support our shared goal of a safe, trusted marketplace for consumers. Temu added that its in discussions to join the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the sale of counterfeit goods on the internet, a collective of online retailers (facilitated by the EC) that collaborates to prevent fake product sales in Europe. We can confirm that we are in discussions to join the initiative, the Temu spokesperson told Engadget. Counterfeiting is an industrywide challenge, and we believe that collaborative efforts are essential to advancing our shared goals of protecting consumers and rights holders. The ECs formal proceedings follow a preliminary risk assessment report Temu provided the EU at the end of September, its replies to the Commissions formal requests in June and October and info shared by third parties. As Bloomberg notes, Meta, X, AliExpress and TikTok are also facing DSA investigations. The US, which typically lags far behind the EU in reining in Big Tech, said in September it may investigate Temu, too. Leaders of The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) ordered staff to evaluate concerns about deadly baby and toddler products on the platform. Among the ECs concerns are whether Temus systems are designed to prevent the reappearance of previously suspended traders and non-compliant products. It will also look at the platforms potentially addictive gamified reward programs and its systems to mitigate the risks from addictive design choices that could harm customers mental well-being. It will investigate Temus parameters used to recommend goods (the Commission wants at least one easily accessible option that is not based on profiling) and whether the company complies with the DSAs requirement to provide researchers with publicly accessible data. The EC doesnt set legal deadline for completing DSA investigations. Once concluded, the Commission will decide whether to bring the hammer down, accept voluntary commitments to remedy the problems or drop the case.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/european-commission-sets-its-regulatory-crosshairs-on-temu-for-illegal-product-sales-164541327.html?src=rss
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