News

• Canva ProSuite connects Affinity, Cavalry, Flourish, and Leonardo into one ecosystem
• Affinity and Cavalry stay free as ProSuite gains over 100 additions
• Scene Decomposition uses AI to split flattened pictures into separate editable components

Canva is giving Affinity a major set of upgrades as it tries to make its professional creative tools more useful against established competitors.

The free software now adds photography, design, automation and file compatibility features alongside deeper connections with Cavalry, Canva and other creative products.

The changes form part of Canva ProSuite, which brings Affinity, Cavalry, Flourish and Leonardo together while keeping Affinity and Cavalry available without payment.

The photography changes are particularly extensive, adding batch importing and an improved RAW processing system for users handling large collections.

Preset looks can now be applied across multiple images, while new correction tools address mixed illumination and camera movement during editing.

Scene Decomposition uses AI to separate flattened pictures into editable components, allowing photographers to modify individual elements without rebuilding images manually.

A dedicated Astrophotography Studio adds specialized controls for photographers working with night skies and astronomical subjects during detailed image processing.

Affinity is also expanding the range of files it can handle, including support for bringing InDesign documents directly into the application.

The company says this gives users access to major industry file formats while reducing obstacles when moving projects between different creative applications.

Integration with Canva Brand Kit and Canva Sheets also adds a route for connecting design work with brand assets and structured information.

Other additions cover vector editing, typography, brushes, noise reduction, high dynamic range processing and export controls, giving professional users more options.

Sony ARW6 support, OpenColorIO display emulation, and improved output matching also extend Affinity's capabilities for photography and color-managed production workflows.

The release includes more than 60 Affinity additions, while Canva says ProSuite brings over 100 additions and changes across its connected products this year.

Canva is also connecting Affinity with Cavalry, its software for creating motion graphics and animations, as part of the new ProSuite.

Cavalry receives more than 50 changes, including new shape controls, lighting effects, graph editing improvements, and expanded SVG handling for motion designers.

The integration lets selected elements within Cavalry projects become editable inside Canva, while keeping the underlying animation protected.

This arrangement could allow teams to make limited changes without repeatedly sending modification requests back to motion designers and animators across team workflows.

Affinity and Cavalry can also connect with AI assistants through ProSuite's AI Connectors, allowing repetitive operations to be handled from natural-language instructions.

“We're genuinely excited to be releasing such a huge swathe of new tools for professional designers, animators, photographers and other advanced users,” said Duncan Clark, CEO of Pro Design at Canva.

“We asked professionals what they actually needed to power their creative work…there’s a lot of noise right now about AI replacing human creatives, but we believe professional craft matters more than ever. We want the Canva ProSuite to be where that craft lives and thrives.”

Affinity's new features, the Cavalry improvements and tighter connections across Canva's products give the free software a significantly larger professional toolkit.

• NymVPN has launched a new version of its app - v2026.12
• It introduces a host of speed-focused improvements, alongside improved usability, better onboarding, and new anti-censorship capabilities
• Alongside the technical changes, a new pricing structure has removed the 2-year plan entirely

NymVPN's latest update marks its latest move to put the best VPNs in its crosshairs. The provider has launched version 2026.12, bringing a massive wave of usability improvements, anti-censorship tools, and a brand-new pricing structure across its desktop and mobile apps.

According to the Nym Core Team, this release is laser-focused on "getting the safest connection to more people, in more places, with less in the way."

To that end, NymVPN has completely reworked its WireGuard handshake to deliver faster, more stable cellular connections. This means your VPN is far less likely to drop when switching from Wi-Fi to a spotty mobile data network. It also introduced a new onboarding experience to help you get started smoothly with the VPN's unique, decentralized mixnet.

The most immediate change users will notice is the introduction of one-click connections. NymVPN has introduced a "Safest" default setting that automatically picks a strong-performing server in a country next to yours, ensuring your entry point sits safely outside your home jurisdiction. Users can also select "Random" to constantly break traffic analysis patterns, or rely on "Favorites" and "Recents" for instant access to trusted nodes.

NymVPN is also expanding on its earlier beta tests by officially launching geo-exclusion alongside traditional split tunneling for desktop (macOS, Windows, Linux).

While basic split tunneling lets you send a whole app outside the VPN, geo-exclusion is far more precise. It splits a single app's traffic by destination, allowing you to route local services (like a banking app) outside the tunnel while keeping international traffic protected. The team notes this feature is currently available for Chinese IPs, with more countries coming soon.

For users in restrictive regimes, simply having a VPN app visible on your phone can be dangerous. Following earlier iOS icon disguises, NymVPN has now brought a camouflage icon feature to Android, allowing users to hide the software behind a discreet alternative logo in their device settings.

The provider is also expanding its global accessibility, launching five new languages: Traditional Chinese, Traditional Chinese (Hong Kong), Japanese, Italian, and Indonesian. As the developer noted in its release, "for people living under censorship, a VPN they can actually read is a necessity, not a nicety."

NymVPN is tweaking its subscription model to reflect the app's growing feature set. The provider has introduced a new six-month plan at $6 per month, while maintaining a standard monthly tier at $8.

However, the company is retiring its two-year subscription tier. The best value is now the one-year plan at $4 per month. NymVPN confirmed that existing two-year subscribers will keep their current plan, but it will automatically renew as a one-year plan when it expires.

The provider claims it remains one of the most affordable options on the market, adding that its "privacy is guaranteed by design, not by a promise a centralized VPN structurally can't keep."

Looking ahead, the NymVPN roadmap promises QR-code support for faster activations, expanded geo-exclusion for Russia, and customizable entry-and-exit server profiles.

Action camera brand Insta360 has been making a name for itself in the webcam space recently, breaking out with its first-ever webcam, the Link, back in 2022. Then we saw the Insta360 Link 2 in 2024, so while I was hoping for a Link 3 this year, instead we're getting an interstitial generation: say hello to the Insta360 Link 2 Pro.

I can't say I'm disappointed, mind you. The Link 2 was a fantastic webcam, and while the Link 2 Pro is a fairly straightforward hardware upgrade, I'm not one to complain about getting more of a good thing. The Pro model increases the price a bit, but also delivers improved internals: a bigger, better sensor and wider aperture for superior FOV and light balance mean that 4K video capture looks even prettier. It also adds a little gold trim around the lens.

Now, the Link 2 was already a pricey product, so there's no denying that the Insta360 Link 2 Pro is very expensive for a webcam, even a 4K-capable one. More on that further down in this review, but in short: want one of the best budget webcams? This ain't that.

But for professional users creating video content or making regular presentations over video conferencing, the Link 2 Pro should be a very serious consideration. It may not be cheap, but you get a lot of webcam for your money: the performance, design quality, and feature set are truly all best-in-class.

It's almost a bit surprising that more camera companies haven't made the jump to webcams. From old-guard industry titans like Canon to up-and-coming manufacturers like DJI, you'd imagine that more of them would want to capitalize on a product type that has only become more necessary in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of remote work.

But hey: their loss is Insta360's gain, having made a seamless jump from action-cams and drones to premium webcams. And make no mistake, the Link 2 Pro is indeed a premium piece of hardware.

The build quality on display here is nothing short of excellent. The casing is a pleasingly sturdy construction of matte plastic and metal, with a compact folding clip that snaps magnetically to the rotating gimbal mount, makning it easy to attach to any monitor. It also features an industry-standard threaded screwhole on the underside for fitting it to a tripod or arm mount.

Of course, the gimbal is arguably the star of the show here. A two-point mechanism that allows for both horizontal and vertical rotation of the main camera unit, the gimbal allows the camera to track your movements within a wide radius thanks to AI-powered head-tracking technology.

I tested this thoroughly, and it really works; even when I attempted to move completely out of frame, the camera was surprisingly adept at tracking my movements.

That's not all it's capable of, though. The gimbal also enables several of the Link 2 Pro's nifty presentation modes, including desktop mode (which points down to the surface in front of you, ideal for showing off physical documents), whiteboard mode (which frames and zooms on a whiteboard or similar presentation board), and the very clever 'pause-tracking' mode (which lets you designate a specific area where the tracking lingers naturally as it follows you around, creating a more dynamic feel to your footage).

It also doubles as a privacy feature (as opposed to a lens cover or camera killswitch), with the lens pointing directly down when not in use. A set of four 'recognition markers' is included in the box, which are used for some of the tracking-lock modes.

All this fancy functionality, as well as more 'conventional' features like light balance adjustment and digital zoom, is readily accessible through Insta360's free software. It's a solid tool that makes setting up your ideal video experience swift and seamless, but even better, it's also available as a phone app – perfect for quick adjustments without needing to fire up an extra piece of software on your PC while you're trying to record.

With all that fancy AI baked into the Link 2 Pro, you might be hoping for something a little more sophisticated than tracking modes. Worry not: like the previous Link 2, this webcam features a set of preloaded gesture controls, letting you control the camera with your hand movements rather than needing to adjust anything in the app.

These are fairly basic, but I found they worked well in practice. Holding up your palm freezes (or unfreezes) your tracking or auto-framing preset, holding up two fingers toggles the aforementioned whiteboard mode, and making an 'L' sign and moving your hand up and down lets you zoom in and out. It doesn't feel particularly natural at first, but I quickly found myself adapting to it.

Now, let's get to the meat of this review: how's that picture quality? Well, I'm very pleased to report that it's nothing short of excellent. Even in the poorly-lit, cramped little box of a room I call a home office, I don't think I've ever looked better on a monitor-mounted webcam.

4K footage is sharp and bright at 30FPS with solid color reproduction. The upgraded sensor and larger aperture compared to the previous model give the Link 2 Pro great performance across a range of light conditions, showing me clearly and well-illuminated whether it was the middle of the day with the curtains open or late at night by the light of my desk lamp.

The field of view is also reasonably wide at 83.9 degrees, making it easy to fit two or even three people in frame for presentations or podcasts. I've seen webcams with broader FOVs – in fact, I very recently reviewed the Razer Kiyo V2, which boasts an almost too-wide 91-degree FOV – but this is more or less perfect for mainstream use.

The built-in microphone array is pretty good considering that integrated microphones frequently feel like an afterthought on webcams. It offers clear enough audio capture with AI-powered background noise canceling for casual to intermediate users, great for stuff like Zoom meetings, but serious professional content creators will likely still want to invest in a proper standalone microphone.

In terms of flexibility of use, it's good, if not perfect. It's relatively compact, so while there are smaller and lighter webcams out there, you can still take it with you on the go if you work across multiple locations. If you fit it to a suitable mount, you can easily flip it onto its side to record vertical video for social media without any loss of functionality. The only issue is that it's a tad bulky to mount atop a laptop display unless your laptop has a particularly sturdy hinge, but that's a pretty minor issue in the grand scheme of things.

Overall, I'm finding very little I can criticize about the Insta360 Link 2 Pro. Other than the fact that it's undeniably expensive and will almost certainly be more than the average user actually needs, this is just a fundamentally great product that easily ranks among the best webcams on the market right now.

If I absolutely had to pick something to nitpick here, it might be that the Link 2 Pro lacks any kind of lens cap. Dust and debris getting stuck on or under the lens can be a real irritation with webcams, so it would have been a nice inclusion – especially considering that it's a pricey, high-end webcam. But that really is the definition of nitpicking; this is genuinely one of the greatest webcams I've seen in a long time.

• How much does it cost? $249.99 / £239 / AU$439
• When is it available? Available now
• Where can you get it? The US, UK, and Australia

At $249.99 / £239 / AU$439, the Insta360 Link 2 Pro is the most expensive webcam the company offers, and it's undeniably a steep price for the average user. If you're purely looking for a high-quality 4K webcam and you're not bothered about fancy features, you could easily find one for half that price if you shop sales.

That being said, I'm not going to call this bad pricing. Considering that the Link 2 Pro is a high-end webcam aimed squarely at professionals who are serious about their hardware, along with the rich feature set and great picture quality it offers, I don't think the price is unreasonable – it's just not going to be worth it for more casual users.

Razer Kiyo V2

Price:

$249.99 / £239 / AU$439

Supported resolutions:

4Kp at 30fps, 1080p at 60fps

Sensor:

Insta360 1/1.3" Low Light Excellence Sensor

Field of view:

83.9 degrees

Connection:

USB-C

Features:

Digital zoom, AI auto-framing, AI tracking modes, AI autofocus, dynamic color correction, HDR, mechanized gimbal

Software Integration:

Insta360 mobile app, Insta360 Studio

Value

The high asking price is the only thing holding the Link 2 Pro back from being genuinely perfect, but it's worth the money for professional users.

3.5 / 5

Design

The chassis remains unchanged from the Link 2, but it was already great, with the gimbal working fantastically.

5 / 5

Performance

Visual clarity is absolutely great at 4K, and the Link 2 Pro performs great at any light level and focal length.

5 / 5

Avarage rating

The definition of a premium webcam for content creators and remote professionals, the Insta360 Link 2 Pro is an easy recommendation – if you can stomach the price.

4.5 / 5

You want the best of the best
It's not cheap, but the Insta360 Link 2 Pro more than earns its title of 'premium webcam', with great performance and a rich, useful feature set.

You want smart tracking modes
The AI-powered gimbal tracking of the Link 2 Pro works seamlessly across a range of use cases, making it ideal for activities like podcasting and shopping streams.

You're on a budget
With a steep price tag of $249.99 / £239 / AU$439, there's no denying that the Link 2 Pro will be too expensive for many users.

You want something simple
While it does offer pretty effective plug-and-play functionality, the Link 2 Pro is a high-end device that offers more than the average Zoom user really needs.

Insta360 Link 2C
Our current top pick of the 4K webcams available on the market right now, the Link 2C offers performance that almost matches the Link 2 Pro, but removes the fancy mechanized gimbal to provide a more straightforward webcam experience at a lower price point.

Read our full Insta360 Link 2C review

Obsbot Tiny 2
The Tiny 2 from Obsbot delivers 4K video along with AI-powered tracking via its mechanical gimbal mount, just like the Link 2 Pro. For those who want a high-end video experience, this is a great pick.

Read our full Obsbot Tiny 2 review

• Tested the webcam in video calls and recording
• Compared image quality to other webcams
• 8+ years of experience reviewing computer hardware

I've been using an Insta360 Link 2 as my day-to-day webcam for several months now, so I was curious to see how it compared to the Link 2 Pro. As per my usual process for reviewing webcams, I replaced my daily driver with the Link 2 Pro for just over a week, using it for my usual spate of workday video calls.

I also installed the relevant Insta360 software on my phone and PC to test out its functionality, and made sure to test the performance of the Link 2 Pro in a range of different light conditions by recording video and comparing the clips side by side.

I've been testing and reviewing PC hardware for more than eight years, starting at the PC-building hobbyist magazine Maximum PC before making the leap to TechRadar's computing team. I put all of my knowledge and experience behind each and every one of my product reviews, so you can be assured that you're getting an informed and bias-free judgement.

Read more about how we test

• First reviewed September 2026

• The iPhone 18 Pro Max uses software artificially reduce its battery capacity to avoid shipping restrictions
• The same software trick will need to be used when shipping the phone off to repair or sell it
• Other phones might start taking this same approach

The iPhone 18 Pro Max has the highest capacity battery that Apple has ever put in a handset. Going by teardowns, you’re getting a 5,567mAh battery in eSIM-only models and a 5,391mAh one in versions with a physical SIM card slot. But both of those are over 20 watt-hours (Wh), and that could have been a problem for Apple.

You see, most countries have additional shipping requirements for devices with a single-cell battery of over 20 Wh. For example, both the US and UK consider these ‘dangerous goods’, and they’re prohibited to be sent through standard consumer mail services such as USPS standard post and Royal Mail.

That’s obviously a problem for a device that many people will be ordering online — and it can also complicate shipping the device to stores. But Apple has come up with a clever solution called ‘Prepare to Ship’.

This is a mode that uses battery firmware to limit the capacity to under 20Wh, and it's active from when the phone is manufactured to when a customer first activates it.

Once you have the phone up and running, the limit is removed automatically — so in other words this gets it around the shipping restrictions, without limiting the capacity of the product you receive.

However, this also adds an extra step you need to take before shipping the phone somewhere yourself — whether you’re sending it off for repair, selling it, or whatever else, as you need to manually enable the ‘Prepare to Ship’ mode again.

To do this, go to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Prepare to Ship. Then just follow the onscreen instructions, including selecting whether or not you also want to erase your phone.

There are a few things to be aware of though: to activate ‘Prepare to Ship’ mode, your phone might need to discharge a bit, so you should unplug it from its charger, and you should also be aware that it might become warmer than usual while this process is being carried out.

The full process can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours depending on how much the battery needs to drop, but you can use the phone as usual in the meantime (assuming you haven’t also opted to erase it), and the Settings app will display a red badge reading ‘Ready to Ship’ once it’s done.

If you have erased it, then you’ll instead see whether it’s ready to ship on the ‘Hello’ screen — just tap the info button there.

Once ‘Prepare to Ship’ has been enabled, it limits the battery to under 80% capacity for 14 days, but if you need to undo this setting prior to that, just head to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Ready to Ship, and tap ‘Undo Shipping Preparation.’

So it’s a simple enough process, but it’s one that’s vital to know about when it comes time to sell or repair your phone — so hopefully there will be enough messaging around it.

But while for now this only affects the iPhone 18 Pro Max, it could one day become the norm. Certainly, we’d expect future large iPhones to have this same feature, but Android phones are likely to get in on the act too, since it's a very elegant solution to the problem.

Currently, some Android phones get around 20Wh restrictions by using multiple smaller battery cells, but depending on the design of the phone it might be preferable to just have a single cell — in which case a solution like Apple’s firmware trickery makes total sense.

This is one of those situations where we don't think there's any shame in borrowing ideas from other manufacturers.

If you're the kind of person who only dabbles in ChatGPT now and again, you might be getting a bit bored.

Maybe you use it to proofread work, plan a trip or make images sometimes. But with the cost of a subscription, and growing concerns about AI’s environmental impact, its effect on our cognitive abilities and what it might mean for jobs, you might reasonably be wondering: is ChatGPT actually useful enough to justify using it?

Well, you're not alone. Plenty of AI users have been telling me the same. So I went looking through Reddit threads where ChatGPT users were sharing the more unusual and genuinely useful ways they use it. And I found a few that might actually be worth experimenting with.

One Redditor asked: What's the most unexpectedly useful thing ChatGPT has done for you? Another posted: What are the most useful ChatGPT features and use cases that most people do not know about?

So, I went through the most upvoted replies looking for ideas that went beyond the usual writing, brainstorming and summarizing suggestions. Some of them made me think about ChatGPT's capabilities in a different way.

But a quick caveat before we start, I haven't tested every suggestion below and we know ChatGPT can make mistakes, so be cautious when an answer could affect your health, safety and finances. Think of these more as inspiration for using ChatGPT more creatively rather than fully vetted recommendations.

I know this one might seem a bit silly. And maybe you thought you'd have to wait until ChatGPT gets a robotic body to help you tidy up. But I promise it might make your dull organization tasks a little less boring.

One Redditor said they use ChatGPT to: “organize and declutter a junk drawer or a box of power adaptors just using pictures.”

Rather than sitting there examining every mysterious cable and adapter you’ve accumulated over the past decade, you can just take a photo and ask ChatGPT to help you work out what everything is and, most importantly, how to sort it.

You can ask it to suggest categories for what you’ve decided to keep and where each group should live. The same trick could work for a toolbox, kitchen cupboard, art supplies or that box of cables you’re keeping because you're convinced one of them will become extremely important as soon as you throw it away.

So, I decided to give it a go. I took a picture of a box that sits on my desk packed full of contact lenses, medication, a bunch of different cables, notes and hair ties.

The advice was helpful, ChatGPT told me what each thing was and how to sort everything. The most useful thing it then did was send my photo back to me with annotated and color-coded notes so I could quickly go about sorting. This was perfect for my ADHD brain.

There are obvious limits here, you wouldn't throw away something valuable just because ChatGPT told you too. But as a starting point for tackling a chaotic collection of stuff, it might be helpful.

AI shopping tools are usually designed to help you find more things to buy. But one Redditor uses ChatGPT for the opposite purpose: "[It] talks me out of purchases. I upload a potential purchase and ask it to talk me out of it. I’ve saved quite a bit of money!"

I love the reversal here. Instead of asking ChatGPT whether you should buy the $200/£200 headphones currently sitting in your basket, tell it you want them and ask it to make the strongest possible case for why you shouldn't buy them.

You could give it the price, tell it what you already own, explain what you think the new product will improve and ask questions, like: What problem am I actually solving here? Do I already own something that does this? What are the strongest reasons to wait a month?

I gave this one a go. I love working out outside and at the gym, but in the depths of winter I find it really hard to stay motivated and I'm considering getting a small treadmill or walking pad. There's nothing wrong with them, but it's not my favorite way to workout, I don't have much room for one and the good ones aren't cheap. I really need someone to talk me out of getting one. Would ChatGPT be up for the challenge?

Here's how it responded:

"Don’t buy it. You already know the case against it. You don’t enjoy treadmill workouts, don’t have much space, and don’t want to spend the money. You’re considering buying a fairly large object to solve a problem that exists for a few dark months a year."

The response felt a little short and sickly sweet. If my finger was genuinely hovering over the "buy it now" button I'm not sure this would have stopped me. But I do love the idea of using AI to actually add some perspective and friction back into our lives.

This one is similar to the idea above, but given how much people spend on skincare these days and how confusing the advice is about how to build the perfect routine, I think it's well worth testing out.

One Redditor said: “I gave it all my skincare. It cross referenced, compared and analyzed all the ingredients and items I had and recommended what I don’t need based on the overlaps. Saved me a lot time and money.”

In other words, don't ask ChatGPT what else you should buy. Show it what you already own and ask where you're duplicating things and if something does genuinely need adding.

For skincare, that could mean listing your cleansers, serums and moisturizers and asking it to identify products containing similar active ingredients. You could potentially apply the same principle to all sorts of collections too.

I took a quick snap of my core skincare staples and asked it to analyze the ingredients, tell me if there's overlap and ask what I could add, but stressed I'm on a budget and want to keep things simple.

It responded with a detailed breakdown of each product, its ingredients and what they do. It was also very measured about suggesting new products, and even told me my eye cream wasn't necessary. I was also happy it included sources for every claim, which it doesn't always do but that's important for skincare.

I then asked it to present this information on the image itself because I found that really useful for the junk drawer sorting example, and it was such a handy visual.

There are limitations here too. ChatGPT isn't a dermatologist, and ingredients alone don't determine how suitable a skincare product is for you. But I like the broader idea of using AI to audit your consumption rather than constantly optimize it by adding more.

“I use it a lot to ID plants and animals,” one Redditor explained, adding that although ChatGPT occasionally produces “a weird incorrect response”, it's usually quite good.

This is another use for ChatGPT's camera capabilities that could be easy to overlook if you mostly interact with it through text.

Photograph a plant, insect or bird and ask ChatGPT what it thinks you're looking at. Better still, ask it what features it's using to make the identification and what similar species it could be confusing it with.

I tried this out with a bunch of trees, asking ChatGPT to identify them based on their leaves. I then fact-checked everything and it identified them all correctly. It also provided details about the history of the trees too. Most of the trees in my area are pretty standard, like Oak, Ash and Beech, so it'd be interesting to see how it fares with trees, plants or insects that are a little more unexpected.

If it’s bird song you’re interested in though, I highly recommend using the identification app Merlin, it’s one of my most-used and much-loved apps.

And also remember that ChatGPT doesn’t always get image identification right, and you shouldn't eat, touch or otherwise interact with a potentially dangerous plant, fungus or animal based purely on a chatbot's identification.

This tip came up in several forms. One Redditor said: “If I'm taking a walk in an interesting place, like a historic district, I show it a particular building or place and it gives me the history behind it. Like having a walking tour guide.”

Another user takes a screenshot of a hiking route and asks ChatGPT for interesting facts about the geology, history and place names they'll encounter along the way.

This is one of those ideas that feels obvious once somebody else has suggested it. Before a walk, you could upload a map and ask for five interesting things to look out for. Or when you encounter an unusual building, monument or landscape feature, take a photo and ask what you're looking at.

I’d be wary of confidently repeating every historical fact ChatGPT gives you to your hiking companions without checking it first. We know that chatbots can still invent plausible-sounding details. And never rely on it for route planning, especially though difficult terrain. There have been far too many horror stories about AI sending people in completely the wrong direction recently.

I tried this one myself and shared a Google Maps screenshot of Saltaire, a picturesque village in the UK. I asked ChatGPT to mark up the map with the best things to see on a trip there.

It showed me all of the key things to visit in the area. Granted there wasn't anything on here I couldn't have found from a very quick search. But it's still handy if you're in a new area for a few hours and want a quick overlay of the map you already have.

Plenty of people already ask ChatGPT technical questions. What I hadn't really considered was combining those questions with its ability to “see” what you're seeing.

One Redditor described doing exactly that when their dishwasher stopped working. They wrote: “Fixing appliances. Our dishwasher stopped working. I gave it the error message and took a photo of the dishwasher and it walked me through every step to fix it.”

They say ChatGPT eventually helped them identify a blockage and suggested ways to clear it. This seems useful for those frustrating household problems where you don't know the correct name for the thing you're looking at. Instead of trying to Google “the little plastic thing underneath dishwasher filter is broken”, you can simply show ChatGPT the little plastic thing.

Give it the appliance's make and model if you can, photograph the problem and provide the exact error message.

I tried this with the water heating system in my new flat because my landlord gave me the wrong manual. ChatGPT needed a lot of additional details but did end up giving me the right instructions for basic tasks, like setting a timer.

There’s a big safety caveat here. I wouldn't follow AI-generated instructions involving electricity, gas, dangerous machinery or anything else where getting it wrong could injure you. But for basic troubleshooting, identifying components and understanding error codes, the combination of text and images could be genuinely useful.

One Redditor uploaded a photograph of themselves and asked ChatGPT for help choosing prescription glasses:

“It helped me identify prescription eyeglass frames to fit my face. Uploaded a picture and it gave me the size, shape and website with model and frame number. Turns out I was wearing the wrong shape most of my life.”

I need new glasses so decided to try this idea out for myself.

I'd take the idea of a "right" or "wrong" glasses shape with a big pinch of salt. Style rules about which frames supposedly suit particular face shapes are subjective.

But doing this did help me start thinking about which glasses I should try on when I have my appointment at the optician's in a few weeks and narrow down the enormous number of options that are available.

You could also show it frames you already like and ask it to describe their characteristics so you know what terms to search for.

I think what's really interesting about all of these suggestions is that most of them aren't about building the cleverest or most elaborate prompt. Instead, they started with something in everyday life that needed identifying, organizing, checking, fixing or remembering.

So if you want to get creative about how ChatGPT could be more useful, maybe you need to look around more and ask, what do I really need help with?

• BAN says 87% of data center hardware isn't actually accounted for in most figures
• Each 1GW of capacity equals 70,000 tonnes of hardware
• AI hardware needs more frequent replacing

A new Basel Action Network (BAN) report has claimed the ongoing AI boom could create a new stream of e-waste, with retired equipment from AI alone likely contributing 395-617 million tonnes between 2025 and 2050.

To put that into context, BAN says that waste would fill 15-23 million 40ft shipping containers, which, placed end-to-end, would be enough to circle the earth six times over.

Ultimately, Moore's Law is to blame because developers are no longer able to achieve such great improvements in performance year-over-year, so they're having to introduce whole new types of technology.

For example, AI companies are now having to deploy huge numbers of specialized AI accelerators alongside GPUs, cooling equipment, networking and more.

BAN also highlights that global data center Capex is expected to hit $7 trillion between 2025 and 2030, with $4.3 trillion of this attributed to electronic hardware.

The paper goes on to criticize earlier estimates for only including servers and accelerators, which it says is only around 13% of the picture. The other 87%, which spans networking, power distribution, storage/backup, and cooling, is largely unaccounted for.

And with each additional 1GW of data center capacity estimated to need around 70,000 tonnes of electronics, and 100GW of additional capacity anticipated globally by the end of this decade, the true scale starts to become clearer.

There's also refresh cycles, because BAN predicts that AI accelerators, servers and racks are replaced every 2.5 years, versus the usual five to seven years of a general-purpose server.

While these may be speculative estimations and not actual quantities, one thing's for certain – more data centers means more e-waste.

To minimise some of the impacts, BAN first suggests designing AI data center equipment to last longer in the first place. Recycling and second use is also a big topic, but the report doesn't go into whether AI-specific hardware can then go on to be used in lesser functionalities, such as being shoehorned into regular server facilities.