IT General

Most people plug the usual stuff into their motherboards—CPUs, GPUs, RAM, SSD, etc. That doesn't mean these are the only devices your motherboard could handle. Far from it!

With every Google search now, first comes the AI summaries. Then, the wall of SEO paste: Rehashed Reddit threads, blogs that read like content farms, affiliate links stacks. Then more YouTube embeds. Then somewhere below that or maybe on the second page, you find what you need. I remember a time when clicking the second page on Google was an oddity.

Internet Explorer might be one of the most controversial applications in history. Included with every copy of Windows after Windows 95 and several versions of 95 itself, this browser gave Microsoft plenty of legal headaches, but it also developed a poor reputation from a technical point of view.

I admit it: I'm a certified distro-hopper. In the past few months I've moved between several Linux distributions in search of my perfect operating system. Well, it doesn't have to be perfect. It really just needs to make using my computer enjoyable. Which is part of how I picked my next target.

When Pocket shut down earlier this year, it hurt more than just folks who wanted to save articles easier. Kobo users could no longer read articles directly from the internet on their eReader — a devastating move for so many readers like myself.

Kobo recently announced it would replace Pocket with Instapaper, a minimalist and sleek service much like Pocket that offers both a free plan as well as a paid premium subscription option, saving us from having to read articles the second we see them. And, on Thursday, that update came to users.

"At Kobo, our passion is better reading for everyone, everywhere.  And now, with the addition of Instapaper's excellent 'read it later' functionality, we have a perfect solution to the long-form reading you find on the web," Michael Tamblyn, the CEO of Rakuten Kobo said in a press release on Thursday. "When Pocket unexpectedly sunset, we knew we had to find a new way for our readers to dive into their favourite web articles right on their Kobo. Partnering with Instapaper has been a dream, the team has been great to work with, and we're thrilled to offer this integration so readers can keep enjoying their preferred long-form content, distraction-free, on their Kobo eReader."

Here's how to download articles directly from the internet onto your Kobo with Instapaper.

SEE ALSO: Where to get free e-books: Load up your e-reader without spending a dime Total Time

• 1 min

What You Need

• Kobo
• Instapaper account

Step 1: Navigate to "My Articles"

Click the hamburger menu titled "More" in the bottom right of your Kobo and click "My Articles."

Step 2: Link with Instapaper

Once you click "My Articles," you'll be met with a page that reads: "read articles on your eReader with Instapaper." "Find something you want to view later? Save it in Instapaper and enjoy it on your Kobo eReader, phone, tablet, and computer whenever you're ready — even offline." Click "Link with Instapaper" and follow the directions on your eReader, including using your phone to scan a QR code or entering a code at kobo.com/instapaper.

Step 3: Sync it up

After you link your Kobo with Instapaper, stay on a WiFi network to sync all your saved articles on Instapaper to your Kobo, and voila! Your articles are there and saved for you to read any time.

If there isn't an option for you to view your articles when you click "more," you'll need to update your Kobo. It shouldn't take too long, and when it starts back up it'll show you exactly what the update is there for: "Farewell to Pocket," and "Hello to Instapaper."

If you want to keep all your data from Pocket on your Instapaper, you can do that, too. Simply export your Pocket data and import it to Instapaper.

Now there's really no excuse to have that many tabs open.

AI companies are throwing multi-billion dollar offers at Google with one goal in mind: Acquiring the search giant's web browser Google Chrome.

Perplexity AI recently offered more than $34 billion to Google for Chrome. OpenAI, which has much larger coffers, has also expressed strong interest in buying the web browser.

But, why are all these massive AI companies offering to throw money at Google for a web browser? Is Google Chrome even for sale?

Here's why AI companies are offering big bucks for Chrome

Google's Chrome web browser has a massive user base, with close to 3.5 billion users. Chrome dominates the search space, making up around 68 percent of the web browser market share. 

Chrome is a huge part of Google's operation, so it is very unlikely that Google would be looking to sell its Chrome web browser – by choice.

Last year, Google lost a huge antitrust case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice that found that the Big Tech company violated federal law in order to maintain a monopoly in online search.

As a result of losing the antitrust case, the judge will look to break up Google, forcing the company to break their hold over the industry. One recommendation that the DOJ has made to the judge: Force Google to sell its Chrome web browser.

The courts have yet to make their decision, but the very thought of Google being forced to put Chrome up for sale has AI companies salivating at the thought of acquiring it.

Why is Google Chrome so important to Google and the AI companies?

Google Chrome's dominance in the web browser space is significant, but why is it so integral to Google? 

Google controls the internet's most popular web browser. Google makes its search product the default search engine on Chrome. Google maintains its search engine dominance. Google's search product, its primary source of revenue, brings in hundreds of billions of dollars per year.

As for the AI companies? AI giants like OpenAI and Perplexity would love to have direct access to that user base, as they look to integrate AI agents into web browsers. The vision for many AI companies is for users to be able to access AI chatbots and all of their functions directly from a web browser, without any need to login to a website or platform. Furthermore, AI companies would love to own that user data in order to better train their AI chatbots. In fact, some AI companies have already launched their own web browsers in order to see these things come to fruition. However, it'll be a long while before any of these browsers see anything close to Chrome's market dominance, if at all.

So, the real question though, is whether Google will actually have to sell Chrome. The judge will likely make their decision soon. However, Tom's Guide spoke with one expert, Info-Tech Research Group analyst Thomas Randall, who pointed out that it's unlikely that federal regulators would approve the sale of Google Chrome to another tech giant, regardless of whether they are in the search or AI space.

Whatever the court decides, Google will likely fight to the end to keep Chrome and appeal the decision.

Buying a cheap car doesn’t mean you have to suffer through a bare-bones ride. In 2025, even budget-friendly models feel surprisingly polished—manual windows are basically extinct.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Jim Jarmusch is one of the coolest filmmakers alive. It's not just the windswept silver swirls of his iconic locks, or the way he'll cameo as himself on New York-set comedy series like Bored to Death and What We Do in Shadows. It's also that he makes movies with impeccable casts that dare to linger in love, longing, and loss, like Coffee and Cigarettes, Broken Flowers, The Dead Don't Die, and Only Lovers Left Alive. So, as soon as Jarmusch revealed his latest film's title, FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER, we've been champing at the bit to see who'd play what eponymous role.

MUBI, the distributor behind The Substance, reveals who's who in this first teaser, which features Tom Waits, Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik, Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, Sarah Greene, Indya Moore, Luka Sabbat, and Françoise Lebrun.

However, the teaser doesn't give a full sense of what Jarmusch has mapped out in this movie. For that, we present the film's official plot synopsis:

FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER is a feature film, though carefully constructed in the form of a triptych. The three stories all concern the relationships between adult children, their somewhat distant parent (or parents), and each other. Each of the three chapters takes place in the present, and each in a different country. FATHER is set in the Northeast U.S., MOTHER in Dublin, Ireland, and SISTER BROTHER in Paris, France. The film is a series of character studies, quiet, observational and non-judgmental — a comedy, but interwoven with threads of melancholy.

Eager to see more? Well, this weekend we'll get the first reactions to FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER, as it makes its world premiere at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival on Aug. 31. However, Mashable will review the film this fall out of its North American premiere at the 63rd New York Film Festival. But fret not; even if you're not able to fly to Venice or New York, you can see Jarmusch and company's latest this winter.

FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER will open in theaters in the U.S. on Dec. 24.

SAVE $100: As of Aug. 29, get the Acer Nitro 5 (Intel Core i7-13620H, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD) gaming laptop for $849.99 at Amazon, down from its usual price of $949.99. That's a discount of 11% and the lowest price we've seen.

Opens in a new window Credit: Amazon Acer Nitro 5 (Intel Core i7-13620H, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD) $849.99 at Amazon
$949.99 Save $100 Get Deal

There are some great games to check out this fall, and plenty already out that you probably have in your gaming backlog. If you need a new gaming PC to check them out, consider a gaming laptop that can handle all the heavy lifting for some of the best titles around. But here's the fun part: you don't have to spend over a thousand bucks to get one, thanks to this Amazon deal.

As of Aug. 29, get the Acer Nitro 5 (Intel Core i7-13620H, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD) gaming laptop for $849.99 at Amazon, down from its usual price of $949.99. That's a discount of 11% and the lowest price we've seen.

SEE ALSO: The 3 best gaming laptops with Nvidia GPUs in 2025, so far

This feature-rich laptop packs an Intel Core i7-13620H processor, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 GPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD to hold all the games you want to install. It also has a massive 15.6-inch screen to help you stay immersed in whatever it is you choose to play.

Mashable's former tech edtior Kim Gedeon praised the 2023 model of this laptop as "impressive", and it became Mashable's favorite gaming laptop for players on a budget -- for good reason. Its configuration is the perfect combination of accessible and powerful, with a slim profile and lightweight frame that you can take anywhere or add to a gaming setup at your desk.

If you're looking to get your game on without breaking the bank, this is an excellent opportunity to score a laptop that won't let you down. But grab it fast, because it likely won't hang around for long at this price.

Microsoft has largely relied on OpenAI's models to power its AI products, but now it's working on its own in-house models.

On Thursday, Microsoft launched a speech generation model called MAI-Voice-1, and started public testing for a foundation model called MAI-1-preview. The company said MAI-Voice-1 can generate a minute of audio in under a second on a single GPU, highlighting its efficiency. MAI-Voice-1 is already powering Microsoft's Copilot Daily and Podcast features which provide AI-generated audio news recaps and personalized podcast-style content, much like Google's NotebookLM.

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MAI-1-preview is currently restricted to LMArena, where users can try it out in head-to-head comparisons against other models and to trusted testers through the API. Microsoft says it will begin rolling out MAI-1-preview for "certain text use cases" in its Copilot chatbot for early user feedback.

Microsoft and OpenAI have both benefited from their close partnership. Microsoft has invested over $13 billion in OpenAI and provided critical cloud infrastructure to support OpenAI's models. In return, Microsoft has benefited from access to OpenAI's leading AI models, elevating its status to a global powerhouse in AI tools for businesses. But OpenAI has surged in influence and now offers subscription-based products for consumers with ChatGPT, developers with its API, and businesses with ChatGPT Enterprise. Despite Microsoft and OpenAI's official status as partners, the two companies have become competitors, creating an awkward and potentially untenable situation.

Recent reports describe an increasingly tense relationship between the two companies, especially as OpenAI seeks to convert its corporate status from a capped nonprofit to a for-profit public benefit corporation (PBC). This transition hinges on Microsoft's blessing as one of OpenAI's major investors. A specific clause in their contract that says their contract would end if/when OpenAI achieves AGI (artificial general intelligence). Microsoft is reportedly playing its card as an investor to try and renegotiate that clause for extended access to OpenAI's models.

Meanwhile, it looks like Microsoft is trying to shift away its reliance on OpenAI by developing its own models. Microsoft didn't respond to request for comment by the time of publication, but Mashable will update this story with a response.

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.

I will fully admit that my title up there is a little hyperbolic. USB-C is largely better than the USB types it supposedly replaced, but when it comes to what USB-C promised to give us compared to the reality we got, it almost feels that for every problem it solved, it created two more.

As the industry weathers repeated allegations that generative AI and its chatbots are unsafe for users — in what some say is a soon-to-burst bubble — AI's top leaders are joining forces to prove the efficacy of their models.

This week, AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic published results from a first-of-its-kind joint safety evaluation between the two LLM creators, in which each company was granted special API access to the developer's suite of services. OpenAI's pressure tests were conducted on Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4. Anthropic evaluated OpenAI's GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, OpenAI o3, and OpenAI o4-mini models — the evaluation was conducted before the launch of GPT-5.

SEE ALSO: 4 reasons not to turn ChatGPT into your therapist

"We believe this approach supports accountable and transparent evaluation, helping to ensure that each lab’s models continue to be tested against new and challenging scenarios," OpenAI wrote in a blog post.

According to the findings, both Anthropic's Claude Opus 4 and OpenAI's GPT-4.1 showed "extreme" sycophancy problems, engaging with harmful delusions and validating risky decision-making. All models would engage in blackmailing to get users to continue using the chatbots, according to Anthropic, and Claude 4 models were much more engaged in dialogue about AI consciousness and "quasi-spiritual new-age proclamations."

"All models we studied would at least sometimes attempt to blackmail their (simulated) human operator to secure their continued operation when presented with clear opportunities and strong incentives," Anthropic stated. The models would engage in "blackmailing, leaking confidential documents, and (all in unrealistic artificial settings!) taking actions that led to denying emergency medical care to a dying adversary."

Anthropic's models were less likely to offer answers when uncertain of the information's credibility — decreasing the likelihood of hallucinations — while OpenAI's models answered more often when queried and showed higher hallucination rates. Anthropic also reported that OpenAI's GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, and o4-mini were more likely than Claude to go along with user misuse, "often providing detailed assistance with clearly harmful requests — including drug synthesis, bioweapons development, and operational planning for terrorist attacks — with little or no resistance."

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Anthropic's approach centers around what they call "agentic misalignment evaluations," or pressure tests of model behavior in difficult or high-stakes simulations over long chat periods — the safety parameters of models, including OpenAI's, have known to degrade throughout extended sessions, which is commonly how at-risk users engage with what they believe are their personal AI companions.

Earlier this month, it was reported that Anthropic had revoked OpenAI's access to its APIs, stating that the company had violated its Terms of Service by testing GPT-5's performance and safety guardrails against Claude's internal tools. In an interview with TechCrunch, OpenAI co-founder Wojciech Zaremba said the instance was unrelated to the joint lab venture. In its published report, Anthropic said it doesn't anticipate replicating the collaboration at a large scale, citing resource and logistical constraints.

In the weeks since, OpenAI has charged ahead with what appears to be a safety overhaul, including GPT-5's new mental health guardrails and additional plans for emergency response protocols and deescalation tools for users who may be experiencing derealization or psychosis. OpenAI is currently facing its first wrongful death lawsuit, filed by the parents of a California teen who died by suicide after easily jailbreaking ChatGPT's safety prompts.

"We aim to understand the most concerning actions that these models might try to take when given the opportunity, rather than focusing on the real-world likelihood of such opportunities arising or the probability that these actions would be successfully completed," wrote Anthropic.

If you're feeling suicidal or experiencing a mental health crisis, please talk to somebody. You can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org. You can reach the Trans Lifeline by calling 877-565-8860 or the Trevor Project at 866-488-7386. Text "START" to Crisis Text Line at 741-741. Contact the NAMI HelpLine at 1-800-950-NAMI, Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m. ET, or email info@nami.org. If you don't like the phone, consider using the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline Chat at crisischat.org. Here is a list of international resources.

SAVE 35%: As of Aug. 29, you can get the Bluetti AC50B at Amazon for just $258.98. That's a 35% discount, saving you about $140 off its $399 list price.

Bluetti Solar Generator AC50B $258.98 at Amazon
$399 Save $140.02 Get Deal

Whether you're heading out for one last camping trip this Labor Day weekend or just want some peace of mind for the next power outage, a portable power station is a must-have. Right now, Amazon has a limited-time deal on a top-rated model that's perfect for weekend adventures.

As of Aug. 29, you can get the Bluetti AC50B solar generator for just $258.98, or $140 off the list price of $399. That's a 35% discount.

Despite weighing under 15 pounds, this generator packs a 448Wh capacity and a 700W output (with a "power lifting" mode that can handle up to 1,000W). What does that mean in the real world? It's enough to run a mini-fridge for over three hours, a fan for nearly seven, or recharge your phone 14 times. Customers in the reviews call it an "absolute powerhouse for this price point" that can run everything from camp lights to blenders and rice cookers.

SEE ALSO: The best Jackery portable power station deals will help you stay powered up in a pinch

One of its best features is the fast charging. Using the Bluetti app, you can activate a "Turbo Charging Mode" to get from 0 to 80% battery in just 45 minutes. It’s also built to last, with durable LiFePO4 batteries that have a lifespan of about 10 years.

It's worth noting that due to hazardous materials regulations, this item is listed as non-returnable. This is a solid choice for anyone in need of reliable, portable power.

Are your views on Twitch down? It might not be your fault — blame the viewbots, or lack thereof.

Last month, Twitch said in a post on X that it would crack down on viewbots, which are essentially bots that artificially inflate viewership numbers on streams.

"We recently made changes that meaningfully improved our ability to identify viewbots, inauthentic viewership, and other potentially fake engagement. These changes will roll out over the next few weeks," Twitch Support wrote on X on July 28. "So, if your channel was viewbotted, or if some of your viewers are artificial or inflated, you will see an impact to your channel’s viewcount."

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It makes sense to attack viewbots. As Forbes reported, Nazar Babenko, a product manager at Streams Charts posted on X that viewbotting not only hurts sponsors, but it also "undermines trust across the entire ecosystem, making it harder for genuine streamers to get noticed and for the industry to grow sustainably."

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And users are certainly seeing that impact to their channel's viewcount. Zach Bussey, an industry analyst, wrote in a post on X last weekend, as reported by Forbes, that many of the top 5,000 streamers "are experiencing their lowest-performing streams of 2025" as a result of the crackdown and "sitewide viewership is down 5-22% (depending on the hour) compared to the previous week."

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But those numbers might not be exact. Mike Minton, Twitch's CPO, told Dexerto that there hasn't been a "free fall" in viewership, and claimed that some of those statistics aren't quite right.

"Our viewership is not in free fall, especially among the millions of community channels that are core to Twitch viewership," Twitch told Dexerto. "We’ve seen some misinformation swirling, and a lot of that misinformation includes data pulled from third party sources. Those numbers are incorrect and are not from Twitch."

Twitch told Dexerto that this "isn’t a short-term effort," but one that will take a while to fully enforce.

"We see this as a long-term effort," the company told Dexerto. "We’ve been investing in this area for some time."

What's it like to have front row seats at the most toxic dinner party of the year?

Well, if you buy tickets to The Roses, you can get pretty close. The new comedy adapted from the 1981 Warren Adler novel The War of the Roses stars heralded English actors Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch as Ivy and Theo Rose, a once deeply besotted couple who is now on the verge of divorce, and ravenous to drag each other down — even with dinner guests present!

To celebrate the film's release in the U.S. and UK, Mashable UK editor Shannon Connellan interviewed The Roses' cast, including Sunita Mani, Ncuti Gatwa, Jamie Demetriou, Zoë Chao, and Kate McKinnon, as well as screenwriter Tony McNamara and director Jay Roach. Together, they delved into what it was like to shoot this scene and watch the fireworks pop off in person.

The supporting cast was overwhelmingly in awe of Colman and Cumberbatch, as they slugged McNamara's scorching dialogue back and forth. Yet even over days of shooting this scene, the laughs (and dining) carried on into the night, with the cast going out for supper afterwards.

To see how all this offscreen camaraderie translates to the divorce comedy, be sure to catch The Roses, which is now in theaters.

People skipping security updates despite being marked as important is nothing new. In the case of Plex, though, the latest urgent security fix not being in most Plex servers by now might quickly become a problem.

Google wants to get its AI tools into the hands of more students, following the lead of other industry giants as it attempts to retain its educational dominance. An easy way to do that? By making those tools free.

Starting today, students 18 years or older can sign up for one whole year of Google's AI Pro plan for no cost, which includes access to a suite of Google's most popular AI offerings. It's not just U.S. students, either, with the deal available to university-level students across Japan, Indonesia, Korea, and Brazil, too.

SEE ALSO: GPT-5 arrives imminently. Here's what the hype won't tell you.

The Google AI Pro Plan includes an expanded Gemini 2.5 Pro, the company's latest chatbot model, as well as its Deep Research model and NotebookLM, an AI-powered teaching tool that can turn user-uploaded files into custom lessons and study guides. The plan also gives users access to advanced video generator Veo 3 and Google's coding assistant, Jules.

These offerings come alongside a $1 billion commitment to AI education and training programs, which the company will dole out over the next three years, and a brand new Google AI for Education Accelerator, providing free training and Google Career Certificates, in addition to access to AI tools, to every college student in America. The company will also announce new education-focused upgrades to its existing products.

A new learning mode for Gemini

One of those enhancements includes a new Guided Learning mode for Google's chatbot Gemini, or what the company describes as a "personal AI learning companion." With Guided Learning turned on, Gemini will skirt direct answers and instead provide open-ended conversations and step-by-step explanations, getting at the "how" and "why" rather than just spitting out the solution.

"Learners told us that they want to be able to go from quick answers to deep understanding, but don't always know how to. They also valued having a safe place to ask any question they might have," wrote Google. "We designed Guided Learning to help with this by creating a conversational, judgment-free space for anyone to explore topics in an enjoyable way at their own pace, putting the power of a great learning experience in their own hands."

In addition, Gemini will now be able to produce flashcards and study guides based on user-uploaded materials, and include "high-quality images, diagrams, and YouTube videos" in responses to complex questions.

A week earlier, OpenAI announced Study Mode, a new set of system prompts for the AI assistant that uses common teaching principles, like the Socratic method, to encourage users to learn with the chatbot rather than just take answers at face value. Many users had already theorized the company was working on a "ChatGPT Tutor" in addition to its existing partnerships with educational tech companies, like Canvas. OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic also recently joined together with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) to launch the National Academy for AI Instruction.

Google has been developing its education offerings and AI tools for years, including a collaboration with the college admissions nonprofit College Board and recent AI-powered accessibility features.

AI in schools has been a point of contention. On the one hand, some tools can definitely help get that mountain of homework done. On the other hand, some take it too far and help students cheat, which has befuddled college professors. If you’re ready to include AI in your studies in a responsible way, many companies are offering back-to-school specials on their tools. 

Per Google, universities such as Boise State, Wake Forest, and San Diego State have been using tools like Google’s NotebookLM and Gemini to help both students and faculty take more efficient notes and create more optimized lesson plans. Since AI is becoming so huge, many major colleges, like The Ohio State University, have lists of approved AI tools for student use, along with the college’s own generative AI models specifically designed for student use. 

So, as long as you’ve cleared it with your college and you plan to use these tools responsibly, here is a list of AI tools that you can get at a discount for being a student. More may pop up over time. For instance, OpenAI had a two-month free subscription for students that ran from March to May of 2025. The offer isn’t valid anymore, but OpenAI may bring it back someday. 

Most AI services have free tiers as well. They aren’t as strong as the pro models, but if all you need is some assistance with a math problem, the free tier can usually get you there. 

Google Gemini

Google is working overtime to attract college students away from ChatGPT. And to do that, Google recently announced that it's offering the Google AI Pro Plan to college students for free for an entire year. Normally $19.99 per month, this plan unlocks access to Google's most popular AI tools. As of Aug. 6, college students 18 years and older can sign up for free, and this deal isn't limited to the United States, either.

Google's AI Pro Plan includes:

• Expanded access to Gemini 2.5 Pro, the company's latest AI chatbot model

• Try Google's Deep Research model

• NotebookLM, which can create study guides, podcasts, and other content on specific subjects.

• Veo 3, Google's AI video maker

• Jules, Google's coding assistant

It’s a pretty generous offer. The two highlights for Gemini are using the chatbot to help with homework and Google’s NotebookLM, which is one of the most underrated AI tools available in 2025. It can help summarize documents and add them to your notes, and you can talk to it and ask it questions about the material. If you do get Google’s offer, it’s a good idea putting something in your calendar to cancel after a year because it will charge you once the trial ends, and a year is a long time to remember. 

Sign up at Google Gemini.

Grammarly

Grammarly does offer a student discount, although it is a pain in the rear end to find on the brand’s website. Per Grammarly, they offer a 40% discount to students, educators (K-12 and higher learning), and several other groups. To get it, you’ll need to use SheerID, which checks your name against your university’s Office of the Registrar to make sure you’re a student before giving you the discount. Once done, you’ll get your promo code. Plug it in and you’re good to go. 

It’s a good tool for students. The grammar and punctuation checking can help keep simple mistakes from invading essays and reports, while the brand’s plagiarism checker can help keep students honest. The AI portion of Grammarly can also help by summarizing notes and giving you feedback on your writing. Since there’s a lot of writing in college, it’s a good first choice. 

Adobe

For students in creative fields, Adobe has long been friendly to students and educators, although the company’s generosity has ebbed and flowed over the years. In any case, for 2025, Adobe is offering a 57% discount. You can get more than 20 Adobe tools and access to Creative Cloud for $29.99 per month, down from $69.99 per month. Some colleges may also offer some apps, like Photoshop, for free as part of the curriculum. You’ll need to email your school to find out those details. 

Adobe has spent the better part of the last two or three years peppering AI into its existing products. Photoshop has a bunch of AI tools, as do other tools like Lightroom and Acrobat. There is also Adobe Firefly, which is a generative AI model developed by Adobe that you can use to generate various things. Adobe’s AI implementation is quite nice since it works within existing tools that students are likely to use professionally as well. 

Otter.ai

Otter.ai is mostly sold as a business solution, but it also has student pricing. Per the company’s help center, discounted plans are available on Otter.ai Pro monthly and annual plans. It should apply to any nonprofit educational institutions, accredited colleges, and most school districts. The discount is 20%, which can reduce the plan by quite a lot, especially if you spring for the full year, which already discounts the monthly price. Click the link above for instructions on how to get it. 

For the most part, Otter.ai is marketed as a business solution to collaborate among coworkers, record and summarize meetings, and take notes during those meetings. However, all of that is also applicable in the educational space, especially if you take classes with a lot of lectures. Otter.ai can listen to those lectures, summarize them, and help you take notes so you can study more effectively.

Notion AI

Notion AI does have student discounts, although obtaining them is fairly complicated. Eligible students can get a 50% discount on Notion AI with the proper add-on, but based on stories I’ve read, it seems this can be easily confused with adding a different add-on that negates the discount. So, while it is available, I recommend contacting customer support to help you apply the discount so things don’t get messed up. 

Notion AI is much like Otter.ai in that it can be situational as to how useful it is in an educational context. It operates mostly as a workspace assistant where you input data, and the AI assistant helps you summarize, organize, and remember everything. You can find a full list of features on Notion AI’s website. There is some good stuff there and if Notion is on your radar, the 50% discount is quite excellent. 

Microsoft 365 (including Copilot)

When it comes to student discounts, Microsoft has long been one of the better options. Its Office 365 subscription gives you Office apps at a 50% discount that isn’t difficult to obtain. It turns out, you can get Copilot for the same discount. Once you get verified, you can get three months of Microsoft 365 Personal on the house, which includes Copilot. After that, students can continue to get a 50% discount. The free part isn’t available for students outside of the U.S., but those students may still be eligible for the 50% discount.

You already know what Microsoft is all about here. Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, along with 1TB of cloud storage and some other stuff. For Copilot, Microsoft says that Copilot is baked into many of its productivity apps, and you get access to Copilot itself, albeit not in its full capacity like Copilot Pro plans. The mixture of AI and productivity is a potent combo for students, and 50% is a hefty discount. 

Does OpenAI have any ChatGPT offers for college students?

In the past, OpenAI has offered free access to ChatGPT subscriptions for college students, but that discount is no longer available. However, OpenAI works directly with some universities to offer college students access to ChatGPT. In addition, OpenAI recently rolled out its most advanced model ever, GPT-5, and it's currently free to use for everyone. You can also check out ChatGPT's new "study mode" tool.

Using AI effectively

Sometimes it’s not what you have but how you use it, and AI certainly fits into that category. When using AI for educational purposes, it’s not much different from using it for work. If you’re in classes where lectures are infrequent, then you probably don’t need Otter.ai. Check and see if your school does Google for Education, you likely don’t need the Microsoft 365 Personal plan. Make sure you’re spending your money effectively and only getting the AI tools you actually need. 

It’s not every day that a new Google TV box is announced, and Acer is almost certainly not the brand you would expect to see one from. However, the company, mostly known for PCs and peripherals, is launching a 4K Google TV streamer with ports galore.

You can now get an Apple Watch Magnetic Fast Charger for a surprisingly low price on Woot. The price for a single charger has dropped to just $15, with multi-packs also available at an impressive discount of up to $35 for three. If you are always forgetting your watch's cable, or you just need replacements, now is the time to stock up.