Cursor, the wildly popular AI coding startup, is launching a new feature that lets people design the look and feel of web applications with AI. The tool, Visual Editor, is essentially a vibe-coding product for designers, giving them access to the same fine-grained controls they’d expect from professional design software. But in addition to making changes manually, the tool lets them request edits from Cursor’s AI agent using natural language.

Cursor is best known for its AI coding platform, but with Visual Editor, the startup wants to capture other parts of the software creation process. “The core that we care about, professional developers, never changes,” Cursor’s head of design, Ryo Lu, tells WIRED. “But in reality, developers are not by themselves. They work with a lot of people, and anyone making software should be able to find something useful out of Cursor.”

Cursor is one of the fastest growing AI startups of all time. Since its 2023 debut, the company says it has surpassed $1 billion in annual recurring revenue and counts tens of thousands of companies, including Nvidia, Salesforce, and PwC, as customers. In November, the startup closed a $2.3 billion funding round that brought its valuation to nearly $30 billion.

Cursor was an early leader in the AI coding market, but it’s now facing more pressure than ever from larger competitors like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. The startup has historically licensed AI models from these companies, but now its rivals are investing heavily in AI coding products of their own. Anthropic’s Claude Code, for example, grew even faster than Cursor, reaching $1 billion in annual recurring revenue just six months after launch. In response, Cursor has started developing and deploying its own AI models.

Traditionally, building software applications has required many different teams working together across a wide range of products and tools. By integrating design capabilities directly into its coding environment, Cursor wants to show that it can bring these functions together into a single platform.

“Before, designers used to live in their own world of pixels and frames, and they don’t really translate to code. So teams had to build processes to hand off tasks back and forth between developers and designers, but there was a lot of friction,” says Lu. “We kind of melded the design world and the coding world together into one interface with one AI agent.”

AI-Powered Web Design

In a demo at WIRED’s San Francisco headquarters, Cursor’s product engineering lead Jason Ginsberg showcased how Visual Editor could modify the aesthetics of a webpage.

A traditional design panel on the right lets users adjust fonts, add buttons, create menus, or change backgrounds. On the left, a chat interface accepts natural-language requests, such as “make this button’s background color red.” Cursor’s agent then applies those changes directly into the code base.

Earlier this year, Cursor released its own web browser that works directly within its coding environment. The company argues the browser creates a better feedback loop when developing products, allowing engineers and designers to view requests from real users and access Chrome-style developer tools.

AT&T is taking a second crack at the smart home. After sunsetting its Digital Life service in 2022—powered by the now-defunct 3G network—the company is launching a new smart-home security platform called Connected Life, this time in partnership with smart-home players Google and Abode.

Previously available as a pilot program in select markets, AT&T Connected Life is rolling out nationwide starting today. The vision behind it is to simplify smart-home setup. Instead of buying various smart-home devices and using multiple apps to connect them, you can buy one of two kits directly from AT&T’s Connected Life website—the Starter Kit ($11 per month for 36 months) or the Advanced Kit ($19 per month for 36 months). You can also pay upfront for the kits at $399 and $699, respectively.

Each includes Google Nest smart-home products and security sensors, with the Advanced Kit offering more sensors, a security keypad, and a Nest Cam security camera. (Google confirmed the Nest products on offer are not the latest devices the company launched recently.) You’ll use the Connected Life app and the Google Home app to set everything up, though you can also get help from a technician if you don’t want to DIY.

Google says the platform leverages Google Home’s application programming interface (API) to integrate Google’s smart home devices into the Connected Life app, and after setup, users can solely rely on the Connected Life app to view livestreams and manage devices.

There are two subscription tiers: Essential ($11 per month) or Professional ($22 per month). They offer access to features like 30-day event video history and intelligent alerts, though the Professional plan includes a US-based monitoring service from Abode that can dispatch police and medical services during emergencies. The system is designed so that you can pause professional monitoring when you don’t need it, rather than being locked into a contract.

AT&T is touting the Cellular Backup feature in Connected Life: If your home internet goes offline, this feature will keep your smart-home devices running by routing data through your smartphone (via the hot spot), and there’s a battery backup for the hub in case power goes out. This was a cornerstone feature of AT&T’s old Digital Life service, but cellular backup is now a staple in many smart-home security systems, like those from SimpliSafe or ADT.

You need to be an AT&T customer to use the Connected Life platform, though it doesn’t matter if you have a wireless mobile plan or home internet. This means the potential customer base for these new smart-home services is massive; AT&T has 119 million wireless mobile customers and is the largest provider of fiber home internet in the US, with more than 10 million customers.

A Virginia startup calling itself Operation Bluebird announced this week that it has filed a formal petition with the US Patent and Trademark Office, asking the federal agency to cancel X Corporation’s trademarks of the words “Twitter” and “tweet” since X has allegedly abandoned them.

“The TWITTER and TWEET brands have been eradicated from X Corp.’s products, services, and marketing, effectively abandoning the storied brand, with no intention to resume use of the mark,” the petition states. “The TWITTER bird was grounded.”

If successful, two leaders of the group tell Ars, Operation Bluebird would launch a social network under the name Twitter.new, possibly as early as late next year. (Twitter.new has created a working prototype and is already inviting users to reserve handles.)

Neither X Corporation nor its owner Elon Musk immediately responded to Ars Technica’s request for comment.

Michael Peroff, an Illinois attorney and founder of Operation Bluebird, said that in the intervening years, more Twitter-like social media networks have sprung up or gained traction—like Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky. But none have the scale or brand recognition that Twitter did prior to Musk’s takeover.

“There certainly are alternatives,” Peroff said. “I don’t know that any of them at this point in time are at the scale that would make a difference in the national conversation, whereas a new Twitter really could.”

Similarly, Peroff’s business partner, Stephen Coates, an attorney who formerly served as Twitter’s general counsel, said that Operation Bluebird aims to re-create some of the magic that Twitter once had.

“I remember some time ago, I’ve had celebrities react to my content on Twitter during the Super Bowl or events,” he told Ars. “And we want that experience to come back, that whole town square, where we are all meshed in there.”

Could It Work?

Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion. He eventually changed the company name and brand identity from Twitter to X. That decision, Operation Bluebird says, created an opening for the Twitter name to be formally abandoned.

In July 2023, Musk himself tweeted that “we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand, and gradually, all the birds.”

That was when Peroff, a Chicago-area attorney specializing in trademark and IP law, saw an opportunity not only to claim the name Twitter but also to use the iconic illustrated logo that was affectionately referred to internally as “Larry Bird.”