Meta has reached a settlement with US states in an $18B lawsuit accusing the social media giant of deliberately making Instagram addictive to teenagers. The money will be used to fund youth safety initiatives and more, though there is a catch.
More importantly, the company has agreed to introduce unprecedented protections against overuse of its social media apps by teens …
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Instagram now has a new iPhone-exclusive feature that can create reels automatically. You just select your video clips and it creates an edit with a single tap.
However, Meta is being extremely careful not to upset creators by implying that the app can replace their manual editing skills …
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Meta continues to get serious about its AI technology. The latest sign? A dedicated Mac app for Meta AI.
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Meta is on a roll with new iPhone app releases this summer. The latest is called Facebook Creator Studio.
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Meta is entering the AI coding-agent race with Muse Code, a new terminal-based tool now available in beta for macOS and Linux.
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Vibes around Meta’s AI glasses are off lately. So much so that one of the top three paid iPhone apps today is dedicated to detecting when someone nearby may be using smart glasses.
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Meta AI is coming to Threads DMs, giving users a private place to chat with the assistant without placing its responses in the public feed.
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Ray-Ban Meta Glasses and the latest cheaper non-designer option are sold on the basis of the built-in AI features, but in early July the company announced a “ridiculous” limit on the free usage you can make of an accessibility feature.
Effectively, Meta has retroactively applied a paywall to a hardware product it already sold to customers. Update: The social network has now said it is “pausing” plans to paywall the feature – see the end of the piece.
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Meta has launched a brand-new iPhone app officially called Seller, a Facebook app. The new Meta app is specifically for Facebook users managing listings on Marketplace, the social network’s virtual storefront for physical items.
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Meta has quietly released a new iPhone app that uses AI to create personalized children’s stories, complete with illustrations, narration, and original music.
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Meta has announced that parents can receive alerts when their teens discuss suicide or other forms of self-harm with its AI on Instagram, Facebook, or Meta Horizons.
You’ll need to opt in to Meta’s supervision tools for parents and guardians in order to select the family accounts you want to supervise …
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Meta and Apple have been engaged in a months-long back-and-forth over how Apple should implement EU-mandated pairing for third-party devices. Here are the details.
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Earlier this year, Meta replaced its Llama AI models with Muse Spark, part of its newly built Meta Superintelligence Labs effort.
Today Meta is releasing its first image generation tool from Superintelligence Labs as part of the Meta AI app. The company says its new image-gen tools also power creative experiences in Instagram and WhatsApp with more to come.
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Hackers managed to trick Meta’s AI-powered support bot into allowing them to take over a number of Instagram accounts, including some high-profile ones. This included accounts belonging to the White House, US Space Force, and security researcher Jane Wong.
Update: Meta has now revealed that around 20,000 accounts were compromised and has explained the steps it has taken in response …
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Meta is on an iPhone app launch streak after introducing two new apps in May. The latest is dedicated app for a key Facebook feature: groups.
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Meta just launched a brand new iPhone app called Instants. Built around ephemeral photo sharing, the new social media app is also the latest Instagram feature. Here’s what it does.
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Last month, Meta relaunched its AI efforts with Muse Spark, replacing its Llama models. As of today, Muse Spark is powering new experiences inside the Meta AI app.
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Meta’s latest attempt to comply with age verification requirements in Europe, Brazil and the US is to roll out AI-powered tech to analyse the faces of teenage users of Facebook and Instagram.
The company says AI analysis will be used to estimate the ages of faces but that it does not amount to face recognition. Update: It doesn’t appear to be working too well – a 12yo kid fooled it by using an eyebrow pencil to draw a fake mustache …
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Anecdotally, I’ve been hearing for a very long time that Facebook and Instagram users are growing ever more dissatisfied with their social media feeds, and there now appears to be some hard data to support this.
Meta has admitted that its daily active users declined by 20 million this quarter, and the company is taking steps to try to improve the quality of both Facebook and Instagram feeds …
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Llama is out; Muse Spark is in. Meta has unveiled its rebooted AI efforts with a new model it calls Muse Spark.
Unlike Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview announcement yesterday, Muse Spark is actually available publicly today.
Meta is also taking on the top Gemini and ChatGPT models with a new Contemplating mode that it says will roll out gradually.
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Meta revealed in January that it plans to test paid versions of Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook. Now, in select markets, the first of those premium services is available.
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A court ruling with potentially massive implications has found that social media apps are intentionally designed to be addictive, and are harmful to teenage mental health.
A now 20-year-old woman sued Meta and YouTube owner Google for damaging her mental health as a child, with a jury awarding her $6 million in damages – and this is likely to be only the start …
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A VPN company has put together AI chatbot privacy ratings based on the data collection practices of the ten most popular AI chatbots in the App Store.
The iPhone chatbots are ranked worst to best, and there are no prizes for guessing which of the competing apps collects the most personal data …
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Meta claimed for years that it was technically challenging to implement end-to-end encryption across Facebook Messenger and Instagram DMs, but back in 2023 said that it had resolved those issues.
Unfortunately, the company has now made a U-turn on Instagram direct messages, and that’s bad news for all of us …
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