Tech Roundup: Google Pixel 7, Spotify Kinzen Acquisition & More

[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]

• The U.K. gains new powers that gives it the right to directly request evidentiary data from American technology companies under a new Data Access Agreement (DAA) between the two nations.
• Google officially unveils Pixel 7 (US$ 599) and 7 Pro (US$ 899) smartphones, the circular Pixel Watch with Fitbit health features and Wear OS (with fall detection coming sometime in 2023) (US$ 350), and teases the upcoming Pixel Tablet with a charging speaker dock, which turns it into a Nest Hub and lets users control smart home devices; rolls out a redesigned "Security & privacy" settings panel for Android 13 that brings together all essential security and privacy options in one place, in addition to a new Photo Unblur feature that can sharpen pictures (both old and new) as well as coughing and snoring detection as part of its Digital Wellbeing controls. (Notably, the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro come with free access to the VPN service from Google One.)
• Music streamer Spotify purchases Dublin-based company called Kinzen to help it detect and address harmful content in podcasts and other audio formats.
• Apple updates the Shazam app for iPhone and iPad, introducing a new feature that is designed to allow songs identified using Siri to be added to both the Shazam App library and the Music Recognition History view in the Control Centre.
• Twitter rolls out its mixed media feature globally, letting Android and iOS users include up to four videos, images, and GIFs in the same tweet.
• Google takes on Meta's Make-A-Video with Imagen Video, an AI system that can generate video clips given a text prompt.
• Ad-free subscription-only search engine Neeva expands to Europe, after its debut in the U.S. in June 2021.
• Meta's Facebook adds Show more or Show less controls in posts from friends, Groups and Pages on users' news feeds to "incorporate direct feedback into Feed ranking" and make its "artificial intelligence systems smarter and more responsive"; to use its own Chromium-based browser engine to power its in-app browser, citing reasons that Android users "not updating their Chrome and WebView apps."
• Twitter makes its crowdsourced fact-checks visible to all U.S. users with Birdwatch expansion ahead of the U.S. elections.
• Chinese tech giant ByteDance reports revenue growth up 80% YoY to US$ 61.7 billion in 2021, as operating losses more than triple YoY from US$ 2.14 billion to US$ 7.15 billion due to growth spending.