Tech Roundup: DuckAssist, Summarizer & More

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

• Microsoft updates its Bing chatbot to support 10 chats per session (and 120 total per day) and let users toggle between creative, balanced, and precise tones for its responses in an attempt to counter Bing's "unhinged" outbursts; surpasses 100 million daily active users, suggesting that the new Bing AI-powered Chat feature is driving usage.
• Apple seemingly requires third-party apps using generative AI tech like ChatGPT to have a 17 or older age restriction on the App Store.
• Russia bans use of "foreign" messaging apps like Discord, Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business, Snapchat, Telegram, Threema, Viber, WhatsApp and WeChat from devices used by government agencies and organisations. (Notably missing from the list are Google Chat/Meet, Signal and Zoom.)
• Brave Search launches Summarizer, which provides a synopsis of search results for some queries using its own LLM trained to fight "unsubstantiated assertions"; come as DuckDuckGo debuts DuckAssist, an AI-assisted that generates a "brief, sourced summary" based on information from Wikipedia and Britannica using natural language technology from OpenAI and Anthropic.
• Meta rolls out new creative tools and templates for Facebook Reels and expands maximum video length to 90 seconds; adds a Grooves feature that automatically aligns and syncs the "motion in your video to the beat of your favourite song" through visual beat technology.
• Twitter expands its Blue subscription service to more than 20 new countries in Europe, including the Netherlands, Poland, Ireland, Belgium, Sweden, Romania, Czechia, Finland, Denmark, Greece, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Slovakia, Latvia, Slovenia, Estonia, Croatia, Luxembourg, Malta and Cyprus.
• Meta tests a new mute unknown callers on WhatsApp, mimicking a feature offered by Apple's iOS, as well as allow group chat memberships on the encrypted platform to expire after a set period of time; also pilots new feature that brings back Messenger integration to the Facebook app, nearly a decade after moving the chat functions to a standalone app in 2014 as it attempts to rework the platform as a place for "social discovery and sharing."
• Microsoft makes Outlook for macOS free to use (but will be ad-supported), eliminating the need for a Microsoft 365 subscription or license; previews Video Super Resolution (VSR), an experimental video upscaling feature for its Edge web browser that uses machine learning to increase the resolution of low-quality video, and a system called File Recommendations in File Explorer that surfaces files of interest.
• Google plans to retire overlay ads on YouTube videos starting on April 6 to "improve the viewer experience and shift engagement to higher performing ad formats"; reverses course on controversial swearing and monetisation policy in YouTube with a tweaked rule that allows the use of moderate and strong profanity in the first seven seconds of a video without risking demonetisation.