Tech Roundup: Apple's India Push, E.U. AI Rules & More

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

• Meta-owned WhatsApp, Signal, Threema, Wire and other messaging services pen an open letter to the British government appealing for it to urgently rethink the Online Safety Bill (OSB), a piece of legislation that would require the platforms to monitor users in order to identify child abuse images, effectively breaking encryption protections; comes as law enforcement agencies claim encryption protections limit their ability to tackle serious crime.
• Google is reportedly "racing" to build a radically new AI-powered search engine under the codename Magi amid renewed competition from Microsoft and OpenAI; also follows negotiations with Samsung over the latter's plans to consider switching to Microsoft Bing as the default search engine on its browser.
• The European parliament is reportedly set to unveil tough new measures on AI, including forcing chatbot makers to reveal if they use copyrighted material.
• The U.S. state of Montana passes a first-of-its-kind bill that bans TikTok and bars app stores from offering the app within the state, starting on January 1, 2024.
• Meta's Instagram updates Reels with a section for trending audio and hashtags and lets users add up to five links to their account bios, challenging Linktree, Beacons, and other "link in bio" services; opens Horizon Worlds to teens in the U.S. and Canada with age-appropriate safety features.
• Spotify plans to shut down Heardle on May 5, after acquiring the Wordle-inspired music guessing game in July 2022, to focus on other music discovery objectives.

• BeReal struggles to retain users as the app's daily users falls to under 6 million in March 2023 from about 15 million in October 2022.
• Microsoft tests a new feature that makes the Edge browser sidebar detachable and pin it to the right side of the desktop; also experiments with optional ads on the Windows Start Menu that offers recommendations to use other Microsoft products.
• Zoom acquires Ireland-based employee communications platform Workvivo to "bolster employee experience offering."
• Google adds support for internet of things (IOT) apps to cars to help users "easily manage IOT systems like home security and doors directly from their car"; begins rolling out Matter support for the Nest Thermostat model released in 2020, allowing it to be controlled with Apple's Home app and Siri on the iPhone and other devices.
• Apple launches its high-yield Apple Card Savings account in the U.S., letting users deposit Daily Cash rewards into a 4.15% high yield account with no fees; opens its first-ever physical stores in India in the cities of Mumbai and Delhi, as the tech giant looks to make further inroads in the South Asian market.
• Japanese gaming giant Sega to acquire Angry Birds maker Rovio in a deal worth US$ 776 million.

• Adobe unveils Firefly generative AI tool upgrades for Premiere Pro and After Effects, allowing users to add music and sound effects, boost colour levels, and more using natural language prompts.
• Twitter announces plans to label tweets violating its Hateful Conduct policy and inform users of its limited visibility across the platform.
• Netflix delays a "broad rollout" of its paid sharing plan to Q2 2023, including to the US, after its Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain launch in February; to shut down its DVD rental business on September 29, 2023, 25 years after launch and upgrades its ad-supported plan's video quality from 720p to 1080p, letting subscribers watch two streams at once.
• Apple and Google urge Amazon to improve content moderation for its Kindle app after it was found that children could use the app to access sexually explicit images without any parental checks.
• Samsung replaces its Free app with a new News experience that gives U.S. users access to everyday news and podcasts from a variety of publications.
• Reddit announces restrictions to its API with a paid model that requires third-party app developers and companies like OpenAI that use the content to "crawl" data from the platform to train machine learning models to pay up.
• Global smartphone sales drop by 12% in Q1 2023, experiencing a fifth consecutive quarter of decline; Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo take the top five spots.
• Google's YouTube announces plans to remove additional videos related to eating disorders, including content that shows or discusses "imitable behavior."