Tech Roundup: Apple RCS Support, OpenAI Leadership Crisis & More

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

• Apple announces plans to adopt the GSM's RCS messaging standard by releasing a software update in the "later half of next year," bringing features like read receipts, attachments, higher-quality multimedia, typing indicators and encryption to cross-platform texts.
• The major reversal is likely an attempt to appease regulatory pressure in the E.U. that aims to enforce interoperability with other platforms, effectively preventing the need for Apple to bring iMessage to Android. Needless to say, this may be the death knell for SMS.
• The decision to keep iMessage within its ecosystem and shunning RCS is deliberate and a lock-in mechanism, as it deters users from transitioning to Android, prompting Google and telecom operators to urge E.U. watchdogs to designate iMessage as a "core" service under the new Digital Markets Act (DMA), a move that would have forced the iPhone-maker to make the chat app fully compatible with rivals.
• Meta rolls out the ability for users to delete their Threads profile without having to delete their Instagram account as well as opt out of automatically sharing posts to Facebook and Instagram; WhatsApp launches a Discord-like voice chat feature for large groups that is designed to be less disruptive than a group call.
• Ride hailing service Uber plans to test Uber Tasks, a TaskRabbit and Urban Company-like service that lets users hire people to complete household tasks.
• Amazon restructures its games division to focus on free streaming games offered with Prime.
• Google pays Apple 36% of the revenue the internet giant earns from search ads through Safari (which "was well over US$ 10 billion" in 2022), as more details trickle out during the ongoing antitrust trial against the search giant in the U.S.; agreed to pay Samsung US$ 8 billion over four years in 2020 to make Google Search, Play Store, and Assistant the default on Samsung mobile devices.
• Nvidia unveils H200, a graphics processing unit designed for training and deploying artificial intelligence models.
• The European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee votes to adopt a policy that prevents the use of mass scanning of encrypted messages as part of an effort to identify and remove exploitative content on messaging platforms.
• Apple extends free usage of Emergency SOS on iPhone 14 for two more years to September 2025.
• Huawei and China Mobile have built a 3,000 km network that they claim is the world's first internet network to achieve a "stable and reliable" 1.2Tbps bandwidth.
• OpenAI pauses new ChatGPT Plus signups "for a bit" as "the surge in usage post devday has exceeded our capacity."
• Japan proposes making Apple, Google, and other app store operators responsible for paying consumption taxes on content sold by foreign developers.
• Notion unveils Q&A, an AI assistant that answers questions using information from a user's docs, projects and meeting notes, as part Notion's AI add-on for US$ 8 to US$ 10 per user per month.
• Google announces new changes that makes WhatsApp's chat and media backups on Android devices to count toward the Google Account storage limit for all users in 2024.
• Nothing rolls out an early version of Nothing Chats, a Sunbird-based app that lets Phone (2) users send iMessages to iPhone contacts, on November 17. (To use iMessage via Nothing Chats, users must log in to their iCloud account, following which iMessages will be sent via a virtual Mac mini, raising serious security questions.)
• Google's DeepMind debuts GraphCast, an AI model for faster and more accurate global weather forecasting; claims to deliver "10-day weather predictions at unprecedented accuracy in under one minute."
• Airbnb acquires Gameplanner.AI, in a deal valued at just under US$ 200 million, to accelerate some of its AI projects, marking its first acquisition as a public company.
• Netherlands-based Yandex is reportedly planning to sell its entire Russian business, including its search engine, instead of a 51% stake, after pressures tied to Russia's war in Ukraine.
• Amazon updates Buy With Prime -- which gives retailers who are not Amazon merchants fulfillment and delivery through its logistics network -- to let customers return items outside of Amazon.com without its shipping labels and see their order history in merchants' apps ahead of the upcoming holiday season.
• Google's YouTube plans to require users to disclose when they upload realistic-looking manipulated or synthetic content, including videos made using its tools, in 2024 to combat misuse of the technology; adds enhanced bitrate 1080p video support for Premium users across more devices. (YouTube has also updated its guidelines to allow new types of content to monetise adult content, including videos that display nudity while breastfeeding and non-sexually graphic dancing. In addition, it's testing Dream Track, a new AI tool powered by DeepMind's Lyria to generate and remix music in the styles of nine artists.)
• Microsoft and Google announce support for OneTable, an open source project that enables data lake interoperability across different table formats.
• Nepal becomes the latest country to ban TikTok in the country, citing disruption to social harmony. (Other nations that have blocked the platform include India, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Senegal, Somalia, Kyrgyzstan, and Iran, while it's banned from government-owned devices in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Indonesia, Latvia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Taiwan, the U.K., and the U.S. It has been temporarily banned several times in Pakistan since 2020, citing concerns that the app promotes immoral content.)
• Civitai, an online marketplace for sharing AI models that has attracted scrutiny for sharing nonconsensual pornographic deepfakes, introduces a new feature that allows users to post bounties urging the community to create AI models that generate images of specific styles, compositions or real people, a new investigation from 404 Media reveals.
• Google plans to pull the plug on its magazine service in Google News effective December 18, 2023; tests new profile discovery and wallpaper features in Google Messages for Android.
• Google sues a group of people for weaponising the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to get competitors' websites removed from search results by submitting bogus copyright claims, resulting in the removal of over 100,000 businesses' websites.
• Meta's Instagram expands its Close Friends feature from Stories and Notes to feed posts and Reels, enabling users to limit the latter to a smaller audience; adds new filters, text styles and options for users to create their own stickers.
• Amazon enters into a partnership with Snap to allow users to buy its products directly from ads on Snapchat in an attempt to better compete with TikTok, which recently launched TikTok Shop in the U.S.
• TikTok teams up with streaming music services, including Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Music, on a new "Add to music app" feature that lets users to save directly to their preferred streaming music app the songs they hear in TikTok videos; its Chinese counterpart Douyin tests letting some creators with over 100,000 followers add paywalls to parts of their videos.
• Apple announces Tap to Pay on iPhone in France, allowing independent sellers, small merchants and large retailers in the country to use ‌iPhones‌ as a payment terminal.
• Tech Against Terrorism announces collaboration with Microsoft to develop an AI-powered tool for detecting terrorist or violent extremist content (TVEC) online.
• Google rolls out new updates for Maps with support for improved transit directions emoji reactions and collaborative lists; launches Notes, an experiment to let users that opt-in via Search Labs annotate search results, including with images and colorful fonts, and follow topics of interest from the search results page as well as use AI-generated ideas to surface and shop products.
• Google expands Bard access for teens that "meet the minimum age requirement to manage their own Google Account" and have English set as the default language, while prioritising safety.
• Meta says WhatsApp Channels has crossed 500M monthly active users in seven weeks, as it adds support for stickers; Threads tests tags, a way of categorizing posts similar to hashtags without the # symbol.
• Amazon plans to merge its Comixology app with Kindle on December 4, and automatically integrate all comics that Comixology users own into their Kindle libraries; to let U.S. auto dealers sell new vehicles on its platform, starting in 2024 with Hyundai, which will include Alexa in its cars beginning in 2025.
• Google launches two Titan Security Keys with FIDO2 that can store more than 250 unique passkeys, and commits to giving 100,000 security keys to high-risk users in 2024; adds new AI-assisted features to Google Photos that makes it possible to group together similar photos and organise screenshots and photos of documents into easy-to-find albums.
• Meta appeals the E.U.'s decision to designate Messenger and Facebook Marketplace as "core" services under the DMA, becoming the first company to challenge DMA designations. (TikTok and Apple have since joined Meta in challenging its EU DMA "gatekeeper" status, with the former saying the service is "arguably the most capable challenger to more entrenched" rivals. Apple, which previously tried to argue its Safari browser is actually three different browsers accessed on three devices and that it has five distinct operating systems, is believed to have pushed back against the gatekeeper status of its App Store, iOS operating system and Safari browser.)
• Microsoft rebrands Bing Chat as Microsoft Copilot; takes on OpenAI's GPT Store with Copilot Studio, a low-code tool that lets companies customise Microsoft 365 Copilot or integrate custom ChatGPT chatbots made with OpenAI's GPT, and rolls out AI updates to Office, Security Copilot and Teams with support for generative backgrounds and voice isolation.
• Microsoft launches Loop, a Notion-like collaboration and productivity app, in general availability on the web and mobile, after a public preview in March 2023; also unveils a Windows App in preview for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, Windows and the web, letting enterprise customers securely access Windows via other devices, and adds AI-generated captions to search result snippets in Bing.
• Apple extends free emergency SOS satellite access for existing iPhone 14 owners by another year; releases Apple Music Classical on iPad as part of a v1.1 update.
• DocuSign and WhatsApp partner to allow e-signature customers to digitally sign documents within the WhatsApp messaging app.
• X debuts a web version of its job search tool for all users as it takes on the likes of LinkedIn and other job serarch platforms; comes as rival Bluesky cross 2 million active users and announces plans to release a web version of its service later this month.
• Meta unveils new AI tools to edit images and generate videos from text instructions based on its image generation model Emu announced in September.
• MediaTek announces a partnership with Meta to develop chips for AR smart glasses.
• Microsoft previews upcoming changes to Windows 11, including disabling Bing web search, removing Microsoft Edge, adding custom web search providers, and changing default apps, in the European Economic Area (EEA) ahead of DMA, which comes into effect in March 2024.
• Privacy-focused service Proton announces Key Transparency, a tool built on Proton's private blockchain to let high-profile users verify email addresses, in beta.
• Discord plans to discontinue its AI chatbot, Clyde, less than a year after it was first introduced on December 1, 2023.
• Sam Altman departs as OpenAI CEO and leaves its board after a review by the board found he wasn't "consistently candid in his communications with the board"; sources claim his exit followed a "misalignment" between OpenAI's profit and nonprofit sides. (Greg Brockman, the company's co-founder and chairman, said he is resigning from OpenAI after Altman's ouster. Sam Altman co-founded OpenAI in 2015, alongside Tesla CEO Elon Musk and others, with an ultimate goal to "advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.")