Tech Roundup: Amazon Rufus, Neuralink Human Trial & More

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

• Elon Musk's neurotech startup Neuralink implants its device in a human for the first time on January 28, 2024, after it began recruiting patients for its first in-human clinical trial in the fall after it received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; calls its first product Telepathy.
• Meta releases Code Llama 70B, a new version of its code generation model, featuring improved code correctness and a variant optimised for Python.
• ByteDance-owned TikTok tests a new feature that could make all posts shoppable, by identifying objects in videos and prompting users to "find similar items on TikTok Shop."
• Microsoft adds safeguards to its AI text-to-image tool Designer following reports that the software is being misused to create non-consensual, explicit deepfakes.
• Amazon abandons its proposed US$ 1.4 billion purchase of Roomba maker iRobot (originally announced in August 2022) after finding that the merger "has no path to regulatory approval" in the E.U. over concerns that the acquisition restricted competition in the market for robot vacuum cleaners and "would have enabled Amazon to foreclose iRobot’s rivals by restricting or degrading access to the Amazon Stores"; to pay a US$ 94 million termination fee to iRobot.
• Apple updates Shazam to add support for identifying songs from other apps while listening via wired or Bluetooth headphones; starts selling the Vision Pro in the U.S.
• The Browser Company releases Arc Search, a new iOS app that takes a user's search query, browses the web, and builds a custom webpage to answer the query.
• OpenAI launches the ability for paying ChatGPT users to invoke GPTs directly in chats by typing "@" and selecting a GPT from a list.
• Alphabet's digital subscription services, including YouTube Premium, YouTube Music, YouTube TV and Google One, generates US$ 15 billion in revenue in 2023, up fivefold since 2019; comes as its Google One plan hits 100 million subscribers and YouTube surpasses more than 100 million Premium and Music subscribers.
• A new investigation from the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) reveals that Meta's advertising and AI platforms approves "harmful teen ads" with AI-generated images promoting anorexia, drug parties and alcoholic drinks in violation of its own policies.
• Universal Music Group (UMG) announces plans to cease licensing its catalogue to TikTok saying the video platform is "trying to build a music-based business, without paying fair value for the music"; TikTok responds by saying UMG has "put their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters."
• Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologises to families who say their children had been harmed by social media, and says "no one should go through the things that your families have suffered and this is why we invest so much, and we are going to continue doing industry-leading efforts to make sure no one has to go through the things your families have had to suffer"; calls on app store providers like Apple and Google to manage parental consent systems for kids' use of social media apps, as social media platforms come under increasing scrutiny for the steps they take to protect children and teens from the harms of social media.
• Music streamer Spotify debuts new "Share Track Lens" for Snapchat that allows users to "share their favorite tracks with friends and express themselves in stories."
• The Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data in Hong Kong stages raids on multiple offices of Worldcoin, objecting to its scheme to offer crypto tokens to anyone willing to have their irises scanned; says the operation involves serious risks to personal data privacy.
• TikTok faces new setback after a new report from the Wall Street Journal reveals that the company does share "protected U.S. data with ByteDance to help train the algorithm" or to work on keeping problematic content off the service.
• Meta-owned Threads crosses 130 million monthly active users.
• Apple makes a record US$ 23.1 billion in revenue from its services business in Q1 2024, rising 11% YoY, as the company's global install base reaches 2.2 billion active devices. (The services segment includes the App Store, Apple Pay and Apple Card; subscription services such as Apple TV+, Apple Music, Apple Arcade and iCloud; advertising; and payments from Google for search.)
• Amazon launches Rufus, an AI-powered shopping assistant trained on its product catalog and information from around the web; reports Q4 2023 ad revenue up 27% YoY to US$ 14.7 billion.
• Google plans to limit news publishers to tracking users across five of their own websites under its Privacy Sandbox, which is set to replace third-party cookies; drops the cache link from Search results snippets and plans to remove the cache functionality entirely "in the near future."
• Snap says it will recall all its Pixy selfie camera drones because their batteries pose a fire hazard.
• Google supercharges Maps with generative AI, allowing users to discover places via a chat interface; shows off improvements MusicFX and TextFX, its generative AI text-to-music experiment, and debuts ImageFX, an AI image generator underpinned by Imagen 2, with "expressive chips", or keyword suggestions.
• Google expands Gemini Pro in Bard with support for over 40 languages and more than 230 countries and territories; updates the chatbot with capabilities to generate images using Imagen 2.
• Microsoft tests support for extensions in its Edge browser for Android, a feature lacking in most mobile versions of Chromium-based browsers.
• Shopify releases new features, including an AI-powered image editor for products, improved semantic search, and tools for better merchandising.
• Hugging Face launches HuggingChat Assistants, allowing users to create customised AI chatbots with specific capabilities using LLMs like Mixtral or Llama2.