Tech Roundup: Apple iPhone 16 Lineup, Brazil X Ban & More

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

• Microsoft partners with StopNCII to proactively remove harmful intimate images and videos from Bing using digital hashes people create from their sensitive media.
• North Carolina musician Michael Smith gets indicted for collecting over US$ 10 million in royalty payments from Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music and YouTube Music using AI-generated songs streamed by thousands of bots in a massive streaming fraud scheme between 2017 and 2024.
• Telegram says it has more than 10 million paying subscribers, as it introduces new features that allows channel and group owners to host giveaways to promote their communities and reward random members with prizes, but disables new media uploads to its Telegraph blogging tool and removes People Nearby feature.
• The company's CEO, who was arrested for failing to tackle illegal content on the platform, said: "While 99.999% of Telegram users have nothing to do with crime, the 0.001% involved in illicit activities create a bad image for the entire platform, putting the interests of our almost billion users at risk." The development comes as Telegram has consistently been criticised for paying little heed to an alleged flood of criminal content that has found a home on it.
• Google partners with The Internet Archive to view archived versions of web pages directly from Google search results, more than seven months after it deprecated cached results; introduces new feature in Chrome that syncs tab groups between Android and desktop.
• X rival Bluesky rolls out the ability to post videos (including adult content) of up to 60 seconds with optional attached subtitles, but restricts it to one video per post; comes as the platform surpasses 9 million users as of September 6, 2024, after adding 3 million new users in the aftermath of Brazil blocking X for refusing to appoint a legal representative for their business in the country to handle government takedown notices, including about political misinformation and incitements to violence.
• Prior to the ban, Brazil was X's fifth-largest international market, with over 20 million users. The X blockade also forbids users from attempting to use VPN apps to access the service, or risk facing fines up to US$ 9,000 a day.
• Chipmaker Qualcomm says the company is working with Samsung and Google on a mixed-reality set of smart glasses linked to a smartphone.
• Adobe says generative AI features powered by its Firefly Video model will be available before the end of 2024.
• Google debuts the Meet Add-ons SDK for developers to create interactive experiences within the video conferencing platform; tests pause screen ads on the YouTube app for smart TVs.
• AI company Mistral releases its first multimodal model, Pixtral 12B, available on GitHub and Hugging Face, as Anthropic launches Claude Enterprise, offering a context window of 500,000 tokens, higher rate limits and GitHub integration.
• Automattic plans to shift Tumblr's backend to WordPress in a bid to make sharing work across the platforms easier, after acquiring Tumblr for US$ 3 million in August 2019.
• Meta opens up Horizon Worlds to users aged 10 to 12 with parental approval, and rolls out a new age rating system for worlds to help parents supervise kids.
• Google adds Audio Overview to NotebookLM, letting users turn documents into audio discussions with two AI hosts that summarise and explain the source material.
• Salesforce announces plans to acquire Own Company, which provides data management and protection services, in an all-cash deal worth US$ 1.9 billion.
• Apple formally announces iPhone 16 (US$ 799), 16 Plus (US$ 899), iPhone 16 Pro (US$ 999), and iPhone 16 Pro Max (US$ 1,199) with 128 GB and dedicated Camera Control button; to release iOS 18, macOS 15, iPadOS 18, watchOS 11 and visionOS 2 on September 16, and make available Apple Intelligence in beta for U.S. English language users in December.
• Apple unveils hearing health related features for AirPods Pro 2, including a "clinical grade" hearing aid mode and a clinically-validated hearing test, two new AirPods 4 models with an H2 chip and USB-C, and Apple Watch Series 10, with a thinner design, a bigger screen, smaller bezels and faster charging.