Tech Roundup: Instagram Teen Accounts, Snapchat Redesign & More

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

• Meta-owned Instagram unveils Teen Accounts, a sweeping update to boost privacy and limit intrusive effects for under-18 users, including making accounts private by default, as the platform faces intensifying pressure over children's safety online.
• X rival Bluesky surpasses more than 10 million users on the platform amid rapid growth of the network after X's shutdown in Brazil; Tumblr says it has seen a 222.99% growth in communities and a 349.55% growth in users since the X ban in the country.
• LinkedIn confirms it's training its AI models on user data by default, and says it is "making sure that those who have specific privacy preferences" can opt out; pauses the effort in the European Union and the U.K., citing data protection regulations.
• Google brings an upgraded version of its Safety Check tool to Chrome browser, and lets users opt out of unwanted website notifications more easily and grant select permissions to a site for one time only.
• Discord begins rolling out end-to-end encryption to voice and video chats in DMs, Group DMs, voice channels and Go Live streams using a new custom protocol called DAVE.
• The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reveals that social media and video streaming companies have been engaging in widespread user surveillance, often collecting user and non-user data en masse to drive targeted advertising and train artificial intelligence systems, often without allowing users to opt out, raising concerns about transparency and consumer harm.
• Telegram says it will give users' IP addresses and phone numbers to authorities in response to valid legal requests in an attempt to rein in criminal activity on the platform.
• OpenAI makes its latest AI models, o1-preview and o1-mini, available to all ChatGPT Enterprise and ChatGPT Edu customers.
• Google updates its Street View imagery in nearly 80 countries, including bringing it to new locations Bosnia and Herzegovina, Namibia, Liechtenstein, and Paraguay, and sharpens satellite imagery across Google Earth and Maps; updates Google Photos' mobile video editor for Android and iOS, adding editing tools and AI presets to make trimming and tweaking clips easier.
• The U.S. Department of Justice files an antitrust lawsuit against Visa, alleging that the financial services firm has an illegal monopoly over debit network markets and has attempted to unlawfully crush competitors, such as PayPal and Square.
• Salesforce agrees to buy Zoomin, an Israeli data management company that makes unstructured data accessible to AI agents, for an undisclosed sum, less than three weeks after the software giant paid US$ 1.9 billion for Own.
• Duolingo unveils an interactive AI feature powered by OpenAI's GPT-4o to "video call" with its Lily mascot, as part of its US$ 30/month Duolingo Max tier, as Spotify rolls out its AI Playlist feature in beta to Premium subscribers in the U.S., Canada, Ireland and New Zealand, after launching in the U.K. and Australia.
• Roku unveils the US$ 100 Roku Ultra streaming player with support for Wi-Fi 6, HDMI 2.1, Dolby Atmos and Voice Remote Pro.
• Snap says it will use Google's Gemini to help add new features to Snapchat's chatbot, including translating menus, after starting to use Gemini earlier in 2024; comes as Google touts enterprise use for AI-based customer agents across sectors.
• GitHub announces plans to let all enterprise cloud customers select an E.U. region for Azure, in the Netherlands or Sweden, to store all their code from October 29, 2024, as part of its efforts to meet the bloc's strict approach to data regulation.
• Google brings Watch OS 5 to the Pixel Watch and Pixel Watch 2; to include the standalone Gemini app in its Workspace Business, Enterprise and Frontline plans from Q4, 2024, replacing the Gemini for Workspace add-on.
• ByteDance-owned TikTok takes on Google with new Search Ads that allows advertisers to target its search results page; rolls out its redesigned Subscription feature, which lets creators offer three tiers, to eligible creators in select regions, including the U.K. and the U.S., and says it will shut down TikTok Music (originally called Resso) on November 28, 2024, and delete user data.
• OpenAI adds five new voices to Advanced Voice Mode -- Arbor, Maple, Sol, Spruce and Vale (alongside existing Breeze, Juniper, Cove and Ember) -- for ChatGPT Plus and Teams users, as well as to enterprise and education users; agrees to give representatives for authors suing the company access to review its training data to see if OpenAI used authors' copyrighted works amid ongoing lawsuit over allegations that it harvested mass quantities of books from shadow library sites to power its technology. (OpenAI has said that it trains its model on "large, publicly available datasets that include copyrighted works." It has not disclosed what exact materials were used in an attempt to maintain an advantage over competitors and sidestep legal liability.)
• Newsletter platform Substack now lets creators with its Bestsellers badges start live videos within its app, and plans to roll out the feature to all users in the coming months.
• Apple says Apple Intelligence will require 4GB of storage on compatible iPhones, and the storage requirement "will increase as more features roll out," as the latest iPhone 16 models go on sale worldwide; to support German, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Vietnamese and other languages in 2025
• Snapchat gets a redesign, simplifying from five to three tabs: Chats, Camera and a new unified For You feed of full-screen videos from publishers and creators; reserves the right to put its users' AI-generated faces in ads, according to terms of service related to its "My Selfie" tool, a setting that's enabled by default, requiring users to explicitly opt out.