Tech Roundup: Apple Invites App, OpenAI Deep Research & More

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

• OpenAI unveils a visual rebrand, featuring a new bespoke typeface called OpenAI Sans, a refined logo and a new colour palette; takes a leaf out of DeepSeek R1 by updating o3-mini's chain of thought to make it easier for users "to understand how the model thinks."
• India expands Aadhaar, now linked to the biometrics of over 1.4 million people, to let businesses across several sectors use it to authenticate customers, raising privacy concerns over the lack of guardrails to avoid misuse of the national ID.
• The U.K. announces four new laws that make it illegal to possess, create or distribute AI tools designed to produce CSAM, becoming the first country to do so.
• OpenAI drops sign-in requirement to use ChatGPT's search engine, and unveils Deep Research, an AI agent for creating in-depth reports, available to subscribers of the US$ 200 ChatGPT Pro tier and limited to 100 queries/month; says it can operate autonomously to "plan and execute a multi-step trajectory to find the data it needs, backtracking and reacting to real-time information where necessary."
• Reliance Retail relaunches Chinese fast-fashion platform Shein in India, with control over operations and data while Shein acts as the technology partner, nearly five years after the app's ban.
• Meta's WhatsApp tests feature that allows users to view self-destructing images, videos and voice messages on their linked devices; adds the option for users on Threads to make their custom feeds public and follow custom feeds made by others.
• Google drops language from its AI Principles that said it would not pursue AI applications "likely to cause overall harm," such as for weapons and surveillance; says the company will work to "mitigate unintended or harmful outcomes and avoid unfair bias," as well as align the company with "widely accepted principles of international law and human rights."
• Snap reports 453 million daily active users for Q4 2024, as Spotify reports 675 million monthly active users and Pinterest reports 553 million monthly active users.
• Apple raises the monthly AppleCare+ price for iPhone users by $0.50 in the U.S.; takes on Partiful with Invites, an iPhone-only and web app to help plan events like birthdays, graduations and more for iCloud+ subscribers.
• Adobe adds "contract intelligence capabilities" to Acrobat's US$ 4.99 per month AI Assistant, letting the PDF management software to summarise complicated contract language.
• Opera launches Opera Air, a free browser focused on mindfulness and mental well-being, including break reminders and ambient soundscapes, for Windows and macOS.
• China's State Administration for Market Regulation says it will probe Google for alleged antitrust violations, adding to its long list of regulatory woes. (China has announced a similar antitrust investigation into NVIDIA in December and is looking at launching a formal probe into Intel, according to Financial Times.)
• Google releases Gemini 2.0 Flash via its API, and experimental versions of Gemini 2.0 Pro and Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking via its apps; also makes available Gemini 2.0 Flash-Lite in AI Studio and Vertex AI.
• Paid Google alternative Kagi introduces a new fair pricing policy that will "automatically apply a full credit to your account" to users' next billing cycle when they don't utilise any searches.
• Google adds a new feature called Auto ‌Dark Mode‌ in its namesake app for iOS that lets users browse websites with dark mode enabled regardless of whether the sites support the feature or not; begins adding its SynthID watermarks to photos that have been edited using Magic Editor in Google Photos, but says some changes may be too small to detect.
• Indian food delivery group Zomato plans to rename itself as Eternal in an effort to better reflect its expanding business portfolio.
• Microsoft's GitHub announces updates for Copilot, including Vision for Copilot to generate interfaces, code and alt text from a screenshot, photo or a diagram; tests a Facebook-like feed inside Microsoft Teams.
• Worldwide tablet shipments grows 9.2% YoY in 2024 to 147.6 million units, after three consecutive years of decline; Xiaomi increases by 73.1% YoY and Huawei grows 29.3% YoY, as Apple leads the segment with a 38.6% market share, followed by Samsung (18.8%).
• Snapchat rolls out options to create AI-generated stickers and send self-destructing snaps for Snapchat+ subscribers.
• Online dating platform Tinder revamps Explore page to connect people with similar dating intentions under broad categories Non-Monogamy, Serious Dater, Short-Term Fun, Long-Term Partner and New Friends.
• Meta allegedly "torrented "at least 81.7 terabytes of data across multiple shadow libraries through the site Anna’s Archive, including at least 35.7 terabytes of data from Z-Library and LibGen," after the company admitted to illegally training its AI models on pirated books. (Meta has maintained that AI training on LibGen was "fair use.")
• French AI company Mistral debuts a dedicated Le Chat chatbot app for Android and iOS, as it attempts to take on ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini and DeepSeek.
• Hugging Face researchers release an open-source AI agent named "Open Deep Research" that aims to match OpenAI's Deep Research performance.
• DeepSeek says it has suspended letting customers top up their API credits due to server capacity shortages after being overwhelmed with demand since January 2024.
• X rival Bluesky says it's planning to add a new "followers only" setting that users can configure to limit replies to their posts.
• Meta shares work on a system that uses a magnetic scanner and a deep neural network to analyse brain signals and identify which keys people pressed while typing.
• ByteDance-owned TikTok advises its U.S. Android users to sideload the app through APKs on its website, as its app continues to remain unavailable on the official app stores in the wake of a ban last month.