Tech Roundup: Apple's Siri Fumble, Meta Antitrust Trial & More

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

• Scientists find new but tentative evidence that a planet called K2-18b orbiting another star has signs of molecules which on Earth are only produced by simple organisms.
• The U.K. bans hidden fees imposed by online businesses as well as the use or commissioning of fake reviews, effective April 6, with compliance enforced by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).
• The U.K. government is developing a "murder prediction" tool to use personal data of those known to police to find likely killers; says the project will "review offender characteristics that increase the risk of committing homicide" and "explore alternative and innovative data science techniques to risk assessment of homicide."
• A French law requiring adult sites to run age checks and block users under 18 goes into effect for sites based in France and outside of the E.U. starting April 11, 2025.
• An analysis of publicly available data of emissions generated from the production of the semiconductors used in AI chips by Greenpeace has found a fourfold increase in 2024; surging by more than 350% year on year, from 218 GWh in 2023 to nearly 984 GWh in 2024.
• Meta allegedly targeted ads at teens based on their "emotional state," according to whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams, the former director of Global Public Policy for Facebook and author of the book Careless People; says the company "could identify when they were feeling worthless or helpless or like a failure, and [Meta] would take that information and share it with advertisers."
• OpenAI tests watermarks for images generated using ChatGPT's free accounts.
• Meta's WhatsApp pilots a new "advanced chat privacy" option that lets users control whether others they are chatting with can export their chats or automatically save media sent by them; adds new features aimed at enhancing the user experience across chats, calls and channels.
• Google takes on Cursor with Firebase Studio, its AI builder for vibe coding; announces Agent2Agent, an open interoperability protocol similar to Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP) in order to enable seamless collaboration between AI agents across diverse frameworks and vendors, and unveils Workspace Flows, an AI tool to automate multi-step processes across apps.
• Google adds new Docs, Sheets, Meet, Chat and Vids features; adds the ability to create full audio versions of documents, improve writing with "Help me refine" in Docs, extract insights using "Help me analyse" in Sheets, summarise and recap conversations and meetings in Chat and Meet, and generate original video content in Vids.
• Google showcases Ironwood, its seventh-generation Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) that's "purpose-built to power thinking, inferential AI models at scale"; announces improvements to its text-to-music model Lyria, text-to-video model Veo 2, text-to-image model Imagen 3, and support for custom voice creation using the text-to-speech model Chirp 3.
• Anthropic debuts Claude's Max plan, with 5x the usage limits of Pro for US$ 100/month or 20x the usage for US$ 200/month, alongside early access to new models and features.
• Adobe outlines agentic AI features, including the ability to analyse documents in Acrobat, iterate over designs in Express, make edits and handle repetitive tasks in Photoshop, and ideate and explore creative options to make video cuts in Premiere Pro.
• WordPress.com launches an AI tool to help users build simple websites using a chat interface for free to compete with Squarespace and Wix.
• Samsung and Google team up to launch Ballie, a soccer-ball-shaped home robot "like a personal BB-8" that uses AI and can project video onto walls.
• Reddit integrates Google Gemini into its conversational AI search tool Reddit Answers to improve search relevance and give quick answers, as movie streamer Netflix begins testing search powered by OpenAI.
• Google unveils Gemini 2.5 Flash, a reasoning model ideal for "high-volume, cost-sensitive" and "real-time" apps; expands Gemini Live to all Gemini app users on Pixel 9 and Samsung Galaxy S25 devices after initially rolling it out to Gemini Advanced subscribers on Android devices, allowing users to have natural, free-flowing conversations about content displayed on the phone's screen or through a camera.
• Germany says Google will change how it offers its Maps and Automotive Services to car makers in Europe, including letting them choose rival infotainment options; to let car makers with in-vehicle infotainment platforms curate services from rival providers instead of choosing a package from Google.
• Google plans to brings its Discover feed to desktop Search; rolls out Loss of Pulse Detection to the Pixel Watch 3 in the U.S. after getting FDA clearance in February 2025. (The feature was previously made available to European users in 2024.)
• Apple bring its web version of Maps to the iPhone and Android, after adding support for Macs, iPads, and PCs.
• Meta-owned Instagram tests Locked Reels that require secret codes for viewing, making it a useful tool for creators and businesses to promote new products or announcements; says it's working on an iPad app.
• Amazon expands Haul, its Shein and Temu competitor, to offer name-brand items from Amazon's U.S. inventory.
• Meta rolls out Teen Accounts to Facebook and Messenger, automatically enrolling users and adding built-in protections, in the U.S., the U.K., Australia and Canada; pilots a new Threads feature that lets users follow the same creators they follow on X.
• Apple gets hit with at least two more proposed class action lawsuits in the U.S. and Canada over its delayed AI-powered Siri features for iPhones; faces accusations of violating false advertising and unfair competition laws by marketing Apple Intelligence upgrades for Siri that are not available.
• The development comes as a blockbuster report from The Information details the internal turmoil behind Apple Intelligence's revamped version of Siri, with former employees of the AI team blaming poor leadership, indecision, repeated changes and lack of ambition for the problems. The report, which also says Apple's AI/ML group had been dubbed "AIMLess" internally, notes that the demo of Apple AI features in 2024 was fictitious.
• Another report from The New York Times, in the meanwhile, said some of the delays were reportedly caused by leadership issues within the company and that AI team's request for purchasing more AI chips for development was shot down, instead slashing the chip budget and encouraging them to make existing chips more efficient.
• OpenAI updates its Memory feature to "reference all of your past chats to provide more personalized responses, drawing on your preferences and interests to make it even more helpful for writing, getting advice, learning and beyond."
• Google launches a new tool called Music Assistant in YouTube's Creator Music that allows select creators in the U.S. to use AI technology to generate custom instrumental backing music that can be added to their videos.
• X rival Bluesky adds new update with support for chat reactions and a revamped search section that's new rebranded as Explore to find updated trends and suggested accounts.
• Microsoft begins a gradual rollout of its AI-powered Recall feature that allows users to "search for things you've seen or done on your PC securely" after pausing it last year to address some of the glaring privacy and security issues.
• Google plans to redirect all Search users to google.com over the coming months, saying "country-level domains are no longer necessary"; tests a new feature in Messages for Android that visually indicates which contacts have RCS enabled on the "Start chat" screen using an "RCS" label and rolls out a Play services update with an Android security feature to auto-reboot phones and tablets that are "locked for three consecutive days."
• OpenAI adds an image library to ChatGPT to make it easier for users to access their AI-generated images for all Free, Plus and Pro users; said to be in the early stages of building its own X-like social network, focused on ChatGPT image generation.
• New documents released as part of the ongoing U.S. Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) antitrust lawsuit against Meta reveal that the company considered spinning off Instagram in 2018, offered to buy Snapchat for US$ 6 billion in 2013 and that it would have grown faster if it accepted his company's offer to buy the social network, and even mulled wiping users' friends lists every year; Meta calls the lawsuit "weak" and that "FTC is trying to break up a great American company at the same time the Administration is trying to save Chinese-owned TikTok."
• Anthropic's Claude adds Research to help search the web and internal documents to give comprehensive answers in beta for Max, Team and Enterprise plan users; says Claude now integrates with Google Workspace for access to Gmail, Calendar and Google Docs.
• Notion releases Notion Mail, a lightweight Gmail client to help users schedule meetings and organise and draft emails, for free on macOS and the web.
• Google rolls out its Deep Research with Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental and text-to-video AI model Veo 2 to Gemini Advanced subscribers and makes its Whisk Animate tool available for Google One AI Premium users.
• Japan's Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) slaps Google with a cease-and-desist order for violating anti-monopoly law; calls out its abusive distribution agreements and revenue-sharing program stipulations, and says Gooogle forces OEMs to give preference to its software in order to obtain an Android distribution license.
• Apple adds the 2018 Mac mini and the iPhone 6s to its vintage products list.
• OpenAI updates its Preparedness Framework to state that it may "adjust" its safety requirements if "another frontier AI developer releases a high-risk system without comparable safeguards"; notes "we would first rigorously confirm that the risk landscape has actually changed, publicly acknowledge that we are making an adjustment, assess that the adjustment does not meaningfully increase the overall risk of severe harm and still keep safeguards at a level more protective."
• ByteDance-owned TikTok takes on Google Maps as it tests surfacing reviews for select places right within the comments tab of a video.
• X announces its plans to sunset its Support account to "streamline how users can contact us for help"; says "subscribers can get support via @Premium, and everyone can get help through our Help Center."
• Google says it blocked 5.1 billion ads and suspended more than 39.2 million advertiser accounts in 2024; releases an update for Chrome on Android that finally lets users move the address bar to the bottom, after rolling out a similar change for iOS in August 2023.
• AI-powered code editor Cursor apologises after its AI support agent "Sam" invents a non-existent policy about the service being "designed to work with one device per subscription as a core security feature" after users began reporting an issue with using the tool across multiple devices. (The development marks the latest instance of how AI confabulations or hallucinations can inflict reputational damage to businesses.)