Tech Roundup: Apple App Store Setback, WhatsApp Private Processing & More

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

• Google tests a new shortcut in Translate that allows users to conduct a web search for translated words or phrases; also includes a Practice feature help users improve language skills with gamified activities, similar to Duolingo.
• Meta-owned WhatsApp pilots built-in voice and video call functionality within desktop web version; plans to add cloud-based AI features like message summarisation and composition to WhatsApp, utilising a system called Private Processing to maintain data privacy and process such requests in the cloud, and rolls out Advanced Chat Privacy, a new opt-in tool to block participants from sharing the contents of a conversation in traditional chats and groups.
• Pakistan launches a digital health programme called One Patient One ID, that uses an individual's Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC) as their permanent Medical Record (MR) number, allowing for easy access to healthcare data nationwide.
• Meta releases a dedicated Meta AI app built with Llama 4 that comes with a "social" Discover feed to share and explore prompts used by friends and even remix them; says the company plans to add ads to the app, along with a paid tier for more compute and functionality.
• Google's app marketplace, Google Play Store, hosts around 1.8 million apps, down from 3.4 million at the start of 2024, as Apple's App Store goes from hosting 1.6 million apps to now just about 1.64 million apps; says its new policy enforcement is the reason behind the drop.
• Alphabet subsidiary Waymo and Toyota announce a preliminary partnership aiming to develop an autonomous vehicle platform and enhance next-generation personally-owned vehicles.
• Reddit adds support for translation of posts and comments to Hindi, after rolling out site-wide machine translation feature for French, Spanish and Portuguese over the past year.
• Meta's Instagram tests blocking minors from accessing AI Studio, its user-generated chatbot character platform, after recent reports on safety issues that found the chatbots to talk to teens about graphic sexual scenarios as well as fabricate license numbers and credentials in order to keep users talking. (In a related development, OpenAI has acknowledged that a bug in ChatGPT allowed the chatbot to generate graphic erotica for accounts where a user registered as a minor, under the age of 18, in some cases even encouraging the users into asking more explicit content.)
• Snapchat reports 460 million daily active users at the end of Q1 2025; Spotify hits 268 million paying subscribers (and 678 million monthly active users (MAUs) and 423 million ad-supported MAUs), Reddit touches global daily active unique users of 108.1 million, and Alphabet says it surpassed 270 million paid subscriptions, driven by YouTube and Google One.
• OpenAI says it's rolling back the latest update to its GPT-4o model in ChatGPT after complaints about extreme sycophancy and it applauding all sorts of dangerous decisions and problematic ideas; says the problem arose as it "focused too much on short-term feedback, and did not fully account for how users' interactions with ChatGPT evolve over time."
• The disclosure comes amid an admission from OpenAI that its new o3 and o4-mini AI models hallucinate more often than its previous reasoning and traditional models, and that it doesn't know why.
• To make matters worse, ChatGPT users are figuring out the location of photos using o3's image analysing capabilities paired with its web search functionality, raising privacy concerns. However, the company said it has "added safeguards intended to prohibit the model from identifying private individuals in images, and actively monitor for and take action against abuse of our usage policies on privacy."
• PayPal is expanding PayPal Ads to sell programmatic ads on the open web, using shopping data from its services to help advertisers target ads; comes as Mastercard says it's working with Microsoft and other companies to give AI agents the ability to shop online and make payments on behalf of consumers.
• Meta says its Llama AI models have been downloaded 1.2 billon times, up from 1 billion downloads in March and 650 million downloads in early December 2024; debuts an API for its Llama AI models.
• Google updates Audio Overviews in NotebookLM to expand support beyond English to over 50 languages, including Spanish, French, Hindi, Turkish, Korean and Chinese; begins rolling out AI image editing in the Gemini app, letting users edit uploaded images and those generated by the app using natural language text prompts.
• Hugging Face starts selling SO-101, a programmable, 3D-printable robotic arm that can pick up and place objects, for US$ 100 to ~US$ 500, depending on the supplier.
• Spotify says it has paid more than US$ 100 million to podcast publishers and creators since January 2025 via a new creator program based on Premium subscribers' video engagement.
• Meta moves Threads from Threads.net to Threads.com and updates its web app with new features to more easily access custom feeds, create new columns and copy a Threads post as an image; the platform surpasses 350 million monthly active users, having added 30 million in Q1 2025, compared to 20 million in Q4 2024.
• Microsoft-owned LinkedIn expands its free verification system to the wider web, allowing external sites and platforms to integrate LinkedIn verification rather than building their own tool, starting with Adobe's new Content Authenticity app; to start sharing ad revenue with creators for the first time, starting with 30 B2B creators.
• Apple launches launched a new website called "Snapshot on Apple" that presents viewers with a carousel of celebrities and information on where you can find their work across the company's services.
• Reddit threatens legal against researchers from the University of Zurich for conducting an "improper and highly unethical experiment" that deployed AI-powered bots into a popular debate subreddit called r/changemyview in an attempt to change people's opinions about sensitive topics.
• Google releases three new AI experiments via Google Labs that allows users to learn specific phrases (Tiny Lesson), speak a new language more colloquially (Slang Hang) and learn new words by pointing the device camera at various items (Word Cam).
• Mozilla updates its Firefox browser to add support for tab groups.
• A study from Cohere, Stanford, MIT and Ai2 accuses LMArena of helping Meta, OpenAI, Google and Amazon game its popular crowdsourced AI benchmark Chatbot Arena.
• AWS launches Nova Premier, a new AI model that can process text, images and videos; claims it "excels at complex tasks that require deep understanding of context, multistep planning, and precise execution across multiple tools and data sources."
• Epic plans to submit Fortnite to the U.S. iOS App Store next week and offers a "peace proposal" to end all litigation over App Store policies and says it will take a 0% store fee from developers on their first US$ 1 million in revenue per app per year, as well as let developers open their own web shops; comes as a U.S. judge rules Apple wilfully violated a 2021 court order to open the App Store to outside payment options on the web through in-app links, and refers the case for a criminal contempt investigation.
• Apple has since updated its App Review Guidelines to comply with the ruling, allowing developers to point to external payment options, but the changes are limited only to the U.S. App Store.
• Visa partners with Stripe's Bridge to help fintech companies launch their own stablecoin-linked card programs in multiple countries at once, starting in Latin America.
• Duolingo launches 148 new language courses developed with generative AI, doubling its offerings for non-English speakers within a year.
• Wikipedia says it will use AI to build new features that "remove technical barriers" for editors, moderators, and patrollers, as well as automate tedious tasks.
• Google says the U.S. Department of Justice's proposal to share Google Search data with rivals amounts to a "de facto" spinoff of Google's search engine and its IP, amid ongoing antitrust trial; states it's open to giving competitors access to real-time bidding data from its ad exchange AdX, but it rejects a breakup of its ad tech units.
• Meta, Spotify and Match Group launch the Coalition for a Competitive Mobile Experience, a lobbying consortium to take on Apple and Google over user age verification.
• Online dating app Grindr rolls out A-List, powered by Claude Sonnet 3.7 and Amazon Bedrock, to curate "meaningful past connections, high-potential matches" and chat summaries.
• Google test support for native PDF previews in the Messages app for Android; expands digital ID passes to U.K. passports and allows Arkansas, Montana, Puerto Rico and West Virginia residents to save their state IDs in the Wallet app.
• OpenAI expands Deep Research usage for Plus, Pro and Team users with an o4-mini-powered lightweight version.
• Apple expects that a majority of iPhones sold in the U.S. in the June quarter will come from India and a majority of its other devices will come from Vietnam, revenue from its Services division climbs up 12% YoY in Q2 to US$ 26.65 billion, a new record.
• Amazon reports Q1 2025 ad revenue of US$ 13.92 billion, up 18% YoY, and subscription services revenue US$ 11.72 billion, up 9% YoY; says its upgraded digital assistant powered by generative AI, Alexa+, has been rolled out to over 100,000 users.
• Uber and autonomous vehicle operator May Mobility partner to deploy "thousands" of robotaxis across the U.S., starting in Arlington, Texas, by the end of 2025; reportedly developing an AI-assisted coding service that offers features like Cursor and goes further than its current coding assistant, Amazon Q Developer.
• Anthropic launches Integrations to connect apps to Claude, and expanded deep research tool Advanced Research, in beta for Claude Max, Team, and Enterprise users.
• Pinterest rolls out an "AI modified" label globally to indicate AI-generated or AI-edited images that are identified via metadata analysis and its own AI classifiers.
• Google updates Google Voice with support for three way calling and an overall enhanced, redesigned in-call user interface; debuts a dedicated "AI Mode" in search results and tests a new Android feature that enables a Desktop Mode when connecting Android phones to computers.
• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's World iris-scanning project launches its Worldcoin cryptocurrency in the U.S. for the first time, as the startup behind it, Tools for Humanity, unveils a mobile verification device called Orb Mini to help people determine the difference between a human and an AI agent.
• Google plans to roll out Gemini next week for children under 13 whose parents use Family Link; says it will not use the under-13 users' data to train its AI models.
• Microsoft says new accounts will be "passwordless by default", as it pushes users to use more secure methods like passkeys.
• Ireland's data protection watchdog fines TikTok €530 million for illegally sending E.U. user data to China, ordering a halt to such data transfers in six months if protections aren't guaranteed.