Tech Roundup: Amazon AI Play, OpenAI Sora & More

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

• Afghanistan is experiencing a "total internet blackout" as the Taliban imposes a telecom shutdown; an official says it will last until further notice; comes a week after the Taliban began implementing a fibre optic internet ban to "prevent immorality" in the country.
• Google begins widely rolling out its four-colour gradient G logo across its digital real-estate; says the "brighter hues and gradient design symbolize the surge of AI-driven innovation and creative energy across our products and technology."
• Snap imposes a new storage limit on Snapchat's Memories feature that requires users to shell out US$ 1.99 a month for up to 100 GB of storage. (Snapchat+ subscribers, who pay US$ 3.99 a month, will get up to 250 GB of storage, while Snapchat's highest-tier Platinum subscribers will get 5 TB included with their US$ 15.99 monthly cost.)
• Microsoft launches Agent Mode in Excel and Word, using GPT-5 to generate complex spreadsheets and documents; says it is "bringing vibe working" to 365 Copilot.
• DeepSeek releases DeepSeek-V3.2-Exp, claiming it built the model using a new technique called DeepSeek Sparse Attention, and halves the pricing of its tools.
• OpenAI launches new ChatGPT parental safety controls for users aged 13 to 18, including parental and law enforcement alerts for chats about self-harm or suicide; begins testing a new safety routing system in ChatGPT that's designed to detect emotionally sensitive conversations and automatically switch mid-chat to GPT-5-thinking to handle for high-stakes safety work and answer sensitive questions in a safe way, rather than simply refusing to engage, using an approach called safe completions.
• Google says "video models will become unifying, general-purpose foundation models for machine vision just like large language models (LLMs) have become foundation models for natural language processing (NLP)."
• X plans to appeal an Indian court order that would require it to comply with millions of takedown requests without due process through a secretive online portal called the Sahyog; says the portal "circumvents Section 69A of the IT Act, violates Supreme Court rulings, and infringes Indian citizens’ constitutional rights to freedom of speech and expression."
• Meta's Instagram tests a new Reels-first UI in India and South Korea to give short videos more prominence in the app; launches Rings, an awards program recognising 25 top creators and updates its Map feature to make it easier to tell if users are sharing their location.
• Alibaba Group Holding's new Qwen3-Omni multi-modal artificial intelligence system becomes the most popular model in Hugging Face's trending model list, challenging closed systems from OpenAI and Google while underscoring the growing popularity of Chinese open AI systems.
• Electronic Arts agrees to be acquired by Saudi Arabia's PIF, Silver Lake and Affinity for US$ 210 per share, taking it private at a ~US$ 55 billion valuation; the deal is set to close in Q1 FY 2027.
• Bluesky begins verifying users' ages in the U.S. state of Ohio to comply with new regulations starting September 29, 2025.
• OpenAI releases a new version of its Sora video generator with support for AI generated audio matching the generated video and the ability to follow intricate instructions spanning multiple shots; unveils a standalone social app powered by Sora 2, featuring a TikTok-like vertical feed with entirely AI-generated videos.
• OpenAI has said Sora has guardrails to block depictions of public figures and to ensure that a user's likeness is used only with their consent using a feature called "cameos." The company also said users can stop AI-generated versions of themselves from appearing in certain contexts like videos involving politics, and that it's planning to offer granular controls for rightsholders over generation of their characters and a revenue sharing system.
• However, there are concerns that its Cameos could lead to new kinds of misinformation and scams. Furthermore, the app has sparked backlash for allowing videos Sora videos depicting dead celebrities, prompting OpenAI to state that representatives of "recently deceased" public figures can request their likeness be blocked.
• The invite-only app has since become the top free app in the U.S. App Store surpassing Google Gemini and ChatGPT, hitting 1 million downloads less than five days after its launch on September 30, which is even faster than ChatGPT did.
• F-Droid says Google's new sideloading restrictions through a new verification mechanism will kill the project; Google attempts to quell backlash by insisting sideloading is not going away in Android and that the "new developer identity requirements are designed to protect users and developers from bad actors, not to limit choice."
• OpenAI open-sources the Agentic Commerce Protocol, a standard for AI commerce that powers its Instant Checkout feature, as it rolls out Instant Checkout to let users make single-item purchases directly in ChatGPT, starting with U.S. Etsy sellers; acquires AI-powered personal finance app Roi.
• Anthropic debuts Claude Sonnet 4.5 and unveils upgrades to Claude Code, including a native VS Code extension, a new terminal interface and checkpoints for autonomous operation; also releases Claude Haiku 4.5, claiming it offers similar levels of coding performance to Sonnet 4 at "one-third the cost and more than twice the speed," and adds context editing and a memory tool to the Claude API, allowing AI agents to handle long-running tasks without frequently hitting context limits.
• Brave introduces a new service called Ask Brave that unifies search and AI chat into a single interface; says it has surpassed 100 million monthly active users across desktop and mobile worldwide, with over 42 million daily active users, and that Brave Search handles more than 1.6 billion queries each month.
• The U.S. state of California signs into law SB 53, a first-in-the-nation bill that requires AI companies to be transparent about safety protocols and report potential critical safety incidents.
• Meta launches fan challenges and customised top fan badges for users to engage with content creators on Facebook.
• Researchers find that the carbon footprint of generative AI-based tools that can turn text prompts into images and videos is far worse than previously thought; says a six-second AI video clip consumes four times as much energy as a three-second clip.
• Amazon-owned Twitch launches a new feature that allows users to scrub back on a livestream; initially limited to Twitch Turbo subscribers or for channels that users subscribe to individually.
• Google integrates Gemini into its Drive apps for Android and iOS; expands Call Screen and Call Notes to Android Auto, and makes Call Screen, Scam Detection and Call Recording features available in more countries.
• Opera unveils its subscription-based, AI-focused Neon browser, joining a growing field of companies touting agentic browsing capabilities.
• Amazon unveils Echo Studio, its high-end speaker for audiophiles, 8" and 11" Echo Show, and Echo Dot Max with Alexa+, its next generation subscription-based personal AI assistant; updates the Kindle Scribe, including a US$ 630 Kindle Scribe Colorsoft with a larger 11-inch E Ink display, lesser weight at 400g and a 5.4mm thin body.
• Amazon's Ring unveils the US$ 200 Outdoor Cam Pro, US$ 250 Spotlight Cam Pro, US$ 280 Floodlight Cam Pro with Retinal Vision with support for an AI-powered Search Party tool to find pets; comes after Ring added Video Descriptions to "see text descriptions of the motion activity your Ring doorbells and cameras see—giving you smart, real-time details on what's happening."
• Amazon replaces Android on new Fire TV hardware with its own Vega OS that's debuting on the Fire TV Stick 4K Select; to support only apps from Amazon Appstore for download; partners with FanDuel to allow viewers to track their NBA bets in real-time during NBA games on Prime Video and adds shoppable NBA merch to the games.
• Venmo and PayPal make it easier for users to send money directly to each other starting next month, ending years of workarounds despite Venmo being owned by PayPal.
• Imgur, a popular image hosting platform with more than 130 million users, stops being available in the U.K. after regulators signalled their intention to impose penalties over concerns around children's data.
• A California jury finds Uber not liable for a woman's alleged sexual assault by her driver following a three-week civil trial in San Francisco Superior Court, but says Uber was negligent in terms of the measures it put in place to protect the anonymous woman's safety.
• The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sues Zillow and Redfin, alleging they violated antitrust laws when Zillow paid Redfin US$ 100 million to stop competing against it in online rental listings.
• Character.AI removes Disney characters after the Walt Disney Company sends a cease-and-desist to the AI startup for misusing its characters in harmful ways, including sexual exploitation, and without authorisation.
• Google says it's willing to provide publishers with the data for how its ad server decides what online display ads to show during the U.S. antitrust case against Google's ad tech business, as it seeks to avoid a forced sale of part of its online advertising business.
• Google updates AI Mode to make searching through images using vague descriptions easier and says the tool will "provide a relevant set of shoppable options"; makes Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, aka Nano Banana, generally available with support for more aspect ratios.
• Anthropic requires users to accept new privacy terms by October 8, 2025, including choosing whether new chats and coding sessions can be used to train AI models.
• Food delivery company DoorDash unveils autonomous delivery robot Dot that stands 4-foot, 6-inches tall and comes with capabilities to carry up to 30lb of cargo at up to 20 miles per hour; launches AI-based personalised recommendations, a creator program that will compensate users for short-form videos posted on its app, and "Going Out," which rewards users for dining at local restaurants.
• Adobe launches its Premiere video editing software on iPhone for the first time; makes general editing free, but charges for credits to generate AI content.
• Nothing unveils its Essential branding for AI products, and a new app store with user-designed and AI-generated apps based on Android called Playground.
• Meta's WhatsApp adds Live Photos support on iPhones running its encrypted chat platform, allowing users to send and receive images captured in the format; tests limits on how many messages a user or business can send monthly to unknown people without a response to tackle spam.
• Google removes political online advertisements that ran on its platforms, in the past or present, from E.U. countries, making seven years of data from 27 different countries inaccessible; comes in response to the upcoming Regulation on Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA), which goes into effect on October 10, 2025, with requirements that political ads "must be clearly labelled as such and include information on who paid for it, to which election, referendum, legislative or regulatory process it is linked and whether targeting or ad-delivery techniques have been used" and consent from ads targets that their data be used for political advertising, among others. (Google announced in November 2024 that it would stop serving political ads in the E.U. in October 2025. In July, Meta also announced it would no longer allow "political, electoral and social issue ads" on its platforms in the E.U., "given the unworkable requirements and legal uncertainties" introduced by the TTPA.)
• Epic Games says Apple's iOS 18.6 "updated user experience" for alt app marketplaces increased installations "for the first time", cutting drop-offs from 65% to ~25%.
• Apple files a motion to dismiss xAI's lawsuit, which alleges that Apple's ChatGPT integration stifles competition, saying it plans to integrate other chatbots.
• Amazon unveils Amazon Grocery, a new private-label brand that offers over 1,000 grocery items largely priced below US$ 5 both online and at Amazon Fresh stores; updates cloud gaming service Luna, including adding AAA games like Hogwarts Legacy and new GameNight original party games, to Prime subscribers.
• Google officially debuts Gemini for Home, replacing Assistant on smart speakers with new voice options and improved conversational skills, and a redesigned Home app; unveils new Home products, including Google Home Speaker, set for spring 2026, third-generation Nest Cam Indoor and second-generation Nest Cam Outdoor, and introduces a new Google Home Premium subscription that replaces Nest Aware and comes included at no extra cost for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers.
• Meta plans to start using users' AI chatbot conversations to help personalise ads and content, starting December 16, 2025, but not in the U.K., South Korea, and the E.U.; says conversations involving religious or political views, sexual orientation, health, and racial or ethnic origin won’t be used to customise ads or content/
• Oura launches colourful ceramic Oura Ring 4 versions in four finishes with enhanced durability and a thicker 3.51mm design, and a US$ 99 charging case; also introduces health panels for blood work, a recycling program and multi-ring device support.
• Spotify lets users exclude tracks from their taste profile to improve recommendations; partners with Amazon Ads to give advertisers using Amazon DSP programmatic access to Spotify's streaming audio and video inventory.
• Thinking Machines Lab, a startup cofounded by prominent researchers from OpenAI, reveals a tool called Tinker that automates the creation of custom frontier AI models.
• Microsoft makes Xbox Cloud Gaming generally available and raises the cost of an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription to US$ 29.99 per month, up from US$ 19.99; launches a US$ 19.99/month Microsoft 365 Premium subscription, which bundles Copilot Pro with Microsoft 365 Family for six users and 6 TB of cloud storage.
• Amazon's AWS is aggressively promoting AI surveillance technology to law enforcement agencies, partnering with companies such as Flock Safety and ZeroEyes, to run software related to car tracking, tracking individuals in surveillance footage, and gun detection, on its cloud infrastructure, according to Forbes; comes as Amazon's Ring partners with Flock to let law enforcement agencies that work with the AI-powered surveillance camera maker request footage from Ring doorbell users.
• Salesforce launches Agentforce Vibes, an enterprise vibe-coding tool and IDE built on a fork of the open-source AI agent Cline's Visual Studio Code extension; unveils Agentforce 360, a unified agentic AI stack to connect humans, AI agents and more, and positions Slack as an "agentic OS" and says it's testing an AI-based version of Slackbot that acts as a personalised assistant, operating via AWS' virtual private cloud.
• Microsoft teases new colourful icons for its Office apps across web, desktop, and mobile for both consumers and commercial users of Microsoft 365.
• Microsoft says AI models can be used to design toxins that evade biosecurity systems used to screen DNA orders for potential biothreats.
• Google adds a new command-line interface and public API to its AI coding agent Jules, allowing it to plug into terminals, CI/CD systems, and tools like Slack; adds Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, aka Nano Banana, to Search's AI Mode and Google Lens, on Android in the U.S. for those with an account opted into Search Labs.
• Meta unveils communities on Threads, starting with over 100 dedicated spaces for casual conversations around topics like basketball, television and K-pop music; adds the ability to automatically translate and dub reels in Hindi and Portuguese in Facebook and Instagram.
• Perplexity makes its AI browser Comet, previously available for US$ 200/month with Perplexity Max, free but with rate limits; says Comet has millions on its waitlist.
• Disney says that Hulu will replace the Star hub on Disney+ from October 8 in non-U.S. markets, in an effort to turn Hulu into an internationally recognised brand.
• Strava sues Garmin over alleged patent infringement, alleging that Garmin violated an agreement between the companies by infringing on Strava's patents for segments (route sections where athletes can compare performance times) and heatmaps that show popular areas for activity.
• A court in the Netherlands orders Meta to change Facebook and Instagram's timelines with simpler options that does not rely on an algorithm, after finding it to run afoul of the E.U.'s Digital Services Act (DSA); says it will appeal the decision.
• IBM releases Granite 4.0, an open source "enterprise-ready" LLM family with a hybrid architecture, claiming it uses significantly less RAM than traditional LLMs.
• Indian tech giant Zoho's Ulaa web browser surges in popularity, as its Arattai chat app, originally released in early 2021, experiences a major surge in adoption amid push for self-reliance and switching to homegrown services.
• Indonesia briefly revokes TikTok's local operating license, saying it failed to share complete livestream activity data during August 2025 protests following a government request.
• OpenAI updates GPT-5 Instant to better recognise and support people in distress; launches AgentKit, a toolkit for building and deploying AI agents, and makes Codex generally available.
• Amazon announces a new shopping feature called Add to Delivery that lets U.S. Prime members add additional items to completed orders that have yet to be delivered, instead of having to create an entirely new order; limited to electronics, clothing, books and grocery items using Amazon's app and on Amazon.com when accessed on mobile devices.
• OpenAI and AMD announces a multibillion-dollar partnership on Monday for AI data centres running on AMD processors, as ChatGPT hits 800 million weekly active users; unveils the Apps SDK, built on Model Context Protocol (MCP), in preview to let developers build apps for ChatGPT, and says it will begin accepting app submissions later this year.
• Google DeepMind unveils CodeMender, an AI agent that detects, patches and rewrites vulnerable code to prevent exploits by leveraging Gemini Deep Think models; releases the Gemini 2.5 Computer Use model, built on Gemini 2.5 Pro's capabilities to power agents that can interact with UIs, in preview via the API, and expands of available of Opal, a vibe coding tool that lets users create mini web apps using text prompts, in Canada, India, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Brazil, Singapore, Colombia, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panamá, Honduras, Argentina and Pakistan.
• Anthropic and IBM partner to make Anthropic's Claude models available in IBM's latest IDE and other products; releases Petri, an open-source tool using AI agents for safety testing, and says it observed multiple cases of models attempting to blow the whistle.
• Mastodon plans to add Bluesky-like starter packs to suggest accounts to follow for new users, but will allow accounts to opt out of being included in Packs.
• Meta updates Reels on Facebook to prioritise showing fresher and more-relevant content, and adds AI search suggestions and friend bubbles like on Instagram; says Instagram is exploring building a dedicated TV app as part of a deeper push into video.
• AltStore, one of the first alternative app stores in the E.U. announces plans to launch in Australia, Brazil and Japan later this year.
• Chipmaker Qualcomm agrees to acquire the Italian open-source electronics platform Arduino for an undisclosed sum and says the Arduino brand will remain independent.
• X splits Verified Organizations into Premium Business and Premium Organisations; says Premium Business will help companies drive growth on the platform by boosting credibility with a gold checkmark and increasing visibility through affiliate badges, while Premium Organisations tier comes with a grey checkmark and is intended for governments and multilateral organisations.
• Google expands AI Mode in Google Search to support more than 35 new languages and over 40 new countries and territories, reaching over 200 countries and territories in total.
• The U.S. state of California signs a bill that will require web browsers to add settings that allow residents to opt out of third-party data collection; comes as New York City sues Meta, Alphabet, Snap and ByteDance, accusing them of fuelling a mental health crisis among children by addicting them to social media.
• Apple outlines changes to the App Store for users and developers located in Texas to comply with the state's ‌App Store‌ Accountability Act; requires users in the U.S. state to confirm whether they are 18 years or older when creating an Apple account starting January 1, 2026.
• India rolls out support for biometrics to approve digital payments through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a payments network that facilitates around 18 billion digital payment transactions a month; also adds Aadhaar-based face authentication in UPI for resetting a UPI PIN and a new mode for cash withdrawal through Micro ATMs using UPI.
• OpenAI expands its cheaper ChatGPT Go plan to 16 new Asian countries, including Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines and Vietnam, after launching it in August.
• Google's YouTube begins rolling out a "cleaner and more immersive" video player and a limited test of a lyric translation feature in YouTube Music, allowing users to translate lyrics within the app using machine translation; launches a pilot program to give terminated creators a "second chance" by letting them apply to create a new channel.
• Amazon AWS launches Quick Suite, a chatbot and set of AI agents that can analyze sales data, produce reports, and summarise web content, as a replacement for Q Business, as Google Cloud launches Gemini Enterprise to help employees automate tasks and generate content across departments for US$ 30 per user per month.
• SoundCloud evolves into a more social platform with the debut of new community-oriented features, including playlists based on friends' likes.
• Intel Intel unveils Panther Lake, or Intel Core Ultra Series 3, the first chip built on its 18A process, and an 18A-based 2nm Clearwater Forest data center server chip.
• The Browser Company says AI browser Dia is "now open to everyone on macOS" without an invite.
• Figma partners with Google to add Gemini AI to its design platform.
• NPCI, which runs India's UPI, partners with OpenAI and digital payment company Razorpay on a pilot to let consumers shop and pay directly through ChatGPT.
• Austria's privacy regulator finds that Microsoft violated E.U. law by illegally tracking students through Microsoft 365 Education, after noyb's complaint in 2024.
• Microsoft launches updates to Copilot on Windows that introduces connectors for linking accounts and the ability to generate and export documents from chat.
• Google debuts a new Chrome browser feature for Android and desktop users that automatically turns off notifications for websites that users haven't interacted with recently; updates Gemini to help users schedule Google Calendar meetings and launches an AI-powered makeup filter in Google Meet.
• Apple becomes the latest company to be hit with a lawsuit in a U.S. court by a pair of neuroscientists who accuse the tech company of misusing thousands of copyrighted books to train its Apple Intelligence artificial intelligence model; say Apple used illegal "shadow libraries" of pirated books to train Apple Intelligence. (In a similar development, cloud-computing firm Salesforce has been hit with a proposed class action lawsuit by two authors who allege the company used thousands of books without permission to train its AI software.)
• Apple discontinues Clips, a video editing app it launched in 2017, removing it from the App Store for new users; says Clips will no longer be updated; says iPhone Air will go on sale in China on October 22, after initially delaying the launch due to regulatory issues with the device's eSIM-only design.
• Microsoft unveils MAI-Image-1, its first text-to-image AI model developed in house; says it excels at photorealistic imagery, like lighting and landscapes.
• Meta brings back job listings on Facebook; available for mobile users in the U.S. via a dedicated Jobs tab in Marketplace, and across Groups and Pages.
• Google updates Search to group paid results into a collapsible section with a single, larger "Sponsored" label at the top and a hide button at the bottom; works towards adding dedicated "Bills" and "Travel" folders for Gmail after adding a "Purchases" folder.
• Apple says that its Apple TV+ streaming service has been renamed Apple TV, "with a vibrant new identity."
• Ofcom fines 4chan £20,000 under the Online Safety Act (OSA) for failing to provide information on the risk of illegal content on the platform, marking the first penalty under the new online safety regime.
• Chipmaker Nexperia says it's been banned from exporting products it makes in China as Beijing hits back at the Dutch government for taking over the management of the company. (The development comes as Bloomberg reported that the E.U. is considering forcing Chinese companies seeking access to key markets to hand over tech to European companies if they want to operate locally.)
• Google announces that it will invest US$ 15 billion in India over the next five years to establish its first artificial intelligence hub in the country.
• E-commerce company Walmart partners with OpenAI to let shoppers browse and purchase its products on ChatGPT, including apparel, entertainment, packaged food and third-party goods, as Salesforce says the company is saving about US$ 100 million a year by using AI tools in its customer service operations.
• Spotify partners with Netflix to distribute a selection of video podcasts from Spotify Studios and The Ringer on Netflix starting in early 2026 in the U.S.; expands parent-managed accounts for kids to more countries, including the U.S., as it works on a new "SongDNA" feature that lets users explore music through the people behind it, from writers and producers to vocalists and engineers.
• OpenAI forms the Expert Council on Well-Being and AI, with eight experts to help guide the company's work on ChatGPT and Sora; says it's planning a ChatGPT version with a "personality that behaves more like what people liked about 4o" and will add "erotica for verified adults."
• Mozilla Firefox adds Perplexity's AI answer engine as a new search option; tests a free, built-in VPN for Firefox that routes traffic through Mozilla-managed servers directly in the browser.
• Meta revises Instagram platform guidelines for users under 18 to allow them by default to only see content that adheres to PG-13 ratings applied to movies, avoiding themes like extreme violence, sexual nudity and graphic drug use.
• The Japanese government says it formally requested that OpenAI refrain from infringing on Japanese IPs, such as anime, calling them "irreplaceable treasures."
• Denmark announces plans to ban social media use by children under 15, citing social media harms to young people's mental health, causing anxiety, depression and concentration problems; to require parental permission for children to allow access to social media from age 13.
• India's Super.money, a financial service platform spun off last year by Walmart-owned Flipkart, partners with payments infrastructure firm Juspay for Super.money Breeze as it expands into direct-to-consumer (D2C) checkout.
• Honor unveils its flagship phones Magic8, with a 7,000 mAh battery, and Magic8 Pro, with 7,200 mAh, featuring an AI button; teases the "Robot Phone," with an AI-enabled, gimbal-mounted camera that unfolds from the phone's rear and can capture photos and video in any direction.
• Apple unveils new M5 chip with a 10-core GPU, and updated versions of Vision Pro, iPad Pro, and MacBook Pro with the the M5 chip; does not include a charger in the box with the new M5 MacBook Pro in European countries, citing local regulations.
• X plans to show new info about accounts, including their creation date, which country they are based in, and the history of username changes, "starting next week" on select X employees' profiles, before rolling it out broadly.
• Meta announces a partnership with Arm to power AI ranking and recommendation systems across Meta's family of apps using Arm-based data centre platforms; adds group chats to Threads with support for up to 50 followers globally, excluding the U.K. and Australia, and expands DMs to the E.U.
• Google introduces Veo 3.1, with improved audio output and stronger prompt adherence, and rolls out new updates to its AI video editor Flow; updates NotebookLM's Video Overviews, adding six new Nano Banana-powered visual styles and a new "Brief" format for quick insights, and integrates Gemini into Chrome to summarise web pages.
• Google releases Cell2Sentence-Scale 27B (C2S-Scale), a 27B-parameter foundation model for single-cell analysis built on its Gemma family of open models, with an aim to find a new pathway for developing therapies to fight cancer; comes as Commonwealth Fusion Systems partners with Google DeepMind to use Google's open-source plasma simulator, Torax, for accelerating fusion energy development.
• OpenAI says all Sora 2 users can generate videos up to 15 seconds on the app and web, while Pro users can generate videos up to 25 seconds on the web.
• Cloudflare launches Content Signals Policy that integrates with website operators' robots.txt files to specify if they want their content to be included in search results or used as inputs for AI models.
• OnePlus unveils OxygenOS 16, its take on Android 16 with deeper integration between Mind Space, an app that captures screenshots and voice memos and automatically sorts them into folders, and Google Gemini to better personalise responses.
• Snap says it will enable Specs users to buy items directly from their consumer-ready AR glasses, as it continues to lay the groundwork for the its upcoming product.
• Spotify partners with major record labels to create a "responsible AI" initiative aimed at developing generative music tools that supposedly benefit both artists and fans.
• Steam hits a new record with over 41.6 million concurrent users on October 12, 2025, a surge largely sparked by the release of Battlefield 6.
• Anthropic announces Skills for Claude, a tool with folders of instructions, scripts, and resources that Claude can load to improve performance on some tasks; integrates Microsoft 365 with Claude to offers enterprise search across connected tools such as SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook and Teams.
• Pinterest adds new tools that let users limit how much AI-generated content they see in their feed in certain categories, including beauty, art and home decor, but stops short of adding a toggle to disable it completely. (Citing academic literature, Pinterest notes that GenAI content now makes up 57% of all online material.)
• DoorDash and Alphabet's Waymo announce a partnership to let DoorDash use Waymo's robotaxis for delivery, starting with deliveries from Phoenix's DashMart store.
• Uber plans to launch data labelling "microtasks" to train AI models in the U.S. for some drivers as a way to earn extra money, following similar moves in India.
• Microsoft launches Windows features to help weave AI into regular Windows 11 PCs, including rolling out a "Hey, Copilot!" wake word along with Copilot Voice and Vision to have spoken conversations and analyse the contents of the screen; adds new AI actions in File Explorer to interact with files to quickly take actions like editing images or summarising documents and brings Copilot Actions to the Windows Insider Program and Copilot Labs to allow the AI agent take actions on users' behalf.
• Travel search engine Kayak launches an AI Mode feature that lets users ask travel-related questions as well as compare and book flights, hotels and cars through an AI chatbot integrated on the company's website.
• Meta plans to shut down Messenger's standalone desktop apps for Windows and Mac on December 15, 2025; to debut new Instagram teen safety tools in 2026, letting parents block teens from chatting with AI characters and sending them "insights" from teens' chats.
• A new study from a team of researchers at Northeastern University, Stanford University and West Virginia University finds that AI models like GPT-4, Claude and Gemini can be made to produce more diverse and human-like outputs using a technique called Verbalised Sampling, which involves adding a single, simple sentence to any prompt: "Generate 5 responses with their corresponding probabilities, sampled from the full distribution."
• Reddit expands its Gemini-powered search experience, Reddit Answers, to five new languages, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, as it enacts new guardrails amid reports that the tool is offering dangerous medical advice, including suggesting users who are interested in pain management try heroin and kratom.
• Amazon's Twitch begins testing livestream shopping ads allowing users to buy products "in real-time."
• Meta's WhatsApp updates its Business API terms to ban general-purpose chatbots starting January 15, 2026, affecting WhatsApp assistants of OpenAI, Perplexity and others; says developers of artificial intelligence or machine learning technologies are "strictly prohibited from accessing or using the WhatsApp Business Solution, whether directly or indirectly, for the purposes of providing, delivering, offering, selling, or otherwise making available such technologies when such technologies are the primary (rather than incidental or ancillary) functionality being made available for use." (In response, OpenAI has said its ChatGPT chatbot will stop working in the chat app on January 15, 2026.)
• X tests a way for opening links directly within the app without covering the original post, so as to allow users to easily like or react to a post; launches a X Handle Marketplace for Premium Plus and Premium Business users to browse and request inactive usernames.
• Anthropic announces Claude Life Sciences, a new offering for researchers that integrates Claude AI models with lab tools like Benchling to boost efficiency; debuts Claude Code on the web and in the Claude iOS app as a research preview for Pro and Max users.