Tech Roundup: Ask.com Shutdown, Meta's Manus Acquisition Blocked & More

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

• OpenAI opens up its partnership with Microsoft in the latest amendment to the major multi-year collaboration between the tech giants, allowing the AI company to offer its latest AI models to other companies and through other cloud providers like Amazon and Google, stripping Microsoft of its exclusivity rights; remove a clause in their deal that would grant Microsoft IP rights up until OpenAI achieved "AGI", replacing it with a fixed-term agreement.
• OpenAI's brings its generative AI models to Amazon's cloud after the AI company revamped its relationship with longtime partner Microsoft.
• Spotify breaks into the fitness app world by offering "guided workout experiences" and on-demand Peloton classes in its quest to become an all-in-one app; reports monthly active users up 12% YoY to 761 million in Q1 2026 and Premium subscribers up 9% YoY to 293 million.
• Google expands access to digital IDs in Google Wallet in select countries, all built with advanced privacy features like selective disclosure to keep your data secure; allows users in India to save Aadhaar Verifiable Credentials, and those residing in Singapore, Taiwan and Brazil to create a secure ID pass based on their passport information.
• New research from Google DeepMind argues that no AI or other computational system will ever become conscious.
• China blocks Meta's proposed $2 billion acquisition of Manus, a Singaporean AI startup with Chinese roots, in a major setback for the social media giant.
• More than 600 Google employees, including many from DeepMind, sign a letter to CEO Sundar Pichai demanding that the U.S. Department of Defense be bared from using Google's AI for classified work; comes as the DoD strikes agreements with Amazon, Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA and Reflection AI to use their AI tools on classified military networks "for lawful operational use," joining OpenAI and xAI. (The development also follows a report that Google dropped out of a $100 million Pentagon challenge to create tech for voice-controlled, autonomous drone swarms, following an internal ethics review.)
• Truecaller faces mounting pressure as growth slows in India, its largest market, as telecom servie providers, Apple and Google roll out caller ID and spam-blocking features.
• An analysis of Internet Archive data finds that by mid-2025, ~35% of new websites published since ChatGPT's launch in late 2022 were AI-generated or AI-assisted.
• Amazon says it plans to expand its Amazon Now quick commerce service to 100 Indian cities, after launching it in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore; debuts "Join the chat," an AI-powered feature that lets users ask questions about products and get conversational audio responses generated in real time.
• OpenAI releases Symphony, an open-source spec for agent orchestration that turns a project-management board like Linear into a control plane for coding agents.
• Apple will let developers offer monthly subscriptions with a 12-month commitment starting in May, except in the U.S. and Singapore.
• Xiaomi open sources MiMo-V2.5 and MiMo-V2.5-Pro under the MIT License, saying both models are among the most efficient available for agentic "claw" tasks.
• The E.U. unveils new proposals under the Digital Markets Act aimed at opening up Android to rivals' AI services; Google says the measures are "unwarranted intervention."
• Tennessee becomes second U.S. state after Indiana to ban cryptocurrency ATMs over scam concerns.
• Google launches Ask YouTube, a conversational AI search "experiment" that generates pages with videos and text summaries, for Premium users in the U.S. aged 18+; adds "fully customisable" multiview to YouTube TV, allowing users to "mix and match live streams" and pin up to four streams in the multiview window.
• Anthropic updates Claude with new connectors aimed at creative professionals, adding integrations for Ableton, Adobe, Affinity, Autodesk Fusion, Blender, Resolume Arena and Wire, SketchUp and Splice.
• Amazon launches an AI-powered audio Q&A experience on product pages, allowing users to ask questions about products and receive AI-powered audio responses; debuts a desktop app for AWS Quick AI assistant, letting users connect their tools and local files to build custom apps and live dashboards.
• Snapchat rolls out AI Sponsored Snaps, a "new way for brands to show up in Chat through AI agents," as companies find a new way to use AI for advertising by letting users chat with brand-specific AI agents for product recommendations.
• Lovable launches its vibe coding app on iOS and Android.
• Google launches a new AI-powered feature for Translate called pronunciation practice that aims to help correct and practice users' enunciation when learning a new language; begins rolling out Gemini to cars with Google built-in as an upgrade from Google Assistant to help users find the right pit stop, get real-time updates from Google Maps, summarise text messages and play music.
• Microsoft begins rolling out Copilot 365 to all of Accenture's roughly 743,000 employees, in the biggest enterprise deal for Copilot, following a 2023 pilot.
• South Africa withdraws its first draft national AI policy after revelations that it contained fictitious sources that appeared to have been AI-generated.
• Google brings picture-in-picture mode for free for longform, non-music content to all users globally after launching it in the U.S.; adds 25 million paid subscriptions in Q1 2026, reaching 350 million total, driven by Gemini and Google One.
• Microsoft says it has 20 million paid Copilot users, as its Xbox hardware revenue continues to tumble.
• Uber adds an option to book hotels using its app in partnership with Expedia, as it continues to expands its slate of offerings.
• Google adds new Gemini update that allows it to generate files (only PDF, TXT, RTF and CSV, along with Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, along with Microsoft Word, Excel and Markdown and LaTex) directly from the prompt bar.
• Google TV adds new featuring, including displaying YouTube Shorts videos directly on the home page, creating images and videos using its Nano Banana and Veo models, and asking Gemini to surface specific photos from Google Photos; brings a Wardrobe feature to Google Photos that creates a digital closet of users' clothing and jewellery by scanning their library.
• Meta says its Q1 2026 family daily active people fell 20 million QoQ to 3.56 billion due to internet disruptions in Iran and WhatsApp access restrictions in Russia; expands Instagram recommendation restrictions beyond Reels to photos and carousels, targeting accounts that post unoriginal content like tweet roundups.
• The European Commission issues preliminary findings against Meta, saying Instagram and Facebook fail to prevent children under age 13 from accessing their services in violation of the Digital Services Act.
• AI company ElevenLabs launches Eleven Music, a new platform to discover, remix, create and earn from music.
• Epic Games scores another procedural win in its fight with Apple over App Store fees, after a U.S. court grants the Fortnite maker's latest motion requiring Apple to allow developers to link to external payment options in their apps without charging commissions on those purchases, at least for the time being.
• Spotify launches a new verification program to combat spam, fakes and AI, allowing artists to be features with a "Verified by Spotify" badge and a green checkmark on their profile, indicating that the company has confirmed a real person is behind the music and the profile.
• Netflix starts rolling out its new Clips vertical video feed as a separate tab in the U.K., the US, Canada, Australia, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines and South Africa.
• Meta says its business AI tools facilitate about 10 million conversations per week as of late March, up from 1 million in the beginning of this year; introduces Meta Ads AI connectors in open beta, letting advertisers use their preferred third-party AI tools to create, manage and analyse campaigns.
• Reddit runs a test for a small number of logged out mobile users that prompts them to download the app after visiting the Reddit site, completely blocking them from accessing the platform.
• Stripe introduces Link, a digital wallet that allows users connect cards, banks and subscriptions, as well as authorise AI agents to spend securely via approval flows.
• X says it has begun a "phased rollout" of its rebuilt ad platform, which it says will have more modern "retrieval and ranking systems" powered by AI.
• Cloudflare says AI agents can now create Cloudflare accounts, start paid subscriptions, register domains and deploy apps on behalf of users.
• Bing reaches a major milestone of 1 billion monthly active users, adding more users in the last 5 years than in the previous 10.
• The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously endorses a bipartisan child safety bill requiring AI companies like OpenAI and Meta to implement age verification.
• OpenAI says its models, starting with GPT-5.1, "increasingly mentioned goblins, gremlins, and other creatures in their metaphors," leading to prompt instructions to mitigate it; blames it on a personality customisation feature, in particular the Nerdy personality, that unknowingly gave particularly high rewards for metaphors with creatures.
• Meta says it might be forced to withdraw its apps from the U.S. state of New Mexico if a court orders it to adopt the state's proposed safety features; comes after the company was found liable and fined $375 million for child safety failures in a landmark lawsuit brought by the state's attorney general, requiring it to introduce a series of reforms to its products that it says are unfeasible.
• Roblox reports 132 million daily active users globally, down from 144 million at the end of last year, which was a drop from 152 million in Q3 2025, as age checks slow growth.
• Microsoft adds a new Legal Agent in Word to "support the precision and rigour legal work demands" and automate "repeatable tasks like reviewing contracts clause by clause against a playbook."
• Reddit reports 493 million weekly active unique users, up 23% from the same period last year, and about 126 million daily active unique users.
• Meta acquires Assured Robot Intelligence, a startup developing artificial intelligence models for robots, as part of a major initiative to build humanoid technology; ends its contract with Sama that helped train its generative AI systems using footage captured through Ray-Ban smart glasses after some of the company's employees working for its Kenyan division revealed in February 2026 that they had witnessed glasses users going to the toilet, and having sex. (While Meta said it "decided to end our work with Sama because they don't meet our standards," Sama has disputed the allegations, stating "Sama has consistently met the operational, security and quality standards required across our client engagements, including with Meta.")
• Alphabet-owned Waymo says it is continuing to "refine" its system preventing kids under 18 from riding alone, after adult riders reported new age-verification checks.
• xAI launches Grok 4.3, featuring "always-on reasoning", 1 million token context window and low API pricing; releases a voice cloning suite called Custom Voices.
• Apple stops offering a 256GB storage option for the Mac mini globally; now starts at 512GB for $799 in the U.S.
• Ask.com, the search engine and question-and-answer service formerly known as Ask Jeeves, shuts down as of May 1, 2026, as IAC, which acquired Ask Jeeves in 2005, says "we have made the decision to discontinue our search business."