Since launching in 2005, YouTube has hosted more than 20 billion videos including music, shorts and podcasts. Now, to celebrate its 20th birthday, the original video streamer is celebrating by sharing stats, unveiling new features and hiding Easter eggs. In the coming weeks, YouTube TV members will be able to “experiment with building their own multiview” with non-sports content and more creators will be able to voice-reply to comments on their videos, something started as a small test last year. Then, this summer, YouTube’s TV app will unveil a makeover. Continue reading YouTube Adds Features to Celebrate 20 Years, 20 Billion Vids

After testing advertising in select markets, Meta Platforms is now offering ads on Instagram’s Threads globally to all eligible advertisers, providing access to the more than 320 million monthly active users the social platform has accrued since launching in July 2023. The Threads feed ad placement will be set on by default for new campaigns using either Advantage+ or Manual Placements unless an advertiser toggles to opt out. Global Threads advertisers will also have access to the platform’s inventory filter, which provides increased control over the distribution of ads. Continue reading Meta Opens Threads Advertising Globally to Eligible Accounts

Instagram has released a standalone video editing tool called Edits that is being described as a full-fledged suite that also has camera capabilities. The resulting content can be released on any social platform, not just those from Meta Platforms, though an Instagram account is required to access Edits. Available worldwide for iOS and Android, Edits is positioned as a way for social videographers to level-up their Instagram or Facebook Reels, but also as a tool for professionals who want a simple mobile solution for short-form videos. Edits also offers analytics so creators can see how their work is performing. Continue reading Instagram ‘Edits’ Video App Is Released for iOS and Android

Instagram is using AI to find teens who have falsified their age and is reclassifying them into “Teen Accounts” settings. The Meta social platform is reaching out to parents to tell them about “the importance of their teens providing the correct ages online, and tips to check and confirm their teens’ ages together,” but letting them know they “don’t have to go it alone — we’re using AI to help.” Instagram launched Teen Accounts last year as a way to enroll users and provide built-in protections. Those under 16 need a parent or guardian’s permission to change the setting. The safeguards are on by default for young users, limiting who can make contact and filtering viewable content. Continue reading Instagram Taps AI to Identify Young Users for Teen Accounts

Meta Platforms has introduced a new Instagram Reels feature called Blend that lets users customize a video feed for themselves and friends. The invite-only Blends can be built for a single friend or within a group chat. Once created, the feed is refreshed each day with new content, with all members able to add material. The idea is to let friends explore and discover content together while adding a new interactive element that harkens back to social media’s roots, cutting through the recent trend of viral influencer content and ads. Earlier this year it was reported that the new feature was being developed. Continue reading Meta Brings ‘Blend’ Custom Video Feed Feature to Instagram

OpenAI has released two new AI models that use images as part of their reasoning process, “thinking with images.” OpenAI o3 and o4-mini “are the smartest models we’ve released to date, representing a step change in ChatGPT’s capabilities for everyone from curious users to advanced researchers,” the company says. The new entries in the “o” series also have agentic capabilities and can independently “use and combine every tool within ChatGPT, including searching the web, analyzing uploaded files and other data with Python, reasoning deeply about visual inputs, and even generating images.” Continue reading OpenAI Introduces New Models That Can Reason with Images

OpenAI is working to build a social network that will compete against Elon Musk’s X and Meta’s Instagram, reports say. Though still in the early stages, the project is revolving around an internal prototype that is said to involve a social feed that leverages ChatGPT’s image generator. It’s unclear if an OpenAI social app would be standalone or integrated with ChatGPT, but either way it would most likely heighten the competition between rivals Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who recently fended off an unsolicited offer by Musk to purchase his company for $97.4 billion. Continue reading OpenAI Reportedly Has Prototype for Its Own Social Network

San Francisco-based AI startup Deep Cogito has released five AI models in preview, making them available under an open-source license agreement. The models come in sizes 3B, 8B, 14B, 32B and 70B, with plans to release 109B, 400B and 671B versions in the weeks and months ahead. As for the current models, “each outperforms the best available open models of the same size, including counterparts from Meta, DeepSeek and Alibaba, across most standard benchmarks,” Deep Cogito claims, noting that the 70B model in particular “outperforms the newly released Llama 4 109B MoE model.” Continue reading Deep Cogito Is Out of Stealth with Hybrid Reasoning Models

Meta Platforms has released its first Llama 4 models, a multimodal trio that ranges from the foundational Behemoth to tiny Scout, with Maverick in between. With 16 experts and only 17B active parameters (the number used per task), Llama Scout is “more powerful than all previous generation Llama models, while fitting in a single Nvidia H100 GPU,” according to Meta. Maverick, with 17B active parameters and 128 experts, is touted as beating GPT-4o and Gemini 2.0 Flash across various benchmarks, “while achieving comparable results to the new DeepSeek v3 on reasoning and coding with less than half the active parameters.” Continue reading Meta Unveils Multimodal Llama 4 Models, Previews Behemoth

Google’s YouTube is rolling out new tools to make YouTube Shorts even more competitive with social-video platform TikTok. The new publishing suite includes an improved video editor, a tool for generating AI stickers, enhanced templates, and a feature that can synchronize content to a musical beat. YouTube says the upgraded editing feature will provide users with the ability to make more precise adjustments, fine-tuning the timing of each clip. Users can “move or remove clips to create a rough version, add music or timed text, and preview their Short to make sure it tells the story the way they want it to,” according to YouTube. Continue reading YouTube Shorts Updates Video Tools to Compete with TikTok

Meta Platforms is developing a deluxe entry for its popular Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses line that is said to incorporate hand-gesture controls and will include a screen for displaying photos and apps. The price tag will reportedly be more than $1,000 (and possibly as high as $1,400) when the item hits the shelves, possibly by the end of this year. Code-named Hypernova, the souped-up eyewear is part of a Meta plan to make a wearable alternative to Apple iPhones. Existing Ray-Ban Meta glasses can pair with Android phones to make calls. Continue reading New Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses to Include Built-In Screen

French video game publisher Ubisoft has created a subsidiary focused on three of its most iconic and narratively cohesive brands: the worlds of the time-shifting actioner “Assassin’s Creed,” anthology mystery “Far Cry,” and tactical combat thriller “Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six.” Essentially a spin-off unit, Ubisoft has secured backing from its minority investor Tencent, which is plowing $1.25 billion into the new venture. The Chinese game giant — sixteenth on the Companies Market Cap list of the world’s most valuable companies, at $593 billion as of this month — in September 2022 upped its stake to 10 percent of Ubisoft. Continue reading Tencent Builds on Ubisoft Stake with $1.25B for New Venture

Just prior to the start of the weekend, Elon Musk announced that his artificial intelligence company xAI is acquiring his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) “in an all-stock transaction,” valuing xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45 billion less $12 billion in debt). The merger has the potential to create a powerful GenAI-powered content platform. The billionaire purchased Twitter in late 2022 for $44 billion, following months of legal skirmishes. According to Musk, X currently touts more than 600 million active users, while “xAI has rapidly become one of the leading AI labs in the world, building models and data centers at unprecedented speed and scale.” Continue reading Elon Musk Announces xAI Corporation Will Purchase X Social

China’s Ant Group is using local semiconductors to train AI at a cost that is 20 percent less than companies typically spend, according to reports. Ant used domestic chips — from companies including Alibaba, an investor in Ant, and Huawei — to launch a unique Mixture of Experts (MoE) training approach that produced results commensurate to training with Nvidia H800 chips. Ant is the latest Chinese company to focus on low cost training, joining a competition triggered by DeepSeek, which in January announced it could build AI comparable to the models released by U.S. companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and Google for billions less. Continue reading Ant Group Stacks Chips to Reduce Development Costs for AI

Utah has become the first state to make app stores responsible for verifying users’ ages. The Utah App Store Accountability Act shifts the burden of proving one’s age from social platforms like Snapchat, Instagram and X to digital storefronts, namely Google Play and Apple’s App Store. Those who create accounts in the state will have to prove they’re over 18 or, if underage, link their account to a parent or guardian’s. Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed the bill into law on Wednesday and it begins taking effect May 7. Google opposed the legislation and lobbied the governor to veto it. Meta, X and Snap applauded the measure and are encouraging other states to follow suit. Continue reading Utah Law Is First in Nation Making App Stores Verify User Age