YouTube has launched YouTube Labs, a new platform for testing experimental AI features, with its first trial being AI-generated music hosts. The digital hosts are designed to provide commentary, artist stories, and fan trivia alongside music playback on the YouTube Music app, according to an official blog post.

Snapchat is introducing paid storage plans for its ‘Memories’ feature, asking users with large digital archives to begin paying for space that was previously free.

Microsoft is rolling out a new update to its Photos app on Windows 11 that brings AI-driven auto-categorisation, a feature long associated with Google Photos, the app for storing photos.

Meta has recently unveiled an update to the Meta AI app called ‘Vibes’, offering users the ability to create and share short-form AI-generated videos. 

WhatsApp has recently announced that the app has begun introducing a real-time translation tool in select languages.

US President Donald Trump has announced an agreement between the United States and China that would allow TikTok to continue operating in the US, according to a recent report by Reuters.

Facebook users across the world are currently unable to search for posts and photos in the platform, after what appears to be a widespread outage affecting the platform’s search function, which began earlier this week.

Nepal has banned Facebook and several other major social media platforms for failing to register with the government. The decision, enforced from Thursday midnight, blocks access to sites including Instagram, YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and Reddit within the country.

Instagram has officially launched a dedicated app for the iPad, responding to years of user requests for a fully optimised tablet experience. The app became available globally on Wednesday for devices running iPadOS 15.1 or later.

Google has recently introduced Pixel Care+, a new protection programme for its hardware products, offering extended coverage and streamlined repair services for Pixel device owners.

Hackers have broken into a Google database, potentially exposing the accounts of more than 2.5 billion Gmail users to targeted scams, according to a report by The Daily Mail.

Alibaba’s Qwen research group has released an open-source AI model, Qwen-Image-Edit, which enables advanced image editing through text prompts.

Google has agreed to pay $30 million to settle a lawsuit accusing it of violating the privacy of children using YouTube. According to a report by Reuters, the case alleged that the company collected personal information from under-13 users without parental consent and used it to target ads, despite a 2019 settlement where Google had promised to change its practices.

Microsoft has introduced a new AI-powered function in Excel, designed to make it easier for users to analyse data, summarise text, and generate content directly within spreadsheets.

Grammarly, the AI-based writing assistance tool, has announced eight new specialised AI agents designed to support students and professionals with different aspects of writing, including research, feedback, and originality checks.

Google has introduced a new Temporary Chat feature to its Gemini app, allowing users to have private conversations that won’t be saved or used to personalise future responses. These chats will not appear in recent chats or Gemini Apps Activity, and Google says they also won’t be used to train its AI models.

Meta’s microblogging app Threads now has more than 400 million monthly active users, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced on Tuesday. The figure is up from over 350 million in late April, when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg last shared user numbers.

Amazon-backed AI startup Anthropic will make its Claude AI models available to all three branches of the US government for just $1, the company announced on Tuesday.

GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke has announced that he will leave the company at the end of 2025 to launch a new venture.

LinkedIn appears to be scaling back its experiment with alternative feed formats, signalling the likely end of a trial that offered users new ways to navigate the professional network’s home page.