All posts tagged: meta ai

Image AI models now drive app growth, beating chatbot upgrades

Image AI models now drive app growth, beating chatbot upgrades

Published by skeptic

Image model releases are driving growth for AI mobile apps, generating 6.5x more downloads than traditional model updates, according to a new report from app intelligence provider Appfigures. This marks a shift from earlier days, when the release of new models powering the conversational experiences drove more demand, alongside the new features like a voice chat interface. For instance, ChatGPT and Gemini each added tens of millions of new downloads after releasing their respective image models, Appfigures found. For Google’s Gemini, the release of its image model Nano Banana drove an additional 22+ million downloads in the 28 days following the introduction of the Gemini 2.5 Flash image model last August. This launch lifted the app’s downloads by more than 4x over that period, the data showed. Image Credits:Appfigures Meanwhile, ChatGPT added more than 12 million incremental installs in the 28 days after the introduction of its GPT-4o image model in March of last year. That’s roughly 4.5x more downloads than it saw for its GPT-4o, GPT-4.5, and GPT-5 model releases, Appfigures pointed out. Other …

Meta will now allow parents to see the topics their child discussed with Meta AI

Meta will now allow parents to see the topics their child discussed with Meta AI

Published by skeptic

Meta announced on Thursday that parents using its supervision tools can now see the topics their teen has asked Meta AI about in the past week on Facebook, Messenger, or Instagram. Parents will see a new “Insights” tab within the supervision hub showing the topics their teen has been discussing with the AI chatbot. Topics can range from “School,” “Entertainment,” and “Lifestyle” to “Travel,” “Writing,” and “Health and Wellbeing,” among others, Meta says. Parents can select a topic to see the subcategories that fall within each one. For example, “Lifestyle” breaks down into fashion, food, and holidays, while “Health and Wellbeing” covers fitness, physical health, and mental health.  The update is now available in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, and Brazil, and will roll out globally in the coming weeks.  Meta first previewed these insights back in October when it said it was developing new tools to help parents guide their teens through AI. Image Credits:Meta Other previewed tools would have allowed parents to block access to specific AI characters or disable them entirely. However, …

PSA: If you use the Meta AI app, your friends will find out and it will be embarrassing

PSA: If you use the Meta AI app, your friends will find out and it will be embarrassing

Published by skeptic

Meta released its new Muse Spark AI model on Wednesday as part of a major overhaul of its AI efforts. It’s do-or-die time for Meta — the company cannot afford investing billions of dollars again into something that doesn’t pan out, like the metaverse. Well, maybe they literally can afford it, but it’d be pretty damaging, not to mention embarrassing. Speaking of embarrassing: Imagine a bunch of your friends, family, and strangers you met once in college getting a notification that you use the Meta AI app. I have lived this humiliation, and I am here to warn you that it could happen to you, too. Meta’s Muse Spark model might be new, but the Meta AI app is not. It came out last April, and at the time, I wrote an article about the app’s launch. As one does when reporting on an app, I downloaded the app. I used it. At some point, Meta started sending people Instagram notifications about which of their friends were using the Meta AI app, presumably to encourage them …

A Meta AI security researcher said an OpenClaw agent ran amok on her inbox 

A Meta AI security researcher said an OpenClaw agent ran amok on her inbox 

Published by skeptic

The now-viral X post from Meta AI security researcher Summer Yue reads, at first, like satire. She told her OpenClaw AI agent to check her overstuffed email inbox and suggest what to delete or archive.   The agent proceeded to run amok. It started deleting all her email in a “speed run” while ignoring her commands from her phone telling it to stop.  “I had to RUN to my Mac mini like I was defusing a bomb,” she wrote, posting images of the ignored stop prompts as receipts.   The Mac Mini, an affordable Apple computer that sits flat on a desk and fits in the palm of your hand, has become the favored device these days for running OpenClaw. (The Mini is selling “like hotcakes,” one “confused” Apple employee apparently told famed AI researcher Andrej Karpathy when he bought one to run an OpenClaw alternative called NanoClaw.)  OpenClaw is, of course, the open source AI agent that achieved fame through Moltbook, an AI-only social network. OpenClaw agents were at the center of that now largely debunked …

Meta pauses teen access to AI characters ahead of new version

Meta pauses teen access to AI characters ahead of new version

Published by skeptic

Meta today said that it is pausing teens’ access to its AI characters globally across all its apps. The company mentioned that it is not abandoning its efforts but wants to develop an updated version of AI characters for teens, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. The move comes days before a case against Meta is set to go to trial in New Mexico, in which the company is accused of not making an effort to protect kids from sexual exploitation on its apps. Wired reported Thursday that Meta has sought to limit discovery related to social media’s impact on teen mental health. In October, the company previewed parental controls for AI characters, allowing parents and guardians to monitor topics and block access to certain characters. Meta said parents would be able to completely turn off chats with AI characters. These features were set to release this year, but the company is now turning off AI characters altogether for teens while it updates the AI characters to a newer version. Meta said that it heard from …

After Italy, WhatsApp excludes Brazil from rival chatbot ban

After Italy, WhatsApp excludes Brazil from rival chatbot ban

Published by skeptic

WhatsApp is allowing AI providers to continue offering their chatbots to users with Brazilian phone numbers, days after the country’s competition regulator ordered the company to suspend its new policy that bars third-party, general-purpose chatbots from being offered on the app via its business API. Under the new policy, the company is providing a 90-day grace period starting January 15 to developers and AI providers, mandating them to cease responding to user queries on the chat app, and notify users that their chatbots won’t work on WhatsApp. Now, Meta told developers that they don’t have to notify users with Brazilian phone numbers (with code +55) of any changes or cease offering their services, per a notice to AI providers seen by TechCrunch. “The requirement to cease responding to user queries and implement pre-approved auto-reply language (mentioned below) before January 15, 2026, no longer applies when messaging people with a Brazil country code (+55),” the notice reads. WhatsApp did not immediately respond to a query seeking to confirm the decision. The policy, which goes into effect …