GoKawiil
Tech News
Meta's Threads platform has been flooded with posts using nearly identical wording, in which users claim they and their spouses work at major companies like PepsiCo, JPMorgan, Fidelity, or IBM before pivoting to promote investment advice or opportunities. The repetitive phrasing across accounts suggests coordinated or automated activity rather than genuine personal testimonials.
Meta's Muse, an AI agent app launched earlier this month, has climbed to the top of Apple's free iPhone app rankings in the US, pushing OpenAI's ChatGPT out of first place. The surge follows Meta's expansion of Muse to Mac desktops, though that version doesn't count toward App Store rankings since it's downloaded via the web.
Chinese AI startup Manus is reportedly negotiating a $500 million funding round valuing it at $4 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal, after resuming operations as an independent company. Prospective backers include IDG Capital, Boyu Capital, CATL, and returning investors Tencent, HSG and Zhenfund, with the company also weighing a restructuring ahead of a possible Hong Kong IPO.
Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses are increasingly being nicknamed 'perv glasses' due to misuse by people secretly filming others in public, echoing the 'Glasshole' stigma that doomed Google Glass in 2014. The author says this backlash has changed their own stance, now favoring reports that Apple's rumored smart glasses, expected next year, might launch without photo or video recording capability.
Meta has launched a Mac version of its AI assistant Muse, allowing it to interact directly with a user's files, messages, calendar, notes and mail within their native apps. The desktop release follows Muse's earlier debut on mobile and web this month, where it quickly climbed to the top of U.S. App Store rankings.
A new Colossus profile of the Zuckerberg family reveals that Priscilla Chan limits how her 11-year-old daughter Maxima can use AI tools, allowing her to vibe-code simple games and messaging apps but banning anything connected to the open internet, including a proposed dating site. The restriction comes even as Mark Zuckerberg's company Meta pushes AI products like its camera-equipped smart glasses and faces ongoing criticism over privacy failures and harmful AI-generated content on its platforms.
More than 30 members of the European Parliament have asked the European Commission to investigate whether Meta violated the Digital Services Act after accounts posting about Albania's anti-government 'Flamingo Revolution' protests were mass-suspended. The suspensions, traced largely to copyright complaints starting in late August, are suspected by researchers to stem from a coordinated brigading campaign rather than genuine infringement claims.
Bilal Chughtai, a former Google DeepMind research engineer who left in July 2026, publicly warned that AI could kill everyone and that time may be running out, echoing similar statements from Anthropic's Jacob Coxon and Evan Hubinger, who put the odds of AI causing human extinction within a decade above 10%. Separately, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said each AI company should be responsible for its own model's safety rather than backing calls for industry-wide coordination, citing legal liability as sufficient incentive and pointing to Meta's delayed release of its Muse AI agent as proof of self-regulation.
Meta AI has released Muse, a personified AI agent app for iPhone, with a companion Mac app added nine days later and web access at muse.ai. Users can customize the agent's name and avatar, and while the app is free with weekly usage limits, paying subscribers get expanded access. The Mac version can work across apps, files, calendar, notes, and messages, with user-controlled permissions.
A content creator using Meta's AI-integrated smart glasses secretly photographed a stranger in a Walmart, ran the image through a facial recognition tool to identify him as an author, then staged an unscripted-looking encounter praising his book on camera. The clip, which went viral, exemplifies a growing genre called 'joybait'—uplifting content engineered for views that relies on deception rather than genuine spontaneity.
Instinct, the San Francisco startup valued near $10 billion, has begun rolling out 'Instinct Concierge,' letting its AI agent place calls to handle tasks like booking restaurants without online reservations or resolving billing issues. Meta's Muse assistant has simultaneously added a similar capability, letting users ask it to call U.S. businesses on their behalf, with early access going first to those who request the feature.
Polish developer Pawel Szydlowski launched an iPhone app called Zuckoff that uses Bluetooth signals to detect and estimate the distance of Meta's AI smart glasses, which have faced criticism for enabling covert recording. The app has attracted about 5,000 users and interest from EU regulators, while separately Meta is reportedly developing a camera-free version of its glasses and rolling out paid subscription tiers for its social apps to offset heavy losses at its Reality Labs division.