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Dave Wehner, Meta's chief strategy officer and former CFO, is leaving after 14 years to join Fireworks AI as chief financial officer. Fireworks, a four-year-old AI inference and model-training platform, was valued at $17.5 billion in a July Series D round backed by Nvidia, Sequoia and others.
Amazon announced a new feature letting select U.S. customers text its Alexa AI assistant to search for products, add items to cart, compare prices, check order status and complete purchases using natural language. Customers can also send photos of items or outfits to find similar products, and Amazon says Alexa will learn preferences over time to suggest items. Access is currently limited, with others able to join a waitlist ahead of a broader rollout in coming weeks.
WhatsApp is rolling out a new AI-powered image expansion feature, letting users expand photos beyond their original borders within the app's drawing editor using Meta AI. The tool is currently limited to select TestFlight beta testers and some users on the public iOS app, and also works with status updates.
Meta took down multiple accounts that were sharing AI-generated videos depicting coaches inappropriately touching and kissing young athletes. The company had initially determined the content did not violate its community standards before reversing course and removing it.
Senators Ron Wyden and Edward Markey sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg demanding answers about privacy and safety risks tied to Meta's AI glasses, citing reports of covert filming, harassment and contractors reviewing footage of people undressing. They asked Meta detailed questions about accidental recording, tampering with recording indicators, blurring of faces and license plates, data access by employees and contractors, and whether human rights due diligence was done before launch, with a response deadline of November 26.
Meta has released Style Sketch, an app that builds a virtual closet from photos users have posted on Instagram or uploaded manually, then suggests outfit combinations and shows them on a model matched to the user's body shape and skin tone. The app, spotted by social media consultant Matt Navarra, is currently live on iOS and Android in Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand, and can also generate day-by-day packing plans for trips. Meta has not commented on whether it will expand the app to other markets.
Meta is expanding parental notifications about self-harm content to Facebook accounts and conversations with its Meta AI assistant, after first launching the feature on Instagram. Parents will be alerted if a supervised teen repeatedly searches for self-harm-related content in a short period, or if their chats with Meta AI suggest risk of suicide or self-harm. Alerts arrive via text, email, WhatsApp or push notification, without revealing specific search terms or chat content, and point parents to helpline resources.
Meta has introduced Muse, a personalized AI agent that operates on users' devices to perform tasks like sending emails, ordering groceries, and negotiating bills on their behalf. According to the report, Muse is so effective at mimicking human behavior that websites struggle to distinguish it from an actual human user.
Meta has quietly launched Waddle World, a 16-bit style app featuring a virtual pet that chats with users and draws doodles based on conversations, described in its store listing as a daily journal disguised as a pet game. The app is currently free but restricted to adults in the Philippines, according to its Apple and Play Store listings spotted by social media consultant Matt Navarra. Meta has also released a separate AI fashion app called Style Sketch, reportedly limited to Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand.
Rohit Patel, who spent eight years at Meta and most recently served as a director at Meta Superintelligence Labs, has left the company to start Ndoc, an AI-native workspace meant to replace Microsoft Office and Google Workspace. The product combines presentation, analysis, and underlying data/code into three linked views called Stage, Narrative, and Model, letting users inspect and verify the scripts behind AI-generated documents.
Meta has issued its own set of rules defining what its AI agents are permitted to do, stepping into a regulatory vacuum where no industry-wide standard exists for AI agent conduct. The move comes as publishers accuse Meta of scraping their content without permission or compensation, deepening tensions between tech platforms and content creators.
A CNET writer used Meta's AI assistant Muse to automatically search Facebook Marketplace for an ottoman, air purifier and humidifier within set price ranges and locations. Instead of a one-time search, Muse set up a recurring task that rescans listings every four hours and surfaces matching items, including a specific air purifier brand the writer wanted.