TikTok has helped users discover both current and past musical artists, and now it might be starting its own music streaming service. Parent ByteDance has filed a trademark application with the US Patent and Trademark Office for "TikTok Music," Insider has reported. The service would let users "purchase, play, share, download music, songs, albums, lyrics... live stream audio and video... edit and upload photographs as the cover of playlists.. [and] comment on music, songs and albums." 

ByteDance already has a music streaming app called Resso, but it's only available in India, Brazil and Indonesia. That app has some of the features mentioned in the trademark filing, like playlists, song-sharing and community interaction. On top of that, TikTok redirects users in Brazil to the full song on Resso, as Insider notes.

The trademark application was first submitted in Australia and then filed in the US on May 9th. It's not clear if it intends to base such a service on Resso, but it has to demonstrate that it will actually use the trademark before applying for it in the US — so it's not just a placeholder, according to Insider. The company also described said you could "live stream audio and video interactive media programming in the field of entertainment, fashion, sports, and current events," as other possible use cases. 

Apple has famously bragged that it will never invade your privacy to serve ads, but it does have an ad business on its App Store and elsewhere. The company is now expanding that business by adding a new ad slot to its "Today" homepage tab and on individual app pages, 9to5Mac reported. Those are on top of the ads already found on the App Store's main "Search" tab and in the Search results. 

"Apple Search Ads provides opportunities for developers of all sizes to grow their business," Apple wrote. "Like our other advertising offerings, these new ad placements are built upon the same foundation—they will only contain content from apps’ approved App Store product pages, and will adhere to the same rigorous privacy standards."

The Today tab is the first thing that loads in the App Store and features a curated and personalized selection of apps to browse (it arrived in 2017 with a significant App Store redesign). The other new space is in the "You Might Also Like" section of an app's product page. The new ads will let developers promote apps alongside Apple's own content and are clearly marked as ads. 

The new slots will adhere to Apple's policies on privacy and transparency, by not offering personalized ads to users under 18, never using sensitive data and avoiding hyper-targeting, Apple said. The company didn't say when the new ad slots will appear, but Apple plans to start testing them "soon." 

TikTok is conducting a broader test of games in its all-conquering app. The company recently added a way for creators in some markets (including the US) to append one of nine mini-games to a video by tapping the Add Link button and choosing the MiniGame option. When viewers come across a video that links to a game, they can start playing it by tapping a link next to the creator's username.

“Currently, we’re exploring bringing HTML5 games to TikTok through integrations with third-party game developers and studios," a TikTok spokesperson told TechCrunch. One of the games is from Aim Lab, the maker of a popular aim training app of the same name. Its TikTok game is called Mr. Aim Lab’s Nightmare. TikTok's other partners on the initiative include developers Voodoo, Nitro Games, FRVR and Lotem.

None of the games have ads or in-app purchases at the minute and the project is in the early stages of testing. TikTok is looking to find out how (or if) creators craft content around them, and how users interact with the games. As The Verge notes, users can record their gameplay and share it in a fresh video.

Reports in recent months suggested TikTok was readying for a major push into gaming. Parent company ByteDance bought game developer Moonton Technology last year. TikTok teamed up with Zynga for an exclusive mobile game called Disco Loco 3D; a charity game called Garden of Good, through which players can trigger donations to Feeding America, became available on the US version of TikTok in June. TikTok previously tested HTML5 games in Vietnam.

Other major tech companies have made a push into mobile gaming, including Apple, Google and, more recently, Netflix. Zynga, of course, became a social gaming giant with the help of Facebook's massive reach, while Facebook moved into cloud gaming in 2020. It's no secret that Meta is trying to ape many of TikTok's features across many of its apps, so it's interesting to see TikTok taking a leaf out of Facebook's playbook on the gaming front.

Crypto scams remain a serious problem, and a key senator wants to make sure app store operators are cracking down. Senate banking committee chair Sen. Sherrod Brown has sent letters to the CEOs of Apple and Google requesting answers on their protections against cryptocurrency app fraud. The politician wanted details of their app approval and reporting processes, user alerts for fraudulent activity, coordination with rival stores and monitoring for apps that transform into phishing scams.

We've asked Apple and Google for comment. Brown gave the executives until August 10th to provide responses to the letters.

Both tech firms provide at least some screening for bogus crypto apps. Apple's App Store review guidelines forbid scam apps, including bait-and-switch tactics. Google is less targeted with its Play Store policies, but bars apps that enable illegal activity or "dishonest behavior." Both companies let you report suspicious apps. They haven't historically sent direct scam alerts, however, and aren't known to actively monitor apps in case they launch phishing scams.

Whatever the stances, Brown saw effective safeguards as important. The FBI recently warned that app-based cryptocurrency fraud has already led to losses of $42.7 million. It was "imperative" that shops protect investors against this damage, the senator said.

There's no certainty that the requests will translate to legislation requiring stricter anti-fraud systems. The committee request could clarify the stances of Apple and Google on the subject, though, and might increase the pressure to take further action. At the least, it's a reminder that an app's presence on the App Store or Google Play isn't a guarantee it will be trustworthy.

It’s no secret that the Backbone One is one of the best mobile gaming controllers you can buy. So it should come as no surprise then that the company is partnering with Sony to release a PlayStation version of its accessory for iPhones. The new Backbone One - PlayStation Edition features the same two-tone white and black design as a standard DualSense controller.

The layout of the controller hasn’t changed. As before, there are dedicated buttons for launching the Backbone app and capturing gameplay footage. It also retains the asymmetrical stick layout of the standard model. On the bottom of the device, you’ll find a Lightning port passthrough and a headphone jack for connecting a pair of wired headphones to your iPhone.

Backbone

Most of the more notable changes Backbone has made for PlayStation fans come courtesy of tweaks to the Backbone companion app, which will be available to all Backbone One owners. A new standalone mode allows you to use the software without first connecting the controller to your iPhone. Effectively, that makes it easier to look for new games to try and chat with friends in between play sessions. Backbone is also adding new PlayStation-specific integrations, including a dedicated row highlighting new releases and updates from Sony.

The Backbone One PlayStation Edition is available today from the Backbone website for $99. Like the standard model, it comes with a one-year free trial to Backbone+, which in turn comes with free trials to Discord Nitro, Stadia Pro and, most notably, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. An Android version of the controller will arrive in the fall.

Later this year, Google Photos is going to get a significant update that has the distinction of first arriving on Chromebooks. According to a Google blog post, Google Photos will get a new movie editor and video editing features this fall as part of an update to Chrome OS. From the sound of things, it’ll let users make videos similar to the highlight clips the app already automatically makes. You’ll be able to select a theme as well as people or pets you want to feature in it; from there, Google Photos will pull together a movie using video clips and images from your library. It’ll be smart enough to scan longer videos and pull out specific clips to include in these new creations as well. 

While it’s no surprise that Google is including an automated tool, the company is also including the ability to start from scratch, adding video clips and photos in any order you like. The app will let you adjust things like brightness and contrast, trim clips as you see fit, add title cards and music and apply Google’s Real Tone filters that work better with non-white hairstyles and darker skin. 

Google isn’t saying yet if these video editing features will come to the mobile apps for iOS and Android, but Google Photos has usually had feature parity regardless of platform, so it wouldn’t be a surprise to see these tools expand past Chromebooks before long. In fact, the video editor will be built in to an optimized version of the Android Google Photos app specifically built for larger screens. The app will also seamlessly work with the Files and Gallery Chrome OS apps, so you can open a video in the Gallery app and immediately move it right over to Google Photos for editing or including in a new creation. 

Google

There are numerous other handy updates planned for Chrome OS coming in the next few months. Another new Google Photos feature will allow Chromebooks to access your library and use those pictures for background wallpaper; like other Chrome OS wallpaper options, you can pick a specific album and set it to change daily. The aforementioned Gallery app is going to get PDF editing features, so you can fill out forms and sign them if you’re using a Chromebook with a stylus. That feature is coming next week. There’s also a new Cursive app for capturing and organizing hand-written notes; those can be copy and pasted into other apps or exported to PDFs for, depending on how you need to share them. 

Chrome OS is also getting a new dark mode, something that’s been rumored for a long time now. As you can on most other devices, you’ll be able to pick one mode or have it automatically switch based on the time of day. Some new wallpapers will also come with light and dark versions that automatically switch depending on which theme you use, too.

Google

Finally, Google is making a few productivity improvements to Chrome OS. Clicking on the date in the Chromebook shelf will pop up a monthly calendar view; you can choose a date to see your Google Calendar events without having to open the app or website. And Chrome OS will let you save virtual desk setups, so if you have a specific set of tabs and apps you use frequently, you can call them up and dismiss them as needed.

Most of these updates should be coming in August, though Google specifically noted the virtual desk update won’t be available until late September. And the Google Photos video editing tools are set to arrive in the “fall” — hopefully sooner than later.

In 1917, Marcel Duchamp submitted a sculpture to the Society of Independent Artists under a false name. Fountain was a urinal, bought from a toilet supplier, with the signature R. Mutt on its side in black paint. Duchamp wanted to see if the society would abide by its promise to accept submissions without censorship or favor. (It did not.) But Duchamp was also looking to broaden the notion of what art is, saying a ready-made object in the right context would qualify. In 1962, Andy Warhol would twist convention with Campbell’s Soup Cans, 32 paintings of soup cans, each one a different flavor. Then, as before, the debate raged about if something mechanically produced – a urinal, or a soup can (albeit hand-painted by Warhol) – counted as art, and what that meant.

Now, the debate has been turned upon its head, as machines can mass-produce unique pieces of art on their own. Generative Artificial Intelligences (GAIs) are systems which create pieces of work that can equal the old masters in technique, if not in intent. But there is a problem, since these systems are trained on existing material, often using content pulled from the internet, from us. Is it right, then, that the AIs of the future are able to produce something magical on the backs of our labor, potentially without our consent or compensation?

The new frontier

The most famous GAI right now is DALL-E 2, Open AI’s system for creating “realistic images and art from a description in natural language.” A user could enter the phrase “teddy bears shopping for groceries in the style of Ukiyo-e,” and the model will produce pictures in that style. Similarly, ask for the bears to be shopping in Ancient Egypt and the images will look more like dioramas from a museum depicting life under the Pharaohs. To the untrained eye, some of these pictures look like they were drawn in 17th-century Japan, or shot at a museum in the 1980s. And these results are coming despite the technology still being at a relatively early stage.

Open AI recently announced that DALL-E 2 would be made available to up to one million users as part of a large-scale beta test. Each user will be able to make 50 generations for free during their first month of use, and then 15 for every subsequent month. (A generation is either the production of four images from a single prompt, or the creation of three more if you choose to edit or vary something that’s already been produced.) Additional 115-credit packages can be bought for $15, and the company says more detailed pricing is likely to come as the product evolves. Crucially, users are entitled to commercialize the images produced with DALL-E, letting them print, sell or otherwise license the pictures borne from their prompts.

Open AI

These systems did not, however, develop an eye for a good picture in a vacuum, and each GAI has to be trained. Artificial Intelligence is, after all, a fancy term for what is essentially a way of teaching software how to recognize patterns. “You allow an algorithm to develop that can be improved through experience,” said Ben Hagag, head of research at Darrow, an AI startup looking to improve access to justice. “And by experience I mean examining and finding patterns in data.” “We say to the [system] ‘take a look at this dataset and find patterns,” which then go on to form a coherent view of the data at hand. “The model learns as a baby learns,” he said, so if a baby looked at a 1,000 pictures of a landscape, it would soon understand that the sky – normally oriented across the top of the image – would be blue while land is green.

Hagag cited how Google built its language model by training a system on several gigabytes of text, from the dictionary to examples of the written word. “The model understood the patterns, how the language is built, the syntax and even the hidden structure that even linguists find hard to define,” Hagag said. Now that model is sophisticated enough that “once you give it a few words, it can predict the next few words you’re going to write.” In 2018, Google’s Ajit Varma told The Wall Street Journal that its smart reply feature had been trained on “billions of Gmail messages,” adding that initial tests saw options like ‘I Love You’ and ‘Sent from my iPhone’ offered up since they were so commonly seen in communications.

Developers who do not have the benefit of access to a data set as vast as Google’s need to find data via other means. “Every researcher developing a language model first downloads Wikipedia then adds more,” Hagag said. He added that they are likely to pull down any, and every, piece of available data that they can find. The sassy tweet you sent a few years ago, or that sincere Facebook post, may have been used to train someone’s language model, somewhere. Even Open AI uses social media posts with WebText, a dataset which pulls text from outbound Reddit links which received at least three karma, albeit with Wikipedia references removed.

Guan Wang, CTO of Huski, says that the pulling down of data is “very common.” “Open internet data is the go-to for the majority of AI model training nowadays,” he said. And that it’s the policy of most researchers to get as much data as they can. “When we look for speech data, we will get whatever speech we can get,” he added. This policy of more data-is-more is known to produce less than ideal results, and Ben Hagag cited Riley Newman, former head of data science at Airbnb, who said “better data beats more data,” but Hagag notes that often, “it’s easier to get more data than it is to clean it.”

Craiyon / Daniel Cooper

DALL-E may now be available to a million users, but it’s likely that people’s first experience of a GAI is with its less-fancy sibling. Craiyon, formerly DALL-E Mini, is the brainchild of French developer Boris Dayma, who started work on his model after reading Open AI’s original DALL-E paper. Not long after, Google and the AI development community HuggingFace ran a hackathon for people to build quick-and-dirty machine learning models. “I suggested, ‘Hey, let’s replicate DALL-E. I have no clue how to do that, but let’s do it,” said Dayma. The team would go on to win the competition, albeit with a rudimentary, rough-around-the-edges version of the system. “The image [it produced] was clear. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t horrible,” he added. But unlike the full-fat DALLl-E, Dayma’s team was focused on slimming the model down so that it could work on comparatively low-powered hardware.

Dayma’s original model was fairly open about which image sets it would pull from, often with problematic consequences. “In early models, still in some models, you ask for a picture – for example mountains under the snow,” he said, “and then on top of it, the Shutterstock or Alamy watermark.” It’s something many AI researchers have found, with GAIs being trained on those image libraries public-facing image catalogs, which are covered in anti-piracy watermarks.

Dayma said that the model had erroneously learned that high-quality landscape images typically had a watermark from one of those public photo libraries, and removed them from his model. He added that some early results also output not-safe-for-work responses, forcing him to make further refinements to his initial training set. Dayma added that he had to do a lot of the sorting through the data himself, and said that “a lot of the images on the internet are bad.”

But it’s not just Dayma who has noticed the regular appearance of a Shutterstock watermark, or something a lot like it, popping up in AI-generated art. Which begs the question, are people just ripping off Shutterstock’s public-facing library to train their AI? It appears that one of the causes is Google, which has indexed a whole host of watermarked Shutterstock images as part of its Conceptual Captions framework. Delve into the data, and you’ll see a list of image URLs which can be used to train your own AI model, thousands of which are from Shutterstock. Shutterstock declined to comment on the practice for this article.

A Google spokesperson said that they don’t “believe this is an issue for the datasets we’re involved with.” They also quoted from this Creative Commons report, saying that “the use of works to train AI should be considered non-infringing by default, assuming that access to the copyright works was lawful at the point of input.” That is despite the fact that Shutterstock itself expressly forbids visitors to its site from using “any data mining, robots or similar data and/or image gathering and extraction methods in connection with the site or Shutterstock content.”

Alex Cardinelli, CEO at AI startup Article Forge, says that he sees no issue with models being trained on copyrighted texts, “so long as the material itself was lawfully acquired and the model does not plagiarize the material.” He compared the situation to a student reading the work of an established author, who may “learn the author’s styles or patterns, and later find applicable places to reuse those concepts.” He added that so long as a model isn’t “copying and pasting from their training data,” then it simply repeats a pattern that has appeared since the written word began.

Dayma says that, at present, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people are playing with his system on a daily basis. That all incurs a cost, both for hosting and processing, which he couldn’t sustain from his own pocket for very long, especially since it remains a “hobby.” Consequently, the site runs ads at the top and bottom of its page, between which you’ll get a grid of nine surreal images. “For people who use the site commercially, we could always charge for it,” he suggested. But he admitted his knowledge of US copyright law wasn’t detailed enough to be able to discuss the impact of his own model, or others in the space. This is the situation that Open AI also perhaps finds itself dealing with given that it is now allowing users to sell pictures created by DALL-E.

The law of art

The legal situation is not a particularly clear one, especially not in the US, where there have been few cases covering Text and Data Mining, or TDM. This is the technical term for the training of an AI by plowing through a vast trove of source material looking for patterns. In the US, TDM is broadly covered by Fair Use, which permits various forms of copying and scanning for the purposes of allowing access. This isn’t, however, a settled subject, but there is one case that people believe sets enough of a precedent to enable the practice.

Authors Guild v. Google (2015) was brought by a body representing authors, which accused Google of digitizing printed works that were still held under copyright. The initial purpose of the work was, in partnership with several libraries, to catalog and database the texts to make research easier. Authors, however, were concerned that Google was violating copyright, and even if it wasn’t making the text of a still-copyrighted work available publicly, it was prohibited from scanning and storing it in the first place. Eventually, the Second Circuit ruled in favor of Google, saying that digitizing copyright-protected work did not constitute copyright infringement.

Rahul Telang is Professor of Information Systems at Carnegie Mellon University, and an expert in digitization and copyright. He says that the issue is “multi-dimensional,” and that the Google Books case offers a “sort of precedent” but not a solid one. “I wish I could tell you there was a clear answer,” he said, “but it’s a complicated issue,” especially around works that may or may not be transformative. And until there is a solid case, it’s likely that courts will apply the usual tests for copyright infringement, around if a work supplants the need for the original, and if it causes economic harm to the original rights holder. Telang believes that countries will look to loosen restrictions on TDM wherever possible in order to boost domestic AI research.

The US Copyright Office says that it will register an “original work of authorship, provided that the work was created by a human being.” This is due to the old precedent that the only thing worth copyrighting is “the fruits of intellectual labor,” produced by the “creative powers of the mind.” In 1991, this principle was affirmed by a case of purloined listings from one phone book company by another. The Supreme Court held that while effort may have gone into the compilation of a phone book, the information contained therein was not an original work, created by a human being, and so therefore couldn’t be copyrighted. It will be interesting to see if there are any challenges made to users trying to license or sell a DALL-E work for this very reason.

Rob Holmes, a private investigator who works on copyright and trademark infringement with many major tech companies and fashion brands, believes that there is a reticence across the industry to pursue a landmark case that would settle the issue around TDM and copyright. “Legal departments get very little money,” he said. “All these different brands, and everyone’s waiting for the other brand, or IP owner, to begin the lawsuit. And when they do, it’s because some senior VP or somebody at the top decided to spend the money, and once that happens, there’s a good year of planning the litigation.” That often gives smaller companies plenty of time to either get their house in order, get big enough to be worth a lawsuit or go out of business.

“Setting a precedent as a sole company costs a lot of money,” Holmes said, but brands will move fast if there’s an immediate risk to profitability. Designer brand Hermés, for instance, is suing an artist named Mason Rothschild, who is producing MetaBirkins NFTs. These are styled images on a design reminiscent of Hermés’ famous Birkin handbag, something the French fashion house says is nothing more than an old-fashioned rip-off. This, too, is likely to have ramifications for the industry as it wrestles with philosophical questions of what work is sufficiently transformational as to prevent an accusation of piracy.

Artists are also able to upload their own work to DALL-E and then generate recreations in their own style. I spoke to one artist, who asked not to be named or otherwise described for fear of being identified and suffering reprisals. They showed me examples of their work alongside recreations made by DALLl-E, which while crude, were still close enough to look like the real thing. They said that, on this evidence alone, their livelihood as a working artist is at risk, and that the creative industries writ large are “doomed.”

Article Forge CEO Alex Cardinelli says that this situation, again, has historical precedent with the industrial revolution. He says that, unlike then, society has a collective responsibility to “make sure that anyone who is displaced is adequately supported.” And that anyone in the AI space should be backing a “robust safety net,” including “universal basic income and free access to education,” which he says is the “bare minimum” a society in the midst of such a revolution should offer.

Trained on your data

AIs are already in use. Microsoft, for instance, partnered with OpenAI to harness GPT-3 as a way to build code. In 2021, the company announced that it would integrate the system into its low-code app-development platform to help people build apps and tools for Microsoft products. Duolingo uses the system to improve people’s French grammar, while apps like Flowrite employs it to help make writing blog posts and emails easier and faster. Midjourney, a DALL-E 2-esque GAI for art, which has recently opened up its beta, is capable of producing stunning illustrated art – with customers charged between $10-50 a month if they wish to produce more images or use those pictures commercially.

For now, that’s something Craiyon doesn't necessarily need to worry about, since the resolution is presently so low. “People ask me ‘why is the model bad on faces’, not realizing that the model is equally good – or bad – at everything,” Dayma said. “It’s just that, you know, when you draw a tree, if the leaves are messed up you don’t care, but when the faces or eyes are, we put more attention on it.” This will, however, take time both to improve the model, and to improve the accessibility of computing power capable of producing the work. Dayma believes that despite any notion of low quality, any GAI will need to be respectful of “the applicable laws,” and that it shouldn’t be used for “harmful purposes.”

And artificial intelligence isn’t simply a toy, or an interesting research project, but something that has already caused plenty of harm. Take Clearview AI, a company that scraped several billion images, including from social media platforms, to build what it claims is a comprehensive image recognition database. According to The New York Times, this technology was used by billionaire John Catsimatidis to identify his daughter’s boyfriend. BuzzFeed News reported that Clearview has offered access not just to law enforcement – its supposed corporate goal – but to a number of figures associated with the far right. The system has also proved less than reliable, with The Times reporting that it has led to a number of wrongful arrests.

Naturally, the ability to synthesize any image without the need for a lot of photoshopping should raise alarm. Deepfakes, a system that uses AI to replace someone’s face in a video has already been used to produce adult content featuring celebrities. As quickly as companies making AIs can put in guardrails to prevent adult-content prompts, it’s likely that loopholes will be found. And as open-source research and development becomes more prevalent, it’s likely that other platforms will be created with less scrupulous aims. Not to mention the risk of this technology being used for political ends, given the ease of creating fake imagery that could be used for propaganda purposes.

Of course, Duchamp and Warhol may have stretched the definitions of what art can be, but they did not destroy art in and of itself. It would be a mistake to suggest that automating image generation will inevitably lead to the collapse of civilization. But it’s worth being cautious about the effects on artists, who may find themselves without a living if it’s easier to commission a GAI to produce something for you. Not to mention the implication for what, and how, these systems are creating material for sale on the backs of our data. Perhaps it is time that we examined if it’s necessary to implement a way of protecting our material – something equivalent to Do Not Track – to prevent it being chewed up and crunched through the AI sausage machine.

ByteDance, TikTok's parent company based in China, used its now-defunct news app called TopBuzz to spread pro-China messages, according to BuzzFeed News. Former employees who worked at the English-language news aggregator told the publication that ByteDance ordered staff members to "pin" content that showed China in a positive light or content that promoted the country to the top of the app. They were even reportedly required to provide proof, such as screenshots of the live content, to show that they had complied with the company's orders. TopBuzz managed to reach 40 million monthly active users by 2018.

The content the former employees helped promote included panda videos, along with videos endorsing travel to China. At least one staff member also remember pinning a video featuring a white man talking about the benefits of moving his startup to the country. As one of the former employees put it, the content ByteDance wanted them to promote wasn't anything overtly political and took more of a soft sell approach. However, they added: "Let’s be real, this was not something you could say no to." 

In addition to promoting pro-China content, former staff members claimed that TopBuzz had a review system that would flag reports on the Chinese government for removal. They said the flagged content included coverage of Hong Kong protests, pieces that mention President Xi Jinping and even those that reference Winnie the Pooh. Some employees also said that content depicting openly LGBTQ+ people were removed at times.

A ByteDance spokesperson denied the former employees' claims and called them "false and ridiculous." In a statement sent to BuzzFeed, they said:

"The claim that TopBuzz — which was discontinued years ago — pinned pro-Chinese government content to the top of the app or worked to promote it is false and ridiculous. TopBuzz had over two dozen top tier US and UK media publishing partners, including BuzzFeed, which clearly did not find anything of concern when performing due diligence."

While TopBuzz was shut down back in June 2020, TikTok is very much alive and well. Authorities and critics have long been worried that ByteDance would use TikTok to spread pro-China propaganda in the US, and we're guessing that these new claims won't be assuaging anybody's fears. Another BuzzFeed News report published in June shed light on how ByteDance employees in China had repeatedly accessed private information on TikTok users in the US. The company quickly migrated US user traffic to a new Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, but FCC commissioner Brendan Carr called on Apple and Google to ban the app "for its pattern of surreptitious data practices" anyway.

CNN's Brian Stelter previously asked TikTok's head of public policy for the Americas, Michael Beckerman, on whether the app could be used to influence politics and culture in the US. Beckerman replied that TikTok is "not the go-to place for politics" and that "the primary thing that people are coming and using TikTok for is entertainment and joyful and fun content." As BuzzFeed News notes, though, a lot of young people now use TikTok as their primary source of information, including politics and breaking news.

We hope you weren't using Meta's experimental Tuned app to keep your relationship fires burning. Gizmodoreports Meta is shutting down Tuned on September 19th, and that sign-up attempts for the couple-oriented app now produce errors. The company wasn't shy about its reasons for the move. In a statement to Engadget, a spokesperson said Meta's New Product Experimentation team winds down apps if they "aren’t sticking."

Meta's (then Facebook's) NPE Team launched Tuned in April 2020 to give partners a "private space" where they could share feelings, love notes, challenges and music streams. The timing was apt (if unintentional) given the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. In theory, this helped distant couples cement their bonds when they couldn't connect in person.

It's not certain how many people used the app, though. While Meta brought the initially iOS-only software to Android and said there were "many couples" who used Tuned to get closer, there's little doubt Tuned remained a niche product compared to the likes of Facebook or Instagram. There's a good chance you're hearing about this app for the first time, after all. We'd add that there wasn't much point when you could text, video chat or otherwise use existing services to accomplish many of the same goals.

You might have seen this coming. Meta has routinely shut down experimental apps, and has even axed higher-profile apps when they didn't gain traction. These closures help the company save resources and focus on more popular platforms. As it stands, Tuned was increasingly an outlier for a tech giant shifting its attention from social networking to the metaverse.

Google has started making good on its promise to update and optimize 20 of its apps for tablets. The tech giant has rolled out a number of new features for Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides and Keep, which all take advantage of tablets' larger screens. They're tools you can use to make it easier to juggle multiple tasks and to transfer content from one app to another when you have two windows open side-by-side. You can now easily drag-and-drop text and images from apps like Chrome, for instance, to a Google document or a spreadsheet cell. That could make writing up notes or reports go much quicker than before.

If you need to upload anything to Google Drive, you can simply open the app in a split window and then drag-and-drop the files in. You can now even open two Drive windows side-by-side, so you can compare files without losing the current view for whatever's already open. Sounds useful if you're reviewing particularly lengthy PDF files or documents. To access the feature, make sure to click the three-dot menu on a Drive file and choose the "Open in new window" option.

Now, if you want to create links for direct access to specific drive files, you can easily do so by dragging files into Google Keep. And if you have any images in Keep that you want to use elsewhere, you can drag them out of a note and into another app. Finally, you'll now be able to use keyboard shortcuts such as select, cut, copy, paste, undo and redo while navigating Drive, Docs and Slides if you're using a keyboard with your tablet.  

Google hasn't exactly been prioritizing Android tablet users over the past few years, but Android 12L's release seems like a promising start in its attempt to address the platform's shortcomings for larger screens. When it announced that it was going to optimize its apps at Google I/O back in May, the company showed it was getting serious about building apps for Android tablets again. Hopefully, that doesn't change and future updates could continue improving the Android experience for tablet users.