It’s Friday (or should I say, fri-yay.) You have done it. Give yourself a pat on the back, and then read the rest of this issue of Week in Review, TechCrunch’s newsletter rounding up the past seven days in tech (sign up here to get it delivered straight to your inbox every Saturday). I will continue to be your WiR emcee for the next few weeks until Greg returns from paternity leave. God knows I lack his wit, but I’ll try to make up for it in essence. Go easy on me please.
First things first, I am contractually (not really… but maybe really?) bound to highlight upcoming TechCrunch events this calendar year.
TechCrunch Live will be making a special (virtual) trip to Boston on February 27 for City Spotlight: Boston, and it will be completely free. That’s right, free! There are no excuses to skip this one. Beyond City Spotlight, TC will return to Boston in April for Early Stage, which will feature expert-led sessions on growing an early-stage business, you guessed it. Last but not least, mark your calendars for TechCrunch Disrupt 2023, taking place in San Francisco from September 19-21. It will be one to remember.
With the PSAs out of the way, let’s get on with the recap:
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Erase your mistakes: One of the best Google Pixel photo editing features, “Magic Eraser”, is now making its way to other Android and iOS devices. But it won’t be free. This week Google announced that the popular tool, which uses artificial intelligence to remove unwanted content from images, will be available to Google One subscribers and existing pixel owners. Google One subscribers will also get a small handful of other editing tools, like a new HDR video effect, exclusive collage styles, and more.
facebook jail: Sarah reports that Meta will reform its sanctions system based on recommendations from the Oversight Board, the independent body of experts, academics, civic leaders and lawyers who now weigh in on appeal decisions made by Meta. The social network says it will reform its system to focus less on penalizing users by restricting their ability to post and more on explaining the reasoning behind removing content, which it believes will be a fairer and more effective means of moderating content on its platform.
TikTok in cars: TikTok is finding its way into vehicles, starting with the new Mercedes-Benz E-Class coming to market in fall 2023. The car’s newly upgraded MBUX infotainment system, which will feature a “superscreen” spanning the entire dash , will allow drivers to click on the TikTok app and watch videos when the vehicle is parked. How’s that for TikTok overload?
AI on my Spotify: Spotify this week launched a new artificial intelligence feature called “DJ” to better personalize the music listening experience for its users. Similar to a radio DJ, Spotify’s DJ feature will serve up a curated selection of music along with AI-powered spoken commentary on the tracks and artists you like, using what Spotify says is a “voice amazingly realistic.” Clean!
Price drop: Netflix cut its subscription costs in more than 100 territories over the past week as customers continue to contemplate which streaming services to keep amid price increases. The company has come under fire lately after implementing password sharing rules in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain, but another possible reason for the price decline is to outperform competitors like Paramount+, Apple TV+, Disney+ and Hulu. .
military secrets: On Monday, the US Department of Defense secured an exposed server that had been sending internal US military email to the open Internet for the past two weeks. The server was hosted on Microsoft’s Azure government cloud for DoD customers, which uses servers that are physically separate from other business customers and, as such, can be used to share sensitive but unclassified government data.
Calculate by OpenAI: OpenAI is quietly launching a new development platform that allows customers to run the company’s newest machine learning models, such as GPT-3.5, in dedicated capacity. In screenshots of documentation posted to Twitter by early access users, OpenAI describes the upcoming offering, called Foundry, as “designed for edge clients running larger workloads.”
YouTube goes multilingual: YouTube announced this week that it is rolling out support for multi-language audio tracks, which will allow creators to add dubbing to their new and existing videos, helping them reach an international audience. The company says the technology to support multi-language audio tracks was created internally at YouTube, but creators will need to partner directly with third-party dubbing providers to create their audio tracks.
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Here’s your weekly reminder that TechCrunch has a wide range of podcasts for your listening pleasure. this week in The TechCrunch podcast, The wine intervened for darrell talk to Taylor on the Supreme Court cases that could change the Internet as we know it. In Chain reaction, jaquelyn interviewed Alex Adelman, co-founder and CEO of Lolli, a bitcoin rewards app that allows people to earn bitcoin or cash back when they shop online or in person at more than 10,000 stores. He Found The team spoke with Michael Chime, co-founder and CEO of Prepared, which is leading the charge on modernizing 911 calling by providing access to video and photos. And to the Equitythe gang covered trends like the potential return of IPOs and accelerators supporting laid-off tech worker startups.
