Magic Eraser is coming to more devices, Spotify gains an AI DJ, and Netflix lowers prices

It’s Friday (or should I say, Ven-yay.) You succeeded. Give yourself a pat on the back – then go read the rest of this issue of Week in Review, TechCrunch’s newsletter summarizing the last seven days in tech (sign up here to get it straight to your inbox every Saturdays). I will continue to be your WiR emcee for the next few weeks until Greg returns from parental leave. God knows I lack wit, but I’ll try to make up for it. Go easy on me, please.

First, I’m contractually obligated (not really…but maybe actually?) to highlight upcoming TechCrunch events this calendar year.

TechCrunch Live is taking a special (virtual) trip to Boston on February 27 for City Spotlight: Boston, and it will be completely free. That’s right – free! No excuse to jump on this one. Beyond City Spotlight, TC will return to Boston in April for Early Stage, which will feature expert-led sessions on growing a – you guessed it – early-stage business. Finally, mark your calendar for TechCrunch Disrupt 2023, which takes place in San Francisco from September 19-21. It will be an unforgettable moment.

With the PSAs out of the way, let’s get to the roundup:

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Erase your mistakes: One of Google Pixel’s best 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 AI 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.

Jail Facebook: Sarah reports that Meta will reform its sanctions system based on recommendations from the Oversight Council, the independent body of experts, scholars, civic leaders and lawyers who now weigh in on appeals 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 its content removals, which it says will be a fairer way. and more efficient to moderate content on its platform.

TikTok in cars: TikTok is making its way into vehicles, starting with the new Mercedes-Benz E-Class which will hit the market in fall 2023. The car’s recently updated MBUX infotainment system, which will feature a “super display” which covers the entire dashboard, will allow drivers to click on the TikTok app and watch videos when the vehicle is parked. How’s that for TikTok overload?

AI in my Spotify: Spotify this week launched a new AI feature called “DJ” to better personalize the music listening experience for its users. Similar to a radio DJ, Spotify’s DJ feature will offer a curated selection of music as well as AI-powered spoken commentary on the tracks and artists you love, using what Spotify says is an “incredibly realistic voice”. . Neat!

Price drop: Netflix has slashed subscription costs in more than 100 territories over the past week as customers continue to consider which streaming services to keep amid price hikes. The company has come under fire recently after rolling out password-sharing rules in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain, but another potential reason for the price drop is to fare better against competitors such as Paramount+, Apple TV+, Disney+ and Hulu.

military secrets: On Monday, the US Department of Defense secured an exposed server that had been dumping internal US military emails onto the Internet for the past two weeks. The server was hosted on Microsoft’s Azure government cloud for Department of Defense customers, which uses physically separate servers from other commercial customers and as such can be used to share sensitive but unclassified government data.

Calculation by OpenAI: OpenAI is quietly launching a new development platform that allows customers to run the company’s new machine learning models, like GPT-3.5, on dedicated capacity. In screenshots of documentation posted to Twitter by users with early access, OpenAI describes the upcoming offering, called Foundry, as “designed for edge customers running larger workloads.”

YouTube becomes multilingual: YouTube announced this week that it is rolling out support for multilingual audio tracks, which will allow creators to add dubbing to their new and existing videos, helping them reach international audiences. The company says the technology to support multilingual audio tracks was developed in-house 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 offers a diverse range of podcasts for your listening pleasure. This week on the TechCrunch podcast, haje intervened for Darrell Talk with taylor on Supreme Court cases that could change the Internet as we know it. On the chain reaction, Jacqueline interviewed Alex Adelman, co-founder and CEO of Lolli, a bitcoin rewards app that lets people earn bitcoins or cashback when they shop online or in person at over 10,000 stores. The Found team spoke with Michael Chime, the co-founder and CEO of Prepared, who is leading the charge to modernize 911 calling by providing access to video and photos. And at Equity, the gang covered trends like the possible return of IPOs and accelerators backing laid-off tech worker startups.

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