 |
|
|
|||||
Apple Music and Apple TV were briefly down during outage, according to Apples System Status page. The outage was logged on Apples own system at around 2:53PM ET and affected both of the companys streaming services, along with Apple TVs Channels feature, until the company resolved the issue around 4:31PM ET. On DownDetector, reports of issues with Apple TV and Apple Music first appeared right around 2:33PM ET, a little before Apple officially confirmed the outage on its own site. Only some users were affected by the outage, according to Apple, and anecdotally, multiple members of Engadgets staff were still able to stream content while the services were reportedly out.Engadget has reached out to Apple for more information on the outage and how many people were impacted. Well update this article if we hear back.Apple relies on cloud services from third-party companies like Amazon, and is ultimately only as stable the data centers its paying for. In October 2025, the company was impacted by the same Amazon Web Services outage that took down services and apps like Alexa, Fortnite and Snapchat for hours.Update, December 10, 5:09PM ET: Article and headline updated to reflect that the outage has been resolved.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/apple-tv-and-apple-music-were-down-for-some-users-214425802.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
Mark Zuckerberg has for months publicly hinted that he is backing away from open-source AI models. Now, Meta's latest AI pivot is starting to come into focus. The company is reportedly working on a new model, known inside of Meta as "Avocado," which could mark a major shift away from its previous open-source approach to AI development. Both CNBC and Bloomberg have reported on Meta's plans surrounding "Avocado," with both outlets saying the model "could" be proprietary rather than open-source. Avocado, which is due out sometime in 2026, is being worked on inside of "TBD," a smaller group within Meta's AI Superintelligence Labs that's headed up by Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, who apparently favors closed models.It's not clear what Avocado could mean for Llama. Earlier this year, Zuckerberg said he expected Meta would "continue to be a leader" in open source but that it wouldn't "open source everything that we do." He's also cited safety concerns as they relate to superintelligence. As both CNBC and Bloomberg note, Meta's shift has also been driven by issues surrounding the release of Llama 4. The Llama 4 "Behemoth" model has been delayed for months; The New York Times reported earlier this year that Wang and other execs had "discussed abandoning" it altogether. And developers have reportedly been unimpressed with the Llama 4 models that are available. There have been other shakeups within the ranks of Meta's AI groups as Zuckerberg has spent billions of dollars building a team dedicated to superintelligence. The company laid off several hundred workers from its Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) unit. And Meta veteran and Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun, who has been a proponent for open-source and skeptical of LLMs, recently announced he was leaving the company. That Meta may now be pursuing a closed AI model is a significant shift for Zuckerberg, who just last year said "fuck that" about closed platforms and penned a lengthy memo titled "Open Source AI is the Path Forward." But the notoriously competitive CEO is also apparently intensely worried about falling behind OpenAI, Google and other rivals. Meta has said it expects to spend $600 billion over the next few years to fund its AI ambitions. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/meta-is-reportedly-working-on-a-new-ai-model-called-avocado-and-it-might-not-be-open-source-215426778.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
Spotify is attempting to give users more control over the music the streaming service recommends with a new playlist feature called "Prompted Playlist." The beta feature is rolling out in New Zealand starting on December 11, and will let users write a custom prompt that Spotify can use alongside their listening history to create a playlist of new music.By tapping on Prompted Playlist, Spotify subscribers participating in the beta will be presented with a prompt field where they can type exactly what they want to hear and how they want Spotify's algorithm to respond. And while past AI features took users' individual taste into consideration, Spotify claims Prompted Playlist "taps into your entire Spotify listening history, all the way back to day one." Prompted Playlist will exist alongside Spotify's other playlist features.SpotifyPrompts can be as broad or specific as users want, and Spotify says playlists can also be set to automatically update with new songs on a specific cadence. An "Ideas" tab in the Prompted Playlist setup screen can provide suggestions for users who need inspiration for their prompt. And interestingly, Spotify says each song in the playlist will be presented with a short description explaining why the algorithm chose it, which could help direct future fine-tuning.If this all sounds familiar, it's because Spotify has already tried AI-generated playlists in the past. The difference here, besides Spotify framing the new feature as giving users more "control," is the detail of the prompts, the depth of user data Spotify is applying and the options users will have to keep playlists up-to-date. Prompted Playlist is only available in English for now, but Spotify says the feature will evolve as it adds more users.Spotify isn't the first company to offer users more direct control over how content is recommended to them. Meta has recently started experimenting with algorithm-tuning options in Threads and Instagram, and TikTok lets users completely reset their For You page to start fresh. The irony of all these features is that algorithm-driven feeds were supposed to be able to recommend good music, posts and videos without additional prompting. Now that prompting is being pitched as a feature, rather than extra work.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/music/spotifys-new-playlist-feature-gives-users-more-control-over-their-recommendation-algorithm-203237903.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||