In today’s Digest, we cover Meta testing premium subscriptions across Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp as well as Google agreeing to a USD$68m settlement over voice assistant privacy claims, while it receives guidance from the EU about how to help search rivals. We also cover YouTubers suing Snap over AI-related copyright infringement.

Meta to test premium subscriptions across platforms

Meta is preparing to trial a new wave of premium subscriptions across Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. The paid tiers, expected to launch in the coming months, would unlock additional features including enhanced AI tools, while leaving the platforms’ core services free to use. The move reflects Meta’s continued experimentation with paid products as it looks to monetise power users without undermining scale.

Among the features being considered are subscriptions linked to AI-driven creative tools, including Vibes, Meta’s video generation app unveiled last September as part of the latest Meta AI update.

Google agrees to $68m settlement over privacy claims; raises concerns over EU plan to help rivals

Google has agreed to pay USD$68m (£50.3m) to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging that its voice assistant unlawfully recorded users’ conversations and used the data, in part, to support advertising activities. The settlement, reported by Reuters, resolves claims that Google intercepted and shared private communications without users’ consent, though the company did not admit any wrongdoing as part of the agreement.

At the centre of the case were instances in which Google Assistant was alleged to have recorded audio without a deliberate activation from the user, possibly having misdetected a wake-word prompt. Plaintiffs argued that these inadvertent recordings were later disclosed to third parties and used for targeted advertising and other purposes. Google has not publicly commented on the settlement.

Meanwhile, EU antitrust regulators are set to issue guidance to Google on how it should open up access to its search services and Gemini AI models, as the commission steps up enforcement of the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The intervention follows long-standing complaints from competitors who argue that Google’s dominance in search and mobile operating systems gives it an unfair competitive edge. 

Google has pushed back on the Commission’s approach, raising concerns after regulators opened two formal specification proceedings to assess its compliance with the DMA. The company insists it is already meeting its obligations, with senior competition counsel Clare Kelly saying Android is “open by design” and that Google is already licensing search data to rivals under the new rules.

YouTubers sue Snap over AI copyright infringement

A group of prominent YouTube creators has expanded its legal challenge against AI training practices, adding Snap to a list of tech companies accused of using online videos without permission. The creators allege that Snap trained its AI systems on their YouTube content to power features such as the app’s “Imagine Lens”, which enables image editing through text prompts. 

The latest proposed class action, filed in the US District Court for the Central District of California, centres on Snap’s alleged use of large-scale video-language datasets, including HD-VILA-100M. According to the complaint, some of these datasets were intended strictly for academic and research purposes, and the creators claim Snap bypassed YouTube’s technical safeguards, licensing terms and usage restrictions to deploy them commercially.