Tech News – Page 22 – by Arlin Schaffel

QWERTY Phones Are Really Trying to Make a Comeback This Year

After dying a painful death at the hand of the iPhone’s revolutionary capacitive touchscreen, the QWERTY smartphone is rising up from the graveyard this year. Either way, two QWERTY phone announcements in this still very new year suggest there may be some kind of trend. Maybe after 19 years of the iPhone and touchscreens defining the mobile experience, it’s time to go back to the physical keyboard and its more tactile typing.
https://gizmodo.com/qwerty-phones-are-really-trying-to-make-a-comeback-this-year-2000709717

Workers spend hours hours fixing AI mistakes, study says

Artificial intelligence is saving workers time, but a large share of those gains is being erased by the effort required to fix AI-generated mistakes, according to a new study. “For every 10 hours of efficiency gained through AI, nearly four hours are lost to fixing its output,” the report said. As a result, “productivity gains alone are not translating into better outcomes for most organizations,” it said.
https://qz.com/ai-mistakes-limit-time-savings-workday-finds

Bandcamp takes a stand against AI music, banning it from the platform

The music distribution platform Bandcamp announced in a Reddit post on Tuesday that it’s banning AI-generated music and audio. “We want musicians to keep making music, and for fans to have confidence that the music they find on Bandcamp was created by humans,” the company said. Bandcamp’s new guidelines state that music and audio generated “wholly or in substantial part by AI” is not permitted, and that it will not allow the use of AI tools to impersonate other artists or styles.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/14/bandcamp-takes-a-stand-against-ai-music-banning-it-from-the-platform/

Apple Creator Studio suite is launching to take on Adobe

Apple has announced Apple Creator Studio, a new software suite for Apple products that bundles popular creative apps into an all-in-one subscription service. Apple Creator Studio will be available on the App Store on January 28th and includes access to Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage — providing a rival editing and design subscription to Adobe’s Creative Cloud platform.
https://www.theverge.com/news/861279/apple-creator-studio-apps-subscription-price-availability

Meta’s metaverse layoffs apparently include some of its VR studios

Meta is laying off about 10 percent of its Reality Labs metaverse division, and the cuts include closing down some of its VR gaming studios. In a statement about the broader Reality Labs layoffs, Clayton said that “We said last month that we were shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward Wearables. This is part of that effort, and we plan to reinvest the savings to support the growth of wearables this year.”
https://www.theverge.com/news/861420/meta-reality-labs-layoffs-vr-studios-twisted-pixel-sanzaru-armature

Google pulls AI overviews for some medical searches

As of this morning, the AI overviews for questions like “what is the normal range for liver blood tests?” have been disabled entirely. Spokesperson Davis Thompson told The Verge that, “We invest significantly in the quality of AI Overviews, particularly for topics like health, and the vast majority provide accurate information. Our internal team of clinicians reviewed what’s been shared with us and found that in many instances, the information was not inaccurate and was also supported by high-quality websites. In cases where AI Overviews miss some context, we work to make broad improvements, and we also take action under our policies where appropriate.”
https://www.theverge.com/news/860356/google-pulls-alarming-dangerous-medical-ai-overviews

Instagram says it fixed the issue that let someone send all those password reset emails

If you’re one of the many, many people who received a password reset email from Instagram the other day, the company says it fixed the issue. What was the issue? Unclear. All we know is that an “external party” triggered the emails, and Instagram says you can safely ignore them. The company posted on X that the issue had been fixed and also claimed there was no breach of its systems. This seemingly contradicts reports from Malwarebytes, which said that information on 17.5 million Instagram accounts, including usernames, physical addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses, was available on the dark web.
https://www.theverge.com/news/860337/instagram-fixed-password-reset-emails