Undeterred by lawsuits and demands to stop scraping social media, facial recognition firm Clearview AI is plowing ahead with efforts to expand its database and introduce new tools. Company co-founder and CEO Hoan Ton-That said Clearview has collected more than 10 billion images from social media and the Internet, while the company is adding new tools to help users, often law enforcement, obtain matches. Most recently, the company developed a deblur tool in addition to mask removal, which uses machine learning to recreate the covered part of a person’s face. However, use of such tools raises concerns that individuals could be wrongly identified or biases could result. Read more

China’s ByteDance is preparing to launch a global shopping platform to compete with Amazon and Alibaba’s AliExpress, according to Business Insider, which gleaned the plan through the company’s job postings. Unclear is whether the retail app would be rolled out as a separate service or integrated into ByteDance’s popular TikTok, which in August added integration with Shopify. It is speculated the new service will specialize in selling products made in China to international buyers. The move follows Amazon’s removal of thousands of third-party Chinese sellers it alleged were using fake reviews and violating its rules. Read more

Facebook is rolling out its short-form video feature, Reels, to all iOS and Android users in the U.S. Intended to counter the increasingly popular TikTok, creators can use Reels to generate within Facebook content of up to 30 seconds using in-app editing tools for music, audio, AR filters and other effects. The feature was deployed in beta last month. Instagram introduced its own version of Reels last year, allowing videos of up to 60 seconds. Facebook also debuted a bonus program to pay creators for Reels views as part of its previously announced initiative to pay creators $1 billion through 2022. Read more

A juggernaut of the largest tech titans has joined forces to create Trusted Cloud Principles, a united front in the face of diversified international regulations on everything from how data is stored to dealing with increasing demands from law enforcement. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Atlassian, Cisco, IBM, Salesforce and SAP have united in the initiative, which they say seeks to protect customer rights. Meanwhile, a group of leading tech companies has also teamed up to develop a framework of best practices for implementing cloud services with a focus on protecting data. Read more

ViacomCBS is teaming up with software and data company VideoAmp to develop a new advertising tracking and audience-measurement tool for linear and digital television programming. The move comes as networks and other content providers express increasing dissatisfaction over the methodologies of longtime industry measurement stalwart Nielsen, which media outlets claim has failed to accurately gauge viewers who have shifted from linear viewing to streaming on demand. Last month, Nielsen’s accreditation was suspended by the Media Rating Council. Read more