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Meta has quietly launched Style Sketch, an AI-powered fashion app that builds a virtual closet from Instagram or user photos and suggests outfit combinations, including realistic try-ons matched to body shape and skin tone. The app is available on iOS and Android in Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand; Meta has not confirmed a wider rollout.
Meta has released Waddle World, a 16-bit tamagotchi-style app described as a “daily journal disguised as a pet” whose virtual creatures chat with users and create doodles; the app is listed as free and reportedly available only to adults in the Philippines. The release appears alongside another limited regional app, Style Sketch, and ties into Meta’s Muse AI mascot and Charm accessories push.
In an interview tied to the release of his new book Hyperscale, Paris Marx traces historical and contemporary opposition to data centers—from US water fights and Irish moratoria to protests in other countries—and warns that surging demand from generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT) is accelerating contentious buildouts, including dedicated gas power plants. He also raises uncertainty about what happens to extensive new infrastructure if an "AI bubble" reassesses demand.
Google DeepMind and the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech) announced an on-device scam-detection model based on a fine-tuned Gemma to detect localized social-engineering scams on typical smartphones. The model uses a two-stage pipeline — a lightweight classifier followed by contextual evaluation with the fine-tuned Gemma — runs entirely on-device to preserve end-to-end encrypted conversations, and was presented at Singapore International Cyber Week 2026; fine-tuning occurred in a GovTech-managed GCP sandbox with anonymized training data and stress-testing on synthetic and local corpora.
Manus, the AI lab under parent Butterfly Effect, said it raised more than $500 million in a funding round led by Boyu Capital and IDG Capital, with participation from existing investors including Tencent, HSG and ZhenFund. This is the company’s first financing since the collapse of a planned $2 billion acquisition by Meta; Manus has launched Manus 2.0 and the Cue app, is hiring internationally, and is reportedly considering a Hong Kong IPO.
A Gallup survey commissioned by Microsoft across 37 countries (about 1,000 respondents per country, polled between April and July) finds that about 68% of Americans who use AI daily are worried about the technology, and the U.S. leads broader anxiety measures with 74% expressing worry. The report also shows regional variation — respondents in Singapore and China are more optimistic — and overall suggests widespread curiosity about AI despite significant concerns about accuracy and societal impacts.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Chinese AI startup Manus is in discussions to raise $500 million at a $4 billion valuation as it resumes independent operations. Potential investors named include IDG Capital, Boyu Capital, CATL and existing backers Tencent, HSG and Zhenfund, and Manus is reportedly weighing a restructuring ahead of a possible Hong Kong IPO.
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