Apple is making Creator Studio an even better deal with new AI features and creative tools

• Pixelmator Pro gets a new AI-powered Generate Fill tool
• Keynote, Pages, and Numbers add AI assistants and OpenAI model support
• Final Cut Pro gains thousands of MotionVFX creative assets in November

Apple's Pro and Tell week is marching on, and alongside the reveal of the M6-powered iMac and 14-inch MacBook Pro, the Cupertino-based giant is also shining a spotlight on software. Specifically, Apple Creator Studio is getting a wide-ranging update that brings a fresh batch of features and, ultimately, packs in more value.

As it stands, Apple Creator Studio is a software subscription priced at $12.99 / £12.99 / AU$19.99 a month or $129 / £129 / AU$199 per year, giving you access to Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Pixelmator Pro, Final Cut Pro, and Logic Pro across Mac, iPad, and iPhone. All that stays the same, including the especially excellent education discount — $2.99 / £2.99 / AU$4.99 per month or $29.99 / £29.99 / AU$49.99 per year — but there are some pretty big updates here, with AI playing a starring role.

Leading the charge is Pixelmator Pro, which is getting a new Generate Fill tool. This lets you select an area of an image, describe what you want to add or change, and let AI do the heavy lifting. It's the kind of feature that could come in handy when you're editing a photo and don't want to jump between apps to get the result you're after. It'll also help level the playing field between Pixelmator Pro and Adobe Photoshop by filling a feature gap.

(Image credit: Apple)

Keynote, Pages, and Numbers are also getting AI assistants designed to help you create presentations, write documents, and work with spreadsheets. Most interestingly, you'll be able to use OpenAI models alongside Apple's own, opening up more possibilities for working with AI in these apps. The apps also support compatible external AI tools, potentially making them a more useful part of your broader workflow.

(Image credit: Apple)

With Final Cut Pro, Apple is bringing MotionVFX content directly into its pro video editing suite, making thousands of creative elements, including transitions, templates, effects, and titles, available for use in your projects. It's another welcome addition that should let you get more done directly inside Final Cut Pro, rather than having to rely on other tools.

(Image credit: Apple)

All of this is coming in November as a free update for existing subscribers, though Apple isn't sharing specific timing just yet. These updates should also be right at home on the new Macs announced this week, but I'm curious to see if Apple introduces any more surprises, like the much-rumored touchscreen MacBook Pro, during its Pro and Tell event tomorrow.

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Fake TikTok Shops now fuel one in five phishing blocks — and Black Friday could make it worse

• Surfshark data shows blocks of a single suspected fake TikTok Shop domain rose 638% between May and September.
• The domain was behind roughly one in five phishing blocks worldwide and is still active in October.
• Phishing exposure also climbed across Europe and the US, with France seeing the sharpest rise.

New data from Surfshark shows that a single domain linked to a suspected counterfeit TikTok Shop operation generated 320,007 phishing blocks between May and September 2026.

That's 19% of the roughly 1.6 million phishing-category blocks recorded worldwide by the company's web content blocker over those five months. The operation isn't slowing down either: in the first 20 days of October, the domain triggered another 96,711 blocks.

The findings come weeks before the busiest shopping period of the year. They're also a reminder that even the best VPN can only do so much if you type your card details into a convincing fake.

One fake storefront, a fifth of all phishing blocks

Monthly blocks tied to the domain jumped from 16,995 in May to 125,413 in September, peaking at 22.2% of all phishing blocks in August.

It's part of a much broader spike. Total phishing-category blocks rose 524% between April and September, and blocks per protected device climbed 83%, so the growth isn't just down to more people using the tool.

"Data clearly shows users are being unknowingly rerouted to fraudulent stores designed to steal money and personal information rather than sell genuine products," said Justas Pukys, Senior Product Manager at Surfshark.

Phishing exposure rises across Europe and the US

Between April and September, blocks per protected device rose 159% in France, 99% in Italy, 86% in Spain, 54% in the UK, and 38% in Germany.

In the US, exposure nearly doubled. Blocks per protected device rose 87%, while total phishing blocks grew almost sixfold, from 20,519 to 122,580.

How to stay safe this Black Friday

Surfshark expects phishing to rise again as Black Friday approaches. Pukys recommends checking that every site is official, typing a trusted address manually if a redirect looks suspicious, and ignoring promotional links sent by SMS or messaging apps. He also suggests paying with single-use virtual cards.

Security tools can help catch what you miss. Surfshark's own web content blocker, the tool behind this data, lets you block site categories, including phishing, even with the VPN switched off. NordVPN's next-gen antivirus blocked 94% of phishing sites in AV-Comparatives' latest test, and VPN providers are hardening connections too, with Surfshark recently bringing full post-quantum security to WireGuard.

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Wikipedia was down for many—here's what we know about the outage

Wikipedia went down for many users around the world today, according to Downdetector — but the issues now seem to be resolved.

The problems started at around 10.51am ET / 3.51pm BST, when a large spike in reports appeared on the outage-tracking website — the reports peaked at just over 2,000 in the US and 850 in the UK.

It appears that some 'emergency maintenance' from Wikimedia was the culprit and appears to have now finished — but you can follow what happened in our liveblog below...

A sharp spike in reports

(Image credit: Downdetector)

Wikipedia is working okay for me here in the UK, but it isn't for thousands of users right now — the reports graph on Downdetector is now over 3,000 in the US, and it's climbing in the UK too.

The cause is so far unclear, as there are no current issues at the major cloud providers like AWS, Google Cloud or Cloudflare. I'll be digging into this and reporting back shortly...

October 21, 2026 – 11:57 AM

Please try again later...

THAT’S A FIRST, I HAVE NEVER SEEN WIKIPEDIA GO DOWN LIKE THIS?everything but the index page fails to load… huhhh??? https://t.co/5DtJ51QIkiOctober 21, 2026

This is what Wikipedia and Wikimedia currently look like for many users — an "error" page with a "please try again later" message. I've also never seen it go down like that, although it's working fine for me in the UK.

Strangely, there are a few other outages running concurrently right now, including Asana and the Internet Archive. It isn't yet clear if they're related, but they did start at very similar times (around 10am ET / 3pm BST). Wikipedia is certainly the worst-hit, though.

October 21, 2026 – 12:03 PM

'Emergency maintenance'

(Image credit: Wikipedia)

This probably explains today's Wikipedia issues — the Wikimedia Foundation status page says 'emergency maintenance' is in progress.

The foundation hasn't explained how long the maintenance will last or what it's for, but that should hopefully mean it's pretty short-lived...

October 21, 2026 – 12:14 PM

Phew, it's back

(Image credit: Downdetector)

Good news, it looks like the Wikipedia outage was indeed short-lived — or at least only lasted an hour.

The Downdetector reports have plummeted back down to zero, which suggests that 'emergency maintenance' is now finished.

Fortunately, that was all a lot more straightforward than the major PHP flaw that's turned government websites dark and sent website admins scambling...

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Zoom's new Unified Context Layer unlocks all of your company's complex conversations and video calls for AI agents to use

• Zoom is packaging up conversations and calls into a Unified Context Layer
• APIs mean third-party AI agents can get direct access to this source of data
• Humans can now spend less time explaining context to AI agents

In recognition that increasingly siloed and complex systems are making it harder for companies to keep track of all their data, making it difficult to deploy effective AI on top of existing tech stacks, Zoom has launched its Unified Context Layer (UCL).

UCL works by bringing together meeting conversations, chats, documents and other business data into one connected system, which it hopes will make it easier for AI agents to work across.

This marks an important step in the company's much broader transition from the video conferencing platform we grew to love during the now-distant pandemic to a full productivity suite that spans both human and agentic users.

Zoom's Unified Context Layer

"This new layer brings together conversations with near real-time activity across Zoom and connected third-party applications, giving people and AI agents access to business context that might otherwise be lost or siloed," the company said in an announcement.

But in a world of increasing interoperability, the company is also adding new APIs to allow external AI tools to query its Unified Context Layer directly, which means ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Muse and other AI agents can see straight into the core data that Zoom holds.

The biggest impact is on productivity, where human workers will need to spend far less time fetching different parts of context to give an AI agent the best chances of success.

Of course, Zoom isn't the first platform to be introducing a Unified Context Layer, but being that the software is still primarily used for communications both within organizations and with external clients, Zoom's UCL should be able to unlock some pretty serious unstructured data for future AI agents.

With Zoom now betting on conversations as a vastly underused source of intelligence, its early adoption of a UCL should play an integral role both in its own roadmap, but also how enterprises benefit from agentic AI on the whole.

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Think social media protects your data? Platforms have racked up $26 billion in privacy penalties since 2020

• Social platforms have incurred over $26 billion in privacy fines and settlements globally since 2020.
• Meta platforms (Facebook and Instagram) accounted for $23.7 billion (91%) of all penalties.
• The US led enforcement with $20.9 billion in fines, followed by European regulators at $5.16 billion.

Social media platforms thrive on personal data, but failing to protect it is proving exceptionally costly. Since 2020, the world’s top 10 social networks have accumulated more than $26 billion in privacy-related fines and regulatory settlements worldwide.

According to a study published by cybersecurity firm Surfshark, the lion's share of this astronomical financial penalty belongs to one parent company: Meta.

Between Facebook and Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg’s tech empire is responsible for an overwhelming 91% of the worldwide total, racking up $23.7 billion in penalties.

Meta dominates the penalty board

Facebook alone accumulated $14.3 billion in penalties, while Instagram accounted for $9.4 billion. TikTok placed a distant third, tallying $1.6 billion in fines across global jurisdictions.

Other familiar platforms also faced notable regulatory actions. LinkedIn accrued $360 million, YouTube followed with $222 million, and X (formerly Twitter) totaled $151 million. Further down the list, Snapchat recorded $35 million in fines, Reddit registered $19 million, and Discord logged $928,000. Pinterest stood out as the sole platform in the study with zero qualifying privacy penalties.

The United States spearheaded the financial enforcement, imposing $20.9 billion, roughly 80% of all global fines examined. The single largest penalty came from a massive $17.1 billion US settlement involving Facebook and Instagram over allegations that inadequate safeguards exposed minors to deliberately addictive product features.

American authorities also levied $3.69 billion strictly for data-processing offenses, led by Facebook ($2.9 billion), TikTok ($593 million), and X ($150 million). TikTok additionally received an independent $100 million penalty in 2026 over inadequate security safeguards.

European regulators target cross-border transfers and GDPR

Across the Atlantic, European authorities have imposed $5.16 billion in fines under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and national frameworks.

Ireland served as the focal point of enforcement, issuing $4.87 billion, or 94% of Europe’s total, largely because many tech giants maintain their regional headquarters in Dublin. France trailed at $245 million, followed by the UK at $36 million.

Europe’s two heaviest individual fines stemmed from unauthorized international data transfers:

Facebook received a $1.39 billion fine for transferring EU user data to US servers.

TikTok was hit with a $615 million fine for transferring European user data to China, echoing wider scrutiny surrounding apps with ties to foreign jurisdictions.

European regulators also penalized platforms $1.22 billion for unlawful data processing, $1.09 billion for data breach incidents, and $594 million for insufficient technical security safeguards. Regulatory bodies in South Korea and Australia added further pressure, issuing $62.4 million and roughly $50.5 million in fines, respectively.

As lawmakers worldwide tighten regulations, whether battling data misuse or debating proposals that weaken encryption, these multi-billion-dollar sums send an unmistakable message: user privacy can no longer be treated as an afterthought.

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NYT Strands hints and answers for Friday, October 16 (game #957)

Looking for a different day?

A new NYT Strands puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing 'today's game' while others are playing 'yesterday's'. If you're looking for Thursday's puzzle instead then click here: NYT Strands hints and answers for Thursday, October 15 (game #956).

Strands is the NYT's latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it's great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc's Wordle today page for the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

NYT Strands today (game #957) - hint #1 - today's theme

What is the theme of today's NYT Strands?

• Today's NYT Strands theme is… Just a little bit

NYT Strands today (game #957) - hint #2 - clue words

Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.

• PILL
• STATE
• LAME
• SALT
• LOCAL
• WORM

NYT Strands today (game #957) - hint #3 - spangram letters

How many letters are in today's spangram?

• Spangram has 10 letters

NYT Strands today (game #957) - hint #4 - spangram position

What are two sides of the board that today's spangram touches?

• First side: left, 5th row

• Last side: right, 5th row

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Strands today (game #957) - the answers

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Strands, game #957, are…

• PINPOINT
• MOLECULE
• ATOM
• MITE
• FOLLICLE
• AMOEBA
• SPANGRAM: SMALLWORLD

• My rating: Easy
• My score: Perfect

Yet again, looking in the top left-hand corner paid off. However, it was at the expense of a fairly easy-to-spot spangram — congratulations if you got a Spangram First today.

After spotting PINPOINT and SMALLWORLD (did everyone have the Disney ride theme tune churning around their heads afterwards?) I was convinced that MINIATURE would be lurking on the board somewhere.

Instead, the remaining words were all scientific leaning, with only the spelling of AMOEBA causing me pause.

Yesterday's NYT Strands answers (Thursday, October 15, game #956)

• BEACON
• STAIRCASE
• DOME
• LANTERN
• GALLERY
• SPANGRAM: LIGHTHOUSE

What is NYT Strands?

Strands is the NYT's not-so-new-any-more word game, following Wordle and Connections. It's now a fully fledged member of the NYT's games stable that has been running for a year and which can be played on the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.

I've got a full guide to how to play NYT Strands, complete with tips for solving it, so check that out if you're struggling to beat it each day.

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Airbnb adds AI search and more services to help you plan your next getaway

• Airbnb is adding AI-powered search
• New AI comparisons make it easier to weigh up vacation rentals and narrow down your options
• Services are expanding to include baby-gear rentals, laundry, and meal delivery.

After a major redesign of its entire service, headed by an easier-to-use app for iOS and Android, Airbnb is further refining the experience to make finding your next vacation rental a little easier. Not surprisingly, it’s turning to AI, but the focus here is on natural-language search, property comparisons, and updated ways to find what else you can do while staying at your Airbnb.

This follow-up should make it easier to find homes, experiences, or services that meet your needs — the three main parts of the redesigned app. Instead of introducing a new interface or updated visuals, Airbnb is using AI to help you find what you’re looking for more easily. Pushing aside sorting through filters, lists, and checkboxes, you’ll be able to search for a stay the way you’d actually talk about it.

The quest to make searching easier

(Image credit: Airbnb)

Like Claude or ChatGPT, Airbnb’s new AI search lets you type or speak a query, making it easier to find a stay that fits what you have in mind. You can search across homes, experiences, and services, using your own words to describe what you need, rather than trying to find the right combination of filters.

AI is also built into the filtering process. Type in a keyword, and Airbnb will suggest relevant filters to help narrow down your options. For example, searching for 'baby' can surface amenities like cribs, playgrounds, children’s books, and toys.

The app will also use AI to highlight key home features directly in search results, so you can get a better sense of what a listing offers without opening every property page. Less tapping!

(Image credit: Airbnb)

And if you’ve already saved a few contenders to your wishlist, Airbnb is adding AI-powered comparisons that put properties side by side and summarize their key features. This could be particularly useful if you’re the one in your group tasked with narrowing down the options. Instead of sending everyone a pile of listings and hoping they’ll compare them, you can get a clearer picture of how each property stacks up, and share your shortlist with the group.

Airbnb is also expanding its AI-powered customer support, with chat available in more than 50 languages, and voice support over the phone on the way.

(Image credit: Airbnb)

Airbnb is also expanding its services to help you handle more of your trip without jumping between apps. Starting in November, guests in more than 60 US cities can rent baby gear through BabyQuip, with delivery and setup, and 10% off for Airbnb guests.

Laundry pickup and delivery is coming to select US cities through Rinse, while grocery delivery is expanding to Europe alongside meal delivery from local restaurants. You’ll also find location-specific options, including ski and snowboard rentals in the French Alps and boat rentals in South Florida.

Taken together, the update builds on Airbnb’s redesigned app rather than reinventing it. AI is the main draw for finding and comparing places to stay, while the expanding services offering could make the app more useful once you’ve booked — and enable you to spend less time sorting out the logistics of your next getaway.

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