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Sponsor Voice - Capital One (0:12)

This episode is brought to you by Capital One Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks. It doesn't just help buyers find a car they love, it helps schedule a test drive, get pre approved for financing and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.

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Sponsor Voice - Grow Therapy (1:08)

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Jen Kutter (2:38)

These are the daily tech headlines for Wednesday, January 21, 2026. I'm Jen Kutter. Snap, parent company of Snapchat, reached a settlement with a 19 year old plaintiff in a social media addiction lawsuit d days before the trial would begin in Los Angeles. The terms have not been disclosed. The suit claims the algorithmic design of social media platforms led to addiction and deteriorating mental health. Other parties in the suit, including Meta, TikTok and YouTube, have not announced any pending settlements, with jury selection for the trial set for January 27th. Snap remains a defendant in other consolidated social media addiction cases. On Tuesday, OpenAI announced the start of the rollout of global age prediction for ChatGPT in order to detect minors ahead of preparations for the debut of an adult mode. OpenAI CEO of Applications Fiji Simo, said in December she expects the adult mode to go live in the first quarter of 2026. Users erroneously categorized as a minor can appeal by submitting data to identity verification service Persona, also used by Reddit and Roblox. Netflix Co CEO Greg Peters said the company's advertising business doubled revenue to 1.5 billion from 2024 to 2025 and expects 2026 to roughly double again to 3 billion. The ad supported Netflix tier, which cost $7.99 a month, had over 94 million subscribers as of May 2025. In the Q4 2025 earnings report, Netflix reported 325 million subscribers with revenue of 12.05 billion. In YouTube's annual letter to the community, CEO Neal Mohan pledged to reduce the spread of low quality AI content alongside working to strengthen safeguards for minors. Mohan also shared that later this year users will be able to use YouTube's AI creation tools to quote create a short using your own likeness and also that shorts currently average 200 billion daily views. The future AI tool improvements will also be able to produce games with a text prompt and experiment with music. The Federal Trade Commission is appealing a November 2025 ruling in the antitrust case against Meta regarding Instagram and WhatsApp deals. The FTC looked to force Meta to restructure or sell Instagram and WhatsApp in order to restore competition eliminated by the acquisitions. U.S. district Judge James Boasberg in Washington ruled Meta does not have a monopoly due to competition from TikTok. Facebook purchased Instagram in 2012, then WhatsApp in 2014, and the FTC did not block the deals at the time, instead suing in 2020, alleging a US monopoly on platforms for sharing content with friends and family. In August 2025, Adobe added some AI features to Acrobat Studio, including PDF Spaces, which supported the ability to add up to 100 documents to be AI. Summarized documents added to PDF Spaces can now use Adobe's AI assistant to generate a presentation from uploads with options for editing without needing to generate new slides, and can be shared with coworkers for further edits. Another new feature in PDF spaces enables the creation of an AI podcast from a document similar to a Notebook LM feature. The default podcast creation option has two AI hosts discuss the material One week after the Federal Communications Commission waived the requirement for Verizon to unlock phones 60 days post network activation, Verizon enacted a 365 day lock period for phones purchased through the TracFone division. The previous 60 day unlock requirement was part of a merger condition to gain approval for the Verizon purchase of TracFone. The new policy states cell phones activated on or after January 20th can be unlocked only upon request and only after 365 days of paid and active service. And according to Sensor Tower's annual State of Mobile report, consumers globally spent more on non gaming apps than Games in 2025, a trend previously noted only in select markets. The report shares approximately 85 billion was spent on apps in 2025, a 21% increase from 2024 and almost three times the amount from five years ago. Downloads of AI apps doubled to hit 3.8 billion, with the top 10 apps dominated by AI assistance, led by OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google, Gemini and Deepseek. And for social media, users spent an average of 90 minutes a day scrolling totaling approximately 2.5 trillion hours up 5% year over year. For more discussion on the Tech News of the day, subscribe to the Daily Tech news show@dailytechnewshow.com where you can also find the show notes and links to every headline. Please remember to rate and review daily tech headlines on your podcast service of choice from everyone here at Daily Tech Headlines. Thanks for listening.