Meta-owned messaging platform WhatsApp has announced a series of new updates designed to improve how users communicate in group chats, introducing enhanced polls, a new @all mention feature and the ability to create new chats from existing groups.

The latest additions build on several group chat improvements introduced earlier this year, as WhatsApp continues to refine one of its most widely used features. The updates aim to help users make decisions more quickly, improve communication in busy conversations and make it easier to organise discussions without creating unnecessary clutter.

New tools to simplify group decisions

WhatsApp has expanded its polling feature with three new options designed to make group decision-making more efficient.

Users can now set a closing time for polls, ensuring that voting automatically ends at a specified deadline. Poll creators also have the option to hide participants’ names, allowing members to vote privately. In addition, poll questions can now be edited within 15 minutes of being posted, making it possible to correct mistakes or clarify wording without creating a new poll.

The changes are intended to make organising meetings, events and group activities quicker and more straightforward.

New ways to keep everyone informed

Among the most significant additions is the introduction of @all, a feature that allows users to notify every member of a group with a single mention, rather than tagging individuals separately. The feature is designed for announcements such as schedule changes, event reminders or urgent updates. In groups with more than 32 members, only administrators will be able to use @all.

WhatsApp says users will continue to have control over their notifications and can choose to mute @all alerts through the app’s notification settings if they prefer. The platform has also introduced a feature that allows users to create a new group chat directly from an existing one. Instead of adding participants individually, members of an existing group can be selected with a single tap to start a separate conversation.

The latest updates follow the introduction earlier this year of group message history, member tags and event reminders, as WhatsApp continues to expand the tools available for managing group conversations.

TikTok has announced a new set of initiatives focused on cracking down AI spam and how social media users can spot it. With more than 1 billion people using the app each month in 2025, the ByteDance‑owned company has become one of the world’s biggest public stages — a place where entertainment, commentary, activism and misinformation all travel at the same speed. And as AI‑generated content floods social feeds everywhere, TikTok is trying to stop its own platform from becoming a playground for synthetic junk.

The company’s latest update focuses on two fronts: helping users understand AI better, and stopping AI‑generated spam from overwhelming the real creators who keep the app alive.

AI literacy with focus on manipulated content

TikTok is expanding its AI literacy push with new resources created alongside NAMLE and AI and deepfakes expert Henry Ajder. The aim is to give users something more useful than vague safety tips — practical explanations of how AI tools work, how to spot manipulated content, and how to use AI without accidentally contributing to the mess.

It’s also doubling down on expert‑led content. Through the NoFiltr programme, launched in November 2025, helped trusted organisations to generate more than 200 million views with content that enables people better understand and use AI. TikTok says it has already invested more than $4 million behind the initiative and plans to keep scaling it.

“TikTok’s early and scaled implementation of Content Credentials demonstrates how provenance can deliver meaningful value in real-world environments around the world,” said Clement Wolf, Chair of the C2PA. “Bringing that experience to the Steering Committee will help accelerate our collective work to make transparency a consistent and trusted part of the digital ecosystem”.

AI spam is getting smarter

AI creativity is exploding on TikTok, but so is AI‑generated spam. The platform removed over 86 million fake accounts in the first three months of this year — a number that shows just how aggressively spam networks try to hijack trending topics.

Now TikTok is testing new detection systems aimed specifically at accounts that mass‑produce AI‑generated content on sensitive subjects like politics, current events, financial advice and medical claims.

Transparency is becoming a requirement

Two years ago, TikTok became the first major video platform to adopt C2PA Content Credentials, a technology that helps people see when a video has been generated or heavily edited using AI. It’s now joining the C2PA Steering Committee, giving it a seat at the table as transparency standards evolve across the industry.

So far, TikTok has labelled over 3 billion videos as AI‑generated using a mix of Content Credentials, creator‑applied labels and invisible watermarking.

Alongside safety measures, TikTok is still building creative AI tools like Smart Split and AI Outline, and testing features such as Manage Topics, which let users control how much AI‑generated content appears in their feed.

At the Visa Payments Forum (VPF), which took place in Paris earlier this month, bringing together payment industry leaders to explore the future of payments, Visa has announced the execution of live agentic commerce transactions across Europe, with AI agents carrying out purchases at participating merchant websites on behalf of cardholders. The transactions are now taking place in live environments, marking an advance beyond testing at controlled storefronts, with AI agents now transacting based on cardholder instructions directly with independent merchants.

The global payment company says that these transactions were carried with AI agents being used to browse products, select items and initiating purchases, acting within consumer-defined parameters. Visa connects banks, merchants and AI systems via its network to enable secure, authenticated agentic transactions in line with European regulatory requirements.

Selected Merchants Join Visa’s AI Trial

Visa has and continues to support the execution of live agentic commerce transactions in Europe, working with over 30 European issuers to enable AI agents to make purchases on behalf of cardholders, with participating merchants including lastminute.com, Frasers, Cleverbridge and BrickDepot.

All the AI-enabled transactions span multiple sectors including travel, retail and e-commerce, demonstrating how agentic commerce can begin to operate across different real‑world consumer use cases.

“We’re now seeing AI agents buy on behalf of people directly with independent merchants,” said Mathieu Altwegg, Head of Product and Solutions for Visa in Europe. “The next step is to scale this by bringing the whole ecosystem together – from standards and infrastructure to partners and enablers – with trust built in from the start. It’s the same approach we took to scale contactless, and it’s how this next wave of commerce will take shape.”

Merchants participate for the first time

Merchants’ participation was enabled through Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol (TAP) and Agent Directory – designed to help merchants to securely recognise and work with verified AI agents across different platforms and environments. These capabilities provide a consistent, secure signal of agent identity, allowing merchants to distinguish trusted AI interactions from non‑verified traffic, while maintaining control over how agents access their sites, surface products, and complete transactions.

Rather than requiring new infrastructure, these signals can be integrated into existing risk, policy and user experience frameworks. TAP is designed to work alongside both existing and emerging commerce protocols, allowing merchants to adopt it in a way that fits their preferred platforms and underlying infrastructure without disruption.

Banks Completing Live AI‑Executed Transactions

The issuing banks who have completed live, agent‑executed transactions at participating merchants – authenticated using Visa Payment Passkeys in support of issuer’s compliance with Strong Customer Authentication requirements – include: Barclays, BBVA, CaixaBank, HSBC UK, ING, Klarna, and Revolut, amongst other companies.

Visa is aiming to scale and expand agentic commerce across sectors and markets in Europe, with the model also being extended to support commercial and B2B payment scenarios.