Meta Builds AI Creator App to Replace Third-Party Tools

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Meta Builds AI Creator App to Replace Third-Party Tools

Meta on Wednesday launched a limited test of a standalone AI companion app for Facebook creators, designed to pull content planning, performance analysis and audience management away from external services such as ChatGPT and into Meta’s own ecosystem.

The new app, which reimagines the existing Creator Studio dashboard, puts Facebook’s AI creator assistant at its centre. The assistant, launched at the start of June, responds to plain-language questions about posting schedules, comment sentiment and audience shifts over time, replacing the analytics charts and multi-tab dashboards creators currently navigate. The app is launching to a small early-access community via waitlist rather than broadly.

The retention motive is explicit. Facebook is losing ground to TikTok and YouTube in the competition for creator time and output. A creator who builds their workflow around Meta’s own AI tools, with access to Facebook’s proprietary algorithm data that no third-party service can replicate, is less likely to migrate their audience elsewhere.

More than 500 million Facebook users watch AI-translated videos every week, with the technology able to preserve a creator’s voice and, in some cases, match lip movements to the translated speech, giving a sense of the scale at which Meta is already deploying AI within its creator infrastructure.

Beyond the assistant, the Creator Studio app will include an AI-powered comment tool that will help surface the most important comments and draft replies in the creator’s own tone. Creators can edit and approve the drafted replies before posting. Each morning, the app will present a personalised priority list: newest post performance, goal tracking and comments flagged for response.

Meta is also splitting its Professional Dashboard inside the Facebook app into separate Creator and Business versions over the coming months, consolidating creator tools from Meta Business Suite into the web experience with additions including a content calendar and bulk upload.

Wednesday’s announcement extends a pattern of rapid product launches. Last month, Meta rolled out Forum, a standalone app for Facebook Groups that functions similarly to Reddit. In April, Meta launched Instants, which lets users share disappearing photos with Instagram friends. The New York Times has reported that Meta is also building a prediction-market platform internally known as Arena, modelled on Polymarket, though no release date has been set.

The pace of releases reflects a broader claim from Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg that AI-driven productivity gains are allowing the company to build and ship new applications faster than at any previous point in its history. Whether that speed translates into creator adoption is a separate question. Meta has discontinued several creator-focused initiatives in recent years, and the credibility of the new app will depend on whether it stays funded and developed long enough for creators to build workflows around it.

WhatsApp-to-MoMo Gap Holds Back Ghana Social Commerce

Roger A. Agana
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WhatsApp-to-MoMo Gap Holds Back Ghana Social Commerce

Ghana has more than 8 million active Facebook users and a growing TikTok following, but a broken payment chain between social conversation and completed sale is preventing businesses from turning that audience into revenue, an MTN Business executive said Wednesday.

Benedict Bentil, Senior Manager at MTN Business, told the Citi Business Festival in Accra that the typical social commerce transaction in Ghana still runs through a manual sequence: a customer messages on WhatsApp, the seller directs them to send Mobile Money (MoMo), then waits for confirmation before dispatching goods. Each handoff is a point at which customers abandon the process.

“These are things we need to work on to streamline growth,” Bentil said.

The contrast with conventional e-commerce is sharp. Established platforms have largely automated the checkout process. Social commerce, which channels sales through WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, has the audience but not the infrastructure. Bentil put Ghana’s active social media reach at roughly 8 million on Facebook, more than 2 million on Instagram and a larger but unspecified number on TikTok, figures that represent a substantial pool of potential buyers businesses currently cannot reach at the point of impulse.

The fix Bentil outlined is technical. Application programming interface (API) integration into chatbots would allow a customer to move from discovery to payment inside a single conversation thread, removing the manual steps that break the buying journey. WhatsApp Business channels and MTN’s mobile money merchant services already exist, he said; the gap is in scaling them to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and microenterprises that lack the technical capacity to deploy them independently.

Bentil identified trust as a parallel obstacle, distinct from payments but equally damaging to adoption. The problem runs in both directions: buyers who refuse cash on delivery because of past disappointments, and sellers who accept payment and ship inferior goods. Bentil argued the actual rate of failed transactions is low, but the perception of risk is suppressing the market beyond what the data warrants.

“If you have a hundred transactions and one goes bad, we should try and fix the trust so people lean more on social commerce,” he said.

Verification systems, better digital record-keeping and consistent enforcement of seller standards were among the tools he cited for rebuilding confidence on both sides.

MTN has a direct commercial stake in the outcome. The company’s MoMo platform is the most widely used mobile payment system in Ghana and stands to benefit from any expansion of digital transactions. Bentil did not address potential conflicts between MTN’s commercial interests and its role as an adviser to SMEs on which payment tools to adopt.

Apple Confirms F1 Sequel, Pledges More Films for Theatres

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Apple Confirms F1 Sequel, Pledges More Films for Theatres

Apple’s entertainment chief confirmed a sequel to the $634 million hit film F1 at Cannes on Monday and pledged more theatrical releases, offering the clearest public signal yet that the company’s Hollywood ambitions will survive the transition to a new chief executive.

Eddy Cue, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Services and Health, received the 2026 Entertainment Person of the Year honour at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France. The award, presented by Cannes Lions Chief Executive Simon Cook at the Grand Théâtre Lumière, recognised Cue’s role in building Apple TV from a streaming newcomer in 2019 into a service that has now accumulated more than 840 award wins and over 3,600 nominations for its original programming.

The more immediate news from Cannes was the F1 sequel confirmation. Writers are working on a script, Cue told Reuters, with producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who shared the stage with Cue earlier in the day, adding that director Joseph Kosinski is expected to return. Bruckheimer and Kosinski also revealed a separate upcoming feature on unidentified aerial phenomena. The F1 racing drama, starring Brad Pitt, earned more than $634 million at the global box office and stands as the highest-grossing film Apple has ever produced.

“We’ve never strived to be the most. We strive to be the best,” Cue told the audience.

The strategic context behind that statement matters. Apple competes against Netflix, which releases hundreds of titles annually. Cue has consistently argued the company’s selective model, fewer titles aimed at higher quality, produces better returns in both prestige and audience loyalty. The F1 box office result and the Emmy runs for Ted Lasso and The Studio give that argument data to stand on.

In his Reuters interview, Cue named John Ternus, Apple’s incoming chief executive, as “a huge supporter and lover of our content” and said the entertainment commitment would continue under the new leadership. Tim Cook’s departure marks the most significant management change at Apple in over a decade, and Cue’s public framing at Cannes appeared designed partly to reassure the creative industry that relationships and spending commitments remain in place.

Apple last year dropped the plus sign and rebranded its streaming service from Apple TV+ to Apple TV. The company plans to release films both through the service and in cinemas, Cue said, framing theatrical and streaming as reinforcing rather than competing.

“We want to keep getting better and more,” Cue told Reuters. “So that’s what we’re aiming to do.”

Anthropic Launches Claude Tag Slack Agent for Enterprise

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Anthropic Launches Claude Tag Slack Agent for Enterprise

Anthropic on Tuesday launched Claude Tag, an AI agent that lives permanently inside Slack channels, takes on tasks, and follows up on stalled threads independently, without waiting to be summoned.

The tool replaces Anthropic’s earlier Slack chatbot and arrives with a striking internal endorsement: 65 percent of the code on Anthropic’s own product team is now generated by an internal version of Claude Tag, including most of the code that built Claude Tag itself. That figure, cited directly by the company, is the strongest proof of concept Anthropic has published for any of its enterprise products.

Claude Tag is available in beta for Claude Enterprise and Team customers, with plans to expand to other platforms in the coming weeks. It runs on Opus 4.8 and replaces the existing Claude in Slack app, which Anthropic will retire on August 3. Administrators have 30 days to migrate.

The structural difference from a conventional chatbot is significant. Each channel gets a single Claude identity that interacts with everyone. All members can see what it is working on and pick up a conversation where someone else left off. Administrators can define which tools, channels and data sources the agent can reach, with memories kept separate between departments so that a Claude configured for sales does not share context with engineering.

When ambient mode is enabled, the agent goes further. It proactively jumps into the chat of its own accord to keep the team updated, flag things from across the organisation, and follow up on threads or tasks that have been forgotten.

“Instead of a private back-and-forth, Claude Tag shows up in the open,” Rob Seaman, executive vice president and general manager of Slack, told Reuters.

The timing is deliberate. As Anthropic heads toward a likely IPO this year, the company has been keen to court enterprise customers, who represent a more predictable and sustainable revenue base than direct consumer use. Anthropic filed confidentially for a United States initial public offering on June 1, 2026, just days after closing a $65 billion Series H round at a $965 billion valuation, which placed it ahead of OpenAI’s most recent valuation of $852 billion. According to Ramp’s May AI Index, which draws on corporate spending data across more than 50,000 United States companies, Anthropic had pulled ahead of OpenAI in business adoption for the first time, with 34.4 percent of firms paying for its services against OpenAI’s 32.3 percent.

Claude Tag deepens that lead strategically. Every enterprise that grants the agent persistent access to its Slack channels, with connected tools, accumulated memory and ambient monitoring enabled, becomes substantially harder to migrate away from a rival. That vendor lock-in dynamic is one that enterprise buyers will need to weigh carefully as the product scales beyond its beta release.

“Mpaebo Kɛseɛ” Draws Massive Crowds as Worshippers Celebrate Spiritual Renewal in Accra

Prosper Kay
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“Mpaebo Kɛseɛ” Draws Massive Crowds as Worshippers Celebrate Spiritual Renewal in Accra

Thousands Flood Accra for “Mpaebo Kɛseɛ” as Global Seer Francis Amoako Attah Leads Day of Healing and Transformation

Accra witnessed a massive spiritual gathering on Wednesday as thousands of worshippers converged at the Parliament Chapel premises near Odorkor Official Town Market for the “Mpaebo Kɛseɛ” (Great Prayer) programme led by the Global Seer, Francis Amoako Attah.

What began in the early hours of the morning quickly grew into an overflowing crowd, with participants arriving from across Accra and surrounding communities for a full day of prayer, worship, and prophetic ministry.

The programme, which started with early morning intercession and progressed into the main service at 9:00am, was marked by intense moments of worship, collective prayer sessions, and what organisers described as powerful prophetic ministrations.

Attendees reported experiences of healing, emotional restoration, and spiritual renewal throughout the day, with many attributing personal breakthroughs and answered prayers to the gathering. Several participants were seen sharing testimonies of relief from long-standing challenges, while others described a renewed sense of hope and direction.

Francis Amoako Attah, widely known for his prophetic teachings and national commentaries, led the session with messages focused on faith, perseverance, and divine intervention in personal and national matters. His ministry emphasised prayer as a tool for transformation, both individually and collectively.

The event reinforced the strong presence of large-scale prayer movements within Ghana’s charismatic and Pentecostal Christian communities, where all-day crusades and vigils remain a central expression of worship and spiritual engagement.

Organisers said the turnout far exceeded expectations, describing the atmosphere as one of unity and spiritual intensity, with worshippers filling the chapel grounds and surrounding areas.

By the close of the programme, participants left the venue with renewed optimism, as organisers framed the gathering as a landmark moment of spiritual impact and communal faith experience.

OpenAI Unveils Jalapeño Chip to Cut Inference Costs

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OpenAI Unveils Jalapeño Chip to Cut Inference Costs

OpenAI on Wednesday unveiled its first custom AI chip, designed in nine months partly using the company’s own models to accelerate development, then tested by running those same models on the finished hardware.

The chip, named Jalapeño, was jointly developed with semiconductor firm Broadcom and is built exclusively for inference: the constant, costly process of generating responses for users of ChatGPT, Codex and other OpenAI products. Engineering samples are already running machine learning workloads in the lab at production target frequency and power, including the GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark model.

The self-referential design loop, where OpenAI’s own models helped build the chip that will run future models, points to where the broader AI industry is heading. The companies say the nine-month design-to-tape-out cycle may be the fastest ever achieved in high-performance advanced semiconductors.

“This is just the beginning of a multi-generation roadmap,” said Broadcom President and Chief Executive Hock Tan.

Jalapeño is an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), a class of chip that is less flexible than Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs) but less expensive and built for specific tasks. OpenAI has been one of the heaviest buyers of Nvidia’s hardware since the generative AI boom began in late 2022, and demand for its services has grown faster than its ability to secure sufficient silicon from existing suppliers.

OpenAI President Greg Brockman previously explained the company’s approach: “We have a deep understanding of the workload. We’ve really been looking for specific workloads that are underserved.” The inference bottleneck is the clearest of those. Every user query to ChatGPT triggers an inference run, and at OpenAI’s scale, even small reductions in cost per query translate into hundreds of millions of dollars in savings annually.

Canadian firm Celestica handled board, rack and production system integration, while Broadcom managed chip implementation and high-performance networking. Both the processors and servers are intended solely for OpenAI’s internal operations.

Initial deployment is targeted for the end of 2026, with plans to expand to gigawatt-scale data centres alongside Microsoft and other partners in the years ahead. The scale of that ambition, data centres drawing power on the order of small cities, signals that Jalapeño is not a cost-cutting experiment but the foundation of a long-term infrastructure strategy.

The chip launch comes as OpenAI prepares for a heavily anticipated public offering, and the move toward custom silicon may reassure investors the company has a credible path toward profitability by driving down the unit economics of AI inference. Meta, Amazon and Google have each pursued similar custom silicon strategies through partnerships with Broadcom and Marvell.

Ghana Arrests Lead Suspect in 320kg Meth Smuggling Case

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Ghana Arrests Lead Suspect in 320kg Meth Smuggling Case

Ghana arrested the chief suspect in a 320 kilogram methamphetamine case traced from Accra to Australia, with further arrests pending on the same day, officials said Wednesday.

The Narcotics Control Commission (NACOC) disclosed the breakthrough at its annual drug destruction ceremony in Accra on June 24, 2026. Director-General Brigadier General Maxwell Obuba Mantey said a three month joint operation involving NACOC and the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) preceded the arrest, with officers spending extended periods away from home and conducting surveillance over several days. The suspect’s name and nationality were not released.

Australian authorities intercepted the consignment after it arrived in shipping containers declared as bags of charcoal from Ghana. Three people face charges in Australia in connection with the case: British national Emaa Hussen, 34, and an Australian couple who appeared before the Adelaide Magistrates Court in May 2026 and were remanded in custody until September 2026.

Brig. Gen. Mantey made clear the operation was not finished.

“This afternoon, we will be picking more,” he told attendees at the ceremony.

He warned that no institutional position, including membership of Ghana’s own security services, would shield anyone named in the investigation. NACOC had publicly confirmed the Australian interception on June 19, 2026, five days before the arrest, saying it was coordinating with domestic and international partners to identify those responsible on Ghana’s end.

The same ceremony saw NACOC destroy more than 9.6 tonnes of confiscated narcotics under a process authorised by court order. The Ghana Standards Authority tested samples at two stages, before and after court approval, to guard against any substitution or tampering of exhibits.

Copilot Lands Air Canada Flight After Captain Falls Ill

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Copilot Lands Air Canada Flight After Captain Falls Ill

A first officer safely landed an Air Canada regional flight in Boston on Wednesday after the captain suffered a medical emergency, with 61 passengers aboard.

Air Canada Flight 7664 had taken off from Newark Liberty International Airport bound for Halifax Stanfield International Airport in Nova Scotia when the captain was incapacitated about an hour into the journey. The first officer assumed command, declared a diversion and put the Dash 8-400 turboprop down at Boston Logan International Airport at approximately 2 p.m. local time.

Emergency crews were waiting on the runway. Boston Emergency Medical Services personnel brought a stretcher to the cockpit and transferred the captain to an ambulance within minutes of touchdown. The pilot was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital.

The flight is operated by PAL Airlines, a Canadian regional carrier running routes under the Air Canada Express banner. The Dash 8-400 is a twin turboprop with a typical seating capacity of up to 74 passengers. Wednesday’s flight carried 61. Commercial aviation protocols require the qualified remaining officer to take sole command if a captain is declared incapacitated, with removal from the flight deck immediate.

Both the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Massachusetts State Police confirmed a crew member had suffered a medical emergency forcing the diversion. Air Canada said the crew followed standard safety procedures throughout. The captain’s condition had not been publicly disclosed as of Wednesday evening.

Medical diversions involving commercial flights are subject to standard review by the FAA and the Transportation Safety Board of Canada.

Presidential Committee’s findings contradict Fourth Estate claims on NLA-KGL deal – former NLA Official

Prosper Kay
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Presidential Committee’s findings contradict Fourth Estate claims on NLA-KGL deal – former NLA Official

A fierce war of words has erupted following a public statement issued by the former Head of Public Relations at the National Lottery Authority, Dr. Razak Kojo Opoku, who has vehemently accused investigative media outlet The Fourth Estate of peddling “barefaced lies” and “misleading the public” regarding the ongoing review of the National Lottery Authority (NLA) and KGL Group partnership agreement.

The prominent political and social commentator argues that, recent claims by the media house suggesting that a government-instituted committee’s findings validate their previous reportage are entirely false, malicious, and a calculated attempt to twist facts.

The Core of the Dispute

The controversy stems from a series of publications by The Fourth Estate which heavily criticized the NLA-KGL deal, labeling it “terrible” and aggressively demanding its immediate termination.

In a sharp rebuttal, Dr. Opoku pointed out that in the interest of transparency, the President of the Republic ordered a committee to investigate the matter. However, the committee’s final directive fundamentally contradicted the media house’s agenda. Rather than canceling the contract, the committee recommended a stay of execution and a structured renegotiation of the financial terms to maximize benefits for the state.

“The Fourth Estate, right from the beginning, had been calling for the abrogation of the NLA-KGL deal,” Dr. Opoku stated. “However, this description has never been backed with any reasonable conclusion or substantial evidence by the Fourth Estate or its surrogates.”

“Why the Backtracking?”

Dr. Opoku questioned why The Fourth Estate is now allegedly attempting to align its previous narrative with the committee’s actual findings, calling out the media organization for what he described as a lack of professional integrity.

“The Fourth Estate maliciously and mischievously labelled the KGL-NLA deal as terrible and called for the abrogation of the deal. It never called for renegotiation,” Dr. Opoku argued. “Why the backtracking? Why not be truthful? We expected that, if not for cheap sentimentalism and parochialism, the Fourth Estate would have rendered an unqualified apology to KGL.”

He further noted that the media house’s lack of relevance to the actual governance process is evident in their exclusion from the official proceedings.

“Again, if the Fourth Estate were that consequential, it would have been considered as part of the ongoing renegotiation. No one at the Fourth Estate or among its surrogates can pressure the Committee, which has the mandate, to rush and interfere with its professional work,” he added.

Renegotiations Strictly Commercial, Not for Social Media

The statement emphasized that all parties involved in the NLA-KGL agreement are actively engaged in a lawful, structured process aimed at securing Ghana’s economic interests. Dr. Opoku warned that state-level commercial agreements cannot be influenced by media campaigns or public sensationalism.

“Renegotiations are NOT done on social media or at the headquarters of the Fourth Estate,” Dr. Opoku maintained. “This is an important national exercise, devoid of sensationalism, propaganda, and the twisting of narratives. All parties sincerely appreciate the urgency of this important renegotiation, but this is strictly a legal and commercial agreement that must adhere to the legal rights of each party.”

Defense of Indigenous Businesses

Concluding his remarks, Dr. Opoku defended the track record of KGL Group, a major corporate entity and a prominent headline sponsor of Ghana’s national football team, the Black Stars. He criticized The Fourth Estate and its parent organization, the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), accusing them of routinely trying to dismantle local corporate successes.

“KGL is fully committed to the Republic and will never waste its time on those who seek to undermine and destroy indigenous businesses, as is the habit of the Fourth Estate and the Media Foundation for West Africa,” Dr. Opoku concluded.

At the time of going to press, the leadership of The Fourth Estate had not yet issued a formal response to Dr. Opoku’s blistering critique.

Ghana’s Women’s Bank Awaits Licence After GH¢500m Budget Push

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Ghana’s Women’s Bank Awaits Licence After GH¢500m Budget Push

Ghana has applied to the central bank for a licence to run a dedicated women’s bank, backed by more than GH¢500 million in budget allocations spread across 2025 and 2026.

Deputy Finance Minister Thomas Nyarko Ampem told Parliament on Wednesday that the implementing entity, WDB GH Ltd, was formally incorporated on January 26, 2026, and that a licence application has since been filed with the Bank of Ghana (BoG). The bank cannot open for business until the BoG approves it.

The funding scale shifted sharply between the two budgets. The government set aside GH¢51.3 million in 2025 and followed with GH¢450 million in 2026, a near ninefold increase that points either to a substantial expansion of the bank’s design or an initial underestimate of what building a fully licensed institution actually costs. The combined commitment tops GH¢500 million.

Five months after incorporation, WDB GH Ltd remains a registered entity without a trading licence. Ampem gave Parliament no timeline for when the BoG would respond to the application.

He was answering a question from Techiman South Member of Parliament Martin Kweku Adjei-Mensah Korsah. Ampem told the House that all preparatory groundwork is in place and that the Finance Minister will deliver a comprehensive project update at the Mid-Year Fiscal Policy Review in July.

The Women’s Bank Project targets women entrepreneurs and women-led businesses, a group the government acknowledges has been consistently locked out of formal credit. The initiative sits within a broader push to widen banking access across underserved populations in Ghana.

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