Science and Technology

Mr. Romero visits Ms. Ochoa in Mexico about once a month. But when they’re apart, the A.I.-powered app transports Ms. Ochoa to Mr. Romero’s kitchen or to a wrestling tournament as he coaches his teenage son. They exchange messages on WhatsApp and video chat as Ms. Ochoa gets ready for work. In addition to the lip-dub feature, Ms. Ochoa will often use her iPad to translate their tête-à-tête, while Mr. Romero uses the Timekettle WT2 Edge — earbuds with two-way simultaneous translation that help him follow a conversation in real time.Because their work hours differ, Ms. Ochoa is usually working…

Mark Zuckerberg stood to directly address relatives of online child abuse victims in the Senate gallery on Wednesday, a first for the chief executive of Meta and a singular moment in a morning full of tense exchanges during a Judiciary Committee hearing on child safety.“I’m sorry for everything you have all been through,” Mr. Zuckerberg said, turning his back away from the bipartisan panel of Senators and toward the family members, many of whom were holding photos of their deceased loved ones. “No one should go through the things that your families have suffered.”Mr. Zuckerberg added that the company was…

Snap, the parent of the Snapchat messaging app, said on Monday that it would lay off more than 500 employees, joining other tech companies in a wave of new cost-cutting measures.The layoffs amount to 10 percent of its global work force; the majority will occur in the first quarter of 2024. “We have made the difficult decision to restructure our team,” the company said in a securities filing, adding that it would take pretax charges of $55 million to $75 million, primarily for severance and related costs.Amazon, Google and Microsoft have announced layoffs this year, after tens of thousands across…

Product placement, one of the oldest tricks in advertisers’ toolbox, is getting an A.I. makeover.New technology has made it easier to insert digital, realistic-looking versions of soda cans and shampoo onto the tables and walls of videos on YouTube and TikTok. And a growing group of creators and advertisers is grabbing at the chance for an additional revenue stream.A recent TikTok from the dancer Melissa Becraft featured a poster for Bubly, the sparkling-water brand owned by PepsiCo, hanging on the wall of her apartment as she shimmied to a Shakira song. A duo known as HiveMind chatted about bands while…