Following an outage that affected thousands of users in the United States on Monday, most users were able to access Facebook and Instagram again, according to Downdetector.com, an outage tracking website.
TakeAway Points:
- Meta Platforms’ Facebook and Instagram were largely restored for most users after an outage that impacted thousands in the U.S. on Monday, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com.
- The number of outages has come down to around 450 for Instagram and 659 for Facebook since then, Downdetector showed, as of 2:09 p.m. ET.
- Adobe on Monday said it has started publicly distributing an AI model that can generate video from text prompts, joining the growing field of companies trying to upend film and television production using generative artificial intelligence.
Facebook and Instagram are back up for the majority of US users
At its peak around 1:35 p.m. ET, there were more than 12,000 incidents of people reporting issues with Facebook and over 5,000 reports of issues with Instagram, according to Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources.
The number of outages has come down to around 450 for Instagram and 659 for Facebook since then, Downdetector showed, as of 2:09 p.m. ET.
Downdetector’s numbers are based on user-submitted reports. The actual number of affected users may vary.
Early this year, hundreds of thousands of Facebook and Instagram users were impacted globally for more than two hours by an outage that was caused by a technical issue.
There were more than 550,000 reports of disruptions for Facebook and about 92,000 for Instagram at the peak of the outage, according to Downdetector.
Adobe rolls out AI video tools
Adobe on Monday said it has started publicly distributing an AI model that can generate video from text prompts, joining the growing field of companies trying to upend film and television production using generative artificial intelligence.
The Firefly Video Model, as the technology is called, will compete with OpenAI’s Sora, which was introduced earlier this year, while TikTok owner ByteDance and Meta Platforms have also announced their video tools in recent months.
Facing much larger rivals, Adobe has staked its future on building models trained on data that it has rights to use, ensuring the output can be legally used in commercial work.
San Jose, California-based Adobe will start opening up the tool to people who have signed up for its waiting list but did not give a general release date.
While Adobe has not yet announced any customers using its video tools, it said on Monday that PepsiCo-owned Gatorade will use its image generation model for a site where customers can order custom-made bottles, and Mattel has been using Adobe tools to help design packaging for its Barbie line of dolls.
For its video tools, Adobe has aimed at making them practical for everyday use by video creators and editors, with a special focus on making the footage blend in with conventional footage, said Ely Greenfield, Adobe’s chief technology officer for digital media.
“We really focus on fine-grain control, teaching the model the concepts that video editors and videographers use – things like camera position, camera angle, and camera motion,” Greenfield told Reuters in an interview.
