Meta is working on a tool to ID images and video created with its new image generation model, Muse Image. The company showed off a preview of the web-based tool that can check for the invisible watermarks used by the new model.
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This watermarking system, called Content Seal, remains in place "even when cropped, compressed, resized, or screenshotted," Meta explains in a blog post. "We're previewing a detection tool that lets you check whether an image carries a Content Seal watermark, providing an initial way to help you better understand if an image was made with Meta AI."
Content Seal seems to be a somewhat new approach for Meta. The version that's part of Muse Image is proprietary, though the company has previously released open-source versions of the tech, Meta told Engadget. Meta's new models don't include any visible watermarks, like some previous versions of Meta AI that added a small logo to the bottom right corner.
For now, Meta AI's detection abilities are limited to images that are created or edited with Muse Image, though the company said it plans to expand Content Seal watermarks to AI-generated and edited videos as well. Meta is also working on a separate video generation model called Muse Video that will be "coming soon."
I tried out the new detection feature on images I created today with Meta AI and the web-based tool was able to detect a watermark for edited images and entirely AI-made creations (like the one pictured above). It also found the watermark in screenshots of my images. "A positive result means that the image was generated or edited using the Meta AI app or meta.ai," the company explains in an FAQ. "A negative result means it is unlikely that the image was processed using Meta AI app or meta.ai."
Interestingly, Meta AI's new detection abilities don't seem to be part of the Meta AI app yet. When I asked Meta's app-based assistant about an image the web tool had identified as AI-made, it replied that it did not have the ability to check. "I can't tell you definitively if this specific image was made with Meta Al just by looking at it," it said. "Meta Al doesn't automatically watermark images, and I don't have a tool that can detect which Al model made an existing image."
Meta has previously faced some criticism for how it labels and identifies AI-generated material in its apps. The Oversight Board told the company earlier this year that it was "concerned" that Meta was "inconsistently implementing" digital watermarks on AI content created by its own tools.
The new feature does still seem to have some other limitations, though. Content Seal is not compatible with SynthID or C2PA Content Credentials, two established watermarking methods used by other companies. The web-based feature was unable to identify images created or edited with earlier versions of Meta's AI models in my testing. When I added images created in older chats with Meta AI, it was unable to tell me if the image was made with its AI. The feature also appears, for some reason, to be subject to Meta's rate limits. After uploading a handful of examples, I was alerted that I had reached my "daily limit on identification checks." %!s()
Perplexity could be the latest entrant to the red-hot AI coding wars.
The San Francisco-based AI search startup has built an internal AI coding tool that it may launch publicly later down the line, a person familiar with the matter said.
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For now, Perplexity has codenamed the tool "Teammate," and its engineers have been using it since May, according to screenshots obtained by Business Insider.
It's unclear exactly if or when Perplexity, which was valued at $20 billion in a funding round last year, will launch the product. If it does, it would put Perplexity — originally focused on an AI-powered search engine that competes with Google — much closer to vying for supremacy with Cursor, Anthropic, and OpenAI, all of which have built widely-used AI coding products.
Teammate is meant to oversee softwareprojects from start to finish, according to an internal announcement seen by Business Insider.
"It's built for long-horizon engineering work: owning projects, investigating issues, and monitoring services," the announcement reads.
A Perplexity spokesperson declined to comment.
Perplexity engineers have given the tool tasks such as finding bugs in internal systems, screenshots show.
The AI tool is model-agnostic, meaning that it's not built on any particular chatbot, the person familiar with the matter said.
Perplexity's chief technology officer, Denis Yarats, has also urged the startup's engineers to use AI for coding.
A few weeks before Teammate launched internally, the executive wrote in messages viewed by Business Insider that by the end of the year or sooner, software engineers should "stop looking at code" and just use AI.
Yarats also defended AI against accusations that it produces "slop," or poor-quality code.
"Slop is not going to be a thing" as long as the code it generates passes quality checks, Yarats wrote.
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Charles Rollet is BI's tech correspondent in San Francisco. Prior to joining BI, Charles worked at TechCrunch covering startups and VC. Charles is based in the Bay Area, where he enjoys hiking with his dogs. You can contact Charles securely on Signal at charlesrollet.12 or +1-628-282-2811.
Young women are moving away from exclusive heterosexuality faster than young men.
In a recent poll, Gallup found that LGBTQ+ identification has more than doubled since 2012, with especially high rates among Gen Z women, or those born between 1997 and 2012. In 2023, 28.5% of Gen Z women identified as LGBTQ+, compared with 10.6% of Gen Z men.
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As researchers who study sexuality, gender and young adulthood, we, along with our former colleague Sarah R. Young, have tracked these patterns in our Human Sexualities Research Lab since 2011. The national trend matches what our interdisciplinary team—spanning psychology, social work and gender studies—has documented over a decade.
Our most recent study asked whether young women and men are changing in similar ways across three measures of sexual orientation: sexual attraction, or who someone sees as a sexual partner; sexual behavior, or who their sexual contacts or partners actually are; and self-identification, or how they label their sexuality. Our findings suggest they are not. In our analysis, this gender gap is not only about who claims an LGBTQ+ identity; it is also about how the boundaries of heterosexuality are changing.
In a study now under review, our team examined 15 years of responses from more than 10,000 public university undergraduates in New York state between 2011 and 2026. We also analyzed more than 700 open-ended responses from 2024 and 2025 in which the same student population explained why they chose their particular sexual identities.
Our research found that, across 15 years, young women have steadily become less likely to report being exclusively attracted to the other sex. In 2011, about 22% of female students reported attraction that was not exclusively to men; by 2026, that had increased to close to 50%. Similar movement appeared across sexual behavior and identity: The share of women who reported not having exclusively male sexual partners increased from 8% to 35%, while the share identifying as something other than exclusively heterosexual increased from 18% to 44%. These trends were broadly consistent across racial groups.
In our survey, students rated sexual attraction on a scale from exclusively other-sex attraction (women attracted only to men; men attracted only to women) to exclusively same-sex attraction (women attracted only to women; men attracted only to men). For young women, the shift was not mainly from exclusive attraction to men to exclusive attraction to women. Instead, women's responses spread across the scale, from mostly attracted to men to mostly attracted to women. The largest change was a decline in exclusive attraction to men.
Young men have barely budged
Young men showed no comparable long-term shift and instead remained concentrated in exclusive heterosexuality; any movement away from that was limited and less sustained. The share of male students reporting attraction that was not exclusively to women remained nearly unchanged: about 14% in 2011 and 13% in 2026. This lack of movement was also seen in behavior and identity.
Among students who identified as something other than exclusively straight, male students were more likely to report exclusively gay identities than female students were to report exclusively lesbian identities. This is consistent with gender norms that leave men less room for sexual ambiguity and sort male desire into either entirely straight or entirely gay.
The pandemic didn't start the trend
Researchers and journalists have suggested COVID-era lockdowns changed conditions for exploring sexuality and gender: Social life moved online, dating was interrupted, and some people had more time for reflection, online connection and experimentation away from peer scrutiny.
Our research does show a pandemic-era shift. Around 2020, more women reported being attracted to people other than just men, a change that leveled off somewhat after 2023. But COVID-19 lockdowns did not create the broader trend. Among women, movement away from exclusive heterosexuality was already visible before 2020 and has since continued along the same general path.
In contrast, there was no steady, long-term movement among men away from exclusive heterosexuality. The changes we observed were smaller and more concentrated around the pandemic and the years that immediately followed.
Why the ground shifted for women
To understand why these changes matter, consider what feminist writer Adrienne Rich argued more than four decades ago: Heterosexuality has never simply described who someone desires. As a social expectation, it has helped define women and men as complementary but unequal. It gives men greater authority and social status, encourages women to organize their attention, care and futures around men, and makes that arrangement appear normal, natural and even romantic. As the norm, it also stigmatizes those who do not conform.
Similar efforts to reimagine masculinity have existed for decades, but they have had less cultural reach and have not loosened masculinity's reliance on heterosexuality to the same extent. For many, masculinity is still tied to heterosexual dominance, sexual confidence with women and distance from anything seen as gay or feminine.
Feminist progress loosened assumptions that men and women naturally complete one another through heterosexual relationships. As gender becomes less tightly bound to heterosexuality, marriage and family, some people have found room for exploration. Others have responded by trying to restore more traditional views of masculinity, femininity and heterosexual roles.
That may explain why public arguments about what young adults should want—in dating, sex, marriage, family and identity—so often circle back to gender.
Whereas some young adults embrace queer, pansexual, nonbinary or fluid self-descriptions, others turn to ideals that restore traditional roles: "trad wife" femininity, which casts homemaking and deference as aspirational; "feminine energy" dating advice that prizes softness, receptivity and letting one's partner lead; male dominance promoted across the manosphere; or claims that men and women are naturally suited to opposite roles. These attempts to restore traditional gender roles offer certainty as expectations linking gender, sexuality, relationships and adulthood weaken.
Our findings don't just tell the story of young people becoming less heterosexual or young women becoming more queer. Instead, we believe they support the idea that heterosexuality may no longer organize gender in quite the same way for women and men. For young women, its boundaries appear more permeable. For young men, heterosexuality remains bound to masculinity, status and social recognition.
The larger question is what happens as these young adults carry different relationships with gender and heterosexuality beyond college. Those relationships will shape, and be shaped by, dating, families, workplaces, politics and law. They will also face expectations about what women and men should want, with all the pressures, backlash, policing and resistance that come with them.
In our analysis, the gap between women and men may persist unless masculinity itself becomes less dependent on dominance, control and compulsory heterosexuality.
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Young women are identifying as less straight; young men, not so much (2026, July 7)
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When Sally, 74, bought her two-bedroom flat in 2021, she hoped it would be the home she could peacefully retire in.
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But she says buying a leasehold home has led to terrible stress.
There are around five million leaseholders in England and Wales. Sally is one of over 1,000 people the BBC spoke to in an attempt to understand the pressures on leaseholders. Most said that fast rising service changes and ground rent costs make them feel they have little control over their own homes.
When she moved into her London flat, Sally says service charges were around £2,600 a year. One year, they totalled more than £5,400.
"That was a really bad year. Me and my fellow owners were very stressed and anxious. There were tears and I remember us talking about how we were going to pay."
Now, the government wants to fundamentally change how flats are owned.
Under its Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill, new leasehold flats will be banned and replaced with commonhold, a system where residents collectively own and manage their buildings.
"The people who should own buildings, and who should exercise control over their management, shared facilities and related costs are not third-party landlords but the people who live in flats within them and who have a direct stake in their upkeep," said Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook, in a speech in April.
Image source, Anadolu via Getty Images
Image caption,
Matthew Pennycook: "The people who should own buildings, and who should exercise control over their management...are not third-party landlords but the people who live in flats"
Freeholders argue that the English Housing Survey suggests 93% of leaseholders living in flats are satisfied with being an owner occupier (the survey doesn't ask specifically about being a leaseholder).
Despite this, the government is introducing reforms widely seen as the biggest shake-up of home ownership in decades.
But as commonhold moves closer to becoming the default for new-build flats, questions remain over whether it can avoid creating a new set of challenges for homeowners. And can a system that has existed for centuries really be replaced - or will a whole new set of problems emerge?
"Feudal" system
To understand the complexities of today's leasehold system, described by many, including Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook, as "feudal", we have to go back almost 1,000 years.
In the Middle Ages, William the Conqueror took control of England's land and granted parts of it to loyal nobles, who leased it to others for a fixed term.
While today's leasehold system is very different, critics argue the basic principle remains the same - homeowners pay for the right to occupy land they do not fully own.
For almost 60 years, successive governments have tried to reform it, with one alternative repeatedly put forward: commonhold.
It was first introduced into law under Tony Blair's government in 2004, but developers have rarely chosen it. According to the Land Registry, there are only 18 commonhold developments in England.
Commonhold is a type of home ownership where flat owners have a share in running their building. There is no freeholder, and residents vote on decisions about shared spaces and maintenance. Homeowners are expected to pay into a reserve fund and either manage the property themselves or appoint a managing agent.
Image source, Getty Images
Image caption,
Commonhold was introduced under Tony Blair's government in 2004, but it has rarely been used for new developments
Nick Hopkins, Professor of Land Law at UCL and specialist adviser to the House of Commons Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee - the group of MPs scrutinising the draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill - says that after years of looking into the issue he is "convinced" commonhold is the right direction for the government to go in.
He says flat owners would still have to pay towards the upkeep of their building, but they would have "much more autonomy" over decision-making under the proposals.
John Bartholomew, 81, and his wife have lived in one of England's commonhold developments, in Somerset, for around 12 years.
The development consists of two blocks of flats and five town houses. They have an annual general meeting and come together to discuss issues such as the shared car park.
He says he has been lucky to live in a place where people agree on the work that needs to be done.
"If a renegade came in, we might struggle," he says.
"If we want something done, we have to agree that part of the fee will be put to that purpose, like the repainting of the sheds."
Freeholders argue that they act as "stewards" of buildings.
They point to research by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), which they say suggests Scotland's commonhold-like system has created "major hurdles" in carrying out essential building maintenance, with 28% of buildings in critical disrepair.
Image caption,
Professor Nick Hopkins says he is convinced commonhold is the right direction for housing reform in England and Wales, with similar ownership models already common around the world.
Similar concerns were raised in evidence to MPs scrutinising the draft legislation.
Mari Knowles, a landlord and tenant lawyer, told the Select Committee there was a risk of a "stalemate situation" where residents may not agree on paying for maintenance and investment in a building.
She said she had worked with resident-managed buildings that "traditionally have not paid into the reserve fund... now the buildings are severely dilapidated, and they are all looking at five-figure or six-figure bills."
Freeholders
Under the leasehold system, the freeholder appoints a managing agent to maintain and service the common parts of a building. Flat owners are then given the bills.
Leaseholders are also legally obliged to pay ground rent - a fee paid for the land beneath their building - to the freeholder. Depending on the terms of the lease, the amount can either double at fixed intervals or increase in line with inflation, which can make a property harder to sell, mortgage or remortgage.
Freeholds can be bought and sold between investors who do not live in the building, and sometimes not even in the country, meaning the English system of flat ownership has become "financialised", according to Hopkins.
He believes a move to commonhold would change that, ensuring "the only financial interest in the block is with those living in it."
Under the proposed plans, ground rents will also be capped at £250 before falling to a "peppercorn" rate - effectively zero - after 40 years. In a debate in Parliament on Thursday, a number of MPs called for that process to be sped up - and described ground rents as "money for nothing".
Freeholders say this overlooks the long-term oversight and legal accountability they provide, including maintaining buildings and acting as an independent party when disputes arise.
Arguments over costs
The BBC wrote to all of the groups that run commonhold developments in England and Wales, and not all described a harmonious way of living.
One resident described commonhold as a "nightmare".
He says one flat owner has refused to pay towards maintenance and other residents now have to pay more to cover that share. The collective is now £10,000 in debt.
"The government is pushing commonhold forward, but it's not the way to go. It's terrible - a disaster."
Due to the ongoing dispute, the man did not want to be named for this article, but said the leasehold system would have offered more protection in his case because, "if a leaseholder doesn't pay there is something in the contract that will say 'you forfeit the lease'. With commonhold, that doesn't happen, so the payments fall on everyone else."
Image source, PA Media
Image caption,
The BBC contacted every known commonhold development in England and Wales, with residents describing mixed experiences of managing their buildings
A freeholder can seek to repossess someone's home if a leaseholder doesn't pay service charges, something that will also be abolished under the reforms. In a commonhold, disputes between owners must be resolved through the courts. Under the changes, in the most extreme cases, homeowners who refuse to pay could be forced to sell their home to settle debt.
Hopkins accepts that commonhold is "not a panacea for everything that can go wrong when you own a flat," but says it is "the right legal basis to have to deal with the issues that can go wrong".
He says commonhold will require "a bit of a cultural change" and that people will need to view themselves as "stewards" of their building.
English system is a global outlier
One of the main arguments from Hopkins and many others is that commonhold, or similar forms of ownership, already work in much of the rest of the world.
Dr Cathy Sherry, Professor at Macquarie Law School in Australia, has studied property law and ownership across the world. She agrees there is no perfect way of owning buildings but believes England and Wales should move to commonhold.
Australia uses a system known as strata, which Sherry describes as a form of commonhold similar to the condominium model used in the United States and other countries.
"The reason why we have strata and condominiums is ex-British colonies were settled by people, the working class of Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland, and they actively did not want the emergence of a landed aristocracy."
Sherry, who was also a technical adviser to the Law Commission's review of commonhold, describes leasehold as "deeply unfair".
Image source, Cathy Sherry
Image caption,
Cathy Sherry says leasehold is "deeply unfair" and believes commonhold offers a fairer system of home ownership
She says the Australian system is "much better than leasehold" because ownership and building management are set out in legislation, rather than relying on millions of different leases.
Under the government's proposals, there would also be standard rules around how commonhold buildings are managed.
The Residential Freehold Association (RFA) argue the picture is more complicated.
They point to research from Your Strata Property suggesting only 30% of committee members in Australia's strata system considered themselves "very knowledgeable" about strata law, while 70% admitted to having limited or no confidence in their legal understanding.
They argue this can result in poor governance, legal non-compliance and deferred maintenance - all risks in collectively owned building
Converting to commonhold
Although commonhold has been an option for developers for more than 20 years, they have continued to build leasehold blocks. One reason was reluctance from lenders to provide mortgages for commonhold properties because they were seen as an untested risk.
John Bartholomew says that when he tried to draw equity from his home he was told: "We don't lend to commonhold."
He believes one of the biggest challenges is getting institutions to treat commonhold owners "like any other householders" rather than "second or third-class citizens".
Charles Roe, former Director of Mortgages at UK Finance, which represents around 120 mortgage lenders, told MPs in March that estate agents, valuers, surveyors and conveyancers would all need to be brought up to speed, and that the transition for consumers and the industry would be a "big piece of work".
He said lenders' main concern is what happens when existing leasehold buildings convert to commonhold.
And that is arguably the most complex part of the government's plans.
Campaigners are calling for "commonhold now" and a select committee report released in May called for the government to "go further and faster". But Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook has sought to manage expectations.
In April he said the "outright and immediate abolition of the leasehold system in England and Wales" would be "almost certainly impossible".
Converting a block to commonhold means transferring ownership from the freeholder to the residents, and how existing freeholders should be compensated is disputed.
The previous government tried to make buying a share of freehold cheaper through the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024. But those changes were challenged in the courts by freeholders, who argued the reforms breached their human rights.
The government won that case, but the decision is now under appeal.
Barrister Dr Douglas Maxwell told MPs it was "almost inevitable" that further legal challenges would be brought under human rights law once the new legislation is introduced.
Meanwhile, court battles could slow attempts to make it easier for residents to convert their buildings.
Can England follow Scotland?
Despite what has happened in Australia and other countries, there is no direct comparison for dismantling a leasehold system on the scale of England and Wales.
Scotland did not so much reform leasehold as remove a much smaller version of it.
Ken Gerber, a solicitor in Glasgow, explains that most residential properties in Scotland are already owned outright after a feudal-style system of land ownership was abolished in 2000. Long leases were automatically converted to ownership in 2015.
But he says the scale was very different. In 2006 there were around 2,500 long leases in Scotland - roughly 2% of all residential properties.
"Leasehold in England is much, much more common than in Scotland," he says.
Scottish landlords were entitled to compensation, but Gerber says it was relatively modest. "It was roughly 40 times the amount of annual rent. But it was only leases where the rent was less than £100 a year."
Image source, Bloomberg via Getty Images
Image caption,
Ken Gerber says Scotland's move away from long residential leases was on a much smaller scale than the reforms proposed for England and Wales
The compensation likely to be sought by English freeholders would be far greater.
On Scotland's current system, which has similarities to commonhold, Gerber says it "generally works".
"You'll always find one that doesn't want to stump up their money... that can be a problem," he says.
Most of the experts agreed there is no perfect system where multiple people share responsibility for a building.
Hopkins believes commonhold will happen, regardless of further legal challenges. "The judicial review failed at first instance and failed quite comprehensively. A lot of the arguments, I think, have really been lost."
He says there is now broad political support for reform.
Former housing secretaries Angela Rayner and Michael Gove both backed reform when giving evidence together to MPs. The Liberal Democrats and Greens also support commonhold, while Reform UK has stopped short of supporting the complete abolition of leasehold.
A spokesperson at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said their reforms would "transform the experience of flat ownership in England by giving homeowners "more power and control over high costs".
Professor Sherry accepts that "stuff can be tricky, but it's workable".
"Commonhold is better because I don't believe that people who don't live in homes should own the underlying land and get the benefits that flow from that."
Whether that vision becomes reality now depends on politics as much as policy.
The likely next prime minister, Andy Burnham, has previously expressed support for leasehold reform, but who he appoints as housing secretary will matter. With the draft bill described as "technical and long", there is still a long way to go before the manifesto pledge comes to fruition.
Top image credit: Getty Images
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