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Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET's key takeaways Snapchat's Imagine Lens is now free for all US users. The AI Lens turns your typed prompts into custom images. Free users get limited generations daily. Snapchat is expanding its new Imagine Lens. It's the app's first open-prompt AI image-generation lens. With it, you can type anything and watch your idea come to life inside the Snapchat camera. Until recently, this was an exclusive feature for Lens+ and Platinum subscribers, but now anyone in the US can try it for free -- no subscription required. Also:  I exported my Snapchat Memories to avoid the monthly storage fee - here's how According to Snap, users interact with Lenses more than eight billion times per day. But this one seems especially neat. It's like having DALL-E or Midjourney built right into the app. You can turn yourself into anything, try on Halloween costume ideas, transform your living spaces, and more. Here's how to find and use the lens, plus a few tips I recommend after trying it myself. How to find and use Snap's Imagine Lens What you'll need: Just your phone with the latest

This story was originally published on Social Media Today. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Social Media Today newsletter. After launching its first open-prompt AI Lens to paying users last month, Snapchat is now making it available to all users, as it looks to latch onto the broader AI creation trend. Snapchat’s “Imagine” Lens gives users the opportunity to re-create and/or re-contextualize their Snaps, through conversational prompts in-stream. And now, anybody can try it out for themselves. As explained by Snap: “ We’ve now made the Imagine Lens available to all Snapchatters in the U.S., no subscription required, and we are beginning to expand it to additional international markets starting with Canada, Great Britain and Australia With the Imagine Lens, your creativity is the only limit. Just type in your idea, watch it come to life, and share your creation with friends, your Story, or even beyond Snapchat.” Snap’s even offered some creative examples of Imagine Lens usage to get you thinking: Turning an everyday office into a slippery slip-and-slide Trying on Halloween costume inspo before committing to a look Coming up with the perfect reply when nothing else quite fits the moment Though

Snapchat and Roblox Down: A widespread outage originating from Amazon Web Services disrupted numerous popular online platforms on Monday, ...

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Amazon Web Services, a cloud computing service run by Amazon, said its services are back to operating as usual after an outage caused widespread issues across the internet on Oct. 20. AWS said the outage, which began around 3 a.m. ET on Oct. 20, was rooted in a series of issues in its US-EAST-1 Region, a cluster of data centers based in Northern Virginia. AWS said it fixed the initial problem by 6 a.m. ET. However, a ripple effect of other issues caused service disruptions throughout the day. All services returned to normal by 6 p.m. ET, AWS said. According to Downdetector, an outage-tracking website, large platforms including Amazon, Snapchat, Ring, Fortnite and more faced issues during the outage. More than three million users in the United States reported problems, Downdetector said. Mike Chapple, an IT professor at the University of Notre Dame, said in a statement to USA TODAY that the incident is a reminder of the world's dependency on a handful of cloud service providers, including AWS. "When a major cloud provider sneezes, the Internet catches a cold," Chapple said. Is AWS still down? As of 6 p.m. ET on Oct. 20, AWS said all its services "returned to normal

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is not having a great start to the week. A massive internet outage hit AWS-powered platforms in the early hours of Monday morning, affecting a large number of popular sites, games and services including the likes of Fortnite, Snapchat, and HBO Max. Of course, people are reacting online. AWS posted on a company dashboard at 5:01 a.m. ET, "We have identified a potential root cause for error rates for the DynamoDB APIs in the US-EAST-1 Region," which the company said was "related to DNS resolution." AWS added it was working to resolve the issue. At 5:27 a.m. ET, the company reported "significant signs of recovery" across the affected sites listed below, and that "most requests should now be succeeding. Then, at 6:35 a.m. ET, Amazon said, "The underlying DNS issue has been fully mitigated, and most AWS Service operations are succeeding normally now." However, the company noted that "some requests may be throttled while we work toward full resolution." Mashable Light Speed Mashable reached out to Amazon for further comment and was directed to the AWS Health Dashboard. Sites impacted by AWS outage According to Downdetector, here's a list of the websites affected by the AWS

People struggled to access social media app Snapchat, online game Fortnite, payments app Venmo and other popular online services on Monday after an Amazon Web Services outage caused widespread disruption. DownDetector , a website that tracks online outages, said the AWS outage resulted in more than 11 million reports across all services. More than 2,500 companies received increased reporting of problems, according to the website. The outage was another reminder of how consumers, businesses and even government organizations rely on AWS and its massive cloud to make their websites, apps and other online services work. Here’s what you need to know about the AWS outage. What is Amazon Web Services? Amazon Web Services provides cloud computing services to millions of customers that include companies and organizations across various sectors such as technology, entertainment, government, education and financial services. The cloud provider offers more than 200 services, enabling businesses to store data, host websites and access computing power. Businesses pay Amazon based on the consumption of these services so they don’t have to own and maintain data centers and servers themselves. AWS captured about 30% of the global cloud infrastructure market in the second quarter of this year, ahead of its

Some of the world’s biggest websites, apps and online games have been taken offline for hours after being caught up in an issue with the “backbone” of the internet. Fortnite, Roblox, Snapchat, Canva, Ring, Amazon and Wordle are among the popular sites that have gone down in some regions on Monday afternoon, leaving millions affected. The issue is believed to be tied to Amazon Web Services, a popular cloud platform used by companies to run their websites. Know the news with the 7NEWS app: Download today More than two hours after revealing it was investigating “increased error rates” and delays with multiple services based at its facilities in Virginia, Amazon issued a promising update. “We are seeing significant signs of recovery,” the company said. “Most requests should now be succeeding. “We continue to work through a backlog of queued requests. We will continue to provide additional information.” Amazon was sought for comment about the cause of the issue but redirected 7NEWS.com.au back to its health dashboard. Ticketmaster is down, caught up in the global AWS tech issue. Credit: 7NEWS Frontier Touring, which brings live entertainment to Australia, Ticketmaster and Eventbrite have also been impacted. People have flooded social media to

Snapchat is currently experiencing a widespread outage, leaving users around the world unable to send messages, access stories, or connect to the app’s servers. The disruption began this morning around 8 AM UK time (midnight PT). The issue is not limited to Snapchat. The outage is linked to a broader internet disruption caused by a failure at Amazon Web Services (AWS), which hosts a range of popular online services, News.Az reports, citing foreign media. Downdetector, the website that tracks service outages, shows a sharp spike in error reports for Snapchat, confirming the problem is widespread. Users have reported Snap scores failing to load and Snap Map being inaccessible. Other apps and games relying on AWS are also affected, leaving millions of users temporarily cut off from their favorite services. News.Az 

AEW WrestleDream is set to bring fans an unforgettable night of action on October 18, 2025, with a stacked lineup featuring hard-hitting matches and heated rivalries. Viewers can expect shocking moments, potential surprises, and showdowns that could shift the direction of AEW’s biggest storylines. The spoiler lineup, complete match card, and backstage notes provide an early look at what’s in store for WrestleDream. Keep in mind, though, that last-minute changes can always happen before the event goes live. AEW WrestleDream Spoiler (10/18/25) Lineup: Trios Match: Death Riders vs. The Conglomeration & Roderick Strong Tag Team Match: Mystery Team vs. Eddie Kingston & HOOK Tag Team Match: Megan Bayne & Penelope Ford vs. Harley Cameron & Willow Nightingale Tag Team Match (Tailgate Brawl): FTR vs. JetSpeed Singles Match: Thekla vs. Jamie Hayter $500,000 Tag Team Challenge: The Young Bucks vs. Jurassic Express Tornado Trios Match: The Hurt Syndicate vs. The Demand AEW TNT Championship Match: Kyle Fletcher (c) vs. Mark Briscoe AEW Women’s World Championship Match: Kris Statlander (c) vs. “Timeless” Toni Storm TBS Championship Open Challenge: Mercedes Moné (c) vs. ??? AEW World Tag Team Championship Match: Brodido (c) vs. Don Callis Family (Kazuchika Okada & Konosuke Takeshita) AEW World