Instagram is set to notify parents if their teenager frequently searches for terms associated with suicide or self-harm in a short timeframe, as announced by the company on Thursday. The alerts will be introduced in the upcoming weeks to parents who are utilizing parental supervision features on Instagram.

The social media platform, owned by Meta, states that although it already prevents users from searching for content related to suicide and self-harm, these new alerts are intended to ensure that parents are informed if their teen is persistently attempting to look up this content so they can provide the necessary support.

Search queries that could trigger an alert might consist of terms that promote suicide or self-harm, indicators suggesting a teen could be in danger of self-harm, and words like “suicide” or “self-harm.”

Instagram indicates that parents will receive these alerts via email, text, or WhatsApp, depending on the contact information they have provided, as well as through an in-app notification. This notification will include resources meant to assist parents in discussing these issues with their teens.

This initiative comes as Meta and other large tech firms are currently undergoing multiple lawsuits aimed at holding social media companies accountable for the damage inflicted on teenagers.

During a trial in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, Instagram’s head Adam Mosseri faced intense questioning from prosecutors regarding the app’s slow implementation of essential safety features, including a nudity filter for direct messages sent to teens.

Moreover, in a different lawsuit proceeding before the Los Angeles County Superior Court, it surfaced that an internal study conducted by Meta revealed that the influence of parental supervision and controls on children’s compulsive use of social media was minimal. The research also indicated that children encountering stressful life situations were more prone to difficulties in managing their social media usage effectively.

Considering the ongoing lawsuits alleging that the platform has not sufficiently safeguarded teens, the introduction of these alerts is not particularly unexpected.

The organization emphasizes that it will strive to limit the issuance of these notifications to prevent unnecessary alarm, as excessive notifications could diminish their overall impact.

“In our efforts to find the right balance, we analyzed Instagram search patterns and consulted with experts from our Suicide and Self-Harm Advisory Group,” Instagram detailed in a blog post. “We established a threshold that calls for multiple searches in a brief period, while still prioritizing caution. Although this entails that we might occasionally inform parents even when there isn’t a significant concern, we believe — and experts concur — that this serves as an appropriate initial step, and we will keep monitoring and gathering feedback to ensure we stay on the right course.”

The alerts will be available in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada starting next week, with plans to expand to additional regions later this year.

In the future, Instagram intends to activate these notifications when a teen attempts to use the app’s AI for discussions surrounding suicide or self-harm.

Salesforce went all out to assure investors that the AI wave won’t signify its downfall during its fourth-quarter earnings announcement on Wednesday.

Salesforce disclosed a robust quarter with $10.7 billion in revenue, reflecting a 13% increase compared to the previous year. Over the year, it achieved $41.5 billion in revenue, marking a 10% rise from the prior year, and both figures were bolstered by its $8 billion procurement of data management firm Informatica last May.

Net income reached $7.46 billion, and the company provided optimistic guidance for the upcoming year, anticipating revenue between $45.8 billion and $46.2 billion — a 10% to 11% increase. It also reported its “remaining performance obligation,” or RPO, exceeding $72 billion, a figure that indicates revenue under contract that has yet to be delivered or recognized as earned.

However, these figures can only accomplish so much. Software-as-a-service stocks, with Salesforce as their flagship, have been facing significant pressure lately. Investors are concerned that the emergence of AI agents could threaten these companies, rendering their per-employee-seat business models outdated. This predicament has been termed the “SaaSpocalypse.”

The term loomed large during the earnings call, prompting CEO Marc Benioff to mention it several times.

“Have you heard of the SaaSpocalypse? And it’s not our first. We’ve experienced a few,” he stated, further adding, “If a SaaSpocalypse occurs, it may be devoured by the Sasquatch because there are numerous companies utilizing a lot of SaaS because it has truly improved with agents.”

In a bid to demonstrate its ongoing vitality, Salesforce put all its resources into this earnings report. The firm raised its dividend by nearly 6% to $0.44 per share and initiated a new $50 billion share buyback initiative, which is typically well-received by shareholders as it creates a strong buyer for shares and reduces the total number of shares available, potentially increasing the stock price.

The company also transformed the earnings call format. It was a blend of podcast, infomercial, and traditional Q&A, featuring a few inquiries from Wall Street analysts.

Rather than simply reviewing the figures, Benioff conversed with three Salesforce customers on camera to highlight their enthusiasm for its new agentic features: the CEO of home appliance firm SharkNinja; the CEO of Wyndham Hotels and Resorts; and, to emphasize the point, the CEO of SaaStr, the software industry conference and media organization. To sum up the interviews succinctly: They all appreciate Salesforce’s AI agent offerings.

Salesforce also unveiled a new metric for its agentic services: agentic work units (“AWU”). This aims to gauge something more significant than merely counting “tokens” — the basic unit of AI processing capacity — as AWU assesses if an agent has effectively completed a task. (Salesforce recorded 19 trillion tokens last quarter, which may sound impressive but is relatively negligible in the AI domain.)

“You can pose a question and it might generate a poem, but that isn’t particularly valuable in the enterprise setting,” Salesforce president and CMO Patrick Stokes remarked during the call. Thus, AWU is designed to track situations when the agent inputs data into a record or performs another verifiable task.

Furthermore, Salesforce presented its architectural vision for the future of agents, illustrating SaaS software — like itself — as the dominant player in the tech stack, with the AI model creators positioned below as unseen, interchangeable, and commoditized work engines.

This was a direct response to one of the factors contributing to the SaaSpocalypse sell-off earlier this month, following OpenAI’s launch of its enterprise agent, Frontier. OpenAI’s architectural vision portrays it as the key player in the stack, with systems-of-record SaaS vendors (the databases and business software platforms that hold companies’ core data) positioned at the bottom as the unseen engines.

And if that wasn’t sufficient to sway investors: Benioff appeared in a black leather jacket, reminiscent of the signature style of the CEO who is clearly excelling in the AI arena: Nvidia’s Jensen Huang.