Ticketmaster that it will be the first ticketing company to take advantage of new features that arrived in Apple Wallet with iOS 18. According to a blog post from the business, Ticketmaster tickets viewed in the Apple app can show enhanced information such as venue maps, parking directions, local weather forecasts and recommended listening from Apple Music. Teams and event spaces can also choose to add links to their own apps or websites that customers can access from their Wallet tickets.

The company is first applying the new tech to two sporting events this year, and said it will be rolling out the capabilities to more events in 2025. While Ticketmaster is touting its role as the first adopter of the new Wallet ticket experience, the new features will not only be available to that company. Considering Ticketmaster was in the PR images the new features, it seems likely that the companies had an agreement about how they’d jointly promote the updates.

Apple Wallet boasts several upgrades in the latest operating system release, such as a new feature for faster money transfer. The initial iOS 18 rollout last month had some good stuff, but the marquee debut of Apple Intelligence likely won’t happen until .

 Activision released a report on its anti-toxicity tools for Call of Duty, including the upcoming launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 coming on October 25.

The report is part of the Call of Duty team’s string of reports on multiplayer play aimed at sharing knowledge with the industry on fostering a positive and welcoming community for all players. Part of these ongoing initiatives involve the development and use of technology to help the teams combat disruptive behavior, in accordance with the Call of Duty Code of Conduct.

As one of the biggest games in the world (more than 425 million Call of Duty games sold as of October 2023), it’s important for Call of Duty to set the example of transparency in helping to fight the entire industry’s common foe of toxic player behavior.

In the progress report, Activision’s Disruptive Behavior team shares the latest results and upgrades made to Call of Duty’s anti-toxicity tools, which will reinforce the ongoing work toward deploying anti-toxicity systems for the launch of the new game.

Voice & Text Moderation in Black Ops 6 at launch

Voice and text moderation systems designed to combat toxic behavior already deployed in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III will launch with Black Ops 6 on day one on October 25. This includes the global availability (excluding Asia) of Call of Duty’s AI-powered voice moderation system in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Call of Duty will also expand voice moderation support to French and German for Black Ops 6 at launch.

Text-based moderation of in-game text chat and usernames in twenty languages will be deployed for Black Ops 6 on day one.

The Disruptive Behavior team knows that hype and passion is part of Call of Duty’s DNA. Voice and text-based moderation tools in Call of Duty don’t target the competitive spirit – rather, it enforces against behavior identified in the Call of Duty franchise Code of Conduct, targeting harassment and derogatory language.

Similar to Modern Warfare III, the Call of Duty Code of Conduct will be visible during the initial in-game flow when players first launch core multiplayer modes in Black Ops 6, asking players to acknowledge the Code of Conduct pillars.

Over 45 million text messages blocked in 20 languages

Since Modern Warfare (2019), Call of Duty has collaborated with Community Sift to support text-based moderation. In August, the text moderation expanded from 14 to 20 languages.

Call of Duty’s text moderation is available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Polish, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Turkish, Dutch, Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Finnish, and Romanian.

Call of Duty has implemented a new analysis system for username reports to enhance efficiency and accuracy, surfacing critical reports to the moderation team for investigation and action.

The Disruptive Behavior team has also been emphasizing proactive measures for text moderation activity, reducing exposure to disruptive behavior for the community. The system also analyzes text chat traffic in near real-time, resulting in the blocking of over 45 million text-based messages in violation of the Call of Duty Code of Conduct since November 2023.

Exposure to voice toxicity dropped 43%

Call of Duty’s proactive voice moderation strategy, powered by Modulate’s ToxMod, has helped reduce exposure to disruptive voice chat for millions of players since its global launch (excluding Asia) last year.

Since rolling out an improved voice chat enforcement in June 2024, Call of Duty has seen a combined 67% reduction in repeat offenders of voice-chat based offenses in Modern Warfare III and Call of Duty: Warzone. In July 2024, 80% of players that were issued a voice chat enforcement since launch did not re-offend. Exposure to disruptive voice chat continues to fall, dropping by 43% since January 2024.

At launch, Black Ops 6 will expand its voice moderation to French and German, in addition to English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Collaborating to battle disruptive behavior

The Disruptive Behavior team aims to reduce the community’s exposure to disruptive behavior as well as enhancing moderation effectiveness across all types of social interactions in Call of Duty. These improvements include improved messaging to players, Code of Conduct updates, and enhancements to the enforcement strategies.

As part of this work, Call of Duty has been working with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) since 2022 which has resulted in research paper publication and improvements to the disruptive behavior approach which include reduced time to moderation enforcement as a result of Caltech’s research contribution.

The team has also worked closely with the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and their Product Innovation student cohort. This collaboration began in 2022 and continues to this day, with results of developed research providing the team with insights to better identify and combat disruptive behavior.

Additionally, the team is actively engaged in research surrounding disruptive behavior and prosocial activities in gaming. The knowledge gained from these research initiatives are valuable input to be fed back into the game as part of Call of Duty’s overall strategy to combat disruptive behavior.

Caroline Mitterdorfer’s fertility journey began with an early-stage cancer diagnosis at age 27. She told TechCrunch that her diagnosis made her realize how little she knew about her health and her fertility. She dove into researching the space and became a self-described fertility advocate.

Through that work, Mitterdorfer noticed that it took a long time for doctors to diagnose fertility issues. She co-founded Levy Health to help speed up the process.

San Francisco-based Levy Health built a clinical decision support platform to help physicians and fertility specialists diagnose women with fertility issues earlier. The platform has users fill out a whole host of questions, like how long they’ve been trying to get pregnant and whether they track ovulation, and it has them submit necessary lab work before an appointment with a fertility specialist.

Levy Health’s software analyzes a patient’s questionnaire, biomarkers, and labs and narrows down a list of 110 potential diagnoses to a few potential conditions a patient might have. It presents this information, and potential treatment options, to doctors before they see their patient. While physicians review everything before it is presented to patients, Mitterdorfer said that this process has led to a 50% reduction in time to diagnosis.

Mitterdorfer said that while clinical decision support platforms aren’t new, they are to the fertility space. Part of the reason it can take so long for women to get diagnosed is that they are talking about fertility issues with their OB-GYN or primary care provider, who aren’t necessarily equipped with the proper knowledge on endocrine disorders like infertility, she said.

“We truly believe we can change how women get access to an early diagnosis by empowering the diagnoser,” Mitterdorfer said. “Fertility clinics, they have a huge problem: There is more demand than supply, and a lot of innovation is in the IVF lab, not as much in funneling patients through.”

Through her fertility advocacy, Mitterdorfer met her co-founders Silvia Hecher, CPO, who’s held numerous roles in fertility clinics and companies, and Dr. Theresa Vilsmaier, founding physician focused on gynecology.

The trio launched the company in 2022 in Germany. Despite getting regulatory approval in Europe, Mitterdorfer said that they quickly realized that the European market wasn’t aligned with the company because Levy Health didn’t want to pass any of the costs on to consumers. So the company packed up and moved to the U.S. where it is based now.

Levy Health launched in the U.S. in 2023. The company has landed six B2B customers, including Progyny, a fertility benefits company; Boston IVF, a chain of fertility clinics; and Everie, an egg donation organization.

“The biggest challenge of a company in a healthcare space is finding the first five customers,” Mitterdorfer said. “Word of mouth in healthcare is significant. One of our first companies being Progyny helps build that trust and validation.”

Levy Health just raised a $4.5 million seed round led by XYZ Venture Capital with participation from Atlantic Labs and Possible Ventures. Mitterdorfer said that the company will use the funds to continue building the team and technology but also to help fund clinical studies related to areas like fertility and egg freezing.

“We are focusing on publishing a clinical study over the next six months for clinical support for women to freeze their eggs, validating our KPIs,” Mitterdorfer said. “It’s a lot about trust, also a lot of, ‘Do you really provide the value proposition that you are trying to deliver?’”

Fertility health as a market has continued to gain momentum. The U.S. fertility market was valued at $6.19 billion in 2023, according to Precedence Research, and is expected to grow 63% by 2033.

There are numerous companies approaching the problem from various angles. Carrot is a fertility-focused employee benefit provider that has raised $114 million in venture capital. Mira is an at-home hormone testing kit that has raised $4.3 million in VC. Pozitivf is a chain of fertility clinics that has raised $20 million.

“For me, it is just critical to know that what we are building is helping, at the end of the day, hopefully millions of women getting an early diagnosis,” Mitterdorfer said.