Facebook acquires Bloomsbury AI to excel in natural languageJuly 4 (AZINS) Facebook has made a new purchase from the Artificial Intelligence (AI) domain. The social network has acquired London-based Bloomsbury AI which uses machine learning to improve natural language processing, Engadget reported.

In addition to improving in language processing, Bloomsbury is also said to help Facebook in tackling fake news and other issues the social network is dealing with.

Facebook has pulled down the curtains on a handful of apps including Moves, Hello, and tbh, as they failed to flourish. The company will delete the user data of these three apps within 90 days which will enable it to prioritise its resources, The Verge reported.

Moves is a fitness tracking app which Facebook acquired in 2014 while Hello is a Android dialer. The app tbh was a teen app that the company acquired just eight months ago.

Recently, Facebook said it is notifying more than 800,000 users that a software bug temporarily unblocked people at the social network and its Messenger service. The glitch active between May 29 and June 5 has been fixed, according to Facebook, which has been striving to regain trust in the aftermath of a Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal.

"We know that the ability to block someone is important," Facebook chief privacy officer Erin Egan said in a blog post yesterday. "We'd like to apologize and explain what happened." Blocking someone on Facebook prevents them from seeing posts in a blocker's profile; connecting as a friend, or starting Messenger conversations. Blocking someone also automatically "unfriends" the person.

"There are many reasons why people block another person on Facebook," Egan said. "Their relationship may have changed or they may want to take a break from someone posting content they find annoying." People are blocked for harsher reasons, such as harassment or bullying, Egan added.