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Tag: Business

  • Google is using AI to change how you shop | CNN Business

    Google is using AI to change how you shop | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Google wants to make it easier for online shoppers to know how clothing will look on them before making a purchase.

    The company on Wednesday announced a new virtual try-on feature that uses generative AI, the same technology underpinning a new crop of chatbots and image creation tools, to show clothes on a wide selection of body types.

    With the feature, shoppers can see how an item would drape, fold, cling, stretch or form wrinkles and shadows on a diverse set of models in various poses, according to the company.

    Google is also launching a feature that helps users find similar clothing pieces in different colors, patterns or styles, from merchants across the web, using a visual matching algorithm powered by AI.

    These efforts are part of Google’s bigger push to defend its search engine from the threat posed by a wave of new AI-powered tools in the wake of the viral success of ChatGPT. At the Google I/O developer conference last month, the company spent more than 90 minutes teasing a long list of AI announcements, including expanding access to its existing chatbot Bard and bringing new AI capabilities to Google Search.

    Google said it developed the virtual try-on option using many pairs of images of more than 80 models standing forward and sideways, from sizes XS to XL, and with varying skin tones, body shapes and ethnic backgrounds. The AI-powered tool then learned to match the shape of certain shirts in those positions to generate realistic images of the person from all angles.

    The feature will initially work with women’s tops from brands such as Anthropology, Loft, H&M and Everlane. Google said it will expand to men’s shirts in the future. Google also said the tool will get more precise over time.

    Google isn’t the only e-commerce company blending generative AI into the shopping experience. Some companies such as Shopify and Instacart are using the technology to help inform customers’ shopping decisions. Amazon is experimenting with using artificial intelligence to sum up customer feedback about products on the site, with the potential to cut down on the time shoppers spend sifting through reviews before making a purchase. And eBay recently rolled out an AI tool to help sellers generate product listing descriptions.

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  • Meta is giving parents more visibility into who their teens are messaging on social media | CNN Business

    Meta is giving parents more visibility into who their teens are messaging on social media | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Meta is adding new safeguards and monitoring tools for teens across its social platforms: parental controls on Messenger, suggestions for teens to step away from Facebook after 20 minutes, and nudges urging young night-owl Instagrammers to stop scrolling.

    The features announced Tuesday come as Meta

    (META)     and other social media platforms face heightened pressure from lawmakers over the impact that their platforms have on younger users, who can be just 13 when they sign up for Meta

    (META)    ’s apps.

    Messenger, Meta’s instant-messaging app, is adding parental supervision tools for the first time that are similar to those that exist on Instagram already: Parents and guardians can see how much time their teens spend on the chat tool, view and receive updates on their contacts list, and get notified if their teen reports someone.

    Another new feature is the ability for parents and teens to have discussions directly through notifications if their accounts are synced up.

    “We heard from parents and teens about the value they’re seeing from how a two-way dialogue can foster and encourage discussions,” Diana Williams, who oversees product changes for youth and families at Meta, told CNN in an interview.

    On Facebook, Meta will start to nudge teen users to take time away from the app after 20 minutes.

    Instagram will add introduce a new nudge that suggests teens close Instagram if they’re scrolling Reels videos for too long during nighttime hours. The effort builds on existing Instagram features like Quiet Mode, which temporarily holds notifications and lets people know if you’re trying to focus.

    In addition, Instagram is testing a feature that limits how people interact with non-followers. Users must now send an invite to connect with someone if they’re not a follower, and they cannot call the recipient or send photos, videos or voice messages or make calls until the user accepts their request. The feature aims to cut down on unwanted content from strangers, particularly for women, the company said.

    It’s the latest in a series of new tools and guardrails for teens from Meta, following the release of leaked internal documents that found Instagram can negatively impact the mental health of its young users. Instagram, for example, has since introduced an educational hub for parents with resources, tips and articles from experts on user safety.

    The company said it’s also taking a “stricter approach” to the content it recommends to teens and will actively nudge them toward different topics, such as architecture and travel destinations, if they’ve been dwelling on any type of content for too long.

    Few changes have been made to Facebook and Messenger until now. Facebook does, however, have a Safety Center that provides supervision tools and resources, such as articles and advice from leading experts.

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  • Tired of Elon Musk? Here are the Twitter alternatives you should know about | CNN Business

    Tired of Elon Musk? Here are the Twitter alternatives you should know about | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    When Elon Musk took over Twitter in October and began upending the platform, there weren’t many viable alternatives for frustrated users. Now, there may be too many.

    A growing number of services have launched or gained traction in recent months by appealing to users who are uncomfortable with Musk’s decisions to slash Twitter’s staff, overhaul the verification process, reinstate numerous incendiary accounts and most recently impose temporary read limits on tweets.

    Bluesky, Mastodon and Spill are among the many social apps vying for users over the last several months, with services that look and feel strikingly similar to Twitter. But now this increasingly crowded marketplace may be disrupted by the most dominant social media company: Meta.

    Meta’s Twitter clone, Threads, launched Wednesday and amassed more than 70 million sign-ups as of Friday morning thanks to a decision to tie the app to Instagram. Its user base is already far more than newer rivals and puts Threads on pace to rapidly catch up to Twitter, which had 238 million active users last year before Musk took the company private.

    In interviews, some other Twitter competitors took jabs at Meta’s effort and expressed confidence in their ability to grow and maintain an audience, even if it ends up being much smaller than what Mark Zuckerberg’s company can attract.

    “Threads leans heavily on celebrities and people with large Instagram followings, and therefore risks being more of a megaphone for the established, rather than something for everyone,” Sarah Oh, a former Twitter employee and founder of rival app T2, told CNN in an email.

    Spill co-founder and CEO Alphonzo Terrell said the company is “thrilled to see so much innovation in the social space” and remains “confident in our roadmap.”

    Here’s what you should know about the current crop of services trying to take on Twitter.

    Threads is Meta’s long-anticipated answer to Twitter and the biggest threat to the social network Musk bought for $44 billion. Threads is intended to offer a space for real-time conversations online, a function that has long been Twitter’s core selling point, and it’s doing so in part by adoption many of Twitter’s most recognizable features.

    The app has already attracted a long list of celebrities, brands and other VIP users, as well as many who clearly appear to be frustrated with Musk’s Twitter. And Zuckerberg isn’t just looking to catch up to Twitter; he wants to build a service that’s far larger.

    “It’ll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it. Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it,” Zuckerberg wrote on Threads. “Hopefully we will.”

    Launched by former Twitter employees, Spill says it strives to be a “visual conversation at the speed of culture.”

    The site is visual heavy and pushes GIFs, memes and video, making it more of a destination for creative communities. Spill has also emerged as a haven for Black Twitter users and marginalized communities seeking a safe space online.

    While the traction for Threads was unique, Spill has gained recently, too. Last weekend, amid renewed chaos at Twitter over the read limits, Spill gained “hundreds of thousands of new users,” according to Terrell, the CEO.

    T2, another service created by former Twitter employees, offers a social feed of posts with 280-character limits. The key selling point that sets it apart from others is its focus on safety, according to Oh, the founder.

    “We really do want to create an experience that allows people to share what they want to share without fearing risk of things like abuse and harassment, and we feel like we’re really well positioned to deliver on that,” Oh told CNN in February.

    In a statement this week, Oh doubled down on safety as a possible differentiator with Threads as well, raising the question of whether Meta had “learned from their past mistakes” after years of scrutiny on its struggles to police its own platforms.

    Bluesky, a service backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, looks identical to Twitter, with one key difference. The app runs on a decentralized network, which provides users more control over how the service is run, the data is stored, and the content is moderated.

    Bluesky was formed independently of Twitter while Dorsey was serving as CEO but it was funded by the company until it became an independent organization in February 2022. In a tweet introducing the idea in 2019, Dorsey said it also plans to “build an open community around it, inclusive of companies & organizations, researchers, civil society leaders,” but warned “this isn’t going to happen overnight.”

    This week, Dorsey appeared to acknowledge that the market is now flooded with “Twitter clones.”

    Also built on decentralized networks, Mastodon launched before Musk took over Twitter but skyrocketed in popularity after the acquisition.

    Mastodon lets users join a slew of different servers run by various groups and individuals, rather than one central platform controlled by a single company like Twitter or Instagram. Mastodon is also free of ads. It’s developed by a nonprofit run by Eugen Rochko, who created Mastodon in 2016.

    After joining, users pick a server, with options from general-interest servers such as mastodon.world; regional servers like sfba.social, which is aimed at people in the San Francisco Bay Area; and ones aimed at various interests (many servers review new sign-ups before approving them.)

    Launched publicly in June 2022, Cohost offers a text-based social media feed with followers, reposts, likes and comments, similar to Twitter. However, the product is chronologically based with no ads, no trending topics and no displayed interactions (think hidden like counts and follower lists).

    Part of Cohost’s goal is to create a less hostile space for open dialogue, according to the website.

    “People who hear ‘Facebook has a Twitter replacement now!’ and don’t immediately run for the hills are unlikely to be interested in anything we’re doing,” said Jae Kaplan, co-founder of anti-software software club, the company that develops cohost. “We’re in separate market niches. I doubt they’re going to do anything to try and appeal to our users, and we’re not going to do anything to try and appeal to their users.”

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  • Microsoft unveils more secure AI-powered Bing Chat for businesses to ensure ‘data doesn’t leak’ | CNN Business

    Microsoft unveils more secure AI-powered Bing Chat for businesses to ensure ‘data doesn’t leak’ | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Microsoft on Tuesday announced a more secure version of its AI-powered Bing specifically for businesses and designed to assure professionals they can safely share potentially sensitive information with a chatbot.

    With Bing Chat Enterprise, the user’s chat data will not be saved, sent to Microsoft’s servers or used to train the AI models, according to the company.

    “What this [update] means is your data doesn’t leak outside the organization,” Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s vice president and consumer chief marketing officer, told CNN in an interview. “We don’t co-mingle your data with web data, and we don’t save it without your permission. So no data gets saved on the servers, and we don’t use any of your data chats to train the AI models.”

    Since ChatGPT launched late last year, a new crop of powerful AI tools has offered the promise of making workers more productive. But in recent months, some businesses such as JPMorgan Chase banned the use of ChatGPT among its employees, citing security and privacy concerns. Other large companies have reportedly taken similar steps over concerns around sharing confidential information with AI chatbots.

    In April, regulators in Italy issued a temporary ban on ChatGPT in the country after OpenAI disclosed a bug that allowed some users to see the subject lines from other users’ chat histories. The same bug, now fixed, also made it possible “for some users to see another active user’s first and last name, email address, payment address, the last four digits (only) of a credit card number, and credit card expiration date,” OpenAI said in a blog post at the time.

    Like other tech companies, Microsoft is racing to develop and deploy a range of AI-powered tools for consumers and professionals amid widespread investor enthusiasm for the new technology. Microsoft also said Tuesday that it will add visual searches to its existing AI-powered Bing Chat tool. And the company said the Microsoft 365 Co-pilot, its previously announced AI-powered tool that helps edit, summarize, create and compare documents across its various products, will cost $30 a month for each user.

    Bing Chat Enterprise will be free for all of its 160 million Microsoft 365 subscribers starting on Tuesday, if a company’s IT department manually turns on the tool. After 30 days, however, Microsoft will roll out access to all users by default; subscribed businesses can disable the tool if they so choose.

    Current conversational AI tools such as the consumer version of Bing Chat send data from personal chats to their servers to train and improve its AI model.

    Microsoft’s new enterprise option is identical to the consumer version of Bing but it will not recall conversations with users, so they’ll need to go back and start from scratch each time. (Bing recently started to enable saved chats on its consumer chat model.)

    With these changes, Microsoft, which uses OpenAI’s technology to power its Bing chat tool, said workers can have “complete confidence” their data “won’t be leaked outside of the organization.”

    To access the tool, a user will sign into the Bing browser with their work credentials and the system will automatically detect the account and put it into a protected mode, according to Microsoft. Above the “ask me anything” bar reads: “Your personal and company data are protected in this chat.”

    In a demo video shown to CNN ahead of its launch, Microsoft showed how a user could type confidential details into Bing Chat Enterprise, such as an someone sharing financial information as part of preparing a bid to buy a building. With the new tool, the user could ask Bing Chat to create a table to compare the property to other neighboring buildings and write an analysis that highlights the strengths and weaknesses of their bid relative to other local bids.

    In addition to trying to ease privacy and security concerns around AI in the workplace, Mehdi also addressed the problem of factual errors. To reduce the possibility of inaccuracies or “hallucinations,” as some in the industry call it, he suggested users write clear, better prompts and check the included citations.

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  • Meta’s Threads app rolls out first big batch of updates | CNN Business

    Meta’s Threads app rolls out first big batch of updates | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Meta’s Twitter rival app Threads on Tuesday rolled out its first major batch of updates since its launch two weeks ago as it works to maintain momentum.

    The new features include a translation button and a tab on users’ activity feed dedicated to showing who’s followed them, according to a post from Cameron Roth, a software engineer working on Threads.

    All new features should be available to iOS Threads users by the end of Tuesday, Roth said.

    Threads users have been clamoring for updates since its launch. The new app attracted over 100 million user sign-ups in less than a week, but it still lacks many of the features popular on Twitter and other platforms, including direct messaging and a robust search function.

    User engagement on Threads has dipped since its first week, according to web traffic analysis firm Similarweb. And Meta executives have teased plans to improve the app in hopes of getting users to keep coming back.

    “Early growth was off the charts, but more importantly 10s of millions of people now come back daily … The focus for the rest of the year is improving the basics and retention,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Threads post Monday.

    Tuesday’s updates also include the ability to subscribe and receive notifications from accounts a user doesn’t follow and a “+” button that lets users follow new accounts from the replies on a post, as well as bug fixes and other improvements.

    Instagram head Adam Mosseri, who is overseeing Threads, has also hinted at plans to introduce a desktop version of the app as well as a feed of only accounts a user follows and an edit button.

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  • Social Security will not be able to pay full benefits in 2034 if Congress doesn’t act | CNN Politics

    Social Security will not be able to pay full benefits in 2034 if Congress doesn’t act | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Americans’ Social Security checks will get a lot smaller in 2034 if lawmakers don’t act to address the pending shortfall, according to an annual report released Friday by the Social Security trustees.

    That’s because the combined Social Security trust funds – which help support payouts for the elderly, survivors and disabled – are projected to run dry that year. At that time, the funds’ reserves will be depleted, and the program’s continuing income will only cover 80% of benefits owed.

    The estimate is one year earlier than the trustees projected last year. About 66 million Americans received Social Security benefits in 2022.

    Medicare, meanwhile, is in a more critical financial condition. Its hospital insurance trust fund, known as Medicare Part A, will only be able to pay scheduled benefits in full until 2031, according to its trustees’ annual report, which was also released Friday.

    At that time, Medicare, which covered 65 million senior citizens and people with disabilities in 2022, will only be able to cover 89% of total scheduled benefits. Last year, Medicare’s trustees projected that the hospital trust fund’s reserves would be depleted in 2028.

    Immensely popular but long troubled, Social Security and Medicare are on shaky financial ground in large part because of the aging of the American population. Fewer workers are paying into the program and supporting the ballooning number of beneficiaries, who are also living longer. Also, health care is becoming increasingly expensive.

    Social Security has two trust funds – one for retirees and survivors and another for Americans with disabilities.

    Looking at them separately, the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund is projected to run dry in 2033, at which time Social Security could pay only 77% of benefits, primarily using income from payroll taxes. The date is one year earlier than estimated last year.

    The Disability Insurance Trust Fund is expected to be able to pay full benefits through at least 2097, the last year of the trustees’ projection period.

    Merging the two trust funds would require Congress to act, but the combined projection is often used to show the overall status of the entitlement.

    Social Security’s projected long-term health worsened over the past year because the trustees revised downward their expectations for the economy and labor productivity, taking into account updated data on inflation and economic output.

    However, the long-term projection for Medicare’s hospital trust fund’s finances improved, mainly due to lowered estimates for health care spending after the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Also, the program is projected to take in more income because the trustees estimate the number of covered workers and average wages will be higher.

    Regardless, the bottom line remains that Medicare is not bringing in enough money to pay the costs it is expected to incur, said Cori Uccello, senior health fellow at the American Academy of Actuaries.

    “It’s still not a time to become complacent,” she said. Insolvency “is still less than a decade away.”

    The trustees’ reports are the latest warnings to Congress that they will have to deal with the massive entitlement programs’ fiscal problems at some point soon. But addressing their issues is politically challenging. Elected officials are hesitant to suggest any changes that could lead to benefit cuts, even though that could reduce their options in the future.

    “With each year that lawmakers do not act, the public has less time to prepare for the changes,” the trustees warned in a fact sheet.

    The programs’ shortfalls are back in the spotlight this year as President Joe Biden and House Republicans battle over how to address the nation’s debt ceiling drama and mounting budget deficits. GOP lawmakers want to cut spending in exchange for resolving the borrowing limit, while the White House has said it will not negotiate.

    In a memorable moment in his State of the Union address in February, Biden garnered public acknowledgment from congressional Republicans about keeping Social Security and Medicare out of the debt discussions.

    But “not touching” Social Security means a hefty cut in benefits within a decade or so.

    “Change is inevitable because without changes to current law, both Social Security and Medicare Hospital Insurance would go insolvent, subjecting program participants to sudden and severe payment cuts,” said Charles Blahous, senior research strategist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and former Social Security and Medicare trustee. “The outstanding question is whether change will be tolerably gradual, or instead highly damaging because it is too long delayed.”

    Though Biden has repeatedly vowed to protect Social Security, his latest budget proposal did not include a plan to stabilize its finances.

    However, his proposal did call for extending Medicare’s solvency by 25 years or more by raising taxes on those earning more than $400,000 a year and by allowing the program to negotiate prices for even more drugs.

    Spending on the entitlement programs is also projected to soar and exert increased pressure on the federal budget in coming years.

    Mandatory spending – driven by Social Security and Medicare – and interest costs are expected to outpace the growth of revenue and the economy, according to a Congressional Budget Office outlook released in mid-February.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Inside the long and winding road to Trump’s historic indictment | CNN Politics

    Inside the long and winding road to Trump’s historic indictment | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The New York grand jury hearing the case against Donald Trump was set to break for several weeks. The former president’s lawyers believed on Wednesday afternoon they had at least a small reprieve from a possible indictment. Trump praised the perceived delay.

    Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had other plans.

    Thursday afternoon, Bragg asked the grand jury to return an historic indictment against Trump, the first time that a current or former US president has been indicted. The surprise move was the final twist in an investigation that’s taken a long and winding road to the history-making charges that were returned this week.

    An indictment had been anticipated early last week – including by Trump himself, who promoted a theory he would be “arrested” – as law enforcement agencies prepared for the logistics of arraigning a former president. But after the testimony of Robert Costello – a lawyer who appeared on Trump’s behalf seeking to undercut the credibility of Trump’s former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen – Bragg appeared to hit the pause button.

    Costello’s testimony caused the district attorney’s office to reassess whether Costello should be the last witness the grand jury heard before prosecutors asked them to vote on an indictment, multiple sources told CNN.

    So they waited. The next day the grand jury was scheduled to meet, jurors were told not to come in. Bragg and his top prosecutors huddled the rest of the week and over the weekend to determine a strategy that would effectively counter Costello’s testimony in the grand jury.

    They called two additional witnesses. David Pecker, the former head of the company that publishes the National Enquirer, appeared on Monday. The other witness, who has still not been identified, testified on Thursday for 35 minutes in front of the grand jury – just before prosecutors asked them to vote on the indictment of more than 30 counts, the sources said.

    Trump and his attorneys, thinking Bragg might be reconsidering a potential indictment, were all caught off-guard, sources said. Some of Trump’s advisers had even left Palm Beach on Wednesday following news reports that the grand jury was taking a break, the sources added.

    After the indictment, Trump ate dinner with his wife, Melania, Thursday evening and smiled while he greeted guests at his Mar-a-Lago club, according to a source familiar with the event.

    The Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into Trump has been ongoing for years, dating back to Bragg’s predecessor, Cy Vance. Its focus shifted by mid-2020 to the accuracy of the Trump Org.’s financial statements. At the time, prosecutors debated legal theories around the hush money payments and thought they were a long shot. At several points, the wide-ranging investigation seemed to have been winding down – to the point that prosecutors resigned in protest last year. One even wrote a book critical of Bragg for not pursuing charges against Trump released just last month.

    The specific charges against Trump still remain under seal and are expected to be unveiled Tuesday when Trump is set to be arraigned.

    There are questions swirling even among Trump critics over whether the Manhattan district attorney’s case is the strongest against the former president amid additional investigations in Washington, DC, and Georgia over both his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents at his Florida resort.

    Trump could still face charges in those probes, too, which are separate from the New York indictment.

    But it’s the Manhattan indictment, dating back to a payment made before the 2016 presidential election, that now sees Trump facing down criminal charges for the first time as he runs again for the White House in 2024.

    It was just weeks before the 2016 election when Cohen, Trump’s then-lawyer, paid adult film actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep silent about an alleged affair with Trump. (Trump has denied the affair.) Cohen was later reimbursed $420,000 by the Trump Organization to cover the original payment and tax liabilities and to reward him with a bonus.

    That payment and reimbursement are keys at issue in the investigation.

    Cohen also helped arrange a $150,000 payment from the publisher of the National Enquirer to Karen McDougal to kill her story claiming a 10-month affair with Trump. Trump also denies an affair with McDougal. During the grand jury proceedings, the district attorney’s office has asked questions about the “catch and kill” deal with McDougal.

    When Cohen was charged by federal prosecutors in New York in 2018 and pleaded guilty, he said he was acting at the direction of Trump when he made the payment.

    At the time, federal prosecutors had determined they could not seek to indict Trump in the scheme because of US Justice Department regulations against charging a sitting president. In 2021, after Trump left the White House, prosecutors in the Southern District of New York decided not to pursue a case against Trump, according to a recent book from CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig.

    But then-Manhattan District Attorney Vance’s team had already picked up the investigation into the hush money payments and begun looking at potential state law violations. By summer 2019, they sent subpoenas to the Trump Org., other witnesses, and met with Cohen, who was serving a three-year prison sentence.

    Vance’s investigation broadened to the Trump Org.’s finances. New York prosecutors went to the Supreme Court twice to enforce a subpoena for Trump’s tax records from his long-time accounting firm Mazars USA. The Trump Org. and its long-time chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg were indicted on tax fraud and other charges in June 2021 for allegedly running an off-the-books compensation scheme for more than a decade.

    Weisselberg pleaded guilty to the charges last year and is currently serving a five-month sentence at Rikers Island. Prosecutors had hoped to flip Weisselberg to cooperate against Trump, but he would not tie Trump to any wrongdoing.

    Disagreements about the pace of the investigation had caused at least three career prosecutors to move off the investigation. They were concerned that the investigation was moving too quickly, without clear evidence to support possible charges, CNN and others reported last year.

    Vance authorized the attorneys on the team to present evidence to the grand jury near the end of 2021, but he did not seek an indictment. Those close to Vance say he wanted to leave the decision to Bragg, the newly elected district attorney.

    Bragg, a Democrat, took office in January 2022. Less than two months into his tenure, two top prosecutors who had worked on the Trump case under Vance abruptly resigned amid a disagreement in the office over the strength of the case against Trump.

    On February 22, 2022, Bragg informed the prosecution team that he was not prepared to authorize charges against Trump, CNN reported. The prosecutors, Carey Dunne and Mark Pomerantz, resigned the next day.

    In his resignation letter, Pomerantz said he believed Trump was guilty of numerous felonies and said that Bragg’s decision to not move forward with an indictment at the time was “wrong” and a “grave failure of justice.”

    “I and others believe that your decision not to authorize prosecution now will doom any future prospects that Mr. Trump will be prosecuted for the criminal conduct we have been investigating,” Pomerantz wrote in the letter, which was reviewed by CNN.

    At that point, the investigation was focused on Trump’s financial statements and whether he knowingly misled lenders, insurers, and others by providing them false or misleading information about the value of his properties.

    Prosecutors were building a wide-ranging falsified business records case to include years of financial statements and the hush money payments, people with direct knowledge of the investigation told CNN. But at the time, those prosecutors believed there was a good chance a felony charge related to the hush money payment would be dismissed by a judge because it was a novel legal theory.

    Dunne and Pomerantz pushed to seek an indictment of Trump tied to the sweeping falsified business records case, but others, including some career prosecutors, were skeptical that they could win a conviction at trial, in part because of the difficulty in proving Trump’s criminal intent.

    Despite the resignations of the prosecutors on the Trump case, Bragg’s office reiterated at the time that the investigation was ongoing.

    “Investigations are not linear so we are following the leads in front of us. That’s what we’re doing,” Bragg told CNN in April 2022. “The investigation is very much ongoing.”

    At the same time that Bragg’s criminal investigation into Trump lingered last year, another prosecution against the Trump Org. moved forward. In December, two Trump Org. entities were convicted at trial on 17 counts and were ordered to pay $1.6 million, the maximum penalty, the following month.

    Trump was not personally charged in that case. But it appeared to embolden Bragg’s team to sharpen their focus back to Trump and the hush money payment.

    Cohen was brought back in to meet with Manhattan prosecutors. Cohen had previously met with prosecutors in the district attorney’s office 13 times over the course of the investigation. But the January meeting was the first in more than a year – and a clear sign of the direction prosecutors were taking.

    As investigators inched closer to a charging decision, Bragg was faced with more public pressure to indict Trump: Pomerantz, the prosecutor who had resigned a year prior, released a book about the investigation that argued Trump should be charged and criticized Bragg for failing to do so.

    “Every single member of the prosecution team thought that his guilt was established,” Pomerantz said in a February interview on “CNN This Morning.”

    Asked about Bragg’s hesitance, Pomerantz said: “I can’t speak in detail about what went through his mind. I can surmise from what happened at the time and statements that he’s made since that he had misgivings about the strength of the case.”

    Bragg responded in a statement saying that more work was needed on the case. “Mr. Pomerantz’s plane wasn’t ready for takeoff,” Bragg said.

    Prosecutors continued bringing in witnesses, including Pecker, the former head of American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer. In February, Trump Org. controller Jeffrey McConney testified before the grand jury. Members of Trump’s 2016 campaign, including Kellyanne Conway and Hope Hicks, also appeared. In March, Daniels met with prosecutors, her attorney said.

    And Cohen, after his numerous meetings with prosecutors, finally testified before the grand jury in March.

    The second week of March, prosecutors gave the clearest sign to date that the investigation was nearing its conclusion – they invited Trump to appear before the grand jury.

    Potential defendants in New York are required by law to be notified and invited to appear before a grand jury weighing charges.

    Behind the scenes, Trump attorney Susan Necheles told CNN she met with New York prosecutors to argue why Trump shouldn’t be indicted and that prosecutors didn’t articulate the specific charges they are considering.

    Trump, meanwhile, took to his social media to predict his impending indictment. In a post attacking Bragg on March 18, Trump said the “leading Republican candidate and former president of the United States will be arrested on Tuesday of next week.”

    “Protest, take our nation back,” Trump added, echoing the calls he made while he tried to overturn the 2020 election.

    Trump’s prediction would turn out to be premature.

    Trump’s call for protests after a potential indictment led to meetings between senior staff members from the district attorney’s office, the New York Police Department and the New York State Court Officers – who provide security at the criminal court building in lower Manhattan.

    Trump’s lawyers also made a last-ditch effort to fend off an indictment. At the behest of Trump’s team, Costello, who advised Cohen in 2018, provided emails and testified to the grand jury on Monday, March 20, alleging that Cohen had said in 2018 that he had decided on his own to make the payment to Daniels.

    Costello’s testimony appeared to delay a possible indictment – for a brief time at least.

    During the void, Trump continued to launch verbal insults against Bragg, calling him a “degenerate psychopath.” And four Republican chairmen of the most powerful House committees wrote to Bragg asking him to testify, which Bragg’s office said was unprecedented interference in a local investigation. An envelope containing a suspicious white powder and a death threat to Bragg was to delivered to the building where the grand jury meets – the powder was deemed nonhazardous.

    The grand jury would not meet again until Monday, March 27, when Pecker was ushered back to the grand jury in a government vehicle with tinted windows in a failed effort to evade detection by the media camped outside of the building where the grand jury meets.

    Pecker, a longtime friend of Trump’s who had a history of orchestrating so-called “catch and kill” deals while at the National Enquirer, was involved with the Daniels’ deal from the beginning.

    Two days after Pecker’s testimony, there were multiple reports that the grand jury was going into a pre-planned break in April. The grand jury was set to meet Thursday but it was not expected to hear the Trump case.

    Instead, the grand jury heard from one last witness in the Trump case on Thursday, whose identity is still unknown. And then the grand jury shook up the American political system by voting to indict a former president and 2024 candidate for the White House.

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  • Apple’s Weather app briefly went down and rained on everyone’s morning | CNN Business

    Apple’s Weather app briefly went down and rained on everyone’s morning | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Anyone using their iPhone to check the weather on Tuesday may have had better luck just looking out the window.

    Apple’s default Weather app briefly went down for many users on Tuesday morning, showing blank screens with no data. The result: many users felt clueless about what was happening outside.

    “The Apple Weather app has been down all morning and I never imagined how much disruption that would cause,” wrote one Twitter user. Another tweeted an apparent “Top Gun” reference: “Biggest storm of the season is about to hit Fargo and the Apple weather app is down. I’m flying blind, Goose.”

    There are numerous other sources one could use to determine the weather, including various apps, websites, local news reports and, of course, one’s own eyes. But the apparent disruption from the outage highlights how reliant some have grown on certain popular applications.

    Apple confirmed the outage in a Twitter reply to a frustrated user, noting that some app users may be experiencing a “temporary outage.” The company’s

    System Status page     also flagged the Weather app as facing an ongoing issue.

    Apple did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    One CNN reporter saw only a handful of cities on the Weather app home screen load with full data, while most cities remained completely blank. The app usually displays information including hourly forecast, 10-day forecast, air quality index, precipitation, UV index and more.

    The app was revamped as part of the iOS 16 release in September after Apple bought popular weather service Dark Sky in 2020 and fully integrated its features into the newest operating system.

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  • HHS secretary says ‘everything is on the table’ amid calls to ignore medication abortion ruling | CNN Politics

    HHS secretary says ‘everything is on the table’ amid calls to ignore medication abortion ruling | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra on Sunday said “everything is on the table” following a Texas federal judge’s ruling to suspend the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the medication abortion drug mifepristone.

    In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union,” the secretary would not say whether he believes the FDA should ignore the ruling and keep the drug on the market, but he maintained that the Biden administration is considering all options.

    “We want the courts to overturn this reckless decision,” Becerra said, adding that there was a “good chance” of Supreme Court intervention but declining to say how, exactly, the administration will handle the ruling in the interim.

    “Everything is on the table. The president said that way back when the Dobbs decision came out. Every option is on the table,” the secretary told Bash, referring to last year’s Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade.

    Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in a separate appearance on “State of the Union,” did not back away from her call Friday on CNN for the ruling to be ignored, saying that if it was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court, “it would essentially institute a national abortion ban.”

    “I do not believe that the courts have the authority over the FDA that they just asserted, and I do believe that it creates a crisis,” she told Bash.

    Ocasio-Cortez called the ruling “an extreme abuse of power” and said there was precedent for the executive branch ignoring court rulings.

    “I do think that when it comes to gaming out what the very real possibilities are in the coming days, weeks and months, this is not just about speculation, but this is about preparation. And the reality of our courts right now is very disturbing,” she said.

    Meanwhile, Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas warned in a separate interview with Bash on Sunday that House GOP appropriators could defund certain FDA programs if the ruling is ultimately ignored.

    “The House Republicans have the power of the purse, and if the administration wants to not lead this ruling, not live up to this ruling, then we’re going to have a problem,” the second-term lawmaker said. “And it may come a point where House Republicans on the appropriation side have to defund FDA programs that don’t make sense.”

    US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk on Friday issued a ruling to halt the decades-old approval of mifepristone, but he paused the ruling from taking effect for a week so it could be appealed, a process that is underway.

    “This is not America,” Becerra said Sunday. “What you saw is that one judge in that one court in that one state, that’s not America. America goes by the evidence. America does what’s fair. America does what is transparent, and we can show that what we do is for the right reasons. That’s not America.”

    Within an hour of the ruling Friday, a different federal judge ruled in favor of 17 Democratic-led states and Washington, DC, looking to expand access to the abortion pill, allowing them to keep the drug available.

    Becerra on Sunday touted the proven safety of the drug, a factor that Kacsmaryk questioned in his ruling. He confirmed that the Department of Justice had already filed its appeal and is waiting for its day in court.

    Still, Becerra had little to say about what tangible preparations the administration would take to secure access to abortion should the drug no longer be available after the weeklong pause.

    “Well, [women] certainly have access today, and we intend to do everything to make sure it’s available for them not just in a week but moving forward, period,” Becerra told Bash when asked if women would have access to the medication after this week.

    The Justice Department and Danco, a mifepristone manufacturer that intervened in the case to defend the approval, have both filed notices of appeal. Attorney General Merrick Garland and Danco said in statements that in addition to the appeals, they will seek “stays” of the ruling, meaning emergency requests that the decision remains frozen while the appeal moves forward.

    They’re appealing to the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which is sometimes said to be the country’s most conservative appellate court. Yet some legal scholars are skeptical that the 5th Circuit, as conservative as it is, would let Kacmsaryk’s order take effect.

    “I got to believe that, Dana, an appeals court, the Supreme Court, whatever court has to understand that this ruling by this one judge overturns not just access to mifepristone, but possibly any number of drugs,” Becerra said.

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  • Elon Musk’s weekend antics could only further crumble Twitter’s brand value | CNN Business

    Elon Musk’s weekend antics could only further crumble Twitter’s brand value | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Under Elon Musk, Twitter has antagonized multiple major news organizations by labeling them state-funded media, appears to have eased restrictions on Russian government accounts and made crude jokes on the front of its headquarters and on Musk’s own Twitter display name.

    And that’s just this weekend.

    Musk’s antics, which only seem to have escalated this month, threaten to further erode Twitter’s brand value. For months, the company has struggled to retain advertisers and supplement its declining ad business — which previously comprised 90% of its annual revenue — by convincing users to pay up for its Twitter Blue subscription service.

    Musk, who is on the hook for large payments to lenders after buying the company for $44 billion, including with significant debt, must either coax hesitant advertisers back to the platform or boost its subscription business -— or both. But his recent erratic moves may only complicate those turnaround efforts.

    Late last week, Twitter faced backlash for labeling NPR as a “state-affiliated media” organization akin to foreign propaganda outlets such as Russia’s RT and Sputnik, in an apparent violation of its own policies. NPR CEO John Lansing called Twitter’s move “unacceptable,” and said the organization is “supported by millions of listeners.”

    Following the pushback, Twitter changed NPR’s label to “government funded media,” and applied the same designation to British broadcaster BBC over the weekend. Twitter has not given a definition for what it considers “government funded media,” but the BBC pushed back on the label, saying it is independent and “funded by the British public through the license fee.”

    The moves risk alienating some of the best-known media organizations in the world and undermining what has long been a key selling point for the platform: its role as a central hub for news. NPR, in particular, has not tweeted from its main account in nearly a week.

    While Twitter labeled some news accounts as state-funded, it also appears to have removed some restrictions on Russian government accounts that had been put in place following the outset of Russia’s war in Ukraine, again prompting outrage among some users.

    Musk commented on the decision in a tweet Sunday saying: “I’m told Putin called me a war criminal for helping Ukraine, so he’s not exactly my best friend. All news is to some degree propaganda. Let people decide for themselves.”

    Twitter, which laid off much of its media relations team last year, did not respond to a request for comment.

    The controversial moves come as Twitter continues to face significant business challenges. Analysis firm Similarweb last week reported that traffic to Twitter’s ad portal was down nearly 19% year-over-year in March. Many major advertisers have halted spending on Twitter since Musk’s takeover over concerns about increased hate speech on the platform and massive cuts to the company’s workforce.

    Musk has said Twitter is working to improve the platform’s ad targeting to increase value for advertisers. “But all the while there have been distractions,” said Scott Kessler, technology sector lead at research firm Third Bridge, adding that there are “significant questions about the direction that the company is going.” At the same time, online ad spending broadly has contracted over concerns about the economy.

    Against that backdrop, Musk’s Twitter has made several head-scratching announcements this month, some of which might only add to its challenges.

    Musk previously frustrated some of Twitter’s celebrity users, who have long been a key selling point for the platform, with a promise to remove blue checkmarks from accounts who had been verified under Twitter’s previous system. But it didn’t exactly go to plan — instead of removing checks from all previously verified users, Twitter appeared to target a single account belonging to the New York Times.

    Days later, Twitter’s home button was temporarily replaced with doge, the meme representing the cryptocurrency dogecoin, which Musk has promoted. The company also briefly restricted Twitter users from sharing links to a rival platform, upsetting users, including one who had previously reported the so-called Twitter files using documents provided by Musk.

    As if to underscore his unique and questionable impact on the brand, the “Chief Twit” has also apparently been keeping busy with changes to Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters. Last week, photos began spreading of a piece of plastic covering the “w” in the sign on the front of the company’s office.

    At nearly midnight on Sunday, Musk tweeted that the company’s landlord “says we’re legally required to keep sign as Twitter & cannot remove ‘w,’ so we painted it background color,” alongside a photo of the “w” painted white against a white background, leaving a more asinine word in its place. “Problem solved!” Musk tweeted.

    If only the same could be said for the platform’s business troubles.

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  • Amazon is ‘investing heavily’ in the technology behind ChatGPT | CNN Business

    Amazon is ‘investing heavily’ in the technology behind ChatGPT | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Amazon wants investors to know it won’t be left behind in the latest Big Tech arms race over artificial intelligence.

    In a letter to shareholders Thursday, Amazon

    (AMZN)     CEO Andy Jassy said the company is “investing heavily” in large language models (LLMs) and generative AI, the same technology that underpins ChatGPT and other similar AI chatbots.

    “We have been working on our own LLMs for a while now, believe it will transform and improve virtually every customer experience, and will continue to invest substantially in these models across all of our consumer, seller, brand, and creator experiences,” Jassy wrote in his letter to shareholders.

    The remarks, which were part of Jassy’s second annual letter to shareholder since taking over as CEO, hint at the pressure that many tech companies feel to explain how they can tap into the rapidly evolving marketplace for AI products. Since ChatGPT was released to the public in late November, Google

    (GOOG)    , Facebook

    (FB)     and Microsoft

    (MSFT)     have all talked up their growing focus on generative AI technology, which can create compelling essays, stories and visuals in response to user prompts.

    Amazon’s goal, according to Jassy, is to offer less costly machine learning chips so that “small and large companies can afford to train and run their LLMs in production.” Large language models are trained on vast troves of data in order to generate responses to user prompts.

    “Most companies want to use these large language models, but the really good ones take billions of dollars to train and many years, most companies don’t want to go through that,” Jassy said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday morning.

    “What they want to do is they want to work off of a foundational model that’s big and great already, and then have the ability to customize it for their own purposes,” Jassy told CNBC.

    With that in mind, Amazon on Thursday unveiled a new service called Bedrock. It essentially makes foundation models (large models that are pre-trained on vast amounts of data) from AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Stability AI and Amazon accessible to clients via an API, Amazon said in a blog post.

    Jassy told CNBC he thinks Bedrock “will change the game for people.”

    In his letter to shareholders, Jassy also touted AWS’s CodeWhisperer, another AI-powered tool which he said “revolutionizes developer productivity by generating code suggestions in real time.”

    “I could write an entire letter on LLMs and Generative AI as I think they will be that transformative, but I’ll leave that for a future letter,” Jassy wrote. “Let’s just say that LLMs and Generative AI are going to be a big deal for customers, our shareholders, and Amazon.”

    In the letter, Jassy also reflected on leading Amazon through “one of the harder macroeconomic years in recent memory,” as the e-commerce giant cut some 27,000 jobs as part of a major bid to rein in costs in recent months.

    “There were an unusual number of simultaneous challenges this past year,” Jassy said in the letter, before outlining steps Amazon took to rethink certain free shipping options, abandon some of its physical store concepts and significantly reduce overall headcount.

    Amazon disclosed in a securities filing Thursday that Jassy’s pay package last year was valued at some $1.3 million, and that the CEO did not receive any new stock awards in 2022. (When Jassy took over as CEO in 2021, he was awarded a pay package mostly comprised of stock awards that valued his total compensation package at some $212 million.)

    Despite the challenges at Amazon, however, Jassy said in his letter that he finds himself “optimistic and energized by what lies ahead.” Jassy added: “I strongly believe that our best days are in front of us.”

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  • Here’s what you can do if you lose Medicaid coverage | CNN Politics

    Here’s what you can do if you lose Medicaid coverage | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Though millions of Americans are expected to be kicked off of Medicaid in coming months, they don’t all have to be left uninsured.

    But it could take some work to regain health coverage.

    “For a lot of people, this can be a very disruptive period of time,” said Sabrina Corlette, co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University. “There is a significant time and paperwork burden being placed on families – a lot of them very low income, a lot of them medically vulnerable.”

    States are now free to terminate the Medicaid coverage of residents they deem ineligible. States had been barred from involuntarily removing anyone for the past three years as part of an early congressional Covid-19 pandemic relief package, causing enrollment in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program to balloon to more than 92 million people.

    Of the roughly 15 million people who could lose Medicaid coverage over the next 14 months, about 8.2 million would no longer qualify, according to a Department of Health and Human Services analysis released in August.

    Some 2.7 million of these folks would qualify for enhanced federal subsidies for Affordable Care Act policies that could bring their monthly premiums to as low as $0.

    Another 5 million are expected to secure other coverage, mainly through employers.

    Some 6.8 million people, however, will be disenrolled even though they remain eligible for Medicaid.

    Check out Obamacare policies: Folks who lose their Medicaid coverage can shop for health insurance plans on the Affordable Care Act exchanges.

    Those whose annual incomes remain below 150% of the federal poverty level – $20,385 for a single person and $41,625 for a family of four in 2023 – can obtain enhanced federal assistance to lower their premiums to as little as $0 a month. That beefed-up subsidy is in place through 2025.

    Many people with higher incomes can find subsidized policies for $10 or less.

    State Medicaid agencies are tasked with easing residents’ transfer from Medicaid to the Obamacare marketplaces, but the smoothness of the process will vary greatly by state. Once someone is determined to no longer qualify for Medicaid, the agency must assess his or her eligibility for Affordable Care Act coverage and transfer the resident’s information to the exchange.

    Some states that run their own Obamacare exchanges are taking extra steps to ensure their residents remain covered. Rhode Island, for instance, is automatically enrolling certain people in marketplace coverage. It’s also paying the first two months of premiums for some residents who actively select policies.

    Those who lose Medicaid coverage and live in the 33 states covered by the federal marketplace, healthcare.gov, can apply for Affordable Care Act policies through a special enrollment period that runs through July 2024. State-based exchanges have their own deadlines, with some mirroring the federal exchange and others providing much shorter windows.

    Navigators and insurance brokers can help consumers select plans.

    Historically, very few people who lose Medicaid coverage wind up in Obamacare plans. About 4% of adults who were terminated from Medicaid enrolled in exchange policies in 2018, according to the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission.

    The coverage differs too. Those that switch to the marketplace may have to find other doctors that are in their insurers’ networks and may face out-of-pocket costs.

    Consider job-based coverage: A number of people who are terminated from Medicaid may already be covered by their employers, particularly those who started new jobs during the pandemic. Others have the option of obtaining coverage through work, though it will almost certainly be more expensive than Medicaid since it will likely entail premiums, deductibles and copays.

    Workers may find they can afford coverage for themselves but not for their families. If the premiums for family policies cost more than 9.12% of household income, spouses and children may be able to get subsidized coverage on the Affordable Care Act exchanges.

    Employees should contact their human resources departments to sign up. Typically, they’ll have to enroll within 60 days of losing Medicaid, but those who are terminated from the program between now and July 10 will have until early September to sign up.

    See if you or your children remain eligible for Medicaid: Millions of Americans who still qualify for Medicaid may lose coverage for procedural reasons. For example, they may have moved so they don’t receive the redetermination notices. Or they may not return the necessary paperwork to prove their eligibility.

    So it’s crucial that folks update their contact information with their state agencies and reply to the letters they receive about renewing their Medicaid eligibility.

    “When you get that packet in the mail, respond to it promptly,” Corlette said.

    Those who are dropped have 90 days to submit their renewal paperwork to their state agency, which is required to reinstate them if they are found eligible. Beyond that time period, people may reapply. In most states, your coverage can be made retroactive for up to three months if you were eligible and received Medicaid-covered services.

    Parents who no longer qualify and are terminated should check if their children remain eligible. As many as 6.7 million kids are at risk of losing Medicaid coverage, according to Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families.

    Nearly three-quarters of the children projected to be dropped will remain eligible for Medicaid or CHIP but will lose coverage mainly because of administrative issues. Black and Latino children and families are more likely to be erroneously terminated, according to the center.

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  • Snapchat’s new AI chatbot is already raising alarms among teens and parents | CNN Business

    Snapchat’s new AI chatbot is already raising alarms among teens and parents | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Less than a few hours after Snapchat rolled out its My AI chatbot to all users last week, Lyndsi Lee, a mother from East Prairie, Missouri, told her 13-year-old daughter to stay away from the feature.

    “It’s a temporary solution until I know more about it and can set some healthy boundaries and guidelines,” said Lee, who works at a software company. She worries about how My AI presents itself to young users like her daughter on Snapchat.

    The feature is powered by the viral AI chatbot tool ChatGPT – and like ChatGPT, it can offer recommendations, answer questions and converse with users. But Snapchat’s version has some key differences: Users can customize the chatbot’s name, design a custom Bitmoji avatar for it, and bring it into conversations with friends.

    The net effect is that conversing with Snapchat’s chatbot may feel less transactional than visiting ChatGPT’s website. It also may be less clear you’re talking to a computer.

    “I don’t think I’m prepared to know how to teach my kid how to emotionally separate humans and machines when they essentially look the same from her point of view,” Lee said. “I just think there is a really clear line [Snapchat] is crossing.”

    The new tool is facing backlash not only from parents but also from some Snapchat users who are bombarding the app with bad reviews in the app store and criticisms on social media over privacy concerns, “creepy” exchanges and an inability to remove the feature from their chat feed unless they pay for a premium subscription.

    While some may find value in the tool, the mixed reactions hint at the risks companies face in rolling out new generative AI technology to their products, and particularly in products like Snapchat, whose users skew younger.

    Snapchat was an early launch partner when OpenAI opened up access to ChatGPT to third-party businesses, with many more expected to follow. Almost overnight, Snapchat has forced some families and lawmakers to reckon with questions that may have seemed theoretical only months ago.

    In a letter to the CEOs of Snap and other tech companies last month, weeks after My AI was released to Snap’s subscription customers, Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet raised concerns about the interactions the chatbot was having with younger users. In particular, he cited reports that it can provide kids with suggestions for how to lie to their parents.

    “These examples would be disturbing for any social media platform, but they are especially troubling for Snapchat, which almost 60 percent of American teenagers use,” Bennet wrote. “Although Snap concedes My AI is ‘experimental,’ it has nevertheless rushed to enroll American kids and adolescents in its social experiment.”

    In a blog post last week, the company said: “My AI is far from perfect but we’ve made a lot of progress.”

    In the days since its formal launch, Snapchat users have been vocal about their concerns. One user called his interaction “terrifying” after he said it lied about not knowing where the user was located. After the user lightened the conversation, he said the chatbot accurately revealed he lived in Colorado.

    In another TikTok video with more than 1.5 million views, a user named Ariel recorded a song with an intro, chorus and piano chords written by My AI about what it’s like to be a chatbot. When she sent the recorded song back, she said the chatbot denied its involvement with the reply: “I’m sorry, but as an AI language model, I don’t write songs.” Ariel called the exchange “creepy.”

    Other users shared concerns about how the tool understands, interacts with and collects information from photos. “I snapped a picture … and it said ‘nice shoes’ and asked who the people [were] in the photo,” a Snapchat user wrote on Facebook.

    Snapchat told CNN it continues to improve My AI based on community feedback and is working to establish more guardrails to keep its users safe. The company also said that similar to its other tools, users don’t have to interact with My AI if they don’t want to.

    It’s not possible to remove My AI from chat feeds, however, unless a user subscribes to its monthly premium service, Snapchat+. Some teens say they have opted to pay the $3.99 Snapchat+ fee to turn off the tool before promptly canceling the service.

    But not all users dislike the feature.

    One user wrote on Facebook that she’s been asking My AI for homework help. “It gets all of the questions right.” Another noted she’s leaned on it for comfort and advice. “I love my little pocket, bestie!” she wrote. “You can change the Bitmoji [avatar] for it and surprisingly it offers really great advice to some real life situations. … I love the support it gives.”

    ChatGPT, which is trained on vast troves of data online, has previously come under fire for spreading inaccurate information, responding to users in ways they might find inappropriate and enabling students to cheat. But Snapchat’s integration of the tool risks heightening some of these issues, and adding new ones.

    Alexandra Hamlet, a clinical psychologist in New York City, said the parents of some of her patients have expressed concern about how their teenager could interact with Snapchat’s tool. There’s also concern around chatbots giving advice and about mental health because AI tools can reinforce someone’s confirmation bias, making it easier for users to seek out interactions that confirm their unhelpful beliefs.

    “If a teen is in a negative mood and does not have the awareness desire to feel better, they may seek out a conversation with a chatbot that they know will make them feel worse,” she said. “Over time, having interactions like these can erode a teens’ sense of worth, despite their knowing that they are really talking to a bot. In an emotional state of mind, it becomes less possible for an individual to consider this type of logic.”

    For now, the onus is on parents to start meaningful conversations with their teens about best practices for communicating with AI, especially as the tools start to show up in more popular apps and services.

    Sinead Bovell, the founder of WAYE, a startup that helps prepare youth for future with advanced technologies, said parents need to make it very clear “chatbots are not your friend.”

    “They’re also not your therapists or a trusted adviser, and anyone interacting with them needs to be very cautious, especially teenagers who may be more susceptible to believing what they say,” she said.

    “Parents should be talking to their kids now about how they shouldn’t share anything personal with a chatbot that they would a friend – even though from a user design perspective, the chatbot exists in the same corner of Snapchat.”

    She added that federal regulation that would require companies to abide by specific protocols is also needed to keep up the rapid pace of AI advancement.

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  • NY judge to hear arguments over DA’s bid to limit Trump’s ability to publicize information in criminal case | CNN Politics

    NY judge to hear arguments over DA’s bid to limit Trump’s ability to publicize information in criminal case | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A New York judge will hear arguments Thursday over a proposed protective order in Donald Trump’s criminal case that would limit the former president’s ability to publicize information about the investigation.

    The Manhattan district attorney’s office is seeking to restrain Trump’s access to the evidence it turns over to his attorneys, in part, it says, because of his social media posts about the District Attorney Alvin Bragg and witnesses in the case.

    Trump will not be in attendance at Thursday’s hearing with Judge Juan Merchan.

    The former president’s attorneys oppose the DA’s proposal, arguing that the state should be just as restrained as Trump from what information it can discuss publicly and says that Trump, as a presidential candidate, should have the ability to defend himself against the charges while campaigning.

    “To state the obvious, there will continue to be significant public commentary about this case and his candidacy, to which he has a right and a need to respond, both for his own sake and for the benefit of the voting public,” Trump’s attorneys wrote.

    The proposed protective order submitted by prosecutors, Trump’s attorneys wrote, “would severely hamper President Trump’s ability to publicly defend himself and prepare for trial.”

    Trump’s attorneys are asking that any limitations to disclosing evidence in the case be placed on both Trump and the district attorney’s office. They criticized a press conference held by Bragg last month as revealing information that they say would be violated by the district attorney’s own proposed order.

    “Surprisingly, the People apparently believe that New York law allows the District Attorney’s Office and its witnesses to freely speak and quote from grand jury evidence, but not President Trump or his counsel,” they wrote.

    Prosecutors have cited Trump’s public attacks on Bragg and prosecution witness Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, as one reason to restrict what he could say. Trump’s attorneys contend that Bragg and former prosecutor Mark Pomerantz made “disparaging and obnoxious” comments about their client.

    Manhattan prosecutors have accused Trump of falsifying business records with the intent to conceal illegal conduct connected to his 2016 presidential campaign. The criminal charges stem from Bragg’s investigation into hush money payments, made during the 2016 campaign, to women who claimed they had extramarital affairs with Trump, which he denies. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.

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  • Here’s how the 14th Amendment factors into the debt ceiling debate | CNN Politics

    Here’s how the 14th Amendment factors into the debt ceiling debate | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    As the stalemate over addressing the debt ceiling continues and the threat of default looms larger, President Joe Biden has resurfaced the controversial idea of using the 14th Amendment as a way to lift the borrowing cap without Congress.

    How could a 145-year-old change to the US Constitution that gave citizenship to former slaves serve as a path out of the debt ceiling drama? Government officials and legal authorities are divided over whether it does.

    Some experts, including Laurence H. Tribe of Harvard Law School, point to Section 4 of the amendment as the basis of their argument that the president has the authority to order the nation’s debts be paid regardless of the debt limit Congress put in place more than 100 years ago.

    “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned,” reads the section, which refers to the debt incurred by the Union to fight the Civil War.

    Lawmakers who crafted the amendment are very strongly saying that once the US borrows money, it has to pay it back, said Garrett Epps, a constitutional law professor at the University of Oregon. The section was designed to remove debt payments from potential post-war partisan bickering between the North and South, but it also applies to the wide divide between Democrats and Republicans today.

    “The federal government is required to pay the debt on time in full,” said Epps, who has long supported using this option in the event Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling.

    Were Biden to invoke the 14th Amendment to allow Treasury to borrow above the debt ceiling to pay the nation’s obligations, it would almost certainly prompt a constitutional crisis and swift legal action. The president acknowledged as much, saying that he doesn’t think it would solve the current problem.

    “I’ll be very blunt with you, when we get by this, I’m thinking about taking a look at, months down the road, as to see whether what the court would say about whether or not it does work,” Biden said Tuesday after meeting with congressional leaders about the impasse.

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who has warned lawmakers that the government may default on its obligations as soon as June 1, also poured cold water on the idea.

    “There would clearly be litigation around that. It’s not a short-run solution,” Yellen said at a news conference Thursday when asked about the 14th Amendment. “It’s legally questionable whether or not that’s a viable strategy.”

    She declined to rank where invoking the 14th Amendment would fall in the list of options if Congress failed to act.

    “There are choices to be made, if we got into that situation,” she said. “But as you think about each possible thing that we could do, the answer is there is no good alternative that will save us from catastrophe. The only reasonable thing is to raise the debt ceiling and to avoid the dreadful consequences that will come if we have to make those choices.”

    Prior administrations also considered invoking the 14th Amendment but deemed it unworkable. They never had to pursue it since Congress always acted in time.

    Doing so, however, would not avoid calling into question the safety of US Treasury securities and would put the nation at risk, former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, who served in the Obama administration, said at a Council on Foreign Relations event last month.

    “It was not meant to be a broad grant of power,” he said. “Whether you could come up with a theory that you could convince a court was legitimate, I think it’s just a risky thing to do.”

    Invoking the 14th Amendment would also open the door to potential abuse of presidential power by allowing the executive branch to circumvent Congress, said Philip Wallach, senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. And it could forever end the ability of lawmakers to negotiate with the president over the debt ceiling.

    “Every time you take these actions that empower the president at the expense of Congress and at the expense of the political process, you need to ask yourself, am I going to be happy about the consequences of this the next time, when the other side’s party is sitting in the White House?” Wallach said.

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  • Biden cancels visits to Australia and Papua New Guinea as debt ceiling negotiations continue | CNN Politics

    Biden cancels visits to Australia and Papua New Guinea as debt ceiling negotiations continue | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden is canceling his upcoming visits to Papua New Guinea and Australia due to the ongoing debt ceiling negotiations in Washington, the White House confirmed Tuesday.

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement Biden spoke to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese earlier Tuesday to inform him he will be “postponing” the trip and invited the prime minister for an official state visit “at a time to be agreed by the teams.” Jean-Pierre added that the “President’s team engaged” with the prime minister of Papua New Guinea.

    Biden will still travel to Japan starting Wednesday as part of what was supposed to be a weeklong trip through the Pacific region.

    Earlier Tuesday, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby told reporters that the White House was “reevaluating” the stops to Papua New Guinea and Australia.

    “What I can speak to is the G7 and going to Hiroshima. The president is looking forward to that. We are taking a look at the rest of the trip,” Kirby told reporters.

    The cancellation canes as congressional leaders met with Biden at the White House to discuss the debt limit. The Treasury Department has warned that the government default could come as early as June 1, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said a default would trigger a global economic downturn.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • China imposes sales restrictions on Micron as it escalates tech battle with Washington | CNN Business

    China imposes sales restrictions on Micron as it escalates tech battle with Washington | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    China has banned US chip maker Micron from selling to Chinese companies working on key infrastructure projects, in a major escalation of an ongoing battle between the world’s top two economies over access to crucial technology.

    The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) announced the decision on Sunday, saying the US chip maker had failed to pass a cybersecurity review. The news came shortly after the close of the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Hiroshima, Japan, where leaders of major democracies spoke in one voice on their growing concerns over China.

    “The review found that Micron’s products have relatively serious cybersecurity risks, which pose significant security risks to China’s critical information infrastructure supply chain and would affect national security,” the Chinese regulator said in a statement.

    As a result, operators involved in domestic critical information infrastructure projects should stop purchasing products from Micron, it said.

    Shares of Micron Technology

    (MU)     sank about 3% Monday. Its Asian rivals had finished the day higher. Shares of Chinese memory chip maker Ingenic Semiconductor jumped 2.8%. Shenzhen Techwinsemi Technology surged 6.3%. Toyou Feiji Electronics soared 14%. In Seoul, SK Hynix, one of the world’s largest memory chip makers, gained 0.9%, outperforming the South Korean market.

    The Chinese regulator’s decision came seven weeks after it kicked off a cybersecurity review of Micron’s products, in apparent retaliation against sanctions imposed by Washington and its allies on China’s chip sector.

    Micron is one of the largest memory chip makers in the United States. It derives more than 10% of its revenue from mainland China.

    The company told CNN that it had received the regulator’s notice and was assessing its next steps.

    “We look forward to continuing to engage in discussions with Chinese authorities,” it said in a statement.

    Micron’s chief financial officer, Mark Murphy, said separately on Monday that the company was unclear what security concerns Beijing had. He said the company is evaluating what portion of its sales could be impacted.

    “We are currently estimating a range of impact in the low single digits percent of our company total revenue at the low end and high single-digit percentage of total company revenue at the high end,” he said at a conference.

    The US Commerce Department said it firmly opposed the restrictions that “have no basis in fact,” according to Reuters.

    “This action, along with recent raids and targeting of other American firms, is inconsistent with [China’s] assertions that it is opening its markets and committed to a transparent regulatory framework,” it was quoted as saying.

    The US State Department similarly said it has “very serious concerns” about the ban.

    “The Department of Commerce is engaging directly with the PRC to make our view clear, and broadly, this action appears inconsistent with the PRC’s assertions that it is open for business and committed to a transparent regulatory framework,” US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Monday.

    On Sunday, China’s Foreign Ministry accused G7 leaders of “hindering international peace” and said the group needed to “reflect on its behavior and change course.”

    In a landmark joint communique Saturday, G7 member countries had made the group’s most detailed articulation of a shared position on China to date — stressing the need to cooperate with the world’s second-largest economy, but also to counter its “malign practices” and “coercion.” in a landmark joint communique Saturday.

    Since October 2022, Washington has imposed sweeping export curbs on advanced chips and chip-making equipment to China, in an attempt to cut off China’s access to critical technology for military purposes.

    In March, Japan and the Netherlands, both key US allies, also announced restrictions on overseas sales of chip-making technology to countries including China. China has strongly criticized the restrictions, labeling them “discriminatory containment” directed at the country.

    Chips are at the center of Beijing’s bid to become a tech superpower. China has its own chip manufacturers, but they supply mostly low- to mid-end processors used in home appliances and electric vehicles.

    The semiconductor battle is part of a growing divide between the United States and China. In recent years, relations between the two have reached their lowest level in decades.

    Tensions escalated this year after a suspected Chinese spy balloon was shot down by US fighter jets in February and Beijing continued to deepen its ties with Russia despite its continued invasion of Ukraine.

    However, US President Joe Biden said on Sunday that he expected ties between the two countries to improve soon.

    “I think you are gonna see that begin to thaw very shortly,” Biden told a news conference at the end of the Group of Seven summit in Japan.

    He said he had agreed with Chinese President Xi Jinping in November to keep communications open, but that everything changed after a “silly balloon that was carrying two freight cars worth of spying equipment” was shot down.

    “We are not looking to decouple from China,” he said. “We are looking to de-risk and diversify our relationship with China.”

    — CNN’s Simone McCarthy, Jennifer Hansler and Saba Haroon contributed to this report

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  • Microsoft leaps into the AI regulation debate, calling for a new US agency and executive order | CNN Business

    Microsoft leaps into the AI regulation debate, calling for a new US agency and executive order | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Microsoft joined a sprawling global debate on the regulation of artificial intelligence Thursday, echoing calls for a new federal agency to control the technology’s development and urging the Biden administration to approve new restrictions on how the US government uses AI tools.

    In a speech in Washington attended by multiple members of Congress and civil society groups, Microsoft President Brad Smith described AI regulation as the challenge of the 21st century, outlining a five-point plan for how democratic nations could address the risks of AI while promoting a liberal vision for the technology that could rival competing efforts from countries such as China.

    The remarks highlight how one of the largest companies in the AI industry hopes to influence the fast-moving push by governments, particularly in Europe and the United States, to rein in AI before it causes major disruptions to society and the economy.

    In a roughly hour-long appearance that was equal parts product pitch and policy proposal, Smith compared AI to the printing press and described how it could streamline policymaking and lawmakers’ constituent outreach, before calling for “the rule of law” to govern AI at every part of its lifecycle and supply chain.

    Regulations should apply to everything from the data centers that train large language models to the end users such as banks, hospitals and others that may apply the technology toward making life-altering decisions, Smith said.

    For decades, “the rule of law and a commitment to democracy has kept technology in its proper place,” Smith said. “We’ve done it before; we can do it again.”

    In his remarks, Smith joined calls made last week by OpenAI — the company behind ChatGPT and that Microsoft has invested billions in — for the creation of a new government regulator that can oversee a licensing system for cutting-edge AI development, combined with testing and safety standards as well as government-mandated disclosure rules.

    Whether a new federal regulator is needed to police AI is quickly emerging as a focal point of the debate in Washington; opponents such as IBM have argued, including in an op-ed Thursday, that AI regulation should be baked into every existing federal agency because of their understanding of the sectors they oversee and how AI may be most likely to transform them.

    Smith also called for President Joe Biden to develop and sign an executive order requiring federal agencies that procure AI tools to implement a risk management framework developed and published this year by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. That framework, which Congress first ordered with legislation in 2020, covers ways that companies can use AI responsibly and ethically.

    Such an order would leverage the US government’s immense purchasing power to shape the AI industry and encourage the voluntary adoption of best practices, Smith said.

    Microsoft itself plans to implement the NIST framework “across all of our services,” Smith added, a commitment he described as the direct outgrowth of a recent White House meeting with AI CEOs in Washington. Smith also pledged to publish an annual AI transparency report.

    As part of Microsoft’s proposal, Smith said any new rules for AI should include revamped export controls tailor-made for the AI age to prevent the technology from being abused by sanctioned entities.

    And, he said, the government should mandate redundant AI circuit breakers that would allow algorithms to be shut off by critical infrastructure providers or from within the data centers they depend on.

    Smith’s remarks, and a related policy paper, come a week after Google released its own proposals calling for global cooperation and common standards for artificial intelligence.

    “AI is too important not to regulate, and too important not to regulate well,” Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs, said in a blog post unveiling the company’s plan.

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  • The Reddit blackout shows no signs of stopping | CNN Business

    The Reddit blackout shows no signs of stopping | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    A widespread Reddit blackout affecting some of the site’s largest communities has continued into its third day with no signs of stopping, as a number of groups on the site vowed to remain closed off indefinitely to protest changes to the platform’s data policies.

    As of Wednesday morning, more than 6,000 subreddits remained inaccessible and in private mode after what began as a two-day voluntary shutdown. The blackout includes popular forums such as r/aww, r/videos and r/music, each of which claims more than 25 million subscribers on the platform.

    The extended protest highlights the commitment of some users, moderators and developers to a long-term standoff with Reddit’s management over a decision to begin charging steep fees for third-party data access to its platform.

    Reddit didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The coming fees have provoked broad outrage because of their expected impact on independent apps and moderator tools that have grown up around Reddit and that many users view as a critical resource. Some of the largest third-party apps, such as Apollo and RIF, have said they cannot afford the fees and must shut down, effectively driving users to Reddit’s native app that has been widely panned as slow, buggy and inferior, particularly for users with disabilities.

    In recent days, Reddit has said it would exempt some accessibility apps from the price changes and allow some third-party tools to continue operating through its application programming interface (API). But many moderators have called the announcements little more than a “microscopic” concession.

    In response to allegations that Reddit is imposing the fees and forcing developers to shut down in a “profit-driven” move, Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman said in a recent Q&A with users that Reddit will “continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive.”

    “Unlike some of the [third-party] apps, we are not profitable,” Huffman said.

    The tensions echo how Twitter, under its new owner Elon Musk, has prompted criticism with plans for its own paywall for data in a bid to develop new revenue sources and to shore up the company’s struggling finances. For Reddit, the stakes are also high to grow revenue, as the company reportedly looks to go public later this year.

    Huffman reportedly dismissed the blackout in a leaked internal memo obtained by The Verge. According to the memo, Huffman described the protest as “among the noisiest we’ve seen” but insisted that “like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well.”

    “We absolutely must ship what we said we would,” Huffman reportedly wrote in the memo, in an apparent reference to the API changes. Huffman also reportedly predicted that some subreddits would end their protest after the initially scheduled two days.

    As of Wednesday morning, many groups participating in the blackout had lifted their self-imposed restrictions. But even as some groups went public once more, others joined the protest.

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  • The largest newspaper publisher in the US sues Google, alleging online ad monopoly | CNN Business

    The largest newspaper publisher in the US sues Google, alleging online ad monopoly | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the United States, is suing Google, alleging the tech giant holds a monopoly over the digital ad market.

    The publisher of USA Today and more than 200 local publications filed the lawsuit in a New York federal court on Tuesday, and is seeking unspecified damages. Gannett argues in court documents that Google and its parent company, Alphabet, controls how publishers buy and sell ads online.

    “The result is dramatically less revenue for publishers and Google’s ad-tech rivals, while Google enjoys exorbitant monopoly profits,” the lawsuit states.

    Google controls about a quarter of the US digital advertising market, with Meta, Amazon and TikTok combining for another third, according to eMarketer. News publishers and other websites combine for the other roughly 40%. Big Tech’s share of the market is beginning to erode slightly, but Google remains by far the largest individual player.

    That means publishers often rely at least in part on Google’s advertising technology to support their operations: Gannett says Google controls 90% of the ad market for publishers.

    Michael Reed, Gannett’s chairman and CEO, said in a statement Tuesday that Google’s dominance in the online advertising industry has come “at the expense of publishers, readers and everyone else.”

    “Digital advertising is the lifeblood of the online economy,” Reed added. “Without free and fair competition for digital ad space, publishers cannot invest in their newsrooms.”

    Dan Taylor, Google’s vice president of global ads, told CNN that the claims in the suit “are simply wrong.”

    “Publishers have many options to choose from when it comes to using advertising technology to monetize – in fact, Gannett uses dozens of competing ad services, including Google Ad Manager,” Taylor said in a statement Tuesday. “And when publishers choose to use Google tools, they keep the vast majority of revenue.”

    He continued: “We’ll show the court how our advertising products benefit publishers and help them fund their content online.”

    The legal action from Gannett comes as Google faces a growing number of antitrust complaints in the United States and the European Union over its advertising business, which remains its central moneymaker.

    EU officials said last week that Google’s advertising business should be broken up, alleging that the tech giant’s involvement in multiple parts of the digital advertising supply chain creates “inherent conflicts of interest” that risk harming competition.

    Earlier this year, the Justice Department and eight states sued Google, accusing the company of harming competition with its dominance in the online advertising market and similarly calling for it to be broken up.

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