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  • China still wants to control Big Tech. It’s just pulling different strings | CNN Business

    China still wants to control Big Tech. It’s just pulling different strings | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    Investors have raced back into Chinese tech stocks this year, encouraged by an apparent truce in a two-year battle between some of the country’s most powerful regulators and its biggest internet companies.

    But the enthusiasm may prove to be premature; Beijing is tightening its grip on household names such as Alibaba

    (BABA)     by acquiring so-called “golden shares” that allow government officials to be directly involved in their businesses, including having a say in the content they provide to hundreds of millions of people.

    Earlier this month, a fund controlled by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) took a 1% stake in Alibaba’s digital media subsidiary in Guangzhou, according to business data platform Qichacha. The subsidiary — Guangzhou Lujiao Information Technology — has a portfolio of businesses under its wing, including mobile browser UCWeb and streaming video site Youku Tudou.

    According to Qichacha, a new board member, who has the same name as a mid-level official at the CAC, was appointed to the subsidiary at the same time. Alibaba didn’t respond to CNN request for comments. Calls to the CAC went unanswered.

    According to a person familiar with the matter, the Chinese government is also discussing taking a similar stake in a mainland Chinese subsidiary of Tencent

    (TCEHY)    , the group that includes WeChat and a vast gaming business. The terms have not been finalized yet, the person said. Tencent

    (TCEHY)     declined to comment.

    The moves come as Beijing has signaled that its two-year onslaught on the internet industry is coming to an end. As the economy falters, the ruling Communist Party needs the private sector to boost jobs and growth.

    But that doesn’t mean China is changing its attitude towards companies it believes have become too powerful.

    “It wasn’t a change of heart that caused Beijing to pull back its regulatory push on tech companies, it was a concession to economic reality,” said Brock Silvers, chief investment officer for Kaiyuan Capital in Hong Kong.

    “The goal of furthering state control over sprawling tech empires, however, wasn’t abandoned.”

    Instead, Beijing is returning to the “golden shares” approach, by which the state can still assert control over these firms, while moderating its impact on markets, Silvers added.

    “Golden shares” give their owners, usually governments, some level of control over companies, often those that were previously state-owned.

    In China, such shares are called “special management shares” and give the government decisive voting rights or veto power over certain business decisions or — in the case of internet companies — content.

    The policy could present a “nightmare” scenario for foreign investors, said Alex Capri, a research fellow at the Hinrich Foundation.

    That’s because the Biden administration has issued a series of executive orders limiting securities investments in Chinese entities that the US suspects of aiding China’s military.

    “This represents a murky grey zone for investors, as the CCP’s presence spills over into all areas, both military and civil,” Capri said. “American and other foreign investors will struggle to perform due diligence in an opaque Chinese system.”

    The Chinese government first introduced “golden shares” in 2013 with the aim of strengthening its control over state-backed media firms, which were later opened up to private investors. But as the mobile internet took off, it took such shares in a number of private tech firms operating news and video apps to maintain its grip over information on the internet.

    Between 2018 and 2022, several government entities took 1% stakes in popular news and content platforms, including US-listed Sina Weibo

    (SINA)    , 36kr

    (KRKR)    , and Qutoutiao

    (QTT)    , and Hong Kong-listed Kuaishou, according to company filings or public registration records.

    “Beijing’s Golden Share initiative is about embedding the Chinese Communist Party within the nerve-centers of China’s most important internet-content companies,” said Capri. “It’s about achieving pervasive surveillance, censorship and policing capabilities from the inside out,” he added.

    In April 2021, a government entity acquired a 1% stake in a Beijing subsidiary of TikTok’s parent company Bytedance, according to Qichacha.

    The subsidiary controls some Chinese operating licenses for Douyin and Toutiao. Douyin is the country’s most popular short-video app with more than 600 million active users. Toutiao is a news aggregation app.

    Later that year, an executive at TikTok said at a US congressional hearing that TikTok had “no affiliation” with the Bytedance subsidiary.

    Beijing has tried to arrest a rapid slowdown in the country’s economy by hitting pause on the heavy-handed tech crackdown. Chinese Vice Premier Liu He said at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week that China will support the growth of the private sector, while opening its door further to foreign investment.

    But investors may not be so easily enticed to return to China, analysts said.

    The Communist Party may be easing off on fines and penalties, but the “golden shares” approach seeks the same end, which is “control and tight oversight,” said Capri.

    Silver pointed out that not only will government control of listed entities likely raise risks with an increasingly wary US administration, but Western institutional investors may be reluctant to invest alongside Beijing.

    “The risk is that shareholder interests will remain subservient to state interests,” he said.

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  • Southwest Airlines is testing a software fix it developed after the Christmas travel meltdown | CNN Business

    Southwest Airlines is testing a software fix it developed after the Christmas travel meltdown | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Southwest Airlines said it is testing software fixes that the company developed after its Christmas travel meltdown, as the airline faces multiple federal investigations.

    The software fixes are an “upgrade,” rather than a replacement of the crew scheduling system, Southwest executives said on a conference call with reporters Thursday. The airline and its employees have said the scheduling software left the company unable to recover from winter storms on some of the busiest travel days of the year and caused it to cancel more than 16,700 flights between December 21 and 29, roughly half its schedule during that period.

    The company decided to keep the underlying software system because it “generally worked as designed” even during the meltdown, CEO Bob Jordan said. The software’s shortcoming, he said, is “solving past problems.”

    The company is currently testing the software and expects to begin using it “in a few weeks’ time.”

    Southwest’s cancellations dwarfed other airlines during the Christmas storm because crew members had to call in to the airline, rather than notify the company electronically, to let them know of their availability.

    “That was a problem,” said Andrew Watterston, Southwest’s chief operating officer Thursday. “It wasn’t the problem for the situation. It was a symptom of the problem.”

    Switching to electronic notification would require a change in the labor contracts with pilots and flight attendants, said Jordan. Negotiations are now taking place on replacing the existing contracts covering all issues, including pay and benefits.

    Other changes stemming from the company’s review of its winter meltdown include a new team in its command center, telephone system improvements, and better preparedness for bitterly cold weather.

    “We’re looking at de-icing procedures top to bottom, we’re buying more engine covers for extremely cold weather, we’re looking at fuel mixes for ground equipment when you have sub-zero temperatures,” Jordan said.

    The company said it doesn’t have a cost estimate for the fix.

    “We haven’t even talked cost, so I don’t know if it’s going to cost us anything or not,” said Southwest Chief Operations Officer Andrew Watterson.

    The airline’s executives also pushed back on the Department of Transportation’s announcement late Wednesday that it is investigating whether Southwest “engaged in unrealistic scheduling of flights” by selling more tickets than it could handle.

    If that were the case, “then you’d expect to see poor on time performance, poor reliability” even on good weather days, Watterson told reporters on a conference call Thursday.

    “You don’t see the signs of a schedule that is out of whack with the resources’ ability to operate, given our strong operating performance over the last three months,” Watterson said.

    In addition to the DOT investigation, the ongoing reviews include an internal probe, one led by its board of directors, and an external inquiry conducted by a consultancy firm. That external report should be delivered in the coming weeks and “we will attack it with a sense of urgency,” Jordan said.

    – CNN’s Chris Isidore contributed to this report

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  • Jan. 6 Committee failed to hold social media companies to account for their role in the Capitol attack, staffers and witnesses say | CNN Business

    Jan. 6 Committee failed to hold social media companies to account for their role in the Capitol attack, staffers and witnesses say | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    “There might be someone getting shot tomorrow.”

    That was the warning from Twitter staff at an internal meeting on Jan. 5, 2021, the eve of the deadly attack on the US Capitol. It wasn’t the only stark warning Twitter management received ahead of the insurrection, according to two former Twitter employees who spoke to the House Jan. 6 Committee.

    But now these witnesses, along with some committee staff, are frustrated, saying the committee failed to adequately hold major social media companies to account for the role they played in the worst attack on the Capitol in 200 years.

    It was a “real missed opportunity,” Anika Collier Navaroli, a former Twitter employee turned whistleblower who gave evidence to the committee, told CNN in an interview last week. “I risked a lot to come forward and speak to the committee and to share the truth about these momentous occasions in history,” Navaroli said.

    CNN spoke to half a dozen people who interacted with and were familiar with the Jan. 6 Committee’s so-called “purple team” – a group that included staff with expertise in extremism and online misinformation. Some witnesses and staff said the committee pulled its punches when it came to Big Tech, failing to include critical parts of the team’s work in its final report. The discontent has poured into public view, with an unpublished draft of the team’s findings leaked and obtained by multiple news organizations, including CNN.

    One source familiar with the probe acknowledged that the committee obtained evidence that social media companies like Twitter largely ignored concerns that were raised internally prior to Jan. 6, but while those platforms should have done something at the time, the panel was limited in its ability to hold them accountable. A lawyer who worked on the committee said the panel did its job and focused on the unique and malign role of then-President Donald Trump in an unprecedented attack on American democracy. They also said the final report outlines structural issues across social media and society that need to be studied further.

    Disagreement about social media companies’ role in the Jan. 6 attack comes as 2023 looks to be a pivotal year for Silicon Valley firms in Washington, DC. Spurred in part by the release of Elon Musk’s so-called “Twitter Files,” House Republicans are set to investigate purported Big Tech censorship, particularly as it pertains to social media companies’ handling of a 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden and his laptop. Facebook parent company Meta’s high-stakes decision Wednesday to reinstate Trump on its platforms is also expected to stoke further scrutiny of tech companies’ influence in elections. At the Supreme Court, justices are set to rule this year on a case that could strip key protections afforded to tech companies moderating online speech.

    It isn’t just Navaroli who has taken issue with the committee’s findings. Three of the committee’s own staff members, part of the so-called purple team, published an article earlier this month, sharply criticizing the decisions made by social media companies in the lead up to the attack.

    The final report’s “emphasis on Trump meant important context was left on the cutting room floor,” they wrote.

    “Indeed, the lack of an official Committee report chapter or appendix dedicated exclusively to these matters does not mean our investigation exonerated social media companies for their failure to confront violent rhetoric,” they wrote.

    In wake of the decision, CNN has reviewed thousands of pages of deposition transcripts and other supporting documents the committee has publicly released that provide insight into Silicon Valley’s action and inaction in the critical period between Election Day 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021.

    Navaroli, who worked on Twitter’s safety policy team, told the committee she had repeatedly warned Twitter’s leadership in the lead-up to Jan. 6 about the dangers of not cracking down on what she said was violent rhetoric.

    Navaroli pointed to Trump’s infamous “stand back and stand by” message to the Proud Boys at the first 2020 presidential debate as one instance that incited more violent rhetoric on Twitter.

    Navaroli initially appeared before the committee as an anonymous whistleblower. Part of her testimony was played during the public committee hearings last summer, with her voice distorted to protect her identity. However, she later decided to go public, testifying before the committee for a second time, and speaking to The Washington Post.

    In an interview with CNN, Navaroli said she is speaking out now because she believes it is important for the “truth to be on the record.” She warned that without a full reckoning of social media’s role in the Capitol attack, political violence could once again ignite in the United States and elsewhere around the world, pointing to recent unrest in Brazil where supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the country’s top government offices.

    The final report from the Jan. 6 Committee stated, “Social media played a prominent role in amplifying erroneous claims of election fraud.”

    But a far more blistering assessment was laid out in an unpublished draft document prepared by committee staff that was obtained by several news organizations, including CNN. Its key findings included:

    • “Social media platforms delayed response to the rise of far-right extremism—and President Trump’s incitement of his supporters—helped to facilitate the attack on January 6th.”
    • “Fear of reprisal and accusations of censorship from the political right compromised policy, process, and decision-making.”
    • “Twitter failed to take actions that could have prevented the spread of incitement to violence after the election.”
    • “Facebook did not fail to grapple with election delegitimization after the election so much as it did not even try.”

    Tech companies would broadly dispute these findings and have repeatedly said they are working to keep their platforms safe.

    Twitter’s previous management repeatedly outlined steps it said it was taking to crack down on hateful and violent rhetoric on its platform prior to Jan. 6, 2021, but stressed it didn’t want to unnecessarily limit free expression. Under Musk’s leadership, Twitter no longer has a responsive communications team, and the company did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Facebook parent company Meta, pointed to an earlier statement from the company where it said it was cooperating with the committee.

    Jacob Glick, an investigative counsel, conducted multiple depositions for the Jan. 6 Committee, including Navaroli's.

    Jacob Glick, an investigative counsel who conducted multiple depositions for the Jan. 6 Committee, including Navaroli’s, told CNN he believes the committee did its job to show “the American public the dangers posed by President Trump’s multilayered attack on our democracy.”

    He said the lack of awareness he believes tech companies have shown about their role in the attack was “stark.”

    “I don’t think social media companies recognize they were dealing with a sustained threat to American democracy,” he said.

    Glick, who now works at the Georgetown Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, said the purple team’s report had not been fact-checked, contains some errors, and should not have been leaked.

    Another source familiar with the committee’s work told CNN, “It couldn’t be clearer that Trump was at the center of this plot to overturn the election. Not everything staff worked on could fit into this extensive report and hearings, including some who wanted their work to be the center of the investigation.”

    How social media platforms write and enforce their rules has become a central and ongoing debate, raising the key question of what power the companies should wield when it comes to politicians like Trump.

    While some, including Navaroli, insist Trump repeatedly broke social media platforms’ rules by inciting violent rhetoric that should have resulted in his removal before Jan. 6, others including Musk and Twitter’s previous management, argue that what politicians say should be made available to as many people as possible so they can be held to account.

    Meta and Twitter have both reversed their bans on Trump.

    “We’re moving backwards and it’s concerning to me,” Navaroli said of the return of prominent election conspiracy theorists to major tech platforms. “History has taught us what happens when political speech on social media companies is allowed to fester unchecked.”

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  • BuzzFeed’s CEO says AI could usher in a ‘new model for digital media,’ but warns against a ‘dystopian’ path | CNN Business

    BuzzFeed’s CEO says AI could usher in a ‘new model for digital media,’ but warns against a ‘dystopian’ path | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Over the holidays, while most media executives were perhaps looking to get a reprieve from work, Jonah Peretti was online, fully immersed in experimenting with artificial intelligence.

    The BuzzFeed co-founder and chief executive, who has always raced to test out the latest technologies, was familiar with AI and predictions of how it could one day revolutionize the media industry. In fact, BuzzFeed had dabbled in using it over the years.

    A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.

    But Peretti, sitting in his California home in late December, started probing how the developing robot writing technology could quickly be infused into the very DNA of BuzzFeed.

    In a phone interview Thursday, Peretti said that as he and a handful of colleagues prototyped how the technology could be used to enhance the site’s hallmark quizzes, interactive articles, and other types of content, he found himself genuinely having fun. “It started to feel like we were all playing,” Peretti recalled.

    That “playful work,” as he described it, soon “led to multiple Google docs full of the implications of the technology and how [BuzzFeed] could build this into our platform and how we could extend it to other formats.”

    Those efforts culminated in Peretti’s formal announcement on Thursday: That BuzzFeed will work with ChatGPT creator OpenAI to assist in the creation of content for its audience and move artificial intelligence into the “core business.”

    Peretti said that he understood people might read the news and conclude that BuzzFeed was, in short, moving to replace humans with robots. But Peretti insisted that is not his vision for the technology, even as he predicted other companies will likely go down that dark path.

    “I think that there are two paths for AI in digital media,” Peretti said. “One path is the obvious path that a lot of people will do — but it’s a depressing path — using the technology for cost savings and spamming out a bunch of SEO articles that are lower quality than what a journalist could do, but a tenth of the cost. That’s one vision, but to me, that’s a depressing vision and a shortsighted vision because in the long run it’s not going to work.”

    “The other path,” Peretti continued, “which is the one that gets me really excited, is the new model for digital media that is more personalized, more creative, more dynamic — where really talented people who work at our company are able to use AI together and entertain and personalize more than you could ever do without AI.”

    Put more simply, Peretti said he envisions artificial intelligence being used to enhance the work of his employees, not replace them.

    The example the company provided is the BuzzFeed quiz. Typically, a human would write the questions and perhaps a dozen responses that would be delivered to the user based on their inputs. But, with AI, the staffer could write the questions and the software could spit out a highly personalized response for the user. In the supplied example, a user would take a quick quiz and the AI would write a short RomCom using the data provided.

    “We don’t have to train the AI to be as good as the BuzzFeed writers because we have the BuzzFeed writers, so they can inject language, ideas, cultural currency and write them into prompts and the format,” Peretti said. “And then the AI pulls it together and creates a new piece of content.”

    Peretti indicated that he had no interest in utilizing artificial intelligence to replace human journalists for authoring news articles, as the technology outlet CNET recently did with disastrous consequences (dozens of the outlet’s stories written by AI were riddled with errors that required correcting.)

    “There’s the CNET path, and then there is the path that BuzzFeed is focused on,” Peretti said. “One is about costs and volume of content, and one is about ability.”

    “Even if there are a lot of bad actors who try to use AI to make content farms, it won’t win in the long run,” Peretti predicted. “I think the content farm model of AI will feel very depressing and dystopian.”

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  • Video: How Elon Musk’s Twitter drama impacts Tesla and how ChatGPT can be useful to students on CNN Nightcap | CNN Business

    Video: How Elon Musk’s Twitter drama impacts Tesla and how ChatGPT can be useful to students on CNN Nightcap | CNN Business

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    CNN’s Allison Morrow tells “Nightcap’s” Jon Sarlin that Elon Musk’s Twitter antics are damaging Tesla’s brand. Plus, high school teacher Cherie Shields argues that ChatGPT is an excellent teaching tool and schools are making a mistake if they ban the AI technology. To get the day’s business headlines sent directly to your inbox, sign up for the Nightcap newsletter.

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  • ChatGPT passes exams from law and business schools | CNN Business

    ChatGPT passes exams from law and business schools | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    ChatGPT is smart enough to pass prestigious graduate-level exams – though not with particularly high marks.

    The powerful new AI chatbot tool recently passed law exams in four courses at the University of Minnesota and another exam at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, according to professors at the schools.

    To test how well ChatGPT could generate answers on exams for the four courses, professors at the University of Minnesota Law School recently graded the tests blindly. After completing 95 multiple choice questions and 12 essay questions, the bot performed on average at the level of a C+ student, achieving a low but passing grade in all four courses.

    ChatGPT fared better during a business management course exam at Wharton, where it earned a B to B- grade. In a paper detailing the performance, Christian Terwiesch, a Wharton business professor, said ChatGPT did “an amazing job” at answering basic operations management and process-analysis questions but struggled with more advanced prompts and made “surprising mistakes” with basic math.

    “These mistakes can be massive in magnitude,” he wrote.

    The test results come as a growing number of schools and teachers express concerns about the immediate impact of ChatGPT on students and their ability to cheat on assignments. Some educators are now moving with remarkable speed to rethink their assignments in response to ChatGPT, even as it remains unclear how widespread use is of the tool among students and how harmful it could really be to learning.

    Since it was made available in late November, ChatGPT has been used to generate original essays, stories and song lyrics in response to user prompts. It has drafted research paper abstracts that fooled some scientists. Some CEOs have even used it to write emails or do accounting work.

    ChatGPT is trained on vast amounts of online data in order to generate responses to user prompts. While it has gained traction among users, it has also raised some concerns, including about inaccuracies and its potential to perpetuate biases and spread misinformation.

    Jon Choi, one of the University of Minnesota law professors, told CNN the goal of the tests was to explore ChatGPT’s potential to assist lawyers in their practice and to help students in exams, whether or not it’s permitted by their professors, because the questions often mimic the writing lawyers do in real life.

    “ChatGPT struggled with the most classic components of law school exams, such as spotting potential legal issues and deep analysis applying legal rules to the facts of a case,” Choi said. “But ChatGPT could be very helpful at producing a first draft that a student could then refine.”

    He argues human-AI collaboration is the most promising use case for ChatGPT and similar technology.

    “My strong hunch is that AI assistants will become standard tools for lawyers in the near future, and law schools should prepare their students for that eventuality,” he said. “Of course, if law professors want to continue to test simple recall of legal rules and doctrines, they’ll need to put restrictions in place like banning the internet during exams to enforce that.”

    Likewise, Wharton’s Terwiesch found the chatbot was “remarkably good” at modifying its answers in response to human hints, such as reworking answers after pointing out an error, suggesting the potential for people to work together with AI.

    In the short-term, however, discomfort remains with whether and how students should use ChatGPT. Public schools in New York City and Seattle, for example, have already banned students and teachers from using ChatGPT on the district’s networks and devices.

    Considering ChatGPT performed above average on his exam, Terwiesch told CNN he agrees restrictions should be put in place for students while they’re taking tests.

    “Bans are needed,” he said. “After all, when you give a medical doctor a degree, you want them to know medicine, not how to use a bot. The same holds for other skill certification, including law and business.”

    But Terwiesch believes this technology still ultimately has a place in the classroom. “If all we end up with is the same educational system as before, we have wasted an amazing opportunity that comes with ChatGPT,” he said.

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  • One news publication had an AI tool write articles. It didn’t go well | CNN Business

    One news publication had an AI tool write articles. It didn’t go well | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    News outlet CNET said Wednesday it has issued corrections on a number of articles, including some that it described as “substantial,” after using an artificial intelligence-powered tool to help write dozens of stories.

    The outlet has since hit pause on using the AI tool to generate stories, CNET’s editor-in-chief Connie Guglielmo said in an editorial on Wednesday.

    The disclosure comes after CNET was previously called out publicly for quietly using AI to write articles and later for errors. While using AI to automate news stories is not new – the Associated Press began doing so nearly a decade ago – the issue has gained new attention amid the rise of ChatGPT, a viral new AI chatbot tool that can quickly generate essays, stories and song lyrics in response to user prompts.

    Guglielmo said CNET used an “internally designed AI engine,” not ChatGPT, to help write 77 published stories since November. She said this amounted to about 1% of the total content published on CNET during the same period, and was done as part of a “test” project for the CNET Money team “to help editors create a set of basic explainers around financial services topics.”

    Some headlines from stories written using the AI tool include, “Does a Home Equity Loan Affect Private Mortgage Insurance?” and “How to Close A Bank Account.”

    “Editors generated the outlines for the stories first, then expanded, added to and edited the AI drafts before publishing,” Guglielmo wrote. “After one of the AI-assisted stories was cited, rightly, for factual errors, the CNET Money editorial team did a full audit.”

    The result of the audit, she said, was that CNET identified additional stories that required correction, “with a small number requiring substantial correction.” CNET also identified several other stories with “minor issues such as incomplete company names, transposed numbers, or language that our senior editors viewed as vague.”

    One correction, which was added to the end of an article titled “What Is Compound Interest?” states that the story initially gave some wildly inaccurate personal finance advice. “An earlier version of this article suggested a saver would earn $10,300 after a year by depositing $10,000 into a savings account that earns 3% interest compounding annually. The article has been corrected to clarify that the saver would earn $300 on top of their $10,000 principal amount,” the correction states.

    Another correction suggests the AI tool plagiarized. “We’ve replaced phrases that were not entirely original,” according to the correction added to an article on how to close a bank account.

    Guglielmo did not state how many of the 77 published stories required corrections, nor did she break down how many required “substantial” fixes versus more “minor issues.” Guglielmo said the stories that have been corrected include an editors’ note explaining what was changed.

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

    Despite the issues, Guglielmo left the door open to resuming use of the AI tool. “We’ve paused and will restart using the AI tool when we feel confident the tool and our editorial processes will prevent both human and AI errors,” she said.

    Guglielmo also said that CNET has more clearly disclosed to readers which stories were compiled using the AI engine. The outlet took some heat from critics on social media for not making overtly clear to its audience that “By CNET Money Staff” meant it was written using AI tools. The new byline is just: “By CNET Money.”

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  • Scammers posed as tech support to hack employees at two US agencies last year, officials say | CNN Politics

    Scammers posed as tech support to hack employees at two US agencies last year, officials say | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Cybercriminals hacked employees of at least two US federal civilian agencies last year as part of a “widespread” fraud campaign that sought to steal money from individuals’ bank accounts, US cybersecurity officials revealed Wednesday.

    In one case, the unidentified hackers posed as tech support, convinced a federal employee to call them and then instructed the federal employee to visit a malicious website, according to the advisory from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, National Security Agency and a threat-sharing center for state and local governments known as MS-ISAC.

    The goal of the scam, which appears to have hit both private sector and government agencies, was to trick victims into sending the scammers money. It was unclear if that happened in the case of the federal employees.

    The episodes underscore how federal officials, like others, can be duped into sharing sensitive financial information – and that they might not find out about it for weeks or months afterward.

    CISA discovered the activity in October 2022, but the hackers had been sending phishing emails to federal employees’ personal and government email accounts since at least June, according to the advisory.

    Forensic analysis “identified related activity” on many other federal networks in addition to the two initial agency victims, the advisory said.

    While financially motivated crooks were apparently behind this campaign, the US agencies said they were concerned such hackers could sell stolen data to government-backed spies. The legitimate tech-support software used in the scam is useful for hackers looking to maintain covert, long-term access to a network, officials said.

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  • Meta says it will restore Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts | CNN Business

    Meta says it will restore Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Facebook-parent Meta said on Wednesday that it will restore former President Donald Trump’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram in the coming weeks, just over two years after suspending him in the wake of the January 6 Capitol attack.

    “Our determination is that the risk [to public safety] has sufficiently receded,” Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg said in a blog post. “As such, we will be reinstating Mr. Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks. However, we are doing so with new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses.”

    Trump could be suspended for as much as two years at a time for violating platform policies in the future, Clegg said.

    With his Facebook and Instagram accounts reactivated, Trump will once again gain access to huge and powerful communications and fundraising platforms just as he ramps up his third bid for the White House.

    The decision, which comes on the heels of a similar move by Twitter, could also further shift the landscape for how a long list of smaller online platforms handle Trump’s accounts.

    It was not immediately clear whether Trump will seize the opportunity to return to the Meta platforms. Trump’s reps did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    In a post on his own platform, Truth Social, Trump acknowledged Meta’s decision to reverse its suspension of his account and said “such a thing should never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution.”

    Former President Trump’s team was not given advance notice of Meta’s decision, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. Many of his aides and advisers learned of the decision from media reports. Shortly before the announcement, Meta asked for a last-minute meeting with Trump’s lawyers this evening to discuss his possible reinstatement, but were not told what the final decision was. They were still in the meeting when Meta released the news, the source said.

    Twitter restored Trump’s account in November following its takeover by billionaire Elon Musk, but the former president has not yet resumed tweeting, opting instead to remain on Truth Social.

    But Trump’s campaign earlier this month sent a letter to Meta petitioning the company to unblock his Facebook account, a source familiar with the letter told CNN, making his return more likely. Although Twitter was always Trump’s preferred platform, he has a massive reach on Facebook and Instagram — 34 million followers and 23 million followers, respectively, ahead of his reinstatement. Previous Trump campaigns have lauded the effectiveness of Facebook’s targeted advertising tools and have spent millions running Facebook ads.

    Meta’s decision was quickly criticized by a number of online safety advocates and democratic lawmakers. Congressman Adam Schiff said in a tweet that restoring Trump’s “access to a social media platform to spread his lies and demagoguery is dangerous,” noting that Trump has shown “no remorse” for his actions around the January 6 attack. NAACP President Derrick Johnson called the decision “a prime example of putting profits above people’s safety.”

    But ACLU Director Anthony Romero called the decision “the right call,” joining several other groups in praising the move. He added: “The biggest social media companies are central actors when it comes to our collective ability to speak — and hear the speech of others — online. They should err on the side of allowing a wide range of political speech, even when it offends.”

    The company made the landmark decision to bar Trump from posting on Facebook and Instagram the day after the January 6 attack, in which his supporters stormed the US Capitol in a bid to overturn the 2020 election results.

    Many other platforms did the same in quick succession, but Facebook was clear that it planned to revisit the decision at a later date. After Facebook’s independent Oversight Board recommended that the company clarify what was initially an indefinite suspension, Facebook said the former president would remain restricted from the platform until at least January 7, 2023.

    Meta earlier this month was considering whether to restore Trump’s accounts with the help of a specially formed internal company working group made up of leaders from different parts of the organization, a person familiar with the deliberations told CNN. The group included representatives from the company’s public policy, communications, content policy, and safety and integrity teams, and was being led by Clegg, who previously served as UK Deputy Prime Minister.

    The company said in June 2021 that it would “look to experts to assess whether the risk to public safety has receded” in January 2023 to make a determination about the former president’s account.

    “If we determine that there is still a serious risk to public safety, we will extend the restriction for a set period of time and continue to re-evaluate until that risk has receded,” Clegg, then-vice president of global affairs at Meta, said in a statement at the time.

    Clegg said in his Wednesday post that the company believes “the public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying — the good, the bad and the ugly — so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box.” But, he said, “that does not mean there are no limits to what people can say on our platform.”

    In light of his previous violations, Trump will now face “heightened penalties for repeat offenses,” Clegg said, adding that the policy will also apply to other public figures whose accounts are reinstated following suspensions related to civil unrest.

    Clegg told Axios in an interview published Wednesday that the company does not “want — if he is to return to our services — for him to do what he did on January 6, which is to use our services to delegitimize the 2024 election, much as he sought to discredit the 2020 election.”

    “In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation,” Clegg said. However, the possibility of permanent removal of Trump’s accounts — which Clegg had previously indicated could be a consequence of future violations if his account were to be restored — no longer appears to be on the table.

    For content that doesn’t violate its rules but “contributes to the sort of risk that materialized on January 6th, such as content that delegitimizes an upcoming election or is related to QAnon,” Meta may limit distribution of the posts, Clegg said. The company could, for example, remove the reshare button or keep the posts visible on Trump’s page but not in users’ feeds, even for those who follow him, he said. For repeated instances, the company may restrict access to its advertising tools.

    If Trump again posts content that violates Meta’s rules but “we assess there is a public interest in knowing that Mr. Trump made the statement that outweighs any potential harm” under the company’s newsworthiness policy, Meta may similarly restrict the posts’ distribution but leave them visible on Trump’s page.

    –CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, Kaitlan Collins and Kristen Holmes contributed to this report.

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  • Classic ‘GoldenEye 007’ game is coming to Nintendo Switch and Xbox | CNN Business

    Classic ‘GoldenEye 007’ game is coming to Nintendo Switch and Xbox | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    James Bond fans may be waiting on the next actor who will play the British spy onscreen, but a beloved Bond adventure of yore is making its return.

    “GoldenEye 007,” a classic first-person shooter made for Nintendo 64 in 1997, is being revived for Nintendo Switch and Xbox more than 25 years later. For fans who subscribe to additional content on both gaming systems, the game will be available on Friday.

    Based on the 1995 film “GoldenEye,” the game follows a block-like version of Pierce Brosnan’s 007 as he shoots his way through various locales, all while a synthy version of the signature Bond theme plays. The Xbox version has been “faithfully recreated and enhanced,” said one ad for the re-release, while the Switch game features an online multiplayer mode.

    “GoldenEye 007” was a hit upon its release: IGN gave it a 9.7/10 in 1997, praising its graphics as “superb.” Contemporary players used to the lifelike visuals of popular games like “The Last of Us” and “Red Dead Redemption” may beg to differ, but the game still holds a nostalgic appeal for fans who spent their youths lasering their way through surfaces using Bond’s watch. Not to mention, its soundtrack remains iconic.

    To access the game, Switch users will have to subscribe to its Online membership plus its expansion pack, which includes some Nintendo 64 games and downloadable content for popular games like “Mario Kart 8 Deluxe” and “Animal Crossing: New Horizons.” Xbox players must subscribe to Xbox Game Pass, a service that allows players to access hundreds of games from its server.

    The return of “GoldenEye 007,” often referred to as one of the greatest video games of all time, has been years in the making. The Verge reported last year that rights issues blocked developers from releasing it on newer consoles, including Xbox, since at least 2008. Undeterred N64 fans even attempted to remake the game themselves on several occasions, though the original rights holders usually shut them down. Now, Rare, the game’s original developer, has recreated it for Xbox with “a few modern touches,” while Nintendo is re-releasing the original on its Switch console.

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  • Microsoft quarterly profit falls 12% but cloud computing business shows strength | CNN Business

    Microsoft quarterly profit falls 12% but cloud computing business shows strength | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Microsoft on Tuesday posted weaker-than-expected revenue and a double-digit percentage drop in profit for the final three months of last year amid broader economic uncertainty and reduced demand for personal computers and software.

    The tech giant reported revenue of $52.7 billion for the quarter, a modest 2% increase from the year prior but slightly less than analysts had expected. It reported net income of $16.4 billion, a 12% decline from the year prior.

    The earnings results come at a turbulent moment for Microsoft, and the tech industry as a whole. Microsoft said last week that it plans to lay off 10,000 employees as part of broader cost-cutting measures. In his explanation of the cuts, CEO Satya Nadella pointed to changing demand for digital services years into the pandemic as well as looming recession fears.

    Demand for personal computers, and the Microsoft operating systems that power them, has pulled back after experiencing a boom early in the pandemic. Consulting firm Gartner said earlier this month that worldwide PC shipments fell more than 28% in the fourth quarter of 2022 compared to the same period the prior year. This marked the largest quarterly shipment decline since Gartner began tracking the PC market in the mid-90s.

    On Tuesday, Microsoft reported revenue declines from its Windows OEM operations and from its Xbox content and services lines. Microsoft also said it would incur $800 million in severance expenses from the layoffs announced this month, as well as charges from “changes to our hardware portfolio, and costs related to lease consolidation activities.”

    But the earnings report had some bright spots. Revenue from its cloud computing division, a key area of focus for Microsoft in recent years, increased 22% from the prior year. An analyst at Evercore described the results as “a sigh of relief.”

    Shares of Microsoft rose 4% in after-hours trading Tuesday on the news.

    “The next major wave of computing is being born, as the Microsoft Cloud turns the world’s most advanced AI models into a new computing platform,” CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement accompanying the results. “We are committed to helping our customers use our platforms and tools to do more with less today and innovate for the future in the new era of AI.”

    Earlier this week, Microsoft confirmed it is making a “multibillion dollar” investment into OpenAI, the company behind the viral AI-powered chatbot tool ChatGPT. The deepening partnership between the two companies – Microsoft was an early investor in OpenAI – could help catapult Microsoft as an AI leader and pave the way for the company to incorporate elements of ChatGPT into some of its hallmark applications, such as Outlook and Word.

    In his memo to staffers announcing the job cuts, Nadella said the company will continue to invest in “strategic areas for our future” and pointed to advances in AI as “the next major wave” of computing.

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  • DOJ sues Google over its dominance in online advertising market | CNN Business

    DOJ sues Google over its dominance in online advertising market | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

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

    The move marks the Biden administration’s first blockbuster antitrust case against a Big Tech company. The eight states joining the suit include California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Virginia.

    The fresh complaint significantly escalates the risks to Google emanating from Washington, where lawmakers and regulators have frequently raised concerns about the tech giant’s power but have so far failed to pass new legislation or regulations that might rein in the company or its peers.

    For years, Google’s critics have claimed that the company’s extensive role in the ecosystem that enables advertisers to place ads, and for publishers to offer up digital ad space, represents a conflict of interest that Google has exploited anticompetitively.

    In Tuesday’s complaint, a copy of which was viewed by CNN, the Justice Department alleged that Google actively and illegally maintained that dominance by engaging in a campaign to thwart competition. Google gobbled up rivals through anticompetitive mergers, the US government said, and bullied publishers and advertisers into using the company’s proprietary ad technology products.

    As part of the lawsuit, the US government called for Google to be broken up and for the court to order the company to spin off at least its online advertising exchange and its ad server for publishers, if not more.

    Google, the US government alleged, “has corrupted legitimate competition in the ad tech industry by engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of the wide swath of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers, and brokers, to facilitate digital advertising. Having inserted itself into all aspects of the digital advertising marketplace, Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies.”

    The suit was filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

    Tuesday’s suit marks the federal government’s second antitrust complaint against Google since 2020, when the Trump administration sued over Google’s alleged anticompetitive harms in search and search advertising. That case is still ongoing. Google has also been the target of antitrust litigation by state and private actors.

    In a statement, Google said the DOJ suit “attempts to pick winners and losers in the highly competitive advertising technology sector.”

    “DOJ is doubling down on a flawed argument that would slow innovation, raise advertising fees, and make it harder for thousands of small businesses and publishers to grow,” a Google spokesperson said, adding that a federal judge last year knocked down a claim that Google colluded with Facebook in a separate antitrust suit led by the state of Texas. That judge also ruled, however, that a number of monopolization claims in the Texas case could move forward.

    The lawsuit is a frontal assault against Google’s massive, primary business of advertising. Google generated $209 billion in advertising revenue in 2021, according to its annual report, a figure representing more than 80% of its total revenue. By comparison, the next largest giant in online advertising, Facebook-parent Meta, generated $115 billion in 2021.

    Third-party estimates suggest that Google and Facebook accounted for the majority of US digital ad revenues, hitting a peak around 2017, with Google taking about a third of the market. Since then, however, others including Amazon have begun encroaching on that business.

    The US complaint echoes concerns that have prompted similar antitrust investigations in the United Kingdom and in the European Union.

    Google not only controls the platform publishers use to sell online ad inventory, the Justice Department alleged Tuesday, but also the advertising tools marketers use to claim that inventory and the exchange that facilitates those transactions.

    “Google’s pervasive power over the entire ad tech industry has been questioned by its own digital advertising executives,” the complaint said, “at least one of whom aptly begged the question: ‘[I]s there a deeper issue with us owning the platform, the exchange, and a huge network? The analogy would be if Goldman or Citibank owned the NYSE.’”

    Tuesday’s complaint marks an opening salvo against Big Tech by DOJ’s antitrust chief, Jonathan Kanter. Kanter has spent months laying the groundwork for a broader offensive against the tech industry’s most dominant companies, reflecting commitments by President Joe Biden and others in the US government to hold powerful firms accountable. Under Kanter, Justice Department antitrust officials have pushed to bring more cases to trial as well as to prosecute cases involving unconventional legal theories.

    In 2020, House lawmakers released a 450-page report finding that Google, along with Amazon, Apple and Facebook, hold “monopoly power” in key business segments. The report was the result of a 16-month investigation in which congressional staff reviewed corporate documents and interviewed the tech industry’s many customers and rivals. It concluded, among other things, that Google was uniquely positioned to benefit from its powerful role in the online ad industry.

    “With a sizable share in the ad exchange market and the ad intermediary market, and as a leading supplier of ad space, Google simultaneously acts on behalf of publishers and advertisers, while also trading for itself,” the report said.

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  • Spotify to cut 6% of its workforce | CNN Business

    Spotify to cut 6% of its workforce | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    Spotify

    (SPOT)     said Monday that it will cut 6% of its workforce to reduce costs, joining tech companies including Amazon

    (AMZN)     and Microsoft

    (MSFT)     in slashing headcount as the global economy slows.

    In a letter to employees posted on the company’s website, CEO Daniel Ek took full responsibility for the job cuts, which he called “difficult but necessary.”

    “Like many other leaders, I hoped to sustain the strong tailwinds from the pandemic and believed that our broad global business and lower risk to the impact of a slowdown in ads would insulate us. In hindsight, I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our revenue growth,” he said.

    The Stockholm-headquartered music streaming business had about 9,800 employees globally as of September 30, according to an earnings report.

    The company’s stock, which has nearly halved in value over the past 12 months, gained more than 4% in premarket trading in New York. Spotify’s share price has risen 24% since the start of the year, Refinitiv data shows.

    Over the past few months, major tech companies have swiftly reversed a pandemic hiring spree that saw them add thousands of workers to keep up with a surge in demand from households and businesses for services such as online shopping and videoconferencing.

    The same companies have recently made deep cuts to their workforces, as inflation weighs on consumer spending and rising interest rates squeeze funding. The demand for digital services during the pandemic has also waned as people return to their offline lives.

    Over the past three months, Amazon

    (AMZN)    , Google

    (GOOGL)    , Microsoft

    (MSFT)     and Facebook

    (FB)    -parent Meta have announced plans to cut more than 50,000 employees from their collective ranks.

    The recent cuts in most cases amount to a relatively small percentage of each company’s overall headcount, essentially erasing the last year of gains for some while leaving them with enormous workforces.

    Spotify’s decision to shed about 590 jobs is part of a wider reorganization to improve efficiency and “speed up decision-making,” according to Ek. As part of the changes, engineering and product work will be centralized. Chief content officer Dawn Ostroff had also decided to leave the company, Ek said.

    Spotify reported a loss of €228 million ($248 million) in its most recent financial quarter through September 30, as operating expenses shot up by 65%, according to a company presentation to investors.

    In 2022, operating expenses grew at twice the rate of the company’s revenue, Ek said.

    “That would have been unsustainable long-term in any climate, but with a challenging macro environment, it would be even more difficult to close the gap,” he told employees in Monday’s letter. “As you are well aware, over the last few months we’ve made a considerable effort to rein-in costs, but it simply hasn’t been enough.”

    — Clare Duffy contributed to this report.

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  • There’s actually a presale for Oreo’s newest flavor | CNN Business

    There’s actually a presale for Oreo’s newest flavor | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    In the past, Oreo has partnered with Lady Gaga, Pokémon and Ritz on new limited-time flavors. Now, it’s working with … itself. And Martha Stewart.

    The cookie brand’s latest limited-edition cookie is an Oreo stuffed with Oreos.

    Dubbed “the Most OREO OREO,” the cookie is made with the usual chocolate wafers, filled (to the “Most Stuf” extreme) with a creme that has Oreo bits mixed in, for a meta cookies-n-creme experience. The flavor is available for pre-sale through the Oreo website starting Tuesday, and will hit shelves at major retailers nationwide starting on January 30 for a suggested retail price of $4.99.

    The packages come with a QR code that allows buyers to access online games and chances to win prizes in the so-called Oreoverse — Oreo’s entrée into the metaverse, a virtual space where people interact through avatars. Those with VR headsets can use them to access the Oreoverse. Others can just use their phones or computers.

    For brands, the metaverse promises a whole new way to reach young customers, and Oreo isn’t the only brand trying to market to people using new online spaces.

    Coca-Cola

    (KO)     has paired its high-concept limited-edition flavors like Starlight, Byte and Dreamworld with online experiences including virtual concerts, digital outfits and custom places within video games like Fortnite. Kraft Heinz

    (KHC)     has placed Lunchable logos in Roblox, and Heinz-sponsored rest areas in Call of Duty.

    Oreo sees it as a new way to reach consumers, and for them to interact.

    Martha Stewart with the Most Oreo Oreo.

    “We love to create new opportunities for our fans to connect with each other,” said Julia Rosenbloom, Oreo’s senior brand manager, in a statement announcing the new flavor, noting “we’re so excited to enter the metaverse!”

    To help launch the Oreoverse, Oreo tapped Martha Stewart and Ryan McCallister, her gardener and quarantine buddy. On Monday, Stewart and McCallister will share their Oreoverse experiences on Oreo’s social media channels.

    Stewart also recently partnered with Tito’s Handmade Vodka on a tongue-in-cheek campaign that offers those observing dry January other ways to make use of vodka, llke putting a splash (or two) in a marinara sauce or deodorizing stinky boots.

    — CNN’s Jordan Valinsky contributed to this report.

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  • ‘I cried all night’: Millions of Chinese lose access to ‘World of Warcraft’ and other hit games | CNN Business

    ‘I cried all night’: Millions of Chinese lose access to ‘World of Warcraft’ and other hit games | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    Millions of players in China have lost access to the iconic “World of Warcraft” franchise and other popular video games, as Blizzard Entertainment’s servers in the country went offline after two decades.

    The company’s services in China were suspended at midnight local time on Tuesday, marking the end of an era for fans, after a licensing agreement with longtime local partner NetEase

    (NTES)     expired.

    “World of Warcraft,” also known as “WoW,” is a hugely popular online multiplayer game that allows users to fight monsters and journey through expeditions in the medieval world of Azeroth.

    Many gamers around the world have grown up with the smash hit, including in China. That was underscored in recent days, as Chinese fans expressed their disbelief over the loss of their longtime pastime in social media posts.

    “When I woke up, I still didn’t want to accept [it],” one user said on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, on Tuesday. “I cried all night in my sleep because the game went offline. I dreamed that I was crying in the middle of the class.”

    Another player described “World of Warcraft” as “my first love.”

    “I really can’t forget it,” they wrote.

    The suspension follows a bitter dispute between Blizzard, a unit of Activision Blizzard

    (ATVI)    , and NetEase.

    Foreign publishers must work with local partners to offer video games in China. Last November, however, Blizzard and NetEase announced they would not renew licensing agreements that were set to expire this month.

    Those deals had covered the publication of several popular Blizzard titles in mainland China, including “World of Warcraft,” “Hearthstone,” and “Diablo III,” since 2008. In separate statements at the time, both sides said they were unable to reach a new agreement on key terms, without giving further details.

    Now, the discussions appear to have gotten more acrimonious.

    In a statement last Tuesday, Blizzard said it had reached out to NetEase to seek “their help in exploring a six-month extension to the current agreement.”

    The US company said it had appealed to NetEase to let fans continue playing uninterrupted, “based on our personal feelings as gamers, and the frustration expressed to us by Chinese players.”

    “Unfortunately, after renewed discussions last week, NetEase did not accept our proposal for an extension,” Blizzard said.

    NetEase hit back with its own statement last week.

    In unusually terse comments, the Chinese tech and gaming giant accused Blizzard of blindsiding it with its “sudden statement” and called the US company’s proposal “outrageous, inappropriate, and not in line with business logic.”

    NetEase also pointed out that Blizzard had already “started the work of finding new partners” in China, putting the Hangzhou-based company in an “unfair” position.

    The public spat marked an unexpected twist in the companies’ 14-year partnership.

    Under a separate agreement, the companies are working together on the joint development and publishing of “Diablo Immortal,” another widely followed multiplayer game that allows users to slay demons in an ancient world. NetEase said in a statement in November that this collaboration would continue.

    Blizzard said in December that “World of Warcraft” fans would be able to back up their playing history and ensure all progress was saved as it wound down its agreement and looked for a new partner.

    This week’s shutdown has been emotional, even for senior leadership at NetEase.

    In a LinkedIn post Monday, Simon Zhu, president of global investments and partnerships of NetEase Games, detailed how he grew up with Blizzard games in China, including older “Warcraft” and “Diablo” titles.

    “Only [a] few hours before Blizzard Games servers shut down in China, and that is a very very big deal for players in China,” he wrote.

    “Today is such a sad moment to witness the server shutdown, and we don’t know how things will play out in the future. The biggest victim would be players in China who live and breathe in those worlds.”

    Activision Blizzard, which previously had another Chinese partner before teaming up with NetEase, said it is continuing its search for a new distribution partner.

    “Our commitment to players on mainland China remains strong as we continue to work with Tencent to distribute ‘Call of Duty: Mobile,’ as well as continue active talks with potential partners to resume gameplay for Blizzard’s iconic franchises,” an Activision Blizzard spokesperson told CNN.

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  • UK’s Crown Estate sues Twitter over alleged non-payment of rent in London offices | CNN Business

    UK’s Crown Estate sues Twitter over alleged non-payment of rent in London offices | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    The Crown Estate, a British commercial property portfolio historically belonging to the monarch, began court proceedings against Twitter over the tech giant’s alleged non-payment of rent in its London offices, a spokesperson of the property business told CNN on Monday.

    The Crown Estate is run by an independent board and boasts a collection of commercial buildings and land which generate profits that are collected by the British government for public spending.

    According to the Crown Estate spokesperson, the legal action follows previous contact with Twitter regarding the rental arrears on its office space at 20 Air Street, London. Discussions between the companies are ongoing, the spokesperson added.

    CNN has reached out to Twitter for comment.

    Twitter currently faces at least one other lawsuit over unpaid rent. A commercial landlord is suing Twitter for breach of contract after the company allegedly failed to pay rent for one of its offices in San Francisco.

    The lawsuit concerns Twitter’s office space at 650 California Street, not its main headquarters on Market Street. But it came after media reports said Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, had stopped paying rent on Twitter’s office space globally — including for its headquarters — and had told employees not to pay company vendors, in an apparent effort to cut costs.

    Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion, including a substantial amount of debt financing.

    – CNN’s Brian Fung contributed to this report

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  • Microsoft confirms it’s investing billions in ChatGPT creator OpenAI | CNN Business

    Microsoft confirms it’s investing billions in ChatGPT creator OpenAI | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Microsoft on Monday confirmed it is making a “multibillion dollar” investment in OpenAI, the company behind the viral new chatbot tool called ChatGPT.

    Microsoft, an early investor in OpenAI, said it plans to expand its existing partnership with the company as part of a greater effort to add more artificial intelligence to its suite of products. In a separate blog post, OpenAI said the multi-year investment will be used to “develop AI that is increasingly safe, useful, and powerful.”

    In late November, OpenAI opened up access to ChatGPT, an AI-powered chatbot that can provide lengthy, thoughtful and thorough responses to user prompts and questions. Its responses, while sometimes inaccurate, have stunned users, including academics and some in the tech industry.

    The investment comes days after Microsoft announced plans to lay off 10,000 employees as part of broader cost-cutting measures, making it the latest tech company to reduce staff because of growing economic uncertainty.

    Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that the company was not immune to a weaker global economy, but he also said the company will continue to invest in “strategic areas for our future” and pointed to advances in AI as “the next major wave” of computing.

    The investment in OpenAI could catapult Microsoft as an AI leader and ultimately pave the way for the company to incorporate ChatGPT into some of its hallmark applications, such as Word, PowerPoint and Outlook.

    As a result of its existing exclusive deal with OpenAI, Microsoft recently said it would soon add ChatGPT features to to its cloud computing service, Azure. If ChatGPT becomes available on that service, businesses could use the tools directly within its apps and services, too.

    Ahead of Monday’s announcement, David Lobina, an artificial intelligence analyst at ABI Research, told CNN there are big benefits of a further Microsoft investment for OpenAI, too.

    “OpenAI is looking to monetize their systems, considering the huge compute costs of creating these models, and their partnership with Microsoft can be an easy way to do so,” he said.

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  • Asia’s richest man Gautam Adani is addicted to ChatGPT | CNN Business

    Asia’s richest man Gautam Adani is addicted to ChatGPT | CNN Business

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    New Delhi
    CNN
     — 

    Asia’s richest man Gautam Adani says he is addicted to ChatGPT, the powerful new AI tool that interacts with users in an eerily convincing and conversational way.

    In a LinkedIn post last week, the 60-year-old India tycoon said that the release of ChatGPT was a “transformational moment in the democratization of AI given its astounding capabilities as well as comical failures.”

    The billionaire admitted to “some addiction” to ChatGPT since he has started using it.

    The tool, which artificial intelligence research company OpenAI made available to the general public late last year, has sparked conversations about how “generative AI” services — which can turn prompts into original essays, stories, songs and images after training on massive online datasets — could radically transform how we live and work.

    Some claim it will put artists, tutors, coders, and writers out of a job. Others are more optimistic, postulating that it will allow employees to tackle to-do lists with greater efficiency.

    “But there can be no doubt that generative AI will have massive ramifications,” Adani wrote in his post, adding that generative AI holds the “same potential and danger” as silicon chips.

    “Nearly five decades ago, the pioneering of chip design and large-scale chip production put the US ahead of rest of the world and led to the rise of many partner countries and tech behemoths like Intel, Qualcomm, TSMC, etc,” Adani, who has businesses in sectors ranging from ports to power stations, wrote.

    “It also paved the way for precision and guided weapons used in modern warfare with more chips mounted than ever before,” he added. The race in the field of generative AI will quickly get as “complex and as entangled as the ongoing silicon chip war,” he said.

    Chipmaking has emerged recently as a new flashpoint in US-China tensions, with Washington blocking sales of advanced computer chips and chip-making equipment to Chinese companies. Some Chinese investments in European chipmaking have also been blocked.

    The Indian infrastructure magnate believes that China has an edge over the United States in the AI race because Chinese researchers published twice as many academic papers on the subject as their American counterparts in 2021, he wrote in the post published on Friday after attending the World Economic Forum in Davos.

    Back home, Adani is also considering taking five new businesses to the stock market in the next five years, according to his conglomerate’s chief financial officer Jugeshinder Singh.

    Speaking to reporters on Saturday in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad — where the Adani empire is headquartered — Singh said the group’s metals and mining, energy, data center, airports, and roads businesses will likely be spun off between 2025 to 2028.

    Adani Enterprises, the conglomerate’s flagship company, functions as an incubator for Adani’s businesses. Once they have matured, they are often given their independence via a stock market listing. Many of Adani companies have become leading players in their respective sectors.

    Later this month, Adani Enterprises is also raising 200 billion rupees ($2.5 billion) by issuing new shares. It would be India’s biggest ever follow-on public share offering.

    A college dropout and a self-made industrialist, Adani is worth over $120 billion, making him the world’s third richest man, ahead of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates.

    Shares of Adani’s seven listed companies — in sectors ranging from ports to power stations — have seen turbocharged growth in the last few years. But some analysts fear that this growth comes at a huge risk as Adani’s $206 billion juggernaut has been fueled by a $30 billion borrowing binge, making his business one of the most indebted in the country.

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  • Who is Shou Zi Chew? Mounting scrutiny on TikTok could put new spotlight on its CEO | CNN Business

    Who is Shou Zi Chew? Mounting scrutiny on TikTok could put new spotlight on its CEO | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    When TikTok was the title sponsor last summer for Vidcon, an annual convention for the creators and brands that make up a key part of the short-form video app’s audience and business, it was Chief Operating Officer Vanessa Pappas who got on stage for the industry keynote event.

    Months later, when TikTok was grilled by Congress over privacy and security concerns, Pappas was the TikTok executive in the hot seat fielding questions.

    But while Pappas has arguably been the public face of the company for much of the past few tumultuous years, she has done so while acting as TikTok’s second-in-command. The person who has actually served as the CEO of one of the most popular apps on the planet for nearly two years is a longtime tech finance executive named Shou Zi Chew, based thousands of miles away from Washington, in Singapore.

    In Silicon Valley, it’s common for tech CEOs to be household names and the faces of the company’s they lead. Mark Zuckerberg is synonymous with Facebook and Jack Dorsey was the bearded face of Twitter, before Elon Musk acquired it. But Chew, who took over as TikTok CEO in April 2021, has largely stayed out of the spotlight at a time when the app he leads can’t seem to avoid it.

    After averting a threat of a ban in 2020, TikTok has increasingly found itself under scrutiny from state and federal lawmakers in the United States over concerns about its ties to China through its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, as well as over fears that it could have a harmful impact on younger users.

    Some US lawmakers have once again renewed calls to ban the app outright, while the Biden administration is still said to be negotiating with TikTok over a deal to let it continue to operate in the United States. Meanwhile, officials in the European Union have also begun toughening their rhetoric toward TikTok.

    That could put greater pressure on Chew. Already, he has had to respond to pointed letters from US senators, and just last week he made the rounds in Brussels to meet with EU officials. At the same time, Chew, who previously was CFO of ByteDance, is reportedly constrained in how much control he has over TikTok and how much power rests with its parent company.

    In a rare interview at the New York Times DealBook summit in late November, Chew was asked whether he worked “at the behest of the folks at ByteDance and therefore at the behest of the Chinese government.” In response, he said, “I am responsible for all the strategic decisions at TikTok.”

    Shou Zi Chew, chief executive officer of TikTok Inc., speaks during the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore, on Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022.

    But he added that ByteDance is “organized the way you would expect an internet company to be organized,” featuring global investors and a board of shareholder and employee representatives. “I am responsible for the decisions at TikTok,” Chew re-emphasized, “but, ultimately, I have to be responsible to the shareholders and to the board as well.”

    TikTok did not make Chew available for this story or respond to requests for comment.

    In interviews, Chew has described himself as a a 40-year-old father of two who likes to golf and read books on theoretical physics. But it’s his national origin that TikTok seems to like to highlight most.

    In a letter to US lawmakers in June, TikTok appeared to try and distance itself from ByteDance’ reach and said it was led by “its own global CEO, Shou Zi Chew, a Singaporean based in Singapore.”

    It’s not the first time TikTok has played up the nationality of its CEO. In 2020, as it faced growing pressure from the Trump administration, TikTok repeatedly defended itself against critics by touting its “American CEO,” Kevin Mayer, a former executive at one of the most iconic US companies, Disney.

    Mayer held the chief executive position at TikTok for just three months before stepping down. Pappas, an Australian based in Los Angeles with experience at other big US tech platforms like Google’s YouTube, then served as interim global head of TikTok for less than a year.

    Then Chew took over as CEO.

    “I think they brought him in specifically because, frankly, he’s not a Chinese national, and Singapore traditionally straddles the fence of these worlds,” said Ivan Kanapathy, a former director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia on the White House’s National Security Council staff and current senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. “And they’re quite good at it, geopolitically.”

    “Ultimately, I don’t think it’s going to be enough for Washington,” Kanapathy added of Chew’s Singaporean origin offering comfort to lawmakers concerned about China’s reach over TikTok. “For now, I don’t think it makes much of a difference because at the end of the day, he still answers to ByteDance, and so there’s only so much he can do.”

    After completing his mandatory military service in Singapore, Chew attended university in London before graduating with an MBA from Harvard Business School in 2010. He was exposed to Silicon Valley while at Harvard, after he interned one summer at a “startup” that “was called Facebook,” as he put it in an alumni spotlight.

    He eventually went on to become the CFO of Chinese tech giant Xiaomi, which he helped take public in 2018.

    In 2013, he led a group that became one of ByteDance’s earliest investors. In an interview with business magnate David Rubenstein, Chew said he stayed in contact with the ByteDance team throughout his career and they eventually reached out to offer him the CFO position. He took over as CEO of TikTok in April 2021, with Pappas named COO.

    As CEO of TikTok, “I’m most focused on trust building,” Chew told Rubenstein. “We are a young company and I think trust is something that we have to earn, through actions.”

    Chew doesn’t tweet and has a private, but verified, Instagram account with zero posts. He has shared a handful of videos on TikTok, mostly short clips of his travels and visits to various TikTok offices. But despite running one of the most popular apps on the planet, Chew largely keeps his own life private.

    In some ways, it can be a refreshing break from certain US tech executives who can’t seem to help tweeting their every thought. But it might also stem from cultural differences that come from leading a massive tech company with a Chinese parent company, according to Matthew Quint, the director of the center on global brand leadership at Columbia Business School. While Chew is not a Chinese national, Quint noted Chinese tech companies and leaders that have drawn too much attention to themselves have faced tough government crackdowns.

    Even if Chew does become more of a public figure and attempt to go on a charm offensive, it may not matter much for TikTok’s future in the United States. Ultimately, Quint said, “I don’t think the CEO of TikTok has much relevance at all” for US lawmakers scrutinizing its ties to China.

    “We’ve seen a rotating group, many of whom are not born-Chinese nationals, and that has not swayed the pressure around TikTok from a regulatory, national security perspective over the course of the last 18 months or so,” Quint said.

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  • Meta, Twitter, Microsoft and others urge Supreme Court not to allow lawsuits against tech algorithms | CNN Business

    Meta, Twitter, Microsoft and others urge Supreme Court not to allow lawsuits against tech algorithms | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    A wide range of businesses, internet users, academics and even human rights experts defended Big Tech’s liability shield Thursday in a pivotal Supreme Court case about YouTube algorithms, with some arguing that excluding AI-driven recommendation engines from federal legal protections would cause sweeping changes to the open internet.

    The diverse group weighing in at the Court ranged from major tech companies such as Meta, Twitter and Microsoft to some of Big Tech’s most vocal critics, including Yelp and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Even Reddit and a collection of volunteer Reddit moderators got involved.

    In friend-of-the-court filings, the companies, organizations and individuals said the federal law whose scope the Court could potentially narrow in the case — Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — is vital to the basic function of the web. Section 230 has been used to shield all websites, not just social media platforms, from lawsuits over third-party content.

    The question at the heart of the case, Gonzalez v. Google, is whether Google can be sued for recommending pro-ISIS content to users through its YouTube algorithm; the company has argued that Section 230 precludes such litigation. But the plaintiffs in the case, the family members of a person killed in a 2015 ISIS attack in Paris, have argued that YouTube’s recommendation algorithm can be held liable under a US antiterrorism law.

    In their filing, Reddit and the Reddit moderators argued that a ruling enabling litigation against tech-industry algorithms could lead to future lawsuits against even non-algorithmic forms of recommendation, and potentially targeted lawsuits against individual internet users.

    “The entire Reddit platform is built around users ‘recommending’ content for the benefit of others by taking actions like upvoting and pinning content,” their filing read. “There should be no mistaking the consequences of petitioners’ claim in this case: their theory would dramatically expand Internet users’ potential to be sued for their online interactions.”

    Yelp, a longtime antagonist to Google, argued that its business depends on serving relevant and non-fraudulent reviews to its users, and that a ruling creating liability for recommendation algorithms could break Yelp’s core functions by effectively forcing it to stop curating all reviews, even those that may be manipulative or fake.

    “If Yelp could not analyze and recommend reviews without facing liability, those costs of submitting fraudulent reviews would disappear,” Yelp wrote. “If Yelp had to display every submitted review … business owners could submit hundreds of positive reviews for their own business with little effort or risk of a penalty.”

    Section 230 ensures platforms can moderate content in order to present the most relevant data to users out of the huge amounts of information that get added to the internet every day, Twitter argued.

    “It would take an average user approximately 181 million years to download all data from the web today,” the company wrote.

    If the Supreme Court were to advance a new interpretation of Section 230 that safeguarded platforms’ right to remove content, but excluded protections on their right to recommend content, it would open up broad new questions about what it means to recommend something online, Meta argued in its filing.

    “If merely displaying third-party content in a user’s feed qualifies as ‘recommending’ it, then many services will face potential liability for virtually all the third-party content they host,” Meta wrote, “because nearly all decisions about how to sort, pick, organize, and display third-party content could be construed as ‘recommending’ that content.”

    A ruling finding that tech platforms can be sued for their recommendation algorithms would jeopardize GitHub, the vast online code repository used by millions of programmers, said Microsoft.

    “The feed uses algorithms to recommend software to users based on projects they have worked on or showed interest in previously,” Microsoft wrote. It added that for “a platform with 94 million developers, the consequences [of limiting Section 230] are potentially devastating for the world’s digital infrastructure.”

    Microsoft’s search engine Bing and its social network, LinkedIn, also enjoy algorithmic protections under Section 230, the company said.

    According to New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, it is virtually impossible to design a rule that singles out algorithmic recommendation as a meaningful category for liability, and could even “result in the loss or obscuring of a massive amount of valuable speech,” particularly speech belonging to marginalized or minority groups.

    “Websites use ‘targeted recommendations’ because those recommendations make their platforms usable and useful,” the NYU filing said. “Without a liability shield for recommendations, platforms will remove large categories of third-party content, remove all third-party content, or abandon their efforts to make the vast amount of user content on their platforms accessible. In any of these situations, valuable free speech will disappear—either because it is removed or because it is hidden amidst a poorly managed information dump.”

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