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Tag: iab-computing

  • Federal judge blocks Biden administration officials from communicating with social media companies | CNN Business

    Federal judge blocks Biden administration officials from communicating with social media companies | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal judge on Tuesday ordered some Biden administration agencies and top officials not to communicate with social media companies about certain content, handing a win to GOP states in a lawsuit accusing the government of going too far in its effort to combat Covid-19 disinformation.

    In a preliminary injunction issued by US District Judge Terry Doughty, the judge ordered a slew of federal agencies and more than a dozen top officials not to communicate with social media companies about taking down “content containing protected free speech” that’s posted on the platforms.

    The injunction notes that the government can still communicate with the companies as part of efforts to curb illegal activity and address national security threats.

    The order applies to agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Justice Department and FBI as well as officials such as US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

    The agencies and officials, Doughty said, are prohibited from “specifically flagging content or posts on social-media platforms and/or forwarding such to social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”

    Doughty, a Donald Trump appointee, noted in the lawsuit that social media companies “include Facebook/Meta, Twitter, YouTube/Google, WhatsApp, Instagram, WeChat, TikTok,” as well as a number of other online platforms.

    CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.

    Meta declined to comment. CNN also reached out to Twitter, Google and TikTok for comment.

    The lawsuit brought by the Missouri and Louisiana attorneys general in 2022 represents a novel way to pursue “censorship” claims accusing the Biden administration of effectively silencing conservatives by leaning on the private social media companies.

    Though Doughty hasn’t yet ruled on the merits of the two states’ claims, his order Tuesday represents their most significant victory yet in the ongoing lawsuit. The judge had previously ordered the administration to produce documents identifying government officials and the nature of their communications with social media platforms.

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  • Foxconn pulls out of $19 billion chipmaking project in India | CNN Business

    Foxconn pulls out of $19 billion chipmaking project in India | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    Foxconn says it is exiting an ambitious project to help build one of India’s first chip factories.

    The world’s largest contract electronics maker will “no longer move forward” with its $19.4 billion joint venture with Vedanta

    (VEDL)    , an Indian metals and energy conglomerate, in Asia’s third largest economy, it said Monday.

    The news was seen as a blow to the Indian government’s plans to turn the country into a tech manufacturing powerhouse, even as officials have sought to counter that view.

    In a statement to CNN, Foxconn, a Taiwanese tech giant best known for being one of Apple

    (AAPL)    ’s top suppliers, said the decision was based on “mutual agreement” and allowed the company “to explore more diverse development opportunities.”

    The joint venture will now be wholly owned by Vedanta.

    In a followup statement Tuesday, Foxconn reaffirmed its commitment to invest in Indian chipmaking, saying it will apply for a government program that subsidizes the cost of setting up semiconductor or electronic display production facilities in the country.

    “Building fabs from scratch in a new geography is a challenge, but Foxconn is committed to invest in India,” the company said, referring to fabrication plants, the technical term for semiconductor factories.

    “There was recognition from both sides that the project was not moving fast enough, there were challenging gaps we were not able to smoothly overcome, as well as external issues unrelated to the project,” it said.

    Since announcing the deal in February 2022, Foxconn said it had worked with Vedanta on plans to set up a semiconductor plant in the country that would support a wider ecosystem for manufacturers.

    It did not provide an investment figure for the facility, but Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted in September that the total investment would amount to 1.54 trillion rupees, which was then equivalent to $19.4 billion.

    Foxconn said last year it was actively scouting for locations for the plant and held discussions with “a few state governments.”

    Foxconn CEO Young Liu has in recent months courted Indian partners, having traveled there in February to seek new collaborators.

    The company, which already has factories in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, is one of many global tech firms looking for opportunities in the country, particularly as multinationals seek to diversify their supply chains beyond China.

    On Monday, India’s electronics and information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told Indian news outlet and CNN affiliate News18 that both Vedanta and Foxconn are “completely committed to India’s semiconductor mission.”

    Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the country’s minister of state for electronics and IT, also tweeted that the news “changes nothing about” India’s semiconductor manufacturing goals, adding that the decision would still allow “both companies to independently pursue their strategies” in India.

    The project had been hailed as a milestone in India’s campaign to attract more investment in manufacturing, a sector sorely needed to help ease unemployment.

    Prime Minister Modi had framed the project as a significant boost for the economy and jobs.

    Foxconn shares rose 1.3% in Taipei on Tuesday following its announcement, while Vedanta’s shares fell 1.4% in Mumbai. The latter has not responded to a request for comment.

    Other prominent tech companies have moved to expand production in India recently.

    Last month, US chipmaker Micron

    (MICR)     announced a new factory in the western state of Gujarat, calling it the country’s first semiconductor assembly and test manufacturing facility.

    The venture will see Micron invest up to $825 million, and create “up to 5,000 new direct Micron jobs and 15,000 community jobs over the next several years,” according to the company.

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  • Thousands of authors demand payment from AI companies for use of copyrighted works | CNN Business

    Thousands of authors demand payment from AI companies for use of copyrighted works | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Thousands of published authors are requesting payment from tech companies for the use of their copyrighted works in training artificial intelligence tools, marking the latest intellectual property critique to target AI development.

    The list of more than 8,000 authors includes some of the world’s most celebrated writers, including Margaret Atwood, Dan Brown, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Franzen, James Patterson, Jodi Picoult and Philip Pullman, among others.

    In an open letter they signed, posted by the Authors Guild Tuesday, the writers accused AI companies of unfairly profiting from their work.

    “Millions of copyrighted books, articles, essays, and poetry provide the ‘food’ for AI systems, endless meals for which there has been no bill,” the letter said. “You’re spending billions of dollars to develop AI technology. It is only fair that you compensate us for using our writings, without which AI would be banal and extremely limited.”

    Tuesday’s letter was addressed to the CEOs of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, Facebook-parent Meta, Google, Stability AI, IBM and Microsoft. Most of the companies didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Meta, Microsoft and Stability AI declined to comment.

    Much of the tech industry is now working to develop AI tools that can generate compelling images and written work in response to user prompts. These tools are built on large language models, which are trained on vast troves of information online. But recently, there has been growing pressure on tech companies over alleged intellectual property violations with this training process.

    This month, comedian Sarah Silverman and two authors filed a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Meta, while a proposed class-action suit accused Google of “stealing everything ever created and shared on the internet by hundreds of millions of Americans,” including copyrighted content. Google has called the lawsuit “baseless,” saying it has been upfront for years that it uses public data to train its algorithms. OpenAI did not previously respond to a request for comment on the suit.

    In addition to demanding compensation “for the past and ongoing use of our works in your generative AI programs,” the thousands of authors who signed the letter this week called on AI companies to seek permission before using the copyrighted material. They also urged the companies to pay writers when their work is featured in the results of generative AI, “whether or not the outputs are infringing under current law.”

    The letter also cites this year’s Supreme Court holding in Warhol v Goldsmith, which found that the late artist Andy Warhol infringed on a photographer’s copyright when he created a series of silk screens based on a photograph of the late singer Prince. The court ruled that Warhol did not sufficiently “transform” the underlying photograph so as to avoid copyright infringement.

    “The high commerciality of your use argues against fair use,” the authors wrote to the AI companies.

    In May, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appeared to acknowledge more needs to be done to address concerns from creators about how AI systems use their works.

    “We’re trying to work on new models where if an AI system is using your content, or if it’s using your style, you get paid for that,” he said at an event.

    – CNN’s Catherine Thorbecke contributed to this report.

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  • OpenAI’s Sam Altman launches Worldcoin crypto project | CNN Business

    OpenAI’s Sam Altman launches Worldcoin crypto project | CNN Business

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    Worldcoin, a cryptocurrency project founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, launched on Monday.

    The project’s core offering is its World ID, which the company describes as a “digital passport” to prove that its holder is a real human, not an AI bot. To get a World ID, a customer signs up to do an in-person iris scan using Worldcoin’s ‘orb’, a silver ball approximately the size of a bowling ball. Once the orb’s iris scan verifies the person is a real human, it creates a World ID.

    The company behind Worldcoin is San Francisco and Berlin-based Tools for Humanity.

    The project has 2 million users from its beta period, and with Monday’s launch, Worldcoin is scaling up “orbing” operations to 35 cities in 20 countries. As an enticement, those who sign up in certain countries will receive Worldcoin’s cryptocurrency token WLD.

    WLD’s price rose in early trading on Monday. On the world’s largest exchange, Binance, it hit a peak of $5.29 and at 1000 GMT was at $2.49 from a starting price of $0.15, having seen $25.1 million of trading volume, according to Binance’s website.

    Blockchains can store the World IDs in a way that preserves privacy and can’t be controlled or shut down by any single entity, co-founder Alex Blania told Reuters.

    The project says World IDs will be necessary in the age of generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT, which produce remarkably humanlike language. World IDs could be used to tell the difference between real people and AI bots online.

    Altman told Reuters Worldcoin also can help address how the economy will be reshaped by generative AI.

    “People will be supercharged by AI, which will have massive economic implications,” he said.

    One example Altman likes is universal basic income, or UBI, a social benefits program usually run by governments where every individual is entitled to payments. Because AI “will do more and more of the work that people now do,” Altman believes UBI can help to combat income inequality. Since only real people can have World IDs, it could be used to reduce fraud when deploying UBI.

    Altman said he thought a world with UBI would be “very far in the future” and he did not have a clear idea of what entity could dole out money, but that Worldcoin lays groundwork for it to become a reality.

    “We think that we need to start experimenting with things so we can figure out what to do,” he said.

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  • Twitter threatens to sue hate-speech watchdog group | CNN Business

    Twitter threatens to sue hate-speech watchdog group | CNN Business

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    Washington, DC
    CNN
     — 

    Elon Musk has called himself a free-speech absolutist and has praised “even my worst critics.” But now Twitter has threatened to sue a nonprofit known for sharply criticizing the platform for its handling of hate speech and misinformation.

    In a July 20 letter shared publicly Monday, Twitter threatened to sue the Center for Countering Digital Hate, accusing the group of a campaign to hurt Twitter by driving away its advertisers. The CCDH has published numerous reports about various social media companies’ approach to everything from vaccine misinformation to online racism and antisemitism.

    The letter by Alex Spiro, an outside attorney representing Twitter owner Musk, alleges that CCDH has made “inflammatory, outrageous, and false or misleading assertions about Twitter and its operations” through its reports, which he argued lack scientific rigor.

    To back up his claim, Spiro cited one report in which CCDH staff flagged tweets from 100 Twitter Blue subscribers to the platform as being harmful and found that after several days, the company had not taken action on the vast majority of it. The resulting CCDH report said Twitter had failed to act on “99% of Twitter Blue accounts tweeting hate.”

    “This article leaves no doubt that CCDH intends to harm Twitter’s business by driving advertisers away from the platform with incendiary claims,” Spiro wrote to CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed, adding that Twitter is investigating whether it can sue the nonprofit for making false descriptions of the company.

    CCDH tweeted Spiro’s July 20 letter along with the organization’s reply to Twitter — which Musk has since rebranded as X — that called the legal threat “ridiculous.”

    “These allegations not only have no basis in fact (your letter states none), but they represent a disturbing effort to intimidate those who have the courage to advocate against incitement, hate speech and harmful content online, to conduct research and analysis regarding the drivers of such disinformation, and to publicly release the findings of that research, even when the findings may be critical of certain platforms,” wrote CCDH’s attorneys in a response dated Monday.

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

    Since taking over Twitter, Musk has slashed roughly 80% of the company’s staff, including many working on the platform’s content moderation teams.

    In December, Twitter shuttered its Trust and Safety Council comprised of outside experts on online safety, human rights, mental health, suicide prevention and child sexual exploitation.

    Reports from multiple groups, including CCDH but also the Anti-Defamation League as well as researchers from Tufts University and the University of Southern California, have pointed to observed increases in hate speech.

    Musk claimed that impressions of hate speech — which he described as based on a list of “bad words” — declined in the month following his takeover.

    But concerns about the platform’s handling of hateful content under Musk last year have persisted, prompting many brands to pause their advertising on Twitter and contributing to sharp financial losses at the company.

    Despite claiming in April that most of Twitter’s advertisers had returned, Musk acknowledged this month that Twitter’s ad revenue remains down by 50% and that the company is still cash-flow negative.

    In addition, Twitter has made changes to its platform restricting how third parties can access its data, a move that has drawn widespread criticism from academic researchers who study extremism and other online harms. The changes, which require researchers to pay hefty fees, could inhibit studies on how misinformation, harassment and spam spread on Twitter, experts have said.

    Threatening lawsuits has become a favored tactic for Musk as Twitter faces continued pressure. Earlier this month, Twitter threatened to sue Facebook-parent Meta over the launch of its competing app, Threads, accusing the company of copying Twitter’s product through trade secret theft. In May, Spiro sent a letter to Microsoft accusing it of over-using its ability to download tweets from the platform as Musk stepped up his criticism of the Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant as a perceived rival in artificial intelligence technology.

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  • Pay $84 a year for Twitter Blue or lose your checkmark beginning April 1, Twitter says | CNN Business

    Pay $84 a year for Twitter Blue or lose your checkmark beginning April 1, Twitter says | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Twitter’s free blue “verified” checkmarks for notable users may finally be coming to an end.

    Ever since Elon Musk took control of the company in October, he’s been threatening to remove the “legacy” checkmarks that confirmed the identities of users like government officials, corporations, journalists, celebrities and other high-profile tweeters.

    Now Musk may follow through: “On April 1st, we will begin winding down our legacy verified program and removing legacy verified checkmarks,” the company wrote in a tweet Thursday.

    A caveat, however: Twitter says this policy will go into effect starting on April Fool’s Day. Musk in particular has been known for April 1 trolling, including in 2018 when he falsely tweeted that his electric vehicle company Tesla

    (TSLA)     had gone bankrupt.

    “To keep your blue checkmark on Twitter, individuals can sign up for Twitter Blue,” the company’s tweet continued.

    Twitter Blue is a subscription service that Musk relaunched late last year that costs individuals $84 a year or $8 a month. Charging fees provides a revenue stream for Twitter — and a needed one, as Twitter currently collects virtually all of its revenue from advertisers, who have been fleeing the social media platform since he took over.

    Charging for Twitter verification provides both additional revenue to Twitter and a way for Musk to show his disdain for government agencies, journalists and others. Yet building a replacement for the legacy verification program has proved to be fraught.

    Twitter Blue first launched in the pre-Musk days of 2021, as a subscription service offering “power features” like undoing a tweet and saving bookmarks to folders. Musk relaunched the program in November 2022, including a blue checkmark in the features for paying users.

    Immediately the program was flooded with users who paid for counterfeit accounts pretending to be users such as former President Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, LeBron James and Nintendo.

    Before being suspended, the impostor Nintendo account tweeted an image of video game character Mario giving the viewer the middle finger. The LeBron James account falsely claimed the athlete had requested a trade. The fake Trump account tweeted, “This is why Elon Musk’s plan doesn’t work.”

    Musk pulled the Twitter Blue program for a few weeks and relaunched it yet again in December, with additional steps for reviewing and approving subscribers. Beyond the checkmark, Blue also lets paying users edit a tweet up to 5 times within 30 minutes, create tweets up to 4,000 characters long and post HD videos.

    The company also says Twitter Blue users will see 50% fewer ads in their home timelines, and that their tweets will be prioritized among replies, mentions and searches.

    For companies and other organizations, Twitter Blue costs $1,000 a month for the main account and $50 a month for each additional related account.

    – CNN’s Brian Fung contributed to this report.

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  • Academic researchers blast Twitter’s data paywall as ‘outrageously expensive’ | CNN Business

    Academic researchers blast Twitter’s data paywall as ‘outrageously expensive’ | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    After Twitter announced in February it would begin charging third parties to access its platform data, academic researchers warned that the vaguely worded plan could threaten important studies about how misinformation, harassment and other malicious activity spreads online.

    Now, as Twitter has released more pricing information, many of those same academics are saying their fears were well-founded, complaining that Twitter’s new tiered paywall not only charges “outrageously expensive” prices but that it also restricts the amount of accessible data so heavily that what little researchers can see, even on the most expensive tiers, is not useful for studies at any rigorous level.

    Twitter, which has cut much of its public relations team under CEO Elon Musk, automatically responded to a request for comment with an email containing a poop emoji.

    In an open letter this week, the Coalition for Independent Technology Research — a group representing dozens of researchers and civil society organizations — said free and open access to Twitter data has historically enabled systematic, large-scale research on social media’s role in public health initiatives, foreign propaganda, political discourse, and even the bots and spam that Musk has blamed for ruining Twitter.

    But Twitter’s new tiered access system undercuts all of that, the researchers said. The company’s pricing that launched last week, starting at $100 per month for a “basic” amount of data, does not provide nearly enough volume for users at the low end, while the high end “ranges from $42,000 to $210,000 per month [and] is unaffordable for researchers,” the letter said.

    The new basic tier limits users to reading just 10,000 tweets per month. That represents 0.3% of what researchers used to be able to collect in a single day, the letter said.

    Even under the most expensive “enterprise” tier costing upwards of $2.5 million a year, Twitter is offering only a fraction of the tweets it used to, the letter continued. Before the change, researchers could pay about $500 a month for the ability to access up to 10% of the roughly 1 billion tweets a month that flow across Twitter’s platform.

    Now, though, “the most expensive Enterprise tier would cut that by 80% at about 400 times the price,” the researchers’ letter said.

    Asking researchers to pay orders of magnitude more for a fifth of the access they once had represents a barrier to accountability and transparency, the letter added.

    “Under the new pricing plans, studying the communications and interactions of even a small population—such as the 535 Members of the U.S. Congress or the 705 Members of the European Parliament—will be unfeasible,” the letter said. “The new pricing plans will also end at least 76 long-term efforts, including dashboards, tools, or code packages that support other researchers, journalists, first-responders, educators, and Twitter users.”

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  • Suspect in murder of Cash App founder appears in court | CNN Business

    Suspect in murder of Cash App founder appears in court | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Nima Momeni, the suspect in the stabbing death of Cash App founder Bob Lee, appeared in a San Francisco court Friday morning for an arraignment, one day after police announced his arrest.

    When Momeni entered the courtroom, members of his family sitting in the front row held up heart signs with their hands. Momeni, who was not cuffed, acknowledged them and smiled back.

    Momeni’s arraignment is set to continue on April 25. He will be held without bail in the meantime.

    Lee was stabbed to death in the Rincon Hill neighborhood of San Francisco early in the morning of April 4th. The moments following the stabbing attack were captured on surveillance video and in a 911 call to authorities, according to a local Bay Area news portal.

    The surveillance footage, reviewed by the online news site The San Francisco Standard, shows Lee walking alone on Main Street, “gripping his side with one hand and his cellphone in the other, leaving a trail of blood behind him.”

    In announcing his arrest Thursday, law enforcement described Momeni as a 38-year-old man from Emeryville, California and said Momeni and Lee knew one another, but didn’t provide further details about their connection.

    California Secretary of State Records indicate that Momeni has been the owner of an IT business, which, according to its website, provides services like technical support.

    Lee’s family issued a statement Thursday thanking the San Francisco Police Department “for bringing his killer to Justice” after Momeni’s arrest.

    “Our next steps will be to work with the District Attorney’s office to ensure that this person is not allowed to hurt anyone else or walk free,” the statement said.

    In the statement, the family described Lee’s upbringing, his career, and the impact of the technology he helped create.

    “Every day around the world, people interact with technology that Bob helped create. Bob will live on through these interactions and his dreams of improving all of our lives,” the statement reads.

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  • The viral new ‘Drake’ and ‘Weeknd’ song is not what it seems | CNN Business

    The viral new ‘Drake’ and ‘Weeknd’ song is not what it seems | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    One of the buzziest songs recently circulating on TikTok and climbing the Spotify charts featured the familiar voices of best-selling artists Drake and the Weeknd. But there’s a twist: Drake and the Weeknd appear to have had nothing to do with it.

    The viral track, “Heart on my Sleeve,” comes from an anonymous TikTok user named Ghostwriter977, who claims to have used artificial intelligence to generate the voices of Drake and the Weeknd for the track.

    “I was a ghostwriter for years and got paid close to nothing just for major labels to profit,” Ghostwriter977 wrote in the video comments. “The future is here.”

    “Heart on my Sleeve” racked up more than 11 million views across several videos in just a few days and was streamed on Spotify hundreds of thousands of times. The original TikTok video has seemingly been taken down, and the song has since been removed from streaming services including YouTube, Apple Music and Spotify. (TikTok, YouTube, Apple and Spotify did not respond to a request for comment.)

    The exact origin of the song remains unclear, and some have suggested it could be a publicity stunt. But the stunning traction for “Heart on my Sleeve” may only add to the anxiety inside the music industry as it goes on offense against the possible threat posed by a new crop of increasingly powerful AI tools on the market.

    Universal Music Group, the music label that represents Drake, The Weeknd and numerous other superstars, sent urgent letters in April to streaming platforms, including Spotify and Apple Music, asking them to block AI platforms from training on the melodies and lyrics of their copywritten songs.

    “The training of generative AI using our artists’ music — which represents both a breach of our agreements and a violation of copyright law as well as the availability of infringing content created with generative AI on digital service providers – begs the question as to which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or on the side of deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due compensation,” the company said in a statement this week to CNN.

    The record label said platforms have “a fundamental legal and ethical responsibility to prevent the use of their services in ways that harm artists.”

    But attempting to crack down on AI-generated music may pose a unique challenge. The legal landscape for AI work remains unclear, the tools to create it are widely accessible and social media makes it easier than ever to distribute it.

    AI-generated music is not new. Taryn Southern’s debut song “Break Free,” which was composed and produced with AI, hit the Top 100 radio charts back in 2018, and VAVA, an AI music artist (i.e. not a human), currently has a single out in Thailand.

    But a new crop of AI tools have made it easier than ever to quickly generate convincing images, audio, video and written work. Some services such as Boomy specifically leverage generative AI to make music creation more accessible.

    There’s little known about who is behind the Ghostwriter977 account, or which tools the creator used to make the track. The user did not respond to a CNN request for comment.

    In the bio section of the user’s TikTok account, a link directs users to a page on Laylo, a website where fans can sign up to get notifications from artists when new songs are dropped or merchandise and tickets become available. The company told CNN the account likely registered to build up its fan base and brought in “tens of thousands” of signups in the past few days.

    Laylo CEO Alec Ellin denied that the company was behind the viral track as some have speculated, but Ellin told CNN whoever did make it was “clearly a really savvy creator” and called it “a perfect example of the power of using Laylo to own your audience.”

    Michael Inouye, an analyst at ABI Research, said “Heart on my Sleeve” could have been made in several ways depending on the sophistication of the AI and level of musical talent.

    “If music artists were involved, they could create the background music and the lyrics, and then the AI model could be trained with content from Drake and The Weekend to replicate their voices and singing styles,” he said. “AI could also have generated most of the song, lyrics and replicated the artists again based on the training data set and any prompts given to direct the AI model.”

    He added that part of this fascination and virality of the song comes from “just how good AI has gotten at creating content, which includes replicating famous people.”

    Roberto Nickson, who is building an AI platform to help boost productivity and work flow, recently posted a video on Twitter showing how easy it is to record a verse and train an AI model to replace his vocals. He used the artist formerly known as Kanye West as an example.

    “The results will blow your mind,” he said. “You’re going to be listening to songs by your favorite artist that are completely indistinguishable and you’re not going to know if it’s them or not.”

    Although the entertainment industry has seen these issues coming, regulations are lagging behind the rapid pace of AI development.

    Audrey Benoualid, an entertainment lawyer based in Los Angeles, said one could argue “Heart On My Sleeve” does not infringe copyright as it appears to be an “original” composition.

    “Ghostwriter also publicized that Drake and The Weeknd were not involved in the making of the song, which could protect them from a ‘passing off’ claim, where profits are generated as consumers are misled into believing the song is actually a Drake-Weeknd collaboration,” she said in an email to CNN.

    However, Benoualid added, machine learning and generative AI programs may also be found to infringe copyright in existing works, either by making copies of those works to train the AI or by generating outputs that are substantially similar to those existing works. “Major labels would undoubtedly, and have already begun to, argue that their copyrights (and their artists’ intellectual property rights) are being infringed,” she said.

    Michael Nash, an executive VP at Universal Music Group, recently wrote in an op-ed that AI music is “diluting the market, making original creations harder to find, and violating artists’ legal rights to compensation from their work.”

    No regulations exist that dictate on what AI can and cannot train. But last month, in response to individuals looking to seek copyright for AI-generated works, the US Copyright Office released new guidance around how to register literary, musical, and artistic works made with AI.

    The copyright will be determined on a case-by-case basis, the guidance continued, based on how the AI tool operates and how it was used to create the final piece or work. The US Copyright Office announced it will also be seeking public input on how the law should apply to copywritten works the AI trains on, and how the office should treat those works.

    “AI and copyright law and the rights of musicians and labels have crashed into one another (once again), and it will take time for the dust to settle,” Benoualid said. “The landscape is anything but clear at the moment.”

    Inouye said if AI generated content becomes associated with famous individuals in a negative way that could be grounds for a lawsuit to not only take content down but to cease and desist their operations and potentially seek damage.

    “On the flip side, if the content were to be popular and the creator were to make revenue off of the artists’ image or likeness then again the artists could similarly request the content to be taken down and potentially sue for any monetary gains,” he said.

    But for now, concerned parties may be forced to play whack-a-mole. While services like Spotify pulled “Heart on my Sleeve,” versions of it appeared to continue circulating as of Tuesday on other online platforms.

    Even a song made with artificial intelligence may find real staying power online.

    – CNN’s Vanessa Yurkevich contributed to this report.

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  • Twitter’s former CEO has a new app that looks a lot like Twitter | CNN Business

    Twitter’s former CEO has a new app that looks a lot like Twitter | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    The buzzy new social media app of the moment looks so much like Twitter it’s almost hard to distinguish the two. The profiles, timelines and colors are nearly identical. Even the creator is the same.

    But under the hood, Bluesky, developed by Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, is vastly different.

    The app, which launched in a closed beta on iOS in February and on Android this month, runs on a decentralized network which provides users with more control over how the service is run, data is stored, and content is moderated.

    In recent days, it’s gained traction among journalists, politicians and celebrities, from Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to model Chrissy Teigan and the 90s band Eve 6.

    Here’s what you should know:

    Bluesky calls itself “a new social network for microblogging.” With the app, users can post and follow short updates on a timeline, just as they would on Twitter, though with some differences. There are currently no hashtags – a central feature on Twitter – and no direct messages.

    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.”

    In a tweet last year, Dorsey said the “biggest issue and my biggest regret is that [Twitter] became a company.” He later clarified that if a service was a protocol it “can’t be owned by a state, or company.”

    If the idea of a decentralized social network sounds familiar, it’s likely because of Mastodon, another Twitter alternative that also gained attention late last year.

    Like Mastodon, Bluesky appeals to a number of Twitter users who are frustrated with the direction of the platform under owner Elon Musk. In the six months since Musk took over Twitter, he has made a number of controversial changes to its features and policies, including the removal of blue check marks from prominent users.

    Some of the same high-profile users now testing out Bluesky have also been openly critical of Musk’s moves at Twitter.

    According to data.ai, the company formerly known as App Annie, Bluesky has been downloaded more than 375,000 times from the Apple App Store and the waitlist continues to be flooded with signup requests. On the Google Play Store, Bluesky is described as having been downloaded more than 100,000 times. (By comparison, Twitter reported having more than 200 million monetizable daily active users last year before Musk completed his acquisition.)

    Bluesky did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    It’s unclear if Bluesky has staying power or will lose steam as Mastodon did. But Mark Bartholomew, a professor at the University at Buffalo School of Law who writes about online privacy, said the early shift toward Bluesky is a positive one, as it gives social media users more choice over where they spend their time.

    “Competition might actually help users find the product features they want, like greater privacy protection, portability, and more significant content moderation,” he said. “Social media platforms have features that users dislike but they still feel like they must accept them to just be in the online space where everyone else is.”

    All it took, he said, was Musk taking steps “to sabotage his own platform.”

    For now, Bluesky is invite-only as it ramps up support for the implementation of its network. Existing users get one invite code to share with someone for every two weeks they’re on the app. Not surprisingly, the sense of exclusivity has only added to the excitement of joining Bluesky.

    As Eve 6 wrote on Twitter: “Bluesky invite codes are the new blue check.”

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  • How the technology behind ChatGPT could make mind-reading a reality | CNN Business

    How the technology behind ChatGPT could make mind-reading a reality | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    On a recent Sunday morning, I found myself in a pair of ill-fitting scrubs, lying flat on my back in the claustrophobic confines of an fMRI machine at a research facility in Austin, Texas. “The things I do for television,” I thought.

    Anyone who has had an MRI or fMRI scan will tell you how noisy it is — electric currents swirl creating a powerful magnetic field that produces detailed scans of your brain. On this occasion, however, I could barely hear the loud cranking of the mechanical magnets, I was given a pair of specialized earphones that began playing segments from The Wizard of Oz audiobook.

    Why?

    Neuroscientists at the University of Texas in Austin have figured out a way to translate scans of brain activity into words using the very same artificial intelligence technology that powers the groundbreaking chatbot ChatGPT.

    The breakthrough could revolutionize how people who have lost the ability to speak can communicate. It’s just one pioneering application of AI developed in recent months as the technology continues to advance and looks set to touch every part of our lives and our society.

    “So, we don’t like to use the term mind reading,” Alexander Huth, assistant professor of neuroscience and computer science at the University of Texas at Austin, told me. “We think it conjures up things that we’re actually not capable of.”

    Huth volunteered to be a research subject for this study, spending upward of 20 hours in the confines of an fMRI machine listening to audio clips while the machine snapped detailed pictures of his brain.

    An artificial intelligence model analyzed his brain and the audio he was listening to and, over time, was eventually able to predict the words he was hearing just by watching his brain.

    The researchers used the San Francisco-based startup OpenAI’s first language model, GPT-1, that was developed with a massive database of books and websites. By analyzing all this data, the model learned how sentences are constructed — essentially how humans talk and think.

    The researchers trained the AI to analyze the activity of Huth and other volunteers’ brains while they listened to specific words. Eventually the AI learned enough that it could predict what Huth and others were listening to or watching just by monitoring their brain activity.

    I spent less than a half-hour in the machine and, as expected, the AI wasn’t able to decode that I had been listening to a portion of The Wizard of Oz audiobook that described Dorothy making her way along the yellow brick road.

    Huth listened to the same audio but because the AI model had been trained on his brain it was accurately able to predict parts of the audio he was listening to.

    While the technology is still in its infancy and shows great promise, the limitations might be a source of relief to some. AI can’t easily read our minds, yet.

    “The real potential application of this is in helping people who are unable to communicate,” Huth explained.

    He and other researchers at UT Austin believe the innovative technology could be used in the future by people with “locked-in” syndrome, stroke victims and others whose brains are functioning but are unable to speak.

    “Ours is the first demonstration that we can get this level of accuracy without brain surgery. So we think that this is kind of step one along this road to actually helping people who are unable to speak without them needing to get neurosurgery,” he said.

    While breakthrough medical advances are no doubt good news and potentially life-changing for patients struggling with debilitating ailments, it also raises questions about how the technology could be applied in controversial settings.

    Could it be used to extract a confession from a prisoner? Or to expose our deepest, darkest secrets?

    The short answer, Huth and his colleagues say, is no — not at the moment.

    For starters, brain scans need to occur in an fMRI machine, the AI technology needs to be trained on an individual’s brain for many hours, and, according to the Texas researchers, subjects need to give their consent. If a person actively resists listening to audio or thinks about something else the brain scans will not be a success.

    “We think that everyone’s brain data should be kept private,” said Jerry Tang, the lead author on a paper published earlier this month detailing his team’s findings. “Our brains are kind of one of the final frontiers of our privacy.”

    Tang explained, “obviously there are concerns that brain decoding technology could be used in dangerous ways.” Brain decoding is the term the researchers prefer to use instead of mind reading.

    “I feel like mind reading conjures up this idea of getting at the little thoughts that you don’t want to let slip, little like reactions to things. And I don’t think there’s any suggestion that we can really do that with this kind of approach,” Huth explained. “What we can get is the big ideas that you’re thinking about. The story that somebody is telling you, if you’re trying to tell a story inside your head, we can kind of get at that as well.”

    Last week, the makers of generative AI systems, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, descended on Capitol Hill to testify before a Senate committee over lawmakers’ concerns of the risks posed by the powerful technology. Altman warned that the development of AI without guardrails could “cause significant harm to the world” and urged lawmakers to implement regulations to address concerns.

    Echoing the AI warning, Tang told CNN that lawmakers need to take “mental privacy” seriously to protect “brain data” — our thoughts — two of the more dystopian terms I’ve heard in the era of AI.

    While the technology at the moment only works in very limited cases, that might not always be the case.

    “It’s important not to get a false sense of security and think that things will be this way forever,” Tang warned. “Technology can improve and that could change how well we can decode and change whether decoders require a person’s cooperation.”

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  • Reddit sparks outrage after a popular app developer said it wants him to pay $20 million a year for data access | CNN Business

    Reddit sparks outrage after a popular app developer said it wants him to pay $20 million a year for data access | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Twitter has been widely criticized for trying to charge transit agencies, third-party app developers and academics for data access to its platform, a move opponents say has forced independent apps to shut down and threatened research on misinformation and hate speech.

    Now, a similar revolt against Reddit may be gaining steam after a popular app developer said Wednesday the social media company wants to charge him $20 million a year to continue offering software that lets Reddit users view and interact with the platform.

    The newly unveiled pricing of Reddit’s paywall “is close to Twitter pricing” and is not “anything based in reality or remotely reasonable,” said Christian Selig, developer of the Apollo app, in a Reddit post on Wednesday. “It goes without saying that I don’t have that kind of money or would even know how to charge it to a credit card.”

    Selig’s post highlights a plan Reddit announced in April to enact a Twitter-like pricing structure for its application programming interface (API) — the software that allows other programs to tap into the company’s data, including posts and comments. Reddit’s API is what allows Reddit content to be displayed to the Apollo app’s 900,000 daily active users.

    Reddit’s initial announcement had been light on pricing details, leaving many to speculate about the future of third-party access to Reddit. As details of its pricing plan trickled out on Wednesday, Reddit did not dispute Selig’s account of his conversations with the company, but said Reddit remains “committed to fostering a safe and responsible developer ecosystem.”

    “Expansive access to data has impact and costs involved, and in terms of safety and privacy we have an obligation to our communities to be responsible stewards of data,” said Tim Rathschmidt, a company spokesperson, in an email.

    Selig’s tweet on the issue has been viewed more than one million times and has led to an outpouring of criticism for Reddit. “Apollo is the only reason I use Reddit,” one fan of the app tweeted. Another said: “Reddit is going full Twitter and it’s a big mistake.” .

    Selig had initially expressed cautious optimism about the company’s plan, saying on the day of the announcement that he had spoken to the company and that if the new moves were implemented reasonably, “this could be a positive change.”

    But now, a month later, Selig’s optimism has deflated. According to Selig’s post Wednesday, Reddit intends to charge $12,000 for every 50 million attempts to access the company’s data.

    “Apollo made 7 billion requests last month,” Selig wrote Wednesdsay, meaning his additional costs simply for running his business as usual would add up to “1.7 million dollars per month, or 20 million US dollars per year.”

    “I’d be in the red every month,” he added. Selig didn’t immediately respond to questions from CNN about whether he expects to have to shut down the app.

    Selig isn’t the only app developer crying foul. Some developers have said Reddit’s API changes would also block ads in third-party apps, potentially depriving apps of ad revenue and forcing them to try to convert users to subscription business models.

    Part of the motivation for Reddit’s plan involves the surging popularity of artificial intelligence.

    Large language models such as ChatGPT are developed using training data, which in many cases is sourced from content found across the internet. Reddit should not be expected to provide that data to “some of the largest companies in the world for free,” CEO Steve Huffman told the New York Times in a recent interview.

    Meanwhile, Reddit is also widely expected to go public, potentially as soon as this year. The stock offering could add to pressure for Reddit to show revenue growth. Its paid API could help on that front.

    But that could come at the expense of independent apps and, as some pointed out, Reddit users who may experience a loss of choices in ways to access the platform. Some predicted that they might soon have to rely on Reddit’s proprietary app, which has been widely panned by users, if they wish to access the site at all.

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  • Silicon Valley escalates the battle over returning to the office | CNN Business

    Silicon Valley escalates the battle over returning to the office | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Three years after Silicon Valley companies led the charge for embracing remote work in the early days of the pandemic, the tech industry is now escalating the fight to bring employees back into the office -— and igniting tensions with staff in the process.

    Google, which has long been a bellwether for workplace policies in the tech industry and beyond, frustrated some employees this week by announcing plans to begin more strictly enforcing its policy that requires workers in-office at least three days a week. The updated policy includes tracking office badge attendance and possibly factoring it into performance reviews, according to CNBC, citing internal memos.

    “Overnight, workers’ professionalism has been disregarded in favor of ambiguous attendance tracking practices tied to our performance evaluations,” Chris Schmidt, a software engineer at Google and member of the grassroots Alphabet Workers Union, told CNN in a statement. “The practical application of this new policy will be needless confusion amongst workers and a disregard for our various life circumstances.”

    In a statement, Ryan Lamont, a Google spokesperson, told CNN that its policy of working in the office three days a week is “going well, and we want to see Googlers connecting and collaborating in-person, so we’re limiting remote work to exception only.”

    Lamont said that company leaders can see reports showing how their teams are adopting the hybrid work model, including “aggregated data” on badge swipes. He added that now that the company is more than a year into its hybrid model, “we’re formally integrating this approach into all of our workplace policies.”

    Google isn’t alone in facing pushback from employees. Other tech companies are also grappling with how best to compel workers to come into the office after they’ve grown accustomed to greater flexibility. The tug-of-war is compounded by the fact that tech companies have laid off tens of thousands of employees over the past year, leveling a major blow to employee morale.

    At Amazon, tensions boiled over last week as hundreds of office workers staged a walkout to call attention to their grievances, including the three-day return-to-office mandate that was implemented in May.

    A current Amazon worker who spoke at the walkout said that she started an internal Slack channel called “remote advocacy” because she wanted a space where workers could discuss how the new return-to-office policy would impact their lives.

    “Before I realized what was happening, that channel had 33,000 people in it,” the worker, who identified only as Pamela, said to the crowd at the event. Pamela called the Slack channel advocating for remote work “the largest concrete expression of employee dissatisfaction in our entire company history.”

    But the employee criticism isn’t stopping tech companies, who have spent billions on sprawling campuses over the years and often preach the value of serendipitous workplace interactions, from moving forward with their return to office policies.

    In response to the walkout, Amazon previously told CNN it may “take time” for some workers to adjust to being in the office more days. But the company also said it’s “happy with how the first month of having more people back in the office has been” and touted the extra “energy, collaboration, and connections happening” in the office.

    Facebook-parent Meta similarly doubled down last week on its push to get workers in the office, warning that employees currently assigned to an office must return to in-person work three days a week starting this September. (A Meta spokesperson told CNN the updated policy was not set in stone, and employees designated as remote workers will be allowed to keep their remote status).

    At least one tech company is taking a gentler approach.

    Salesforce is trying to lure staff into offices by offering to donate $10 to a local charity for each day an employee comes in from June 12 to June 23, according to an internal Slack message reported on by Fortune.

    A Salesforce spokesperson told CNN: “Giving back is deeply embedded in everything we do, and we’re proud to introduce Connect for Good to encourage employees to help us raise $1 Million+ for local nonprofits.”

    But it might take more than temporary charitable contributions to convince some workers it’s worthwhile to return. Schmidt, the software engineer at Google, said that even if you go into the office, there’s no guarantee you’ll have people on your team to work with or even a desk to sit at.

    “Many teams are distributed, and for some of us there may not be anyone to collaborate with in our physical office locations,” Schmidt said. “Currently, New York City workers do not even have enough desks and conference rooms for workers to use comfortably.”

    “A one size fits all policy does not address these circumstances,” he added. “We deserve a voice in shaping the policies that impact our lives to establish clear, transparent and fair working conditions for all of us.”

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  • Biden kicks off reelection bid with union rally in Philadelphia | CNN Politics

    Biden kicks off reelection bid with union rally in Philadelphia | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden kicked off his reelection campaign Saturday at a union rally in his frequent haunt of Pennsylvania, the state that remains an intersection of his personal and political identities that he hopes can propel him to a second term.

    The first official rally of his final political campaign was a moment for Biden to underscore recent economic wins that undergird his argument for another four years in the White House.

    “Just think back. Remember what it was like when I came to office, we came into office. Remember the mess we inherited,” Biden told the audience in Philadelphia. “Now look at where we are today.”

    To a roaring crowd, who repeatedly cheered “four more years,” the president touted several accomplishments, including the bipartisan infrastructure law, a coronavirus relief package, a bipartisan semiconductor chip manufacturing law and the recently negotiated debt ceiling deal that helped avert a US default.

    Biden also criticized recent Republican tax proposals while describing what he called his middle-class vision for the American economy, referring to it several times as “Biden-omics.”

    Biden made only brief mention of Donald Trump, the current front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, steering clear of the former president’s recent federal indictment and arraignment but hitting him on infrastructure.

    “Under my predecessor, infrastructure week became a punchline,” Biden said. “On my watch, we’re making infrastructure a decade headline.”

    First lady Jill Biden, who spoke shortly before her husband, highlighted the president’s optimism. Wearing a corsage to mark their 46th wedding anniversary Saturday, the first lady recalled how she met Biden following the death of his first wife and baby daughter in a tragic car accident that also injured his two sons.

    “What I love about Joe is that even though he has faced unimaginable tragedies, his optimism is undaunted,” Jill Biden said. “His strength is unshakeable.”

    She added that the president was “not done.”

    “He’s ready to finish the job,” she said. “He’s ready to win, and with your help, he will.”

    Though his economic wins were the centerpiece of Biden’s opening campaign event, polls show many voters give him poor marks for his handling of the economy, particularly as prices have soared post-pandemic. Recent figures have shown inflation easing, however, and fears of an imminent recession have faded.

    Biden has said more Americans will come to reward him for his economic stewardship once the benefits of some of his signature legislative achievements, including a new infrastructure law, begin taking hold.

    Labor groups that threw their backing behind Biden ahead of his speech include the AFL-CIO, which said it was the earliest point in a presidential election cycle it had ever endorsed a candidate.

    “There’s absolutely no question that Joe Biden is the most pro-union president in our lifetimes,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. “From bringing manufacturing jobs home to America to protecting our pensions and making historic investments in infrastructure, clean energy and education, we’ve never seen a president work so tirelessly to rebuild our economy from the bottom up and middle out.”

    Supporters cheer before Biden speaks at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

    Biden, who made his first stop after announcing his reelection bid a legislative conference for North America’s Building Trades Unions in Washington, has long relied on union support for his political ambitions.

    “I’m more honored by your endorsement than you can imagine – coming this early, it’s going to make a gigantic difference in this campaign,” Biden said during Saturday’s event in Philadelphia, where he called himself “the most pro-union president in American history.”

    Not all unions have thrown their support behind Biden’s reelection bid. The powerful United Auto Workers said last month it was holding off on endorsing Biden, citing concerns over his policies that would encourage a transition to electric vehicles, according to a memo from the union.

    The UAW has more than 400,000 members, and Biden has touted its support in the past. Last year he called American autoworkers “the most skilled autoworkers in the world.” The group’s membership is mostly concentrated in Michigan, a presidential election battleground.

    Biden also rankled union members last year when he signed legislation that averted a nationwide rail strike – a step he said was necessary to prevent a stoppage of important freight movement.

    Biden’s campaign has leaned into his economic record, including releasing a 60-second ad titled “Backbone” last month. The spot struck a populist tone, mixing audio of the president speaking about “investing in places and people that have been forgotten” and a narrator ticking through the administration’s work to boost infrastructure and manufacturing in the country.

    “Joe Biden’s building an economy that leaves no city, no town, no American behind,” the narrator says.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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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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  • Twitter isn’t letting users view the site without logging in | CNN Business

    Twitter isn’t letting users view the site without logging in | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Twitter appears to be restricting access to its platform for anyone not logged into an account.

    People without a Twitter account or who weren’t logged in used to be able to scroll the platform’s homepage and view public accounts and tweets. But as of this week, when such a user opens the platform they are met with a screen prompting them to sign up or sign in to Twitter.

    Internet users began noticing the change late this week, and on Friday, multiple CNN reporters were unable to access Twitter without logging in.

    It was not immediately clear whether the change was an intentional policy update or a glitch, both of which have been common at Twitter since Musk took over the platform. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

    The change comes as billionaire owner Elon Musk attempts to revamp Twitter’s business following months of challenges since his takeover late last year — now with the help of new CEO Linda Yaccarino.

    Twitter’s leadership is urging advertisers to return to the platform after many fled over concerns about increased hate speech, layoffs and general questions about the company’s direction. Musk has also sought to grow subscription revenue by offering a blue verification checkmark for users who sign up for its Twitter Blue service.

    The restriction on public access to Twitter could be an effort to grow the platform’s user base, which has always been significantly smaller than social media rivals like Facebook and Instagram.

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  • Google hit with lawsuit alleging it stole data from millions of users to train its AI tools | CNN Business

    Google hit with lawsuit alleging it stole data from millions of users to train its AI tools | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Google was hit with a wide-ranging lawsuit on Tuesday alleging the tech giant scraped data from millions of users without their consent and violated copyright laws in order to train and develop its artificial intelligence products.

    The proposed class action suit against Google, its parent company Alphabet, and Google’s AI subsidiary DeepMind was filed in a federal court in California on Tuesday, and was brought by Clarkson Law Firm. The firm previously filed a similar suit against ChatGPT-maker OpenAI last month. (OpenAI did not previously respond to a request for comment on the suit.)

    The complaint alleges that Google “has been secretly stealing everything ever created and shared on the internet by hundreds of millions of Americans” and using this data to train its AI products, such as its chatbot Bard. The complaint also claims Google has taken “virtually the entirety of our digital footprint,” including “creative and copywritten works” to build its AI products.

    Halimah DeLaine Prado, Google’s general counsel, called the claims in the suit “baseless” in a statement to CNN. “We’ve been clear for years that we use data from public sources — like information published to the open web and public datasets — to train the AI models behind services like Google Translate, responsibly and in line with our AI Principles,” DeLaine Prado said.

    “American law supports using public information to create new beneficial uses, and we look forward to refuting these baseless claims,” the statement added.

    Alphabet and DeepMind did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The complaint points to a recent update to Google’s privacy policy that explicitly states the company may use publicly accessible information to train its AI models and tools such as Bard.

    In response to an earlier Verge report on the update, the company said its policy “has long been transparent” about this practice and “this latest update simply clarifies that newer services like Bard are also included.”

    The lawsuit comes as a new crop of AI tools have gained tremendous attention in recent months for their ability to generate written work and images in response to user prompts. The large language models underpinning this new technology are able to do this by training on vast troves of online data.

    In the process, however, companies are also drawing mounting legal scrutiny over copyright issues from works swept up in these data sets, as well as their apparent use of personal and possibly sensitive data from everyday users, including data from children, according to the Google lawsuit.

    “Google needs to understand that ‘publicly available’ has never meant free to use for any purpose,” Tim Giordano, one of the attorneys at Clarkson bringing the suit against Google, told CNN in an interview. “Our personal information and our data is our property, and it’s valuable, and nobody has the right to just take it and use it for any purpose.”

    The suit is seeking injunctive relief in the form of a temporary freeze on commercial access to and commercial development of Google’s generative AI tools like Bard. It is also seeking unspecified damages and payments as financial compensation to people whose data was allegedly misappropriated by Google. The firm says it has lined up eight plaintiffs, including a minor.

    Giordano contrasted the benefits and alleged harms of how Google typically indexes online data to support its core search engine with the new allegations of it scraping data to train AI tools.

    With its search engine, he said, Google can “serve up an attributed link to your work that can actually drive somebody to purchase it or engage with it.” Data scraping to train AI tools, however, is creating “an alternative version of the work that radically alters the incentives for anybody to need to purchase the work,” Giordano added.

    While some internet users may have grown accustomed to their digital data being collected and used for search results or targeted advertising, the same may not be true for AI training. “People could not have imagined their information would be used this way,” Giordano said.

    Ryan Clarkson, a partner at the law firm, said Google needs to “create an opportunity for folks to opt out” of having their data used for training AI while still maintaining their ability to use the internet for their everyday needs.

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  • Twitter’s rebrand is the next stage in Elon Musk’s vision for the company. But does anyone want it? | CNN Business

    Twitter’s rebrand is the next stage in Elon Musk’s vision for the company. But does anyone want it? | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Elon Musk’s move over the weekend to rebrand Twitter and replace its iconic bird logo with an X is just the latest step in his effort to make over the billionaire’s longtime favorite platform in his image.

    When Musk bought Twitter late last year, he laid out a vision for an “everything” app called X, where users could communicate, shop, consume entertainment and more. Last June — prior to his takeover — Musk told Twitter employees that the platform should be more like China’s WeChat, where he said users “basically live on” the app because “it’s so usable and helpful to daily life.”

    The vision for the rebrand may go all the way back to Musk’s creation of the original X.com in 1999, which Musk hoped would be an all-in-one financial platform and which eventually became PayPal.

    Despite Musk’s longstanding ambitions — and the heightened stakes since he shelled out $44 billion to purchase the social network — ditching Twitter’s branding in service of a future super app is a significant risk.

    Twitter still has a long way to go if Musk wants to build out the kind of services WeChat is known for — everything from ordering groceries and booking yoga classes to paying bills and chatting with friends. And that’s not to mention the financial and competitive challenges the company faces merely existing in its current form, let alone launching a massive expansion. It’s also not clear how much demand there is for such a super app outside of China, given that efforts by other platforms to simply sell users on added shopping features have been slow to take off.

    “While Musk’s vision is to turn ‘X’ into an ‘everything app,’ this takes time, money, and people -— three things that the company no longer has,” Mike Proulx, research director and vice president at Forrester, said in an investor note. By ditching Twitter’s name, Proulx added, Musk “will have singlehandedly wiped out over fifteen years of a brand name that has secured its place in our cultural lexicon,” leaving him to start fresh at a precarious time for the company.

    The X branding has already started taking over Twitter.

    Musk — who bought Twitter with a company called X Corp. — tweeted on Sunday that X.com now redirects to Twitter. (Musk reportedly bought the X.com domain back from PayPal in 2017.)

    On Sunday night, the new stylized X logo was projected onto the company’s headquarters. And by Monday, the bird logo had been replaced by an X on Twitter’s website. Musk even told followers that tweets should instead be called “x’s.”

    On Sunday, CEO Linda Yaccarino seemed to confirm Musk’s vision for the company. “X is the future state of unlimited interactivity — centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities,” Yaccarino said in a tweet.

    Walter Isaacson, the legendary tech journalist who has been shadowing Musk to write his biography, tweeted on Sunday that Musk told him even before the Twitter acquisition that he wanted to use the social platform to fulfill his original, decades-old vision for X.com. “I am very excited about finally implementing X.com as it should have been done, using Twitter as an accelerant!” Musk texted Isaacson at 3:30 a.m. one morning last October, just ahead of his takeover, according to the writer.

    On Monday, Musk explained the move in a tweet saying, “The Twitter name made sense when it was just 140 character messages going back and forth – like birds tweeting – but now you can post almost anything, including several hours of video.”

    “In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world,” Musk said. “The Twitter name does not make sense in that context.”

    (The rebrand also seems to be a continuation of a sort of obsession with the letter “X,” which also features in the name of one of Tesla’s cars, the Model X; the name of his rocket company, SpaceX; the name of his new artificial intelligence firm, xAI; and the name of two of his children, X Æ A-Xii and Exa Dark Sideræl.)

    In recent weeks, Twitter has quietly begun its effort to build out a payments business called Twitter Payments — the company was granted money transmitter licenses in four US states since last month, including Arizona and Michigan. Musk has discussed his desire to promote longer videos on Twitter. And he’s tried to shift Twitter’s business model away from advertising by allowing users to pay for verification, a strategy that has resulted in some chaos but only a limited number of actual subscriptions.

    Still, Musk faces obvious hurdles to turning Twitter into a fully-developed super app. Since acquiring Twitter, Musk has fired around 80% of its staff, scared away many of the advertisers that made up its core user base and frustrated many of its users with controversial policy decisions. And now, Twitter faces steep competition from Meta’s rival app Threads, which launched to stunning success, although its usage has petered off slightly in recent days.

    Musk last week also said that Twitter still has negative cash flow because of a 50% decline in ad revenue.

    Even if Musk does add new features to Twitter, many US tech platforms have struggled to succeed in imitating WeChat. Deloitte said in a report published last year that Western markets are unlikely to see “a single, dominant super-app like WeChat in the near term” because the services such apps would aim to bundle together, such as digital payments and ride hailing, already “have too many well-established players.”

    A 2019 effort by the social media giant then known as Facebook to create its own digital currency and payments system that the company said would make it easier to buy things online officially flopped last year following intense regulatory scrutiny. And both TikTok and Instagram have reportedly scaled back their ambitions to incorporate e-commerce onto their platforms after their shopping features failed to gain significant traction with users.

    And until Musk rolls out significant changes to the platform, observers of the company say ditching Twitter’s well-known brand is a risky move.

    “To rebrand without significant new features seems like a desperate attempt for attention,” especially in the wake of Meta’s launch of Threads, said Joshua White, assistant professor of finance at Vanderbilt University. “This is akin to buying Coke and changing the bottle and name without changing the formula — likely a mistake.”

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  • Twitter says portions of source code leaked online | CNN Business

    Twitter says portions of source code leaked online | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Twitter said parts of its proprietary code were posted online and had been exposed until Friday, when the company had the material removed from the web and filed for a court order to hunt down the source of the leak.

    The leak saw excerpts of Twitter’s source code — the programming that powers the Twitter platform and its internal tools — posted to the online software repository GitHub, according to a court filing Friday by a Twitter attorney. The files were posted by a pseudonymous GitHub user, identified only by the handle FreeSpeechEnthusiast. The account was created on Jan. 3 and does not appear to have posted any other material besides the Twitter code.

    The code leak represents the latest mishap for Twitter as CEO Elon Musk has sought to reverse a sharp decline in revenues through substantial layoffs and other cost cutting measures that some experts had already said risked making the platform less safe. Leaked source code can not only provide insight into how a company designs its product but can also give criminals the chance to find or exploit security flaws and vulnerabilities.

    Twitter has launched an effort to identify the person or group behind the FreeSpeechEnthusiast GitHub account, as well as anyone who may have interacted with the leaked code. On Friday, Twitter filed for a subpoena at the US District Court for the Northern District of California, which Twitter hopes will compel GitHub to hand over IP addresses, contact information, and access logs associated with the incident.

    “The purpose for which Twitter’s DMCA Subpoena is sought is to obtain the identity of an alleged infringer or infringers, and such information will only be used for the purpose of protecting Twitter’s rights,” Twitter wrote in its filing to the court.

    GitHub removed the content on Friday after Twitter submitted a copyright claim to the company. GitHub declined to comment on the matter but said it publicly posts all copyright takedown requests and referred CNN to Twitter’s request. Twitter, which has cut much of its public relations team under Musk, automatically responded to a request for comment with an email containing a poop emoji.

    The leak was first reported by The New York Times.

    The leak comes as Musk has sought to place more of his own imprint on the social media platform he purchased last year. The acquisition prompted a wave of advertisers to flee the platform over fears the deal would lead to a rise in hate speech and an increase in reputational risks for brands. Musk has blamed the advertiser revolt for steep losses at the company, and has aggressively pushed the company’s subscription service, Twitter Blue, as an alternative revenue stream. He has also said Twitter will charge fees for other software applications to access Twitter’s platform.

    On Saturday, reports on an internal memo by Musk outlining employee stock awards suggested that Twitter was valued at about $20 billion, or less than half of the $44 billion Musk paid for the company. (CNN has not independently confirmed the memo’s existence or its contents.) In the memo, Musk reportedly defended the changes he has made at the company and claimed that Twitter’s valuation could someday exceed $250 billion.

    The same day, Musk tweeted that prior to the changes he made, Twitter only had $1 billion in cash, which he said represented about four months’ worth of expenses and an “extremely dire situation.” But, he added, things are looking up.

    “Now that advertisers are returning, it looks like we will break even in Q2,” he said.

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  • Micron Technology: China probes US chip maker for cybersecurity risks as tech tension escalates | CNN Business

    Micron Technology: China probes US chip maker for cybersecurity risks as tech tension escalates | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    China has launched a cybersecurity probe into Micron Technology, one of America’s largest memory chip makers, in apparent retaliation after US allies in Asia and Europe announced new restrictions on the sale of key technology to Beijing.

    The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) will review products sold by Micron in the country, according to a statement by the watchdog late on Friday.

    The move is aimed at “ensuring the security of key information infrastructure supply chains, preventing cybersecurity risks caused by hidden product problems, and maintaining national security,” it noted.

    It came on the same day that Japan, a US ally, said it would restrict the export of advanced chip manufacturing equipment to countries including China, following similar moves by the United States and the Netherlands.

    Washington and its allies have announced curbs on China’s semiconductor industry, which strike at the heart of Beijing’s bid to become a tech superpower.

    Last month, the Netherlands also unveiled new restrictions on overseas sales of semiconductor technology, citing the need to protect national security. In October, the United States banned Chinese companies from buying advanced chips and chipmaking equipment without a license.

    Micron told CNN it was aware of the review.

    “We are in communication with the CAC and are cooperating fully,” it said, adding that it stands by the security of its products.

    Shares in Micron sank 4.4% on Wall Street Friday following the news, the biggest drop in more than three months. Micron derives more than 10% of its revenue from China.

    In an earlier filing, the Idaho-based company had warned of such risks.

    “The Chinese government may restrict us from participating in the China market or may prevent us from competing effectively with Chinese companies,” it said last week.

    China has strongly criticized restrictions on tech exports, saying last month it “firmly opposes” such measures.

    In efforts to boost growth and job creation, Beijing is seeking to woo foreign investments as it grapples with mounting economic challenges. The newly minted premier Li Qiang and several top economic officials have been rolling out the welcome wagon for global CEOs and promising they would “provide a good environment and services.”

    But Beijing has also exerted growing pressure on foreign companies to bring them into line with its agenda.

    Last month, authorities closed the Beijing office of Mintz Group, a US corporate intelligence firm, and detained five local staff.

    Days earlier, they suspended Deloitte’s operations in Beijing for three months and imposed a fine of $31 million over alleged lapses in its work auditing a state-owned distressed debt manager.

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