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Enlarge / A cropped image showing Raw TV's poster for the Netflix documentary What Jennifer Did, which features a long front tooth that leads critics to believe it was AI-generated. (credit: Raw TV)
An executive producer of the Netflix hit What Jennifer Did has responded to accusations that the true crime documentary used AI images when depicting Jennifer Pan, a woman currently imprisoned in Canada for orchestrating a murder-for-hire scheme targeting her parents.
What Jennifer Did shot to the top spot in Netflix's global top 10 when it debuted in early April, attracting swarms of true crime fans who wanted to know more about why Pan paid hitmen $10,000 to murder her parents. But quickly the documentary became a source of controversy, as fans started noticing glaring flaws in images used in the movie, from weirdly mismatched earrings to her nose appearing to lack nostrils, the Daily Mail reported, in a post showing a plethora of examples of images from the film.
Futurism was among the first to point out that these flawed images (around the 28-minute mark of the documentary) "have all the hallmarks of an AI-generated photo, down to mangled hands and fingers, misshapen facial features, morphed objects in the background, and a far-too-long front tooth." The image with the long front tooth was even used in Netflix's poster for the movie.
Enlarge / An Apple Store in Shanghai, China, on April 11, 2024. (credit: CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Apple said it complied with orders from the Chinese government to remove the Meta-owned WhatsApp and Threads from its App Store in China. Apple also removed Telegram and Signal from China.
"We are obligated to follow the laws in the countries where we operate, even when we disagree," Apple said in a statement quoted by several news outlets. "The Cyberspace Administration of China ordered the removal of these apps from the China storefront based on their national security concerns. These apps remain available for download on all other storefronts where they appear."
The Wall Street Journal paraphrased a person familiar with the matter as saying that the Chinese cyberspace agency "asked Apple to remove WhatsApp and Threads from the App Store because both contain political content that includes problematic mentions of the Chinese president [Xi Jinping]."
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A jury has unanimously convicted Avi Eisenberg in the US Department of Justice's first case involving cryptocurrency open-market manipulation, the DOJ announced Thursday.
The jury found Eisenberg guilty of commodities fraud, commodities market manipulation, and wire fraud in connection with the manipulation on a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange called Mango Markets.
Eisenberg is scheduled to be sentenced on July 29 and is facing "a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison on the commodities fraud count and the commodities manipulation count, and a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on the wire fraud count," the DOJ said.
X's chatbot Grok is supposed to be an AI engine crunching the platform's posts to surface and summarize breaking news, but this week, Grok's flaws were once again exposed when the chatbot got confused and falsely accused an NBA star of criminal vandalism.
"Klay Thompson Accused in Bizarre Brick-Vandalism Spree," Grok's headline read in an AI-powered trending-tab post that has remained on X (formerly Twitter) for days. Beneath the headline, Grok went into even more detail to support its fake reporting:
In a bizarre turn of events, NBA star Klay Thompson has been accused of vandalizing multiple houses with bricks in Sacramento. Authorities are investigating the claims after several individuals reported their houses being damaged, with windows shattered by bricks. Klay Thompson has not yet issued a statement regarding the accusations. The incidents have left the community shaken, but no injuries were reported. The motive behind the alleged vandalism remains unclear.
Grok appears to be confusing a common basketball term, where players are said to be throwing "bricks" when they take an airball shot that doesn't hit the rim. According to SF Gate, which was one of the first outlets to report the Grok error, Thompson had an "all-time rough shooting" night, hitting none of his shots on what was his emotional last game with the Golden State Warriors before becoming an unrestricted free agent.
The US Constitution's Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination does not prohibit police officers from forcing a suspect to unlock a phone with a thumbprint scan, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday. The ruling does not apply to all cases in which biometrics are used to unlock an electronic device but is a significant decision in an unsettled area of the law.
The US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit had to grapple with the question of "whether the compelled use of Payne's thumb to unlock his phone was testimonial," the ruling in United States v. Jeremy Travis Payne said. "To date, neither the Supreme Court nor any of our sister circuits have addressed whether the compelled use of a biometric to unlock an electronic device is testimonial."
A three-judge panel at the 9th Circuit ruled unanimously against Payne, affirming a US District Court's denial of Payne's motion to suppress evidence. Payne was a California parolee who was arrested by California Highway Patrol (CHP) after a 2021 traffic stop and charged with possession with intent to distribute fentanyl, fluorofentanyl, and cocaine.
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On Wednesday, Colorado expanded the scope of its privacy law initially designed to protect biometric data like fingerprints or face images to become first in the nation to also shield sensitive neural data.
That could stop companies from hoarding brain activity data without residents realizing the risks. The New York Times reported that neural data is increasingly being collected and sold nationwide. And after a market analysis showed that investments in neurotechnology leapt by 60 percent globally from 2019 to 2020—and were valued at $30 billion in 2021—Big Tech companies have significantly intensified plans to develop their own products to rake in potentially billions.
For instance, in 2023, Meta demoed a wristband with a neural interface used to control its smart glasses and unveiled an AI system that could be used to decode the mind. In January, Elon Musk announced that Neuralink implanted its first brain chip in a human that can be used to control a device with their thoughts. And just last month, Apple Insider reported that "Apple is working on technology that could turn the Apple Vision Pro into a brainwave reader to improve mental health, assist with training and workouts, and help with mindfulness."
(credit: Getty Images)
Last October, I received an email with a hell of an opening line: “I fired a nuke at the US Copyright Office this morning.”
The message was from Elisa Shupe, a 60-year-old retired US Army veteran who had just filed a copyright registration for a novel she’d recently self-published. She’d used OpenAI's ChatGPT extensively while writing the book. Her application was an attempt to compel the US Copyright Office to overturn its policy on work made with AI, which generally requires would-be copyright holders to exclude machine-generated elements.
The US AI Safety Institute—part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)—has finally announced its leadership team after much speculation.
Appointed as head of AI safety is Paul Christiano, a former OpenAI researcher who pioneered a foundational AI safety technique called reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), but is also known for predicting that "there's a 50 percent chance AI development could end in 'doom.'" While Christiano's research background is impressive, some fear that by appointing a so-called "AI doomer," NIST may be risking encouraging non-scientific thinking that many critics view as sheer speculation.
There have been rumors that NIST staffers oppose the hiring. A controversial VentureBeat report last month cited two anonymous sources claiming that, seemingly because of Christiano's so-called "AI doomer" views, NIST staffers were "revolting." Some staff members and scientists allegedly threatened to resign, VentureBeat reported, fearing "that Christiano’s association" with effective altruism and "longtermism could compromise the institute’s objectivity and integrity."
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It's easy to get the impression that Discord chat messages are ephemeral, especially across different public servers, where lines fly upward at a near-unreadable pace. But someone claims to be catching and compiling that data and is offering packages that can track more than 600 million users across more than 14,000 servers.
Joseph Cox at 404 Media confirmed that Spy Pet, a service that sells access to a database of purportedly 3 billion Discord messages, offers data "credits" to customers who pay in bitcoin, ethereum, or other cryptocurrency. Searching individual users will reveal the servers that Spy Pet can track them across, a raw and exportable table of their messages, and connected accounts, such as GitHub. Ominously, Spy Pet lists more than 86,000 other servers in which it has "no bots," but "we know it exists."
An example of Spy Pet's service from its website. Shown are a user's nicknames, connected accounts, banner image, server memberships, and messages across those servers tracked by Spy Pet. [credit: Spy Pet ]
As Cox notes, Discord doesn't make messages inside server channels, like blog posts or unlocked social media feeds, easy to publicly access and search. But many Discord users many not expect their messages, server memberships, bans, or other data to be grabbed by a bot, compiled, and sold to anybody wishing to pin them all on a particular user. 404 Media confirmed the service's function with multiple user examples. Private messages are not mentioned by Spy Pet and are presumably still secure.
Enlarge / Tesla CEO Elon Musk at an opening event for Tesla's Gigafactory on March 22, 2022, in Gruenheide, southeast of Berlin. (credit: Getty Images | Patrick Pleul)
Tesla is asking shareholders to approve a move to Texas and to re-approve a $55.8 billion pay package for CEO Elon Musk that was recently voided by a Delaware judge.
Musk's 2018 pay package was voided in a ruling by Delaware Court of Chancery Judge Kathaleen McCormick, who found that the deal was unfair to shareholders. After the ruling, Musk said he would seek a shareholder vote on transferring Tesla's state of incorporation from Delaware to Texas.
The proposed move to Texas and Musk's pay package will be up for votes at Tesla's 2024 annual meeting on June 13, Tesla Board Chairperson Robyn Denholm wrote in a letter to shareholders that was included in a regulatory filing today.
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Yuichiro Chino)
Some net neutrality proponents are worried that soon-to-be-approved Federal Communications Commission rules will allow harmful fast lanes because the plan doesn't explicitly ban "positive" discrimination.
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel's proposed rules for Internet service providers would prohibit blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization. The rules mirror the ones imposed by the FCC during the Obama era and repealed during Trump's presidency. But some advocates are criticizing a decision to let Internet service providers speed up certain types of applications as long as application providers don't have to pay for special treatment.
Stanford Law Professor Barbara van Schewick, who has consistently argued for stricter net neutrality rules, wrote in a blog post on Thursday that "harmful 5G fast lanes are coming."
Enlarge (credit: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin / Contributor | FilmMagic)
Elon Musk confirmed Monday that X (formerly Twitter) plans to start charging new users to post on the platform, TechCrunch reported.
"Unfortunately, a small fee for new user write access is the only way to curb the relentless onslaught of bots," Musk wrote on X.
In October, X confirmed that it was testing whether users would pay a small annual fee to access the platform by suddenly charging new users in New Zealand and the Philippines $1. Paying the fee enabled new users in those countries to post, reply, like, and bookmark X posts.
Enlarge / Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) meeting on February 23, 2024. (credit: MANDEL NGAN / Contributor | AFP)
A judge has preliminarily blocked what Media Matters for America (MMFA) described as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's attempt to "rifle through" confidential documents to prove that MMFA fraudulently manipulated X (formerly Twitter) data to ruin X's advertising business, as Elon Musk has alleged.
After Musk accused MMFA of publishing reports that Musk claimed were designed to scare advertisers off X, Paxton promptly launched his own investigation into MMFA last November.
Suing MMFA over alleged violations of Texas' Deceptive Trade Practices Act—which prohibits "disparaging the goods, services, or business of another by false or misleading representation of facts"—Paxton sought a wide range of MMFA documents through a civil investigative demand (CID). Filing a motion to block the CID, MMFA told the court that the CID had violated the media organization's First Amendment rights, providing evidence that Paxton's investigation and CID had chilled MMFA speech.
Epic Games has filed a proposed injunction that would stop Google from restricting third-party app distribution outside Google Play Store on Android devices after proving that Google had an illegal monopoly in markets for Android app distribution.
Epic is suggesting that competition on the Android mobile platform would be opened up if the court orders Google to allow third-party app stores to be distributed for six years in the Google Play Store and blocks Google from entering any agreements with device makers that would stop them from pre-loading third-party app stores. This would benefit both mobile developers and users, Epic argued in a wide-sweeping proposal that would greatly limit Google's control over the Android app ecosystem.
US District Court Judge James Donato will ultimately decide the terms of the injunction. Google has until May 3 to respond to Epic's filing.
Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto)
X will soon stop allowing users to hide their blue checkmarks, and some users are not happy.
Previously, a blue tick on Twitter was a mark of a notable account, providing some assurance to followers of the account's authenticity. But then Elon Musk decided to start charging for the blue tick instead, and mayhem ensued as a wave of imposter accounts began jokingly posing as brands.
After that, paying for a blue checkmark began to attract derision, as non-paying users passed around a meme under blue-checked posts, saying, "This MF paid for Twitter." To help spare paid subscribers this embarrassment, X began allowing users to hide their blue check last August, turning "hide your checkmark" into a feature of paid subscriptions.
The United States government is currently poised to outlaw TikTok. Little of the evidence that convinced Congress the app may be a national security threat has been shared publicly, in some cases because it remains classified. But one former TikTok employee turned whistleblower, who claims to have driven key news reporting and congressional concerns about the app, has now come forward.
Zen Goziker worked at TikTok as a risk manager, a role that involved protecting the company from external security and reputational threats. In a wrongful termination lawsuit filed against TikTok's parent company ByteDance in January, he alleges he was fired in February 2022 for refusing “to sign off” on Project Texas, a $1.5 billion program that TikTok designed to assuage US government security concerns by storing American data on servers managed by Oracle.
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Matt Anderson Photography)
California can keep enforcing its state net neutrality law after the Federal Communications Commission implements its own rules. The FCC could preempt future state laws if they go far beyond the national standard but said that states can "experiment" with different regulations for interconnection payments and zero-rating.
The FCC scheduled an April 25 vote on Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel's proposal to restore net neutrality rules similar to the ones introduced during the Obama era and repealed under former President Trump. The FCC yesterday released the text of the pending order, which could still be changed but isn't likely to get any major overhaul.
State-level enforcement of net neutrality rules can benefit consumers, the FCC said. The order said that "state enforcement generally supports our regulatory efforts by dedicating additional resources to monitoring and enforcement, especially at the local level, and thereby ensuring greater compliance with our requirements."
Enlarge (credit: Francesco Carta fotografo | Moment)
On Friday, Meta announced policy updates to stop censoring harmless AI-generated content and instead begin "labeling a wider range of video, audio, and image content as 'Made with AI.'"
Meta's policy updates came after deciding not to remove a controversial post edited to show President Joe Biden seemingly inappropriately touching his granddaughter's chest, with a caption calling Biden a "pedophile." The Oversight Board had agreed with Meta's decision to leave the post online while noting that Meta's current manipulated media policy was too "narrow," "incoherent," and "confusing to users."
Previously, Meta would only remove "videos that are created or altered by AI to make a person appear to say something they didn’t say." The Oversight Board warned that this policy failed to address other manipulated media, including "cheap fakes," manipulated audio, or content showing people doing things they'd never done.
For the past few months, Morten Blichfeldt Andersen has spent many hours scouring OpenAI’s GPT Store. Since it launched in January, the marketplace for bespoke bots has filled up with a deep bench of useful and sometimes quirky AI tools. Cartoon generators spin up New Yorker–style illustrations and vivid anime stills. Programming and writing assistants offer shortcuts for crafting code and prose. There’s also a color analysis bot, a spider identifier, and a dating coach called RizzGPT. Yet Blichfeldt Andersen is hunting only for one very specific type of bot: Those built on his employer’s copyright-protected textbooks without permission.
Blichfeldt Andersen is publishing director at Praxis, a Danish textbook purveyor. The company has been embracing AI and created its own custom chatbots. But it is currently engaged in a game of whack-a-mole in the GPT Store, and Blichfeldt Andersen is the man holding the mallet.
“I’ve been personally searching for infringements and reporting them,” Blichfeldt Andersen says. “They just keep coming up.” He suspects the culprits are primarily young people uploading material from textbooks to create custom bots to share with classmates—and that he has uncovered only a tiny fraction of the infringing bots in the GPT Store. “Tip of the iceberg,” Blichfeldt Andersen says.
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Nathan Stirk )
Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson yesterday issued a statement debunking claims of widespread voter fraud that were amplified by X owner Elon Musk on the social network formerly named Twitter. Election officials in two other states also disputed the "extremely false" information shared by Musk.
Musk is generally a big fan of Texas, but on Tuesday he shared a post by the account "End Wokeness" that claimed, "The number of voters registering without a photo ID is SKYROCKETING in 3 key swing states: Arizona, Texas, and Pennsylvania." The account claimed there were 1.25 million such registrations in Texas since the beginning of 2024, over 580,000 in Pennsylvania, and over 220,000 in Arizona.
"Extremely concerning," Musk wrote in a retweet re-X. The End Wokeness post shared by Musk suggested that "illegals" are registering to vote in large numbers by using Social Security numbers that can be obtained for work authorizations. The End Wokeness post has been viewed 63 million times so far, and Musk's re-post has been viewed 58.2 million times.
Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto)
Google has sued two app developers based in China over an alleged scheme targeting 100,000 users globally over four years with at least 87 fraudulent cryptocurrency and other investor apps distributed through the Play Store.
The tech giant alleged that scammers lured victims with "promises of high returns" from "seemingly legitimate" apps offering investment opportunities in cryptocurrencies and other products. Commonly known as "pig-butchering schemes," these scams displayed fake returns on investments, but when users went to withdraw the funds, they discovered they could not.
In some cases, Google alleged, developers would "double down on the scheme by requesting various fees and other payments from victims that were supposedly necessary for the victims to recover their principal investments and purported gains."
Enlarge / Chicago City Wire is a hyper-partisan website masquerading as an outlet that does journalism. (credit: FT Montage)
The number of partisan news outlets in the US masquerading as legitimate journalism now equals genuine local newspaper sites, researchers say, as so-called pink slime operators gear up ahead of November’s presidential election.
Pink slime sites mimic local news providers but are highly partisan and tend to bury their deep ties to dark money, lobbying groups, and special interests.
NewsGuard, which rates the quality and trustworthiness of news sites, has identified 1,197 pink slime sites operating in the US as of April 1—about as many as the estimated 1,200 real news sites operated by daily local newspapers.
Enlarge (credit: Malte Mueller | fStop)
A high-level Iowa hospital systems administrator, Matthew Kierans, has admitted to stealing a coworker's identity and posing as William Donald Woods for more than 30 years, The Register reported.
On top of using Woods' identity to commit crimes and rack up debt, Kierans' elaborate identity theft scheme led to Woods' incarceration after Kierans' accused his victim of identity theft and Los Angeles authorities failed to detect which man was the true William Donald Woods. Kierans could face up to 32 years in prison, The Register reported, and must pay a $1.25 million fine.
According to a proposed plea agreement with the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Iowa, Kierans met Woods "in about 1988" when they worked together at a hot dog stand in New Mexico. "For the next three decades," Kierans used Woods' "identity in every aspect of his life," including when obtaining "employment, insurance, a social security number, driver's licenses, titles, loans, and credit," as well as when paying taxes. Kierans even got married and had a child using Woods' name.
Enlarge / FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel at a spectrum policy event at the National Press Club on Monday, September 19, 2022. (credit: Getty Images | CQ Roll Call/Tom Williams)
The Federal Communications Commission has scheduled an April 25 vote to restore net neutrality rules similar to the ones introduced during the Obama era and repealed under former President Trump.
"After the prior administration abdicated authority over broadband services, the FCC has been handcuffed from acting to fully secure broadband networks, protect consumer data, and ensure the Internet remains fast, open, and fair," FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said today. "A return to the FCC's overwhelmingly popular and court-approved standard of net neutrality will allow the agency to serve once again as a strong consumer advocate of an open Internet."
The text of the pending net neutrality order wasn't released today. The FCC press release said it will prohibit broadband providers "from blocking, slowing down, or creating pay-to-play Internet fast lanes" and "bring back a national standard for broadband reliability, security, and consumer protection."
X has named a new head of safety about nine months after Ella Irwin resigned last June, following Elon Musk's criticism of Irwin's team's decision to restrict a transphobic documentary. Shortly after Irwin left, former head of brand safety AJ Brown similarly resigned. And that regime notably took over where former safety chief Yoel Roth—who also clashed with Musk—left off.
Stepping into the safety chief role next is Kylie McRoberts, who was promoted after leading X "initiatives to increase transparency in our moderation practices through labels" and "improve security with passkeys," X's announcement said.
As head of safety, McRoberts will oversee X's global safety team, which was rebranded last month to drop "trust" from its name. On X, Musk had said that "any organization that puts ‘Trust’ in their name cannot [be] trusted, as that is obviously a euphemism for censorship."
Enlarge (credit: SUZANNE CORDEIRO / Contributor | AFP)
Ever since Elon Musk's X Corp sued Media Matters for America (MMFA) over a pair of reports that X (formerly Twitter) claims caused an advertiser exodus in 2023, one big question has remained for onlookers: Why is this fight happening in Texas?
In a motion to dismiss filed in Texas' northern district last month, MMFA argued that X's lawsuit should be dismissed not just because of a "fatal jurisdictional defect," but "dismissal is also required for lack of venue."
Notably, MMFA is based in Washington, DC, while "X is organized under Nevada law and maintains its principal place of business in San Francisco, California, where its own terms of service require users of its platform to litigate any disputes."
The Daily Show host Jon Stewart's interview with FTC Chair Lina Khan. The conversation about Apple begins around 16:30 in the video.
Before the cancellation of The Problem with Jon Stewart on Apple TV+, Apple forbade the inclusion of Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan as a guest and steered the show away from confronting issues related to artificial intelligence, according to Jon Stewart.
This isn't the first we've heard of this rift between Apple and Stewart. When the Apple TV+ show was canceled last October, reports circulated that he told his staff that creative differences over guests and topics were a factor in the decision.
The New York Times reported that both China and AI were sticking points between Apple and Stewart. Stewart confirmed the broad strokes of that narrative in a CBS Morning Show interview after it was announced that he would return to The Daily Show.
Enlarge (credit: Anadolu / Contributor | Anadolu)
To settle a class-action dispute over Chrome's "Incognito" mode, Google has agreed to delete billions of data records reflecting users' private browsing activities.
In a statement provided to Ars, users' lawyer, David Boies, described the settlement as "a historic step in requiring honesty and accountability from dominant technology companies." Based on Google's insights, users' lawyers valued the settlement between $4.75 billion and $7.8 billion, the Monday court filing said.
Under the settlement, Google agreed to delete class-action members' private browsing data collected in the past, as well as to "maintain a change to Incognito mode that enables Incognito users to block third-party cookies by default." This, plaintiffs' lawyers noted, "ensures additional privacy for Incognito users going forward, while limiting the amount of data Google collects from them" over the next five years. Plaintiffs' lawyers said that this means that "Google will collect less data from users’ private browsing sessions" and "Google will make less money from the data."
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AT&T reset passcodes for millions of customers after acknowledging a massive leak involving the data of 73 million current and former subscribers.
"Based on our preliminary analysis, the data set appears to be from 2019 or earlier, impacting approximately 7.6 million current AT&T account holders and approximately 65.4 million former account holders," AT&T said in an update posted to its website on Saturday.
An AT&T support article said the carrier is "reaching out to all 7.6 million impacted customers and have reset their passcodes. In addition, we will be communicating with current and former account holders with compromised sensitive personal information." AT&T said the leaked information varied by customer but included full names, email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, AT&T account numbers, and passcodes.
Enlarge / Has a government employee checked all those zeroes and ones floating above the skyline? (credit: Getty Images)
If you follow generative AI news at all, you're probably familiar with LLM chatbots' tendency to "confabulate" incorrect information while presenting that information as authoritatively true. That tendency seems poised to cause some serious problems now that a chatbot run by the New York City government is making up incorrect answers to some important questions of local law and municipal policy.
NYC's "MyCity" ChatBot launched as a "pilot" program last October. The announcement touted the ChatBot as a way for business owners to "save ... time and money by instantly providing them with actionable and trusted information from more than 2,000 NYC Business webpages and articles on topics such as compliance with codes and regulations, available business incentives, and best practices to avoid violations and fines."
But a new report from The Markup and local nonprofit news site The City found the MyCity chatbot giving dangerously wrong information about some pretty basic city policies. To cite just one example, the bot said that NYC buildings "are not required to accept Section 8 vouchers," when an NYC government info page says clearly that Section 8 housing subsidies are one of many lawful sources of income that landlords are required to accept without discrimination. The Markup also received incorrect information in response to chatbot queries regarding worker pay and work hour regulations, as well as industry-specific information like funeral home pricing.
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Charles O'Rear)
Two lawsuits filed by a civil rights group allege that county jails in Michigan banned in-person visits in order to maximize revenue from voice and video calls as part of a "quid pro quo kickback scheme" with prison phone companies.
Civil Rights Corps filed the lawsuits on March 15 against the county governments, two county sheriffs, and two prison phone companies. The suits filed in county courts seek class-action status on behalf of people unable to visit family members detained in the local jails, including children who have been unable to visit their parents.
Defendants in one lawsuit include St. Clair County Sheriff Mat King, prison phone company Securus Technologies, and Securus owner Platinum Equity. In the other lawsuit, defendants include Genesee County Sheriff Christopher Swanson and prison phone company ViaPath Technologies. ViaPath was formerly called Global Tel*Link Corporation (GTL), and the lawsuit primarily refers to the company as GTL.
Enlarge (credit: Wolfgang Reisser / 500px | 500px)
After backlash, the cloud provider Vultr has updated its terms to remove a clause that a Reddit user feared required customers to "fork over rights" to "anything" hosted on its platform.
The alarming clause seemed to grant Vultr a "non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable" license to "use and commercialize" any user content uploaded, posted, hosted, or stored on Vultr "in any way that Vultr deems appropriate, without any further consent" or compensation to users or third parties.
Here's the full clause that was removed:
The White House has announced the "first government-wide policy to mitigate risks of artificial intelligence (AI) and harness its benefits." To coordinate these efforts, every federal agency must appoint a chief AI officer with "significant expertise in AI."
Some agencies have already appointed chief AI officers, but any agency that has not must appoint a senior official over the next 60 days. If an official already appointed as a chief AI officer does not have the necessary authority to coordinate AI use in the agency, they must be granted additional authority or else a new chief AI officer must be named.
Ideal candidates, the White House recommended, might include chief information officers, chief data officers, or chief technology officers, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) policy said.
Enlarge / FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried arrives at US District Court on March 30, 2023, in New York City after being hit with a criminal charge for allegedly authorizing a bribe of at least $40 million to one or more Chinese government officials. (credit: Getty Images | Michael Santiago )
Convicted FTX fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison today, according to news reports.
The founder and ex-CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX was sentenced this morning by Judge Lewis Kaplan in US District Court for the Southern District of New York. Bankman-Fried had requested a sentence of 63 to 78 months (5.25 to 6.5 years), arguing that he deserved leniency because of his "charitable works and demonstrated commitment to others."
Kaplan ordered a forfeiture of $11 billion but did not order restitution "due to the complexity of the case and the number of victims," the court docket said. Kaplan instead authorized the US to compensate victims with "forfeited assets through a remission process, as restitution would be impractical in this case."
Enlarge / A Starlink user terminal during winter. (credit: Getty Images | AntaresNS)
Starlink's mobile ambitions were dealt at least a temporary blow yesterday when the Federal Communications Commission dismissed SpaceX's application to use several spectrum bands for mobile service.
SpaceX is seeking approval to use up to 7,500 second-generation Starlink satellites with spectrum in the 1.6 GHz, 2 GHz, and 2.4 GHz bands. SpaceX could still end up getting what it wants but will have to go through new rulemaking processes in which the FCC will evaluate whether the spectrum bands can handle the system without affecting existing users.
The FCC Space Bureau's ruling dismissed the SpaceX application yesterday as "unacceptable for filing." The application was filed over a year ago.
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Unsealed court documents have revealed more details about a secret Facebook project initially called "Ghostbusters," designed to sneakily access encrypted Snapchat usage data to give Facebook a leg up on its rival, just when Snapchat was experiencing rapid growth in 2016.
The documents were filed in a class-action lawsuit from consumers and advertisers, accusing Meta of anticompetitive behavior that blocks rivals from competing in the social media ads market.
"Whenever someone asks a question about Snapchat, the answer is usually that because their traffic is encrypted, we have no analytics about them," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (who has since rebranded his company as Meta) wrote in a 2016 email to Javier Olivan.
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This week, Florida made headlines after passing HB 3, a law banning children under 14 from accessing social media without parental consent.
Much less attention was given to another requirement under the law obligating "pornographic or sexually explicit websites" to "use age verification to prevent minors from accessing sites that are inappropriate for children," as Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis explained the law in a statement.
But Pornhub's parent company, Aylo, has taken notice, with a spokesperson confirming to Ars that "we are aware of the passage into law of HB 3 in Florida, which unfortunately fails to protect minors online."
Enlarge / Demonstrators participate in an abortion-rights rally outside the Supreme Court as the justices of the court hear oral arguments in the case of the US Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine on March 26, 2024 in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty | Anna Moneymaker)
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday heard arguments in a case seeking to limit access to the abortion and miscarriage drug mifepristone, with a majority of justices expressing skepticism that the anti-abortion groups that brought the case have the legal standing to do so.
The case threatens to dramatically alter access to a drug that has been safely used for decades and, according to the Guttmacher Institute, was used in 63 percent of abortions documented in the health care system in 2023. But, it also has sweeping implications for the Food and Drug Administration's authority over drugs, marking the first time that courts have second-guessed the agency's expert scientific analysis and moved to restrict access to an FDA-approved drug.
As such, the case has rattled health experts, reproductive health care advocates, the FDA, and the pharmaceutical industry alike. But, based on the line of questioning in today's oral arguments, they have reason to breathe a sigh of relief.
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Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey yesterday sued Media Matters in an attempt to protect Elon Musk and X from the nonprofit watchdog group's investigations into hate speech on the social network. Bailey's lawsuit claims that "Media Matters has used fraud to solicit donations from Missourians in order to trick advertisers into removing their advertisements from X, formerly Twitter, one of the last platforms dedicated to free speech in America."
Bailey didn't provide much detail on the alleged fraud but claimed that Media Matters is guilty of "fraudulent manipulation of data on X.com." That's apparently a reference to Media Matters reporting that X placed ads for major brands next to posts touting Hitler and Nazis. X has accused Media Matters of manipulating the site's algorithm by endlessly scrolling and refreshing.
Bailey yesterday issued an investigative demand seeking names and addresses of all Media Matters donors who live in Missouri and a range of internal communications and documents regarding the group's research on Musk and X. Bailey anticipates that Media Matters won't provide the requested materials, so he filed the lawsuit asking Cole County Circuit Court for an order to enforce the investigative demand.
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On Monday, Florida became the first state to ban kids under 14 from social media without parental permission. It appears likely that the law—considered one of the most restrictive in the US—will face significant legal challenges, however, before taking effect on January 1.
Under HB 3, apps like Instagram, Snapchat, or TikTok would need to verify the ages of users, then delete any accounts for users under 14 when parental consent is not granted. Companies that "knowingly or recklessly" fail to block underage users risk fines of up to $10,000 in damages to anyone suing on behalf of child users. They could also be liable for up to $50,000 per violation in civil penalties.
In a statement, Florida governor Ron DeSantis said the "landmark law" gives "parents a greater ability to protect their children" from a variety of social media harm. Florida House Speaker Paul Renner, who spearheaded the law, explained some of that harm, saying that passing HB 3 was critical because "the Internet has become a dark alley for our children where predators target them and dangerous social media leads to higher rates of depression, self-harm, and even suicide."
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The US Justice Department on Monday unsealed an indictment charging seven men with hacking or attempting to hack dozens of US companies in a 14-year campaign furthering an economic espionage and foreign intelligence gathering by the Chinese government.
All seven defendants, federal prosecutors alleged, were associated with Wuhan Xiaoruizhi Science & Technology Co., Ltd. a front company created by the Hubei State Security Department, an outpost of the Ministry of State Security located in Wuhan province. The MSS, in turn, has funded an advanced persistent threat group tracked under names including APT31, Zirconium Violet Typhoon, Judgment Panda, and Altaire.
“Since at least 2010, the defendants … engaged in computer network intrusion activity on behalf of the HSSD targeting numerous US government officials, various US economic and defense industries and a variety of private industry officials, foreign democracy activists, academics and parliamentarians in response to geopolitical events affecting the PRC,” federal prosecutors alleged. “These computer network intrusion activities resulted in the confirmed and potential compromise of work and personal email accounts, cloud storage accounts and telephone call records belonging to millions of Americans, including at least some information that could be released in support of malign influence targeting democratic processes and institutions, and economic plans, intellectual property, and trade secrets belonging to American businesses, and contributed to the estimated billions of dollars lost every year as a result of the PRC’s state-sponsored apparatus to transfer US technology to the PRC.”
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A US judge has struck down a lawsuit brought by X against a nonprofit group that researched toxic content on the social media platform, finding the Elon Musk-owned company’s case appeared to be an attempt at “punishing” the group for exercising free speech.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate had sought to dismiss the case from X, which alleged the nonprofit unlawfully accessed and scraped X data for its studies. The CCDH found a rise in hate speech and misinformation on the platform. X had also alleged the group “cherry-picked” from posts on the platform to conduct a “scare campaign” to drive away advertisers, costing it tens of millions of dollars.
In a stinging ruling, US judge Charles Breyer in California granted the motion. “Sometimes it is unclear what is driving a litigation, and only by reading between the lines of a complaint can one attempt to surmise a plaintiff’s true purpose. Other times, a complaint is so unabashedly and vociferously about one thing that there can be no mistaking that purpose. This case represents the latter circumstance. This case is about punishing the defendants for their speech,” he wrote in the decision.
Enlarge / EU Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton talks to media about non-compliance investigations against Google, Apple, and Meta under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). (credit: Thierry Monasse / Contributor | Getty Images News)
Not even three weeks after the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) took effect, the European Commission (EC) announced Monday that it is already probing three out of six gatekeepers—Apple, Google, and Meta—for suspected non-compliance.
Apple will need to prove that changes to its app store and existing user options to swap out default settings easily are sufficient to comply with the DMA.
Similarly, Google's app store rules will be probed, as well as any potentially shady practices unfairly preferencing its own services—like Google Shopping and Hotels—in search results.
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | NurPhoto / Getty Images)
X used to be called Twitter, but soon it will become "the Everything App," and that day is "closer than everyone thinks," X CEO Linda Yaccarino promised in one of her first X posts of 2024.
"Nothing can slow us down," Yaccarino said.
Turning Twitter into an everything app is arguably the reason that Elon Musk purchased Twitter. He openly craved the success of the Chinese everything app WeChat, telling Twitter staff soon after purchasing the app that "you basically live on WeChat in China because it’s so usable and helpful to daily life, and I think if we can achieve that, or even get close to that at Twitter, it would be an immense success,” The Guardian reported.
Enlarge / Steve Huffman, u/spez on Reddit, sold 500,000 of his shares in Reddit’s IPO on Thursday (credit: AFP via Getty Images)
In an interview on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor ahead of Reddit’s market debut on Thursday, chief executive Steve Huffman acknowledged that the mischievous retail investors that congregate on the social media platform might deliberately drive down its share price.
“It’s a free market!” he said.
For Reddit, as for Huffman, the bet on a public offering for a site he described as a “fun and special, but sometimes crazy place” has appeared to pay off.
Enlarge / "Yes, we offer Internet at your address." (credit: Chev Wilkinson via Getty Images)
An Internet service provider that admitted lying to the Federal Communications Commission about where it offers broadband will pay a $10,000 fine and implement a compliance plan to prevent future violations.
Jefferson County Cable (JCC), a small ISP in Toronto, Ohio, admitted that it falsely claimed to offer fiber service in an area that it hadn't expanded to yet. A company executive also admitted that the firm submitted false coverage data to prevent other ISPs from obtaining government grants to serve the area. Ars helped expose the incident in a February 2023 article.
The FCC announced the outcome of its investigation on March 15, saying that Jefferson County Cable violated the Broadband Data Collection program requirements and the Broadband DATA Act, a US law, "in connection with reporting inaccurate information or data with respect to the Company's ability to provide broadband Internet access service."
Instagram users have started complaining on X (formerly Twitter) after discovering that Meta has begun limiting recommended political content by default.
"Did [y'all] know Instagram was actively limiting the reach of political content like this?!" an X user named Olayemi Olurin wrote in an X post with more than 150,000 views as of this writing. "I had no idea 'til I saw this comment and I checked my settings and sho nuff political content was limited."
"Instagram quietly introducing a 'political' content preference and turning on 'limit' by default is insane?" wrote another X user named Matt in a post with nearly 40,000 views.
Enlarge / The United Nations building in New York. (credit: Getty Images)
On Thursday, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously consented to adopt what some call the first global resolution on AI, reports Reuters. The resolution aims to foster the protection of personal data, enhance privacy policies, ensure close monitoring of AI for potential risks, and uphold human rights. It emerged from a proposal by the United States and received backing from China and 121 other countries.
Being a nonbinding agreement and thus effectively toothless, the resolution seems broadly popular in the AI industry. On X, Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith wrote, "We fully support the @UN's adoption of the comprehensive AI resolution. The consensus reached today marks a critical step towards establishing international guardrails for the ethical and sustainable development of AI, ensuring this technology serves the needs of everyone."
The resolution, titled "Seizing the opportunities of safe, secure and trustworthy artificial intelligence systems for sustainable development," resulted from three months of negotiation, and the stakeholders involved seem pleased at the level of international cooperation. "We're sailing in choppy waters with the fast-changing technology, which means that it's more important than ever to steer by the light of our values," one senior US administration official told Reuters, highlighting the significance of this "first-ever truly global consensus document on AI."
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The US Department of Justice is angry about green message bubbles. Announcing today's antitrust lawsuit against Apple, US Attorney General Merrick Garland devoted a portion of his speech to the green bubbles that appear in conversations between users of iPhones and other mobile devices such as Android smartphones.
"As any iPhone user who has ever seen a green text message, or received a tiny, grainy video can attest, Apple's anticompetitive conduct also includes making it more difficult for iPhone users to message with users of non-Apple products," Garland said while announcing the suit that alleges Apple illegally monopolized the smartphone market.
The attorney general accused Apple of "diminishing the functionality of its own messaging app" and that of messaging apps made by third parties. "By doing so, Apple knowingly and deliberately degrades quality, privacy, and security for its users," Garland said. "For example, if an iPhone user messages a non-iPhone user in Apple Messages, the text appears not only as a green bubble, but incorporates limited functionality."
Enlarge / FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (R) departs Manhattan Federal Court after an arraignment hearing on March 30, 2023, in New York City. (credit: Drew Angerer / Staff | Getty Images News)
The CEO of FTX Trading, John Ray, sent a letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan Wednesday to correct what he called "callously" and "demonstrably false" claims that disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried made in hopes of receiving a lighter sentence for crimes including defrauding FTX customers.
In a sentencing memo, Bankman-Fried asked the court to drastically slash his prison sentence from what he considered a "grotesque" 110-year maximum to five to six years. Prosecutors have suggested the sentence should be between 40 and 50 years, but Bankman-Fried claimed such a sentence painted him as a "depraved supervillain," Bloomberg reported.
The lightest sentence was appropriate, Bankman-Fried claimed, because the "most reasonable estimate of loss" and "harm" to customers, lenders, and investors is "zero."
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