Technology category, Page 13
Deepfake images continue to cloud social media. Can they be stopped?
Ari Lightman admits he probably would fall for a deepfake. “I cannot spot a deepfake,” he said. That might be considered alarming, as Lightman is a Carnegie Mellon University professor of digital media and marketing who teaches classes measuring the impact of emerging technologies. Yet even he says he is...
Popular TikTok music pulled in contract dispute
If you were scrolling on TikTok Wednesday night and noticed that certain songs from popular artists like Taylor Swift have disappeared from videos, you weren’t alone. Universal Music group said it would stop licensing its songs to TikTok if the two companies could not reach a new deal, as reported...
Meta, TikTok and other social media CEOs testify in heated Senate hearing on child exploitation
Sexual predators. Addictive features. Suicide and eating disorders. Unrealistic beauty standards. Bullying. These are just some of the issues young people are dealing with on social media — and children’s advocates and lawmakers say companies are not doing enough to protect them. On Wednesday, the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, X...
ChatGPT violated European privacy laws, Italy tells chatbot maker OpenAI
LONDON — Italian regulators said they told OpenAI that its ChatGPT artificial intelligence chatbot has violated European Union’s stringent data privacy rules. The country’s data protection authority, known as Garante, said Monday that it notified San Francisco-based OpenAI of breaches of the EU rules, known as General Data Protection Regulation....
Zero-emission goal still eludes the EU, where most cars emit the same CO2 levels as 12 years ago
BRUSSELS — Most passenger cars in the European Union still emit the same quantity of carbon dioxide as 12 years ago, the European Union’s auditing agency warned on Wednesday. The European Court of Auditors said the 27-nation bloc must “shift up gear” to come close to a zero-emissions car fleet,...
Microsoft: State-backed Russian hackers accessed emails of senior leadership team
BOSTON — State-backed Russian hackers broke into Microsoft’s corporate email system and accessed the accounts of members of the company’s leadership team, as well as those of employees on its cybersecurity and legal teams, the company said Friday. In a blog post, Microsoft said the intrusion began in late November...
Carnegie Mellon University hit by cyberattack, informs 7,300 people possibly affected
Carnegie Mellon University informed about 7,300 people that their personal information may have been compromised in an August cyberattack that was quietly investigated by law enforcement and the university. The breach impacting one of the nation’s top schools for computing was acknowledged by the university as higher education in general...
Amazon’s Twitch cuts more than 500 jobs attempting to turn expensive platform profitable
Twitch, the video game streaming platform acquired by Amazon a decade ago for close to $1 billion, is laying off more than 500 employees as the company tries to turn the tremendously expensive division profitable. Twitch CEO Dan Clancy in an email to employees said that even with cost cuts...
Meta to hide posts about suicide, eating disorders from teens’ Instagram and Facebook feeds
SAN FRANCISCO — Meta said Tuesday it will start hiding inappropriate content from teenagers’ accounts on Instagram and Facebook, including posts about suicide, self-harm and eating disorders. The social media giant based in Menlo Park, Calif., said in a blog post that while it already aims not to recommend such...
Pittsburgh’s autonomous tech will take the stage at annual CES convention in Las Vegas
Autonomous technology in Pittsburgh will be the focus, at least for an afternoon, this week at the world’s largest annual tech event. Members of four Pittsburgh-area companies will step onto a Las Vegas showroom stage Tuesday at the 2024 International CES for a panel discussion on “Building Approachable Autonomous Technology...
Group representing TikTok, Meta, X sues Ohio over law limiting kids’ use of social media
COLUMBUS, Ohio — A trade group representing TikTok, Snapchat, Meta and other major tech companies sued Ohio on Friday over a pending law that requires children to get parental consent to use social media apps. The law was part of an $86.1 billion state budget bill Republican Gov. Mike DeWine...
Pennsylvania case at center of challenge to police use of Google search data
Civil liberties advocates are mounting a new challenge to the use by police of Google search data for help in solving criminal cases, as the practice draws greater scrutiny nationwide. After a Pennsylvania woman was raped in 2016, police submitted a search warrant to Alphabet’s Google for information about users...
Microsoft’s new AI key is first big change to keyboards in decades
Computer keyboards are making room for an artificial intelligence chatbot button as Microsoft unveils its first major keyboard redesign in three decades. Starting this month, some new personal computers that run Microsoft’s Windows 11 operating system will have a special “Copilot key” that launches the software giant’s AI chatbot. Getting...
Books we read in 2023 to prepare us for the future
It has been an overwhelming 12 months in the technology world. Rapid developments in artificial intelligence, which went into overdrive in late 2022 with the release of ChatGPT, have generated countless column inches, panel discussions and political debate. For those who want to contribute to the discourse, understanding the core...
Google settles privacy lawsuit over tracking people using ‘incognito mode’
SAN FRANCISCO — Google has agreed to settle a $5 billion privacy lawsuit alleging it spied on people who used the “incognito” mode in its Chrome browser — along with similar “private” modes in other browsers — to track their internet use. The class-action lawsuit filed in 2020 said Google...
The late-night email to Tim Cook that set the Apple Watch saga in motion
At about 1 a.m. California time in 2013, a scientist emailed Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook with an irresistible pitch. “I strongly believe that we can develop the new wave of technology that will make Apple the No. 1 brand in the medical, fitness and wellness market,” he...
Study shows AI image-generators being trained on explicit photos of children
Hidden inside the foundation of popular artificial intelligence image-generators are thousands of images of child sexual abuse, according to a new report that urges companies to take action to address a harmful flaw in the technology they built. Those same images have made it easier for AI systems to produce...
Pitt launches grad program to make data science more accessible
Understanding how to work with data is a skill that once seemed important only for those with careers tied at the hip to a computer. Not any more. Artists, accountants, health care workers and just about anyone else in an increasingly digitized world can benefit from being able to assemble,...
Elon Musk restores X account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones
Elon Musk has restored the X account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, pointing to a poll on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that came out in favor of the Infowars host who repeatedly called the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting a hoax. It poses new uncertainty for...
Meta makes end-to-end encryption a default on Facebook Messenger
NEW YORK — Meta is rolling out end-to-end encryption for calls and messages across its Facebook and Messenger platforms, the company announced Thursday. Such encryption means that no one other than the sender and the recipient — not even Meta — can decipher people’s messages. Encrypted chats, first introduced as...
Google ups the stakes in AI race with Gemini, a technology trained to behave more like humans
Google took its next leap in artificial intelligence Wednesday with the launch of project Gemini, an AI model trained to behave in human-like ways that’s likely to intensify the debate about the technology’s potential promise and perils. The rollout will unfold in phases, with less sophisticated versions of Gemini called...
AI’s future could be ‘open-source’ or closed; tech giants divided as they lobby regulators
Tech leaders have been vocal proponents of the need to regulate artificial intelligence, but they’re also lobbying hard to make sure the new rules work in their favor. That’s not to say they all want the same thing. Facebook parent Meta and IBM on Tuesday launched a new group called...
Whistleblower allegation: Harvard muzzled disinfo team after $500 million Zuckerberg donation
A prominent disinformation scholar who left Harvard University in August has accused the school of muzzling her speech and stifling — then dismantling — her research team as it launched a deep dive in late 2021 into a trove of Facebook files she considers the most important documents in internet...
Elon Musk uses expletive to tell audience he doesn’t care about advertisers that fled X over hate speech
NEW YORK — Billionaire Elon Musk said Wednesday that advertisers who have halted spending on his social media platform X in response to antisemitic and other hateful material are engaging in “blackmail” and, using a profanity, essentially told them to go away. “Don’t advertise,” Musk said. He appeared to specifically...
Canada says Google will pay $74 million annually to Canadian news industry under new online law
TORONTO — Canada’s government said Wednesday it reached a deal with Google for the company to contribute $100 million Canadian dollars annually to the country’s news industry to comply with a new Canadian law requiring tech companies to pay publishers for their content. The agreement removes a threat by Google...
