Meet Cute on company’s intranet allows employees to advertise family and acquaintances to colleagues
TikTok has an internal matchmaking service for employees to introduce their colleagues to friends and family members, it has been revealed.
The channel, called Meet Cute, sits on the workplace tool used by thousands of TikTok employees around the world for document hosting, video conferencing. It also helps people find a potential romantic partner from among their colleagues.
Continue reading...Deputy prime minister to urge UN general assembly to create international regulatory system
Artificial intelligence is developing too fast for regulators to keep up, the UK’s deputy prime minister is to announce as he aims to galvanise other countries to take the threat seriously in advance of the UK’s AI safety summit in November.
Oliver Dowden will use a speech at the UN general assembly on Friday to sound the alarm over the lack of regulation of AI, which he says is developing faster than many policymakers thought possible.
Continue reading...Seventeen authors have joined a new lawsuit alleging ‘systematic theft on a mass scale’ by the program
John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and George RR Martin are among 17 authors suing OpenAI for “systematic theft on a mass scale”, the latest in a wave of legal action by writers concerned that artificial intelligence programs are using their copyrighted works without permission.
In papers filed on Tuesday in federal court in New York, the authors alleged “flagrant and harmful infringements of plaintiffs’ registered copyrights” and called the ChatGPT program a “massive commercial enterprise” that is reliant upon “systematic theft on a mass scale”.
Continue reading...In Home Office initiative, survivors urge Mark Zuckerberg to rethink changes to Messenger and Instagram
Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to roll out encrypted messaging on his platforms will let child abusers “hide in the dark”, according to a government campaign urging the tech billionaire to halt the move.
The Facebook founder has been under pressure from ministers over plans to automatically encrypt communications on his Messenger service later this year, with Instagram expected to follow soon after.
Continue reading...Google-owned company says move is due to it ‘violating our creator responsibility policy’
YouTube has suspended Russell Brand’s ability to earn money on the platform after allegations of rape and sexual assault in a massive hit to his finances.
The video-sharing and social media site said it had suspended Brand’s channel from the YouTube partner programme after serious allegations against him, meaning his videos are no longer able to be monetised on the platform.
Continue reading...Benjamin Netanyahu told the billionaire owner to clamp down on the hate on the site formerly known as Twitter
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, urged Elon Musk to address the proliferation of antisemitism on the billionaire’s social media platform X.
In an in-person meeting in California on Monday, Netanyahu said he hoped Musk would find ways within the confines of the first amendment to clamp down on antisemitism and other forms of hatred on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Continue reading...Irish data regulator says platform put 13- to 17-year-old users’ accounts on default public setting, among other breaches
TikTok has been fined €345m (£296m) for breaking EU data law in its handling of children’s accounts, including failing to shield underage users’ content from public view.
The Irish data watchdog, which regulates TikTok across the EU, said the Chinese-owned video app had committed multiple breaches of GDPR rules.
Continue reading...Details of thousands of officers may have been taken in ransomware attack on third-party supplier
The personal details of tens of thousands of public sector workers could have been breached in a cyber-attack that has hit two of Britain’s biggest police forces, an expert has said.
More than 12,500 Greater Manchester police (GMP) officers and staff were put on alert on Thursday that their private data had been compromised in a hack that also hit the Metropolitan police last month.
Continue reading...Justice department takes on tech giant in court, seeking to prove it illegally used its power to maintain monopoly on internet search
The court battle between the US justice department and Google has entered its second day, as the United States government seeks to prove that the tech behemoth illegally leveraged its power to maintain a monopoly over internet search engines. The trial is a major test of antitrust law and could have far-reaching implications for the tech industry and for how people engage with the internet.
The question at the heart of the trial is whether Google’s place as the search engine for most Americans is the result of anti-competitive practices that gave internet users no other choice but to use its services.
Continue reading...Apple disputing tests by watchdog that showed radio frequency exposure was higher than permitted
Apple is facing a ban on the sale and potential recall of its iPhone 12 in France, as the US company contests a report that the smartphone exceeds radio frequency exposure limits by the nation’s regulator.
Apple said on Wednesday its iPhone 12 was certified by multiple international bodies as compliant with global radiation standards, disputing tests by the French ANFR watchdog that said the model emits more electromagnetic waves susceptible to be absorbed by the body than permitted.
Continue reading...Games creators attack the fees, due for implementation in 2024, as company executive dials back on initial plan
Tech company Unity has sought to clarify its decision to charge a controversial new fee to game developers. A blogpost on its official site last night announced the company would be introducing a “runtime fee”, which would require developers to pay a fixed sum each time a game built using the Unity Engine was installed by a player.
Unity stipulated that the fee would only be chargeable after a game made $200,000 (£160,000) in 12 months and had at least 200,000 lifetime game installs, but developers nevertheless vented outrage on social media.
Continue reading...Egypt, Vietnam and Indonesia among countries sending delegations to four-day DSEI at ExCeL
Europe’s biggest ever arms fair got under way in London on Tuesday with record numbers expected to attend, boosted by interest from countries with controversial human rights records.
Authoritarian Egypt and Vietnam are among those sending delegations, defence sources said, as well as Indonesia and India – all countries whose arms-buying strategies have been affected by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Continue reading...Doctors and pharmacists concerned that Wesfarmers’ acquisition of InstantScripts could end the notion that ‘health data is sacrosanct’
The integration of a controversial online doctor service alongside Bunnings, Kmart and hundreds of pharmacies in the Wesfarmers portfolio has raised concerns among medical practitioners about potential risks to patient data security.
InstantScripts sprang to prominence during the pandemic, offering an alternative to the GP by generating prescriptions via an online form that was then remotely checked by a doctor. The business covers 300 low-risk drugs that patients can either pick up from a pharmacist or get delivered directly to their home.
Continue reading...Outcome could reshape how public accesses and interacts with the internet, or embolden Google to pursue tighter grip on the market
The watershed antitrust trial pitting the US government against Google begins on Tuesday in a Washington district court, as the government is set to make its case that the tech giant illegally abused its power to monopolize internet search. It is the biggest test of antitrust law in decades, and the first such case against Google to go to trial.
Big tech companies and regulators are closely watching the trial, which could force a shift in how the industry is allowed to operate. Its outcome could reshape how the public accesses and interacts with the internet, or embolden Google to pursue an even tighter grip on the market.
Continue reading...Apple shares fall as local government and state-owned firms latest to face restrictions on devices at work
China’s government has reportedly expanded its ban of iPhones to local government workers and state-owned companies, a day after it emerged central government employees were forbidden from bringing the devices to work.
Several agencies had begun instructing employees not to bring iPhones to work and the ban was expected to be further extended, Bloomberg reported. Nikkei reported at least one state-owned company had told its employees that anyone working with trade secrets could not bring their iPhones, Apple Watches or AirPods into work from next month.
Continue reading...Lawyers for family say Saudi government took brother’s data in breach and ‘arrested, tortured, and imprisoned’ him and others
The company formerly known as Twitter is “unfit” to hold banking licenses because of its alleged “intentional complicity” with human rights violations in Saudi Arabia and treatment of users’ personal data, according to an open letter sent to federal and state banking regulators that was signed by a law firm representing a Saudi victim’s family.
The allegations by lawyers representing Areej al-Sadhan, whose brother Abdulrahman was one of thousands of Saudis whose confidential personal information was obtained by Saudi agents posing as Twitter employees in 2014-15, comes as Twitter Payments LLC, a subsidiary of X (the company formerly known as Twitter), is in the process of applying for money-transmitter licenses across the US.
Continue reading...The spectre of intelligent technologies is looming over Australian artists, and dominating the chatter at Brisbane’s Bigsound music conference
Music conferences tend to follow a similar format: showcases of up-and-coming artists, panels about the business, and behind-the-scenes deals. But between the events and around the corridors of this year’s Bigsound in Brisbane, Australia, there was one topic dominating conversation: how AI was threatening the industry.
Musicians and composers are fascinated by – and terrified of – artificial intelligence, which has the potential to both help artists create, and steal their work. AI is already starting to weave into the everyday soundtracks of our lives, from a new track by the Beatles to Spotify’s “AI DJ”. It’s a new reality that scholars such as Oliver Bown from the University of New South Wales call “the robot soundscape”.
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Continue reading...In a change to the online safety bill, tech firms will have to proactively prevent material that facilitates animal torture from being posted
Social media firms must remove animal cruelty content from their platforms or face the threat of substantial fines under the latest change to the online safety bill.
Ministers said causing unnecessary suffering to an animal will become a priority offence in the bill, which means tech firms will have to proactively prevent such material from reaching users. Failure to do so could result in a fine of £18m, or up to 10% of a company’s global revenue.
Continue reading...‘Revolutionary’ Digital Markets Act aims to allow more competition and let consumers delete preloaded phone apps
The EU has unveiled a set of “revolutionary” laws to curb the power of six big tech companies, including allowing consumers to decide what apps they want on their phone and to delete pre-loaded software such as Google or Apple’s maps apps.
The package of laws will also pave the way for more competition in some of the areas most guarded by the tech firms, including Apple Wallet and Google Pay.
Continue reading...‘Just in time’ production system minimises costs but technical glitch highlights risks
Toyota has blamed a recent shutdown of all of its factories in Japan on a system malfunction caused by “insufficient disk space”.
The Japanese carmaker said the stoppage on 29 August at all 14 of its domestic plants occurred after servers that process orders for vehicle parts broke down following a maintenance procedure carried out the previous day.
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