Under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which the company must comply with by March 7, Google is required to treat competing services and products the same as its own when ranking them in search results.

“We will introduce dedicated units that include a group of links to comparison sites from across the web, and query shortcuts at the top of the search page to help people refine their search, including by focusing results just on comparison sites,” Google said in its blog post.

Competing comparison sites are the biggest critics of Google’s search policy. A few years ago, the company paid a €2.42 billion fine for breaking EU antitrust rules.

“For categories like hotels, we will also start testing a dedicated space for comparison sites and direct suppliers to show more detailed individual results including images, star ratings and more. These changes will result in the removal of some features from the search page, such as the Google Flights unit,” it said.

In the upcoming weeks, Android users will experience various updates that facilitate seamless transitions between default search engines or browsers on their phones. Additionally, individuals utilizing Google services and products will have the option to transfer their data to a third-party application or service.

The warning comes after a fake advertisement featuring the image of a popular personality in India, cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, promoting the use of an online gambling platform.

These videos are fake. It is disturbing to see rampant misuse of technology. Request everyone to report videos, ads & apps like these in large numbers.

Social Media platforms need to be alert and responsive to complaints. Swift action from their end is crucial to stopping the… pic.twitter.com/4MwXthxSOM

— Sachin Tendulkar (@sachin_rt) January 15, 2024

Deputy Information Technology Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said the ministry plans to amend IT rules by next week to create clear laws to counter fake technology in the media space.

“If a platform thinks that they can get away without taking down deepfake videos, or merely maintain a casual approach to it, we have the power to protect our citizens by blocking such platforms,” Chandrasekhar told a press conference.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State at Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology

He further said that the ministry has informed the technology platforms that if they fail to effectively tackle the issue, it will lead to legal consequences.

The deputy minister also said that such content is illegal, dangerous and unacceptable.

Once again, deepfakes grabbed attention in India as cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar issued a warning on social media this week.

He cautioned his numerous fans about fraudulent video advertisements that falsely portrayed him endorsing an online gambling platform.

“It is disturbing to see rampant misuse of technology. Social media platforms need to be alert and responsive to complaints. Swift action from their end is crucial to stopping the spread of misinformation and deepfakes”, he wrote in a post.

In the previous year, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw emphasized that technology platforms acknowledged the seriousness of deepfake content.

He stated that these platforms agreed that such media should not be protected under free speech defenses.

The survey also aimed to determine which of the two ways – “App Store” or “Apps” is safer and easier for parents to give their approval.

Here are the survey results:

The majority of survey participants (79%) support the idea of creating a law that requires parents’ prior approval when their children download a particular app.

– Four in five parents (79%) support a law that requires parental approval for children under 16 before downloading apps.

This legislation is supported by two types of parents – parents with Democratic views (81%) and parents with Republican views (79%).

Meta Morning Consult polled parents in the survey and asked what the most appropriate age is for their children (some of them already teenagers) to download an app of their choice without needing the approval of at least one of both parents.

Parents in the US share a common opinion

Responses were again similar to previous ones with 55% of parents supporting the idea that under-16s should not be allowed to download apps without parental permission.

Parents with Democratic views, 54%, and parents with Republican views, 56%, are also united in the idea of prior approval from at least one parent before a minor can download the app they want.

Over 75% of parents prefer using app stores as a more convenient and secure option for approving app downloads for their children.

When asked about the easiest method for parental approval of their child’s app usage, 76% of parents favor a centralized approach, such as using an app store, while only 24% find it easier to approve apps individually after downloading.

This preference for a unified approval process holds true across political affiliations:

• Democratic-leaning parents: 76% prefer approval in one place (e.g., app store)
• Republican-leaning parents: 77% prefer approval in one place (e.g., app store)

Furthermore, a significant majority (76%) of parents trust app stores over individual apps to securely handle the necessary personal data for verifying parental approval. In contrast, only 24% express trust in the apps themselves.

This trust in app stores is consistent among both Democratic-leaning and Republican-leaning parents:

• Democratic-leaning parents: 77% trust app stores
• Republican-leaning parents: 75% trust app stores

What is your opinion on the subject? Do you approve of the creation of a parental approval law for the downloading of apps by children under the age of 16? Email us at [email protected].

Deep learning is a type of machine learning based on artificial neural networks inspired by the human brain. The method is used to teach machines how to learn from large amounts of data through multi-layered structures of algorithms.

Deepfakes typically use a computer learning network called a variational autoencoder, a type of artificial neural network that is commonly used for face recognition.

 

Deepfake technology resembles the 21st century version of Photoshop,but is far more dangerous. It carries many negative implications as it continues to advance the field of artificial intelligence. Deepfake is often controlled by a group of cybercriminals who have the ability to convincingly mimic other humans. Additionally, this platform is used to create numerous manipulated videos that look very real.

In a recent incident, a group of cyber criminals created a fake video with the face of Rashmika Mandan, a South Indian actress, and the body of Zara Patel, a British-Indian girl. This video caused a wave of reactions in the Bollywood community.

When was it first discovered, and what did it do?

Deepfake technology first surfaced in 2017 on the online platform Reddit. Initially, it gained notoriety for swapping the faces of celebrities such as Gal Gadot, Scarlett Johansson, Taylor Swift, and others, primarily for creating explicit content. This face-swapping was accomplished through the use of a machine employing deep learning algorithms. One key element in this process was an AI algorithm known as an “encoder.”

What is an encoder?

An “encoder” serves as a crucial component in the deepfake process. It enables machines to discern commonalities between two faces, reducing them to their shared features by compressing the facial images.

With the aid of an encoder, erroneous images are superimposed to manipulate the source content, while another algorithm, called the “decoder,” reconstructs the face with the desired orientation and expressions.

What does Deepfake technology do to original videos and photos?

Deepfake technology adeptly alters and manipulates the voices and faces of characters within various videos, frequently with explicit content.

Deepfake usage?

Primarily, deepfake technology finds application in unsavory edits, notably within pornographic video content. However, there have been instances, especially during elections, where politicians’ video clips were digitally altered and disseminated with falsely attributed statements.

Prominently, even well-known individuals with significant public profiles have fallen victim to deepfake videos. An example includes former US President Barack Obama, who was featured in a deepfake video where he appeared to refer to Donald Trump as a derogatory term. This video garnered widespread attention.

Furthermore, even Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief, was depicted in various deepfake videos making claims about having “total control of billions of people’s stolen data.”

An AI firm named Deeptrace was also identified, which had cataloged 15,000 deepfake videos by September 2019.

What do experts have to say about deepfake creators?

Experts, including Danielle Citron, a professor of law at Boston University, have voiced serious concerns about the detrimental uses of deepfake technology. Citron highlighted the fact that deepfake technology has been weaponized against women, and recent incidents like the one involving actress Rashmika raise further safety concerns.

What else can deepfake do besides creating videos?

Deepfake technology extends beyond crafting AI-driven videos. It can also generate entirely fabricated images from scratch. Additionally, it has the capacity to create fictitious profiles and characters, complete with fictional names and accompanying videos.

Who is creating deepfake videos presently?

According to a report from The Guardian, a wide range of individuals, from industrial and academic researchers to amateur enthusiasts, can create deepfake videos. Visual effects studios and even porn producers also harness this technology for the manipulation and creation of content.

A new online safety bill will oblige social media companies to remove any animal cruelty content from their platforms or face a fine of up to £18 million, the BBC reports. The new changes are expected to come into force this autumn.

The reason for the drastic measures is BBC Eye’s “Monkey Haters” investigation, which uncovered a worldwide network of monkey abuse. Ministers say this is a clear example of the imperative for new changes to online safety law.

From this autumn, animal cruelty videos will be considered a “priority offence” under a new change to the bill that brings them into line with child sexual abuse and threats to kill.

Under the new proposals, social media platforms will be fined up to 10% of their global annual revenue if they do not actively tackle illegal content and remove it.

An undercover BBC reporter joins a private messaging group on Telegram, where he discovers that hundreds of people in the US and UK are ordering and paying for videos of baby monkeys being tortured and killed by humans in Indonesia.

In the US, a former member of the air force has been charged and more than 20 people are under investigation. Two men in Indonesia have been sentenced to prison and in the UK three women have been arrested and released as part of the investigation.

The social media companies did not remain unmoved. YouTube said animal abuse had “no place” on the platform and that it had removed hundreds of thousands of videos. Telegram said its moderators cannot preemptively patrol private groups. There are still active monkey abuse groups on social media.

Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan said that this kind of activity was “deeply disturbing” and that the bill would now broaden beyond its remit of protecting children to “stop the proliferation of animal abuse too”.

“The BBC’s diligent investigative work revealed a dark underbelly of our internet that pushes its sadistic criminal activity to everyday people,” she said.

David Bowles from the RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals)
was hopeful the amendment would be enacted.

“It’s deeply unsettling and disheartening just how widespread animal abuse videos and imagery are becoming and with young people spending so much time online, it can be incredibly challenging for parents and guardians to monitor the content they are seeing,” he said.

According to Nicola O’Brien, chief co-ordinator of the Social Media Animal Cruelty Coalition (SMACC), of which the RSPCA and Action for Primates are members, the new law change “will put more emphasis on platforms to take responsibility and stop providing a literal platform for animal abusers”, adding that they are currently not doing enough to prevent content being shared on their sites.

The Online Safety Act aims to make social media companies more responsible for the safety of their users on their platforms.

Silicon Valley tech giants, however, opposed some of the proposals.

Some platforms such as WhatsApp, Signal and iMessage claim they cannot access or view anyone’s messages without destroying existing privacy protections for all users. They issued a statement saying they would rather leave the UK and deprive users there than compromise on the security of messages.

The final changes to the legislation will be considered by Parliament today. Stay tuned for details.

CNBC tells us the story of Yanolja founder and chairman Lee Su-jin, who got his start in the travel industry as a motel cleaner.

The experience inspired him to launch hotel booking site Yanolja, which means “Hey, let’s play” in Korean, in 2007. Now that it’s also a popular travel app, the brand has become a global phenomenon with more than 57 million downloads, according to its website.

This unexpected success helped Lee amass a fortune of his own. According to Forbes, his net worth today stands at $1.2 billion, due to the fact that he, along with his wife and two daughters, owns nearly a third of Yanolja. This spring, he debuted on the publication’s “Korea’s 50 Richest” list.

Despite being among the richest people in the world today, Lee’s childhood was very difficult. He was orphaned at a young age and lived with relatives for most of his childhood, according to Bloomberg. When Lee was 23, he began cleaning rooms at a “love hotel” – a type of motel known for offering short-term lodging on an hourly basis – in exchange for a steady paycheck and a place to stay.

Despite the difficulties, Lee doesn’t give up and is constantly thinking of ways to make his life better. He saves his money and invests in stocks. He even started a salad business, according to Bloomberg, but it wasn’t long before he suffered a setback and went back to the hotel business – but this time fate was smiling on him.

When South Korea passed an anti-prostitution law in 2004, Lee worried that the motels that gave him security would go bankrupt.

So he decided to rebrand the love hotels. In 2005, he set up a hotel review platform, which two years later became Yanolja. His goal was to modernize the hotels and convince young couples and travelers that they were safe, comfortable and cost-effective.
Kim says that Lee’s job as a cleaner, where he was able to observe guests’ experiences in love hotels, was actually an advantage: it gave him the opportunity to adapt the platform to users.

In June 2019, Yanolja became South Korea’s eighth “unicorn” startup, achieving a valuation of more than $1 billion during a funding round.

Two years later, investment firm SoftBank Vision Fund 2 bought a minority stake in Yanolja for $1.7 billion at a valuation of $6.7 billion, according to Forbes.

The SoftBank deal has sparked much speculation about a potential IPO of Yanolja. However, the company has yet to go public, and Kim even stated in a July 2022 press release that Yanolja is in no rush to announce an IPO as the hospitality industry is still recovering from the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 2021, the company is launching Yanolja Cloud, a proprietary artificial intelligence software for other hospitality and entertainment platforms. Today, 19 million combined users use Yanolja’s software platforms for reservations, travel and property management operations, according to the company’s website.

Lee is not only proud to have achieved the unachievable, but he has also changed people’s attitude towards this type of motel.

The song Glory to Hong Kong can’t even be found in Meta’s Instagram audio pictures. For now, the song is only available on YouTube.

Is the performance a mistake?
Authorities in Hong Kong are trying to ban the pro-democracy song after organisers of several international sporting events “mistakenly” performed it instead of China’s national anthem. However, the removal of the song from music platforms comes about a month before the Supreme Court is due to rule on 21 July – a possible example of pre-emptive self-censorship that could set a new precedent.

The reason?
The band DGX Music, which is also the creator of the song, announced that it had encountered technical issues unrelated to the streaming platforms and apologized for the temporary service disruption.

Clues to the crime?
“Glory to Hong Kong” was the unofficial anthem of protesters during the mass demonstrations in 2019. However, after a court found that the lyrics “Free Hong Kong, revolution of our time” could incite a crime under Beijing’s imposed national security law the song became illegal.

Are human rights being violated?
Activist groups said banning the song violates international human rights law and further undermines freedom of expression in the former British colony, which has already blocked access to several websites deemed a threat to national security. The reduction of space for free expression is seen as undermining Hong Kong’s reputation as an international business hub.

“If big platforms like Google decide to leave Hong Kong due to regulatory concerns, it will certainly give Hong Kong a big hit in terms of global investors’ confidence,”

said George Chen, managing director for The Asia Group, a Washington-headquartered business and policy consulting firm.

Charles Mok, a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center and a former legislator in Hong Kong, said tech platforms have to take into account geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China. Avoiding potential repercussions from U.S. politicians would be one major factor, he added.

In mainland China, the government maintains complete control over the internet and censorship is widespread.

The FTC reached a settlement with the company that includes enhanced protections for child gamers. Additionally, the tech giant was found to have failed to inform parents of its data collection policies.

Will misuse of personal data and breach of privacy become a new trend? Just a few days ago, the same US commission fined Amazon $25 million for violating children’s privacy with its voice assistant Alexa.

The FTC said Microsoft violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by failing to obtain proper parental consent and retaining personal data of children under 13 for longer than unreasonable.
for accounts created before 2021.

The law requires online services and websites targeting children to obtain parental consent and inform them of the personal data being collected about their child.

To access certain services Xbox users must create an account, with information such as full name, email address and date of birth collected.

Only after obtaining personal information, such as the child’s phone number, does Microsoft ask the parent for permission.

“Regrettably, we did not meet customer expectations and are committed to complying with the order to continue improving upon our safety measures,”

Microsoft’s Dave McCarthy, CVP of Xbox Player Services, wrote in an Xbox blog post.

As part of the settlement, Microsoft must also institute new safety protections for children. That includes maintaining a system to delete all personal data after two weeks if no parental consent is obtained.

The company agreed to pay the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) after it was accused of failing to delete recordings from Alexa at the request of parents after it was found to have stored sensitive data for years.

Ring Amazon will also pay a fine after giving its employees unfettered access to customer data.Ring will pay $5.8 million to authorities, according to a document filed in federal court in the District of Columbia.

However, the complaint alleges that the company failed to do so. It stored the data for years and used it illegally to improve Alexa’s algorithm.

In a statement, Samuel Levin, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, accused Amazon of “misleading parents, storing children’s records indefinitely, and disregarding parents’ requests for deletion.”

He added that the company “sacrifices privacy for profit.”

The FTC also said that Ring – which Amazon bought in 2018 – has allowed “thousands of employees and contractors” to monitor customers’ privacy records.

According to the FTC, they were able to view and download sensitive customer video data for their own purposes.
According to the complaint, one of the officers reviewed thousands of videos belonging to female users of Ring’s cameras, which “monitor intimate spaces in their homes, such as bathrooms or bedrooms.”

The employee was only stopped after his actions were noticed by a co-worker, the report said.

“While we disagree with the FTC’s allegations regarding Alexa and Ring and deny having violated the law, these settlements put these issues behind us.”

Amazon said.

The company added that it will continue to create more privacy features on behalf of customers.

The company’s decision to remove songs that are created by artificial intelligence comes after Spotify and other streaming services began receiving complaints of fraud and platform overload. According to the FT’s sources, music industry giant Universal Music Group has warned streaming service providers about “suspicious streaming activity” of Boomy tracks.

“Artificial streaming is a longstanding, industry-wide issue that Spotify is working to stamp out across our service.”

Spotify commented.

Representatives from Boomy were quick to comment, saying the platform is “categorically opposed” to any manipulation or artificial streaming of any kind.

“The recent explosive development of generative artificial intelligence, if unchecked, will increase the flow of unwanted content across platforms and create rights issues under existing copyright law.”

say the company.

Last month, UMG sent an email to streaming services, including Spotify, asking them to block AI services from accessing music catalogues for training purposes.

While music industry giants fight for control over AI, some artists, like Grimes, are taking the side of the innovative technology. It has allowed creators to use its voice in attempts to create AI music, but on the condition that certain rules are followed and royalties are split.