James Farrell
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Former Twitter executives sue Elon Musk over severance payments
A group of former Twitter Inc. executives filed a lawsuit in a federal court today against Elon Musk and what is now called X Corp., arguing that the company owes them a total of $128 million in unpaid severance. When Musk (pictured) finally took over the social media giant in 2022, he soon got busy ...
US launches ‘unprecedented’ investigation into Chinese connected cars, citing national security concerns
The Biden administration today announced that it’s launching a probe into Chinese-made smart cars, alleging that the vehicles could be used to collect sensitive information on Americans and cause various kinds of mayhem. The investigation, which will be led by the U.S. Commerce Department, will look into how Chinese “connected vehicles” could be used for ...
Google faces $2.3M lawsuit from dozens of European media companies over ad practices
A total of 32 European media companies hit Google LLC with a €2.1 billion ($2.3 billion) lawsuit today, alleging that the American search giant’s advertising practices have led to severe financial losses. The companies come from far and wide – Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain ...
Peace, not war: Tumblr and WordPress are gearing up to sell their data to AI companies
Microblogging website Tumblr and blogging platform WordPress.com will soon begin sharing their data with the artificial intelligence companies OpenAI and Midjourney. The platforms’ parent company, Automattic Inc., published a blog post today assuring users of the platform that they will be able to opt out of the deals that will be made to train AI. The ...
US Supreme Court seems split over landmark social media laws
Supreme Court justices today listened to oral arguments for four hours regarding laws in Florida and Texas that seek to regulate how social media companies such as Meta Platforms Inc. and X Corp. run their platforms, a case that could fundamentally alter the future of digital free speech. The Republican-backed laws passed in Florida and ...
FTC hits antivirus firm Avast with fine for selling customer data it promised to protect
The Federal Trade Commission today announced that it’s fining U.K.-based Avast PLC $16.5 million for selling its customer data to third-party data brokers. Avast, one of the antivirus giants of the world, had advertised its product as a shield against people’s browsing data being collected and sold on to brokers. Yet it was doing exactly ...
Google admits its Gemini AI was problematic with racially diverse images, vows to fix it
Google LLC today admitted it “missed the mark” after its the image generator in its generative artificial intelligence Gemini was accused of going too far in trying to promote diversity by consistently making white historical characters nonwhite. As a result, the company has paused generation of images of people until it can come up with a ...
EU launches probe into TikTok over possible failure to protect minors
The European Union today said it’s investigating TikTok over potential Digital Services Act breaches concerning whether the social media platform has done enough to protect children from harm in the bloc. ByteDance Ltd.-owned TikTok, which recently cried foul over the fees it will have to pay for the EU’s new online moderation policies, was fined ...
AI deepfakes of mass shooting victims used to lobby Congress for gun control
It’s not often we hear about deepfake content being used as a force for good, but a group of activists in the U.S. will tell you that they began doing exactly that this week when they used the technology to lobby members of Congress for stricter gun laws in the country. On Wednesday, exactly six ...
Mozilla lays off 60 of its workforce, will now concentrate on AI for Firefox
Just a week after Mozilla Corp. hired a new chief executive in an effort to steer the company in a different direction, it announced that 60 of its staff – about 5% of the total workforce – are being laid off. Former Airbnb Inc. and eBay Inc. executive Laura Chambers took hold of the reins at ...