TikTok will let you mess up once, maybe even a couple times, but repeating your mistakes a little too often is going to cost you.

The social media platform announced Wednesday it's updating its standards for what's allowed on the algorithmically-generated For You feed, which provides users a personalized experience with videos and creators the app believes they would like. 

But come May 17, those who create content the company considers "fine if seen occasionally but problematic if viewed in clusters" won't be eligible to be on it, making their account temporarily ineligible from being on the FYF. TikTok will also make their content harder to find in search, thereby reducing a person's ability to reach a larger audience in multiple ways.

In its announcement, TikTok specified some types of "repetitive content patterns" it will start interrupting to ensure they're viewed less often. Those include "dieting, extreme fitness, sexual suggestiveness, sadness (such as statements of hopelessness, or sharing sad quotes), and overgeneralized mental health information (such as a quiz that claims to diagnose someone)."

Its policy also makes any TikTok users under the age of 16 ineligible from reaching the FYF at any time.

SEE MORE: What is the 'Oatzempic' trend, and are its social media claims true?

Creators who go against TikTok's FYF standards will be given a warning strike on their first violation, but the next will be an actual strike, which can add up to a permanent ban, the app's head of operations and trust and safety, Adam Presser, said in another TikTok blog post.

If users think a mistake has been made in revoking their FYF eligibility or account suspension, they'll be able to appeal, but zero-tolerance policies like age violations or incitement to violence won't get reminders or appeals, Presser wrote.

And if you're now worried you might be close to being banned from the app right now without knowing it, future you won't have to worry. TikTok is rolling out an "Account Check" feature that will allow users to "quickly audit" their last 30 posts to see if they're in danger of any strikes from violations. 

TikTok also released Wednesday a Creator Code of Conduct, which it says will take effect in the coming weeks. Presser said it includes standards the company expects creators involved in its features and campaigns to follow "on and off-platform." 

"We believe that being a part of these programs is an opportunity that comes with additional responsibilities, and this code will also help provide creators with additional reassurance that other participants are meeting these standards too," Presser wrote. 

The revised standards come as TikTok has increasingly come under scrutiny for how it protects its users, particularly younger ones, from harmful content and its effects. 

In November, an Amnesty International investigation found TikTok's FYF draws young people into "rabbit holes" of potentially dangerous content, "including videos that romanticize and encourage depressive thinking, self-harm and suicide." This, its report said, risks worsening existing mental health challenges.

The policy shift also comes as Congress considers a potential nationwide ban of the app unless it separates from its Chinese parent company ByteDance. Some lawmakers fear TikTok could become a national security issue if ByteDance had to divest its data on American users because of Chinese law. The bill still needs to clear the Senate.

In a sign of how a future might look in which robots and humans move about in our world, a U.S. company said it would upgrade its humanoid robot with a new model that was designed to have more real-world commercial and industrial applications. 

Boston Dynamics said in a statement its hydraulic Atlas robot model would be retired and replaced with a new fully electric Atlas robot "designed for real-world applications."

The company said it began putting research and development resources into humanoid robots around 10 years ago, and has seen other players come onto the scene in that time. Boston Dynamics said it will work with Hyundai to test new applications for its Atlas model. 

A spokesperson for the company said the now-retired humanoid robot would be put in their office lobby museum with other robots that were decommissioned, the New York Times reported. 

SEE MORE: 4-legged robot to help deter wildlife strikes at Alaska airport

The company posted a video online this week showing some of the incredible movement capabilities that the Atlas model had in some of their tests — including some of the dramatic failures it experienced at times.

"For almost a decade, Atlas has sparked our imagination, inspired the next generations of roboticists, and leapt over technical barriers in the field," the company said. "Now it's time for our hydraulic Atlas robot to kick back and relax. Take a look back at everything we've accomplished with the Atlas platform to date."

The image of a world where robots become more advanced is exciting for some, and not so much for others. Stanford noted in a brief history of robotics that some have historically perceived robots to be "dangerous technological ventures that will someday lead to the demise of the human race."

Boston Dynamics, for its part, publishes a code of ethics that states its robots should be trustworthy, must remain unweaponized and must not violate existing civil rights or privacy laws.

The Alaska Department of Transportation has hired a unique candidate for a very important job — keeping wildlife off the airport runways so planes can take off and land safely.

Aurora, a four-legged robotic animal created by Boston Dynamics, will patrol the Fairbanks International Airport for wildlife to both reduce collisions with aircraft and collect data on the animals.

“The purpose of Aurora is to help mitigate wildlife on the airfield and we have several tools that we already utilize to do just that thing. Aurora is just one additional tool,” said Zak Mitchell, the communications manager at Fairbanks International Airport in Fairbanks, Alaska.

“When she arrives here, the first year is going to be measuring her efficiency, measuring her effectiveness and whether or not the data that she’s collecting is accurate,” Mitchell said.

Aurora will be outfitted with a covering that mimics a fox, as well as one that mimics a coyote.

@scrippsnews Check this out! This four-legged #robot will be tested in Fairbanks, #Alaska as a way to help keep animals off the runway for the safety of both planes and #wildlife. Thousands of wildlife-aircraft strikes are reported to the Federal Aviation Administration every year. #aviationtiktok #wildlifeoftiktok ♬ original sound - Scripps News

“They’re natural predators for birds so we’d dress Aurora up using those skins and see how effective she is in getting them off the airfield,” Mitchell said.

Aurora will always have a handler and will also be used in coordination with wildlife biologists.

More than 270,000 wildlife strikes with civil aircraft were reported in the country between 1990 and 2022, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

A quick search of the wildlife strike database available on the FAA’s website shows more than 19,000 entries for the year of 2023. A total of 93 happened in the state of Alaska.

While most wildlife-aircraft strikes involve birds, other animals are also recorded.

Mitchell said Aurora — which is equipped with a camera — can also collect data on larger animals like a moose, for example, that may walk onto the airfield.

“She’s not going to be used every single day because again there's this assimilation that happens with animals that they’re like ‘Oh OK, well I see that all the time’,” Mitchell explained.

According to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, bird and other wildlife strikes to aircraft cause more than $900 million in damage to aircraft annually.

The $70,000 robot was purchased with a grant.

“The money to pay for that is a USDA grant so that was pursued through Statewide Aviation and Fairbanks International Airport,” Mitchell said.

Aurora should arrive in Fairbanks in June. Mitchell said they hope to officially launch the robot in 2025 after some testing.

“I do believe that we might be the first, so that's really exciting too. Because that is expectation setting, that is setting standards, and we’re leading the charge in science and technology in that regard,” Mitchell said.

SEE MORE: Bird strikes happening more while flying, but FAA may have a solution

It's clear Amazon exists in a separate (grocery) lane from most of the marketplace, but it doesn't intend to stay that way.

The company said Tuesday it's begun expanding its Dash Cart to third-party grocers in addition to all of its Amazon Fresh Stores and select Whole Foods Market locations. 

For now, one McKeever's Market and four Price Chopper stores in the Kansas City area have started testing the checkout-free technology, making them the first grocers outside of Amazon and its affiliates — it acquired Whole Foods in 2017 — to do so. And Amazon plans to make the smart carts available in more stores soon, its blog post said.

Amazon first launched its Dash Cart in 2020 only in Amazon Fresh stores. Two years and a redesign later, it introduced the product to select Whole Foods locations, and now another two years later, it's adding more clients to its roster.

The company says the carts — along with its other checkout-free services like Just Walk Out and Amazon One — help make a customers' shopping experience "measurably better" using computer vision, sensor fusion and generative AI. 

These technologies allow customers to weigh and scan as they shop, showing a real-time receipt on a screen that includes all the items in the cart. The company said this particularly helps those who make big weekly shopping trips stick to their budget while offering them personalized shopping recommendations and maps to better navigate their store.

When the customer is done shopping, they leave the store through the Amazon Dash Cart lane, and their receipt should be in their email before they're finished loading the groceries in their car.

The simple process and impressive technology are the same the company used in its Just Walk Out service, which the company recently pulled from all of its U.S. Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market stores.

The cashierless-checkout technology allows customers to enter a store, grab what they need and walk out, charging them automatically upon exit using cameras and other sensors to tally up their items. It was first used in Amazon's Go stores before the company expanded it to third-party retailers like airports, sports stadiums and entertainment venues in 2020. 

It appears Amazon wants to put that service in a separate aisle from its carts — pun intended — with Dash Carts intended for larger grocery stores giving customers longer receipts, and Just Walk Out being used in small-format stores with "mission-driven" customers. 

Even though Amazon has reduced how many of its own stores use Just Walk Out, the company said in its blog post that the technology will be in more than double the number of third-party stores it's currently in by the end of the year. 

The expansion of both technologies comes weeks after reports circulated claiming Amazon's Just Walk Out was run by more than 1,000 people in India who watched videos to ensure checkouts were working properly, according to one claim from Gizmodo. 

Amazon clarified this in the recent post too, saying "machine learning algorithms" run the technology without "any specific knowledge about the person" but that humans do label and annotate "real shopping data."

"The erroneous reports that Just Walk Out technology relies on human reviewers watching from afar is untrue," the post read. "Associates don't watch live video of shoppers to generate receipts — that's taken care of automatically by the computer vision algorithms. This is no different than any other AI system that places a high value on accuracy, where human reviewers are common."

Google has fired 28 employees in the aftermath of protests over technology that the internet company is supplying to the Israeli government amid the Gaza war, further escalating tensions surrounding a hot-button deal.

The firings confirmed by Google late Wednesday came a day after nine employees were arrested during sit-in protests at offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California, after the company called police.

The dissent roiling Google centers on “Project Nimbus,” a $1.2 billion contract signed in 2021 that calls upon Google and Amazon to provide the Israeli government with cloud computing and artificial intelligence services.

The protests are being organized primarily by a group called No Tech For Apartheid. Google says Nimbus isn't being deployed in weaponry or intelligence gathering.

In a statement, Google attributed the firing of the 28 employees to “completely unacceptable behavior” that prevented some workers from doing their jobs and created a threatening atmosphere. The Mountain View, California, company added it is still investigating what happened during the protests, implying more workers could still be fired.

SEE MORE: Police detain pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Columbia University

In a blog post, No Tech For Apartheid accused Google of lying about what happened inside its offices during what it described as a “peaceful sit-in" that received overwhelming support from other workers who weren't participating in the protest.

“This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers,” No Tech For Apartheid asserted.

The contract raising the ire of some Google workers runs within the company's cloud computing division that is overseen by a former Oracle executive, Thomas Kurian.

Under Kurian's leadership, cloud computing has emerged as one of Google's fastest-growing divisions, with revenue of $33 billion last year, a 26% increase from 2022. A wide range of private-sector companies also buy Google's cloud computing services, in addition to governments around the world.

Google workers have periodically staged angry protests over other deals the company has been working on and have also raised ethical concerns about the way it is developing artificial intelligence.

One of the previous employee uprisings resulted in Google deciding in 2018 to end a contract with the U.S. defense department called “Project Maven” that involved helping the armed forces analyze military videos.

But Google has continued to thrive, despite the internal misgivings about the way it is making some of its money. Its revenue mostly comes through digital advertising sold through an internet empire that depends on its dominant search engine as its main pillar.

Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., posted a $74 billion profit last year and now employs about 182,000 workers worldwide — about 83,000 more people than in 2018 when it abandoned Project Maven.

SEE MORE: Pro-Palestinian demonstrators block traffic to Chicago O'Hare Airport

In recent months, numerous examples have emerged of retailers curtailing self-checkouts due to a rise in theft and errors. 

Perhaps grocery chain Aldi has found the solution.

This week, Aldi joined Grabango in launching ALDIgo checkout-free shopping at a suburban Chicago store. Grabango said its technology "uses computer vision to identify and keep track of every item in the store," which allows shoppers to leave without waiting in line or scanning items.

The technology was implemented in the Aurora, Illinois, Aldi store without any changes to the grocery's layout. 

The companies say customers fill their carts like normal, and when they are done, can use an app or a pay station as they exit. 

“The launch of ALDIgo is a pivotal moment for the grocery industry,” said Will Glaser, CEO of Grabango. “Although more challenging, it was important to us to launch this technology in a typical store and not one purpose-built for us. Aldi is one of the most innovative retailers in the world, and we are honored to partner with them to give their shoppers an exciting new way to shop the store.”

Aldi claims to be the first major grocery chain to implement the technology. The company said a traditional cashier will remain an option for customers not interested in using ALDIgo. 

“It’s exciting to see a checkout-free capability live in one of our stores, said Eric Traxler, vice president of IT at Aldi. “Aldi is continuously looking for new ways to be innovative and provide a best-in-class experience for our shoppers, and ALDIgo is a great example of that in action.”

Amazon has implemented a similar technology called Just Walk Out for smaller stores. The technology allows customers to buy smaller items, such as candy and soft drinks, without scanning. 

"Just Walk Out technology detects when a shopper’s hand interacts with a product on the shelf. When that happens, machine learning algorithms make sure the correct item is added to the shopper’s virtual cart — all without any specific knowledge about the person," Amazon said. 

SEE MORE: These 10 grocery stores top the list for value, consumers say

There has been growing debate on the value of self-checkouts. Earlier this year, a study in the Journal of Business Research by researchers from Drexel University and the University of San Diego indicated that self-checkouts can damage customer loyalty. 

The study found that as customers are forced to scan more items, their checkout experience becomes less rewarding. The researchers also said that customers experienced negative consequences with larger orders, such as the extra effort to bag purchases. 

The research comes as some stores have opted to roll back self-checkout over concerns of financial losses. In 2023, Costco began policing its self-checkout lanes to catch nonmembers shopping in the store. 

Last month, Target said customers will now be limited to 10 items for self-checkout. With fewer transactions being eligible for self-checkouts, Target says it will open more traditional checkout lanes. 

A leading psychology group is renewing its warnings about the dangers of social media for kids and teens in a new report Tuesday, pushing for legislators and tech companies to fix design features they call “inherently unsafe."

The report says tech companies and legislators have made “few meaningful changes” since the APA issued a health advisory last year, warning about social media’s impact on adolescents’ social, educational, psychological, and neurological development.

The U.S. Surgeon general says kids and teens who use social media for more than 3 hours a day are doubly at risk for having mental health issues, like anxiety or depression, and said teens spend an average of 3.5 hours a day on social media.

“The region that makes us very excited about getting attention from our peers develops first around 10, 11, 12 — unfortunately, the time when a lot of kids get a device,” Mitch Prinstein, the APA’s chief science officer, told Scripps News. “And the part that helps us resist following every impulse, kind of the brain’s brakes, that doesn't fully develop until our mid-20s.”

The report says features like infinite scrolling, likes, follower counts, and push notifications are “inherently unsafe” for kids and their developing brains.  Because kids are so hypersensitive to praise and attention at that age, they APA says they’re more influenced by social feedback such as likes and follower count, which studies have shown can make teens anxious and depressed, and cause more emotional distress.

The APA also wrote that push notifications “capitalize” on kids' “sensitivity to distraction,” and can drastically impact the amount of sleep kids get during puberty.

“I can say that as long as the platforms are designed to increase kids' time spent on social media as a primary objective, that means that we're not spending enough time on making sure that what they see is appropriate [or] that how long they spend is still preserving the recommended number of hours of sleep for adaptive brain development,” Prinstein said.

While the report didn’t mention specific social media sites, Prinstein also urged companies to build time limits in the apps, and called for hateful and discriminatory content to be taken down from apps entirely.

“I am very concerned about folks who are part of the design of social media who now admit they won't let their own kids anywhere near it. I think that's a really important message for all parents to know and to prompt policymakers to work fast,” he said.

Lawmakers have introduced multiple bipartisan bills directed at stopping child exploitation online, from blocking harmful content about eating disorders and suicide, to allowing some victims of exploitation to sue companies in civil court.

In October, antitrust and tech scholar Tim Wu estimated Congress has held around 40 hearings on children and social media since 2017. Meanwhile, Politico reports congress has only passed one online-related child safety law in the past decade, and that was only specific to sex trafficking.

Prinstein says it’s important to remember kids are learning how to interpret what they see all around them, including social media. The report notes that just because a child is a certain age, that doesn’t mean they’re ready to be online. Prinstein recommends only letting children download apps once they "understand that not everything they see is real" and know "how to resist comparing themselves with others.”

The APA website has a list of ways to start the conversation about safe social media use with children. Prinstein says, they may even thank you for it. “We actually had a class of kids in their early 20s who said that they really wish their parents had not given them a device at the age of 12, even though they had asked for one,” he said. “[What] we're hearing from kids is that when parents do set these limits that actually provides some relief.”

Scripps News reached out to X, formerly known as Twitter, and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp. Only Snap, which runs Snapchat, responded to our requests for comments, and said through a spokesperson “the app doesn’t offer public comparison metrics when you talk with your friends and our content platform is moderated, which means we don’t allow unvetted content to reach lots of people.”

SEE MORE: Instagram testing tools to block nude direct messages

Even if you have outstanding fees, that text message about unpaid tolls may be a scam. 

The FBI issued a public service announcement warning people to be careful handling those messages. 

Since just last month, the FBI said its Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has received almost 2,000 complaints about smishing texts representing road toll collection services from at least three states. “Smishing” is a fake message that tricks people into clicking links to download malware, share sensitive information, or send money to criminals. 

The texts circulating claim recipients owe a specific balance and are prompted to click a link to pay and avoid a late fee. 

The FBI said the texts received are almost identical in language, with similar payment amounts, and appear as such: “(State Toll Service Name): We've noticed an outstanding toll amount of $12.51 on your record. To avoid a late fee of $50.00, visit https://myturnpiketollservices.com to settle your balance.”

The phone numbers the texts are sent from vary by state.

The FBI urges anyone who has clicked a link from such a text to secure their personal information and financial accounts, and dispute any unknown charges.

Text recipients should check their account from their state’s legitimate toll service website or customer service phone number. They should delete any smishing texts received.

“Rule of thumb, do not click on anything. Every time you receive something that seems from an official organization, try to find ... the phone number. Try to call these people or go to a computer that you trust, get onto the website of the organization and find out if you actually have issues with them,” said Edgar Maldonado, an associate professor in the Department of Computer Information Systems at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

The FBI said people who have received a scam text should file a complaint with the IC3 and include the number the text was sent from and the website listed in the text. 

@scrippsnews Have you received a text like this recently? The FBI is warning of an influx of unpaid toll text scam messages. Here’s what to watch out for and how to report them. #TextScam #scammeralert #scam ♬ original sound - Scripps News

Roku has been hit by another cyberattack, this time affecting nearly 40 times more accounts than did a similar incident earlier this year. 

The streaming company said Friday that it had identified a second security breach involving 576,000 customers as it was monitoring account activity after the first cyberattack, which affected 15,363 accounts.

In both incidents, Roku said hackers used a tactic known as "credential stuffing," meaning the unauthorized actors took username and password combinations leaked in other breaches to attempt to log into Roku's platform. This method targets those who use the same login information on multiple platforms, so it wasn't an attack on or within the Roku system itself.

"There is no indication that Roku was the source of the account credentials used in these attacks or that Roku's systems were compromised in either incident," the company said in a statement.

In fewer than 400 cases of breached accounts, hackers used stored payment information to purchase streaming service subscriptions and Roku hardware products, but the company said sensitive information like full credit card numbers was not accessed.

The announcement comes just over a month after Roku announced its first data breach of the year. On March 8, the company told impacted customers that hackers had changed some users' login credentials and, in certain cases, made purchases with stored payment data. Bleeping Computer reported then that the fraudsters were selling stolen account data for as little as $0.50 on a hacking marketplace, giving buyers access to the stored financial data on each profile. 

SEE MORE: Roku data breach compromises 15,363 accounts. Here's what to know

The company said it has since forced a password reset for the 591,363 accounts affected in the two breaches, and it's refunding or reversing the purchases hackers made on customer accounts. 

But Roku is also enacting a new security step for all users, not just those whose data was involved in the breach. All accounts are now fitted with two-factor authentication, requiring users to click on an emailed verification link anytime they try to log into their Roku account.

The company said it's notified those who were impacted in the breach, but still, it recommends all Roku users make sure they have strong, unique passwords and that they stay vigilant and informed about suspicious activity or known data breaches. 

"We sincerely regret that these incidents occurred and any disruption they may have caused," the company said in a statement. "Your account security is a top priority, and we are committed to protecting your Roku account."

The overall number of impacted users is small when compared to Roku's 80 million active accounts. However, the brunt of the attack was still felt within the company, as its stock came down nearly 3% since announcing the breach, per CNN and Reuters.

Some of Taylor Swift’s songs are back on TikTok.

Her music had been removed from the platform in January along with Universal Music Group’s entire catalog of 78,000 albums after UMG and TikTok failed to reach an agreement on a new contract.

TikTok sounds featuring music from artists like Drake, Bad Bunny and Billie Eilish had been wiped from the platform. But songs like Swift’s “Cruel Summer,” "Cardigan"and “Love Story (Taylor’s Version),” among others, are back.

Notably, it seems only songs by Swift have reappeared.

As pointed out by Variety, it’s likely the pop star may have reached a separate deal with TikTok. Because the artist owns her masters and has been rerecording old music to own it, it's possible she had the power to negotiate her own deal with the platform.

This comes a week before Swift’s new album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” is set to drop on April 19.

TikTok’s previous contract with UMG expired on Jan. 31. During negotiations, UMG accused TikTok of offering artists and songwriters a fraction of what other similarly situated social media platforms do.

TikTok fired back at the time, saying its platform of well over 1 billion users served as a free promotional tool for talent. The social media company called it “sad and disappointing” that UMG put its own greed above the interests of their artists.

Scripps News has reached out to both TikTok and Universal Music Group for comment and has not heard back yet. 

SEE MORE: Universal Music Group pulls entire catalog from TikTok

Don Beyer's car dealerships were among the first in the U.S. to set up a website. As a U.S. representative, the Virginia Democrat leads a bipartisan group focused on promoting fusion energy. He reads books about geometry for fun.

So when questions about regulating artificial intelligence emerged, the 73-year-old Beyer took what for him seemed like an obvious step, enrolling at George Mason University to get a master’s degree in machine learning. In an era when lawmakers and Supreme Court justices sometimes concede they don't understand emerging technology, Beyer's journey is an outlier, but it highlights a broader effort by members of Congress to educate themselves about artificial intelligence as they consider laws that would shape its development.

Frightening to some, thrilling to others, baffling to many: Artificial intelligence has been called a transformative technology, a threat to democracy or even an existential risk for humanity. It will fall to members of Congress to figure out how to regulate the industry in a way that encourages its potential benefits while mitigating the worst risks.

But first they have to understand what AI is, and what it isn't.

“I tend to be an AI optimist,” Beyer told The Associated Press following a recent afternoon class on George Mason's campus in suburban Virginia. "We can't even imagine how different our lives will be in five years, 10 years, 20 years, because of AI. ... There won’t be robots with red eyes coming after us any time soon. But there are other deeper existential risks that we need to pay attention to.”

SEE MORE: Congress plans to tackle AI in 2024 in 'bite-sized' pieces

Risks like massive job losses in industries made obsolete by AI, programs that retrieve biased or inaccurate results, or deepfake images, video and audio that could be leveraged for political disinformation, scams or sexual exploitation. On the other side of the equation, onerous regulations could stymie innovation, leaving the U.S. at a disadvantage as other nations look to harness the power of AI.

Striking the right balance will require input not only from tech companies but also from the industry's critics, as well as from the industries that AI may transform. While many Americans may have formed their ideas about AI from science fiction movies like “The Terminator” or “The Matrix,” it's important that lawmakers have a clear-eyed understanding of the technology, said Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., and the chairman of the House's AI Task Force.

When lawmakers have questions about AI, Obernolte is one of the people they seek out. He studied engineering and applied science at the California Institute of Technology and earned an M.S. in artificial intelligence at UCLA. The California Republican also started his own video game company. Obernolte said he's been “very pleasantly impressed” with how seriously his colleagues on both sides of the aisle are taking their responsibility to understand AI.

That shouldn't be surprising, Obernolte said. After all, lawmakers regularly vote on bills that touch on complicated legal, financial, health and scientific subjects. If you think computers are complicated, check out the rules governing Medicaid and Medicare.

SEE MORE: Artificial intelligence introduces new ethical issues to newsgathering

Keeping up with the pace of technology has challenged Congress since the steam engine and the cotton gin transformed the nation's industrial and agricultural sectors. Nuclear power and weaponry is another example of a highly technical subject that lawmakers have had to contend with in recent decades, according to Kenneth Lowande, a University of Michigan political scientist who has studied expertise and how it relates to policy-making in Congress.

Federal lawmakers have created several offices — the Library of Congress, the Congressional Budget Office, etc. — to provide resources and specialized input when necessary. They also rely on staff with specific expertise on subject topics, including technology.

Then there's another, more informal form of education that many members of Congress receive.

"They have interest groups and lobbyists banging down their door to give them briefings,” Lowande said.

Beyer said he's had a lifelong interest in computers and that when AI emerged as a topic of public interest he wanted to know more. A lot more. Almost all of his fellow students are decades younger; most don't seem that fazed when they discover their classmate is a congressman, Beyer said.

He said the classes, which he fits in around his busy congressional schedule — are already paying off. He's learned about the development of AI and the challenges facing the field. He said it's helped him understand the challenges — biases, unreliable data — and the possibilities, like improved cancer diagnoses and more efficient supply chains.

SEE MORE: The next front in the AI wars: The courtroom

Beyer is also learning how to write computer code.

“I’m finding that learning to code — which is thinking in this sort of mathematical, algorithmic step-by-step, is helping me think differently about a lot of other things — how you put together an office, how you work a piece of legislation," Beyer said.

While a computer science degree isn't required, it's imperative that lawmakers understand AI's implications for the economy, national defense, health care, education, personal privacy and intellectual property rights, according to Chris Pierson, CEO of the cybersecurity firm BlackCloak.

“AI is not good or bad,” said Pierson, who formerly worked in Washington for the Department of Homeland Security. “It's how you use it.”

The work of safeguarding AI has already begun, though it's the executive branch leading the way so far. Last month, the White House unveiled new rules that require federal agencies to show their use of AI isn't harming the public. Under an executive order issued last year, AI developers must provide information on the safety of their products.

When it comes to more substantive action, America is playing catchup to the European Union, which recently enacted the world's first significant rules governing the development and use of AI. The rules prohibit some uses — routine AI-enabled facial recognition by law enforcement, for one — while requiring other programs to submit information about safety and public risks. The landmark law is expected to serve as a blueprint for other nations as they contemplate their own AI laws.

As Congress begins that process, the focus must be on “mitigating potential harm,” said Obernolte, who said he's optimistic that lawmakers from both parties can find common ground on ways to prevent the worst AI risks.

“Nothing substantive is going to get done that isn’t bipartisan,” he said.

To help guide the conversation lawmakers created a new AI task force (Obernolte is co-chairman), as well as an AI Caucus made up of lawmakers with a particular expertise or interest in the topic. They've invited experts to brief lawmakers on the technology and its impacts — and not just computer scientists and tech gurus either, but also representatives from different sectors that see their own risks and rewards in AI.

Rep. Anna Eshoo is the Democratic chairwoman of the caucus. She represents part of California's Silicon Valley and recently introduced legislation that would require tech companies and social media platforms like Meta, Google or TikTok to identify and label AI-generated deepfakes to ensure the public isn't misled. She said the caucus has already proved its worth as a “safe place” place where lawmakers can ask questions, share resources and begin to craft consensus.

“There isn’t a bad or silly question," she said. “You have to understand something before you can accept or reject it.”

Can AI help with the shortage of therapists the country is experiencing?

The short answer: There’s potential.

“I think the need to aid in therapy is definitely there, but those just, the risks at the same time are great,” said H. Andrew Schwartz, an associate professor at Stony Brook University. He is also the director of the Human Language Analysis Lab.

Schwartz was also an author on research released this year that looks at how large language models could change the future of behavioral health care.

He said there are pros and cons to using AI in the therapy space.

@scrippsnews How would you feel if your therapist was an #ArtificialIntelligence chatbot? With the rise in AI technology, companies are looking at how the tech can be used to help in the mental health space. Experts say there are pros and cons. #MentalHealth ♬ original sound - Scripps News

While its best use may not be to replace the act of therapy between a client and clinician, there are other aspects of the job it can help with, "such as summarizing therapy sessions,” Schwartz said.

Another use could be in the assessment process.

“There's also less risk because it's not an interactive task, there’s less risk of giving someone bad, risky instructions,” he said.

Around 1 in 5 adults experience mental illness each year, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

One study found that the psychiatrist workforce would see a shortage of 14,280 to 31,091 psychiatrists by 2024.

Health companies have begun to experiment with using AI to help with the shortage of mental health care providers, but it hasn’t always gone well.

Last year, the National Eating Disorders Association took down their AI-powered chatbot after it “may have given information that was harmful," the organization wrote in an Instagram post.

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“I think they have enormous potential for helping therapists and helping more people get treatment, especially personalized treatment for their unique situation. On the other hand, to get there, to get it to have the most help the fastest, I think we’re many years away from doing that in a way that's risk-free,” Schwartz said.

SEE MORE: FDA clears AI stethoscope technology that can detect heart failure

For years, Meta has had the ability to limit the overwhelming majority of nude and obscene photos being exchanged on one of its platforms. The company now appears ready to utilize technology to stop the spread of these images. 

Meta announced on Thursday it will be testing a nudity protection feature on Instagram. Meta said that directly messaged images detected as containing nudity will be automatically blurred. The tool also encourages people to think twice before sending nude images. 

Meta said that the warnings and blurring will be default settings for users under 18. Meta will also instruct adults on how to make changes to their settings. 

The company said that the changes will cut down on instances of sextortion, the practice where scammers try to obtain nude images and then use those images to extort money from victims. 

The social media company said that the changes have gotten the endorsement from a variety of advocates.

“As an educator, parent, and researcher on adolescent online behavior, I applaud Meta’s new feature that handles the exchange of personal nude content in a thoughtful, nuanced, and appropriate way," said John Shehan, senior vice president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. "It reduces unwanted exposure to potentially traumatic images, gently introduces cognitive dissonance to those who may be open to sharing nudes, and educates people about the potential downsides involved. Each of these should help decrease the incidence of sextortion and related harms, helping to keep young people safe online.” 

SEE MORE: Senate Judiciary Committee grills social media CEOs on child safety

The changes come amid lawsuits filed against Meta. In 2023, the state of Vermont filed a lawsuit against the company claiming its platforms were harming the mental health of children and young adults. 

The lawsuit claimed that 11.9% of all users received unwanted sexual advances, including 13% of teens ages 13-15 and 14.1% of teens 16-17. 

The lawsuit also claimed that 16.3% of users viewed nudity that they “did not want to see" in the prior seven days of an internal survey. 

According to a 2021 congressional report, on Facebook, a sister platform of Instagram, artificial intelligence has the capability of flagging over 99% of violent and graphic content posted and child nudity without users flagging it. 

Meta's content monitoring process has also drawn scrutiny from Congress, which held a hearing earlier this year on the harm social media poses to young people. 

"It is unbelievable, indescribable material. And these platforms are absolutely awash with it," said Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican. 

Researchers at Stanford Medicine are using virtual reality to help those who suffer from hoarding disorder.

Carolyn Rodriguez and her team created a virtual home using scans of participants’ actual possessions. These virtual environments were then loaded into a VR headset.

“They can actually practice letting go of items, and this can be a stepping stone to real-life discarding,” said Rodriguez, a professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine and director of the Hoarding Disorders Research Program.

“Individuals with hoarding disorder have difficulty letting go of their possessions. Letting go can range from discarding, donating, recycling, and that act of parting with their possessions causes them to have a lot of distress,” she said.

@scrippsnews Researchers at Stanford University have developed a way to help those suffering from #HoardingDisorder, by recreating their belongings using #VirtualReality. This way, users can practice throwing away items virtually before doing the real thing. #research #news ♬ original sound - Scripps News

An estimated 2% to 6% of the population suffers from hoarding disorder, according to the International OCD Foundation. 

Symptoms are almost three times more common in older adults.

Some symptoms of hoarding disorder include inability to get rid of possessions, extreme stress when attempting to throw out items, and not trusting others to touch your possessions, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

“The VR sessions were well-tolerated and participants found them useful. And nearly all of the participants then said that the VR actually helped them increase real-life discarding,” Rodriguez said.

“In many cases home visits are not feasible. Either individuals live too far away or their home has too much clutter, it’s above shoulder-level or higher, and it can be dangerous,” she explained.

The team completed a pilot study last year with 9 participants. Along with VR, participants attended 16 weeks of online group therapy that gave them hoarding-related cognitive behavioral skills. Seven of the nine participants showed improvement.

Rodriguez hopes as virtual and augmented reality technology advances, this will be more feasible to implement along with other therapies currently used to help hoarding disorder.

“The best evidence that we have supports cognitive behavioral therapy for hoarding disorder,” Rodriguez said.

She explained that if you have a loved one who deals with hoarding disorder, it’s important to express empathy and praise progress.

SEE MORE: Nearly 200 animals seized, Las Vegas couple charged for animal cruelty

More than 6 million Americans have heart failure, according to the CDC. Worldwide more than 11 million people have heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, or a weak heart pump. That’s according to a 2020 study in the journal of the American Medical Association. 

A newly FDA-cleared artificial intelligence engineered by the Mayo Clinic and the company Eko Health can catch it in a matter of seconds.

The stethoscope has been around since 1816, and it’s gotten an AI makeover. Doctors use it to listen to our heart and lungs and interpret what they hear. Often, they need to do more tests, like a CT or MRI scan, to be sure about a diagnosis.

They also use an electrocardiogram, called ECG for short, to measure the heart’s electrical activity. 

Scripps News' Lindsey Theis met with Connor Landgraf, a biomechanical engineer and CEO of Eko Health. For him, using AI to improve care is a personal and professional calling. 

"I had pulmonary disease that was in my family. And I just felt like there had to be better technologies or better ways that physicians could use these tools to identify early signs of disease," said Landgraf. 

A team at Mayo Clinic and Eko Health trained the AI program by having it listen to more than 100,000 patients’ recordings and having the computer interpret the heart’s activity. The new technology can now record and analyze a person’s own heart strength in 10 to 15 seconds, showing some of the earliest, hardest-to-detect signs of heart failure with low ejection fraction. 

"This important disease that is often underdetected is associated with death, with comorbidities, with hospitalization, shortness-of-breath symptoms. And there are powerful treatments. But we have to know it's there," said Dr. Paul Friedman, cardiac electrophysiologist and cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic.

Landgraf says the stethoscope with the newly approved AI costs $429 with a monthly subscription. 

SEE MORE: New AI improves companion robots with conversation, personalization

Less than two years after it went mainstream, ChatGPT is the bot to beat. It’s got 100 million weekly users, it’s easy to work with and, to be honest, it’s kind of fun sometimes.

And now the technology is even more accessible: You can now pester ChatGPT with all of your pressing questions without the added step of creating an account.

On April 1, OpenAI, ChatGPT’s parent company, opened access to their signature AI chat tool. There’s no need to register for a login and password, and it’s totally free of charge. They made the announcement on X:

We’re rolling out the ability to start using ChatGPT instantly, without needing to sign-up, so it's even easier to experience the potential of AI. https://t.co/juhjKfQaoD pic.twitter.com/TIVoX8KFDB

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) April 1, 2024

This version of ChatGPT is an earlier generation of the software called GPT 3.5, originally released in early 2022. And this open-access version does have a few caveats: For one, you can’t save or share chats without a registered account.

You’ll also have to take extra steps if you don’t want your input used to train the AI. There’s a setting to opt out of sharing, but it resets if you clear your cookies, and you have to do it on each of your devices.

The free version isn’t yet available everywhere; the company says they’re “rolling this out gradually,” though it’s not clear precisely when and where it’ll be accessible. (I was able to access the free web version and the app from my iPad in Colorado.)

With more anonymous users comes more potential abuse, unfortunately. OpenAI says they’ve created stricter guidelines for the free bot, shaping what topics it can discuss.

I went ahead and asked ChatGPT, “Are there things I can’t ask you?” The reply:

Seems reasonable, GPT 3.5!

For folks who want the latest and greatest, ChatGPT 4 is up and running, too, though it’s not free and requires an account setup.

A $20 a month Plus subscription offers access to GPT 4’s features, including voice input, image-enabled chat and image creation using OpenAI’s DALL-E tool. (That’s the one where you can describe an image you want to see and AI generates it for you.)

But if you just want to dip your toe into the world of AI chatbots, the free ChatGPT version is a solid intro. It’s like having a virtual assistant — one who knows basically everything.

This story was originally published by Kathleen St. John at Simplemost.

Donald Trump is suing two co-founders of Trump Media & Technology Group, the newly public parent company of his Truth Social platform, arguing that they should forfeit their stock in the company because they set it up improperly.

The former U.S. president's lawsuit, which was filed on March 24 in Florida state court, follows a complaint filed in February by those co-founders, Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss. Their lawsuit sought to prevent Trump from taking steps the two said would sharply reduce their combined 8.6% stake in Trump Media. The pair filed their lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery.

SEE MORE: Trump Media stock plunges 21% after announcing $58M loss in 2023

Trump's lawsuit claims that Litinsky and Moss, who were both contestants on Trump’s reality-TV show “The Apprentice,” mishandled an attempt to take Trump Media public several years ago, allegedly putting the whole project “on ice” for more than a year and a half.

But it also targets the pair over their Delaware suit against Trump, saying that it was one of several attempts they made to block Trump Media's ultimately successful plan to go public. Trump Media accomplished that goal by merging with a publicly traded shell company called Digital World Acquisition in March.

Trump Media shares have fluctuated wildly since its stock market debut. On Tuesday, the stock closed at $51.60, up 6%, valuing the entire company at $5.9 billion.

Billie Eilish, Elvis Costello, Jon Bon Jovi, Nicki Minaj and Smokey Robinson are among more than 200 musicians who called out tech and music companies' use of artificial intelligence in an open letter Monday, saying the "assault on human creativity must be stopped."

The letter, headlined "STOP DEVALUING MUSIC," was issued by the Artist Rights Alliance, an artist-led nonprofit that advocates for musicians' rights to economic and creative freedoms. In it, musicians from around the world prompted "AI developers, technology company platforms and digital music services to cease the use of AI to infringe upon and devalue the rights of human artists."

While acknowledging the technology has "enormous potential to advance human creativity" when used responsibly, the statement asserts that some entities are already using AI to irresponsibly "sabotage creativity and undermine" people in music. 

Namely, the letter states some companies are using artists' work without their authorization to train AI models. This, the letter claims, is an effort to replace the musicians' art with AI-created content that would "substantially dilute the royalty pools that are paid out to artists" and be "catastrophic" for the many "just trying to make ends meet."

"Unchecked, AI will set in motion race to the bottom that will degrade the value of our work and prevent us from being fairly compensated for it," the letter says. "We must protect against the predatory use of AI to steal professional artists' voices and likenesses, violate creators' rights and destroy the music ecosystem."

Other artists supporting the call include Billy Porter, Camila Cabello, Darius Rucker, J Balvin, Kate Hudson, Katy Perry, Miranda Lambert, Norah Jones, Pearl Jam and the estates of Bob Marley and Frank Sinatra. The full letter and list of signees can be read here. 

SEE MORE: YouTube requiring creators to label 'realistic' AI content

The letter comes as the entertainment industry grapples with a changing technological landscape that largely kicked off with the world of streaming, both for TV/film and music. 

A deal between actors guild SAG-AFTRA and studios gave broad protections in dealing with artificial intelligence but still left members in the dark on whether their digital replicas could be used — a similar issue for musicians, who largely remain unprotected from the technology.

However, in March, Tennessee became the first state to include AI rules in legislation. Starting July 1, the ELVIS Act — or Ensuring Likeness, Voice and Image Security Act — will prohibit the use of AI to copy an artist's voice without their authorization. 

Plus, Universal Music Publishing Group has cited AI concerns as one reason it pulled its music from the app. In a statement, the group stated TikTok may be depriving artists from fair compensation by using AI models instead of copyrighted recordings. 

Now only time will tell if the protections these artists are pushing for will come through and, if so, whether the government — like in Tennessee — or entertainment-related companies — like UMPG — will be the ones to help them.

After making its stock market debut on Wall Street last week, shares in the parent company of former President Donald Trump's social media platform Truth Social plunged yesterday after the company disclosed massive losses in 2023.

Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. (DJT) unveiled in filings Monday that it lost about $58.2 million last year, with revenue of just $4.1 million. The disclosure drove the company's stock price down by 21% before closing Monday at just over $48 per share.

SEE MORE: Judge expands gag order after Trump's posts target family members

Trump's company started trading on the Nasdaq for the first time on March 26 after a merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp. was approved earlier this month allowing the company to go public. In its first day of trading, Trump Media had surpassed $79 per share at one point but has since cooled, meaning many early investors have already incurred heavy losses. 

The former president holds some 79 million shares in the newly combined company, giving him a 60% majority ownership. However, it doesn't appear he will be able to cash out on gains anytime soon to help pay his New York civil fraud judgment or any legal bills surrounding his other pending civil and criminal cases. 

According to the Wall Street Journal, people involved in high-stakes deals like the one that brought Truth Social to the public market are typically prohibited from buying or borrowing against their shares for at least six months.

Google has settled to conclude a four-year case involving how it was using data of Chrome users in incognito mode. 

The settlement comes after Google users alleged that the company was collecting data from them. The settlement was agreed upon just as a class-action trial was about to begin. 

Court documents suggest that data was collected on 136 million users. 

"Google does this without disclosure or consent of users, to profile plaintiffs and other class members. As a result, from this data, Google reaps billions of dollars in profits each year," the class-action suit alleged. 

In the settlement, Google agrees to delete billions of data records collected while users were in private viewing mode. The settlement also requires Google to block third-party cookies by default while in incognito mode when using non-Google sites for the next five years. 

Google must also rewrite its disclosures to tell users that it collects private browsing data.

Earlier this year, Google added this wording to its information on incognito mode: "While Incognito mode provides local privacy on your device, it does not affect how Google collects data when you use other products and services, as described in the Privacy Policy."

SEE MORE: DOJ sues Apple in sweeping antitrust suit over iPhone monopoly in US

The agreement does not settle any financial damages, as plaintiffs in the class-action suit are free to sue individually for damages. 

The final agreement still needs a judge's approval. 

Google has agreed to the terms of the settlement but disagrees with some of the legal and factual characteristics in the settlement. 

"We are pleased to settle this lawsuit, which we always believed was meritless. The plaintiffs originally wanted $5 billion and are receiving zero. We never associate data with users when they use Incognito mode. We are happy to delete old technical data that was never associated with an individual and was never used for any form of personalization," a Google spokesperson said.

It seems like everything is getting smarter nowadays — thanks to AI. This includes something known as companion robots.

Scripps News has been following the health tech behind companion robots, which use AI to become personalized to the humans using them, since 2019. Now, with AI advancements like ChatGPT, these robots have the ability to form deeper connections with their humans. They are considered consumer, not medical, devices.

Late last year, we met Cheri Atkins, who got her father Melvin Antilla a companion robot named ElliQ. The device, a screen with an object like a "head" that swivels and lights ups when it hears its name, can have conversations, play music or trivia, deliver messages and have video calls with its user.

“He moved down here from north Minnesota to south Minnesota with the situation changing to living alone. But we noticed once he had ElliQ it was another person to kind of talk to him,” said Atkins at the time. “So it it really became kind of having that person that was with him to remind him to do things.”

Antilla is diabetic, so those reminders include checking his blood sugar and taking his medicine. The AI tech learns with each exchange with Melvin, personalizing and prompting its responses.

Scripps News' Lindsey Theis recently met with Assaf Gad, the VP of strategy of Intuition Robots, which makes ElliQ. The company has teams in Israel and in Silicon Valley.

SCRIPPS NEWS’ LINDSEY THEIS: How popular is ElliQ? Roughly how many homes is she in across the country?

ASSAF GAD: So we are talking about a few thousand homes already. A number of them are in states like New York and Florida. They’re subsidized by government departments focused on aging. 

The device comes with a $250 fee and monthly subscription of about $60.

“Florida, is where we have multiple. We have 21 counties that work with us where ElliQ is available at no cost at all,” said Gad.

This year, the tech company updated their software using large language models and generative AI like ChatGPT and DALL-E. Before the update, the robot would show Antilla flowers; with the update, a user can paint their own. It can also co-write poetry and have rich conversations. We watched as Gad had an in-depth 10-minute chat about love with ElliQ.

Researchers in the U.S. and New Zealand have also come up with a scale they say can measure the impact of the robot’s companionship with its human using questions to track diet and exercise or mood changes. The recently published their findings in The Journal of Aging Research and Lifestyle.

“So we basically took all comers to the study. But in the future we do need to do a randomized controlled trial where half the people get ElliQ and half the people get something else, and then we compare the results,” said Dr. Elizabeth Broadbent, professor of psychological medicine at the University of Auckland.

Doctors have been prescribing companion robots to fight loneliness. Last May, the U.S. Surgeon General issued a public health advisory warning about the health impacts of social isolation and loneliness — including mental health challenges and increased risk for premature death. More than 1 in 3 older adults (37%) reported feeling a lack of companionship, according to a 2023 University of Michigan aging poll.

“It can really cause that wear and tear on our body,” said Dr. Ashwin Kotwal, geriatrician at the University of California San Francisco.

Kotwal has prescribed ElliQ and other devices like robot pets. He says robots should supplement human companionship — not substitute for it.

“We need to make sure that there are some guardrails so that what might be a Band-Aid solution doesn’t become a more permanent solution for some of these deep, more deeply rooted needs in our society,” said Kotwal.

Next, ElliQ researchers plan to study a scale that looks at the withdrawal when humans lose their companion robots. 

SEE MORE: Restaurants implementing AI, self-ordering kiosks in 2024

The theft of sensitive information belonging to millions of AT&T's current and former customers has been recently discovered online, the telecommunications giant said this weekend.

In a Saturday announcement addressing the data breach, AT&T said that a dataset found on the “dark web” contains information including some Social Security numbers and passcodes for about 7.6 million current account holders and 65.4 million former account holders.

Whether the data “originated from AT&T or one of its vendors" is still unknown, the Dallas-based company noted — adding that it had launched an investigation into the incident. AT&T has also begun notifying customers whose personal information was compromised.

Here's what you need to know.

What information was compromised in this breach?

Although varying by each customer and account, AT&T says that information involved in this breach included Social Security numbers and passcodes — which, unlike passwords, are numerical PINS that are typically four digits long.

Full names, email addresses, mailing address, phone numbers, dates of birth and AT&T account numbers may have also been compromised. The impacted data is from 2019 or earlier and does not appear to include financial information or call history, the company said.

How do I know if I was affected?

Consumers impacted by this breach should be receiving an email or letter directly from AT&T about the incident. The email notices began going out on Saturday, an AT&T spokesperson confirmed to The Associated Press.

What action has AT&T taken?

Beyond these notifications, AT&T said that it had already reset the passcodes of current users. The company added that it would pay for credit monitoring services where applicable.

AT&T also said that it “launched a robust investigation” with internal and external cybersecurity experts to investigate the situation further.

Has AT&T had data breaches like this before?

AT&T has seen several data breaches that range in size and impact over the years.

While the company says the data in this latest breach surfaced on a hacking forum nearly two weeks ago, it closely resembles a similar breach that surfaced in 2021 but which AT&T never acknowledged, cybersecurity researcher Troy Hunt told the AP Saturday.

“If they assess this and they made the wrong call on it, and we’ve had a course of years pass without them being able to notify impacted customers,” then it’s likely the company will soon face class action lawsuits, said Hunt, founder of an Australia-based website that warns people when their personal information has been exposed.

A spokesperson for AT&T declined to comment further when asked about these similarities Sunday.

How can I protect myself going forward?

Avoiding data breaches entirely can be tricky in our ever-digitized world, but consumers can take some steps to help protect themselves going forward.

The basics include creating hard-to-guess passwords and using multifactor authentication when possible. If you receive a notice about a breach, it's good idea to change your password and monitor account activity for any suspicious transactions. You'll also want to visit a company's official website for reliable contact information — as scammers sometimes try to take advantage of news like data breaches to gain your trust through look-alike phishing emails or phone calls.

In addition, the Federal Trade Commission notes that nationwide credit bureaus — such as Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — offer free credit freezes and fraud alerts that consumers can set up to help protect themselves from identity theft and other malicious activity.

Crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced Thursday to 25 years in prison for a massive fraud that unraveled with the collapse of FTX, once one of the world’s most popular platforms for exchanging digital currency.

Bankman-Fried, 32, was convicted in November of fraud and conspiracy — a dramatic fall from a crest of success that included a Super Bowl advertisement and celebrity endorsements from stars like quarterback Tom Brady, basketball star Stephen Curry and comedian Larry David.

U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan imposed the sentence in the same Manhattan courtroom where, four months ago, Bankman-Fried testified that his intention had been to revolutionize the emerging cryptocurrency market with his innovative and altruistic ideas, not to steal.

Kaplan said the sentence reflected “that there is a risk that this man will be in position to do something very bad in the future. And it’s not a trivial risk at all.” He added that it was “for the purpose of disabling him to the extent that can appropriately be done for a significant period of time.”

Bankman-Fried, 32, was convicted in November of fraud and conspiracy — a dramatic fall from a year earlier when he and his companies seemed to be riding a crest of success that resulted in a Super Bowl advertisement and celebrity endorsements from stars like quarterback Tom Brady and comedian Larry David.

Prosecutors said Bankman-Fried had cost customers, investors and lenders over $10 billion by misappropriating billions of dollars to fuel his quest for influence and dominance in the new industry, and had illegally used money from FTX depositors to cover his expenses, which included purchasing luxury properties in the Caribbean, alleged bribes to Chinese officials and private planes.

SEE MORE: In Real Life: Crypto Crash

Kaplan agreed with prosecutors Thursday that Bankman-Fried should not get leniency just because some investors and customers might get some of their lost money back. He called the argument “logically flawed” and “speculative.” He said customers lost about $8 billion, investors lost $1.7 billion and lenders were shorted by $1.3 billion.

Kaplan also cited three instances where he concluded that Bankman-Fried committed perjury during his trial testimony, including when Bankman-Fried testified that he didn't know until just weeks before FTX collapsed into bankruptcy that customer funds were being diverted to a hedge fund offshoot of FTX.

Given a chance to speak, Bankman-Fried stood and apologized in a rambling statement, saying: “A lot of people feel really let down. And they were very let down. And I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry about what happened at every stage.”

He added that, “My useful life is probably over. It’s been over for a while now, from before my arrest.”

Defense lawyer Marc Mukasey said his client was misunderstood.

“Sam was not a ruthless financial serial killer who set out every morning to hurt people,” Mukasey said. “Sam Bankman-Fried doesn’t make decisions with malice in his heart. He makes decisions with math in his head.”

A jury found that Bankman-Fried illegally used money from FTX depositors to cover his lavish spending, which authorities said included buying luxury properties in the Caribbean, flying on private jets, making outsized charitable donations and contributions to political candidates and paying bribes to Chinese officials.

Prosecutors had recommended a prison sentence of 40 to 50 years.

“The defendant victimized tens of thousands of people and companies, across several continents, over a period of multiple years. He stole money from customers who entrusted it to him; he lied to investors; he sent fabricated documents to lenders; he pumped millions of dollars in illegal donations into our political system; and he bribed foreign officials. Each of these crimes is worthy of a lengthy sentence,” prosecutors said in a court filing.

Bankman-Fried’s attorneys, friends and family had urged leniency, saying he was unlikely to re-offend again. They also said FTX's investors have largely recovered their funds — a claim disputed by bankruptcy lawyers, FTX and its creditors.

“Mr. Bankman-Fried continues to live a life of delusion,” wrote John Ray, the CEO of FTX who has been cleaning up the bankrupt company. “The ‘business’ he left on November 11, 2022 was neither solvent nor safe.”

Two weeks ago, Mukasey attacked a probation office recommendation of 100 years in prison, saying a sentence of that length would be “grotesque” and “barbaric.”

He urged the judge to sentence Bankman-Fried to a term of five to 6 1/2 years in prison, which Mukasey said was a fair reading of federal sentencing guidelines.

“Sam is not the ‘evil genius’ depicted in the media or the greedy villain described at trial,” Mukasey said, calling his client a “first-time, non-violent offender."

Bankman-Fried was worth billions of dollars on paper as the co-founder and CEO of FTX, which was the second-largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world at one time.

FTX allowed investors to buy dozens of virtual currencies, from Bitcoin to more obscure ones like Shiba Inu Coin. Flush with billions of dollars of investors’ cash, Bankman-Fried took out a Super Bowl advertisement to promote his business and bought the naming rights to an arena in Miami.

But the collapse of cryptocurrency prices in 2022 took its toll on FTX, and ultimately led to its downfall. FTX’s hedge fund affiliate, known as Alameda Research, had bought billions of dollars of various crypto investments that lost considerable amounts of value in 2022. Bankman-Fried tried to plug the holes in Alameda’s balance sheet with FTX customer funds.

Three other people from Bankman-Fried’s inner circle pleaded guilty to related crimes and testified at his trial.

The biggest name among the three was Caroline Ellison, once the girlfriend of Bankman-Fried. Ellison described Bankman-Fried as a calculating individual who knew that he was likely committing crimes when he directed the use of customer funds. Two other onetime friends of Bankman-Fried, Gary Wang and Nishad Singh, also testified they felt they were directed by Bankman-Fried to commit fraud.

SEE MORE: FTX CEO Testifies Collapse Was 'Plain Old Embezzlement'

When does discussing shared dating experiences — particularly the negative ones — go too far? 

That's the basic question at the center of a California man's lawsuit claiming a group of women crossed the line between storytelling and slandering when they posted about him in "Are We Dating the Same Guy?" Facebook groups.

With more than 3.5 million members across 200 location-based subgroups, the private pages serve as a place for women to give advice and discuss their dating experiences with the eligible bachelors in their city — one of them being the plaintiff, Stuart Lucas Murrey.

But in his lawsuit, filed in June of 2023, Murrey claims posts made about him in the Los Angeles subgroup and other similar pages over the last two to three years were filled with false statements, amounting to crimes of defamation, libel, invasion of privacy and more. 

The "defamatory" posts, the Santa Monica resident says in the suit, include that he was suspected in a murder case, had multiple domestic violence charges filed against him, that he's filed court cases against women in an attempt to extort money from them, has been aggressive in court, has STDs and that he lies about being an attorney.

Murrey is seeking $2.6 million in damages from 10 women — nine named and one anonymous — and 50 other Jane Does listed as defendants in the suit. 

The case has been moving slowly and somewhat quietly through the Los Angeles County Court system since its filing, but in the last few weeks, it's gained more public traction — namely after a group of the defendants spoke to the press following a preliminary hearing in which a judge decided to extend Murrey's time window to serve more of the Jane Does in the case.

While speaking to reporters, captured on video from Fox 11, one named defendant, Olivia Berger, said the women wanted to make the case more public to hopefully gain legal representation, as they have been representing themselves thus far.

Although they're hoping for pro bono help, the women made a GoFundMe weeks ago to raise attorney funds. On Monday, Murrey started his own fundraiser, saying the women "are begging the nation for money." 

"Many people have instead reached out to me to contribute to my cause," Murrey's GoFundMe says. "I hope to pave the way for millions of victims, most unaware they are subjects of trashy posts by trashy women."

The plaintiff's GoFundMe also states that his first time seeing many of the defendants he's suing was when their press conference was published. He said he only remembered meeting one of the women who spoke to reporters and that "any minimal interaction" with the others was "abruptly cut off by my swift rejection."

That woman he met with may have been Berger, who told reporters that she was one of the few defendants who actually went on a date with Murrey while many others either interacted with him on dating apps or just simply reacted to posts about him in Facebook groups.

She said she met up with the plaintiff in 2021 after matching with him on Tinder. But soon into the date, Berger told reporters she realized the two wouldn't get along after he didn't comply with mask policies in place at the time and began "ranting" about conspiracy theories.

"It wasn't a friendly back-and-forth conversation; it was more of him talking at me, which obviously made me uncomfortable," she told reporters. 

Berger said she felt Murrey noted her discomfort but "enjoyed" making her feel that way. She described him as "arrogant and smug" and said that when she tried to cut it off that night, he belittled her work. She later shared her "factual" experience with the "Are We Dating the Same Guy?" Facebook group. 

Another defendant who spoke to the press, Vanessa Valdes, said she spoke with Murrey on the dating app Hinge. After a "barrage of harassing messages," she says she blocked and reported him, and years later, she commented on a Facebook post about him to share her experience.

Meanwhile, Murrey said in a March 15 statement that the "only thing I did to Olivia Berger was reject her" after noting her "pictures concealed certain attributes" of her in-person appearance. He also said he doesn't "want to be referred to as someone who went on a date" with her. 

As for Valdes, Murrey said he "rightfully cut of the connection" with her after the two "never had a successfully pleasant conversation."

"The acts of these defendants are hate-fueled and relentless," Murrey said in another statement. "One can name them a female version of incels: 'femcels.' The glue of their group is their hatred of men."

The defendants argue free speech protects them from Murrey's allegations, which Valdes claims were made as a "bullying tactic to silence" the women whose intent was to keep each other safe, she told reporters. 

"We were simply coming together to share truthful accounts of our personal experiences. These included valid concerns pertaining to the plaintiff's unsettling behavior and background, all of which is public information," the defendants' GoFundMe states. "It is our opinion that this plaintiff poses a legitimate danger to the women of Los Angeles. Our negative interactions with him have spanned years. We plan to finally put an end to his harassing ways once and for all."

The defendants told reporters their case is completely separate from another involving the "Are We Dating the Same Guy?" Facebook groups, filed by a Chicago man in January.

SEE MORE: Man sues dozens over Facebook dating group's negative reviews of him

In that case, Nikko D'Ambrosio alleged posts made about him in the groups subject him to defamation, doxxing, emotional distress and more. These included comments that he was "very clingy very fast," "kept talking about how I don't want to see his bad side," and texted from a different phone when he was blocked and that he "ghosted" women.

D'Ambrosio's suit named 30 women — including the group's moderators — one woman's male relative, a multitude of Meta and Facebook properties, Patreon, GoFundMe and AWDTSG, Inc. — which owns and operates the network of groups and its website.

However, Valdes told reporters she doesn't think any defendants have been served in that case.

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating TikTok over its data and security practices, a probe that could lead to a settlement or a lawsuit against the company, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The investigation is the latest battle in Washington for the social media company, which is already fighting against a federal bill that could ban the platform in the U.S. if it doesn't break ties with its Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance.

In its investigation, the FTC has been looking into whether TikTok violated a portion of federal law that prohibits "unfair and deceptive" business practices by denying that individuals in China had access to U.S. user data, said the person, who is not authorized to discuss the investigation.

The agency also is scrutinizing the company over potential violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which requires kid-oriented apps and websites to get parents' consent before collecting personal information of children under 13.

FTC spokesperson Nicole Drayton and TikTok declined to comment on the investigation, which was first reported by Politico.

SEE MORE: How TikTok became a 'battlefield' in Russia's war with Ukraine

The agency is nearing the conclusion of its investigation and could settle with TikTok in the coming weeks. But there's not a deadline for an agreement, the person said.

If the FTC moves forward with a lawsuit instead, it would have to refer the case to the Justice Department, which would have 45 days to decide whether it wants to file a case on the FTC's behalf, make changes or send it back to the agency to pursue on its own.

The news comes nearly two years after Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner and Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the committee, urged FTC chair Lina Khan to investigate TikTok, citing a report from Buzzfeed News that said ByteDance employees in China have repeatedly accessed data on U.S. TikTok users.

In late 2022, ByteDance said it fired four employees who accessed data on journalists from Buzzfeed News and The Financial Times while attempting to track down leaks of confidential materials about the company.

Legislation that could determine TikTok's fate in the U.S. was approved in the House this month. But the bill has already run into roadblocks in the Senate, where there is little unanimity on how to best approach concerns over the social platform.

Lawmakers and intelligence officials have said they worry the platform could be used by the Chinese government to access U.S. user data or influence Americans through its popular algorithm. To date, the U.S. government hasn't provided public evidence that this has happened.

 A TikTok video portraying a father and daughter, luxury cars and glamorous homes doesn’t seem out of the norm for the social media platform. But when that father is a former defense minister of Ukraine, and an AI voice-over falsely claims he misused Western funds to fund a lavish lifestyle, the TikTok is a “breadcrumb” to a massive Russian disinformation investigation, experts say.  

 “What started as a following some breadcrumbs on a handful of TikTok accounts, ended up becoming this massive investigation into what must have been a very sizable information operation,” Andy Carvin, senior fellow and managing editor of the Atlantic Council Digital Forensic Research Lab, told Scripps News.   

Ultimately, the false TikTok video was disseminated across thousands of fake TikTok accounts, according to a new report by the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRL) on Russia’s disinformation campaigns. In many cases, it was the only post on these accounts. It included old photos of former Ukraine defense minister Oleksii Reznikov and his daughter, Anastasiia Shteingauz. The fake video also used images traced back to real estate listings of, at the time, unpurchased property, according to the DFRL.  

 “It's one thing to see a bunch of people talking about a politician and accusing them of corruption. Partisan conversations happen all the time online. But once you start seeing a similar narrative popping up again and again,” Carvin said, “well, our Spidey sense goes off when those things happen.”  

 That suspicion led to what Carvin called a “network” of TikTok accounts attempting to send a clear message.  

“The whole lot of them, when combined, clearly had a shared message of trying to convince the public that the Ukrainian government is corrupt, and they can't be trusted,” Carvin told Scripps News.

That “lot” amounted to nearly 13,000 TikTok accounts, which had a combined total of over 800,000 followers. The videos gained hundreds of thousands of views.  

A TikTok spokesperson told Scripps News the company was aware of these fake accounts before the DFRL investigation and removed them from the platform.    

“It was the largest information operation that they had ever seen on the platform. And their investigation concluded it was coming from Russia,” Carvin said. 

With over a billion users, 13,000 accounts on TikTok are a drop in the bucket. But in the realm of disinformation, this network is valuable. 

"The fact that Russia has determined that the network is valuable enough as a mass medium platform that they invested all of this time, quite probably a lot of money as well to create these accounts.”

TikTok isn’t the only battlefield in Russia’s disinformation war, Carvin said. Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube and Telegram are all parts of Russia’s ever-expanding information war which seeks to discourage support for Ukraine — especially from Western countries like the United States. 

SEE MORE: Russian intelligence controls warlord's disinformation empire with AI

“Battles are no longer purely won on physical battlefields. There are cultural and informational battlefields taking place, constantly. And they're taking place everywhere, even in places where there's no war going on,” Carvin said. 

This information attack on Ukraine isn’t new, according to the DFRL’s report. What’s different is that these campaigns are no longer just targeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky but also government officials, military figures, and local authorities.  

And the battle strategies have evolved. 

Russia’s disinformation campaign has gone a step further since the war in Ukraine: cloning legitimate and trusted news websites.   

“You just copy and paste the website, from the original version, make some adjustments to it, and drop in whatever messaging you want, that you're trying to convince the public,” Carvin said. 

In what is commonly referred to as Operation Doppelganger or the Doppelganger Campaign, which began in 2022, bad actors use this technique “to just add that extra layer of credibility to their messages,” Carvin said.   

"All it takes is people to start sharing a link without thinking very hard,” he added. 

Another technique combines these strategies, using fake social media videos and impersonating news websites. Through videos shared on X pretending to be from the BBC, pro-Russian social media sources amplified false allegations that Ukraine re-sold weapons to drug cartels and terrorist groups like Hamas. The BBC denied any involvement with the falsified video.  

“Russia has a fascinating strategy when it comes to posting propaganda disinformation and the like,” Carvin said. “They don't embrace quality. Their goal isn't to make the perfect deep fake or the perfect lie. They would rather throw as much spaghetti as possible at the wall and see what sticks.” 

“Because part of the role of these campaigns is to confuse the public to the point where they truly believe nothing anymore,” he added.   

Russia's information war against Ukraine remained in full swing this week after Russian President Vladimir Putin recently claimed without proof Ukraine was involved in the terror attack outside Moscow last week.  

Carvin said Russia is in the anti-Ukraine disinformation war “for a long haul.” That long game is currently playing out in the US where there is growing partisan dividing line over continuing aid to Ukraine.    

“From Russia's perspective, all they have to do is wear down enough of the public and enough policymakers around the world that things shift away from some countries and individuals supporting Ukraine.”

YouTube has undergone major changes since it first launched in 2005 — it's now a multibillion-dollar platform.

Scripps News found the family behind an iconic YouTube video from 2008 to get an inside look at the business of going viral.

The video is titled "David After Dentist." David Devore said he decided to record his son, David Jr., when he noticed his then-7-year-old appeared loopy after a dental procedure. 

Devore said it wasn't his intention to go viral, rather he just wanted to share the large video file with his family. 

"So, I decided to just upload it to this thing called YouTube," he said. "By the end of Sunday, we had 10,000 views and by Wednesday we had 3 or 4 million."

The 1-minute, 58-second video now has more than 142 million views, and the Devores are cashing in off its success.

YouTube shares 55% of its ad money with video creators in its partner program, according to The New York Times. 

To enroll in the program, YouTube says users need at least 1,000 subscribers. Their videos must also have been watched for over 4,000 hours over the past 12 months. The Devores say when they enrolled, the money was life-changing.

"It was in the thousands a day in the beginning and then settled into thousands a month," said David Sr.

It's not just the Devores making money off of YouTube: The platform generated more than $31 billion in revenue in 2023.

Shares in the parent company of former President Donald Trump's social media platform Truth Social rose 16% on it first day on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

Shares for Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. (DJT) surged by more than 40% in the first two hours of trading to about $70 per share. The stock began to settle later in the day, closing at nearly $60.

Trading was so intense at point point during the day, there was a brief pause in trading of DJT to allow investors time to address the stock's extreme volatility.

SEE MORE: Truth Social will go public on Tuesday, and could net Trump billions

Trump's social media company went public for the first time Tuesday morning after a merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp. was approved last week. The former president holds some 79 million shares in the newly combined company, giving him a 60% majority ownership and adding billions of dollars to his net worth. 

The merger came just weeks after Trump was ordered to pay $454 million in a civil fraud judgment out of New York — something his lawyers said was "not possible under the circumstances presented." However, an appeals court lowered the bond amount Monday, ruling that Trump must only come up with $175 million in 10 days in order to satisfy the judgment. 

"We will abide by the decision of the Appellate Division, and post either a bond, equivalent securities, or cash," Trump said in a statement after the ruling. 

SEE MORE: Trump wins lower bond in civil case; NY criminal trial set for April

However, it doesn't appear the former president will be able to cash out on his recent gains anytime soon to help pay his New York civil fraud judgement or any legal bills surrounding his other pending civil and criminal cases. According to the Wall Street Journal, people involved in high-stakes deals like the one that brought Truth Social to the public market are typically prohibited from buying or borrowing against their shares for at least six months.

Florida will have one of the country's most restrictive social media bans for minors — if it withstands expected legal challenges — under a bill signed by Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday.

The bill will ban social media accounts for children under 14 and require parental permission for 14- and 15-year-olds. It was slightly watered down from a proposal DeSantis vetoed earlier this month, a week before the annual legislative session ended.

The new law was Republican Speaker Paul Renner's top legislative priority. It takes effect Jan. 1.

"A child in their brain development doesn't have the ability to know that they're being sucked into these addictive technologies and to see the harm and step away from it, and because of that we have to step in for them," Renner said at the bill-signing ceremony held at a Jacksonville school.

The bill DeSantis vetoed would have banned minors under 16 from popular social media platforms regardless of parental consent. But before the veto, he worked out compromise language with Renner to alleviate the governor's concerns and the Legislature sent DeSantis a second bill.

Several states have considered similar legislation. In Arkansas, a federal judge in August blocked enforcement of a law that required parental consent for minors to create new social media accounts.

Supporters in Florida hope the bill will withstand legal challenges because it would ban social media formats based on addictive features such as notification alerts and auto-play videos, rather than on their content.

SEE MORE: More Instagram users note platform limits political content by default

Renner said he expects social media companies to "sue the second after this is signed. But you know what? We're going to beat them. We're going to beat them and we're never, ever going to stop."

DeSantis also acknowledged the law will be challenged on First Amendment issues, and bemoaned the fact the "Stop Woke Act" he signed into law two years ago was recently struck down by an appeals court with a majority of Republican-appointed judges. They ruled it violated free speech rights by banning private business from including discussions about racial inequality in employee training.

"Any time I see a bill, if I don't think it's constitutional, I veto it," said DeSantis, a lawyer, expressing confidence that the social media ban will be upheld. "We not only satisfied me, but we also satisfied, I think, a fair application of the law and Constitution."

Khara Boender, a state policy director for the Computer & Communications Industry Association, said in a news release that she understands the concern for online safety but expressed doubt the law will "meaningfully achieve those goals without infringing on the First Amendment rights of younger users."

She also anticipated a legal challenge.

"This law could create substantial obstacles for young people seeking access to online information, a right afforded to all Americans regardless of age," Bonder said.

The bill overwhelmingly passed both chambers, with some Democrats joining a majority of Republicans who supported the measure. Opponents argued it is unconstitutional and government shouldn't interfere with decisions parents make with their children.

"This bill goes too far in taking away parents' rights," Democratic Rep. Anna Eskamani said in a news release. "Instead of banning social media access, it would be better to ensure improved parental oversight tools, improved access to data to stop bad actors, alongside major investments in Florida's mental health systems and programs."

The company that owns Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform will go public on Tuesday in a deal that could be worth billions of dollars for Trump personally.

Trump Media & Technology Group is being acquired by Digital World Acquisition Corp., a public company that trades on the Nasdaq stock exchange. DWAC’s shareholders voted to allow the merger on Friday.

The new stock will trade under the ticker name “DJT.”

Trump will hold close to 79 million shares in the newly combined company, giving him majority ownership. At current stock prices as of the close on Monday afternoon, his stake would be worth more than $3 billion.

It is not likely that Trump would use the funds to pay the $454 million legal judgments against him. New shares are subject to provisions that prevent their sale for at least six months after they’re issued.

SEE MORE: Trump wins lower bond in civil case; NY criminal trial set for April

Trump moved his trademark social postings to Truth Social in 2022 after he was banned from Facebook Twitter — now X — after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. 

While no official counts exist, Truth Social is estimated to have some 5 million users. For comparison, in 2023, X CEO Elon Musk said that company had more than 540 million monthly users.

European Union regulators opened investigations into Apple, Google and Meta on Monday, in the first cases under a sweeping new law designed to stop Big Tech companies from cornering digital markets that took effect earlier this month.

The European Commission, the 27-nation bloc's executive arm, said it was investigating the companies for "non-compliance" with the Digital Markets Act.

The Digital Markets Act is a broad rulebook that targets Big Tech "gatekeeper" companies providing "core platform services" by forcing them to comply with a set of do's and don'ts, under threat of hefty financial penalties or even breaking up businesses. The rules have the broad but vague goal of making digital markets "fairer" and "more contestable" by breaking up closed tech ecosystems that lock consumers into a single company's products or services.

The commission said in a press release that it "suspects that the measures put in place by these gatekeepers fall short of effective compliance of their obligations under the DMA."

It's looking into whether Google and Apple are fully complying with the DMA's rules requiring tech companies to allow app developers to direct users to offers available outside their app stores. The commission said it's concerned the two companies are imposing "various restrictions and limitations" including charging fees that prevent apps from freely promoting offers.

Google is also facing scrutiny for not complying with DMA provisions that prevent tech giants from giving preference to their own services over rivals. The commission said it is concerned Google's measures will result in third-party services listed on Google's search results page not being treated "in a fair and non-discriminatory manner."

The commission is also investigating whether Apple is doing enough to allow iPhone users to easily change web browsers. It's also looking into Meta's option for users to pay a monthly fee for ad-free versions of Facebook or Instagram so they can avoid having their personal data used to target them with online ads.

"The Commission is concerned that the binary choice imposed by Meta's 'pay or consent' model may not provide a real alternative in case users do not consent, thereby not achieving the objective of preventing the accumulation of personal data by gatekeepers," it said.

SEE MORE: DOJ sues Apple in sweeping antitrust suit over iPhone monopoly in US

Instagram users have been posting more and more complaints about the social platform's practice of limiting political content by default. 

The site and app, owned by Facebook parent company Meta, appears to have quietly posted guidance online in early February on how political content will be limited unless a user goes in and manually changes a setting not to limit the content. 

Instagram said in the post, "If you decide to follow accounts that post political content, we don’t want to get between you and their posts, but we also don’t want to proactively recommend political content from accounts you don’t follow."

SEE MORE: Social media influencer charged with joining Jan. 6 attack on Capitol

Some users have chosen to post their grievances on X, formerly called Twitter — with some accusing the platform of limiting political content while allowing other offensive content to flourish. 

Other users are posting tutorials showing how to update the setting to allow more political content to show up in feeds. 

Tech and investment outlet Ars Technica accused Instagram of not expressly notifying its users of such a big and important change to the platform, which came during a key election year in the United States. 

A spokesperson for Instagram, Dani Lever, responded to the outlet telling them the change doesn't "impact posts from accounts people choose to follow." 

Lever said the change "impacts what the system recommends, and people can control if they want more."

Instagram said on their website that the change will also roll out to Facebook "at a later date."

To update your account on Instagram, the platform says users should navigate to the "Suggested content" screen and then choose "Political content." From there users can choose to either "Limit" political content, or "Don't limit," as options. 

The U.N. General Assembly approved a first-of-its-kind resolution on artificial intelligence this week. 

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas Greenfield was instrumental in passing the resolution, which warns against malicious development. 

Greenfield notes that the U.S. and other countries have already taken measures to address the safety of AI. 

 "What we have done as a country, first, President Biden announced that we were going to engage in this when he was here in September," she said. "We have engaged with the private sector, gotten private-sector entities to agree to certain principles. And so what this does is it sets a platform for countries to base their own initiative."

Greenfield noted that the tech industry has been consulted on this issue, and they are getting buy-in,

"They're deploying AI, so they have to be part of any discussions about it," she said.

Despite all of the countries signing on to the resolution, it is non-binding. Greenfield appears to have faith that even countries like China will abide by the resolution.

"The fact that they wanted to join consensus, I think, is a positive sign," she said. 

With the U.S. taking action on AI and the European Union passing its own set of regulations last week, Greenfield believes progress on this issue is being made. 

SEE MORE: The White House wants feedback on keeping AI private or open-source

Donald Trump is returning to the stock market.

Shareholders of Digital World Acquisition Corp., a publicly traded shell company, approved a deal to merge with the former president's media business in a Friday vote. That means Trump Media & Technology Group, whose flagship product is social networking site Truth Social, will soon begin trading on the Nasdaq stock market.

Trump could receive a sizable payout in the process. He would own most of the combined company — or nearly 79 million shares. Multiply that by Digital World's closing stock price Thursday of $42.81, and the total value of Trump's stake could surpass $3 billion. The shares did fall 5% after the merger approval was announced.

The deal's greenlight arrives at a time the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is facing his most costly legal battle to date: a $454 million judgment in a fraud lawsuit.

But Trump won't be able to cash out the Friday deal's windfall immediately, unless some things change, due to a "lock-up" provision that prevents company insiders from selling newly issued shares for six months.

Trump's presidential campaign did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Trump's earlier foray into the stock market didn't end well. Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts went public in 1995 under the symbol DJT — the same symbol Trump Media will trade under. By 2004, Trump's casino company had filed for bankruptcy protection and was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.

Ahead of the merger's approval, Digital World's regulatory filings listed many of the risks its investors face, as well as those of the Truth Social owner once Trump Media also goes public.

One risk, the company said, is that Trump would be entitled to vote in his own interest as a controlling stockholder — which may not always be in the interests of all shareholders. Digital World also cited the high rate of failure for new social media platforms, as well as Trump Media's expectation that it would lose money on its operations "for the foreseeable future."

Trump Media lost $49 million in the first nine months of last year, when it brought in just $3.4 million in revenue and had to pay $37.7 million in interest expenses.

Trump Media and Digital World first announced their merger plans in October 2021. In addition to a federal probe, the deal has faced a series of lawsuits leading up to Friday's vote.

Truth Social launched in February 2022, one year after Trump was banned from major social platforms including Facebook and Twitter, the platform now known as X, following the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. He's since been reinstated to both but has stuck with Truth Social as a megaphone for his message.

Trump promoted Truth Social in a post on the social media network Thursday evening, saying: "TRUTH SOCIAL IS MY VOICE, AND THE REAL VOICE OF AMERICA!!! MAGA2024!!!"

Trump Media hasn't so far disclose Truth Social's user numbers. But research firm Similarweb estimates that it had roughly 5 million active mobile and web users in February. That's far below TikTok's more than 2 billion and Facebook's 3 billion — but still higher than rivals like Parler, which has been offline for nearly a year but is planning a comeback, or Gettr, which had less than 2 million visitors in February.

SEE MORE: Prosecutors say Donald Trump's hush money trial should start April 15

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee on Thursday signed off on legislation designed to protect songwriters, performers and other music industry professionals against the potential dangers of artificial intelligence.

The move makes Tennessee, long known as the birthplace of country music and the launchpad for musical legends, the first state in the U.S. to enact such measures. Supporters say the goal is to ensure that AI tools cannot replicate an artist’s voice without their consent. The bill goes into effect July 1.

“We employ more people in Tennessee in the music industry than any other state,” Lee told reporters shortly after signing the bill into law. “Artists have intellectual property. They have gifts. They have a uniqueness that is theirs and theirs alone, certainly not artificial intelligence.”

The Volunteer State is just one of three states where name, photographs and likeness are considered a property right rather than a right of publicity. According to the newly signed statute — dubbed the Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security Act or “ELVIS Act” — vocal likeness will now be added to that list.

The law also creates a new civil action where people can be held liable if they publish or perform an individual's voice without permission, as well as use a technology to produce an artist's name, photographs, voice or likeness without the proper authorization.

Yet it remains to be seen how effective the legislation will be for artists looking to shield their art from being scraped and replicated by AI without their permission. Supporters like Lee acknowledged that despite the sweeping support from those inside the music industry and unanimous approval from the Tennessee Statehouse, the legislation is untested. Amid ongoing clashes between the GOP supermajority and handful of Democrats, this level of bipartisan agreement is a shocking anomaly.

Many Tennessee musicians say they don't have the luxury to wait for a perfect solution, pointing out that the threats of AI are already showing up on their cellphones and in their recording studios.

“Stuff comes in on my phone and I can't tell it's not me,” said country star Luke Bryan. “It's a real deal now and hopefully this will curb it and slow it down.”

SEE MORE: House floats a new bill for warning labels on AI-generated content

The Republican governor held the bill signing event at the heart of Nashville’s Lower Broadway inside a packed Robert’s Western World. The beloved honky tonk is often overflowing with tourists eager to listen to traditional country music and snag a fried bologna sandwich.

Lee joked that he and his wife, Maria, sometimes sneak into Robert’s for an incognito date while other lawmakers swapped stories about swinging by the iconic establishment on the weekends.

Naming the newly enacted statute after Elvis Presley wasn't just a nod to one of the state's most iconic residents.

The death of Presley in 1977 sparked a contentious and lengthy legal battle over the unauthorized use of his name and likeness, as many argued that once a celebrity died, their name and image entered into the public domain.

However, by 1984 the Tennessee Legislature passed the Personal Rights Protection Act, which ensured that personality rights do not stop at death and can be passed down to others. It states that “the individual rights … constitute property rights and are freely assignable and licensable, and do not expire upon the death of the individual so protected.”

The move was largely seen as critical to protecting Presley’s estate, but in the decades since then has also been praised as protecting the names, photographs and likenesses of all of Tennessee’s public figures.

Now Tennessee will add vocal likeness to those protections.

In a new report released this week, the United Nations said the amount of electronics waste worldwide is growing even as efforts to recycle it may be falling even further behind targets. 

The Global E-waste Monitor's report defines e-waste as "any discarded product with a plug or battery." This includes phones, computers, e-cigarettes, solar panels and other electronic appliances. It doesn't include electronic vehicle waste.

The report says in 2022, 62 million tons of waste was discarded. By 2030, totals could reach 82 million tons. 

The waste threatens the state of the environment and the health of humans. Mercury, cadmium, lead and arsenic found in electronic waste can cause neurological damage, cancer and miscarriages.

The report also notes that discarded tech products equals billions of dollars in potentially recoverable materials that are going to waste. Discarded metals in waste — like copper and gold —could be worth more than $90 billion if the materials were properly reclaimed. Right now, recycled rare earth metals only meet 1% of demand.

The growth of the electronics waste problem globally is expected to outpace recycling efforts, even further. 

E-waste is discarded at a rate five times faster than it is recycled, and only a quarter of it was properly handled for recycling in 2022, the U.N. said.

Overall consumption of electronic tech is climbing, and products are sometimes more difficult to repair and may also be trending toward shorter life cycles.

SEE MORE: WHO predicts cancer cases will rise 77% by 2050

"The latest research shows that the global challenge posed by e-waste is only going to grow," according to an analysis written by Cosmas Luckyson Zavazava, the head of the ITU telecommunication development bureau. "With less than half of the world implementing and enforcing approaches to manage the problem, this raises the alarm for sound regulations to boost collection and recycling."

The report says efforts to recycle more e-waste could pay for themselves, especially through avoiding the costs of health problems. If 60% of e-waste were recycled, it could return billions of dollars over the costs of processing, according to the report's findings.

"We must seize the economic and environmental benefits of proper e-waste management," according to Vanessa Gray, the head of the Environment & Emergency Telecommunications Division for the ITU's Telecommunication Development Bureau. She says, "Otherwise, the digital ambitions of our future generations will face significant risks."

The House of Representatives on Thursday introduced a new bill that would require disclaimers to be attached to AI-generated content online.

The bill, which has support from both Democrats and Republicans, would require AI-generated content to be marked with digital signatures in their metadata. AI content on platforms like YouTube or TikTok would have to carry disclaimers that users would recognize.

“We've seen so many examples already, whether it's voice manipulation or a video deepfake. I think the American people deserve to know whether something is a deepfake or not," said Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo of California, one of the bill's sponsors.

Florida Republican Neal Dunn, also a sponsor, said a rule to require disclaimers on AI content would be a "simple safeguard" for all of the audiences that AI reaches.

The final rule would be implemented by the Federal Trade Commission. Violators could face civil lawsuits.

SEE MORE: YouTube requiring creators to label 'realistic' AI content

The new legislation joins other efforts from lawmakers and tech companies worldwide to manage the new wave of AI content.

A group of large tech and social platform companies have already signed on to voluntary measures that would manage AI content. In July of 2023, companies including Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI agreed to new guidelines set up by the Biden administration that would include third-party testing for cybersecurity, information sharing with researchers and regulators and some disclaimer practices for consumers like those Congress is now weighing.

Later that year, Google and Meta announced they would set up new rules to require disclosure labels on political ad content that included any AI elements.

President Biden has signed an executive order regulating the use of AI by federal agencies.

And EU regulators have already set out comprehensive rules for the use of AI, set to go into full force in 2025. Broadly, they will manage or ban AI practices that pose risks to the public, hold AI developers to specific safety obligations and set up a governing body in the EU to carry out continued oversight.

Reddit's stock soared in its Wall Street debut as investors pushed the value of the company close to $9 billion seconds after it began trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Reddit, which priced its IPO at $34 a share, debuted Thursday afternoon at $47 a share. At the close of trading, it was up 48% at $50.44, backing off a peak of $57.80.

“This volatility is not surprising because there has been a lot of buzz around Reddit,” Reena Aggarwal, director of Georgetown University’s Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy, noted.

When Reddit's price initially jumped, she explained, some investors who got an allocation may have sold their shares to cash in on the gains, bringing it back down. She noted that this pattern could continue in the stock's early days.

Reddit's IPO will test the quirky company’s ability to overcome a nearly 20-year history colored by uninterrupted losses, management turmoil and user backlashes to build a sustainable business.

The interest surrounding Reddit stems largely from a large audience that religiously visits the service to discuss a potpourri of subjects that range from silly memes to existential worries, as well as get recommendations from like-minded people.

About 76 million users checked into one of Reddit’s roughly 100,000 communities in December, according to the regulatory disclosures required before the San Francisco company went public. Reddit set aside up to 1.76 million of 15.3 million shares being offered in the IPO for users of its service.

Per the usual IPO custom, the remaining shares are expected to be bought primarily by mutual funds and other institutional investors betting Reddit is ready for prime time in finance.

Reddit’s moneymaking potential also has attracted some prominent supporters, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who accumulated a stake as an early investor that has made him one of the company’s biggest shareholders. Altman owns 12.2 million shares of Reddit stock, according to the company’s IPO disclosures.

By the tech industry’s standards, Reddit remains extraordinarily small for a company that has been around as long as it has. Thursday's opening debut valuation of $9 billion, for example, is still far below the $1.2 trillion market value boasted by Meta Platforms — whose biggest social media service Facebook was started just 18 months earlier than Reddit.

Reddit has never profited from its broad reach while piling up cumulative losses of $717 million. That number has swollen from cumulative losses of $467 million in December 2021 when the company first filed papers to go public before aborting that attempt.

In the recent documents filed for its revived IPO, Reddit attributed the losses to a fairly recent focus on finding new ways to boost revenue.

Not long after it was born, Reddit was sold to magazine publisher Conde Nast for $10 million in a deal that meant the company didn’t need to run as a standalone business. Even after Conde Nast parent Advance Magazine Publishers spun off Reddit in 2011, the company said in its IPO filing that it didn’t begin to focus on generating revenue until 2018.

Those efforts, mostly centered around selling ads, have helped the social platform increase its annual revenue from $229 million in 2020 to $804 million last year. But the San Francisco-based company also posted combined losses of $436 million from 2020 through 2023.

Reddit outlined a strategy in its filing, calling for even more ad sales on a service that it believes will be a powerful marketing magnet because so many people search for product recommendations there. The company also is hoping to bring in more money by licensing access to its content in deals similar to the $60 million that Google recently struck to help train its artificial intelligence models. That ambition, though, faced an almost immediate challenge when the U.S. Federal Trade Commission opened an inquiry into the arrangement.

Since Thursday just marks Reddit's first day on the public market, Aggarwal stressed that the first key measure of success will boil down to the company's next earnings call. “As a public company now they have to report a lot more ... in the next earnings release," she said. "I’m sure the market will watch that carefully.” Reddit also experienced tumultuous bouts of instability in leadership that may scare off prospective investors. Company co-founders Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian — the husband of tennis superstar Serena Williams — both left Reddit in 2009 while Conde Nast was still in control, only to return years later.

Huffman, 40, is now CEO. Although his founder’s letter leading up to this IPO didn’t mention it, Huffman touched upon the company’s past turmoil in another missive included in a December 2021 filing attempt that was subsequently canceled. “We lived these challenges publicly and have the scars, learnings, and policy updates to prove it," Huffman then wrote. "Our history influences our future. There will undoubtedly be more challenges to come.”

Elon Musk's startup neurotechnology company Neuralink has shared new footage that purportedly shows the first patient with a brain-implanted device demonstrating how it works.

Neuralink posted a video on social media Wednesday introducing 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh as the "first telekinetic" human with the company's implanted brain–computer interface. Arbaugh explains that he is a quadriplegic who was paralyzed from the shoulders down in a "freak diving accident" about eight years ago, but is now able to control a computer cursor — and play digital chess — just by using his mind.

https://t.co/OMIeGGjYtG

— Neuralink (@neuralink) March 20, 2024

"I love playing chess and so this is one of the things that y'all [Neuralink] have enabled me to do, something I wasn't able to really do much the last few years, especially not like this," Arbaugh said. "I have used like a mouth stick and stuff, but now it's all being done with my brain. Y'all can see the cursor moving around the screen. That's all me."

A Neuralink engineer filming the video then asks Arbaugh if he can pause the music that is playing in the background, which he is also seemingly able to do without moving any of his limbs.

"It's all brain power," Arbaugh said.

In addition to playing chess, Arbaugh goes on to explain that he's also used Neuralink to play other video games for several hours on end — something he wasn't able to do before.

"It just wasn't really feasible [before] for me to play a full game or anything, and now I can just lie in bed and play to my heart's content," Arbaugh said. "Honestly, the biggest restriction at this point was like having to wait for the implant to charge once I used all of it. So, play for eight hours, have to get off and let it charge for a while and then hopefully be able to play some more."

SEE MORE: First human Neuralink patient can move a mouse cursor, Elon Musk says

Billionaire Musk, who founded Neuralink in 2016, shared the video of Arbaugh on his social media site X saying it demonstrated "telepathy." According to Neuralink's website, the company's mission statement is to "create a generalized brain interface to restore autonomy to those with unmet medical needs today and unlock human potential tomorrow."  

Neuralink was granted FDA approval for a human study on brain implants back in May 2023. This came as the company was reportedly under investigation for animal cruelty allegations during the preliminary testing phase of the technology.  

The nonprofit organization Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine issued a statement calling for an investigation into the biotech company in September 2023 after the death of a dozen monkeys on which the brain implant was being tested.

Scripps News reached out to Neuralink for more information about the implant and patient, but has not yet received a response. The company's claim that its brain-implanted device can provide telekinetic capabilities for humans has not been independently verified.

The Justice Department on Thursday announced a sweeping antitrust lawsuit against Apple, accusing the tech giant of engineering an illegal monopoly in smartphones that boxes out competitors and stifles innovation.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New Jersey, alleges that Apple has monopoly power in the smartphone market and uses its control over the iPhone to "engage in a broad, sustained, and illegal course of conduct."

The lawsuit — which was also filed with 16 state attorneys general — is the latest example of the Justice Department's approach to aggressive enforcement of federal antitrust law that officials say is aimed at ensuring a fair and competitive market, even as it has lost some significant anticompetition cases.

"Monopolies like Apple’s threaten the free and fair markets upon which our economy is based. They stifle innovation, they hurt producers and workers, and they increase costs for consumers," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press conference Thursday.

He said Apple engaged in "anticompetitive conduct," such as making it more difficult to message with third-party devices. He pointed to the example of "green texts" from non-iPhone users, which don't show typing bubbles, don't allow edits on messages and send grainy videos.

In addition to messaging, Garland said Apple degrades the functionality of non-Apple apps and accessories, like third-party smartwatches synced to an iPhone.

These types of examples, he said, are what make its monopoly illegal.

"Having monopoly power does not itself violate the antitrust laws. But it does when a firm acquires or maintains monopoly power not because it has a superior product or a superior business acumen, but by engaging in exclusionary conduct," Garland said.

"As set out in our complaint, Apple has maintained its power not because of its superiority — because of its unlawful, exclusionary behavior," he said.

In response to the allegations, Apple called the lawsuit "wrong on the facts and the law" and said it "will vigorously defend against it."

President Joe Biden has called for the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission to vigorously enforce antitrust statutes. The increased policing of corporate mergers and business deals has been met with resistance from some business leaders who have said the Democratic administration is overreaching, but it's been lauded by others as long overdue.

The case is taking direct aim at the digital fortress that Apple Inc., based in Cupertino, California, has assiduously built around the iPhone and other popular products such as the iPad, Mac and Apple Watch to create what is often referred to as a "walled garden" so its meticulously designed hardware and software can seamlessly flourish together while requiring consumers to do little more than turn the devices on.

The strategy has helped make Apple the world's most prosperous company, with annual revenue of nearly $400 billion and, until recently, a market value of more than $3 trillion. But Apple's shares have fallen by 7% this year even as most of the stock market has climbed to new highs, resulting in long-time rival Microsoft — a target of a major Justice Department antitrust case a quarter-century ago — to seize the mantle as the world's most valuable company.

Apple said the lawsuit, if successful, would "hinder our ability to create the kind of technology people expect from Apple — where hardware, software, and services intersect" and would "set a dangerous precedent, empowering government to take a heavy hand in designing people's technology."

"At Apple, we innovate every day to make technology people love — designing products that work seamlessly together, protect people's privacy and security, and create a magical experience for our users," the company said in a statement. "This lawsuit threatens who we are and the principles that set Apple products apart in fiercely competitive markets."

Apple has defended the walled garden as an indispensable feature prized by consumers who want the best protection available for their personal information. It has described the barrier as a way for the iPhone to distinguish itself from devices running on Google's Android software, which isn't as restrictive and is licensed to a wide range of manufacturers.

Fears about an antitrust crackdown on Apple's business model have contributed to the drop in the company's stock price, along with concerns that it is lagging Microsoft and Google in the push to develop products powered by artificial intelligence technology.

But antitrust regulators made it clear in their complaint that they see Apple's walled garden most as a weapon to ward off competition, creating market conditions that enable it to charge higher prices that have propelled its lofty profit margins while stifling innovation.

"Consumers should not have to pay higher prices because companies violate the antitrust laws," Garland said in a statement. "We allege that Apple has maintained monopoly power in the smartphone market, not simply by staying ahead of the competition on the merits, but by violating federal antitrust law. If left unchallenged, Apple will only continue to strengthen its smartphone monopoly."

With the attempt to rein in Apple's dominance, the Biden administration is escalating an antitrust siege that has already triggered lawsuits against Google and Amazon accusing them of engaging in illegal tactics to thwart competition, as well as unsuccessful attempts to block acquisitions by Microsoft and Facebook parent Meta Platforms.

Apple's business interests are also entangled in the Justice Department's case against Google, which went to trial last fall and is headed toward final arguments scheduled to begin May 1 in Washington, D.C. In that case, regulators are alleging Google has stymied competition by paying for the rights for its already dominant online search engine to be the automatic place to handle queries on the iPhone and a variety of web browsers in an arrangement that generates an estimated $15 billion to $20 billion annually.

Now that the Justice Department is mounting a direct attack across its business, Apple stands to lose even more.

The Justice Department is following up on other recent attempts to force Apple to change the way it runs the iPhone and other parts of its business.

Epic Games, the maker of the popular Fortnite video game, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple in 2020 in an effort to break down the barriers protecting the iPhone App Store and a lucrative payment system operating within it. Apple has long collected commissions ranging from 15% to 30% on digital transactions completed within apps, a setup that Epic alleged was enabled by an illegal monopoly that drives up prices for consumers.

After a monthlong trial in 2021, a federal judge ruled mostly in favor of Apple with the exception of deciding that links to competing payment options should be permitted inside of iPhone apps. Apple unsuccessfully resisted that portion of the ruling until the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal in January, forcing the company to relent. But the concessions that Apple made to comply with the ruling are still facing a "bad faith" challenge from Epic, which is seeking an April 30 hearing to ask U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to order more changes.

Apple also had to open up the iPhone to allow apps to be downloaded and installed from competing stores in Europe to comply with a new set of regulators called the Digital Markets Act, or DMA, earlier this month but its approach is being pilloried by critics as little more than an end-around the rules that will enable it to continue to muscle out real competition. European Union regulators already have vowed to crack down on Apple if it finds the company's tactics continue to thwart true consumer choice.

All of this comes on top of a $2 billion fine that European regulators slapped on Apple earlier this month after concluding that the company had undermined competition in the music streaming through the iPhone, despite Spotify being the leader in that market.

Details on Reddit's initial public offering scheduled for Thursday have swirled in recent days, along with speculation — but, as the company is guided to a final position for the deal by shareholders and investment banks, the IPO is expected to be at the top of the target range, according to multiple reports. 

The company will be listed under the ticker symbol "RDDT." The target range is between $31 to $34 per share ahead of going public on the New York Stock Exchange. 

Reddit has reserved 8% of the total shares for retail investors. Those eligible include friends and family members of employees and directors, moderators, eligible platform users and some board members, Reuters reported. 

SEE MORE: Reddit, YouTube to face lawsuits claiming they enabled a mass shooter

The site, which was launched in 2005, boasts some 73 million daily active users and around 267 million weekly active users, and makes over 100,000 active forum boards or "subreddits" available for conversations and discussions. 

Mashable Sr. Technology Reporter Matt Binder said that while the site has had to evolve somewhat over the years to keep up with the times, it has tried to remain true to its original self. Some users worry it will change dramatically after the IPO.

Binder said, "The community has now felt that [Reddit CEO Steve Huffman] has now turned his back on them, based on recent changes to Reddit. For example last year, Huffman was apparently inspired by Elon Musk's changes to Twitter or X, that the community on Reddit wasn't a fan of."

The company made a profit of more than $18 million in the October-December 2023 quarter, driven mostly by advertising. 

This will be Reddit's second attempt at going public after the company filed for an IPO in December 2021. 

The Biden administration announced billions of dollars in new funds for chipmaker Intel on Wednesday, touting the investment as a way to boost U.S. competitiveness in a burgeoning high-tech market.

Intel will get as much as $8.5 billion in direct federal funding and will have access to another $11 billion in loans. The money, delivered in part from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, is expected to go to building and modernizing chip plants in Arizona, Ohio, Oregon and New Mexico.

This is the fourth such disbursement directed by the CHIPS act. The money has been critical in helping chip companies commit to domestic investment, officials say.

Intel said in a press release the new funds would feed into its ongoing plans to invest $100 billion over five years in the U.S. The company said its efforts would create more than 10,000 new jobs within the company, and temporarily support at least twice that number of construction jobs in the process.

SEE MORE: GlobalFoundries gets $1.5 billion in federal chip-manufacturing funds

Right now, more than 90% of advanced chips come from Taiwan, which officials have framed as an economic and national security risk for the U.S. The chips are used in everything from consumer goods and vehicles to military applications.

"The semiconductor industry is absolutely critical for our long term economic strength," said Don Graves, Deputy Secretary of Commerce, in an interview with Scripps News. "We rely on semiconductors and microchips to power all of our devices, all of our equipment, so our phones, our computers, certainly our cars. And so this investment in Intel is a huge down payment for our future, to make sure that we have that resilient supply chain of semiconductors that we need to out-compete the rest of the world."

According to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Intel's cash infusion could help drive the U.S. share of worldwide production of advanced chips from 0% to 20%.

"Leading-edge chips are the core of our innovation system, especially when it comes to advances in artificial intelligence and our military systems," Raimondo told reporters. "We can’t just design chips. We have to make them in America."

The Biden administration wants states to help plan new protections for water infrastructure across the U.S., which it says is at a growing risk from cyberattacks.

White House officials and the EPA asked governors to make health and security officials available for a meeting Thursday. There they will discuss cyber threats against water systems and what U.S. and state governments are doing to plug those vulnerabilities.

These "disabling cyberattacks" are targeting water and wastewater systems nationwide, officials say.

In one case, hackers backed by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps struck drinking water systems that were using default passwords on some of their hardware.

In another, hackers sponsored by the Chinese government compromised a wide range of infrastructure across the U.S., including water systems. Federal officials say the attack is likely to pave the way to disrupt infrastructure "in the event of geopolitical tensions and/or military conflicts."

SEE MORE: Water loss is a growing problem, especially in shrinking US cities

"Drinking water and wastewater systems are a lifeline for communities, but many systems have not adopted important cybersecurity practices to thwart potential cyberattacks," said EPA Administrator Michael Regan.

The U.S. plans to build what it calls a Water Sector Cybersecurity Task Force, which will gather input from state stakeholders to find and fix "the most significant vulnerabilities."

Most of us love cookies, especially when they are fresh from the oven. But not "third-party cookies," which are one of the primary ways businesses track you online.

If you are worried about your privacy, many sites now allow you to turn off cookies as you browse and shop.

However, not all cookies are made the same. Internet security expert Dave Hatter of Intrust IT Security says many cookies are good.

"If you block all cookies, you are going to have all kinds of problems. Many websites will not work at all," he said. "Without cookies, every single time you would do something, it would require you to authenticate and log in again."

On random entertainment sites, however, Hatter said cookies may track your location or other information.

"Like so many things, it kind of spun out of control, and you see cookies used for nefarious purposes," Hatter noted.

Google is cracking down on cookies

Thomas Germain, a tech reporter with Gizmodo, said Google is on a cookie-killing spree, disabling the feature for 30 million Chrome users at the start of the year.

"It is a really significant privacy improvement," Germain said. "Although, Google is just replacing cookies with a different technology that tracks you in a slightly more private way.”

Google’s plan will also turn the business model of the internet on its head, according to Germain.

"There are going to be massive ripple effects for the ways that all of these different internet-based companies make money," he said.

There is a distinction between third-party cookies and first-party cookies, which remember things like log-in information and what you have in your shopping cart. 

Hatter recommends not blocking all cookies. 

"The better approach generally is to block third-party cookies," he said.

For now, you can block third-party cookies by checking your browser's settings. You can also download a browser that does not allow access to cookies.

SEE MORE: The risk of cyberattacks on hospitals is growing, experts say

A New York judge ruled Reddit, YouTube and YouTube’s parent companies Google and Alphabet Inc. must face lawsuits that allege their content algorithms contributed to the radicalization of an 18-year-old gunman who executed a racially motivated attack in Buffalo, New York, killing 10 Black people in 2022. 

The lawsuits were filed last year by gun control advocacy group Everytown Law, which specializes in this type of litigation, on behalf of 25 survivors of the massacre at a Tops Friendly Market. 

The tech companies claim that their platforms are merely message boards and are therefore protected by the Communications Decency Act and the First Amendment, but their motion to dismiss was denied on Monday by Erie County Supreme Court Justice Paula Feroleto. 

In the decision she wrote, “they may yet establish that their platforms are not products or that the negligent design features plaintiffs have alleged are not part of their platforms. However, at this stage of the litigation, the Court must base its ruling on the allegations of the complaint and not ‘facts’ asserted by the defendants in their briefs or during oral argument and those allegations allege viable causes of action under a products liability theory.”

Everytown said these social media sites have a “well-documented tendency to addict teenagers” built within their recommendation algorithms and features. 

“The shooter was addicted to these websites, and these websites radicalized him against the Black community and equipped him with the knowledge he needed to execute his horrific plans,” said Everytown  when the lawsuits were first filed. “These websites’ design features and algorithms shepherded him along the path of radicalization and taught him how to obtain military-grade armaments like his body armor, modify his weapon to enable its semi-automatic firing capacity, and conduct a military-style assault operation with deadly efficiency.”

SEE MORE: White supremacist gets life sentence for Buffalo supermarket massacre

Representatives for YouTube and Reddit provided separate statements on the decision to CNN, both stating they plan to appeal and evaluate their individual platforms. 

The companies are also currently facing scrutiny over extremist material in Australia, along with Meta, X, WhatsApp and Telegram. According to The Associated Press, the country’s eSafety regulator issued legal notices Tuesday asking each company to detail the steps they are taking to protect Australian users of the platforms from harmful material.

YouTube is now requiring creators to label "realistic"-looking content made with altered media, including artificial intelligence.

YouTube said this pertains to "content a viewer could easily mistake for a real person, place, or event." 

A new tool in the Creator Studio will require YouTubers to disclose the modified content, YouTube said in a blog post.

"The new label is meant to strengthen transparency with viewers and build trust between creators and their audience," the post states.

YouTube lists three types of content that will need to be labeled: using the likeness of a realistic person, altering footage of real events or places and generating realistic scenes.

YouTube acknowledged that creators use AI tools for productivity and clarified that it will not require a label in those instances, such as using tools to generate scripts, content ideas or automate captions.

The platform also said it would not require disclosure in instances in which content is unrealistic — such as an animation or a person riding a unicorn in a made-up land — or when modifications are inconsequential, such as color adjustments, special effects or beauty filters and enhancements.

Users will be able to read about how a video was made by looking under the clip's description. A white box will feature the statement, "How this content was made." Users will then see whether it was flagged for being altered or synthetic. 

This move from YouTube comes amid ongoing concerns about artificial intelligence, which has been used in the past to imitate the likenesses of celebrities, politicians and real people to create convincing images and videos of things that were never said or done.

Users can expect to begin seeing the labels in the coming weeks. 

SEE MORE: Tech companies sign pact to fight against AI election disruption

A class-action lawsuit against Apple claiming stalkers are using its AirTag devices to track their victims can move forward after the company’s motion to dismiss the case fully was denied Friday by a judge in San Francisco, according to court documents. 

Over three dozen women and men who filed the lawsuit in 2022 claim Apple ignored warnings about how the devices could be used for stalking before they were released and its alleged failure to mitigate the dangers of the AirTags makes them responsible for the misconduct under California law. 

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria ruled Friday that three of the plaintiffs can proceed with their claims, dismissing the others in a separate ruling. 

“Apple may ultimately be right that California law did not require it to do more to diminish the ability of stalkers to use AirTags effectively, but that determination cannot be made at this early stage,” the judge wrote in the decision. 

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs said AirTags have “revolutionized the scope, breadth, and ease of location-based stalking.”

The small device was launched by Apple in 2021 as a means to keep track of things like keys and purses through users' phones and Bluetooth technology. But the accuracy, ease of use and affordability of the devices is exactly what the plaintiffs say makes it so dangerous and so easy for stalkers to use.

While Apple has added more safety features for the devices over time, the plaintiffs argue it’s not enough or the features have defects. 

“AirTag was designed to help people locate their personal belongings, not to track people or another person’s property, and we condemn in the strongest possible terms any malicious use of our products,” Apple said in a 2022 statement regarding the safety of the device. “Unwanted tracking has long been a societal problem, and we took this concern seriously in the design of AirTag.”

A spokesperson for Apple did not reply to Scripps News’ request for comment on the case. 

A similar lawsuit was filed in 2023 against Tile, its parent company Life360 and its business partner Amazon regarding the safety of its Tile Tracker devices. 

SEE MORE: Virginia cashier who gave tracking device to girl won't face jail time

The Supreme Court heard arguments on Monday over whether the Biden administration violated the First Amendment when it urged social media companies to remove false or misleading posts from their platforms.

The administration said it was trying to curb online misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election.

Two state attorneys general, both Republicans, challenged the administration's actions, claiming federal officials worked with social media companies to silence conservatives online.

In 2022, when the COVID-19 pandemic was still a major issue for the nation, the Biden administration contacted social media companies like Facebook and YouTube and asked them to take down misleading information. The White House wanted these companies to enforce their own rules.

However, the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri sued the Biden administration as they wanted to be able to limit what the Biden administration could do with these private companies.

SEE MORE: Supreme Court Justices appear skeptical of social media state laws

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill do not want the Biden administration to reach out to these private companies and tell them what to remove from their websites.

The White House's actions violated the free speech of the people who posted on those social media platforms, the attorneys general said. 

The White House argued that if they see misinformation with issues of national security or misinforming the general public, they should be able to step in and ask these companies to remove information that could potentially be detrimental. The attorneys general responded by claiming that the government should not use its weight to lean on these companies to ask them to remove details that people have posted on these platforms.

A decision is not expected for some time.

It’s a story you heard a lot of this week: the possible ban of TikTok in the United States.

Scripps News’ Joe St. George sat down with Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to discuss the national security threat from the social media app.

Warner is a supporter of the legislation that would require ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, to divest within 6 months or face a ban in the U.S.

St. George asked Warner if he is pushing for a vote in the Senate.

“Absolutely, the fact it got 352 votes in the House, all across the political spectrum, I think it shows the importance of this issue,” Warner said.

Warner also discussed the actual security threat associated with the social media app.

“Chinese law, as of 2017, says any Chinese company, their first obligation is not to shareholders or customers, it is to the Chinese Communist Party,” Warner said.

Warner dived into how the data matters, and how silly videos now could come back to hurt users later.

“You could be, frankly, blackmailed,” Warner said.

“Anyone who doesn’t think that the Communist Party can slightly shift the algorithm that decides which video you see comes up next — if they want, come election time in this country, to say, you know, Taiwan ought to be part of China,” Warner said.

“That is such a national security risk,” Warner said.

Warner said that he would be supportive of Steve Mnunchin, the former Treasury Secretary, forming a group of investors to buy the social media app.

For the last two weeks, Anita Schnapp, an OB-GYN who's been practicing for 20 years, has gone where she never thought she would: She went to TikTok.

"I had a couple of patients who sent me clips saying, 'Ooh, you could do something like this,'" she said.

On the app, she's known as Gyno On the Go, and she focuses on dismantling misinformation about reproductive health. She's already been getting engagement, but it's not only with the teens and young women she thought her audience would be made of.

"I'm getting questions about menopause. I posted one video about menopause and that's been the one that's generated questions. So clearly, it's not teenagers, so that's been a surprise," said Dr. Schnapp.

"This platform and TikTok and the reach that my business has on this platform has kept my business open," said Emily Swift, owner of Darkslide Film Lab.

While Dr. Schnapp uses the platform for information, others, like Swift, say the reach possible through the app has turned into real, life-changing money for their business.

"We were ... almost failing when we had a video go on to reach over 4 million viewers and that changed everything for my small business," said Swift.

Now, the bill that could lead to the app's American demise heads to the Senate, where lawmakers will debate whether to force its Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the app or face banishment in the United States.

Proponents cite security reasons and preventing the information of 170 million America users getting in the hands of the Chinese communist party. 

However, Swift thinks a change in the ownership of TikTok will hurt small businesses like hers.

"There's no bias with the current ownership as far as I'm concerned, but I fear if it gets into the hands of a U.S.-based company there might be the introduction of more biases that work in favor of the government," said Swift.

Schapp plans to continue her mission as Gyno on the Go whether TikTok sticks around or not, and isn't too worried about what comes next.

"Information is at our fingertips. And if we can't get it through TikTok, something will come along. There will be a TikTok 2.0," she said.

SEE MORE: Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin creating group to buy TikTok

DoorDash has unveiled a new artificial intelligence tool that now monitors messages between customers and delivery drivers in an effort to combat harmful language and make the platform safer.

The popular food delivery company announced this week that it's launched SafeChat+, a new feature within the DoorDash app that leverages the power of AI to detect and prevent verbal harassment or abuse. Depending on the situation, DoorDash says if the tool recognizes any inappropriate rhetoric, then there will be an option to either cancel the order if you're a delivery driver or report the incident if you're a customer.

The company said if the order is already completed, then SafeChat+ will automatically block any future messages in order to prevent the situation from escalating. All incidents identified by the new tool will also be investigated by the company's Trust & Safety team.

SEE MORE: The White House wants feedback on keeping AI private or open-source

According to a company press release, DoorDash claims that SafeChat+ has the power to review more than 1,400 messages a minute and can translate dozens of languages, including English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Mandarin. However, the company said the tool doesn't have access to any personal user information and will only be used to monitor for abusive language. 

DoorDash claims 99.99% of deliveries on its platform are completed without any safety-related incidents, but said  SafeChat+ will "make our platform even safer and provide a better experience for everyone."

Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is reportedly putting together a group of investors in attempt to buy TikTok from its parent company ByteDance as a bipartisan bill that could ban the popular social media app in the U.S. makes its way through Congress.

"I think the legislation should pass and I think it should be sold," Mnuchin told CNBC Thursday morning. "It’s a great business and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok."

SEE MORE: TikTok lobbies to fight back against potential ban in the US

Mnuchin's comments come a day after the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill that would give Chinese-owned ByteDance six months to divest from TikTok or the app would face an outright ban in the U.S. The bill's future in the Senate is unclear, but if it reaches President Biden's desk, the president has said he does intend to sign it into law.

Lawmakers have said banning TikTok is not the overall goal of the legislation. Instead, the effort is purportedly aimed at severing the app's ties with ByteDance, which is owned and operated under the Chinese government.

SEE MORE: Most Americans think TikTok is a national security threat, poll finds

Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., has been working alongside his Democratic colleague Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., to eliminate any connection between TikTok and China, citing national security concerns over the country's influence and access to user data.

"TikTok can continue to exist in the United States as long as it's not effectively controlled by the Chinese Communist Party," Gallagher said. ""That will make for a better user experience. People won't have to worry about manipulation of algorithms, they won't have to worry about a hostile foreign adversary potentially manipulating the news that Americans consume."

The U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to pass a bipartisan bill that would force the owners of TikTok to either divest from the popular social media platform or face an outright ban in the U.S.

The bill criticizes TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, and its ties to the Chinese government. And while President Joe Biden has said he will sign the bill if it ever reaches his desk, it first must make its way through the Senate.

In the meantime, TikTok is fighting back. Posts on the social media site have popped up in recent days, urging users to call on members of Congress to oppose the bill.

The company is also encouraging content creators like Nadya Okamoto to speak out.

"This platform is so much more than silly little TikTok dances," she said. "I have used the platform to make content about growing my business, being a 26-year-old entrepreneur."

Meanwhile, TikTok is also employing lobbyists to fight back. Politico first reported that Kellyanne Conway — a longtime adviser to former President Donald Trump —  is lobbying senators in attempt to block the bill. The former president has also spoken critically of the legislation.

For the moment, it appears TikTok's lobbying effort is working, with Senators telling reporters that they expect thoughtful deliberation of the bill before a vote happens. Some lawmakers have even introduced the idea of establishing a commission to examine all social media sites — not just TikTok.

In the meantime, former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is already preparing for the possibility that the bill is passed into law. He told CNBC Thursday that he's bringing together a group of investors in attempt to buy the app and keep it in the U.S.

"I think the legislation should pass and I think it should be sold," Mnuchin told the outlet. "It's a great business and I'm going to put together a group to buy TikTok."

SEE MORE: Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin creating group to buy TikTok

House Republicans and Democrats banded together and overwhelmingly approved legislation that would cause TikTok to be banned in the U.S. if its parent company, ByteDance, does not divest from the social media platform. 

The bill passed by a 352-65 margin. 

If signed into law, ByteDance would have six months to sell. 

Officials estimate TikTok has 170 million users in the U.S. The platform is extremely popular among teenagers. In 2023, it was the No. 2  social media network among U.S. teens (used by 63%), only behind YouTube, and ahead of Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook, according to Pew research. Pew says TikTok is the No. 5 social media network among adults in the U.S., ahead of older networks such as LinkedIn, X and Reddit. The number of adult users grew by 12% between 2021 and 2023, according to Pew.

SEE MORE: About 72% of American teens feel peaceful when away from cellphones

Lawmakers say they don't want to ban TikTok

TikTok has been a lawmaker target for years, but there's new momentum on Capitol Hill for forcing the Chinese-linked app to make changes or risk being banned from the U.S. entirely.

Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wisconsin, has been working alongside his Democratic colleague, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Illinois, to eliminate any connection between TikTok and China.

"TikTok can continue to exist in the United States as long as it's not effectively controlled by the Chinese Communist Party," Gallagher said.

Banning the social media app is not the goal. It's about separating TikTok from its parent company, Byte Dance, which has links to the Chinese government.

"That will make for a better user experience. People won't have to worry about manipulation of algorithms, they won't have to worry about a hostile foreign adversary potentially manipulating the news that Americans consume," said Gallagher.

China has national security laws that can compel businesses to turn over information or assist with intelligence gathering. Since 2022, TikTok has been prohibited on government-issued devices.

In March 2023, TikTok's CEO promised to put a firewall around U.S. user data, but that didn't do enough to ease concerns. Also, last year, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. threatened to ban TikTok if China didn't divest, but that threat hasn't become reality yet.

Lawmakers say the House's bill does not infringe on Americans' First Amendment freedom of speech.

"We don't want to censor any type of content. This is not about a content-specific law. This is about the manner in which the CCP controls Byte Dance, the parent of the platform at issue," said Krishnamoorthi.

After a push alert in the app, TikTok users flooded congressional offices with phone calls opposing the bill. But lawmakers say that is precisely why Americans should be concerned.

"TikTok actually put up a notice where they blocked an individual to actually get on TikTok unless you called your member of Congress and told them not to vote for this legislation. But that's just an example of how they can manipulate data and influence Americans for their agenda," said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the Republican chair for the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

What happens next

The bill's future in the Senate is unclear, but if it reaches President Biden's desk, the president has said he will sign it. If the bill is signed into law, ByteDance would have six months to sell TikTok before a ban would go into effect.

After the bill's passage, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chair Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, and Vice Chair Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, issued a joint statement praising the House's vote. 

“We are united in our concern about the national security threat posed by TikTok – a platform with enormous power to influence and divide Americans whose parent company ByteDance remains legally required to do the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party. We were encouraged by today’s strong bipartisan vote in the House of Representatives, and look forward to working together to get this bill passed through the Senate and signed into law," the senators said.

There is precedent for this type of forced sale. In 2012, the Obama administration prevented a Chinese company from investing in a wind farm that was near a U.S. military base. And in 2020, the government forced China to sell its interest in Grindr, a gay dating app — all in the name of national security.

More than 15,000 Roku accounts were compromised in a data breach that, in some cases, gave "unauthorized actors" access to customers' stored financial information.

The company disclosed the attack in filings with the Maine and California attorney generals' offices Friday, noting it discovered and investigated the breach from Jan. 1 to Feb. 21. However, the breach began on Dec. 28, 2023.

In a notice to impacted customers, Roku said hackers had seemingly obtained thousands of logins from third-party sources where the same username and password combinations were used. That means it wasn't a hack on the Roku system itself but was likely the result of hackers finding credentials exposed in other company data breaches and checking for the same login uses on Roku.

After gaining access, the company said the hackers changed the affected customers' login information and attempted to purchase streaming subscriptions with the stored credentials in certain cases.

Bleeping Computer, which first reported the breach, said the financial information wasn't just taken to purchase a Netflix account, though. The publication says it found hackers were selling some stolen information for as little as $0.50 per account on a hacking marketplace, giving buyers access to the stored financial data on each profile. 

SEE MORE: UnitedHealth sets dates to restore hacked systems as fallout continues

Luckily, the "unauthorized actors" did not gain any full payment account numbers, social security numbers, dates of birth or other similar sensitive personal information, Roku said. 

And the company told affected customers that it has now secured their accounts from further unauthorized access by requiring each account holder to reset their password. It also said it investigated account activity to make sure the hackers didn't incur any subscription charges, and if they did, Roku said it canceled and refunded them.

The 15,363 impacted accounts are a small number compared to Roku's 80 million active user accounts last year, but if you're concerned your account was affected, the company recommends you reset your password at my.roku.com. It also recommends you review the subscriptions and devices linked to your account and always monitor your account activity for fraud.

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed the first 3D-printed brain tissue that can function like regular brain tissue.

Why is this important?

It has implications for researchers studying the brain in different ways.

“We think this work could help people to understand neuropsychiatric diseases, like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson's, compared to the other models,” said Yuanwei Yan, a scientist in the Zhang Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Printing methods have previously had limited success in printing brain tissue.

This is how it works: The researchers horizontally situated brain cells in a “bio-ink” gel. The brain cells were made from neurons grown from stem cells. The scientists said the horizontal placement allows the structure to hold while still allowing the neurons to grow, talk to each other, and send signals like human brains do.

“Our cells are a lot better compared to an organoid. They mature a lot faster and the function is way better,” Yan said. Brain organoids, which are structures derived from stem cells, are used to study brains.

Now with 3D printing, this method allows scientists to have more flexibility in their studies. And it uses materials and machines available in many labs. 

“I think this will be the future direction for brain tissue regeneration,” Yan said.

The 3D-printed brain tissue can be used to study things like watching the brain grow, testing new drug candidates, and watching interactions between health tissue and tissue affected by Alzheimer’s.

When asked about any concerns he wanted to address, Yan said this new development will not be used to create a full brain.

“We only generate a piece of brain tissue,” he said.

Social media company Reddit told regulators it hopes to raise some $750 million when it makes its upcoming initial public offering.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Reddit told regulators it will offer 22 million shares of Class A common stock. It expects the price of the stock to range from $31 to $34 per share.

Reddit said it would use the funds it raised for general and tax purposes and possibly to fund acquisitions.

Reddit saw an average of more than 76 million people visiting the site every day last December, the company said. It said it has more than 100 million unique "subreddit" communities, where users post content and discussions about shared interests.

The company made a profit of more than $18 million in the October-December quarter, driven mostly by advertising.

SEE MORE: Tech companies sign pact to fight against AI election disruption

Reddit also announced it would share data from its user base with Google, which planned to use it for AI training and making improvements to its search results. That deal was worth $60 million, and Reddit expects to use the same agreement to improve its own internal search performance.

"This enhanced collaboration provides Google with an efficient and structured way to access the vast corpus of existing content on Reddit and enables Google to use the Reddit Data API to improve its products and services," Reddit said in a blog post announcing the deal.

Reddit is expected to be listed under the symbol RDDT on the New York Stock Exchange.

About 72% of American teenagers reported feeling peaceful "often or sometimes" when they were without their smartphones.

In a new report from the Pew Research Center, it was also revealed that out of 1,453 teenagers surveyed between the ages of 13 and 17 in the U.S., 44% experienced anxiety when they were separated from their smartphones.

According to the survey, 95% of teens in the U.S. have a smartphone, and 69% of them say smartphones help them with hobbies and interests, while 45% think they make school easier.

The study also shows that 51% to 64% of teens think they spend the right amount of time on their phones and social media, but 38% feel they overdo it. Meanwhile, girls are more likely than boys to think they spend too much time on both.

This data comes a month after schools and public hospitals announced a lawsuit against major tech companies like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube, accusing them of fostering a harmful and addictive social media environment detrimental to children's mental health, disrupting education and straining resources.

And according to the survey, most parents also agree that their teens spend too much time on their phones. 

About 4 in 10 teens report arguing with their parents about how much time the teens spend on their phones, with 10% saying it happens often, the survey says. 

SEE MORE: Popular social media apps fuel a disturbing surge in child sextortion

It was a stark warning at the worldwide threats hearing in the Senate Monday.

"China's aspirations for greater geopolitical power will probably become all the more apparent," said Avril Haines, director of national intelligence. 

Amid discussion of two brutal wars, came alarms about TikTok. Lawmakers are preparing to vote on the fate of the app.

A bipartisan measure would force the app's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell TikTok or potentially be banned in U.S. app stores and web-hosting services.

Critics of the bill, like the ACLU, call it "unconstitutional," saying the move would be a blow to free speech.

Supporters like Republican Sen. Marco Rubio say not only can private data of TikTok users be accessed by China's government, the app shapes the way an entire generation thinks by controlling what users see and don't see in their feeds.

That assertion led to an exchange with FBI Director Christopher Wray.

"If they went to them and said, 'We want you to change your algorithm so that Americans start seeing videos that hurt this candidate or help that candidate in the upcoming election,' ByteDance would have to do that under Chinese law," said Rubio.

"The different kinds of influence operations you're describing are extraordinarily difficult to detect, which is part of what makes the national security concerns represented by TikTok so significant," said Wray. 

According to the U.S. intelligence community’s annual threat assessment, "Beijing is expanding its global covert influence," and "TikTok accounts run by a PRC propaganda arm reportedly targeted candidates from both political parties during the U.S. midterm election cycle in 2022."

A TikTok spokesperson told Scripps News the legislation has a "predetermined outcome — a total ban of TikTok in the United States."

SEE MORE: TikTok asks creators for help as bill to ban it moves through Congress

TikTok is calling on creators to share what the platform means to them as a bill to ban the app in the U.S. moves through Congress.

"A TikTok shutdown will silence your creativity," said the official @TikTokcreators account on Instagram.

"Every day, 170 million people depend on TikTok for education, entertainment, and personal expression," said the company. "Five million small businesses use TikTok to reach their customers. Millions of people in marginalized communities use TikTok to connect with each other." 

In the post, TikTok urged creators to create a video on what TikTok means to them and how it has positively impacted their lives using #KeepTikTok. 

"This bill would ban TikTok, stripping 170 million Americans of their constitutional right to free expression," said TikTok.

The company also asked creators to encourage their audience to tell Congress to vote "no" on the TikTok ban bill.

"Act now to protect your freedom to create," it said. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by TikTok Creators (@tiktokcreators)

This comes after a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a new piece of legislation last week that would give TikTok six months to either divest from its Chinese-owned parent company ByteDance or face a nationwide ban. The bill was reviewed Thursday by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and passed unanimously. It's now poised for a vote on the House floor.

Lawmakers said TikTok users have been flooding their offices with calls. 

Politico reported that one person called a Republican official and said, "If you ban TikTok, I will kill myself."

But creators also lashed out at TikTok over recent changes to its algorithm that is allegedly silencing their content. On the Instagram post where TikTok called on creators to speak out, comments poured in with users expressing their frustration.

"How about you let creators who have a huge following actually succeed on the platform," wrote Sam Paige.

Another user, Inna Kanevsky, wrote, "I would if TikTok wasn't already silencing my content. You aren't supporting us. Why should we support you?"

Social media users in the comments said they were glad to see creators not supporting TikTok, with others noting TikTok's public plea didn't go as expected.

"Every day TikTok silences the content big creators make anyways," said Augie Bello. "So I'm kind of looking forward to them getting a taste of their own medicine." 

About 42% of TikTok users report they believe the app to be a national security concern, according to a poll conducted by Pew Research Center.

SEE MORE: New bill would force TikTok to divest from China, or face US ban

The Biden administration is pressuring UnitedHealth to speed up payments following a cyberattack that has disrupted payments to providers. 

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, Change Healthcare, which UnitedHealth Group owns, processes 15 billion health care transactions annually, handling 1 in 3 health care transactions in the U.S. 

"The attack has impacted payments to hospitals, physicians, pharmacists, and other health care providers across the country. Many of these providers are concerned about their ability to offer care in the absence of timely payments, but providers persist despite the need for numerous onerous workarounds and cash flow uncertainty," HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and acting Labor Secretary Julie A. Su wrote in a joint letter. 

UnitedHealth said it expects to begin testing and reestablish connectivity to its claims network and software on March 18, restoring service throughout next week. 

Payments started being disrupted last month, and officials released a notification that a cybersecurity incident was to blame. In the days following, a Temporary Funding Assistance Program was launched to bridge the gap in short-term cash flow for health care providers. 

“We are committed to providing relief for people affected by this malicious attack on the U.S. health system,” said Andrew Witty, CEO of UnitedHealth Group. “All of us at UnitedHealth Group feel a deep sense of responsibility for recovery and are working tirelessly to ensure that providers can care for their patients and run their practices, and that patients can get their medications. We’re determined to make this right as fast as possible.”

SEE MORE: UnitedHealth sets dates to restore hacked systems as fallout continues

Although prescriptions are continuing to be filled and health care services are still being provided, there are concerns that some providers will struggle to pay workers and afford their expenses as the disruption continues. 

The American Hospital Association said it welcomed the Biden administration's call for action. 

"It’s critical that all payers help providers during this incident to ensure patient care is not compromised," said Rick Pollack, American Hospital Association CEO. "That includes easing administrative burdens, pausing prior authorizations and requirements on timely billing, and providing advanced payments to hospitals and physicians, among other things, until this issue is fully resolved. 

"Just like the impacted providers, these payers are not responsible for the cyberattack; however, as hospitals and doctors have not wavered from their responsibility to care for their patients despite significant hardship, all payers must too honor their responsibility to support hospitals, physicians and patients for care delivered without delay."

UnitedHealth Group is laying out a timeline to restore its systems as a cyberattack on its Change Healthcare subsidiary continues to disrupt the health care industry for nearly a third week.

The company said Thursday it's still working "aggressively" to restore its services after the attack Feb. 21 caused it to shut down its insurance claims and payment platforms, leaving health care providers and pharmacies across the nation unable to process prescriptions or pay employees, but as of now, its electronic prescribing is back to being "fully functional."

As for the other affected services, UnitedHealth said Change's electronic payment functionality will be available again starting March 15, while the testing and reestablishing of its claims software will begin March 18 and be restored through the rest of the week.

Until then, the company is urging providers and payers to use workarounds it has established in the wake of the attack, such as its iEDI claim submission system, until all Change services are fully restored, though many groups say these haven't been viable replacements. 

"All of us at UnitedHealth Group feel a deep sense of responsibility for recovery and are working tirelessly to ensure that providers can care for their patients and run their practices and that patients can get their medications," said Andrew Witty, CEO of UnitedHealth Group. "We're determined to make this right as fast as possible."

SEE MORE: Hackers in Change Healthcare attack receive $22M in alleged ransom

Acting as a pipeline between health care and insurance providers, Change operates 15 billion medical transactions each year, representing more than $1.5 trillion in health care claims, its website states. The Justice Department also says the company manages half of all medical insurance claims in the country.

That all came to a halt, however, when notorious ransomware group AlphV/BlackCat attacked, and the shutdown of Change's financial services left those dependent on them scrambling to fill prescriptions, process claims, bill patients, verify insurance coverage, pay employees, refill hospital medication, supply inventories and more. 

On Friday, UnitedHealth set up a temporary funding assistance program to help bridge the cash flow gap for providers, who won't need to repay the advances until claim flows are back to normal. But providers have argued the finances available with the program aren't enough to keep them afloat, and the same goes for the workarounds the company has provided in terms of missing services.

But while many medical providers continue to struggle without revenue from insurers or patients — with at least one having to close down due to a missed payroll cycle — the hackers appear to be rolling in dough, allegedly after receiving a $22 million ransom payout from UnitedHealth.

Two days after an AlphV-owned Bitcoin address received a payment worth nearly $22 million, an AlphV affiliate posted to an underground cybercriminal platform saying the ransomware group cheated them out of their share of a ransom Change paid to "prevent data leakage and decryption key," according to a screenshot from Dmitry Smilyanets, a researcher for security firm Recorded Future.

#ALPHV scamming affiliates? $22M paid and withdrawn pic.twitter.com/0ocKoXNLme

— 𝕯𝖒𝖎𝖙𝖗𝖞 𝕾𝖒𝖎𝖑𝖞𝖆𝖓𝖊𝖙𝖘 (@ddd1ms) March 4, 2024

Groups like AlphV often use affiliates to do the actual hacking with its ransomware and then give the affiliates some of the payouts. But the affiliate said AlphV "kept lying and delaying" their payment until the group finally "emptied the wallet and took all the money."

However, if Change did pay a ransom, its chosen recipient may have been misguided, as the affiliate also said the 4TB of "critical" patient data hackers accessed in the attack — including medical records and payment and insurance information — remained with the affiliate, not with the larger group Change allegedly paid to withhold releasing the stolen data.

Dirk McMahon, COO of UnitedHealth, responded to the ransom report first published in WIRED, saying, "We're not going to talk about that." He added, "What I would tell you is, across the board on the investigation, we're working closely with law enforcement, and this is an ongoing investigation."

Some medical groups, though, aren't ready to skip over the data worries. In a statement Friday, the president of the American Medical Association, Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld, said that although the timeline information and financial assistance programs are helpful, UnitedHealth must do more to address these concerns outright

"Full transparency and security assurances will be critical before connections are reestablished with the Change Healthcare network," the statement read.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are again pushing forward with an effort to prohibit TikTok in the United States.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a new piece of legislation this week that would give the social media app six months to either divest from its Chinese-owned parent company ByteDance, or face a nationwide ban. The bill was reviewed Thursday by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and passed unanimously. It's now poised for a vote on the House floor.

However, lawmakers are already facing backlash from TikTok users, who are flooding their offices with calls. 

Politico reported that person called a Republican official and said, "If you ban TikTok, I will kill myself.” 

This bill is just the latest effort to ban TikTok over national security concerns regarding whether China has direct access to users' data. Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, who heads the House committee investigating China, says after the bill was introduced, some TikTok users were already getting pop-ups on the app allegedly lying about the bill and what it intends to achieve.

"It asks [users] to enter the zip code they're in and then it automatically calls the member of Congress in that zip code saying 'Stop the ban on TikTok,'" Gallagher told a group of reporters. "But of course, if you actually read the bill, it's not a ban. It's a divestiture and it puts the choice squarely in the hands of TikTok to sever their relationship with the Chinese Communist party. And as long as they do that, as long as ByteDance no longer owns the company, TikTok can continue to survive."

SEE MORE: TikTok fined $15.9M by UK watchdog over misuse of kids' data

TikTok reports it has more than 150 million users in the U.S., meaning a potential nationwide ban would affect many Americans. According to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan platform tracking political spending, TikTok has spent over 10 million dollars in recent years trying to convince lawmakers that TikTok data is safe. 

Several U.S. agencies — including the White House — have already taken moves to prohibit federal workers from downloading TikTok on any government devices, citing national security concerns. The Office of Management and Budget called the guidance a "critical step forward in addressing the risks presented by the app to sensitive government data." 

According to a poll conducted by Pew Research Center, over 50% of Americans believe TikTok is a major or minor threat to U.S. national security. And among TikTok users, about 42% say they believe the platform is a national security concern. 

The Transportation Security Administration expects this year’s spring break travel season to be record-breaking.

The agency defines the spring break travel period  from March 7 to March 25, and they expect travel volumes to be 6% above last year.

If you plan on traveling to Mexico, the U.S. Embassy and Consulates in Mexico say to travel smart and be informed of nearby crime, unregulated alcohol, and drownings, to name a few of the risks.

“Check out our travel advice on travel.state.gov. There we have unbiased and objective up-to-date travel advice on virtually every country in the world,” said Rena Bitter, the assistant secretary of the Bureau of Consular Affairs with the Department of State.

“Enroll in our smart traveler enrollment program, STEP, which once enrolled, you'll get information on the destination while you're traveling, information on security,” she said.

Travel warnings, scams, and busy travel are all things to be aware of before hitting the roads or the skies.

@scrippsnews Spring break is upon us, and the Transportation Security Administration expects it to be a busy one. Before you book your trip and pack your bags, here are some #scams to watch out for. #SpringBreak #vacation ♬ original sound - Scripps News

Watch out for scams

Before you head on spring break, keep these tips in mind to avoid scams.

Travel scams happen year-round. But right now, scams can be even worse.

The 2023 Risk Report released this week from the Better Business Bureau shows the median loss for consumers who fall for travel and vacation scams is $543.

And while planning a last minute getaway may sound enticing, vacation rental cons, free vacation scams, and third party booking site scams can be common when demand is high. 

So how can you prevent losing your money to scams?

The BBB says look for reviews and ask friends and family for references. Second, avoid wiring money. Pay with a credit card instead, so you have the option to dispute a fraudulent charge.

Finally, do some research on travel companies and vacation rentals before booking.

Before heading to the airport

Before heading to the airport, TSA recommends arriving early, packing smart, and remembering the 3-1-1 rule: Any liquids over 3.4 ounces must be packed in a checked bag.

Don’t forget to have the proper documentation with you.

“More Americans than ever before have passports, which means more Americans can travel overseas,” Bitter said.

“If you're planning to travel, please go check the validity of your passport. Make sure it hasn't expired," she said.

Many destinations require you to have six months validity on your passport to enter or leave. Right now, Bitter says it takes about 6 to 8 weeks to get a new passport when not expedited.

The State Department has more travel tips here.

SEE MORE: Miami Beach breaks up with spring breakers: 'It's not us; it's you'

A privacy watchdog in Europe has ordered Worldcoin, the company created by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman that scans eyeballs to make digital IDs in exchange for crypto, to cease its operations in Spain for three months amid concerns over what it is doing with users' personal information.

The stated goal of Worldcoin is to give people a form of identification that could never be stolen or duplicated. It says the way it can do this is by creating a "World ID" by scanning someone's eyeballs through "orbs" — devices that capture an image of their irises, the colored parts of the eyes. In exchange, people who sign up get Worldcoin cryptocurrency.

Spain's Agency for Data Protection told Worldcoin's parent company Tools for Humanity Corporation, on Wednesday, to stop collecting personal data and keep hold of all information already collected. The agency said in a statement that it had received various complaints against the company that range from gathering the personal information of minors to not allowing for people to withdraw their consent to sharing personal data.

SEE MORE: Supreme Court Justices appear skeptical of social media state laws

People have lined up at points where these orbs are placed in various cities in recent months. More than 360,000 people in Spain have signed up for Worldcoin, according to the most recent company data from November.

While Worldcoin argues that the data is used to create a unique, secure form of identification, privacy experts have concerns that the company may use the information in other ways, like personalized marketing. That has led other countries to investigate Worldcoin's operations, including France and Germany.

The Kenyan government has likewise suspended new sign-ups for Worldcoin as it investigates whether people's information is being properly protected. 

Worldcoin responded that their operations preserve privacy.

"The Spanish data protection authority is circumventing EU law with their actions today, which are limited to Spain and not the broader EU, and spreading inaccurate and misleading claims about our technology globally," said Jannick Preiwisch, Worldcoin’s data protection officer. 

The outage affecting Meta’s platforms worldwide has been resolved after a major disruption. 

The outage impacted the app and website versions of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Threads.

Around 10:30 a.m. ET, more than 600,000 Facebook users reported issues accessing their accounts, according to Downdetector, which monitors online outages. Over 95,000 users experienced similar issues with Instagram at that time. 

At 10:52 a.m., Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the company was working to fix the issues. 

"We're aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now," Stone said on X. 

About an hour and a half later, Stone said the problems were resolved. 

"Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services," Stone posted on X. "We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience."

Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services. We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience. https://t.co/ybyyAZNAMn

— Andy Stone (@andymstone) March 5, 2024

On X, the phrases "Facebook and Instagram" and #FacebookDown were trending Tuesday morning.

On Facebook, many users said they had been logged out of their accounts and couldn’t log back in. On Instagram, some users reported that their feed was not refreshing. Others on Threads were met with an error screen.

Users said they initially feared their accounts were hacked.

"FB and IG are down. I just freaked out thinking my accounts were hacked," said Kelly Bazzle on X.

Meta did not immediately return Scripps News' request for comment.

The hackers behind one of the most disruptive health care cyberattacks in U.S. history recently received a payment of $22 million, and experts say this suggests the victims may have just paid the gang an enormous ransom.

Health care providers and pharmacies across the nation were left unable to process prescriptions, leaving patients unable to get needed medications after Change Healthcare's payment exchange platform went down with the Feb. 21 cyberattack.

In a now-deleted post on the dark web Wednesday, notorious ransomware group AlphV/BlackCat said it was behind the attack, and Change, which is operated by UnitedHealth Group's subsidiary Optum, confirmed this the following day.

Then on Friday, a Bitcoin address belonging to AlphV hackers received a single transaction payment of 350 bitcoins, which is worth nearly $22 million, according to WIRED and blockchain analysis group TRM Labs. TRM Labs also confirmed the same address can be linked to payments from two other AlphV victims in January. 

Two days later, an AlphV affiliate posted to the underground cybercriminal platform RAMP saying the ransomware group cheated them out of their share of the ransom Change paid to "prevent data leakage and decryption key," according to a screenshot from Dmitry Smilyanets, a researcher for security firm Recorded Future.

#ALPHV scamming affiliates? $22M paid and withdrawn pic.twitter.com/0ocKoXNLme

— 𝕯𝖒𝖎𝖙𝖗𝖞 𝕾𝖒𝖎𝖑𝖞𝖆𝖓𝖊𝖙𝖘 (@ddd1ms) March 4, 2024

Groups like AlphV often use affiliates to do the actual hacking with its ransomware and then give the affiliates some of the payouts. But the affiliate said AlphV "kept lying and delaying" their payment until the group finally "emptied the wallet and took all the money." 

"Sadly for the target Change Healthcare - OPTUM, their data [is] still with us," the affiliate's post said, per the screenshot.

A United Healthcare spokesperson declined to answer questions from multiple publications on whether it paid a ransom to AlphV, only saying it was, "focused on the investigation right now." But if it did pay the ransom, the affiliate's alleged post suggests "4TB of the critical data" that Change was worried would leak is still under the hackers' control, potentially lending to additional payments if Change wants to prevent a possible leak.

Plus, a ransomware researcher told WIRED that the possible ransom payment sets a dangerous precedent for the increasingly cyberattacked healthcare industry by way of either funding future attacks or suggesting to other hackers that the same plan of action could work for them.

SEE MORE: Cybersecurity incident impacting nation's pharmacies

AlphV/BlackCat is the world's second-most prolific ransomware-as-a-service variant based on the hundreds of millions of dollars in ransoms paid by its victims, the Justice Department said in December. That's when an FBI operation was thought to have crippled the gang by seizing several of its websites and tools, but two months later, it made this attack on Change.

Acting as a pipeline between health care and insurance providers, Change operates 15 billion medical transactions each year, representing more than $1.5 trillion in health care claims, its website states. The Justice Department also says the company manages half of all medical insurance claims in the country.

In claiming responsibility for the attack, AlphV/BlackCat said it accessed 6TB of data used in these claims, including payment and insurance information and medical records. However, the affiliate noted it has 4TB of data from Change and its partners like Medicare, CVS-CareMark, MetLife, Health Net and more.

Beyond patients' security, the attack continues to leave many dependent on Change for financial services scrambling to fill prescriptions, process claims, bill patients, verify insurance coverage, pay employees, refill hospital medication, supply inventories and more. 

While it's still unclear when Change's systems will be brought back online, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Monday to provide relief to health care providers who are unable to be paid or process claims to ensure patient care can continue to be "top-notch."

"We can't let hackers risk the financial stability of health care providers and even critical care to patients across America. CMS must act now to help our hospitals," Schumer said.

Elon Musk sued OpenAI and company CEO Sam Altman on Friday, alleging the company has betrayed its originally stated goal of using AI technology to benefit humanity.

According to the lawsuit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court, Musk, Altman and company president Greg Brockman had agreed that OpenAI would be run as a nonprofit for pubic benefit.

OpenAI had also agreed to make its code open source, the lawsuit claims.

But in the suit, Musk alleges that by patterning with Microsoft, OpenAI has become a "closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world" that seeks "to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity."

The lawsuit claims breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and unfair business practices.

Musk helped fund OpenAI in its early years, contributing what he says was "tens of millions of dollars." He also served on the company board starting in 2015.

Musk resigned that post in 2018, when Tesla started hiring more AI experts for its autonomous driving goals. 

Microsoft committed a $1 billion investment to the company in 2019. It signed an agreement with OpenAI that gave it exclusive rights to AI products it created. That license is expected to expire if and when OpenAI ever achieves artificial general intelligence.

SEE MORE: Tech companies sign pact to fight against AI election disruption

OpenAI's nonprofit board fired Altman late in 2023, kicking off a firestorm of speculation and attention in the AI space.

Microsoft would later help Altman come back as OpenAI's CEO, along with a new initial board of directors. Details around his firing and re-hiring, and around the replacement of OpenAI's board, remain murky.

Some doorbell cameras which many people buy to bring themselves a higher sense of security are actually not very secure themselves, according to a Consumer Reports investigation.

The report, published Thursday by the product review organization, found a number of these video doorbells have serious vulnerabilities that allow outside users to hack into them, providing bad actors access to the camera's footage or even the ability to completely control the device.

The researchers found these flaws in at least a dozen seemingly identical doorbells sold under different brand names including EKEN, Tuck, Fishbot and Rakeblue. However, they are all made by the same Chinese manufacturer, EKEN, and controlled through the same EKEN-operated mobile app, Await, the report found.

While they're not the biggest names in the market, thousands of these cameras are sold in the U.S. each month through various online retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Sears, Shein and Temu, which removed all EKEN doorbells from its website after CR shared its findings. Walmart said the items have been removed from its website and will offer refunds for customers who want to return the products.

On Amazon, the cameras are an "Amazon's Choice: Overall Pick," with 11 EKEN doorbell listings generating more than 4,200 sales in January alone, CR found. 

"Big e-commerce platforms like Amazon need to take more responsibility for the harms generated by the products they sell," said Justin Brookman, director of technology policy for CR. "There is more they could be doing to vet sellers and respond to complaints. Instead, it seems like they're coasting on their reputation and saddling unknowing consumers with broken products."

The CR team said the EKEN doorbells can expose your home IP address and WiFi network names without encryption, possibly opening your home network to malicious users. 

SEE MORE: Amazon's Ring announces big change, and customers are not happy

But beyond web hacking, CR says anyone who is in close physical proximity to the doorbell can hack it too just by creating an account on the Await app and pressing the device's button to put it in pairing mode. The bad actor could then pair their phone to make themselves the new "owner" of the camera, giving them the ability to watch current and previous images as well as lock out the true owner of the camera, CR found.

The true owner will get an email alert that the app has switched to a new device, but even after retaking control, the dangerous person could still remotely access the device using its serial number, the report says.

Researchers also found the doorbells lack a visible Federal Communications Commission-issued ID number, which would allow consumers to look up a product to ensure its safety. The ID number is required by agency regulations, meaning the devices would be illegal to distribute in the U.S. without having them visibility printed.

"Regulators need to be doing more to address the torrent of junk that's out there," Brookman said. "That means going after the manufacturers, but also the platforms that sell them — and apparently even explicitly recommend them."

If you do own one of these devices, CR recommends disconnecting it from your home WiFi and removing it from your door. The group said it's also asked online retailers to better guarantee the safety of their products while it pushes for federal action. 

EKEN, Amazon, Sears and Shein didn't respond to CR's requests for comment.

A week after AT&T suffered a massive cellphone outage that affected customers from coast to coast, the New York Attorney General's Office is launching an investigation. 

Attorney General Letitia James said she encourages all affected New Yorkers to file a complaint with her office. James said  AT&T customers could not place calls, send text messages or access the internet for up to 12 hours on Feb. 22.

The company said the outage was due to "the application and execution of an incorrect process used while working to expand our network." 

AT&T says the outage started at 5 a.m. and affected about three-quarters of all cellphone customers. The company says that service was normalized by noon. 

SEE MORE: AT&T to credit $5 to customers impacted by the widespread outage

Customers will get a $5 credit on an upcoming statement. 

While the outage was an inconvenience for some, it caused some not to be able to reach emergency services or conduct business.

“Americans rely on cell service providers for consistent and reliable service to help them with nearly every aspect of their daily lives,” said James. “Nationwide outages are not just an inconvenience, they can be dangerous, and it’s critical that we protect consumers when an outage occurs. I encourage any New Yorker who was affected by this disruption to file a complaint with my office.”

Apple has shut down a yearslong plan for an electric car with self-driving capability, multiple outlets report.

Bloomberg first reported that Apple had told close to 2,000 employees in an internal meeting Tuesday it would shut down the car project and reassign at least some staff to other areas within the company, including to its AI efforts.

At least one executive attached to the car project was reassigned to report to Apple's head of AI strategy, the New York Times reported, citing anonymous insiders who were familiar with Apple's moves.

Apple reportedly spent billions of dollars on its autonomous car initiative, which would have put it in competition with Tesla.

SEE MORE: Nvidia beats projections thanks to heavy demand for its AI chips

Apple was known to test prototypes of the car on roads in Silicon Valley under the codename Project Titan.

The company has for years filed vehicle-related patents for design touches and interface elements such as steering wheels and control pedals.

CEO Tim Cook has also more than once publicly suggested Apple had its eyes on self-driving technology.

Cook made his first public comments about AI in a Feb. 1 earnings call this year.

He said the company plans to invest in AI, "where we continue to spend a tremendous amount of time and effort and we are excited to share the details of our ongoing work in that space later this year."

A lithium-ion battery sparked a devastating fire at a New York apartment building, killing one person and injuring 17 others.

Firefighters with the New York City Fire Department said the fire broke out on the third floor of a six-story structure in Harlem. Flames began blowing into the hallway through the blazing unit's open door, blocking the stairway exit and trapping people on that floor and above. 

Some occupants were hanging out of the building's windows when help arrived three-and-a-half minutes after the 911 call, but one person, who has now been identified as 27-year-old journalist Fazil Khan, had already fallen to the alley underneath, authorities said. 

An FDNY official said firefighters rescued the others in the windows by roping down from the roof — a technique the department typically only utilizes once or twice a year — while other responders went into the building to get tenants out, including three who were found unconscious on upper floors.

Three firefighters using the lifesaving rope were lowered to the 5th floor where victims were trapped, grabbed them, & lowered them to the ground. There were 18 total patients. 12 transports, 4 of them in critical condition. 1 person died at the hospital. Fire under investigation pic.twitter.com/867ow7jth9

— FDNY (@FDNY) February 23, 2024

Out of the 18 injured, 12, including Khan, were rushed to a local hospital. Khan succumbed to his injuries there, while at least four people were still in critical condition as of Sunday. 

Khan's employers, including The City and The Hechinger Report, posted condolences on X, with the former calling him a "friend to many in our newsroom."

We learned Saturday that The Hechinger Report’s data reporter Fazil Khan died in a fire in the New York City building where he lived. We are devastated by the loss of such a great colleague and wonderful person, and our hearts go out to his family. He will be dearly missed.

— The Hechinger Report (@hechingerreport) February 24, 2024

This is the latest deadly tragedy to be attributed to lithium-ion batteries. Earlier this month, the FDNY announced the batteries are the leading cause of fires and fire-related deaths in New York City. 

Last year, the batteries caused 267 fires and claimed 18 deaths in the city — up from six the year prior and a large jump from zero in 2019 and 2020.

But the issue isn't limited to New York City. Here's what we know about the growing problem.

Where are lithium-ion battery incidents happening?

Because these batteries are a convenient — and typically a safe — energy source, they can be found pretty much anywhere. They're in your laptops, smartphones, some toys, electric bikes and scooters, cars and more. 

Since 2020, FAA data shows lithium-ion battery incidents on planes have continued to rise, with some personal devices catching fire mid-flight. There's also electrocution, explosion risk or the hydrogen gas these damaged batteries can give off, which injured three people in a Tampa children's clinic last year. 

The dangers stem from loose regulation: Many lithium-ion batteries sold in recent years that have circumvented safety specifications, and minimal oversight has allowed companies to do so. This allows uncertified and dangerous batteries into consumers' homes, sometimes without their awareness. 

This is a particular risk with e-scooters and e-bikes. As their popularity has grown, some customers have begun charging their lithium-ion batteries in their homes. Just one instance of improper charging can cause the battery to internally short circuit. That creates heat that can turn into flammable gas, which can then pressurize and burst the battery.

SEE MORE: Electric scooter linked to fire that killed 2 prompts 'urgent' warning

How consumers can avoid the risks

When buying a lithium-ion battery-powered device, officials say to look for the Underwriters Laboratories Mark to ensure it's been safely tested. It's always recommended to use the manufacturer's cord and power adapter specifically made for the device.

Since September, New York City has enforced e-bike battery certification at retailers, meaning those purchases should come with a compliant charging source. The FDNY's chief has also appealed to Congress to make this a national standard.

For now, the FDNY recommends those charging the batteries at home to avoid placing them near anything flammable and to keep them at room temperature. This includes keeping them away from heat sources — including power strips — and your pillow, bed and couch.

It's also advised to never overcharge lithium-ion batteries — so don't plug them in overnight. 

And just in case, the FDNY says to never block your primary way in or out of a room if you're charging a lithium-ion battery in it.

The Supreme Court heard on Monday two cases that involve how the First Amendment protecting free speech applies to social media sites. The court’s decision could fundamentally change how the internet operates. 

The case stems from state laws passed in Florida and Texas intended to protect conservative viewpoints.

In 2021, the GOP legislation came after Facebook and Twitter (now known as X) banned former President Donald Trump for his posts about the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and tried to slow misinformation about the 2020 election and the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Trade associations representing the social platform then sued, arguing the laws violated the platforms’ speech rights. As they say, they are like news organizations that can decide what content to allow on their platforms without government oversight. 

Both laws aimed to address conservative complaints that the social media companies were liberal-leaning and censored users based on their viewpoints, especially on the political right. The cases are among several the justices have grappled with over the past year involving social media platforms. 

SEE MORE: Poll: Most Americans favor restrictions on certain online content

The Florida law (SB7072) bars the permanent removal of political candidates from social media, while the Texas law (HB 20) bars social platforms from banning content based on any user's viewpoint.

During the hearing justices raised concerns about how sweeping the measures’ impact could be.

"This is so, so broad. It’s covering almost everything. But the one thing I know about the internet is that its variety is infinite," said Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Justices also asked whether such regulations would affect privately owned marketplace sites like Etsy, Uber or Venmo.  Other questions focused on censorship versus editorial discretion. 

A lawyer for the Electronic Freedom Foundation expressed deep skepticism of state governments regulating how a company moderates its content. 

"These laws represent profound intrusions into social media sites' ability to decide for themselves... When platforms have First Amendment rights to curate the user-generated content they publish, they can create distinct forums that accommodate diverse viewpoints, interests, and beliefs,” EFF Senior Staff Attorney and Civil Liberties Director David Greene told Scripps News.

 Underscoring the complexity of the issue, several privacy advocacy groups want the justices to protect the government’s ability to regulate social media companies to some extent. The court is expected to decide these challenges by June.  

Google has temporarily stopped its AI tool Gemini from producing images of people after some backlash over historically inaccurate depictions of race.

The AI tool generated false historical images of people of color. For example, pictures were altered to make White U.S. founding fathers appear Black. 

Google admits Gemini is "missing the mark."

"Some of the images generated are inaccurate or even offensive. We’re grateful for users’ feedback and are sorry the feature didn't work well," said Prabhakar Raghavan, Google senior vice president. "We’ve acknowledged the mistake and temporarily paused image generation of people in Gemini while we work on an improved version."

The feature had only been out for three weeks. Raghavan said that the model overcompensated in some cases, and was overly conservative in others, in creating its depictions. 

SEE MORE: The White House wants feedback on keeping AI private or open-source

"If you prompt Gemini for images of a specific type of person — such as 'a Black teacher in a classroom,' or 'a white veterinarian with a dog' — or people in particular cultural or historical contexts, you should absolutely get a response that accurately reflects what you ask for," Raghavan said. "So what went wrong? In short, two things. 

"First, our tuning to ensure that Gemini showed a range of people failed to account for cases that should clearly not show a range. And second, over time, the model became way more cautious than we intended and refused to answer certain prompts entirely — wrongly interpreting some very anodyne prompts as sensitive."

Google has not said when the feature will be rereleased.

Pharmacies across the U.S. are having difficulty billing insurance for some prescriptions after a cybersecurity incident at a major health care technology company.

Change Healthcare released multiple statements this week providing updates to customers and informing them of the issue. 

"Change Healthcare is experiencing a cyber security issue, and our experts are working to address the matter," a statement released Friday said. "Once we became aware of the outside threat, in the interest of protecting our partners and patients, we took immediate action to disconnect our systems to prevent further impact. At this time, we believe the issue is specific to Change Healthcare, and all other systems across UnitedHealth Group are operational. The disruption is expected to last at least through the day. We will provide updates as more information becomes available."

SEE MORE: AT&T says widespread outage was not caused by cyberattack

The American Hospital Association issued an advisory in response to the incident. Optum and Change Health Care completed a merger in 2022. 

"We recommend that all health care organizations that were disrupted or are potentially exposed by this incident consider disconnection from Optum until it is independently deemed safe to reconnect to Optum," the American Hospital Association said. "It also is recommended that organizations which utilize Optum’s services prepare related downtime procedures and contingency plans should Optum’s services remain unavailable for an extended period."

While prescriptions are largely being processed across the U.S., it is prompting some issues, especially with billing. 

"What does this mean for you? We CAN receive your RX but MOST insurance plans we cannot bill to your insurance company," Michigan-based Canadian Lakes Pharmacy said in a Facebook post. "If you can wait a day or so to pick up your RX that would be great. If you need it today we can do our best to accommodate individual needs."

Tens of thousands of Americans awoke Thursday morning in a panic, shouting "SOS!" into a void where other cell service-dependent people could've once heard them — before AT&T's widespread outage shut them out, and up. But the customers weren't the only ones sending the distress signal; your iPhone probably did, too.

On a typical day, your phone has its service bars and Wi-Fi signal in the top right corner — but on this troublesome morning, if AT&T is your carrier, that signal status was likely replaced by a jarring "SOS." And while that could be taken as laughable mockery to the phone-obsessed crowd, there's a bit more to it.

Here's all you need to know about Apple's SOS mode.

Why does an iPhone go into SOS mode?

In short, your iPhone going into SOS mode means your cellular connection is bad.

This doesn't apply to your Wi-Fi connection. You'd still be able to use that connection to browse online and iMessage during a service outage, so long as your internet provider isn't the same as your downed cell provider. You could also make or receive phone calls if Wi-Fi calling is on in your phone settings. 

But if your iPhone says "no service" or "searching" instead of your service provider in the top right, you're probably going to see that SOS on the opposite side. That means you can't make any calls or texts unless it's an emergency (also known as … an SOS).

And no, that emergency unfortunately doesn't cover a call to your mom. A call in SOS mode will automatically connect you to your local emergency number, and share your information with emergency devices. 

After the emergency call ends, your iPhone will send a text message to your emergency contacts with your current location, and "for a period of time after you enter SOS mode," they will also receive updates if your location changes. You can add emergency contacts in the Health app by pressing your profile picture and tapping Medical ID; then tap Edit, scroll to Emergency Contacts and press the plus sign to add whomever you please.

For those with iPhone 14 or later models, you can also text emergency services via satellite when you're in SOS mode.

SEE MORE: FCC's Homeland Security Bureau investigating massive AT&T cell outage

How do you get out of SOS mode?

There's not a one-size-fits-all fix for getting out of SOS mode. Customers Thursday couldn't really do much until AT&T resolved itself, but at other times, Apple has a few tricks.

While I'm always for the good old, turn-it-off-and-on as a first step, the tech giant recommends checking to make sure you're in an area that has your cellular network coverage. After that, it does follow the good old method. 

To restart your data, you can either go to Settings, then Cellular or Mobile Data and switch it on and off, or you can swipe down from the top right and click then re-click the green signal above the bluetooth button. If that's not enough, try restarting the entire device.

People with physical SIM cards can also try removing and reinserting them. A SIM card can typically be accessed by poking a toothpick into the hole on the side of an iPhone.

International travelers will also probably see some form of service searching or SOS unless they turn on data roaming. That can also be found and turned on in the Cellular Data section of Settings. Non-traveling people can try to turn on data roaming if they're stuck in SOS mode too, but because it enables cellular data services outside of your network, it might lead to additional fees from your provider.

Apple's last recommendation before calling your carrier is to check if there's an update to the carrier settings. You can find this in the Settings under General, then About.

Florida lawmakers voted in favor of legislation to ban social media for children under the age of 16. The Thursday vote marked the start of a possible political tussle between those in Florida's legislature who are for the drafted bill as it stands, and those — including the state's Gov. Ron DeSantis — who say the language still has a ways to go. 

Gov. DeSantis said on Thursday that he agrees that a number of social platforms have the potential to cause addictive behaviors, but said "parents need to have a role in this," the Orlando Sentinel reported. 

DeSantis said he doesn't believe the bill, in its current form, is ready to be passed and signed into law, but said, "Hopefully, we'll be able to get there in a way that, I think, answers the concerns that a lot of folks have."

The bill — HB 1 — which was approved by Florida's Senate in a 23-14 vote, and then sent back to the House where it was approved in a 108-7 vote — has the potential to be one of the most restrictive bans on social media use for minors in the United States. 

SEE MORE: Viral Stanley cup maker facing multiple lawsuits over lead

Florida House Speaker Paul Renner, a Republican, had already made changes to the House bill's original language, hoping to address DeSantis' concerns regarding privacy. 

The legislation focuses on social media sites that monitor and track the activity of their users. Florida lawmakers are concerned with how minors have access to upload materials like images and interact with other users. Lawmakers have also expressed concerns over the addictive behaviors facilitated by social platforms. 

Those against the bill say it goes too far. Florida Sen. Tina Polsky, a Democrat, said that while "parenting is very difficult," that "doesn't mean that the government needs to step in."

There are concerns that courts will find the bill unconstitutional. 

State Sen. Erin Grall, a Republican who sponsored the bill, said, "We're talking about businesses that are using addictive features to engage in mass manipulation of our children to cause them harm."

Similar legislative efforts in other states, that did not go as far as implementing a total ban, were blocked in court. In Arkansas a federal judge halted enforcement of legislation that would require parents to give their consent before minors could create social media accounts. 

Last year, in Utah, two laws were signed by Republican Gov. Spencer Cox to prohibit children under 18 from using social media between 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m. The legislation also included requirements on age verification for social media users in the state. It also created opportunities for lawsuits on behalf of children to be filed citing harm caused by the platforms. 

Florida Democratic state Sen. Jason Pizzo said, "Let's have a bill that encourages engaging with your children, cooking dinner, sitting at a table together, making eye contact, calling grandma to see if she's OK once in a while."

Gov. DeSantis said at a news conference before the Florida legislation passed, "We can't say that 100% of the uses are bad because they're not."

According to the Florida House bill, social media companies would be required to close any accounts believed to be used by children under 16, and delete any data related to the accounts.  

The White House on Wednesday said it wants comment from the public on whether AI systems should be kept private or made open-source.

The debate over whether to open up public access to AI development has evolved along with the capabilities of computerized AI models that can generate text, images and even video. The White House's fact-gathering is part of an executive order signed in October of 2023 that intends to balance the needs of AI companies with the rights and security needs of consumers and the nation.

SEE MORE: Project uses AI to recreate voices of people killed by gun violence

AI companies themselves are split over the best path forward. Some, like Facebook parent Meta and IBM, endorse an open approach that would give researchers and commercial companies better access. Others, including Google, warn of the security risks of posting too much of the inner workings of AI on the internet, saying such moves could be "irreversible" in a field that is moving at breakneck pace and already prompting ethics and misinformation concerns.

Google has nonetheless released less-powerful open versions of its Gemini chatbot and called for a "nuanced, collaborative approach to risks and benefits" in the space.

“One piece of encouraging news is that it’s clear to the experts that this is not a binary issue. There are gradients of openness,” said Alan Davidson, an administrator of the U.S. Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

The department has until July to synthesize feedback from the public and experts, after which it will present recommendations to the president.

SEE MORE: Tech companies sign pact to fight against AI election disruption

Computer chip manufacturer Nvidia beat Wall Street expectations in a closely watched earnings report on Wednesday, posting more than $22 billion in quarterly revenue thanks to high demand for its artificial intelligence chips.

The report, given after the closing bell on Wall Street on Wednesday, drove Nvidia shares about 6% higher in extended trading.

Nvidia's total revenue is up 265% year over year thanks largely to huge investment across the tech space in artificial intelligence computer models, which require powerful computer hardware to develop and run. AI applications are springing up in internet, health care, investment, self-driving vehicles and artistic fields.

"Strong demand was driven by enterprise software and consumer internet applications, and multiple industry verticals including automotive, financial services, and healthcare," Nvidia said.

SEE MORE: Nvidia, already leading tech stocks, expects more big AI earnings

Its revenue in recent months has made Nvidia's data-center business its highest-earning product segment. Previously, the segment earning the company the most revenue was standalone graphics cards used in high-end consumer and professional computers. This quarter, data-center sales brought in more than $18 billion in revenue for the company and were more than 400% higher than this time last year.

Nvidia told investors that revenue for the next quarter is expected to beat projections as well.

President Joe Biden is expected to sign an executive order and create a federal rule Wednesday aimed at better securing the nation's ports from potential cyberattacks.

The administration is outlining a set of cybersecurity regulations that port operators must comply with across the country, not unlike standardized safety regulations that seek to prevent injury or damage to people and infrastructure.

"We want to ensure there are similar requirements for cyber, when a cyberattack can cause just as much if not more damage than a storm or another physical threat," said Anne Neuberger, deputy national security adviser at the White House.

Nationwide, ports employ roughly 31 million people and contribute $5.4 trillion to the economy, and could be left vulnerable to a ransomware or other brand of cyberattack, Neuberger said. The standardized set of requirements is designed to help protect against that.

The new requirements, to be published Wednesday, are part of the federal government's focus on modernizing how critical infrastructure like power grids, ports and pipelines are protected as they are increasingly managed and controlled online, often remotely. There is no set of nationwide standards that govern how operators should protect against potential attacks online.

The threat continues to grow. Hostile activity in cyberspace — from spying to the planting of malware to infect and disrupt a country's infrastructure — has become a hallmark of modern geopolitical rivalry.

For example, in 2021, the operator of the nation's largest fuel pipeline had to temporarily halt operations after it fell victim to a ransomware attack in which hackers hold a victim's data or device hostage in exchange for money. The company, Colonial Pipeline, paid $4.4 million to a Russia-based hacker group, though Justice Department officials later recovered much of the money.

Ports, too, are vulnerable. In Australia last year, a cyber incident forced one of the country's largest port operators to suspend operations for three days.

In the U.S., roughly 80% of the giant cranes used to lift and haul cargo off ships onto U.S. docks come from China, and are controlled remotely, said Admiral John Vann, commander of the U.S. Coast Guard's cyber command. That leaves them vulnerable to attack, he said.

Late last month, U.S. officials said they had disrupted a state-backed Chinese effort to plant malware that could be used to damage civilian infrastructure. Vann said this type of potential attack was a concern as officials pushed for new standards, but they are also worried about the possibility for criminal activity.

The new standards, which will be subject to a public comment period, will be required for any port operator and there will be enforcement actions for failing to comply with the standards, though the officials did not outline them. They require port operators to notify authorities when they have been victimized by a cyberattack. The actions also give the Coast Guard, which regulates the nation's ports, the ability to respond to cyberattacks.

Neuralink owner Elon Musk says the company's first human patient is now able to control basic computer mouse movements using a brain implant they received earlier this year.

In a discussion on X Monday, Musk shared some details about the patient's procedure.

"Progress is good, patient seems to have made a full recovery … and is able to control the mouse, move the mouse around the screen just by thinking."

The next steps, Musk said, would be to allow users to perform more complex operations, such as clicking and dragging content in a desktop environment.

Musk did not provide additional details or information about the procedure.

The chip was implanted in a robot-assisted surgery in January, placed in a part of the brain that deals with the intention to move.

The chip captures brain signals and sends them to an app. The long term goal, according to Neuralink, is to give patients the ability to control entire devices with their thoughts.

SEE MORE: Elon Musk's Neuralink implants first device in human brain

Previously, the company had trialed its chips in animals, including monkeys. Neuralink faced allegations that several macaques died after receiving test implants. Musk has said that none of the deaths occurred "as a result" of receiving an implant.

Reuters reported a federal investigation was opened into potential animal welfare violations at Neuralink in December of 2022.

Neuralink got FDA approval to perform a clinical study in human subjects in May of 2023. It recruited subjects with "quadriplegia due to cervical spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)."

For some single people, it's just the routine: swipe, scroll through photos, swipe, match, swipe, swipe and — you guessed it — swipe again. 

The never-ending dating app cycle can often make users feel stuck, either in their path to a partner or in the very app itself. But a lawsuit claims the latter part — sorry, you probably can't sue for being single just yet — is by design, keeping users hooked to generate more profit for the apps while violating consumer and business laws in the process.

The proposed class-action suit, aptly filed on Valentine's Day in a California U.S. federal court, claims Match Group, Inc. intentionally created its apps like Tinder and Hinge with "addictive, game-like design features, which lock users into a perpetual pay-to-play loop that prioritizes corporate profits over its marketing promises and customers' relationship goals." 

This hidden strategy, the 58-page complaint states, amounts to consumer-protection violations, false advertising, unfair competition, deceptive trade practices, negligence and more.

"The undisclosed defective design is intended to erode users' ability to disengage from the Platforms and turn users into addicts who will purchase ever-more expensive subscriptions to unlock unlimited and other 'special' features, which are not designed to deliver on Match's marketing promises but instead to further addict and forever entrench users in the app," the complaint states.

One of those "marketing promises" the six plaintiffs, hailing from four different states, point to is Hinge's slogan: "Designed to be Deleted." Instead, the suit claims the apps are "designed to be addictive," with "dopamine-manipulating" features that transform "users into gamblers" searching for psychological rewards.

Examples of this include push notifications that "prey on users' fear of missing out on any potential matches" and incentive rewards that "punish users from disengaging and reward compulsive users," the suit states. 

SEE MORE: Is Temu safe? Lawsuit claims app hacks 'literally everything'

In response, Match said the lawsuit has "zero merit" and is "ridiculous."

"Our business model is not based on advertising or engagement metrics," a company statement said. "We actively strive to get people on dates every day and off our apps. Anyone who states anything else doesn't understand the purpose and mission of our entire industry." 

Match Group owns and operates some of the best-known dating apps around the world, including Tinder, Hinge, Match.com, PlentyOfFish, OkCupid and The League. 

Though many of its apps are free to download, they often offer premium features or subscriptions that they claim will increase users' visibility to others, thereby maximizing one's likelihood of getting a match. 

The company's 2023 revenue was $3.365 billion, a 5.51% year-over-year increase according to Statistica, but the amount of people paying to use its services has fallen — a drop that plunged its stock prices in November, though efforts to reach younger daters have somewhat helped it climb back up.

Pew Research Center data shows about 30% of U.S. adults have used a dating site or app, though younger people report a much higher percentage. It also notes more than a third of online dating users have paid to use a platform, and those who have paid reported more positive experiences than those who have never paid.

Wall Street is watching chipmaker Nvidia closely this week, awaiting an earnings call on Wednesday that could help set the tone for tech stocks this year.

Nvidia forecast revenues of around $20 billion for the quarter, and analysts expect it could beat them again, as it has for 19 of the last 20 quarters.

Nvidia is a key player in the burgeoning generative AI space. Its computer chips help run AI language models, data analytics, cybersecurity and other AI-related fields.

In the last two years, revenue from these applications has exploded. Until partway through the 2023 fiscal year, standalone computer graphics cards were Nvidia's best-known single earner, frequently accounting for the biggest chunk of the company's quarterly revenue. Last quarter, Nvidia says its data center and AI business was five times bigger than its graphics cards.

SEE MORE: Artificial intelligence video creator Sora hailed as cutting-edge tech

Demand is high: Facebook owner Meta says it will invest heavily in Nvidia chips for its AI datacenter needs, where it's expected to spend billions of dollars on expansion this year.

Meanwhile, competitors like AMD, Intel and even automaker Tesla are all developing their own versions of AI chips — suggesting the market could remain strong for some time.

The demand has helped push Nvidia's stock up more than 44% this year, making it the hottest stock on the S&P 500. In recent days the company has briefly had a higher market capitalization than Amazon or Alphabet, the parent company of Google.

Patricia Oliver lost her son Joaquin in 2018, after a 19-year-old man opened fire on students and staff in Parkland, Florida at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Seventeen people were killed.

Now, Patricia and Manuel Oliver work to end gun violence. The most recent project they were involved in included recreating their son’s voice.

“We moved forward with the project, we were looking and putting together different videos, anything that has audio,” Oliver explained.

Using old audio messages and video along with a message written by Joaquin’s parents, artificial intelligence was able to put the words in his voice.

“We knew that it would be hard, but it's never harder than losing Joaquin,” Patricia said.

“Hello, I am Joaquin Oliver. Six years ago I was a senior at Parkland. Many students and teachers were murdered on Valentine’s Day that year by a person using an AR-15,” the artificial intelligence message with Joaquin’s voice said.

“I'm back today because my parents used AI to recreate my voice to call you,” the AI message continued.

@scrippsnews “I’m back today because my parents used AI to recreate my voice to call you.” Voices of people shot and killed by guns were re-created using #ArtificialIntelligence. A new project aims to use these messages to send to lawmakers and change the country’s #GunLaws ♬ original sound - Scripps News

“It’s exactly Joaquin’s voice, so when I heard that final product, it was very impressive, very impactful, it was deep. It was like Joaquin was talking next to me, he was telling me that. And that was pretty hard,” Patricia Oliver said.

A new project called The Shotline is using artificial intelligence to recreate the voices of those killed by gun violence. The project was released this month and put together by two organizations – March For Our Lives and Change the Ref.

The groups' goal is to have the public send these AI messages to lawmakers to combat gun violence.

“This is something that is very honest. It's a way we decided to move and send the message to these representatives that they are not willing to really listen, that this is a problem that is attacking every single one in every single place of this country,” Oliver said.

But this technology doesn’t come without concern.

“It’s an interesting use of a very novel technology,” said Anton Dahbura, the co-director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Assured Autonomy.

“Freeform use of synthesizing someone's voice is a slippery slope. And there are going to be well-intended people, as in obviously this case, and then nefarious people,” he said.

However, Dahbura said it could take years for policy and regulations at both the federal and state level to catch up with this ever-evolving technology to eliminate bad actors.

Earlier this month, the FCC announced that calls made with AI-generated voices are considered “artificial”. This was specifically aimed at making common robocall scams illegal and giving officials new tools to go after bad actors.

“Public awareness, pushback, ensuring that this technology is used responsibly, those are of utmost importance right now,” Dahbura said.

The Shotline project website currently showcases AI messages using the voices of six people lost to gun violence.

As of Feb. 20, the website claimed more than 71,000 AI calls had been submitted to representatives through The Shotline, using the six available AI messages. More messages could be developed by the project in the future.

“This is open to bring more voices, to send more messages,” Oliver said.

SEE MORE: Pain into motivation: Gun violence survivor advocates for changes

Do not wear an Apple Vision Pro headset while crossing the street. That's the message from the San Diego Police Department. 

Police posted a video on Instagram showing officers taking a person into custody when another person, wearing the headset, walks by, preparing to cross the street.

The video shows one of the officers looking at the man, apparently confused about what's happening in front of her eyes. 

"It was a sight that had us pausing in bewilderment," the police department said. 

The department is now using the encounter as a teaching moment. 

"While we're all for exploring new dimensions and technology, let's remember the importance of pedestrian safety. Keep those virtual experiences on the sidewalk, folks, and let's cross streets the old-fashioned way — with our eyes wide open to the real world, unobstructed and without distractions," San Diego PD said. 

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Apple Vision Pro allows users to view workspaces and computing selections as if the desktop or viewing screen were floating out in front of the device, seamlessly integrated with a person's surrounding environment.  To navigate between apps and websites, users can simply use their eyes, hands and voice.

The incident in San Diego was not the first time the headsets have prompted a safety warning. Earlier this month, videos of people wearing the headsets while driving Teslas went viral. Before the drivers said it was a joke and the headsets weren't on, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg issued a note of caution. 

"Reminder — ALL advanced driver assistance systems available today require the human driver to be in control and fully engaged in the driving task at all times," Buttigieg said in a statement on social media.

Apple has also warned users to "never use Apple Vision Pro while operating a moving vehicle, bicycle, heavy machinery, or in any other situations requiring attention to safety."

SEE MORE: Apple Vision Pro's $3,500 price tag not worth it, reviewers say

The Biden administration plans to devote $1.5 billion to chipmaker GlobalFoundries so it can expand production in New York and Vermont.

The government will also make another $1.6 billion in loans available.

The payment comes under the CHIPS And Science Act, which will ultimately distribute more than $50 billion in domestic computer chip manufacturing and R&D investment.

GlobalFoundries says it intends to use the money to modernize two existing plants in Burlington, Vermont and Malta, New York. It will also construct a new plant in Malta.

Construction is expected to drive 9,000 new jobs over the next ten years, while manufacturing will add 1,500 jobs in the new plants. As a condition of funding through the CHIPS Act, GlobalFoundries will spend $10 million on new skills training and will continue a $1,000-per-year child care subsidy for construction workers on the project.

SEE MORE: Program helps students become semiconductor technicians in 10 days

The CHIPS Act, signed in 2022 after passing with modest bipartisan support, brings $280 billion to bear on modernizing U.S. manufacturing and making its high-tech output more competitive with China.

A total of $52 billion will go specifically to the semiconductor industry. 

Administration officials say the output of the new factories will show up in everything from military applications to new electric vehicles.

A woman walks down a Tokyo street at night wearing a red dress and a black leather jacket.

But if you watch the video closely, the woman's right leg suddenly becomes her left leg, a giveaway glitch that indicates the clip was created using artificial intelligence.

It's called Sora, a new program from OpenAI, the same company behind ChatGPT. It works by taking a user prompt, such as "tour of an art gallery with many beautiful works of art in different styles" and quickly rendering a completely photorealistic scene. The Sora clips can be realistic, or fantastically bizarre.

"Clearly, it's by a long way the best video generation model that's been created," said Ed Newton-Rex, CEO of nonprofit Fairly Trained.

But what has some AI experts like Newton-Rex concerned isn't the quality: It's the worry that Sora and other AI programs only get better by scraping the internet for copyrighted material to make something new.

"These technologies, many of them — not all of them, but many of them — are exploiting human creators' work without those creators' permission and without paying them," Newton-Rex told Scripps News.

OpenAI won't say how it trains Sora, but on its website demonstrates how the program improves over time, greatly improving video renderings of a dog, for example.

Sora is not yet available to the public. The company is asking select, so-called "red teams" to look for potential harms or risks. "We are also granting access to a number of visual artists, designers, and filmmakers to gain feedback," the company says on its website.

Concerns over AI taking the jobs of artists is one of the main reasons Hollywood writers and actors recently went on strike.

"These tools will help creators," Newton-Rex says. "There will be people who use these tools to do amazing things, but at the same time, the same model that, you know, can assist one video creator is going to put, you know, 10 more out of work."

And there is growing concern AI may be used to generate deepfakes to sway elections, like a recent robocall before the New Hampshire primary featuring a phony President Joe Biden.

Newton-Rex believes new laws should require AI programs to disclose how they are trained. His new nonprofit company, Fairly Trained, works with companies pledging to buy — not just take content.

"We certify companies that don't go and claim that they can use whatever they like, and it falls under the fair use exception to copyright law," says Newton-Rex.

OpenAI says it's focused on safety and ways to detect AI-generated videos, knowing the ethics, legality, and potential of AI are mammoth issues that aren't going away.

SEE MORE: Tech companies sign pact to fight against AI election disruption

Major technology companies signed a pact Friday to voluntarily adopt “reasonable precautions” to prevent artificial intelligence tools from being used to disrupt democratic elections around the world.

Executives from Adobe, Amazon, Google, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and TikTok gathered at the Munich Security Conference to announce a new framework for how they respond to AI-generated deepfakes that deliberately trick voters. Twelve other companies — including Elon Musk's X — are also signing on to the accord.

“Everybody recognizes that no one tech company, no one government, no one civil society organization is able to deal with the advent of this technology and its possible nefarious use on their own,” said Nick Clegg, president of global affairs for Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, in an interview ahead of the summit.

The accord is largely symbolic, but targets increasingly realistic AI-generated images, audio and video "that deceptively fake or alter the appearance, voice, or actions of political candidates, election officials, and other key stakeholders in a democratic election, or that provide false information to voters about when, where, and how they can lawfully vote.”

The companies aren't committing to ban or remove deepfakes. Instead, the accord outlines methods they will use to try to detect and label deceptive AI content when it is created or distributed on their platforms. It notes the companies will share best practices with each other and provide “swift and proportionate responses” when that content starts to spread.

The vagueness of the commitments and lack of any binding requirements likely helped win over a diverse swath of companies, but disappointed advocates were looking for stronger assurances.

“The language isn't quite as strong as one might have expected,” said Rachel Orey, senior associate director of the Elections Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “I think we should give credit where credit is due, and acknowledge that the companies do have a vested interest in their tools not being used to undermine free and fair elections. That said, it is voluntary, and we'll be keeping an eye on whether they follow through.”

Clegg said each company “quite rightly has its own set of content policies.”

“This is not attempting to try to impose a straitjacket on everybody," he said. "And in any event, no one in the industry thinks that you can deal with a whole new technological paradigm by sweeping things under the rug and trying to play whack-a-mole and finding everything that you think may mislead someone.”

Several political leaders from Europe and the U.S. also joined Friday’s announcement. European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova said while such an agreement can’t be comprehensive, “it contains very impactful and positive elements.” She also urged fellow politicians to take responsibility to not use AI tools deceptively and warned that AI-fueled disinformation could bring about “the end of democracy, not only in the EU member states.”

The agreement at the German city's annual security meeting comes as more than 50 countries are due to hold national elections in 2024. Bangladesh, Taiwan, Pakistan and most recently Indonesia have already done so.

Attempts at AI-generated election interference have already begun, such as when AI robocalls that mimicked U.S. President Joe Biden’s voice tried to discourage people from voting in New Hampshire’s primary election last month.

Just days before Slovakia’s elections in November, AI-generated audio recordings impersonated a candidate discussing plans to raise beer prices and rig the election. Fact-checkers scrambled to identify them as false as they spread across social media.

SEE MORE: Experts weigh in on OpenAI's new text-to-video AI tool

Politicians also have experimented with the technology, from using AI chatbots to communicate with voters to adding AI-generated images to ads.

The accord calls on platforms to “pay attention to context and in particular to safeguarding educational, documentary, artistic, satirical, and political expression.”

It said the companies will focus on transparency to users about their policies and work to educate the public about how they can avoid falling for AI fakes.

Most companies have previously said they’re putting safeguards on their own generative AI tools that can manipulate images and sound, while also working to identify and label AI-generated content so that social media users know if what they’re seeing is real. But most of those proposed solutions haven't yet rolled out and the companies have faced pressure to do more.

That pressure is heightened in the U.S., where Congress has yet to pass laws regulating AI in politics, leaving companies to largely govern themselves.

The Federal Communications Commission recently confirmed AI-generated audio clips in robocalls are against the law, but that doesn't cover audio deepfakes when they circulate on social media or in campaign advertisements.

Many social media companies already have policies in place to deter deceptive posts about electoral processes — AI-generated or not. Meta says it removes misinformation about “the dates, locations, times, and methods for voting, voter registration, or census participation” as well as other false posts meant to interfere with someone's civic participation.

Jeff Allen, co-founder of the Integrity Institute and a former Facebook data scientist, said the accord seems like a “positive step” but he'd still like to see social media companies taking other actions to combat misinformation, such as building content recommendation systems that don't prioritize engagement above all else.

Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of the advocacy group Public Citizen, argued Friday that the accord is “not enough” and AI companies should “hold back technology” such as hyper-realistic text-to-video generators “until there are substantial and adequate safeguards in place to help us avert many potential problems.”

In addition to the companies that helped broker Friday's agreement, other signatories include chatbot developers Anthropic and Inflection AI; voice-clone startup ElevenLabs; chip designer Arm Holdings; security companies McAfee and TrendMicro; and Stability AI, known for making the image-generator Stable Diffusion.

Notably absent is another popular AI image-generator, Midjourney. The San Francisco-based startup didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

The inclusion of X — not mentioned in an earlier announcement about the pending accord — was one of the surprises of Friday's agreement. Musk sharply curtailed content-moderation teams after taking over the former Twitter and has described himself as a “free speech absolutist.”

In a statement Friday, X CEO Linda Yaccarino said “every citizen and company has a responsibility to safeguard free and fair elections."

“X is dedicated to playing its part, collaborating with peers to combat AI threats while also protecting free speech and maximizing transparency,” she said.

OpenAI announced a new artificial intelligence tool that can take a text prompt and turn it into a video.

Sora is the newest tool developed by the company behind ChatGPT.

Sora can take a text prompt, and create a video based on it. One example was based on the prompt, “New York City submerged like Atlantis. Fish, whales, sea turtles and sharks swim through the streets of New York.”

Other companies, like Google, have also developed similar tools in this space.

So what does this mean for the ever-advancing artificial intelligence industry?

“This one is more in-depth, more unique, I guess if you will. And it generates very realistic video, moving images. And it does that with what we call a text prompt, so you can type something in and ask it to generate a scene based on text,” said Steve Beaty, a professor of computer science at MSU Denver.

@scrippsnews Sharks swimming in New York City? OpenAI has unveiled a new tool that takes a text prompt and turns it into #video. Here’s how it works, and what experts are watching for as the new tool is developed. #ArtificialIntelligence ♬ original sound - Scripps News

Similar to how ChatGPT works as a large language model, Beaty said Sora has a similar process, in which it takes a frame and decides what would be the next logical frame to come in after that.

Experts say tools like this could make AI more difficult to detect.

“It is going to be possible, I think moving into the future, to not be able to easily recognize some of these images, etcetera. I think it's already happened to a certain degree,” Beaty said.

There may, however, be ways for our computers to differentiate what’s real from what’s AI.

“It could be, moving forward, that certain companies like OpenAI are going to embed things inside of the video that, for example, our browsers will be able to immediately recognize as generated AI. Now there will be other companies who might not choose to do that,” he explained.

SEE MORE: Meta to add 'AI-generated' label to images made by third-party tools 

Another factor experts are considering is how the AI was trained.

In an email statement to Scripps News, Abe Davis, an assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University, wrote, "The results are definitely impressive, but understanding their real significance will require a bit of a shift in how we think about video."

Davis went on to explain how a complex video made by a human reflects deliberate choices on the part of the creator behind every detail. In contrast, he explained, "When AI produces something like this, we get a video with way more detail than the short text prompt used to generate it. That detail must come from somewhere, and in this case, it comes from other content that the AI has been trained on. So, we should probably think of the result as a mash-up of other content made by different creators with different intentions."

OpenAI’s new text-to-video tool is not perfect. On the website, the company wrote, “The current model has weaknesses,” and “For example, a person might take a bite out of a cookie, but afterward, the cookie may not have a bite mark.”

OpenAI wrote on their website that they are taking several safety steps before making this tool publicly available.

“We can expect a certain amount of concern, and I think that's completely appropriate. We might be able to see a certain amount of legislation come out,” Beaty said.

The maker of ChatGPT on Thursday unveiled its next leap into generative artificial intelligence with a tool that instantly makes short videos in response to written commands.

San Francisco-based OpenAI's new text-to-video generator, called Sora, isn't the first of its kind. Google, Meta and the startup Runway ML are among the other companies to have demonstrated similar technology.

But the high quality of videos displayed by OpenAI — some after CEO Sam Altman asked social media users to send in ideas for written prompts — astounded observers while also raising fears about the ethical and societal implications.

“A instructional cooking session for homemade gnocchi hosted by a grandmother social media influencer set in a rustic Tuscan country kitchen with cinematic lighting,” was a prompt suggested on X by a freelance photographer from New Hampshire. Altman responded a short time later with a realistic video that depicted what the prompt described.

SEE MORE: Major tech firms plan to combat AI election misinformation

The tool isn't yet publicly available and OpenAI has revealed limited information about how it was built. The company, which has been sued by some authors and The New York Times over its use of copyrighted works of writing to train ChatGPT, also hasn't disclosed what imagery and video sources were used to train Sora. (OpenAI pays an undisclosed fee to The Associated Press to license its text news archive).

OpenAI said in a blog post that it's engaging with artists, policymakers and others before releasing the new tool to the public.

“We are working with red teamers — domain experts in areas like misinformation, hateful content, and bias — who will be adversarially testing the model,” the company said. “We’re also building tools to help detect misleading content such as a detection classifier that can tell when a video was generated by Sora.”

Self-driving firm Waymo has issued a recall after two separate autonomous vehicles struck the same vehicle that was being towed.

Waymo says on Dec. 11 in Phoenix, Arizona, one of its cars collided with a pickup truck that was being towed across several lanes of traffic. Minutes later, a second Waymo vehicle struck the same truck.

The truck was being towed backwards. Waymo said it was oriented in such a way that it occupied portions of two lanes at the same time.

The collisions took place at low speeds and did not injure anyone, Waymo said. There were no passengers in the Waymo vehicles at the time.

Waymo, which is owned by Google's parent company Alphabet, cooperated with the National Highway Safety Transportation Administration following the incidents. 

SEE MORE: What is the future of automobile technology?

"We determined that due to the persistent orientation mismatch of the towed pickup truck and tow truck combination, the Waymo AV incorrectly predicted the future motion of the towed vehicle," Waymo wrote on its blog. "After developing, rigorously testing, and validating a fix, on December 20, 2023 we began deploying a software update to our fleet to address this issue."

The company submitted a voluntary recall report for software that runs in its vehicles. It says it could recall as many as 444 of its vehicles to address the problem.

Waymo says its cars have now driven themselves more than 10 million miles. It started offering automated taxi services in Phoenix in 2020. Since May of 2023, it has expanded its coverage to most of the city.

New York City, its schools and public hospital system announced a lawsuit Wednesday against the tech giants that run Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube, blaming their "addictive and dangerous" social media platforms for fueling a childhood mental health crisis that is disrupting learning and draining resources.

Children and adolescents are especially susceptible to harm because their brains are not fully developed, the lawsuit said.

"Youth are now addicted to defendants' platforms in droves," according to the 311-page filing in Superior Court in California, where the companies are headquartered.

The country's largest school district, with about 1 million students, has had to respond to disruptions in and out of the classroom, provide counseling for anxiety and depression, and develop curricula about the effects of social media and how to stay safe online, according to the filing. The city spends more than $100 million on youth mental health programs and services each year, Mayor Eric Adams' office said.

"Over the past decade, we have seen just how addictive and overwhelming the online world can be, exposing our children to a non-stop stream of harmful content and fueling our national youth mental health crisis," Adams said.

The legal action is the latest of numerous lawsuits filed by states, school districts and others claiming social media companies exploit children and adolescents by deliberating designing features that keep them endlessly scrolling and checking their accounts.

Teenagers know they spend too much time on social media but are powerless to stop, according to the new lawsuit, filed by the city of New York, its Department of Education and New York City Health and Hospitals Corp., the country's largest public hospital system.

SEE MORE: People who use YouTube are often more lonely, study finds

The lawsuit seeks to have the companies' conduct declared a public nuisance to be abated, as well as unspecified monetary damages.

In responses to the filing, the tech companies said they have and continue to develop and implement policies and controls that emphasize user safety.

"The allegations in this complaint are simply not true," said José Castañeda, a spokesman for YouTube parent Google, who said by email that the company has collaborated with youth, mental health and parenting experts.

A TikTok spokesperson cited similar regular collaborations to understand best practices in the face of industry-wide challenges.

"TikTok has industry-leading safeguards to support teens' well-being, including age-restricted features, parental controls, an automatic 60-minute time limit for users under 18, and more," an emailed statement said.

Virtually all U.S. teenagers use social media, and roughly 1 in 6 teens describe their use of YouTube and TikTok as "almost constant," according to the Pew Research Center.

A spokesperson for Meta, which owns and operates Facebook and Instagram, said the company wants "teens to have safe, age-appropriate experiences online, and we have over 30 tools and features to support them and their parents. We've spent a decade working on these issues and hiring people who have dedicated their careers to keeping young people safe and supported online."

A statement from Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, said its app is intentionally different from others in that it "opens directly to a camera — rather than a feed of content that encourages passive scrolling — and has no traditional public likes or comments."

"While we will always have more work to do, we feel good about the role Snapchat plays in helping close friends feel connected, happy and prepared as they face the many challenges of adolescence," the statement said.

A California federal judge has dismissed the majority of copyright claims in a lawsuit filed by a group of authors against ChatGPT creator OpenAI.

U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín ruled that the writers, including comedian Sarah Silverman and novelist Paul Tremblay, failed to provide enough evidence to prove that OpenAI used their works to train the language model behind the company's popular artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT. The ruling follows similar decisions made by other federal judges who determined that the output of ChatGPT is not similar enough to the authors' work to directly infringe on their copyrights.

SEE MORE: The next front in the AI wars: The courtroom

However, Judge Martínez-Olguín  did give the authors permission to continue pursuing any claims that OpenAI unjustly violated copyright law by using the authors' books without their permission. They now have the option to file an amended complaint by March 13.

Similar lawsuits have been filed against Google and Meta by other groups of writers, artists, and music publishers, alleging that the tech companies misused copyrighted work to train their AI systems.  But the courts have not yet ruled on whether the tech companies directly violated copyright law. 

The U.S. House and Senate are considering legislation that could set the rules for generative AI and intellectual property. But as the law tries to catch up with technology, the intersection of AI and intellectual property will only get more contentious.

Earlier this month, Apple released one of its most expensive new products to date in the Apple Vision Pro, which has a starting price of nearly $3,500. 

It was dubbed Apple's first spatial computer, allowing users to put on a headset to have an immersive experience. 

Despite the high price, many reviewers have said their experiences with Apple Vision Pro were unpleasant. So far, the devices have a 2.7 (out of 5) rating on Google. While many said the product has "cool" features, it simply was not worth the price tag. 

It is a view shared by tech reviewer Farzad Mesbahi, who complimented many of the product features, but said the product is too expensive. He said on X that he is returning his Apple Vision Pro. 

"Get the price down well under $3,000 any way you can. This thing becomes a hit once it's under $2,000," he wrote. 

It allows users to be immersed in video games, TV shows and movies. 

“The era of spatial computing has arrived,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Apple Vision Pro is the most advanced consumer electronics device ever created. Its revolutionary and magical user interface will redefine how we connect, create, and explore.”

SEE MORE: Buttigieg warns against wearing Apple Vision Pro goggles while driving

While Mesbahi complimented the 3D content, he said it simply isn't comfortable to wear for long periods of time. 

"Even when you get the device to sit comfortably on your head and face, it's still something you have to wear on your head and face," he said. "For a technology/productivity device, this is a non-starter for me. The reason why cellphones, tablets, computers, etc. work is because they are easy to use for long periods of time. Regardless of how comfortable I get Vision Pro to be on my head, it's still a hurdle."

As hospitals increase their dependence on online tools for operations and patient records, their risk from cyberattacks and ransomware are expected to grow. 

That's according to cybersecurity experts with the American Hospital Association trade group.

“Unfortunately, the unintended consequence of the use of all this network and internet connected technology is it expanded our digital attack surface,” said John Riggi, cybersecurity adviser for the American Hospital Association. “So, many more opportunities for bad guys to penetrate our networks.”

Experts say the number of attacks against hospitals and health systems is climbing year over year, as is the dollar cost to ransom critical infrastructure back from criminals that hold it hostage. In 2023, the average cost for a ransomware attack was $1.5 million, up from $5,000 in 2018.

Recent attacks have forced hospitals to send patients to different emergency rooms, or take compromised medical record systems offline. One rural hospital in Illinois was forced to close permanently after an attack ruined its finances.

Recovering from an attack can also take time and money, sometimes requiring months of rebuilding systems.

The attacks are often traced to countries like Russia and Iran, which makes prosecution difficult.

SEE MORE: US infrastructure is vulnerable to Chinese cyberattack, officials warn

The Department of Health and Human Services announced new regulations for hospitals, coming later this year, that will help protect them from cyberattack risks.

Changes to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, will hold hospitals to tighter data protection standards.

New security requirements may also be attached to eligibility for Medicare and Medicaid funding.

At least six major technology companies are planning to sign an agreement this week that would guide how they try to put a stop to the use of artificial intelligence tools to disrupt democratic elections.

The upcoming event at the Munich Security Conference in Germany comes as more than 50 countries are due to hold national elections in 2024.

Attempts at AI-generated election interference have already begun, such as when AI robocalls that mimicked U.S. President Joe Biden’s voice tried to discourage people from voting in New Hampshire’s primary election last month.

“In a critical year for global elections, technology companies are working on an accord to combat the deceptive use of AI targeted at voters," said a joint statement from several companies Tuesday. "Adobe, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, TikTok and others are working jointly toward progress on this shared objective and we hope to finalize and present details on Friday at the Munich Security Conference.”

The companies declined to share details of what's in the agreement. Many have already said they're putting safeguards on their own generative AI tools that can manipulate images and sound, while also working to identify and label AI-generated content so that social media users know if what they're seeing is real.

X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, wasn't mentioned in the statement and didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

SEE MORE: Is your company using AI to monitor you while you work?

For those who use assistive voice tech, a new app is trying to make it easier.

Whispp has built real-time AI-powered assistive voice tech for your phone.

Why is this important?

It can help people with a voice disability — like a severe stutter or vocal cord paralysis, for example — communicate better.

“People with ALS and Parkinson's disease can benefit from Whispp,” said Joris Castermans, the founder and CEO of Whispp.

All the user has to do is whisper into the app. Why does this help?

“I tend to stutter,” Castermans explained. “People who stutter severely, when they whisper, they are really fluent.”

The app can even make the voice sound like your own, after using only a few minutes of voice recordings as a sample.

@scrippsnews This AI #tech can convert whispered or vocal cord impaired speech into a clear voice, just by using your phone. Here’s how it works, and who it can help. #artificialintelligence ♬ original sound - Scripps News

Edo van den Brink has damaged facial nerves following acute leukemia, and can experience pain when he speaks at full volume. 

“I’ve always considered my voice and contact with people in my work as one of my essential properties,” van den Brink said.

Whispering, however, doesn’t hurt, he explained.

“Suddenly you can hear your voice like it was before, I mean, that’s pretty, it has a lot of impact,” he said.

“I’m really astonished by the way it can reproduce my original voice,” he said.

The tech uses audio-to-audio-based artificial intelligence, which operates in the cloud. The company started five years ago and built their own AI.

Whispp recently debuted their AI-driven phone-calling feature at the consumer electronics show in January.

Whispp is now available to anyone with an iPhone or Android. A free trial is available when downloading the app.

Subscriptions start at $19.99.

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In the wake of recent technological advancements in artificial intelligence, the traditional workplace is undergoing a transformation in ways some might not expect. And some major companies are now employing AI to monitor employee interactions while they work. 

According to a report from CNBC, U.S. companies including Starbucks, Walmart, Nestle, T-Mobile, Chevron and Delta Air Lines, as well as European employers AstraZeneca and Nestlé, are using the startup AI data platform Aware to track employee messages on popular workplace apps like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and more. Aware CEO Jeff Schumann told the outlet that companies are using his platform to "understand the risk within their communications," by monitoring employee interactions and company morale in real time and bypassing those annual surveys.

"It's always tracking real-time employee sentiment, and it's always tracking real-time toxicity," Schumann told CNBC. "If you were a bank using Aware and the sentiment of the workforce spiked in the last 20 minutes, it's because they're talking about something positively, collectively. The technology would be able to tell them whatever it was."

SEE MORE: Report outlines which jobs are most vulnerable to AI, new technology

Aware confirmed to the outlet that it has collected over 6 billion messages that represent some 20 billion interactions from more than 3 million employees working at large companies. But Schumann estimates that about 80% of Aware customers use the platform for governance and compliance, to help reduce the risks associated with employee interactions.  

A representative from AstraZeneca told CNBC that the pharmaceutical giant doesn't use Aware to track employee sentiment or toxicity. Meanwhile, Delta said it uses the platform's analytics to gather feedback from employees and stakeholders as a way to monitor trends and emotions. CNBC said it didn't receive a response from any of the other companies previously mentioned regarding their use of Aware. 

Schumann added that Aware's revenue has spiked over the past five years by 150% per year on average, and most of its customers have roughly 30,000 employees. However, he noted that his company's AI models are simply making it easier to identify potential risks or policy violations and aren't involved in the decision-making process. 

"When the model flags an interaction, it provides full context around what happened and what policy is triggered," he told CNBC, "giving investigation teams the information they need to decide next steps consistent with company policies and the law." 

SEE MORE: US regulators plan to go after harmful AI business practices

Nonetheless, a recent study conducted by the American Psychological Association showed that 32% of employees who are monitored by their employer during the workday reported their mental health as being "poor" or "fair," compared to just 24% who aren't being monitored. Dr. Tara Behrend is a professor of human resources and labor relations at Michigan State University and she said many of these companies are making the mistake of implementing new technologies like Aware to manage remote workers. 

"It's a mistake because the tools aren't measuring what's really important — all the ways a worker is contributing to the organization and generating value," she said. "Our data has clearly shown that these productivity monitoring tools do not lead to better performance. They are counterproductive for the organizations that use them."

The CEO of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI said Tuesday that the dangers that keep him awake at night regarding artificial intelligence are the “very subtle societal misalignments” that could make the systems wreak havoc.

Sam Altman, speaking at the World Governments Summit in Dubai via a video call, reiterated his call for a body like the International Atomic Energy Agency to be created to oversee AI that's likely advancing faster than the world expects.

“There’s some things in there that are easy to imagine where things really go wrong," Altman said. "And I’m not that interested in the 'killer robots walking on the street' direction of things going wrong; I’m much more interested in the very subtle societal misalignments where we just have these systems out in society and through no particular ill intention, things just go horribly wrong.”

SEE MORE: What is artificial intelligence? An explanation of the tech buzzword

However, Altman stressed that the AI industry, like OpenAI, shouldn't be in the driver's seat when it comes to making regulations governing the industry.

“We’re still in the stage of a lot of discussion. So, you know, everybody in the world is having a conference. Everyone’s got an idea, a policy paper, and that’s OK," Altman said. "I think we’re still at a time where debate is needed and healthy, but at some point in the next few years, I think we have to move towards an action plan with real buy-in around the world.”

OpenAI, a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup, is one of the leaders in the field. Microsoft has invested some $1 billion in OpenAI. The Associated Press has signed a deal with OpenAI for it to access its news archive. Meanwhile, The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft over the use of its stories without permission to train OpenAI's chatbots.

OpenAI's success has made Altman the public face for generative AI’s rapid commercialization — and the fears over what may come from the new technology.

SEE MORE: While AI went mainstream in 2023, so did efforts to regulate its use

The United Arab Emirates, an autocratic federation of seven hereditarily ruled sheikhdoms, has signs of that risk. Speech remains tightly controlled. Those restrictions affect the flow of accurate information — the same details AI programs like ChatGPT rely on as machine-learning systems to provide their answers for users.

The UAE also has the Abu Dhabi firm G42, overseen by the country’s powerful national security adviser. G42 has what experts suggest is the world's leading Arabic-language artificial intelligence model. The company has faced spying allegations for its ties to a mobile phone app identified as spyware. It has also faced claims it could have gathered genetic material secretly from Americans for the Chinese government.

G42 has said it would cut ties to Chinese suppliers over American concerns. However, the discussion with Altman, moderated by the UAE's Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence Omar al-Olama, touched on none of the local concerns.

For his part, Altman said he was heartened to see that schools, where teachers feared students would use AI to write papers, now embrace the technology as crucial for the future. But he added that AI remains in its infancy.

“I think the reason is the current technology that we have is like ... that very first cellphone with a black-and-white screen,” Altman said. "So give us some time. But I will say I think in a few more years it’ll be much better than it is now. And in a decade it should be pretty remarkable.”

If you paid attention to Super Bowl commercials Sunday, you surely couldn't have missed the multitude of ads for Temu.

The Chinese-backed e-commerce platform aired three commercials during the big game and two that played after, likely costing upwards of $30 million in total for the coveted — yet wildly expensive — broadcast slots. Yet the investment appears to have reaped gains already, with the Temu app ranking second in Apple's chart of most downloaded free apps Monday.

But while Temu promises that its low prices on everything from clothing to technology allow customers to "shop like a billionaire," some of those customers say the promise is a ploy to allow the app itself to shop — for users' private data.

Class action lawsuits allege "malicious" data-collection scheme

In the most recent bout of controversy, a group of plaintiffs from multiple states filed a class action lawsuit against Temu and its parent company PDD Holdings Inc., claiming the app violates users' privacy rights by secretly collecting their data and doesn't give them an option to effectively consent.

The suit claims experts who reviewed the app found it is "purposefully and intentionally" loaded with "a complete arsenal of tools to exfiltrate virtually all the private data on a user's device and perform nearly any malign action upon command trigger from a remote server." This, it alleges, gives the company access to "literally everything on your phone."

"This is particularly concerning, given that biometric information such as facial characteristics, voiceprints, and fingerprints are immutable characteristics that can be misused by unscrupulous actors," the lawsuit states, also claiming this process gives Temu access to a user's private messages, phone settings and location services.

The experts involved in the case claim the "smoking gun evidence" they found, including alleged evidence that "great efforts were taken to intentionally hide" the software's intrusiveness, makes Temu "the most dangerous malware/spyware package currently in widespread circulation," particularly as it pertains to China.

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Months prior, another class action lawsuit alleged Temu knowingly failed to secure customers' personal information and allowed hackers to steal users' data. This led to reports to the Better Business Bureau over Temu customers' credit card and bank information being sold or leaked after they used the app, the lawsuit states.

On its website, Temu says it cares "deeply about privacy." It also says it doesn't "sell" personal information in the traditional sense, and only provides it to certain entities to create a better and more personalized service for users.

The company also shared a statement with CBS, which first reported the news of the lawsuit, saying, "We categorically deny the allegations and intend to vigorously defend ourselves against these meritless lawsuits … Our privacy practices are in line with industry standards and are transparently disclosed in our privacy policy. Temu also has a 'permissions' section in the Temu app and website that clearly explains the device features that Temu does and does not access. We do not sell customer data to third parties."

Other controversies involving Temu

Other Chinese-owned apps have been subject to increased data-privacy concerns as of late, particularly with the rise of TikTok, because any company in China cannot legally refuse if the government demands access to their data.

The recent lawsuit points to the Pinduoduo online shopping app — which is also owned by PDD Holdings Inc. — as another example of this, claiming it was recently suspended from the Google Play Store over the presence of spyware.

But beyond its security and ownership, the business model of Temu itself has also faced other scrutiny regarding its products and how they're made in the first place.

A Congressional report published in June 2023 said there's an "extremely high risk" Temu's supply chains employ forced labor, violating the U.S. law that blocks imports from China's Xinjiang region unless there's proof the products were made without it. Temu said in the report that it doesn't conduct audits to examine whether its suppliers are in accordance with the anti-forced-labor law.

Are the prices too good to be true?

Since its 2022 launch, Temu's appeal has centered on its low or — even free, if you promote it — prices for every kind of product.

In a statement to TIME, a Temu spokesperson said it can offer the low prices because of its "deep network of merchants, logistic partners, and [Pinduoduo's] established ecosystem built over the years."

But instead of being known for the costs, it's the quality that seems to be taking hold of the business' reputation.

Temu has a 2.5-star Better Business Bureau rating, and most of the customer reviews claim some issue, like its "horrible" customer service, delivery errors, pricing tricks and low-quality items.

There are some high reviews, however, which mostly detail skeptics being pleasantly surprised upon receiving their orders.

Since Temu suppliers are mostly overseas, the prices are offset by an average 23-day shipping window, which could deter some users who are accustomed to the Amazon Prime two-day delivery schedule. 

Still, tens of millions of Americans are receiving Temu packages each year, so apparently, neither data privacy nor bad reviews can beat the appeal of a good deal.