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This week, Figma CEO Dylan Field said the company would temporarily disable its Make Design AI feature after it was accused of “seriously” training the tool on existing apps. The feature, unveiled at the company’s annual Config conference, was meant to boost the design process by generating UI layouts and components from text prompts, but faced criticism after it appeared to mimic the layout of Apple’s Weather app.
This week, YouTube quietly rolled out a policy change that allows people to request the removal of AI-generated or other synthetic content that simulates their face or voice. The move marks a shift in opinion at YouTube, where the company now sees deep fake messages as a privacy issue rather than just a content moderation issue.
Fisker has asked the Delaware bankruptcy judge overseeing the Chapter 11 case to approve the sale of its remaining inventory of the all-electric Ocean SUV. If approved, the company would be able to offload its finished EVs to a New York-based vehicle leasing company for about $14,000 per vehicle — a steep drop from the $70,000 starting price some of them once demanded.
News
Twitter meets Myspace for GenZ: Aiming to put the “social” back into “social media,” a new app called noplace serves as a modern-day MySpace with colorful, customizable profiles — and it’s climbed to the top of the App Store. Read more
How to avoid AI-powered scams: Generative AI has made online fraud easier, cheaper and even more convincing. We’ve put together a helpful guide on what you can do to protect yourself and your loved ones. Read more
Turn off these silly video call reactions: If you’ve seen thumbs up and confetti go off on your screen during a video call, you’re not alone. Here’s how you can turn off this setting on your Apple devices. Read more
Amazon retires Astro for Business: Amazon has decided to end its Astro for Business security robot just seven months after launch as the company shifts its focus to the home version of Astro. Read more
Naturally 1 for security: Popular online board and role-playing game platform Roll20 suffered a data breach that exposed the personal information of some users. The platform is currently notifying users of the breach. Read more
Cloudflare tackles AI bots: The publicly traded cloud services provider has released a new, free tool to prevent bots from scraping websites hosted on its platform for data to train AI models. Read more
Is Gemini as good as Google claims?: Google claims that its AI models can perform previously impossible tasks such as summarizing multiple hundred-page documents. But new research shows the models aren’t as good as the company says. Read more
1 billion records stolen and growing: This year has seen some of the biggest and most damaging data breaches in recent history. From AT&T to Ticketmaster, these are the biggest data breaches of 2024 so far. Read more
Analysis
Year of Themes: Threads, Twitter’s Meta alternative, just celebrated its first birthday. The social network has reached 175 million monthly active users, but is still trying to find its own voice. The threads turned out not to be as newsworthy as X and not as open as Mastodon or Bluesky — at least for now. Ivan Mehta reflects on the app’s first year and what it can learn from other social networks. Read more
Supreme Court declares open season on regulators: In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court swooped in with what may turn out to be one of the most consequential decisions it has ever made in the context of the technology industry, overturning the 1984 case Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council. On paper, wetlands and the EPA appear to have little to do with technology, but as Devin Coldway writes, the decision opens up regulators to endless meddling. Read more
