Government & Policy

Booking latest to fall under EU market power rules

Booking.com has been designated a gatekeeper under the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), meaning the online travel agency will face regulation under the bloc’s market fairness and contestability framework — with the risk of major fines (of up to 10% or even 20%) for non-compliance. The travel platform has been given six months to comply

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Biden signs bill to protect children from online sexual abuse and exploitation

On April 29, Senators Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and Marsha Blackburn (R-SC) proposed a bipartisan bill to protect children from online sexual exploitation. President Biden officially signed the REPORT Act into law on Tuesday. This marks the first time that websites and social media platforms are legally obligated to report crimes related to federal trafficking, grooming,

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TikTok sues the US government over law that could ban the app

TikTok is suing the United States government in an effort to block a law that would ban TikTok if its parent company, ByteDance, fails to sell it within a year. The lawsuit, which was filed on Tuesday, argues that the bill violates the U.S. Constitution. TikTok argues that the law violates the U.S. Constitution’s commitment

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Microsoft and OpenAI launch $2M fund to counter election deepfakes

Microsoft and OpenAI have announced a $2 million fund to combat the growing risks of AI and deepfakes being used to “deceive the voters and undermine democracy.” This year will see a record 2 billion people head to the polls in elections spanning some 50 countries, so there are concerns around the influence that AI

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India urges political parties to avoid using deepfakes in election campaigns

India’s Election Commission has issued an advisory to all political parties, urging them to refrain from using deepfakes and other forms of misinformation in their social media posts during the country’s ongoing general elections. The move comes after the constitutional body faced criticism for not doing enough to combat such campaigns in the world’s most

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Microsoft bans US police departments from using enterprise AI tool for facial recognition

Microsoft has changed its policy to ban U.S. police departments from using generative AI for facial recognition through the Azure OpenAI Service, the company’s fully managed, enterprise-focused wrapper around OpenAI technologies. Language added Wednesday to the terms of service for Azure OpenAI Service prohibits integrations with Azure OpenAI Service from being used “by or for”

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Apple adds more carve-outs to its EU core tech fee after criticism from devs

Apple is tweaking how it applies a new fee that can affect iOS developers in the European Union as it continues to configure its approach to the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA): Developers of free apps will be able to avoid the fee entirely under changes it announced Thursday, which apply from today, while other

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NASA orders studies from private space companies on Mars mission support roles

Mars exploration has always been the exclusive purview of national space agencies, but NASA is trying to change that, awarding a dozen research tasks to private companies as a prelude to commercial support for future missions to the Red Planet. It’s the second time in a month that the agency has shown its desire for

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