Techmeme
May 25, 2024, 11:20 PM

Top News

Kylie Robison / The Verge:
Google says it is “taking swift action” to remove AI Overviews on certain queries “where appropriate under our content policies”  —  Social media is abuzz with examples of Google's new AI Overview product saying weird stuff, from telling users to put glue on their pizza to suggesting they eat rocks.
Peter Kafka / Business Insider:
Google says the vast majority of AI Overviews provide high-quality information and many of the viral examples have been uncommon queries or have been doctored  —  Step 1: Google rolls out a new AI-powered product.  Step 2: Users quickly find the product's flaws and point them out with social-media posts, which become news stories.
Washington Post:
Two lawsuits filed on behalf of the Uvalde shooting victims allege Activision, Meta, and the gunmaker, Daniel Defense, are responsible for “grooming” the gunman  —  The lawsuits allege the companies are responsible for pushing the Robb Elementary shooter to acquire an AR-15-style weapon.
Wes Davis / The Verge:
A US jury finds that Phoenix Digital, which owns the cheat mod site AimJunkies, is guilty of violating Bungie copyrights when it created cheats for Destiny 2  —  The landmark decision may be the first time a jury has agreed that a cheat creator violated a gaming company's copyrights.
Viola Zhou / Rest of World:
How Threads became a gathering space for young progressives in Taiwan, who now use the app to organize protests against pro-China opposition parties  —  Despite Meta's promise to crack down on political content in the app, Taiwanese activists are using it to organize.
Bloomberg:
A significant amount of illicit crypto activity still remains in China, highlighting the continuing use of cryptocurrencies despite Beijing's digital asset ban  —  - Crypto tied to billions of dollars in underground transactions  — Cases are further signs of holes in China's digital-asset ban
Christine Mui / Politico:
Congress has quietly diverted $3.5B from the US CHIPS Act to Secure Enclave, a classified project proposed by Intel to build chips for defense needs  —  The Commerce Department was expecting to hand out new federal money to high-tech research.  Congress sent it to a secretive natsec program instead.
Will Knight / Wired:
How SLMs like Microsoft's Phi-3, which can run locally on phones or PCs without big compromises, open up new AI use cases by being more responsive and private  —  Research at Microsoft shows it's possible to make AI models small enough to run on phones or laptops without major compromises to their smarts.
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Filings: US pharmaceutical company Cencora notified ~500K individuals since learning about a data breach in February 2024 that exposed health diagnoses and more  —  U.S. pharmaceutical giant Cencora says it is notifying affected individuals that their personal and highly sensitive medical information …
Michael Kan / PCMag:
Instant messaging client ICQ will stop working from June 26, recommends users migrate to messaging platforms from parent company VK; ICQ had 100M users in 2001  —  ICQ will stop working on June 26.  It's encouraging users to migrate to a messaging app from Russia-based VK, its parent company.
Kevin Breuninger / CNBC:
Similarweb: Truth Social's average number of US monthly visits was just over 4M from May 2023 to April 2024, down 39%+ from the prior 12-month period  —  Nearly two-and-a-half years after its launch, Truth Social is struggling to hang onto its small U.S. user base, according to new data …

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More News

Sharon Adarlo / Futurism:
Ben Cohen / Wall Street Journal:
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Pete Brown / Columbia Journalism Review:

Earlier Picks

Mike Butcher / TechCrunch:
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Chris Welch / The Verge: