Technology

The race to find a better way to label AI

July 31, 2023
This article is from The Technocrat, MIT Technology Review’s weekly tech policy newsletter about power, politics, and Silicon Valley. To receive it in your inbox every Friday, sign up here. I recently wrote a short story about a project backed by some major tech and media companies trying to help identify content made or altered by AI. …

X reinstates Kanye West’s account after Musk banned him last year

July 31, 2023
Social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) has reinstated the account of Kanye West (who legally goes by Ye) after he was banned last year for posting a picture of Swastika merged with the Star of David. Last December, months after Elon Musk took over the platform, Ye created a tweetstorm by posting a […]

Worldcoin’s official launch triggers swift privacy scrutiny in Europe

July 28, 2023
Worldcoin, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s bid to sew up the market for verifying humanness by convincing enough mobile meatsacks to have their eyeballs scanned in exchanged for crypto tokens (yes, really), only started its official global rollout this week but it’s already landed on the radar of European data protection authorities. Why should anyone feel […]

Apple’s App Store tightens up on user privacy with new rules for app developers

July 28, 2023
Apple for years has made user privacy a focus for its App Store with rules around data collection, plus requirements around app labeling, anti-tracking measures, and the more private “Sign in with Apple” option. Now, Apple will begin to require that developers explain why they need access to select data, under some circumstances, with a […]

Cryptography may offer a solution to the massive AI-labeling problem 

July 28, 2023
The White House wants big AI companies to disclose when content has been created using artificial intelligence, and very soon the EU will require some tech platforms to label their AI-generated images, audio, and video with “prominent markings” disclosing their synthetic origins.  There’s a big problem, though: identifying material that was created by artificial intelligence…