Georgia is the eighth US state challenged on an age-verification law, as NetChoice swipes at the Georgia Children on Social Media Act. The business tech advocacy group sued Georgia over the new law which is due to go into effect this summer.
Intended to protect the privacy of young children, the law requires companies to use “commercially reasonable efforts” to verify someone’s age and requires parental consent for minors to use social media.
Nigerians may lose Facebook and Instagram services if Meta makes good on its threat made to protest three sizeable fines imposed there. The fines levied by separate agencies are: 1) $220 million for alleged anti-competitive practices, 2) $37.5 million for unapproved advertising; and 3) $32.8 million for violating privacy laws.
Michigan’s Attorney General has sued television platform Roku for ongoing violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the Michigan Consumer Protection Act. The company is accused of systematically collecting, processing, and disclosing children’s data, which is not allowed under COPPA. The company is also accused of misleading parents about what data it collects.
Disney has agreed to license more than 200 characters, costumes, and environments (but not voices or talent likenesses) to OpenAI for Sora, its gen AI video platform. This is highly unusual for Disney, which generally sues AI models for copyright infringement; in fact, it sued Google for that a day before announcing the OpenAI deal. Disney will also invest $1 billion in OpenAI, nicely illustrating how very eager they are to join the AI party.