The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has provisionally fined Clearview AI £17 million ($22.6 million) alleging it failed to inform UK citizens it was collecting billions of their photos and continuing to process their data. The UK and Australia had opened a joint investigation of Clearview last year, and Australia regulator has also issued a similar ruling.
I saved the best for last: social media isn’t destroying society after all! Ipsos MORI did find that “nuanced” belief in conspiracy theories is more widespread than you ever imagined, which I’ll admit is upsetting. But they also report that TV news and tabloid newspapers are equally responsible for spreading them (at least in the UK). So go ahead and buy all the Facebook ads you want.
The company has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging it shared personal information with third parties without user consent. Eligible users fall into two groups: the first are people who paid for a Zoom Meetings app subscription between March 30, 2016 and July 30, 2021; and the second is anyone who downloaded, registered, used or opened the Zoom Meetings App in the same date period.
Nearly one-third of major news publishers have blocked generative AI tools from reading their content. But that’s a drastic measure which could also exclude their results from conventional search engines. Microsoft has just given publishers the option to block access by Bing Chat without also removing their content from search results. We’ll see if competitors do the same.