EU opens investigation into Google’s use of online content for AI models

The EU has opened an investigation to assess whether Google is breaching European competition rules in its use of online content from publishers and YouTube creators for artificial intelligence.The European Commission said on Tuesday it would examine whether the US tech company, which runs the Gemini AI model and is owned by Alphabet, was putting rival AI owners at a “disadvantage”.The commission said: “The investigation will notably examine whether Google is distorting competition by imposing unfair terms and conditions on publishers and content creators, or by granting itself privileged access to such content, thereby placing developers of rival AI models at a disadvantage.”It said it was concerned that Google may have used content from web publishers to generate AI-powered services on its search results pages without appropriate compensation to publishers and without offering them the possibility to refuse such use of their content.The commission said it was also concerned as to whether Google had used content uploaded to YouTube to train its own generative AI models without offering creators compensation or the possibility to refuse

Australia launches a social media ban – and is AI a bubble about to pop?

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, writing to you from a New York City that feels much colder than last December. 🥶In a world first, Australia implemented a ban on social media use for people under 16. It’s the first country to take such a far-reaching measure. Starting on 10 December, children and teens under 16 will not be allowed to use social media in Australia

‘I feel it’s a friend’: quarter of teenagers turn to AI chatbots for mental health support

It was after one friend was shot and another stabbed, both fatally, that Shan asked ChatGPT for help. She had tried conventional mental health services but “chat”, as she came to know her AI “friend”, felt safer, less intimidating and, crucially, more available when it came to handling the trauma from the deaths of her young friends.As she started consulting the AI model, the Tottenham teenager joined about 40% of 13- to 17-year-olds in England and Wales affected by youth violence who are turning to AI chatbots for mental health support, according to research among more than 11,000 young people.It found that both victims and perpetrators of violence were markedly more likely to be using AI for such support than other teenagers. The findings, from the Youth Endowment Fund, have sparked warnings from youth leaders that children at risk “need a human not a bot”

Social media use damages children’s ability to focus, say researchers

Increased use of social media by children damages their concentration levels and may be contributing to an increase in cases of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, according to a study.The peer-reviewed report monitored the development of more than 8,300 US-based children from the age of 10 to 14 and linked social media use to “increased inattention symptoms”.Reseachers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and the Oregon Health & Science University in the US found that children spent an average of 2.3 hours a day watching television or online videos, 1.4 hours on social media and 1

‘It has to be genuine’: older influencers drive growth on social media

In 2022, Caroline Idiens was on holiday halfway up an Italian mountain when her brother called to tell her to check her Instagram account. “I said, ‘I haven’t got any wifi. And he said: ‘Every time you refresh, it’s adding 500 followers.’ So I had to try to get to the top of the hill with the phone to check for myself.”A personal trainer from Berkshire who began posting her fitness classes online at the start of lockdown in 2020, Idiens, 53, had already built a respectable following

Scores of UK parliamentarians join call to regulate most powerful AI systems

More than 100 UK parliamentarians are calling on the government to introduce binding regulations on the most powerful AI systems as concern grows that ministers are moving too slowly to create safeguards in the face of lobbying from the technology industry.A former AI minister and defence secretary are part of a cross-party group of Westminster MPs, peers and elected members of the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish legislatures demanding stricter controls on frontier systems, citing fears superintelligent AI “would compromise national and global security”.The push for tougher regulation is being coordinated by a nonprofit organisation called Control AI whose backers include the co-founder of Skype, Jaan Tallinn. It is calling on Keir Starmer to show independence from Donald Trump’s White House, which opposes the regulation of AI. One of the “godfathers” of the technology, Yoshua Bengio, recently said it was less regulated than a sandwich