Amazon promises fake reviews crackdown after investigation by UK watchdog

Amazon has promised to do a better job policing fake reviews and to crack down on sellers using them to boost product ratings after an investigation by the UK competition watchdog.Ending the scourge of fake reviews is a priority for the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) due to the influence they have over consumers.About 90% of UK shoppers rely on reviews, with an estimated £23bn a year of spending influenced by crowd-sourced information. Since April, fake reviews have been explicitly banned.Sarah Cardell, the CMA’s chief executive, said the undertakings secured from Amazon meant shoppers could now “make decisions with greater confidence”

23andMe back on the auction block after former CEO makes 11th-hour bid

The DNA testing company 23andMe is back up for sale, throwing a purchase agreement reached last month into chaos, court filings show.The board of directors of 23andMe, which filed for bankruptcy in March, had agreed to sell the company and its assets to the pharmaceutical firm Regeneron for $256m after conducting an auction in April. However, the founder and former CEO of the genetics company, Anne Wojcicki, put in a $305m bid through a newly formed non-profit, TTAM Research Institute, after the auction ended and pushed the bankruptcy court to reopen the sale process. She tried to buy the company multiple times during its long decline and bankruptcy but was rejected by the board.TTAM’s offer of $305m will serve as a starting price for the secondary sale process, and Regeneron will be permitted to submit a competing bid that is at least $10m more

UK sales of new Tesla cars slump by more than a third amid Musk backlash

Sales of new Tesla cars slumped by more than a third in the UK last month as the electric carmaker lost ground to China’s BYD and other rivals, amid a political backlash against its billionaire boss, Elon Musk.Tesla sold 2,016 vehicles in the UK in May, down from 3,152 in May 2024 – a 36% drop, according to the monthly snapshot from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).The Chinese carmaker BYD’s sales in the UK jumped by 407%, from 596 in May last year to 3,025 last month. It sells hybrids as well as pure electric cars. BYD first overtook Tesla in January

Amazon ‘testing humanoid robots to deliver packages’

Amazon is reportedly developing software for humanoid robots that could perform the role of delivery workers and “spring out” of its vans.The $2tn (£1.47tn) technology company is building a “humanoid park” in the US to test the robots, said the tech news site the Information, citing a person who had been involved in the project.The Information reported that the robots could eventually take the jobs of delivery workers. It is developing the artificial intelligence software that would power the robots but will use hardware developed by other companies

English-speaking countries more nervous about rise of AI, polls suggest

People in English-speaking countries including the UK, US, Australia and Canada are more nervous about the rise of artificial intelligence than those in the largest EU economies, where excitement over its spread is higher, new research suggests.A global split over what has been dubbed “the wonder and worry” of AI appears to correlate with widely divergent levels of trust in governments to regulate the fast-developing technology.The polling of 23,000 adults in 30 countries, shared exclusively with the Guardian by Ipsos Mori, also showed a quarter of people globally still do not have a good understanding of what AI is, despite it being widely described as the most transformative technology in decades.On Wednesday, Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus revealed he was writing a musical with the assistance of AI, describing it as “like having another songwriter in the room with a huge reference frame”.Britons appear to be among the world’s most worried people about the rise of AI, with two-thirds of people in Great Britain saying they are nervous about the technology being deployed in products and services, and less than half trusting the UK government to regulate AI responsibly

Trump family disown debut of crypto wallet: ‘I know nothing about this project!’

A splashy website featuring an illustration of Donald Trump, looking buff and pumping his fist in the air, appeared online on Tuesday. The image is the logo of one of Trump’s digital currencies, and the website claims to be the “Official $Trump Wallet”, hawking a product that would allow customers to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, primarily the president’s own.The website prominently features the name of Trump’s coin, $Trump, and invites people to join the waitlist to use the digital wallet. It was first noticed by the crypto newsletter Citation Needed. Magic Eden, an established cryptocurrency marketplace, said on the website that it had partnered with Trump’s official digital coin team to create the wallet