The war in Ukraine has exposed Europe’s energy dependence on Russia and is spurring the development of new, cleaner-burning biofuels. Spain is emerging as a leader in this effort, with the introduction late last year of airplane fuel made from olive pits. Marcus Harton narrates this report from Alfonso Beato in Seville.
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Microsoft said it’s seeing some improvement to problems with its online services including the Teams messaging platform and Outlook email system after users around the world reported outages Wednesday. 

In a status update, the tech company reported “service degradation” for a number of its Microsoft 365 services. 

Thousands of users reported problems with Teams, Outlook, the Azure cloud computing service and XBox Live online gaming service early Wednesday on the Downdetector website, which tracks outage reports. Many users also took to social media to complain that services were down. 

By later in the morning, Downdetector showed the number of reports had dropped considerably. 

“We’re continuing to monitor the recovery across the service and some customers are reporting mitigation,” the Microsoft 365 Status Twitter account said. “We’re also connecting the service to additional infrastructure to expedite the recovery process.” 

It tweeted earlier that it had “isolated the problem to a networking configuration issue” and that a network change suspected to be causing the problem was rolled back. 

It comes after Microsoft reported Tuesday that its quarterly profit fell 12%, reflecting economic uncertainty that the company said led to its decision this month to cut 10,000 workers. 
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The U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Alphabet’s GOOGL.O Google on Tuesday over allegations that the company abused its dominance of the digital advertising business, according to a court document.

“Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies,” the government said in its antitrust complaint.

The Justice Department asked the court to compel Google to divest its Google Ad manager suite, including its ad exchange AdX.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit is the second federal antitrust complaint filed against Google, alleging violations of antitrust law in how the company acquires or maintains its dominance. The Justice Department lawsuit filed against Google in 2020 focuses on its monopoly in search and is scheduled to go to trial in September.

Eight states joined the department in the lawsuit filed on Tuesday, including Google’s home state of California.

Google shares were down 1.3% on the news.

The lawsuit says “Google has thwarted meaningful competition and deterred innovation in the digital advertising industry, taken supra-competitive profits for itself, prevented the free market from functioning fairly to support the interests of the advertisers and publishers who make today’s powerful internet possible.”

While Google remains the market leader by a long shot, its share of the U.S. digital ad revenue has been eroding, falling to 28.8% last year from 36.7% in 2016, according to Insider Intelligence. Google’s advertising business is responsible for some 80% of its revenue.
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Countless artists have taken inspiration from “The Starry Night” since Vincent Van Gogh painted the swirling scene in 1889.

Now artificial intelligence systems are doing the same, training themselves on a vast collection of digitized artworks to produce new images you can conjure in seconds from a smartphone app.

The images generated by tools such as DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion can be weird and otherworldly but also increasingly realistic and customizable — ask for a “peacock owl in the style of Van Gogh” and they can churn out something that might look similar to what you imagined.

But while Van Gogh and other long-dead master painters aren’t complaining, some living artists and photographers are starting to fight back against the AI software companies creating images derived from their works.

Two new lawsuits —- one this week from the Seattle-based photography giant Getty Images —- take aim at popular image-generating services for allegedly copying and processing millions of copyright-protected images without a license.

Getty said it has begun legal proceedings in the High Court of Justice in London against Stability AI — the maker of Stable Diffusion —- for infringing intellectual property rights to benefit the London-based startup’s commercial interests.

Another lawsuit filed Friday in a U.S. federal court in San Francisco describes AI image-generators as “21st-century collage tools that violate the rights of millions of artists.” The lawsuit, filed by three working artists on behalf of others like them, also names Stability AI as a defendant, along with San Francisco-based image-generator startup Midjourney, and the online gallery DeviantArt.

The lawsuit said AI-generated images “compete in the marketplace with the original images. Until now, when a purchaser seeks a new image ‘in the style’ of a given artist, they must pay to commission or license an original image from that artist.”

Companies that provide image-generating services typically charge users a fee. After a free trial of Midjourney through the chatting app Discord, for instance, users must buy a subscription that starts at $10 per month or up to $600 a year for corporate memberships. The startup OpenAI also charges for use of its DALL-E image generator, and StabilityAI offers a paid service called DreamStudio.

Stability AI said in a statement that “Anyone that believes that this isn’t fair use does not understand the technology and misunderstands the law.”

In a December interview with The Associated Press, before the lawsuits were filed, Midjourney CEO David Holz described his image-making subscription service as “kind of like a search engine” pulling in a wide swath of images from across the internet. He compared copyright concerns about the technology with how such laws have adapted to human creativity.

“Can a person look at somebody else’s picture and learn from it and make a similar picture?” Holz said. “Obviously, it’s allowed for people and if it wasn’t, then it would destroy the whole professional art industry, probably the nonprofessional industry too. To the extent that AIs are learning like people, it’s sort of the same thing and if the images come out differently then it seems like it’s fine.”

The copyright disputes mark the beginning of a backlash against a new generation of impressive tools — some of them introduced just last year — that can generate new images, readable text and computer code on command.

They also raise broader concerns about the propensity of AI tools to amplify misinformation or cause other harm. For AI image generators, that includes the creation of nonconsensual sexual imagery.

Some systems produce photorealistic images that can be impossible to trace, making it difficult to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s AI. And while most have some safeguards in place to block offensive or harmful content, experts say it’s not enough and fear it’s only a matter of time until people utilize these tools to spread disinformation and further erode public trust.

“Once we lose this capability of telling what’s real and what’s fake, everything will suddenly become fake because you lose confidence of anything and everything,” said Wael Abd-Almageed, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Southern California.

As a test, The Associated Press submitted a text prompt on Stable Diffusion featuring the keywords “Ukraine war” and “Getty Images.” The tool created photo-like images of soldiers in combat with warped faces and hands, pointing and carrying guns. Some of the images also featured the Getty watermark, but with garbled text.

AI can also get things wrong, like feet and fingers or details on ears that can sometimes give away that they’re not real, but there’s no set pattern to look out for. And those visual clues can also be edited. On Midjourney, for instance, users often post on the Discord chat asking for advice on how to fix distorted faces and hands.

With some generated images traveling on social networks and potentially going viral, they can be challenging to debunk since they can’t be traced back to a specific tool or data source, according to Chirag Shah, a professor at the Information School at the University of Washington, who uses these tools for research.

“You could make some guesses if you have enough experience working with these tools,” Shah said. “But beyond that, there is no easy or scientific way to really do this.”

But for all the backlash, there are many people who embrace the new AI tools and the creativity they unleash. Searches on Midjourney, for instance, show curious users are using the tool as a hobby to create intricate landscapes, portraits and art.

There’s plenty of room for fear, but “what can else can we do with them?” asked the artist Refik Anadol this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he displayed an exhibit of his AI-generated work.

At the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Anadol designed “Unsupervised,” which draws from artworks in the museum’s prestigious collection — including “The Starry Night” — and feeds them into a massive digital installation generating animations of mesmerizing colors and shapes in the museum lobby.

The installation is “constantly changing, evolving and dreaming 138,000 old artworks at MoMA’s Archive,” Anadol said. “From Van Gogh to Picasso to Kandinsky, incredible, inspiring artists who defined and pioneered different techniques exist in this artwork, in this AI dream world.”

For painters like Erin Hanson, whose impressionist landscapes are so popular and easy to find online that she has seen their influence in AI-produced visuals, she is not worried about her own prolific output, which makes $3 million a year.

She does, however, worry about the art community as a whole.

“The original artist needs to be acknowledged in some way or compensated,” Hanson said. “That’s what copyright laws are all about. And if artists aren’t acknowledged, then it’s going to make it hard for artists to make a living in the future.”
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Alphabet Inc., the parent company of tech giant Google, announced Friday it is laying off 12,000 workers across the entire company — cuts reflecting six percent of the company’s total workforce.

In an email to employees Friday, Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai said the company saw dramatic growth over the past two years and hired new employees “for a different economic reality than the one we face today.” He said he takes full responsibility for the decisions that led to where the company is today.

In his email, Pichai said the layoffs come following “a rigorous review across product areas and functions” to ensure the company’s employees and their roles are aligned with Google’s top priorities. “The roles we’re eliminating reflect the outcome of that review,” he said.

In the email, Pichai said U.S. employees to be laid off already have been notified, while it is going to take longer for employees in other countries because of different laws and regulations.

Google’s decision comes the same week other big tech companies, Meta Platforms Inc. – the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Twitter Inc., Microsoft and Amazon, announced they were laying off thousands of employees.

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press and Reuters. 

 
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FBI Director Christopher Wray said Thursday that he was “deeply concerned” about the Chinese government’s artificial intelligence program, asserting that it was “not constrained by the rule of law.”

Speaking during a panel session at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Wray said Beijing’s AI ambitions were “built on top of massive troves of intellectual property and sensitive data that they’ve stolen over the years.”

He said that left unchecked, China could use artificial intelligence advancements to further its hacking operations, intellectual property theft and repression of dissidents inside the country and beyond.

“That’s something we’re deeply concerned about. I think everyone here should be deeply concerned about,” he said.

More broadly, he said, “AI is a classic example of a technology where I have the same reaction every time. I think, ‘Wow, we can do that?’ And then I think, ‘Oh God, they can do that.’”

Such concerns have long been voiced by U.S. officials. In October 2021, for instance, U.S. counterintelligence officials issued warnings about China’s ambitions in AI as part of a renewed effort to inform business executives, academics and local and state government officials about the risks of accepting Chinese investment or expertise in key industries.

Earlier that year, an AI commission led by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt urged the U.S. to boost its AI skills to counter China, including by pursuing “AI-enabled” weapons.

A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment Thursday about Wray’s comments. Beijing has repeatedly accused Washington of fearmongering and attacked U.S. intelligence for its assessments of China.
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Software giant Microsoft on Wednesday became the latest major company in the tech sector to announce significant job cuts when it reported it would lay off 10,000 employees, or about 5% of its workforce.

Microsoft’s job cuts come just as e-commerce leader Amazon begins a fresh round of 18,000 layoffs, extending a wave of other major cuts at Twitter, Salesforce and dozens of smaller technology firms in recent weeks.

The phenomenon of job losses in the tech sector has global reach but has been keenly felt in Silicon Valley and other West Coast tech hubs in the United States. The website layoffs.fyi, which tracks job cuts in the tech industry, has identified well over 100 tech firms announcing layoffs since January 1 across North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australia. In all, the website has counted more than 1,200 firms making layoffs since the beginning of 2022.

Changing environment

In an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella appeared to suggest that retrenchment in the tech sector was a result of reduced consumer demand.

“During the pandemic, there was rapid acceleration,” Nadella said. “I think we’re going to go through a phase today where there is some amount of normalization in demand.”

He said the company would seek to drive growth by increasing its own productivity. The interview took place before Microsoft officially announced the layoffs.

One major focus of the layoffs, according to multiple media reports, was the division of the company that makes augmented reality systems, including the company’s HoloLens goggles and the Integrated Visual Augmentation System, which until recently were being developed in cooperation with the U.S. Army.

Later in the day in an email to employees, Nadella wrote, “These are the kinds of hard choices we have made throughout our 47-year history to remain a consequential company in this industry that is unforgiving to anyone who doesn’t adapt to platform shifts.”

However, he signaled the company would continue hiring in areas such as artificial intelligence that management believes are strategically important.

Also on Wednesday, Doug Herrington, head of Amazon’s global retail business, said his company was restructuring to meet consumers’ demands but would continue to invest in areas where it saw the potential for growth, including its grocery delivery business.

Stronger, perhaps

Wayne Hochwarter, who teaches business administration at Florida State University, described the layoffs at Microsoft and Amazon as examples of businesses making adjustments to their workforces in the face of a changing business climate.

“I think they overestimated the trends in personal purchasing patterns, and they thought, ‘OK, we’re going to make sure we’re not shorthanded,’” he told VOA. “And then when things softened a little bit, they realized they had hired too many people.”

He also warned against reading too much into the latest layoffs.

“I don’t think the tech sector is going to heck in a handbasket,” he said. “They may have reevaluated where things are going to go, but I don’t see this as a catalyst for sending us into economic deterioration, or anything that’s going to put a crimp on the economy.”

Looking to the future, Hochwarter said, the workforce changes are “probably going to make them stronger companies.”

Weathering the storm

Margaret O’Mara, author of the book The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America, told VOA that the current run of layoffs in the U.S. was just the latest chapter in a long cycle of booms and busts in the tech sector.

In some important respects, she said, it’s a story about more than just a misreading of trends in consumer preferences.

“It’s similar to other downturns, and there have been many — for every boom there was a bust — in that their macro[economic] conditions have shifted,” she said. “Tech is an industry that’s very much fueled by investment capital and the stock market.”

O’Mara said that over the last 10 years, with low interest rates and large amounts of cash flowing through the economy, conditions have been “extraordinary” for the growth of U.S. tech companies. As those conditions change, so does the amount of money investors want to put into tech firms.

However, O’Mara, a professor of American history at the University of Washington, said it was important not to look at conditions today as similar to the catastrophic dot-com bust of 2000.

“Tech is many orders of magnitude larger than it ever has been before,” she said. “We are talking about platform companies that are unlike the dot-coms, which were very young and very frothy, and it was easy for their value to collapse. They weren’t providing the essential services … fundamental to the rest of the economy.”

By contrast, she said, companies like Microsoft and Amazon have deep connections to the broader U.S. economy and should be able to withstand the current economic headwinds.

Difficult for H-1B visa holders

A disproportionate share of workers in the U.S. technology sector are non-citizens who hold H-1B visas, which allow companies to sponsor them. Layoffs are particularly difficult for visa holders — the overwhelming majority of whom are from India — because once their employment is terminated, they have just 60 days to find a new sponsor. Otherwise, they are required to leave the country.

Hochwarter said he thought companies would pull back on hiring H-1B visa workers, at least for the time being.

“My sense is that because that takes a great deal of effort and energy on the part of the employing organization, they’re probably going to start cutting down on those because they’re just not quite as needed,” he said.

On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of Labor Martin Walsh, speaking at Davos, bemoaned the state of U.S. immigration law, saying it denies the U.S. the workers it needs to drive economic growth.

“We need immigration reform in America. America has always been a country that has depended on immigration. The threat to the American economy long term is not inflation, it’s immigration,” he said. “It’s not having enough workers.”
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When Russia invaded Ukraine, the military and private citizens started using Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starlink, which eventually became key to Ukraine’s resistance. From Kyiv, Myroslava Gongadze tells the story of one Ukrainian engineer who volunteers to support the technology and the soldiers who use it.
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President Joe Biden hosted Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Tuesday at the White House, where he urged the Netherlands to support new U.S. restrictions on exporting chip-making technology to China, a key part of Washington’s strategy in its rivalry against Beijing.

During a brief appearance in front of reporters before their meeting, Biden said that he and Rutte have been working on “how to keep a free and open Indo-Pacific” to “meet the challenges of China.”

“Simply put, our companies, our countries have been so far just lockstep in what we’ve done in our investment to the future. So today, I look forward to discussing how we can further deepen our relationship and securing our supply chains to strengthen our transatlantic partnership,” he said.

ASML Holding NV, maker of the world’s most advanced semiconductor lithography systems, is headquartered in Veldhoven, making the Netherlands key to Washington’s chip push against Beijing. Ahead of Rutte’s visit, Dutch Trade Minister Liesje Schreinemacher said the Netherlands is consulting with European and Asian allies and will not automatically accept the new restrictions that the U.S. Commerce Department launched in October.

“You can’t say that they’ve been pressuring us for two years and now we have to sign on the dotted line. And we won’t,” she said.

Rutte did not mention the semiconductor issue ahead of his meeting with Biden, focusing instead on Russia’s invasion on Ukraine, where the NATO allies have been working together to support Kyiv.

“Let’s stay closely together this year,” Rutte said. “And hopefully, things will move forward in a way which is acceptable for Ukraine.”

China is one of ASML’s biggest clients. CEO Peter Wennink in October played down the impact of the U.S. export control regulations.

“Based on our initial assessment, the new restrictions do not amend the rules governing lithography equipment shipped by ASML out of the Netherlands and we expect the direct impact on ASML’s overall 2023 shipment plan to be limited,” he said.

Shoring up allies

Biden has been shoring up allies, including the Netherlands, Japan and South Korea — home to leading companies that play a critical role in the industry’s supply chain — to limit Beijing’s access to advanced semiconductors. Last week he hosted Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who said he backs Biden’s attempt but did not agree to match the sweeping curbs targeting China’s semiconductor and supercomputing industries.

U.S. officials say export restrictions on chips are necessary because China can use semiconductors to advance their military systems, including weapons of mass destruction, and commit human rights abuses.

The October restrictions follow the U.S. Congress’ July passing of the CHIPS Act of 2022 to strengthen domestic semiconductor manufacturing, design and research, and reinforce America’s chip supply chains. The legislation also restricts companies that receive U.S. subsidies from investing in and expanding cutting edge chipmaking facilities in China.

Some information for this story came from AP.
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Israel’s Cognyte Software Ltd won a tender to sell intercept spyware to a Myanmar state-backed telecommunications firm a month before the Asian nation’s February 2021 military coup, according to documents reviewed by Reuters.

The deal was made even though Israel has claimed it stopped defense technology transfers to Myanmar following a 2017 ruling by Israel’s Supreme Court, according to a legal complaint recently filed with Israel’s attorney general and disclosed Sunday.

While the ruling was subjected to a rare gag order at the request of the state and media cannot cite the verdict, Israel’s government has publicly stated on numerous occasions that defense exports to Myanmar are banned.

The complaint, led by high-profile Israeli human rights lawyer Eitay Mack who spearheaded the campaign for the Supreme Court ruling, calls for a criminal investigation into the deal.

It accuses Cognyte and unnamed defense and foreign ministry officials who supervise such deals of “aiding and abetting crimes against humanity in Myanmar.”

The complaint was filed on behalf of more than 60 Israelis, including a former speaker of the house as well as prominent activists, academics and writers.

The documents about the deal, provided to Reuters and Mack by activist group Justice for Myanmar, are a January 2021 letter with attachments from Myanmar Posts and Telecommunications (MPT) to local regulators that list Cognyte as the winning vendor for intercept technology and note the purchase order was issued “by 30th Dec 2020.”

Intercept spyware can give authorities the power to listen in on calls, view text messages and web traffic including emails, and track the locations of users without the assistance of telecom and internet firms.

Representatives for Cognyte, Myanmar’s military government and MPT did not respond to multiple Reuters requests for comment. Japan’s KDDI Corp and Sumitomo Corp, which have stakes in MPT, declined to comment, saying they were not privy to details on communication interception.

Israel’s attorney general did not respond to requests for comment about the complaint. The foreign affairs ministry did not respond to requests for comment about the deal, while the defense ministry declined to comment.

Two people with knowledge of Myanmar’s intercept plans separately told Reuters the Cognyte system was tested by MPT.

They declined to be identified for fear of retribution by Myanmar’s junta.

MPT uses intercept spyware, a source with direct knowledge of the matter and three people briefed on the issue told Reuters although they did not identify the vendor. Reuters was unable to determine whether the sale of Cognyte intercept technology to MPT was finalized.

Even before the coup, public concern had mounted in Israel about the country’s defense exports to Myanmar after a brutal 2017 crackdown by the military on the country’s Rohingya population while Aung San Suu Kyi’s government was in power. The crackdown prompted the petition led by Mack that asked the Supreme Court to ban arms exports to Myanmar.

Since the coup, the junta has killed thousands of people including many political opponents, according to the United Nations.

Cognyte under fire

Many governments around the world allow for what are commonly called “lawful intercepts” to be used by law enforcement agencies to catch criminals but the technology is not ordinarily employed without any kind of legal process, cybersecurity experts have said.

According to industry executives and activists previously interviewed by Reuters, Myanmar’s junta is using invasive telecoms spyware without legal safeguards to protect human rights.

Mack said Cognyte’s participation in the tender contradicts statements made by Israeli officials after the Supreme court ruling that no security exports had been made to Myanmar.

While intercept spyware is typically described as “dual-use” technology for civilian and defense purposes, Israeli law states that “dual-use” technology is classified as defense equipment.

Israeli law also requires companies exporting defense-related products to seek licenses for export and marketing when doing deals. The legal complaint said any officials who granted Cognyte licenses for Myanmar deals should be investigated. Reuters was unable to determine whether Cognyte obtained such licenses.

Around the time of the 2020 deal, the political situation in Myanmar was tense with the military disputing the results of an election won by Suu Kyi.

Norway’s Telenor, previously one of the biggest telecoms firms in Myanmar before withdrawing from the country last year, also said in a Dec. 3, 2020 briefing and statement that it was concerned about Myanmar authorities’ plans for a lawful intercept due to insufficient legal safeguards.

Nasdaq-listed Cognyte was spun off in February 2021 from Verint Systems Inc, a pioneering giant in Israel’s cybersecurity industry.

Cognyte, which had $474 million in annual revenue for its last financial year, was also banned from Facebook in 2021.

Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc said in a report Cognyte “enables managing fake accounts across social media platforms.”

Meta said its investigation identified Cognyte customers in a range of countries such as Kenya, Mexico and Indonesia and their targets included journalists and politicians. It did not identify the customers or the targets.

Meta did not respond to a request for further comment.

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund last month dropped Cognyte from its portfolio, saying states said to be customers of its surveillance products and services “have been accused of extremely serious human rights violations.” The fund did not name any states.

Cognyte has not responded publicly to the claims made by Meta or Norway’s sovereign wealth fund.
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An upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case that asks whether tech firms can be held liable for damages related to algorithmically generated content recommendations has the ability to “upend the internet,” according to a brief filed by Google this week.

The case, Gonzalez v. Google LLC, is a long-awaited opportunity for the high court to weigh in on interpretations of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. A provision of federal law that has come under fire from across the political spectrum, Section 230 shields technology firms from liability for content published by third parties on their platforms, but also allows those same firms to curate or bar certain content.

The case arises from a complaint by Reynaldo Gonzalez, whose daughter was killed in an attack by members of the terror group ISIS in Paris in 2015. Gonzales argues that Google helped ISIS recruit members because YouTube, the online video hosting service owned by Google, used a video recommendation algorithm that suggested videos published by ISIS to individuals who displayed interest in the group.

Gonzalez’s complaint argues that by recommending content, YouTube went beyond simply providing a platform for ISIS videos, and should therefore be held accountable for their effects.

Dystopia warning

The case has garnered the attention of a multitude of interested parties, including free speech advocates who want tech firms’ liability shield left largely intact. Others argue that because tech firms take affirmative steps to keep certain content off their platforms, their claims to be simple conduits of information ring hollow, and that they should therefore be liable for the material they publish.

In its brief, Google painted a dire picture of what might happen if the latter interpretation were to prevail, arguing that it “would turn the internet into a dystopia where providers would face legal pressure to censor any objectionable content. Some might comply; others might seek to evade liability by shutting their eyes and leaving up everything, no matter how objectionable.”

Not everyone shares Google’s concern.

“Actually all it would do is make it so that Google and other tech companies have to follow the law just like everybody else,” Megan Iorio, senior counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told VOA.

“Things are not so great on the internet for certain groups of people right now because of Section 230,” said Iorio, whose organization filed a friend of the court brief in the case. “Section 230 makes it so that tech companies don’t have to respond when somebody tells them that non-consensual pornography has been posted on their site and keeps on proliferating. They don’t have to take down other things that a court has found violate the person’s privacy rights. So you know, to [say] that returning Section 230 to its original understanding is going to create a hellscape is hyperbolic.”

Unpredictable effects

Experts said the Supreme Court might try to chart a narrow course that leaves some protections intact for tech firms, but allows liability for recommendations. However, because of the prevalence of algorithmic recommendations on the internet, the only available method to organize the dizzying array of content available online, any ruling that affects them could have a significant impact.

“It has pretty profound implications, because with tech regulation and tech law, things can have unintended consequences,” John Villasenor, a professor of engineering and law and director of the UCLA Institute for Technology, Law and Policy, told VOA.

“The challenge is that even a narrow ruling, for example, holding that targeted recommendations are not protected, would have all sorts of very complicated downstream consequences,” Villasenor said. “If it’s the case that targeted recommendations aren’t protected under the liability shield, then is it also true that search results that are in some sense customized to a particular user are also unprotected?”

26 words

The key language in Section 230 has been called, “the 26 words that created the internet.” That section reads as follows:

“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher of or speaker of information provided by another information content provider.”

At the time the law was drafted in the 1990s, people around the world were flocking to an internet that was still in its infancy. It was an open question whether an internet platform that gave individual third parties the ability to post content on them, such as a bulletin board service, was legally liable for that content.

Recognizing that a patchwork of state-level libel and defamation laws could leave developing internet companies exposed to crippling lawsuits, Congress drafted language meant to shield them. That protection is credited by many for the fact that U.S. tech firms, particularly in Silicon Valley, rose to dominance on the internet in the 21st century.

Because of the global reach of U.S. technology firms, the ruling in Gonzalez v. Google LLC is likely to echo far beyond the United States when it is handed down.

Legal groundwork

The groundwork for the Supreme Court’s decision to take the case was laid in 2020, when Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in response to an appeal that, “in an appropriate case, we should consider whether the text of this increasingly important statute aligns with the current state of immunity enjoyed by internet platforms.”

That statement by Thomas, arguably the court’s most conservative member, heartened many on the right who are concerned that “Big Tech” firms enjoy too much cultural power in the U.S., including the ability to deny a platform to individuals with whose views they disagree.

Gonzalez v. Google LLC is remarkable in that many cases that make it to the Supreme Court do so in part because lower courts have issued conflicting decisions, requiring an authoritative ruling from the high court to provide legal clarity.

Gonzalez’s case, however, has been dismissed by two lower courts, both of which held that Section 230 rendered Google immune from the suit.

Conservative concerns

Politicians have been calling for reform of Section 230 for years, with both Republicans and Democrats joining the chorus, though frequently for different reasons.

Former President Donald Trump regularly railed against large technology firms, threatening to use the federal government to rein them in, especially when he believed that they were preventing him or his supporters from getting their messages out to the public.

His concern became particularly intense during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, when technology firms began working to limit the spread of social media accounts that featured misinformation about the virus and the safety of vaccinations.

Trump was eventually kicked off Twitter and Facebook after using those platforms to spread false claims about the 2020 presidential election, which he lost, and to help organize a rally that preceded the assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Major figures in the Republican Party are active in the Gonzalez case. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley and Texas Senator Ted Cruz have both submitted briefs in the case urging the court to crack down on Google and large tech firms in general.

“Confident in their ability to dodge liability, platforms have not been shy about restricting access and removing content based on the politics of the speaker, an issue that has persistently arisen as Big Tech companies censor and remove content espousing conservative political views,” Cruz writes.

Biden calls for reform

Section 230 criticism has come from both sides of the aisle. On Wednesday, President Joe Biden published an essay in The Wall Street Journal urging “Democrats and Republicans to come together to pass strong bipartisan legislation to hold Big Tech accountable.”

Biden argues for a number of reforms, including improved privacy protections for individuals, especially children, and more robust competition, but he leaves little doubt about what he sees as a need for Section 230 reform.

“[W]e need Big Tech companies to take responsibility for the content they spread and the algorithms they use,” he writes. “That’s why I’ve long said we must fundamentally reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects tech companies from legal responsibility for content posted on their sites.”
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A recently published report in a U.S.-based magazine says Iran is likely using facial recognition technology to monitor women’s compliance with the country’s hijab law.

While there are other ways people can be identified, Wired magazine says Iran’s apparent use of facial recognition technology against women is “perhaps the first known instance of a government using face recognition to impose dress law on women based on religious belief.”

Iran announced late last year that it would begin to use recognition technology to monitor its women.

Wired said that since the protests that have erupted across Iran following the death of a young women who was arrested for wearing her headscarf improperly, Iranian women are reporting that they are being arrested for hijab infractions a day or two after attending protests, even though they had no interaction with police during the protests.

Tiandy, a Chinese company blacklisted by the U.S., is a likely provider of facial recognition technology to Iran, although neither it nor Iranian officials responded to a request for comment from Wired.

The company has in the past listed the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corp and other Iranian police and government agencies as customers. Tiandy also boasted on its website that its technology has helped China identify the country’s ethnic minorities, including Uyghurs.
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Concerns linger over Twitter’s stance on free expression and safety since Elon Musk took over the platform in a $44 billion deal.

Since taking ownership in late October, Musk has instituted changes including dissolving an oversight review channel, laying off a large portion of the team focused on combating misinformation, and suspending the accounts of several U.S. journalists.

Two media advocacy groups on Wednesday called on Musk to reverse course and implement policies to protect the right to legitimate information and press freedom.

In a joint letter to Twitter, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) voiced “alarm” that Musk had undermined the legitimacy of Twitter by dissolving the site’s oversight review panel that checked postings for their truthfulness and laying off the majority of Twitter staff who helped combat misinformation.

The journalists’ groups also criticized Musk for “arbitrarily reinstating the accounts of nefarious actors, including known spreaders of misinformation,” and its suspension of several reporters, including VOA’s chief national correspondent, Steve Herman.

“Twitter’s policies should be crafted and communicated in a transparent manner … not arbitrarily or based on the company leadership’s personal preferences, perceptions and frustrations,” said the two organizations.

The groups also said Musk should reinstate Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council to review content posted on the site and better monitor attempts to censor information and penalize some individuals, including many journalists.

“Transparency and democratic safeguards must replace Musk’s capricious, arbitrary decision-making,” said Christophe Deloire, secretary-general of RSF.

In December, Twitter notified members of the Trust and Safety Council that the advisory group had been dissolved.

The email to the group said Twitter would work with partners through smaller meetings and regional contacts, said CPJ, a media rights organization that was a member of the council along with RSF.

“Mechanisms such as the Trust and Safety Council help platforms like Twitter to understand how to address harm and counter behavior that targets journalists,” CPJ President Jodie Ginsberg said in a statement. “Safety online can mean survival offline.”

Twitter also has continued its suspension of some journalists, saying it will restore their accounts only if certain posts are deleted.

Those suspended had tweeted about @ElonJet, an account that uses publicly available data to report on Musk’s private jet. That account was also suspended.

Musk had said on Twitter that the @Elonjet account and any accounts that linked to it were suspended because they violated Twitter’s anti-doxxing policy.

Doxxing is maliciously publishing a person’s private or identifying information — such a phone number or address — on the internet.

The @Elonjet Twitter account, however, used publicly available data. Additionally, none of the journalists who had tweeted about Musk and his shutdown of the account had tweeted location information for his plane. They did report that the @Elonjet account had moved to another platform and named the platform.

Some of the journalists have had their accounts restored after removing content. But VOA’s Herman is still suspended from the platform after refusing to remove tweets.

The veteran correspondent said he was notified this week that his appeal against the permanent suspension was denied. The reason: violating rules against “posting private information.”

Before the account was suspended, Herman had more than 111,000 followers.

“Based on what Musk has previously tweeted and recent media reports, I have concerns that if I don’t give into the demand to delete several posts and reactivate @W7VOA, my Twitter account will eventually be deleted for inactivity or auctioned off,” he told VOA.

Herman, like other journalists, migrated to other social media platforms including Mastodon, where he gained 40,000 followers. But, he said, “Neither platform has yet to achieve critical mass and thus the influence of Twitter, especially for journalists and policymakers.”
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Companies including GM, Ford, Google and solar energy producers said on Tuesday they would work together to establish standards for scaling up the use of virtual power plants (VPPs), systems for easing loads on electricity grids when supply is short.

Energy transition nonprofit RMI will host the initiative, the Virtual Power Plant Partnership (VP3), which will also aim to shape policy for promoting the use of the systems, the companies said.

Virtual power plants pool together thousands of decentralized energy resources like electric vehicles or electric heaters controlled by smart thermostats.

With permission from customers, they use advanced software to react to electricity shortages with such techniques as switching thousands of households’ batteries, like those in EVs, from charge to discharge mode or prompting electricity-using devices, such as water heaters, to back off their consumption.

VPPs are positioned for explosive growth in the United States, where the 2021 Inflation Reduction Act has created or enlarged tax incentives for electric cars, electric water heaters, solar panels and other devices whose output and consumption can be coordinated to smooth grid load.

RMI estimates that by 2030, VPPs could reduce U.S. peak demand by 60 gigawatts, the average consumption of 50 million households, and by more than 200 GW by 2050.

“Virtual power plants will enable grid planners and grid operators to (better manage) growing electricity demand from vehicles, from buildings and from industry, and make sure that the grid can stay reliable even in the face of ongoing extreme weather challenges and aging physical infrastructure,” said Mark Dyson, managing director with the carbon-free electricity program at RMI.

Rob Threlkeld, director of global energy strategy at General Motors GM.N, told Reuters that VP3 would be able to “show that EVs can become a reliable asset to the retail utility and or the retail transmission operator” and “can be an asset to a homeowner and to fleet customers.”

VPPs have already improved grid reliability in such countries as Germany and Australia and in some U.S. states.

During an extreme heat wave last August, wholesale market operator California Independent System Operator avoided blackouts by calling on all available resources, including VPPs, to dispatch electricity. Google Nest smart thermostats contributed to easing the load.

“That is increasingly going to be required to make sure that the grid remains resilient, that we avoid blackouts and that we enable the grid to become cleaner and greener,” said Parag Chokshi, director of Google’s Nest Renew.

Other founding members of VP3 include Ford F.N, SunPower SPWR.O and Sunrun RUN.O.
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A mission to launch the first satellites into orbit from Western Europe suffered an “anomaly” Tuesday, Virgin Orbit said.  

The U.S.-based company attempted its first international launch on Monday, using a modified jumbo jet to carry one of its rockets from Cornwall in southwestern England to the Atlantic Ocean where the rocket was released. The rocket was supposed to take nine small satellites for mixed civil and defense use into orbit.  

But about two hours after the plane took off, the company reported that the mission encountered a problem. 

“We appear to have an anomaly that has prevented us from reaching orbit. We are evaluating the information,” Virgin Orbit said on Twitter.  

Virgin Orbit, which is listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange, was founded by British billionaire Richard Branson. It has previously completed four similar launches from California. 

Hundreds gathered for the launch cheered earlier as a repurposed Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 aircraft, named “Cosmic Girl,” took off from Cornwall late Monday. Around an hour into the flight, the plane released the rocket at around 35,000 feet (around 10,000 meters) over the Atlantic Ocean to the south of Ireland.  

The plane, piloted by a Royal Air Force pilot, returned to Cornwall after releasing the rocket. 

Some of the satellites are meant for U.K. defense monitoring, while others are for businesses such as those working in navigational technology. One Welsh company is looking to manufacture materials such as electronic components in space.  

U.K. officials had high hopes for the mission. Ian Annett, deputy chief executive at the U.K. Space Agency, said Monday it marked a “new era” for his country’s space industry. There was strong market demand for small satellite launches, Annett said, and the U.K. has ambitions to be “the hub of European launches.”  

In the past, satellites produced in the U.K. had to be sent to spaceports in other countries to make their journey into space. 

The mission was a collaboration between the U.K. Space Agency, the Royal Air Force, Virgin Orbit and Cornwall Council.  

The launch was originally planned for late last year, but it was postponed because of technical and regulatory issues. 
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The public school district in Seattle has filed a novel lawsuit against the tech giants behind TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat, seeking to hold them accountable for the mental health crisis among youth.

Seattle Public Schools filed the lawsuit Friday in U.S. District Court. The 91-page complaint says the social media companies have created a public nuisance by targeting their products to children.

It blames them for worsening mental health and behavioral disorders including anxiety, depression, disordered eating and cyberbullying; making it more difficult to educate students; and forcing schools to take steps such as hiring additional mental health professionals, developing lesson plans about the effects of social media and providing additional training to teachers.

“Defendants have successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of youth, hooking tens of millions of students across the country into positive feedback loops of excessive use and abuse of Defendants’ social media platforms,” the complaint said. “Worse, the content Defendants curate and direct to youth is too often harmful and exploitive ….”

While federal law — Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — helps protect online companies from liability arising from what third-party users post on their platforms, the lawsuit argues that provision does not protect the tech giants’ behavior in this case.

“Plaintiff is not alleging Defendants are liable for what third-parties have said on Defendants’ platforms but, rather, for Defendants’ own conduct,” the lawsuit said. “Defendants affirmatively recommend and promote harmful content to youth, such as pro-anorexia and eating disorder content.”

In emailed statements Sunday, Google and Snap said they had worked to protect young people who use their platforms.

Snap launched an in-app support system called ‘Here For You’ in 2020, to help those who might be having a mental health or emotional crisis find expert resources, and it also has enabled settings that allow parents to see whom their children contact on Snapchat, though not the content of those messages. It also has recently expanded content about the new 988 suicide and crisis phone system in the U.S.

“We will continue working to make sure our platform is safe and to give Snapchatters dealing with mental health issues resources to help them deal with the challenges facing young people today,” the company said in a written statement.

José Castañeda, a spokesperson for Google, said Google, which owns YouTube, had also given parents the ability to set reminders, limit screen time and block certain types of content on their children’s devices.

“We have invested heavily in creating safe experiences for children across our platforms and have introduced strong protections and dedicated features to prioritize their well-being,” Castañeda said.

Meta and TikTok did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The lawsuit says that from 2009 to 2019, there was on average a 30% increase in the number of Seattle Public Schools students who reported feeling “so sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks or more in a row” that they stopped doing some typical activities.

The school district is asking the court to order the companies to stop creating a public nuisance, to award damages, and to pay for prevention education and treatment for excessive and problematic use of social media.

While hundreds of families are pursuing lawsuits against the companies over the harm they allege their children suffered from social media, it’s not clear if any other school districts have filed a complaint like Seattle’s.

Internal studies revealed by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen in 2021 showed that the company knew that Instagram negatively affected teenagers by harming their body image and making eating disorders and thoughts of suicide worse. She alleged that the platform prioritized profits over safety and hid its own research from investors and the public.
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Is the metaverse closer than we think?

It depends on whom you ask at CES, where companies are showing off innovations that could immerse us deeper into virtual reality, otherwise known as VR.

The metaverse — essentially a buzzword for three-dimensional virtual communities where people can meet, work and play — was a key theme during the four-day tech gathering in Las Vegas that ends Sunday.

Taiwanese tech giant HTC unveiled a high-end VR headset that aims to compete with market leader Meta, and a slew of other companies and startups touted augmented reality glasses and sensory technologies that can help users feel — and even smell — in a virtual environment.

Among them, Vermont-based OVR Technology showcased a headset containing a cartridge with eight primary aromas that can be combined to create different scents. It’s scheduled to be released later this year.

An earlier, business-focused version used primarily for marketing fragrances and beauty products is integrated into VR goggles and allows users to smell anything from a romantic bed of roses to a marshmallow roasting over a fire at a campsite.

The company says it aims to help consumers relax and is marketing the product, which comes with an app, as a sort of digital spa mixed with Instagram.

“We are entering an era in which extended reality will drive commerce, entertainment, education, social connection, and wellbeing,” the company’s CEO and co-founder Aaron Wisniewski said in a statement. “The quality of these experiences will be measured by how immersive and emotionally engaging they are. Scent imbues them with an unmatched power.”

But more robust and immersive uses of scent — and its close cousin, taste — are still further away on the innovation spectrum. Experts say even VR technologies that are more accessible are in the early days of their development and too expensive for many consumers to purchase.

The numbers show there’s waning interest. According to the research firm NPD Group, sales of VR headsets, which found popular use in gaming, declined by 2% last year, a sour note for companies betting big on more adoption.

Still, big companies like Microsoft and Meta are investing billions. And many others are joining the race to grab some market share in supporting technologies, including wearables that replicate touch.

Customers, though, aren’t always impressed by what they find. Ozan Ozaskinli, a tech consultant who traveled more than 29 hours from Istanbul to attend CES, suited up with yellow gloves and a black vest to test out a so-called haptics product, which relays sensations through buzzes and vibrations and stimulates our sense of touch.

Ozaskinli was attempting to punch in a code on a keypad that allowed him to pull a lever and unlock a box containing a shiny gemstone. But the experience was mostly a letdown.

“I think that’s far from reality right now,” Ozaskinli said. “But if I was considering it to replace Zoom meetings, why not? At least you can feel something.”

Proponents say widespread adoption of virtual reality will ultimately benefit different parts of society by essentially unlocking the ability to be with anyone, anywhere at any time. Though it’s too early to know what these technologies can do once they fully mature, companies looking to achieve the most immersive experiences for users are welcoming them with open arms.

Aurora Townsend, the chief marketing officer at Flare, a company slated to launch a VR dating app called Planet Theta next month, said her team is building its app to incorporate more sensations like touch once the technology becomes more widely available on the consumer market.

“Being able to feel the ground when you’re walking with your partner, or holding their hands while you’re doing that… subtle ways we engage people will change once haptic technology is fully immersive in VR,” Townsend said.

Still, it’s unlikely that many of these products will become widely used in the next few years, even in gaming, said Matthew Ball, a metaverse expert. Instead, he said the pioneers of adoption are likely to be fields that have higher budgets and more precise needs, such as bomb units using haptics and virtual reality to help with their work and others in the medical field.

In 2021, Johns Hopkins neurosurgeons said they used augmented reality to perform spinal fusion surgery and remove a cancerous tumor from a patient’s spine.

And optical technology from Lumus, an Israeli company that makes AR glasses, is already being used by underwater welders, fighter pilots and surgeons who want to monitor a patient’s vital signs or MRI scans during a procedure without having to look up at several screens, said David Goldman, vice president of marketing for the company.

Meanwhile, Xander, a Boston-based startup which makes smart glasses that display real-time captions of in-person conversations for people with hearing loss, will launch a pilot program with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs next month to test out some of its technology, said Alex Westner, the company’s co-founder and CEO. He said the agency will allow veterans who have appointments for hearing loss or other audio issues to try out the glasses in some of their clinics. And if it goes well, the agency would likely become a customer, Westner said.

Elsewhere, big companies from Walmart to Nike have been launching different initiatives in virtual reality. But it’s not clear how much they can benefit during the early stages of the technology. The consulting firm McKinsey says the metaverse could generate up to $5 trillion by 2030. But outside of gaming, much of today’s VR use remains somewhat of a marginal amusement, said Michael Kleeman, a tech strategist and visiting scholar at the University of California San Diego.

“When people are promoting this, what they have to answer is — where’s the value in this? Where’s the profit? Not what’s fun, what’s cute and what’s interesting.”

For more coverage of CES, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/technology
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The past year has been difficult for startups everywhere, but running a company in Ukraine during the Russian invasion comes with a whole different set of challenges.

Clinical psychologist Ivan Osadchyy brought his medical device, called Knopka, to this year’s consumer technology show known as CES in Las Vegas in hopes of getting it into U.S. hospitals.

His is one of a dozen Ukrainian startups backed by a government fund that are at CES this year to show their technology to the world.

“Two of our hospitals we operated before are ruined already and one is still occupied. So this is the biggest challenge,” Osadchyy said.

“The second challenge is for production and our team because they are shelling our electricity system and people are hard to work without lights, without heating in their flats,” he said.

Inspired by grandmother

He came up with the device after spending a year with his own grandmother in the hospital and finding that he had to track down nurses when she needed something.

The system works by notifying nurses when a patient has an abnormal heart rate, is due for treatment or otherwise needs help. The nurse can’t turn off their button until they’ve dealt with the issue.

“We are still working and operating because hospitals are open and we need to support them and provide efficiency and safety for patients as well,” he said.

Karina Kudriavtseva of the government-backed Ukrainian Startup Fund, says that, like Knopka, all the country’s startups have kept going since Russia’s invasion almost a year ago.

“The times have changed, their conditions have changed, but it can only make them stronger because all of the startups are working on the thing that to save the company, save the team, save the business, and save their lives, of course,” she said.

Conflict led to relocation, innovation

The invasion forced Valentyn Frechka to relocate to France, but he says his Releaf paper company has never stopped production.

When he was 16, Frechka decided to study alternative sources of cellulose in order to decrease deforestation. He’s now developed a technology that uses fallen leaves and recycled fiber to make paper.

The company’s main product is paper shopping bags, but they also make food packaging, egg trays and corrugated boxes.

Frechka said the conflict has forced the company to become more flexible and more open to opportunities.

“When this conflict happened and we located our company to France, we have found a lot of new partners and we have raised fundraising. We have raised the money for our needs,” he said. “So, it really makes us more open for the world.”
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Major tech companies are appealing to consumers’ evolving lifestyles, tastes and personal values with connected devices that touch on nearly every aspect of daily life. From the CES 2023 consumer technology show in Las Vegas, VOA’s Tina Trinh has the story. Video editor: Matt Dibble
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Tens of thousands of tech innovators and their fans are flocking to Las Vegas this week for the annual Consumer Electronics Show. Deana Mitchell has spotted some up-and-coming tech trends.
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Amazon.com layoffs will now stretch to more than 18,000 jobs as part of a workforce reduction it previously disclosed, Chief Executive Andy Jassy said in a public staff note on Wednesday.

The layoff decisions, which Amazon will communicate starting January 18, will largely impact the company’s e-commerce and human-resources organizations, he said.

The cuts amount to 6% of Amazon’s roughly 300,000-person corporate workforce and represent a swift turn for a retailer that recently doubled its base pay ceiling to compete more aggressively for talent.

Jassy said in the note that annual planning “has been more difficult given the uncertain economy and that we’ve hired rapidly over the last several years.”

Amazon has more than 1.5 million workers including warehouse staff, making it America’s second-largest private employer after Walmart. It has braced for likely slower growth as soaring inflation encouraged businesses and consumers to cut back spending and its share price has halved in the past year.

Amazon began letting staff go in November from its devices division, with a source telling Reuters at the time it was targeting 10,000 job cuts.

In number, its layoffs now surpass the 11,000 job cuts at Facebook-parent Meta Platforms as well as reductions at other tech-industry peers.
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European Union regulators on Wednesday hit Facebook parent Meta with hundreds of millions in fines for privacy violations and banned the company from forcing users in the 27-nation bloc to agree to personalized ads based on their online activity. 

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission imposed two fines totaling 390 million euros ($414 million) in its decision in two cases that could shake up Meta’s business model of targeting users with ads based on what they do online. The company says it will appeal. 

A decision in a third case involving Meta’s WhatsApp messaging service is expected later this month. 

Meta and other Big Tech companies have come under pressure from the European Union’s privacy rules, which are some of the world’s strictest. Irish regulators have already slapped Meta with four other fines for data privacy infringements since 2021 that total more than 900 million euros and have a slew of other open cases against a number of Silicon Valley companies. 

Meta also faces regulatory headaches from EU antitrust officials in Brussels flexing their muscles against tech giants: They accused the company last month of distorting competition in classified ads. 

The Irish watchdog — Meta’s lead European data privacy regulator because its regional headquarters is in Dublin — fined the company 210 million euros for violations of EU data privacy rules involving Facebook and an additional 180 million euros for breaches involving Instagram. 

The decision stems from complaints filed in May 2018 when the 27-nation bloc’s privacy rules, known as the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, took effect. 

Previously, Meta relied on getting informed consent from users to process their personal data to serve them with personalized, or behavioral, ads, which are based on what users search for online, the websites they visit or the videos they click on. 

When GDPR came into force, the company changed the legal basis under which it processes user data by adding a clause to the terms of service for advertisements, effectively forcing users to agree that their data could be used. That violates EU privacy rules. 

The Irish watchdog initially sided with Meta but changed its position after its draft decision was sent to a board of EU data protection regulators, many of whom objected. 

In its final decision, the Irish watchdog said Meta “is not entitled to rely on the ‘contract’ legal basis” to deliver behavioral ads on Facebook and Instagram. 

Meta said in a statement that “we strongly believe our approach respects GDPR, and we’re therefore disappointed by these decisions and intend to appeal both the substance of the rulings and the fines.” 

Meta has three months to ensure its “processing operations” comply with the EU rules, though the ruling doesn’t specify what the company has to do. Meta noted that the decision doesn’t prevent it from displaying personalized ads, it only covers the legal basis for handling user data. 

Max Schrems, the Austrian lawyer and privacy activist who filed the complaints, said the ruling could deal a big blow to the company’s profits in the EU, because “people now need to be asked if they want their data to be used for ads or not” and can change their mind at any time. 

“The decision also ensures a level playing field with other advertisers that also need to get opt-in consent,” he said. 

Making changes to comply with the decision could add to costs for a company already facing rising business challenges. Meta reported two straight quarters of declining revenue as advertising sales dropped because of competition from TikTok, and it laid off 11,000 workers amid broader tech industry woes. 

 
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CES 2023 opens this week in Las Vegas. After an unusually low turnout last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and supply chain issues, organizers say the consumer electronics show is back in full swing. VOA’s Julie Taboh shows us some of what to expect.
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The Consumer Electronics Show, the biggest technology trade show in the world, is once again open for business.

After two challenging years coping with the COVID-19 pandemic, which was particularly difficult for the conference and trade show industry, CES is expected to welcome about 100,000 attendees this week in Las Vegas.

That’s down about 40% from CES 2020 but still a significant jump in the numbers who attended in 2022. Over the past two years, CES managed to put on its show, which was all digital in 2021 and a hybrid digital and in-person in 2022 amid the Omicron surge.

This year, the Consumer Technology Association, the trade organization that puts on the annual event, says about one-third of the attendees are coming from outside the U.S.

“On the exhibitor side, a significant number come from outside of the U.S., making CES a truly global event,” said John Kelley, vice president and acting show director for CES, who spoke with VOA via Skype.

In fact, of the estimated 3,200 exhibitors who are expected to show off their wares, more than 1,400, or 43%, are coming from outside the U.S.

In the African pavilion, a dozen companies from the Democratic Republic of the Congo will be showcasing their homegrown innovations. The Ukraine pavilion will include technology firms from the Eastern European nation under siege by Russian forces.

Organizers also expect hundreds of Chinese firms to exhibit, despite recent COVID-related requirements for people traveling from China to the U.S.

“The Chinese presence at CES has always been quite pronounced and we’re starting to see it come back this year, which is quite exciting,” Kelley said.

Digital health, transportation technology and the metaverse are just a few of the latest technological innovations being showcased in Las Vegas.

Addressing global concerns

This year’s theme is technology helping to address the world’s greatest challenges, said Kelley.

“We’ve partnered with a U.N.-affiliated group, the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, to showcase how technology is supporting what we call human securities, or human rights,” he said, which includes food, political and environmental security, and mobility.

Show organizers expect increased focus on the metaverse — a shared digital reality connecting users — and on Web3, also known as Web 3.0, which proponents describe as the third generation of the World Wide Web.

CES has partnered with CoinDesk, a news site specializing in bitcoin and digital currencies, to build a studio on the show floor to showcase these types of Web3 applications, including blockchain and crypto.

Cool cars and trash-collecting sharks

From the internet highway to the interstate, automobiles have always had a major presence at the show, with more than 300 auto industry exhibitors showing off their latest products.

Organizers say there is also growth in marine technology, with boat manufacturers moving toward sustainable forms of energy.

The battery-operated WasteShark by the Dutch firm RanMarine Technology is an autonomous surface vessel designed to remove algae, biomass, and floating pollution such as plastics from lakes, ponds, and other coastal waterways.

“There’s a lot of people doing really great stuff out in the ocean and cleaning that up,” said company CEO Richard Hardiman, who spoke with VOA via Skype.

“Our mandate for our company is to clean it before it goes into the ocean,” he said. “So we’re trying to, sort of, what we call, ‘capture that waste at source,’ before it pollutes the ocean.”

Digital health

Another area that’s grown significantly at CES is digital health, CTA’s Kelley said. Dozens of exhibitors will be showcasing the latest health technologies, including new applications and diagnostic tools.

“What this does is give consumers access to their information, access to their data, and allows them to make decisions based on the data that they receive,” he said.

Canadian-based eSight Eyewear plans to display a headset designed to help people with visual impairments such as age-related macular degeneration, also known as AMD.

“When a person with AMD looks at your face, they wouldn’t see any distinct features; it would just be flesh tones,” explained Roland Mattern, eSight Eyewear’s director of marketing, who spoke with VOA via Skype.

Once the user puts on the device, they will be able to see distinct features such eyebrows, mouth and eyes, Mattern said.

“Users can literally see your entire face,” he said. “Your reaction. And that is an important feature because so much of communication is being able to see the other person’s reaction.”

It’s just one example of the many technologies on display this year at CES 2023, where companies from all corners of the world will come together to share their latest innovations.
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