Tag Archives: author_name|Mariella Moon

SAG-AFTRA deal will let advertisers replicate actors’ voices with AI

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SAG-AFTRA has announced a new agreement that would allow actors to earn from AI copies of their voice with their informed consent. The union representing thousands of performers has struck a deal with Narrativ, which is an online platform where performers can license digital voice replicas for use in audio ads. Brands who want to use a performer's voice will have to identify the products or services they're promoting, and performers will be able to review offers before accepting or declining them. 

Performers will also be able to set their own prices, with SAG-AFTRA's minimum rates being the lowest. And if they don't want to work with Narrativ anymore, the platform is required to delete their digital voice replica and any recordings they made for its creation. When the union went on strike last year, one of the biggest issues it wanted to address was the use of artificial intelligence to create actors' likeness without their permission (and without pay) even after they die. They were also concerned about the technology's potential to replace performers altogether. 

When the union ended its strike in November 2023, it said it was able to secure a deal that would protect its members from the "threat of AI." Under the terms of agreement it negotiated, performers have to provide explicit consent before replicas of them can be created. They also have to provide their consent for every additional project where their replica is used. In January, SAG-AFTRA entered an agreement with Replica Studios so performers can license their voice to game studios. However, it failed to reach a deal with several major video game publishers, prompting the union to call for another strike in July so it could protect it members' likenesses and voices from being recreated with AI without their permission. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/sag-aftra-deal-will-let-advertisers-replicate-actors-voices-with-ai-130019844.html?src=rss

Apple finally allows Spotify to display pricing in the EU

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Spotify can now show its users in the European Union how much its plans cost within its iOS app after their trial period ends. The company has revealed that it's opting into Apple's "entitlement" for music streaming services in an update to an old blog post. This "entitlement" was created after the European Commission slapped Apple with a €1.8 billion ($1.95 billion) fine back in March for restricting alternative music streaming apps on the App Store. The commission's decision followed an investigation that was opened when Spotify filed a complaint against the tech company, accusing it of suppressing its service in favor of iTunes and Apple Music.

Apple initially rejected the update that Spotify submitted in April this year to add "basic pricing and website information" on its app in Europe. Now that Apple has approved changes, users will be able to see pricing information, as well as promotional offers, within the Spotify app for iPhones. They'll also see a note saying that they can go to the Spotify website to subscribe to any of the service's plans. However, the service chose not to provide users with an in-app link that would give them access to external payment options. As The Verge notes, it's because Apple recently tweaked its App Store rules in the EU, stating that it will still take a cut of developers' sales even if customers pay via third-party providers. 

"Unfortunately, Spotify and all music streaming services in the EU are still not able to freely give consumers a simple opportunity to click a link to purchase in app because of the illegal and predatory taxes Apple continues to demand, despite the Commission’s ruling," Spotify wrote in its post. It added that "if the European Commission properly enforces its decision, iPhone consumers could see even more wins, like lower cost payment options and better product experiences in the app."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/music/apple-finally-allows-spotify-to-display-pricing-in-the-eu-123010178.html?src=rss

Proton VPN’s browser extension is now free for all users

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You can now get and use Proton VPN's browser extension even if you're not a paying user. The extension used to only be accessible if you're on one of the service's paid plans, but now you can install it as long as you're on a Firefox- or a Chromium-based browser. Proton VPN was our top choice for VPNs last year, because it was fast and doesn't collect data that passes through its network. 

Its apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and Linux have always been free to use, but the unpaid service does come with limitations. The service's paid plans are faster, has over 100 countries to choose from and lets you connect up to 10 devices at once. Meanwhile, the free version struggled to stay connected at times when we tested it out. Still, it does its job and now it comes with access to the service's browser extension, which lets you keep your Proton VPN connection within your browser only. 

Yes, the extension will let you use your standard internet connection outside of your browser. If you're using an app that doesn't work properly when you're on a device-wide VPN, but you want to protect your connection or circumvent region-based website blocks, the extension can solve your problem. Proton unfortunately has no plans to release a Safari browser for now, but we'll let you know if that changes. You can get the Chrome and Firefox extensions from Proton VPN's official website.

The company has also recently launched a new plan called Proton Duo, if you're considering paying for its products. It was specifically designed for two users who'll then get to share 1 TB of storage space (with additional 15 GB of bonus storage every year), as well as full access to Proton Mail, Drive, Calendar, Pass and VPN. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/proton-vpns-browser-extension-is-now-free-for-all-users-100049528.html?src=rss

Opera’s AI-focused web browser One is now on iOS

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Opera One, the browser with a focus on generative AI features that Opera launched for desktop last year, is now available for iOS devices. It retains its desktop counterpart's cleaner look, but it comes with a full screen interface and features specifically designed for mobile use. The company said it experienced a 63 percent growth in new users across the European Union after the Digital Markets Act was implemented, and now it has "embraced the opportunities presented by the new regulatory landscape."

Users will be able to move their search bar to the bottom of the screen if that will make it easier to type in queries on the go, especially if they're only using one hand. They can also activate the search bar simply by swiping down in the same way they'd swipe down to look for apps on their phone, as well. In addition, the browser's updated search function can make it faster to look up information: As soon as they start typing, a set of predictive chips will show up right above their keyboard with several possible options, including complete URLs for websites they may want to visit. The colors of the browser's top bar and bottom search bar change to blend in with the website the user is visiting, and both bars disappear when the user starts browsing.

And since Opera One has a focus on generative AI features, it comes with the company's Aria built-in browser assistant. Aria now has voice input, so users can speak queries out loud. Plus, users will be able to ask Aria to generate images using Google’s Imagen2 image generation model. Finally, since Opera puts a focus on security, the One iOS browser comes with a built-in ad blocker and free VPN.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/operas-ai-focused-web-browser-one-is-now-on-ios-130013697.html?src=rss

Scientists find evidence of liquid water deep underneath the Martian surface

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Water exists on Mars, according to a team of geophysicists, and not just as ice on its poles or as vapor in its atmosphere. The scientists have found evidence of liquid water deep in its outer crust, based on their analysis of data provided by NASA's Mars Insight Lander. Specifically, they analyzed four years' worth of ground motions recorded by the lander's seismometer. By looking at seismic velocities, or how fast seismic waves travel on the planet, they were able to determine the materials that the waves moved through. What they found was that Mars' mid-crust has fractured igneous rocks saturated with liquid water. 

One of the scientists involved in the study, Prof Michael Manga from the University of California, Berkeley, told the BBC that they implemented the same techniques used "to prospect for water on Earth, or to look for oil and gas." He said his group's findings can answer the question of where all the water on Mars had gone, because features on the planet's surface showed that it had lakes and rivers around three billion years ago. While there's a theory that most of that water was lost to space, scientists have challenged that idea in recent years. One study by Caltech and NASA JPL published in 2021 found data that most of that water is still trapped in the planet's crust. 

The scientists involved in this newer study, published in PNAS, were only able to analyze seismic velocity data taken from underneath the lander. However, they believe that similar underground water reservoirs exist all over the planet, and they estimate that there's enough liquid water under the surface to form a layer across Mars that's half a mile deep. Manga told the the BBC that "much of our water is underground and there's no reason for that not to be the case on Mars too."

While the team's findings could be taken as good news for space agencies and private companies looking to visit and even form human colonies on the planet, it won't be easy reaching Mars' water reservoirs. They're located around 7 to 12.5 miles below the surface, which won't be easy to reach even on our planet. "Drilling a hole 10km (6 miles) deep on Mars — even for [Elon] Musk — would be difficult," Manga said, adding that "without liquid water, you don't have life."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/scientists-find-evidence-of-liquid-water-deep-underneath-the-martian-surface-120054729.html?src=rss

X appears to be suppressing Trump-related searches

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If you want to find a specific tweet by Donald Trump, you may have to go through his timeline and look for it yourself. According to Mediaite, X has switched off the ability to search for Trump's tweets. As the publication explains, you can do a search for specific posts by typing "from:[username without the @ symbol]" followed by the term or phrase you're looking for. 

So if you want to see the former president's tweet wherein he said that the COVID cases and deaths are "far exaggerated in the United States" due to the CDC's "ridiculous method of determination," you could do a search for "from:realDonaldTrump COVID." That's supposed to bring up all his tweets with the term "COVID," except... it doesn't. What does show up is a selection of his tweets that don't even appear in chronological order. We were able to replicate the results Mediaite has reported, as you can see below.

A screenshot of Donald Trump's tweets.
Twitter

The former president's Twitter account was suspended in 2021 after the company determined that some of his tweets violated its policies. His was kicked out of the website after the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol. Trump sued Twitter in an attempt to get his account back, but it wasn't until Elon Musk took over that he was reinstated. His first and only post since then was his mug shot, which was taken when he was booked on charges that he conspired to overturn the results of 2020 Presidential election. 

As Mediaite notes, it's not quite clear why this happening. Other accounts that had been suspended in the past and then reinstated, such as Alex Jones', remain searchable. The accounts of other high-profile political personalities, such as Kamala Harris, remain searchable, as well. A software engineer that the publication talked to claimed that it was a deliberate move on X's part, seeing as the issue doesn't seem to affect other previously suspended users. We reached out to X for a statement and will update this post if we hear back. It's worth noting, however, that there's a free resource called "Trump Twitter Archive" that contains a searchable database of Trump's tweets, and it still works perfectly. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/x-appears-to-be-suppressing-trump-related-searches-140026507.html?src=rss

Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has died

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Susan Wojcicki, who served as YouTube's CEO for almost a decade until she stepped down last year, has died. She was 56 years old. Her husband Dennis Troper has shared the news on Facebook, revealing that Wojcicki lived two years with non-small cell lung cancer. "Susan was not just my best friend and partner in life, but a brilliant mind, a loving mother, and a dear friend to many," he wrote in his post. "Her impact on our family and the world was immeasurable."

Google operated out of Wojcicki's garage when the company was just starting out, with founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin using it as their office. She became the company's first marketing manager, co-created Google Image Search and was the first product manager of AdSense. Wojcicki also headed Google's video efforts and was the one who encouraged the company to purchase YouTube in 2006, a year after the video-sharing platform debuted. 

In 2014, she was appointed as the CEO of YouTube, which became a key part of Google under her leadership. For the fiscal year of 2022, the year before she stepped down, YouTube ads brought in $29.24 billion in revenue, which made up over 10 percent of the company's total earnings. Outside of her work with Google, Wojcicki brought attention to the gender gap issue in tech and to the plight of refugees. She was also a proponent of lengthy parental leaves and talked about they're actually good for business. In a post on X, Alphabet's current CEO, Sundar Pichai, said Wojcicki was "as core to the history of Google as anyone" and described her someone who's "had a tremendous impact on the world."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/former-youtube-ceo-susan-wojcicki-has-died-110020190.html?src=rss

TikTok and Pinterest team up with Amazon for in-app shopping

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Amazon has struck new deals that will give people the option to shop without having to leave TikTok or Pinterest, according to The Information. Users will be able to purchase items from the Amazon ads the pop up within either platform. Typically, clicking on an ad would take a buyer to Amazon's interface, but this deal will let them check out from within TikTok or Pinterest using the payment method and shipping address saved on their Amazon account. 

The Information says it has seen screenshots of the ads, which show more information than usual, including items' prices, their estimated shipping times and whether they're eligible for Prime shipment. Take note that users will have to link their social media accounts to their Amazon profiles first before they're able to seamlessly shop from within their apps. "In-app shopping with Amazon is available for select products advertised on TikTok and sold by Amazon or by independent sellers in Amazon's store," a company spokesperson confirmed to the publication. 

Amazon's new deals reportedly expand on its previous agreements with Meta and Snap under an initiative that's internally called Project Handshake. Similar to these newer arrangements, those previous deals made it possible for Snapchat and Instagram users to purchase items from within their apps. As The Information notes, though, it's not quite clear why TikTok has entered the agreement when it's been trying to grow its own shopping platform. TikTok brought live shopping to North America in 2022, and it added more relevant features, such as a dedicated shop tab and live stream shop buttons, last year. In addition to the fact that Amazon shopping could undercut sales on its own platform, TikTok could also end up getting banned in the US unless ByteDance, its parent company based in China, agrees to sell it. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/tiktok-and-pinterest-team-up-with-amazon-for-in-app-shopping-140004136.html?src=rss

Google and Meta reportedly teamed up for ads targeting young teens

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Google worked with Meta to roll out ads that targeted young teens even if it's against the former's rules, according to the Financial Times. Based on the documents seen by the publication, Google worked on a marketing project designed to advertise Instagram to YouTube users within the 13- to 17-year-old age range. Google had blocked age-based ad targeting for users under 18 years ago, but the company reportedly found and used a loophole. 

Since they couldn't go for the demographic they wanted to reach, they instead targeted a group of users Google had labeled as "unknown." Google's staff proposed the group to Meta, The Times said, because the company had data points to prove that a large number of users under the label are below 18 years in age. The company even reportedly told Meta that the daily engagement it gets from 13- to 17-year-old users exceeds TikTok's and Instagram's. The Information says using this loophole is against Google's rules, as well, since it has policies against proxy targeting. 

Meta and Google worked with media agency Spark Foundry to launch the marketing program in Canada between February and April, according to the report. When it did well, they kicked off a trial in the US in May and had made plans to expand it to other regions, as well as to include other Meta apps in the campaign. 

However, Google had investigated and ultimately cancelled the project after being contacted by the Times. "We prohibit ads being personalized to people under-18, period," the company told the publication. It said that its safeguards worked properly in this case because it didn't directly target registered YouTube users know to be 18. That said, it didn't outright deny using the loophole and only said that it will take "additional action to reinforce with sales representatives that they must not help advertisers or agencies run campaigns" that attempt to work around its policies.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/google-and-meta-reportedly-teamed-up-for-ads-targeting-young-teens-130024683.html?src=rss

X makes its Premium+ subscription tier fully ad-free

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X has updated its Premium+ subscription tier so that paying users don't have to see any advertisement at all. The website formerly known as Twitter has announced that Premium+, which costs $16 a month in the US, is now fully ad-free. While one of the tier's original perks is having an ad-free For You and Following timelines, subscribers still saw advertisements on other parts of the social network.

As Social Media Today points out, the FAQ page for X's subscriptions used to say that the no-ads feature for Premium+ "does not apply to promoted content elsewhere on X, including but not limited to ads on profiles, ads in post replies, ads in Immersive Media Viewer, promoted events in Explore, promoted trends, and promoted accounts to follow."

Some users in that announcement thread on X have expressed concerns about the company's revenue-sharing scheme. People can earn on the social network by getting some of X's ad revenue, but they can only earn money for an add if a fellow verified user sees it. That is why X engineer Eric Farraro had to write a post answering a common complaint from creators that their payouts were lower than expected. "Revenue is only earned for ads shown to Verified users. This is one of many ways we mitigate attempts to manipulate the program," he tweeted. Since ads had been limited for Premium+ subscribers from the start, though, this might not have a big impact on the revenue amount X can share with its users. People paying for the basic tier, the cheapest option at $3 a month, will continue seeing ads like usual. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/x-makes-its-premium-subscription-tier-fully-ad-free-120017998.html?src=rss