Tech News – Page 75 – by Arlin Schaffel

Google’s best Gemini demo was faked

Google’s new Gemini AI model is getting a mixed reception after its big debut yesterday, but users may have less confidence in the company’s tech or integrity after finding out that the most impressive demo of Gemini was pretty much faked. “We created the demo by capturing footage in order to test Gemini’s capabilities on a wide range of challenges. Then we prompted Gemini using still image frames from the footage, and prompting via text.” (Parmy Olsen at Bloomberg was the first to report the discrepancy.)
https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/07/googles-best-gemini-demo-was-faked/

Meta’s new AI image generator was trained on 1.1 billion Instagram and Facebook photos

If you're on Facebook or Instagram, it's quite possible a picture of you (or that you took) helped train Emu. In a way, the old saying, "If you're not paying for it, you are the product" has taken on a whole new meaning.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/12/metas-new-ai-image-generator-was-trained-on-1-1-billion-instagram-and-facebook-photos/

Apple Just Confirmed Governments Are Spying on People’s Phones With Push Notifications

Governments are spying on U.S. smartphone users through the push notifications that they receive from apps, Senator Ron Wyden wrote in a letter to the Department of Justice on Wednesday and Apple confirmed. Apple confirmed in a statement to Reuters on Wednesday that, “In this case, the federal government prohibited us from sharing any information. Now that this method has become public we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these kinds of requests.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxjbv9/apple-just-confirmed-governments-are-spying-on-peoples-phones-with-push-notifications

‘GTA VI’ Has Already Sparked a Bizarre Moral Panic Fit For Our Age

The GTA franchise is the perfect fodder for a moral panic. It’s massively popular, violent, and garishly stupid. The series has long courted controversy, and the panic accompanying each entry says something about the era in which it occurs. It’s early days, but I see two overlapping strains of panic hitting the GTA VI discourse. The first is that the game will lead players astray into a life of pornography, crime, and sloth.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3we8x/gta-vi-has-already-sparked-a-bizarre-moral-panic-fit-for-our-age

Instagram and Facebook cross messaging is coming to an end

“A few years ago, we introduced a new Messenger experience in Instagram DMs which enabled people to message and call a FB account (Messenger) from an Instagram account and vice versa,” spokesperson Alex Dziedzan said. “Starting in mid-December, we will begin removing this feature. However, people can continue to message and call their contacts on Facebook, Instagram or Messenger.”
https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/5/23988879/instagram-facebook-meta-cross-platform-messaging-discontinued-mid-december-2023

The Cybertruck Is a Disappointment Even to Cybertruck Superfans

When the Cybertruck was first announced in 2019, Musk said it would have up to 500 miles of range and start at $40,000, both of which were huge promised improvements over any available or forthcoming competitor. Instead, the Cybertruck base model has half that range—250 miles—and starts at $60,990, or $20,000 more than people expected.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a35ed/the-cybertruck-is-a-disappointment-even-to-cybertruck-superfans

Google and Canada reach deal to avert news ban over Online News Act

The agreement announced on Wednesday requires Google pay C$100m (£58m, $74m) annually, indexed to inflation, to news outlets. The statement said that Google would pay a "single collective" which would distribute the funds to eligible news agencies "based on the number of full-time equivalent journalists engaged by those businesses".
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67571027