Balancing Bytes: EU Takes on Big Tech Titans

Europen Union (EU) is trying to tame the big tech while Toys r Us uses AI to build advertisement campaign and new money keeps flowing AI and chips based startups

All this and more in today’s newsletter

Featured Byte

The European Union (EU) has been taking significant steps to regulate and hold big tech companies accountable. Big Tech is being held accountable on multiple counts and it seems that legal issues for them is not going to stop anytime soon -

1. Apple’s Violation of Digital Markets Act (DMA):

   • The EU accused Apple of violating the new major tech competition law under the Digital Markets Act.

   • Preliminary findings revealed that Apple’s app store rules hinder developers from directing consumers to alternative ways of buying products and accessing content outside the Apple ecosystem.

   • The investigation also examined whether Apple’s technology fee for third-party developers violates the law.

2. Digital Markets Act (DMA):

   • In addition to Apple, the EU is investigating Meta (formerly Facebook) and Google parent Alphabet for potential violations of the law.

   • Apple recently announced that it would not roll out some AI features in Europe this year due to regulatory concerns stemming from the DMA.

3. GDPR Litigation Against Big Tech:

   • The EU’s top court unblocked litigation brought by consumer protection organizations seeking to apply the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) against tech giants like Facebook and Twitter.

4. Consumer Advocates’ Request for Rights to Sue Big Tech:

   • A coalition of 31 groups and academics requested changes in the DMA to allow individual users to sue U.S. tech giants for EU law violations.

5. Microsoft sued for breaching antitrust rules :

   • The European Union (EU) recently accused Microsoft of breaching antitrust rules by bundling its Teams messaging and videoconferencing app with its widely used business software, including Office 365 and Microsoft 365.

Overall, the EU is actively addressing market dominance, privacy concerns, and antitrust issues related to big tech companies through fines, regulations, and legal actions.

News Bytes

• Toys R Us has created its first-ever brand film using OpenAI’s new text-to-video tool called Sora. The video, produced by Toys R Us Studios and ad agency Native Foreign, narrates the origin story of the beloved toy store by its real-life founder, Charles Lazarus. It features an AI representation of a young Lazarus and the iconic toy store mascot, Geoffrey the Giraffe.

• Facebook and Instagram are using user data to train their artificial intelligence (AI) models. While Meta, the parent company, has paused AI training plans for European users due to privacy laws, it continues to use publicly shared content from U.S. accounts for AI improvement. If you want to prevent Meta from using your data, you can either make your Facebook or Instagram account private or delete your public posts

• Etched, a 2-year-old startup founded by Harvard dropouts, has raised $120 million in venture funding to develop a specialized chip aimed at competing with Nvidia in the field of artificial intelligence. The company is headquartered in Cupertino, California, and is working on a chip called Sohu, designed for training and deploying AI models using the core architecture of transformers (similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT).

• Researchers have made a significant advancement in matrix multiplication efficiency, which could benefit AI models like ChatGPT. Matrix multiplication plays a crucial role in AI tasks such as speech and image recognition, chatbots, and video synthesis. The recent technique, developed by scientists from Tsinghua University, UC Berkeley, and MIT, reduces the upper bound of the complexity exponent for matrix multiplication.

• Sony Music, Universal Music Group, and Warner Records, are suing two AI start-ups, Suno and Udio, for alleged copyright infringement. These companies are accused of stealing music on an “almost unimaginable scale” using their software to create similar works. The record labels seek compensation of $150,000 per work. The lawsuits highlight the ongoing debate over AI firms’ rights to use copyrighted material, challenging the fair use doctrine.

Robot Bytes

• Tesla Optimus : A futuristic humanoid robot developed by Tesla that aims to perform basic tasks.

• Mobile ALOHA : An AI-assisted robot that can help you with your daily chores: cooking, washing up, tidying up, cleaning, etc.

• Atom Limbs : Near-full human range of motion, a basic sense of touch, and mind control. All non-invasively.

• Neuralink : Redefining the boundaries of human capabilities

• Menteebot : An AI robot that can understand and execute your voice instructions.

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