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Microsoft has withdrawn from OpenAI’s board of directors a couple of weeks after the European Commission revealed that it’s taking another look at the terms of their partnership, according to the Financial Times. The company has reportedly sent OpenAI a letter, announcing that it was giving up its seat “effective immediately.” Microsoft took on an observer, non-voting role within OpenAI’s board following an internal upheaval that led to the firing (and eventual reinstatement) of the latter’s CEO, Sam Altman. 

According to previous reports, Apple was also supposed to get an observer seat at the board following its announcement that it will integrate ChatGPT into its devices. The Times says that will no longer be the case. Instead, OpenAI will take on a new approach and hold regular meetings with key partners, including the two Big Tech companies. In the letter, Microsoft reportedly told OpenAI that it’s confident in the direction the company is taking, so its seat on the board is no longer necessary. 

The company also wrote that its seat “provided insights into the board’s activities without compromising its independence,” but the European Commission wants to take a closer look at their relationship before deciding if it agrees. “We’re grateful to Microsoft for voicing confidence in the board and the direction of the company, and we look forward to continuing our successful partnership,” an OpenAI spokesperson told The Times.

Microsoft initially invested $1 billion into OpenAI in 2019. Since then, the company has poured more money into the AI company until it has reached $13 billion in investments. The European Commission started investigating their partnership to figure out if it breaks the bloc’s merger rules last year, but it ultimately concluded that Microsoft didn’t gain control of OpenAI. It didn’t drop the probe altogether, however — Margrethe Vestager, the commission’s executive vice-president for competition policy, revealed in June that European authorities asked Microsoft for additional information regarding their agreement “to understand whether certain exclusivity clauses could have a negative effect on competitors.”

The commission is looking into the Microsoft-OpenAI agreement as part of a bigger antitrust investigation. It also sent information requests to other big players in the industry that are also working on artificial intelligence technologies, including Meta, Google and TikTok. The commission intends to ensure fairness in consumer choices and to examine acqui-hires to “make sure these practices don’t slip through [its] merger control rules if they basically lead to a concentration.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-and-apple-give-up-their-openai-board-seats-120022867.html?src=rss 

Amazon Prime Day will officially be here on July 16, but we’re already starting to see discounts pop up, particularly on Amazon’s own devices. The Amazon Echo Buds are half off in this early Prime Day deal. The wireless earphones, already one of Engadget’s top picks for budget on-the-go buds at $50, are only $25 today. That’s a record low for the latest model, which arrived last year.

This latest iteration of the Echo Buds doesn’t plunge into your ear canals. Instead, the buds have a semi-open fit with a stem, similar to Apple’s standard AirPods. The Echo Buds include removable silicone ear covers (not tips) to help with grip and comfort without stuffing something inside your ear, which can be uncomfortable for some folks.

That means they lack noise cancelation, so don’t expect them to tune or block out the outside world (apart from your music drowning things out if it’s loud enough). This style works better for those who want to maintain awareness of their surroundings while avoiding the feeling of full ear canals.

The third-gen Echo Buds can last up to five hours per charge (up to six with Alexa’s wake-word detection disabled). However, their charging case adds another 15 hours, and you can add a quick two hours to the buds with a quick 15-minute charge.

Sound quality will be noticeably lower than that of competitors in the $200-ish range, but Amazon would’ve been performing miracles if it matched that. Instead, you get a perfectly solid sound profile (lacking a bit of bass) that performs beyond what you’d expect for $50 earbuds. At $25 today, it’s hard to imagine anything else coming close in that price range.

Your Prime Day Shopping Guide: See all of our Prime Day coverage. Shop the best Prime Day deals on Yahoo Life. Follow Engadget for Prime Day tech deals. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Amazon Prime Day deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Prime Day sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-discounts-the-echo-buds-to-only-25-ahead-of-prime-day-123058567.html?src=rss 

US officials and their allies have identified and taken down an artificial intelligence-powered Russian bot farm comprising almost 1,000 accounts. These accounts were able to spread disinformation and pro-Russian sentiments across X, formerly Twitter. The Justice Department has revealed the scheme was made possible by software created by a digital media department in RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet.

According to a cybersecurity advisory from the FBI, intelligence officers from the Netherlands, and cybersecurity authorities from Canada, it centered on a tool called Meliorator, which can create “authentic appearing social media personas en masse,” generate text messages as well as images and mirror disinformation from other bot personas. For example, one account with the name Ricardo Abbott, which claimed to be from Minneapolis, posted a video of Russian President Vladimir Putin justifying Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

The Justice Department is still tracing and trying to find all 968 accounts used by the Russian actors to disseminate false information. X has shared information with authorities on all the identified accounts and has already suspended them.

— Mat Smith

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We’re liveblogging Samsung Unpacked 2024

And what to expect.

Samsung’s next big event kicks off in a few hours. We’ll be covering all the announcements (and testing out devices), so tune into our liveblog. We expect to see the Galaxy Fold 6 and Galaxy Z Flip 6, but their updates could be minor, as well as Samsung’s newest wearable, the Galaxy Ring. If you want some insight into what to expect, you can read up on that right here.

Bookmark our liveblog.

Apple blog TUAW returns as an AI content farm

With not-so-new content from writers who haven’t worked there in more than a decade.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) has returned online nearly a decade after shutting down. But the new owners of the once venerable source of Apple news appear to have transformed it into an AI-generated content farm. The site, which ceased operations in 2015, began publishing ‘new’ articles, many of which appear nearly identical to content published by MacRumors and other publications over the past week. Adding to the grossness, the site also has an author page featuring former writers’ names and photos that appear to be AI-generated.

Continue reading.

A British boarding school will make students use old Nokia dumbphones

First-year students will only be able to make calls and texts.

Eton College, the elite historic British boarding school — with famous alumni Princes William and Harry, Ian Fleming and Tom Hiddleston — has instituted a new mobile phone policy for its first-year students starting in September. Those students will have to leave their smartphones at home and bring their SIM card to school to put in an old-school Nokia cell phone with a simple number pad, which can only make phone calls and send text messages.

Continue reading.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-us-officials-help-take-down-ai-powered-russian-bot-farm-with-nearly-1000-fake-x-accounts-111659112.html?src=rss 

Google is adding passkey support to its Advanced Protection Program. APP is the company’s highest-level security option. It’s intended for targets who could be at high risk of hacks or other scams, such as elected officials or human rights workers, and it previously required a physical security key to use. In Google’s announcement today, it acknowledged that the physical component made APP less feasible for some of the people who need the service most. Now, people who enroll in APP can opt for a passkey or for a physical key.

Google was one of many tech companies to start offering passkeys for security, rolling out the option to Android and Chrome in 2022 and offering them to all Google accounts in 2023. Earlier this year, Google said that more than 400 million accounts have used passkeys more than 1 billion times. And that’s a big number, but on the whole, uptake of this technology has still been gradual.

In addition to adding passkey support, Google also shared that it is partnering with media nonprofit Internews to provide cybersecurity support for its network of journalists and human rights advocates. The arrangement will cover ten countries, including Brazil, Mexico and Poland.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-brings-passkeys-to-its-advanced-protection-program-100034040.html?src=rss 

US officials and their allies have identified and taken down an artificial intelligence-powered Russian bot farm comprised of almost 1,000 accounts, which spread disinformation and pro-Russian sentiments on X. The Justice Department has revealed the the scheme that was made possible by software was created by a digital media department within RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet. Its development was apparently led by RT’s deputy editor-in-chief back in 2022 and was approved and funded by an officer at Russia’s Federal Security Service, the main successor of the KGB. 

In a cybersecurity advisory issued by the FBI, intelligence officers from the Netherlands and cybersecurity authorities from Canada, they specifically mentioned a tool called “Meliorator,” which can create “authentic appearing social media personas en masse,” generate text messages as well as images and mirror disinformation from other bot personas. Authorities have seized two domains that the operation used to create email addresses that were necessary to sign up for accounts on X, formerly known as Twitter, which served as home to the bots. 

The Justice Department, however, is still in the midst of finding all 968 accounts used by the Russian actors to disseminate false information. X has shared information with authorities on all the identified accounts so far and has already suspended them. As The Washington Post has noted, the bots slipped through X’s safeguards, because they can copy-paste OTPs from their email accounts to log in. The operations’ use of US-based domain names violates the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Justice Department said. Meanwhile, paying for them violates federal money laundering laws in the US.

A lot of profiles created by the tool impersonated Americans by using American-sounding names and setting their locations on X to various places in the US. The examples presented by the Justice Department used headshots against gray backgrounds as their profile photos, which are a pretty good indicator that they were created using AI. One account with the name Ricardo Abbott, which claimed to be from Minneapolis, posted a video of Russian president Vladimir Putin justifying Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Another account with the name Sue Williamson posted a video of Putin saying that the war in Ukraine isn’t about territorial conflict and is a matter of “principles on which the New World Order will be based.” These posts were then liked and reposted by other bots in the network. 

It’s worth noting that while this particular bot farm was confined to X, the people behind it had plans to expand to other platforms, based on the authorities’ analysis of the Meliorator software. Foreign actors that spread political disinformation have been using social media to disseminate false news for years. But now they’ve added AI to their arsenal. Back in May, OpenAI reported that it dismantled five covert influence operations originating from Russia, China, Israel and Iran that were using its models to influence political outcomes.

“Russia intended to use this bot farm to disseminate AI-generated foreign disinformation, scaling their work with the assistance of AI to undermine our partners in Ukraine and influence geopolitical narratives favorable to the Russian government,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement. “The FBI is committed to working with our partners and deploying joint, sequenced operations to strategically disrupt our most dangerous adversaries and their use of cutting-edge technology for nefarious purposes.”

As for RT, the media organization told Bloomberg: “Farming is a beloved pastime for millions of Russians.” 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/us-officials-announce-the-takedown-of-an-ai-powered-russian-bot-farm-054034912.html?src=rss