Automattic Announces The World’s Best Inbox Just Got Better

April 9, 2024AutomatticAutomattic, BeeperJenThorpe

Messaging today is a mess, Automattic wrote. We have endless chat apps on our phones, each with different contacts and notification settings, making it all too easy to accidentally ghost family and friends.

That’s why we’re excited to announce today that Automatic has acquired Beeper, a universal messaging app that combines 14 different chat networks in one inbox. We began investing in messaging last year when we acquired Texts.com. Now, two of the most exciting teams in tech will work together to push the boundaries of messaging, giving us one app that will improve our focus and the way we communicate.

The best and only messaging app you’ll ever need

Beeper has been a leader in simplifying chat apps with a focus on streamlined user experiences. As the teams go through organizational changes,Texts and Beeper will merge under the Beeper brand. But the good stuff you already love isn’t changing! End-to-end encryption keeps your conversations secure, and you’ll have access to well over a dozen app integrations, with even more to come.

Eric Migicovsky, Beeper CEO -> Automattic Head of Messaging wrote:

I’m excited to announce that Beeper has been acquired by Automattic. This acquisition marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter as we continue our mission to create the best chat app on earth.

If you haven’t heard of Beeper before, welcome! We make a universal chat app — one app to send and receive messages on 14 different chat networks. You might have also heard about Beeper Mini, our briefly available iMessage-on-Android app.

In many ways, our journey has only just begun. Beeper has just over 115,000 users and was, until today, in beta. Given the state of the messaging landscape today, we believe there is a huge opportunity for us to push boundaries and create new experiences in chat. The majority of other chat apps have stagnated, entrenched in their positions with no significant new players emerging since Discord’s launch in 2015.

Given the state of the messaging world, we’ve long felt the need for a strong ally with the resources to support us on our quest. Automattic has a long history of putting user control and privacy first with open source, and great bilateral relationships with Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Matrix and others that we hope can usher in a new era of collaboration.

TechCrunch reported WordPress.com owner Automattic is acquiring Beeper, the company behind the iMessage-on-Android solution that was referenced by the Department of Justice in its antitrust lawsuit against Apple.

The deal, which was for $125 million, according to sources close to the matter, is Automattic’s second acquisition of a cross-platform messaging solution after buying texts.com last October.

In my opinion, there certainly seems to be a lot of people working for Automatic that appear to be very excited about the Beeper acquisition.

American Privacy Rights Act a Step in the Right Direction #1735

April 8, 2024PodcastKirk

In a significant bipartisan effort, Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) have introduced the American Privacy Rights Act, aiming to break the deadlock in Congress over data privacy protections. This landmark proposal offers consumers new rights over personal information, including the ability to correct, delete, or export their data and opt out of targeted advertising and data transfers. Additionally, it introduces stringent security measures to protect consumer data and allows for federal and state enforcement and private lawsuits against violations.

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Spotify Launches Personalized AI Playlists That You Can Build Using Prompts

April 8, 2024AIAI, SpotifyJenThorpe

Spotify announced that Spotify Premium users can now turn any idea into a personalized playlist with AI Playlist in Beta. From their newsroom:

We know that discovery happens on Spotify, with nearly two billion discoveries happening on our platform every day. Features like our AI DJ and duelist power those discoveries and bring fans closer to the artists they love. Now we’re providing Spotify Premium subscribers with another tool to fuel discovery and music curation. With AI Playlist in beta, you can effortlessly turn your most creative ideas into playlists.

Starting with users on Android and iOS devices in the United Kingdom and Australia, creating a new playlist with AI Playlist is as simple as typing a unique prompt into the chat. Looking for “an indie folk playlist to give my brain a big warm hug,” “relaxing music to tide me over during allergy season,” or “a playlist that makes me feel like the main character”? AI Playlist has you covered. Whether you’re a beginner or an expert playlist creator, AI Playlist pairs our powerful personalization technology with AI to deliver that perfect musical mix, just for you.

TechCrunch reported Spotify already found success with its popular AI DJ feature, and now the streaming music service is bringing AI to playlist creation. The company Monday introduced into beta a new option called AI playlists, which allows users to generate a playlist based on written prompts.

The feature will initially become available on Android and iOS devices in the U.K. and Australia and will evolve over time.

In addition to more standard playlist creation requests, like those based on genre or time frame, Spotify’s use of AI means people could ask for a wide variety of custom playlists, like “songs to serenade my cat” or “beats to battle a zombie apocalypse,” Spotify suggests. Prompts can reference all sorts of things like places, animals, activities, movie characters, colors or emojis. The company notes that the best playlists are generated using prompts that contain a combination of genres, moods, artists and decades, however.

Spotify also leverages its understanding of users’ tastes to customize the playlists it makes with the feature.

Mashable reported artificial intelligence is ramping up on Spotify. First, the company launched its AI DJ. Now, select users can use AI to help create personalized playlists based on niche prompts — even simply using emoji.

Spotify Premium users can enter promote that will generate AI playlists, a feature now available for subscribers in the UK and Australia on Android and iOS devices. The AI Playlist is currently in beta, and will allow users to type in unique prompts to create said playlists.

In my opinion, Spotify is making it easier for people to create their own playlists on Spotify. Although the feature is currently limited to a few countries, it will likely result in interesting, personal, playlists that are created by AI.

Trudeau Announces $2.4 billion For AI-Related Investments

April 7, 2024AIAI, canadaJenThorpe

The Liberal government is setting aside $2.4 billion in its upcoming budget to build capacity in artificial intelligence, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Sunday, CBS reported.

The bulk of that — $2 billion — is going to a fund that aim to provide access to computing capabilities and technical infrastructure.

He said the federal government will begin consulting with industry soon on a new AI Compute Access Fund and an accompanying strategy to expand the sector in Canada.

“We want to help companies adopt AI in a way that will have positive impacts for everyone,” Trudeau said, adding that $200 million will go towards boosting the adoption of AI sectors like agriculture, health care, and clean technology.”

The government plans to launch a $50-million AI institute to protect against what it calls “advanced or nefarious AI systems,” and another $5.1 million will go toward an office of AI and Data Commissioner to enforce the proposed Artificial Intelligence and Data Act.

Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau posted “Securing Canada’s AI advantage” Here are some key points from it:

Investing $2 billion to build and provide access to computing capabilities and technological infrastructure for Canada’s world-leading AI researchers, start-ups, and scale-ups: As part of this investment, we will soon be consulting with AI stakeholders to inform the launch of a new AI Compute Access Fund to provide near-term support to researchers and industry. We will also develop a new Canadian AI Sovereign Compute Strategy to catalyze the development of Canadian-owned and located AI infrastructure. Ensuring access to cutting-edge computing infrastructure will attract more global AI investment to Canada, develop and recruit the best talent, and help Canadian businesses compete and succeed on the world stage.

Boosting AI start-ups to bring new technologies to market, and accelerating AI adoption in critical sectors, such as agriculture, clean technology, health care, and manufacturing, with $200 million in support through Canada’s Regional Development Agencies.

Investing $100 million in the NCP IRAP AI Assist Program to help small and medium-sized businesses scale up and increase productivity by building and deploying new AI solutions. This will help companies incorporate AI into their businesses and take on research, product development, testing, and validation work for new AI-based solutions.

Supporting workers who may be impacted by AI, such as creative industries, with $50 million for the Sectoral Workforce Solutions Program, which will provide new skills training for workers in potentially disrupted sectors and communities.

Creating new Canadian AI Safety Institute, with $50 million to further the safe development and deployment of AI. The Institute, which will leverage input from stakeholders and work in coordination with international partners, will help Canada better understand and protect against the risks of advanced or nefarious AI systems, including to specific communities.

Strengthening enforcement of the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act, with $5.1 million for the Office of the AI and Data Commissioner. The proposed Act aims to guide AI innovation in a positive direction to help ensure Canadians are protected from potential risks ensuring the responsible adoption of AI by Canadian businesses.

In my opinion, it sounds like the Canadian Government has put a lot of thought about what they want to have in their AI programs. Prime Minister Trudeau appears to have a high opinion of what AI can do for Canada.

Fake Facebook MidJourney AI Page Promoted Malware To 1.2 Million People

April 6, 2024FacebookAI, Facebook, malwareJenThorpe

Hackers are using Facebook advertisements and hijacked pages to promote fake Artificial Intelligence services, such as MidJourney, OpenAI’s SORA and ChatGPT-5, and DALL-E, to infect unsuspecting users with password-stealing malware, Bleeping Computer reported.

The malvertising campaigns are created by hijacked Facebook profiles that impersonate popular AI services, pretending to offer a sneak peak of new features.

Users tricked by the ads become members of fraudulent Facebook communities, where the threat actors post news, AI-generated images, and other related info to make pages look legitimate.

However, the community posts often promote limited-time access to upcoming and eagerly anticipated AI-services, tricking the users into the download malicious executables that infect Windows computers with information-stealing malware like Rilide, Vidar, IceRAT, and Nova.

Information-stealing malware focuses on stealing data form a victim’s browser, including stored credentials, cookies, cryptocurrency wallet information, autocomplete data, and credit card information.

The Record reported cybercriminals are taking over Facebook pages and using them to advertise fake generative artificial intelligence software loaded with malware.

According to researchers at the cybersecurity company Bitdefender, the cybercrooks are taking advantage of the popularity of new generative AI tools and using “malvertising” to impersonate legitimate products like Midjourney, Sora AI, ChatGPT-5, and others.

The campaigns follow a certain blueprint. Cybercriminals take over a Facebook account and begin to make changes to the page’s descriptions, cover and profile photo. According to Bitdefender, they make “the page seem as if it is run by well-known AI-based image and video generators.”

They then populate the pages with purported product news and advertisements for software, which are themselves generated with AI software.

The downloads contain various types of info steeling malware – like Riide, Vidar, IceRAT, and Nova Stealers — which are available for purchase on the dark web, allowing unsophisticated cybercriminals to launch attacks.

According to The Record, the most notable Facebook page hijack involved the application Midjourney, a popular tool for creating AI-generated images. Its hijacked page had 1.2 million followers and was active for nearly a year before it was shut down earlier this month.

Tom’s Guide reported once an account is compromised, the hackers then give it an AI-themed makeover with a new cover and profile photos as well as descriptions to make it appear as if it is run by one of the well-known AI-generated photos and advertisements to further impersonate whichever AI image generator of video generate service they want to leverage in their attacks.

During their investigation, Bitedefender’s security researchers found that the hackers responsible used a much different approach with MidJourney. For other AI tools, they urged visitors to download the latest versions from Dropbox or Google Drive, but with Midjourney, they created more than a dozen malicious sites that impersonated the tool’s actual landing page. These sites then tried to trick visitors into downloading the latest version of the took via a GoFile link.

In my opinion, the cybercriminals are obviously terrible people who want to take advantage of others. I’m hoping that Facebook has taken swift action against the crooks who likely caused harm to several Facebook users.

Meta Announces Approach To Labeling AI-Generated Content

April 5, 2024AIAI generated, MetaJenThorpe

Monika Bickert, Vice President of Content Policy at Meta posted information regarding their approach to labeling AI-generated content and manipulated media.

We are making changes to the way we handle manipulated media on Facebook, Instagram and Threads based on feedback from the Oversight Board that we should update our approach to reflect a broader range of content that exists today and provide context about the content through labels. These changes are also informed by Meta’s policy review process that included extensive public opinion surveys and consultations with academics, civil society organizations, and others.

We agree with the Oversight Board’s argument that our existing approach is too narrow since it only covers videos that are created or altered by AI to make a person appear to say something they didn’t say. Our manipulated media policy was written in 2020 when realistic AI-generated content was rare and the overarching concern was about videos.

In the last four years, and particularly in the last year, people have developed other kinds of realistic AI-generated content like audio and photos, and this technology is quickly evolving, As the Board noted, it’s equally important to address manipulation that shows a person doing something they didn’t do.

The Board also argued that we unnecessarily risk restricting freedom of expression when we remove manipulated media that does not otherwise violate our Community Standards. It recommends a “less restrictive” approach to manipulated media like labels with context.

In February, we announced we’ve been working with industry partners on common technical standards for identifying AI content, including video and audio. Our “Made with AI” labels on AI-generated video, audio, and image will be based on our detection of industry-shared signals of AI images or people self-disclosing that they’re uploading AI-generated content. We already add “Imagined with AI” to photorealistic images created using our Meta AI features.

TechCrunch reported Meta announced changes to its rules on AI-generated content and manipulated media, following criticism from its Oversight Board. Starting next month it said it will label a wider range of such content, including by applying a “Made with AI” badge to deepfakes (aka synthetic media). Additional contextual information may be shown when content has been manipulated in other ways that pose a high risk of deceiving the public on an important issue.

According to TechCrunch, the move could lead the social networking giant labeling more pieces of content that have the potential to be misleading — a step that could be important in a year of many elections taking place around the world. However, for deepfakes, Meta is only going to apply labels where the content in question has “industry standard AI-generated content.

AI generated content that falls outside those bounds will, presumably, escape unlabeled.

ArsTechnica reported Meta announced policy updates to stop censoring harmless AI-generated content and instead begin “labeling a wider range of audio, video, and image content as ‘Made with AI.”

Previously, Meta would only remove “videos that are created or altered by AI to make a person appear to say something they didn’t say,” The Oversight Board warned that this policy failed to address other manipulated media, including “cheap fakes,” manipulated audio, or content showing people doing things they’d never done.

In my opinion, it is a good idea for Meta to start adding “Made with AI” labels to connect that was detected as AI-generated. Doing so might reduce confusion on Meta’s sites.

Google Phases Out Early Nest and Dropcam Models #1734

April 4, 2024PodcastKirk

Google announced the discontinuation of support for early Dropcam, Dropcam Pro, and Nest Secure models, rendering these devices largely inoperable on April 8. To assist users in transitioning, Google offers a complimentary Nest camera for Nest Aware subscribers or a 50% discount on a new Nest camera for non-subscribers. Dropcam and Dropcam Pro users will lose the ability to save new clips, and they will have limited time to access existing ones. Nest Secure users will find their devices, such as the Nest x Yale door locks, unable to connect to WiFi. Google offers a free Nest Connect to extend the life of existing locks, with a reminder to contact support for details if not already received.