Topic 1 - Apple Music did a thing, I guess.

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Summary

Apple has partnered with the online internet-based radio provider, TuneIn, to distribute it’s own curated radio stations to users of the TuneIn service. This includes all of Apple’s radio stations:

  • Apple Music 1, Hits, Country, Chill, Club, and Música Uno

The most important thing to note is that all of these stations will continue to have no commercial ad breaks. This is supposedly in an effort to convert these free radio listeners into paying subscribers of the service - since Apple Music notably does not have a free tier of any kind.

Old people love radio, will this work?

Topic 2 - Will Google kill Duolingo or itself first?

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Summary

Google announced and subsequently released a beta feature for Google Translate with the goal of allowing users to learn a new language. With, of course, the help of AI.

In it’s current state, it provides English speaking users a new “practice” option that will allow users to practice either Spanish or French - with variations depending on the user’s comprehension. Similarly, Spanish, French, or Portuguese speaking users will be able to do the same to practice English.

The new feature will prompt the user for their own opinion on their proficiency, as well as a written goal and supposedly adapts a course using Google’s Gemini models to help fit your goal.

The learning format is very similar to Duolingo, which notably was under scrutiny back in April, when it announced that it would become “AI-first”. While the company claims it never laid off any full-time employees, and that appears to be true, it did reduce the number of contractors that they hired, replacing them with “AI automations”.

The biggest question really becomes, will Google kill Duolingo? Or will Google kill this feature and add to their ever-expanding Google Graveyard?

Topic 3 - Nothing is real anymore. Thanks Google.

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Summary

Google announced another AI feature coming to Google Vids, a platform that I just found out existed today. Google is introducing a feature that allows employees of workspaces to create videos using a set of pre-made avatars to be used in AI-generated videos. Among other features such as noise cancellation for audio, new backgrounds, filters, etc.

All that a user needs to do is write a script, select an avatar, and then it will generate the videos.

Vishnu Sivaji, the director of product management at Google Workspace, provided the following example to Axios:

  • He stated that he often has to record videos of himself for projects at work, and hates doing it. He states that “Most of the time I’m speaking too fast, too slow, or I’m using a lot of filler words.”
  • He says that the features allow him to clean up a video, or have “someone” present the video if you are not in a position to record.

Topic 4 - No, AI is not a therapist.

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Summary

Fair warning in advance, this is a rather grim topic.

For context, a few days ago The New York Times reported on 16 year old Adam Raine, who took his own life in April after confiding in OpenAI’s ChatGPT. On the same day of the story’s release, Raine’s family filed a lawsuit against both OpenAI, as well as it’s CEO, Sam Altman.

The lawsuit alleged that ChatGPT provided Adam with the instructions on how to commit suicide as well as actively driving him away from real-world support systems.

In a blog post from an OpenAI, that claimed that their existing safeguards can:

“sometimes be less reliable in long interactions: as the back-and-forth grows, parts of the model’s safety training may degrade. For example, ChatGPT may correctly point to a suicide hotline when someone first mentions intent, but after many messages over a long period of time, it might eventually offer an answer that goes against our safeguards.”

The company claimed that are actively working on better parental controls. One of the biggest discussions that remains, is parenting in the modern digital age.

Topic 5 - Oops, here’s ~13 million people’s sensitive data.

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Summary

The consumer credit reporting firm, TransUnion, not to be confused with your local Starbucks baristas, warned it’s users that it suffered a data breach exposing the personal information of over 4.4 million Americans, with over 13 million records total.

BleepingComputer confirmed with two sources that the data breach occurred due to an attack with TransUnion’s Salesforce account. In a sample provided to BleepingComputer, affected data could include names, billing addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, and entirely unredacted Social Security Numbers.

Among affected data, it also included reasons for a customer transaction, customer support tickets, and other messages stored in Salesforce.

It’s important to note that two years ago a threat actor had claimed a data breach at TransUnion, but the company rejected these claims, placing the blame on third parties. As well as the fact that TransUnion reported in their data breach notice that:

“We recently experienced a cyber incident involving a third-party application serving our U.S. consumer support operations,” and continues by saying “The unauthorized access includes some limited personal information belonging to you.”

Topic 6 - Hey @AIPACTracker, what about Microsoft?

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Summary

Microsoft has fired multiple employees involved in an extensive protest at Microsoft’s headquarters and other events.

The protests originated from Microsoft’s ties to the Israeli government. The “No Azure for Apartheid” with Azure being Microsoft’s enterprise cloud services provider, had organized several protests over the company’s contracts with the Israeli government. With a former employee disrupting Microsoft’s 50 year anniversary event and calling Microsoft’s AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, a “war profieteer.”

Similarly, three other CEOs within Microsoft have also been interupted by former Microsoft employees. Following other disruptions, Microsoft even blocked any email that contained the word “Palestine.”

In an investigation done by The Guardian, +972 Magizine, and Local Call, it was reported that the Israeli government relies on Microsoft’s cloud services to store the data and recordings of up to “a million calls an hour” made by Palestinian citizens.

Topic 7 - America gets… high speed rail… sort of?

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Summary

After years and years of delays, Amtrak, the provider of passenger rail infrastructure in the United States, unveiled their new high-speed “Acela” trains. At the moment, it is currently operating along the Northeast Corrider, linking Washington, New York, and Boston.

The trains intend to replace the 25-year-old Acelas, and carries 27% more passengers, while also operating faster. The Acela trains are equipped with high-speed WiFi, USB, power outlets, and reading light. The Acela trains were originally designed to reach upwards of 180 miles per hour, however Amtrak reports that their speed limited to around ~160 miles per hour due to old rail infrastructure - that they intend to fix and replace.

The state of public infrastructure, especially public transit, has been in a limbo following the Trump administrations return. The presidency has flip flopped consistently on it’s attitude towards funding public transport projects.

Amtrak is hoping to eventually break even on operations, and invest in further infrastructure.

Topic 8 - Bloomberg takes down independent journalism.

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Summary

Bloomberg filed a DMCA takedown against the hardware reviewer, and consumer advocacy channel, GamersNexus. The DMCA takedown was filed on an 3.5 hour documentary, reporting the black market of NVIDIA’s AI GPUs being sold between the U.S. and China.

Bloomberg claims the reason they took down the video, was for the usage of a news clip - in which President Trump discusses the unbanning of NVIDIA’s H200 series of GPUs. The clip lasting around 75 seconds, with occasional commentary from GamersNexus. Accounting for less than 0.6% of the total runtime of the documentary, and less that 0.5% if you consider portions without commentary.

To any person with a brain, this is obviously fair use, but it raises the question of journalistic integrity. Bloomberg not only had a competing 40 minute “documentary” but they also have financial ties to NVIDIA Corporation. On their own website, “Bloomberg Media Studios - Sponsored Content” they have an entire page dedicated sponsored content paid for or provided by NVIDIA.

Topic 9 - Samsung finally adds a long awaited feature!

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Summary:

I don’t think this really needs one.