CNN – Social Media/Technology

By Catherine Thorbecke, CNN (CNN) — OpenAI, the company behind the viral ChatGPT tool, has been hit with a lawsuit alleging the company stole and misappropriated vast swaths of peoples’ data from the internet to train its AI tools. The proposed class action lawsuit, filed Wednesday in a California federal court, claims that OpenAI secretly

By Brian Fung, CNN (CNN) — A high-profile lawsuit brought by TikTok users and creators last month challenging Montana’s statewide ban against the short-form video app is being funded by the social media giant itself, the company told CNN on Wednesday. TikTok has been covering legal fees for the group of five TikTok creators, said

By Samantha Murphy Kelly, CNN New York (CNN) — Meta is adding new safeguards and monitoring tools for teens across its social platforms: parental controls on Messenger, suggestions for teens to step away from Facebook after 20 minutes, and nudges urging young night-owl Instagrammers to stop scrolling. The features announced Tuesday come as Meta (META)

By Brian Fung, CNN Washington (CNN) — The Biden administration on Monday outlined how states across the country will be receiving billions of dollars in federal funding for high-speed internet access, highlighting the US government’s push to bring connectivity to more Americans and to close the digital divide. More than $42 billion from the 2021

By Samantha Murphy Kelly, CNN (CNN) — Business executives keep talking about it. Teachers are struggling with what to do about it. And artists like Drake seem angry about it. Love it or hate it, everyone is paying attention to artificial intelligence right now. Almost overnight, a new crop of AI tools has found its

By Sean Lyngaas, CNN (CNN) — The chief executive of US software firm SolarWinds told employees Friday that “we intend to vigorously defend ourselves” in the face of potential legal action from US regulators over the firm’s handling of a sweeping 2020 breach by alleged Russian hackers, according to an internal SolarWinds email obtained by

By Brian Fung, CNN (CNN) — A top European Union official is touring Silicon Valley this week and reminding tech platforms including Twitter and Facebook-parent Meta about their content moderation obligations, just weeks ahead of a deadline to comply with sweeping new EU laws that will apply to large social media platforms. On Thursday, EU

By Brian Fung, CNN (CNN) — After staging a widespread blackout to protest Reddit’s plans for a controversial new pricing policy, some users are now trying a different tactic: flooding the social network with John Oliver pictures. Several of Reddit’s largest self-moderated communities, including r/pics and r/aww, have turned spaces that were once devoted to

By Brian Fung, CNN (CNN) — TikTok’s chief operating officer Vanessa Pappas is leaving the company, according to an internal memo obtained by CNN, after spending several tumultuous years as its top public advocate and a champion of TikTok creators in the face of accusations the platform poses a national security risk. Pappas, who is

By Hanna Ziady, CNN London (CNN) — Business rivalry seemingly isn’t enough for two of the tech industry’s most powerful billionaires. Now Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg say they want to settle their scores in a cage fight. Twitter owner and Tesla (TSLA) CEO Musk recently tweeted that he would be “up for a cage

By Brian Fung, CNN (CNN) — Three US senators are pressing Facebook-parent Meta, Google-parent Alphabet and Twitter about whether their layoffs may have hindered the companies’ ability to fight the spread of misinformation ahead of the 2024 elections. In a letter to the companies dated Tuesday, the lawmakers warned that reported staff cuts to content

By Brian Fung, CNN (CNN) — Microsoft (MSFT) and the video game giant Activision Blizzard (ATVI) will face off Thursday against the US government in a high-stakes battle over one of the largest technology acquisitions in history. The showdown in federal court will have the CEOs of both companies taking the stand to defend their

By Catherine Thorbecke (CNN) — Twitter failed to pay out annual bonuses to staff after its acquisition by billionaire Elon Musk despite repeated assurances from executives in the lead-up to the deal closing that the company would do so, according to a new lawsuit filed on behalf of employees. The lawsuit was filed in a

By Brian Fung, CNN (CNN) — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced a broad, open-ended plan for regulating artificial intelligence on Wednesday, describing AI as an unprecedented challenge for Congress that effectively has policymakers “starting from scratch.” The plan, Schumer said at a speech in Washington, will begin with at least nine panels to identify

By Alex Stambaugh, Laura He, and Manveena Suri, CNN Hong Kong (CNN) — Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Tuesday the company is looking to invest in India “as soon as humanly possible,” following a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New York. “[Modi] really cares about India because he’s pushing us to make

By Catherine Thorbecke, CNN (CNN) — Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday launched a Senate investigation into working and safety conditions at Amazon warehouses, adding to federal scrutiny on the labor practices of one of the country’s largest employers. Sanders, the chairman of the Senate committee on health, education, labor and pensions, also unveiled a website

By Clare Duffy, CNN New York (CNN) — YouTube said on Monday that it had removed a video of presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. being interviewed by podcast host Jordan Peterson for violating its policy prohibiting vaccine misinformation. A YouTube spokesperson told CNN that the platform removed the video from Peterson’s channel because it

By Catherine Thorbecke, CNN (CNN) — Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the United States, is suing Google, alleging the tech giant holds a monopoly over the digital ad market. The publisher of USA Today and more than 200 local publications filed the lawsuit in a New York federal court on Tuesday, and is seeking

By Laura He, CNN Hong Kong (CNN) — Alibaba is replacing Daniel Zhang as chairman and CEO as the Chinese tech giant undergoes the biggest shakeup in its history. Joseph Tsai, executive vice chairman and a co-founder of Alibaba (BABA), will succeed Zhang as chairman, the company said Tuesday. Eddie Wu, chairman of e-commerce unit

By Jennifer Korn (CNN) — Reddit’s month may be going from bad to worse. Hackers from the BlackCat ransomware gang, also known as ALPHV, are threatening to leak 80 gigabytes of confidential data from Reddit that they claim to have stolen during a February breach, according to a post from the group on the dark

By Hanna Ziady, CNN London (CNN) — Italy has imposed several curbs on Pirelli’s biggest shareholder, Sinochem, in a move aimed at blocking the Chinese government’s access to sensitive chip technology. The Italian government decided last week to make use of its so-called “Golden Power” regulations, designed to protect assets of strategic importance to the

By Laura He, CNN Hong Kong (CNN) — Alibaba founder Jack Ma has given his first lecture as a visiting professor to the University of Tokyo, as the high-profile Chinese entrepreneur retreats further from his business empire following a crackdown by Beijing. Ma, who was formerly an English teacher before he became one of China’s

By Clare Duffy, CNN New York (CNN) — Facebook-parent Meta plans to lower the minimum age for its virtual reality headsets from 13 years old to 10 years old, despite pressure from lawmakers not to market its VR services to younger users. Parents will be able to set up accounts for children as young as

By Jennifer Korn and Sean Lyngaas, CNN (CNN) — A growing number of businesses, universities and government agencies have been targeted in a global cyberattack by Russian cybercriminals and are now working to understand how much data was compromised. While the scope of the attack is not yet fully known, officials at the US Cybersecurity

By Brian Fung, CNN (CNN) — After nearly a week of mass protests on Reddit directed at its management, the company’s strategy appears to be simple: power through. That approach was reflected Thursday in a series of media interviews conducted by Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman. In the interviews, Huffman defended the company’s initial

By Vanessa Yurkevich, CNN New York (CNN) — At 62, Helen Polise isn’t considering retirement. Not remotely. Her job: TikTok star. Polise’s account “The Muthership” has nearly 1 million followers. She started the account during the pandemic as a distraction and a way to have fun — but soon it became a second career in

By Jennifer Korn For a few months in 2017, there were rumors that Sam Altman was planning to run for governor of California. Instead, he kept his day job as one of Silicon Valley’s most influential investors and entrepreneurs. But now, Altman is about to make a different kind of political debut. Altman, the CEO

By Catherine Thorbecke, CNN David Risher had a rocky first week at his job. Days after taking over as the new CEO of Lyft last month, Risher announced plans to “significantly reduce” the company’s workforce and stressed that the decision was his. The next week, Lyft revealed the extent of the layoffs: 26% of the

By Chris Isidore, CNN Elon Musk on Friday named longtime media executive Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter, months after he promised to step back from the role. “I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter!” Musk wrote in a tweet on Friday. He said she “will focus

By Clare Duffy, CNN Elon Musk on Thursday said he’s found a new CEO to take over Twitter, months after he first promised to step back from the role. The new CEO will assume the role at Twitter Inc., which recently changed its name to X Corp., in the coming weeks, Musk said. He did

By Samantha Kelly Google on Wednesday unveiled its latest lineup of hardware products, including its first foldable phone and a new tablet, as well as plans to roll out new AI features to its search engine and productivity tools. The updates, announced at its annual Google I/O developer conference, come as the company is simultaneously

By Brian Fung, CNN OpenAI CEO Sam Altman will testify before Congress next Tuesday as lawmakers increasingly scrutinize the risks and benefits of artificial intelligence, according to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee. During Tuesday’s hearing, lawmakers will question Altman for the first time since OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, took the world by storm late last year. The

By Catherine Thorbecke, CNN Shares of Airbnb fell more than 10% in trading Wednesday after the travel company offered a more muted outlook for the current quarter than some analysts had expected. Airbnb on Tuesday reported strong revenue growth and a new record for bookings during the first three months of the year, in a

By Kara Scannell and Allison Morrow, CNN Lawyers for FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried on Monday filed motions to dismiss the US government’s fraud charges against him. Bankman-Fried’s attorneys said the government failed to properly explain what offenses the former CEO of the bankrupt crypto exchange committed. They urged the judge to toss most of the

By Catherine Thorbecke Within hours of the mass shooting on Saturday at a Texas outlet mall, some Twitter users shared gruesome pictures of bloodied bodies, purportedly from the crime scene. At least one image appeared to be of a child. These images were harder to avoid on the platform, according to some users, in part

By Catherine Thorbecke and Clare Duffy, CNN Apple on Thursday reported that its revenue fell 3% to $94.8 billion for the first three months of the year, as consumers scale back spending on smartphones and computers due to looming recession fears. The company’s revenue was slightly better than what Wall Street had expected, but it

By Brian Fung, CNN The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday accused Facebook-parent Meta of violating its landmark $5 billion privacy settlement and called for toughening up restrictions on the company, after alleging Meta has improperly shared user data with third parties and failed to protect children as it has promised. The proposal to update the

By Sean Lyngaas and Donie O’Sullivan, CNN Hackers have seized on worldwide interest in the artificial intelligence-powered tool ChatGPT in an effort to break into people’s devices, Facebook owner Meta revealed in a security report Wednesday, equating the phenomenon to the surge in cryptocurrency scams. Meta’s security team said it found hackers software that claimed

By Jennifer Korn Geoffrey Hinton, also known as the “Godfather of AI,” decided he had to “blow the whistle” on the technology he helped develop after worrying about how smart it was becoming, he told CNN on Tuesday. “I’m just a scientist who suddenly realized that these things are getting smarter than us,” Hinton told

By Brian Fung, CNN Some of the internet’s biggest adult websites, including Pornhub, are now blocking access to Utah users over a new age verification law that takes effect on Wednesday. Pornhub and other adult sites controlled by its parent, MindGeek, began blocking visitors with Utah-based IP addresses this week. Now, instead of seeing adult

By Jennifer Korn Geoffrey Hinton, who has been called the ‘Godfather of AI,’ confirmed Monday that he left his role at Google last week to speak out about the “dangers” of the technology he helped to develop. Hinton’s pioneering work on neural networks shaped artificial intelligence systems powering many of today’s products. He worked part-time

By Samantha Murphy Kelly, CNN Business The buzzy new social media app of the moment looks so much like Twitter it’s almost hard to distinguish the two. The profiles, timelines and colors are nearly identical. Even the creator is the same. But under the hood, Bluesky, developed by Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey,

By Brian Fung, CNN A group of states that sued to break up Facebook-parent Meta in 2020 were years too late to file their challenge and failed to make a persuasive case that the company’s data policies harmed competition, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday in a sweeping victory for the tech giant. In siding