Lawmakers Press Google, Meta, Others on Addressing Deepfake Pornography

Google

A bipartisan group of 26 U.S. lawmakers have sent letters to seven major tech companies requesting updates on how the platforms plan to counter the growing prevalence of pornographic “deepfakes” on social media.

The number of artificially generated, sexually explicit impersonations of nonconsenting individuals increased by 550% from 2019 to 2023, with deepfake pornography now making up 98% of all deepfake videos online, the lawmakers cited in each of the seven letters addressed to Google, Apple, X, ByteDance, Snapchat, Microsoft and Meta.

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Tech Leaders of Amazon, Apple, Meta, Google Say They Look Forward to Working with Trump

Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, Andy Jassy

Jeff Bezos, founder and chairman of Amazon, congratulated President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday for an “extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory” after he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris.

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‘Remedying These Harms’: Federal Government Weighs Breakup of $2 Trillion Tech Giant

Google Search

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is considering recommending a federal judge to force Google to sell parts of its business in a bid to eliminate its alleged monopoly on online search, according to a court filing Tuesday.

A U.S. judge ruled in August that Google built and abused a “monopoly” by spending billions on exclusivity agreements to be the automatic search engine for browsers such as Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox. The DOJ could force Google to sell segments of its business, including its Chrome browser and Android operating system, which place Google as its default search engine, the DOJ filing showed.

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Congress Opens Probe into Whether Google Search Misled Americans on Trump Assassination

Already facing a potential breakup from a devastating antitrust court ruling, Google got more bad news Wednesday when the main congressional oversight committee announced it had opened a probe into whether the search engine misled Americans about the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump last month.

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Trump Suggests Congress Could ‘Shut Down’ Tech Giant over Alleged Censorship

Trump Google

Former President Donald Trump suggested on Friday that Congress could close down Google for its alleged bias and censorship.

Republican Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall demanded in a Wednesday letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai that the company provide answers relating to its apparent “censorship” of the Trump assassination attempt from the tech giant’s “autocomplete” feature. Trump on “Mornings With Maria Bartiromo” said the company could face additional congressional scrutiny and possibly closure for how its handled political issues.

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Trump Blasts Facebook, Google for ‘Wrongly Censored’ Photo of Assassination Attempt

Donald Trump in front of Google headquarters (composite image)

Former President Donald Trump blasted Facebook and Google Tuesday after Facebook admitted it had censored photos of Trump’s assassination attempt, images widely seen as a major moment and rallying point for the Trump campaign.

Users on X, formerly known as Twitter, began posting online this week that Google searches for Trump’s assassination, including the photo, were not being autocompleted like other searches. They also posted screenshots saying that searches for Trump turned up news for Trump’s opponent, Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

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Google Insists ‘No Manual Action’ to Hide Trump Assassination Attempt from Search Suggestions

Google’s search engine conspicuously left out Donald Trump in autocomplete suggestions for “assassination,” “assassination attempt” and even “president donald” Sunday, drawing criticism from social media users including X owner Elon Musk that it was censoring recent history.

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Big Tech Championed Zero Emissions but Now Its Power-Hungry Data Centers are Straining the Grid

Data center

For years, tech giants in California and Washington have been leading the charge to eliminate fossil fuels from the grid. Microsoft, Google, Meta and Apple, for example, are members of Climate Group RE100, an organization of major corporations who are dedicated to accelerating “change toward zero-carbon grids at scale by 2040.”

In 2018, Apple proclaimed that it was globally powered entirely by 100 percent renewable energy.

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Conservatives Urge House to Hold Hearing on Google Gemini Over 2024 Election Integrity Concerns

Rep. Jim Jordan

The hearing Republicans are calling for would increase public scrutiny on Google’s AI application and potentially inherent bias.

Conservative and Republican groups nationwide are urging House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan to hold a hearing about potential problems posed by Google Gemini, with concerns specifically about whether it could influence the 2024 presidential election.

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Google Threatens to Demonetize Wall Street Watchdog as GOP Targets Ad Collusion

Wall Street Bull

Google’s artificial intelligence isn’t particularly bright when it comes to evaluating publishers’ compliance with its advertising policies, if the experience of a heterodox economics blog with outsized influence is any indication.

With a megaphone from Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi, both darlings of progressives in the “Occupy Wall Street” era, Naked Capitalism accused Google of making “flagrant errors” in its threats to demonetize the 18-year-old site for verboten content.

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