Megan Garcia said Sewell, 14, used Character.ai obsessively before his death and alleges negligence and wrongful death The mother of a teenager who killed himself after becoming obsessed with an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot now accuses its maker of complicity in his death. Megan Garcia filed a civil suit against Character.ai, which makes a customizable chatbot for role-playing, in Florida federal court on Wednesday, alleging negligence, wrongful death and deceptive trade practices. Her son Sewell Setzer III, 14, died in Orlando, Florida, in February. In the months leading up to his death, Setzer used the chatbot day and night, according to Garcia. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In the UK, the youth suicide charity Papyrus can be contacted on 0800 068 4141 or email pat@papyrus-uk.org, and in the UK and Ireland Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org Continue reading...

Google must make Android apps available from competing sources and cannot forbid use of in-app payment methods A US judge on Monday ordered Alphabet’s Google to overhaul its mobile app business to give Android users more options to download apps and to pay for transactions within them, following a jury verdict last year for the Fortnite game maker Epic Games. The injunction by US district judge James Donato in San Francisco outlined the changes Google must undertake to open up its lucrative app store, Play, to greater competition, including making Android apps available from rival sources. Donato’s order said that for three years Google cannot prohibit the use of in-app payment methods and must allow users to download competing third-party Android app platforms or stores. Continue reading...

Fortnite maker’s lawsuit says Samsung Auto Blocker deters users from app downloads outside Google’s Play store Fortnite video game maker Epic Games on Monday accused Alphabet’s Google and Samsung, the world’s largest Android phone manufacturer, of conspiring to protect Google’s Play store from competition. Epic filed a lawsuit in US federal court in California alleging that a Samsung mobile security feature called Auto Blocker was intended to deter users from downloading apps from sources other than the Play store or Samsung’s Galaxy store. It’s Epic’s second antitrust suit against Google. Continue reading...

Competition authorities were too slow to stop tech giants from dominating Web 2.0. They can’t repeat that mistake with AI When a company triples in value in just a few months, as computer chip company Nvidia has, investors take notice. But regulators do too, because they know from experience how monopolies engage in illegal anti-competitive behavior that squashes competitors and manipulates the market to expand their dominance. The US Department of Justice (as well as other competition authorities and tech observers) suspects Nvidia has used such tactics to entrench its chips monopoly, and last month it was reported that the Department of Justice was opening an antitrust investigation. It’s high time. Before the pandemic, few beyond video game enthusiasts – whose top-of-the-line gaming computers and consoles are built on high-capacity Nvidia chips – had ever heard of the company. But thanks to the generative AI boom, Nvidia has become one of the fastest-growing companies ever, and its chips have powered every important AI milestone – including OpenAI’s development of ChatGPT, which holds two-thirds of the AI business tools market. Max von Thun is the director of Europe and transatlantic partnerships at the Open Markets Institute, an anti-monopoly thinktank Continue reading...

DoJ accused tech giant of more monopolistic behavior a month after judge found it illegally cornered online search A second antitrust trial pitting Google against the US Department of Justice began on 9 September, with a federal judge in Virginia hearing opening statements over whether the tech giant illegally monopolized the digital advertising industry. The case could have far-reaching implications for Google’s primary source of revenue as well as the tech industry and online publishers. The long-awaited trial is the second major US antitrust suit against Google, after the company lost a landmark case last month that determined the company illegally monopolized the online search industry. Unlike in that trial, the justice department is seeking specific remedies in its second case, ones that would force Google to break up parts of its business and divest some of its advertising technology. Continue reading...

Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson allege company misused work to teach chatbot Claude The artificial intelligence company Anthropic has been hit with a class-action lawsuit in California federal court by three authors who say it misused their books and hundreds of thousands of others to train its AI-powered chatbot Claude, which generates texts in response to users’ prompts. The complaint, filed on Monday by writers and journalists Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson, said that Anthropic used pirated versions of their works and others to teach Claude to respond to human prompts. Continue reading...

DoJ could force divestment of Android operation system and Chrome web browser following the antitrust verdict A week after a judge ruled the tech giant illegally monopolized the online search market, the US Department of Justice is considering options that include breaking up Alphabet’s Google, worth some $2tn, according to reports from the New York Times and Bloomberg News. Divesting the Android operating system was one of the remedies most frequently discussed by justice department attorneys, the reports said. Continue reading...

The ruling found Google broke antitrust laws by making multibillion-dollar deals. Will those agreements evaporate? Google lost its landmark antitrust case against the US Department of Justice this week after a federal judge ruled the tech giant had built an illegal monopoly over the online search and advertising industry. The decision will probably have immense implications for both Google’s internal operations and how people interact with the most popular page on the internet. Judge Amit Mehta’s ruling specifically found that Google broke antitrust laws by striking exclusive agreements with device makers like Apple and Samsung, in which Google would pay billions of dollars to ensure that its product was the default search engine on their phones and tablets. During the trial, it was revealed that Google paid companies, including Apple, more than $26bn in 2021 alone to remain the default option for search in Safari. Those deals allowed Google to build a monopoly over search and unfairly suppress competition, Mehta found. Continue reading...

White House calls decision – that could have major implications for web use – ‘victory for the American people’ Google violated antitrust laws as it built an internet search empire, a federal judge ruled on Monday in a decision that could have major implications for the way people interact with the internet. Judge Amit Mehta found that Google violated section 2 of the Sherman Act, a US antitrust law. His decision states that Google maintained a monopoly over search services and advertising. Continue reading...