California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has begun working through the stack of bills dealing with artificial intelligence (AI) that landed on his desk at the end of the legislative session, with one major exception. Newsom this week signed bills requiring AI-generated content from larger models to carry an invisible watermark denoting synthetic content; barring the distribution of election-related deepfakes during campaign season and criminalizing the creation and distribution of sexually explicit deepfakes; and laws that will protect artists, musicians and performers from having their likenesses replicated without their permission. Some of those new laws are first-in-the-nation templates to which other states will turn. Others build off the work of both conservative and liberal states alike (Tennessee was the first to protect performers). But Newsom has been notably silent on the most consequential tech bill on his desk, the measure to require big generative AI systems to add safety checks. How he acts on that measure will have tremendous consequences, both for the booming AI industry and for lawmakers across the country planning their own AI legislation next year. |
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Welcome to Tech Friday, a joint project of The Hill and Pluribus News covering tech policy across government. |
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House panel advances KOSA |
The House Energy and Commerce Committee has advanced the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) in a markup Wednesday, though both Democrats and Republicans raised concerns over the version authored by Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.). A previous version of the bill passed the Senate on a 91-3 vote earlier this year. Read more at The Hill. |
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FTC raises concerns over social media privacy |
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a report Thursday accusing social media platforms of violating user privacy and failing to provide safeguards for kids. Chair Lina Khan said the platforms monetize that data for billions of dollars every year. Read more at The Hill. |
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Biden administration to hold AI safety summit |
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Secretary of State Antony Blinken will host government scientists and AI experts from nine countries and the European Union in November in San Francisco. Raimondo said the meeting would work toward setting standards for synthetic content. China is not among the nations that will participate. Read more at The Hill. |
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Instagram rolls out teen protections |
Instagram has rolled out new tools aimed at protecting teenage users online, creating new rules around followers and requiring parental supervision to set up their accounts. Instagram said it would require more age verification on its platform. Read more at The Hill. |
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Three Mile Island to reopen for Microsoft |
Microsoft has reached agreement with Constellation Energy to reopen the nuclear plant at Three Mile Island, energy from which will be used to power the tech giant's data centers. The plant is set to reopen in 2028, 49 years after a partial meltdown shuttered the facility. Read more at The Hill. |
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Amazon introduces AI assistant |
Amazon has rolled out Amelia, an AI tool designed to help third-party sellers resolve account issues. The company has already introduced chatbots meant to help shoppers, businesses and cloud customers. Read more at CNBC. |
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Magnificent Seven performance this week |
AAPL +7%, NVDA -0.1%, TSLA +4.4%, MSFT +1.6%, GOOG +3.6%, META +7.5%, AMZN +2.8%. NASDAQ-100 Tech Sector Index: +1.4%. |
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Image © Illustration / Courtney Jones; and Adobe Stock |
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has voted to forgo new rule making around artificial intelligence in campaigns ahead of November's elections, rejecting a request from Public Citizen made last year. Commissioners voted to issue an interpretive rule clarifying that AI falls under existing regulations barring fraudulent misrepresentation. Read more at The Hill. |
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Sept. 20: TwitchCon kicks off today in San Diego. |
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Sept. 24: A Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee holds hearings on threats to cyberspace by authoritarian regimes. |
Sept. 25: A Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions subcommittee holds a hearing on preparing workers for an AI future. |
Sept. 25-26: Meta hosts Meta Connect 2024 in Menlo Park, Calif. |
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More than half of Americans (54%) say they sometimes or often get news from social media websites, according to a Pew Research Center survey released this week. About a third regularly get news from Facebook (33%) and YouTube (32%), while Instagram (20%) and TikTok (17%) have seen the fastest growth in recent years. Men are most likely to get news from X and Reddit, while women tend to favor Facebook, TikTok and Instagram. |
Disney will no longer use Slack for in-house communications after a data breach in July leaked a massive amount of company information. Disney has already begun transitioning to new internal collaboration tools, it said this week. Read more at CNBC. |
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You're all caught up! See you next week. |
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