{"id":44458,"date":"2024-03-05T05:00:24","date_gmt":"2024-03-05T10:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.itworldcanada.com?p=560019"},"modified":"2024-03-05T05:00:24","modified_gmt":"2024-03-05T10:00:24","slug":"hashtag-trending-mar-5-apple-music-fined-for-market-dominance-lockbit-back-from-the-dead-openai-kills-chatgpt-plugins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/hashtag-trending-mar-5-apple-music-fined-for-market-dominance-lockbit-back-from-the-dead-openai-kills-chatgpt-plugins\/","title":{"rendered":"Hashtag Trending Mar.5- Apple Music fined for market dominance; LockBit back from the dead; OpenAI kills ChatGPT plugins"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Apple Music gives a whole new meaning to the phrase the hits just keep on coming.\u00a0 It\u2019s not the opposing candidates, it\u2019s public AI systems that are spreading election disinformation, and LockBit, the cybercriminal gang may be back from the dead and saying so long to the ChatGPT plugins, which went from innovation to legacy in only a few months.<\/span><\/p>\n<table style=\"width: 100%;\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/ITWC-Hashtag-Trending\/dp\/B074ZQTRMP\/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8\"  rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-396718 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i.itworldcanada.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/sub-alexa-200.png\" alt=\"Hashtag Trending on Amazon Alexa\" width=\"200\" height=\"74\" border=\"none\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<td><a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/podcasts?feed=aHR0cDovL2hhc2h0YWd0cmVuZGluZy5saWJzeW4uY29tL2dwbQ%3D%3D\"  rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"thumbnail aligncenter wp-image-408712 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i.itworldcanada.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/sub-gp-200.png\" alt=\"Google Podcasts badge - 200 px wide\" width=\"200\" height=\"74\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<td><a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/hashtag-trending\/id1264759930?mt=2\"  rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-396720 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i.itworldcanada.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/sub-itunes-200.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"74\" border=\"none\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All this and more on the \u201cthey were so 2023\u201d edition of Hashtag Trending. I\u2019m your host, Jim Love, CIO of IT World Canada and TechNewsDay in the US.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The European Commission has imposed a fine of about a billion dollars US on Apple for what it claims is Apple\u2019s abuse of its dominant market position in the distribution of music streaming apps through its App Store.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Commission found that Apple had implemented restrictions on app developers, preventing them from informing iOS users about alternative and more affordable music subscription services available outside the app, known as &#8220;anti-steering provisions.&#8221; Such actions are deemed illegal under EU antitrust rules.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This latest action from the European commission was initiated by a complaint from Swedish music streaming service Spotify.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Margrethe Vestage, the executive vice president in charge of competition policy, said, \u201cFor a decade, Apple abused its dominant position in the market for the distribution of music streaming apps through the App Store. They did so by restricting developers from informing consumers about alternative, cheaper music services available outside of the Apple ecosystem. This is illegal under EU antitrust rules, so today we have fined Apple over \u20ac1.8 billion.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Apple, being the sole provider of an App Store for iOS users across the European Economic Area (EEA), controls every aspect of the iOS user experience, including the terms and conditions developers must comply with to reach iOS users.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Commission&#8217;s investigation highlighted that Apple&#8217;s anti-steering provisions banned developers from:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Informing iOS users within their apps about subscription offers available on the internet outside of the app.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Informing iOS users within their apps about the price differences between in-app subscriptions sold through Apple&#8217;s in-app purchase mechanism and those available elsewhere.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Including links in their apps that lead iOS users to the app developer&#8217;s website where alternative subscriptions can be purchased. Additionally, app developers were restricted from contacting their newly acquired users, for instance, by email, to inform them about alternative pricing options after setting up an account.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Apple has taken a series of hits from the European Commission, on its app store and now on its music service. It faces class action lawsuits about its closed system that forces users to pay for iCloud backups, this last action happening in the U.S.. But clearly Apple&#8217;s closed system, the thing that has made them a multi-trillion dollar company, is under attack.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Apple has said it will appeal the order and maintains that consumers were not harmed by their actions and that Spotify had also not suffered any harm as they sell their subscriptions from the Spotify website and don\u2019t have to pay Apple anything.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Source include:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A recent study has revealed that public AI chatbots have been spreading false and misleading information about the 2024 election.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This came from research conducted by the AI Democracy Projects and Proof News, underscoring the critical need for regulatory oversight as AI increasingly influences political discourse.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The study tested various AI models, including OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT-4, Meta\u2019s Llama 2, Anthropic\u2019s Claude, Google\u2019s Gemini, and Mistral\u2019s Mixtral, and found them all guilty of giving voters incorrect polling locations, illegal voting methods, and false registration deadlines.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example, Llama 2 incorrectly claimed that California voters could vote via text message, an illegal method in the United States. Additionally, none of the AI models tested could accurately identify the prohibition of campaign logo attire at Texas polling stations, such as MAGA hats.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This spread of misinformation has prompted responses from the AI developers. Anthropic plans to release an updated version of its AI tool with accurate election information. OpenAI has expressed intentions to refine its approach. However, Meta dismissed the findings as \u201cmeaningless\u201d and that has sparked controversy and raised questions about their commitment to curbing misinformation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That attitude from Meta could come at a cost as it may place pressure on the government to increase regulations on AI systems \u2013 although that may not be considered a bad thing by election officials \u2013 or the public.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sources include:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the UK&#8217;s National Crime Agency, along with agencies from ten countries, collaborated in Operation Cronos to target the LockBit ransomware gang, one of the world&#8217;s most successful ransomware groups. This operation, which began on February 20, led to the takedown of over 30 servers, acquisition of source code, decryption keys, affiliate details, chat logs, and more, effectively disrupting LockBit&#8217;s operations.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The agencies involved in the operation added a twist of humour to their takedown by altering the traditional &#8220;Game over&#8221; message seen by users trying to connect to the seized sites. They included a loading animation featuring the flags of the agency consortium and embedded images with jokey file names. Additionally, they replicated LockBit&#8217;s countdown timer, which typically indicated the time left for victims to pay up, to count down to the unmasking of LockBit&#8217;s leader, known as LockBitSupp.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">LockBit, which emerged in 2019, had become the most successful ransomware gang by adopting a business-oriented model. It provided tools and managed negotiations with victims in exchange for a 20 percent cut from its affiliates, who conducted the actual hacking. The gang&#8217;s professional online presence and marketing strategies were notable, even running bug bounty programs to improve its operations and security.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But it may turn out that Lockbit may have the last laugh on this one.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Despite the initial success of Operation Cronos, LockBit and LockBitSupp resurfaced online just five days later, with LockBitSupp mocking the federal agencies&#8217; efforts.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0The FBI and its partners had anticipated this comeback, emphasizing that they had obtained keys to assist thousands of victims. The future rounds of this ongoing battle between law enforcement and the LockBit gang will determine the ultimate victor.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But it may have turned out that LockBit may have had a better recovery plan than most of its victims.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sources include:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">BBC News has launched a new &#8220;content credentials&#8221; feature, designed to prove the authenticity of images and videos used in their journalism.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This feature, part of BBC Verify, allows users to see a button labeled &#8220;how we verified this&#8221; beneath images and videos on the BBC News site. Clicking on this button reveals the verification processes undertaken by BBC journalists, such as cross-referencing content with other sources, examining metadata, comparing locations, and checking for the correct casting of shadows, among other methods.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This initiative aims to counter the spread of disinformation, AI-generated deepfakes, and other forms of manipulated content. It also seeks to help audiences distinguish between real and fake BBC content when encountered on external sites.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Deborah Turness, CEO of BBC News, emphasized the importance of earning trust by showing audiences not just what the BBC knows, but how it knows it, highlighting the significance of transparency in today&#8217;s environment of deep fakes and misinformation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The &#8220;content credentials&#8221; feature incorporates a new technical standard that embeds information about the origins of media, including how it has been edited, functioning like an audit trail. This standard, developed by the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) co-founded by BBC Research &amp; Development, Adobe, and Microsoft, is freely available and has seen participation from major organizations like Google, Facebook, and OpenAI.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Initially, content credentials will be available on select content published by the BBC Verify team on the BBC News site and app.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Future plans include working with external publishers and social media networks to ensure these credentials are displayed wherever news is consumed, aiding in the quick identification of genuine BBC content.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sources include:\u00a0 <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/images\/ic\/400xn\/p0hg3y6p.jpg\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">BBC<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And finally, OpenAI is doing away with its plugins. These functions, added by third party developers, extended the functionality of OpenAI. The first, and in my mind, still the best way of linking ChatGPT to the internet is via a plug-in.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What will replace the plug-ins? Apparently, ChatGPT wants to use its GPT\u2019s \u2013 the feature that they introduced recently that allows anyone to write their own mini-GPT model that can also now be called from another chat session.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That has a couple of problems. One, the plug-ins were created and tested to perform their functions and while there are a lot of them, they also had some kind of quality control.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">GPTs, on the other hand, might be a great idea, but were launched with no quality control and the number of them \u2013 one estimate was more than three million \u2013 makes it difficult to even conceive of how to sort through the mess and replace some of the plugins that users have come to count on.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A lesson to all of us \u2013 these public AI models are evolving rapidly and they may not feel an obligation to support any legacy functions. And in the world of AI, a \u201clegacy function\u201d could be measured in months, giving little time to react.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That\u2019s our show for today.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Love your comments.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Send us a note at <\/span><a href=\"mailto:jlove@itwc.ca\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">jlove@itwc.ca<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> or drop us a comment under the show notes at itworldcanada.com\/podcasts \u2013 look for Hashtag Trending.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thanks for listening and have a Terrific Tuesday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.itworldcanada.com\/article\/hashtag-trending-mar-5-apple-music-fined-for-market-dominance-lockbit-back-from-the-dead-openai-kills-chatgpt-plugins\/560019\">Hashtag Trending Mar.5- Apple Music fined for market dominance; LockBit back from the dead; OpenAI kills ChatGPT plugins<\/a> first appeared on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.itworldcanada.com\/\">IT World Canada<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Apple Music gives a whole new meaning to the phrase the hits just keep on coming.\u00a0 It\u2019s not the opposing candidates, it\u2019s public AI systems that are spreading election disinformation, and LockBit, the cybercriminal gang may be back from the dead and saying so long to the ChatGPT plugins, which went from innovation to legacy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1083,360],"tags":[525,1334,1335,1336,1337,1338,600,772,326],"class_list":["post-44458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hashtag-trending","category-podcasts","tag-ai","tag-apple-music","tag-bbc","tag-chatgpt-plugins","tag-elections","tag-european-commission","tag-lockbit","tag-openai","tag-spotify"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44458"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44460,"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44458\/revisions\/44460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}