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Aug 1, 2024
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'A California judge has allowed Meta to close its acquisition of virtual reality fitness startup, Within, despite an ongoing antitrust case by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC sued in July 2022 to stop the acquisition, claiming it would expand Meta\'s dominance in the consumer VR market and eliminate a \"beneficial rivalry\" between the two companies. Meta agreed to delay the acquisition until January 31st but might drop the deal if it does not close in a timely manner. The FTC faced internal disagreements over whether to intervene in the deal and its pursuit of the case stands in contrast to several relatively smooth Meta acquisitions, including the purchase of VR startup Oculus in 2014. If the order stands, it could represent a loss for FTC head and antitrust crusader, Lina Khan, who is also fighting to stop another game-related merger, Microsoft\'s acquisition of Activision. The decision could indicate an uphill battle to limit tech industry consolidation, despite efforts to give antitrust watchdogs teeth. The FTC declined to comment on the decision and a status hearing on the case is set for February 7th. Telemedicine company GoodRx has been accused by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of sharing sensitive personal health information with Facebook, Google, and other firms to target advertisements to users. The FTC has filed a complaint and the Department of Justice has filed an order that seeks to ban GoodRx from sharing health data with advertisers, as well as requiring the company to direct third parties to delete the data that was previously shared with them. GoodRx has agreed to pay a $1.5 million penalty. This is the first enforcement action that the FTC has taken under its Health Breach Notification Rule, which requires vendors of personal health records to notify consumers and the FTC if data is disclosed or acquired without authorization. According to the complaint, GoodRx allegedly shared data with Google, Facebook, Criteo, Branch, and Twilio in violation of the rule. The FTC alleges that GoodRx compiled lists of users who purchased specific heart disease and blood pressure medication in August 2019 and uploaded their contact information to Facebook in order to target them with health-related ads. An FTC official stated that the order will have a significant impact on the marketplace by making it clear that companies will face consequences for abusing consumer health data. The officials declined to comment on other potential cases or companies that they are investigating. OpenAI, the company behind the text generator ChatGPT, has developed a tool called \"AI Text Classifier\" that identifies text generated by AI. The tool is a fine-tuned GPT model that predicts the likelihood of a piece of text being generated by AI. The tool labels the text as \"very likely,\" \"unlikely,\" \"unclear if it is,\" \"possibly\" or \"likely\" AI-generated. The aim of the tool is to start a conversation about the difference between human-written and AI-generated content, but OpenAI cautions that it should not be the sole piece of evidence in deciding if a document was created by AI. However, the text classifier has some limitations. The text samples must be at least 1,000 characters, and the tool may misidentify both AI-generated and human-written samples. The classifier was trained using English text samples written by adults and may misidentify content written by children or in languages other than English. OpenAI has also acknowledged that it has not thoroughly assessed the classifier\'s effectiveness in detecting content written in collaboration with human authors. The company recommends using the classifier only as one factor in an investigation to determine a piece of content\'s source. A Washington official has acknowledged the existence of a deal between the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands to impose new restrictions on exports of chipmaking tools to China. The United States imposed sweeping export restrictions on shipments of chipmaking tools to China in October, seeking to curb China\'s ability to expand its chip industry and enhance its military capabilities. To be effective, Washington needed to bring on board the Netherlands and Japan, which are home to major chipmakers. China’s semiconductor industry has become a key target of US export restrictions, as Beijing has ploughed money into cultivating its domestic industry, but its fabrication plants still heavily rely on foreign-made equipment. SMIC and YMTC, two major Chinese companies, have been added to the US Entity List, effectively barring foreign firms from providing certain equipment to them. These restrictions are likely to derail China\'s further efforts in the ultra-competitive semiconductor sector.'See also:
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