Category:
Investing
Category:
Investing
Category:
Investing
2026-01-28 00:52:34|
Engadget
Meta has faced some serious questions about how it allows its underage users to interact with AI-powered chatbots. Most recently, internal communications obtained by the New Mexico Attorney General's Office revealed that although Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was opposed to the chatbots having "explicit" conversations with minors, he also rejected the idea of placing parental controls on the feature. Reuters reported that in an exchange between two unnamed Meta employees, one wrote that we "pushed hard for parental controls to turn GenAI off but GenAI leadership pushed back stating Mark decision. In its statement to the publication, Meta accused the New Mexico Attorney General of "cherry picking documents to paint a flawed and inaccurate picture." New Mexico is suing Meta on charges that the company failed to stem the tide of damaging sexual material and sexual propositions delivered to children; the case is scheduled to go to trial in February. Despite only being available for a brief time, Meta's chatbots have already accumulated quite a history of behavior that veers into offensive if not outright illegal. In April 2025, The Wall Street Journal released an investigation that found Meta's chatbots could engage in fantasy sex conversations with minors, or could be directed to mimic a minor and engage in sexual conversation. The report claimed that Zuckerberg had wanted looser guards implemented around Meta's chatbots, but a spokesperson denied that the company had overlooked protections for children and teens. Internal review documents revealed in August 2025 detailed several hypothetical situations of what chatbot behaviors would be permitted, and the lines between sensual and sexual seemed pretty hazy. The document also permitted the chatbots to argue racist concepts. At the time, a representative told Engadget that the offending passages were hypotheticals rather than actual policy, which doesn't really seem like much of an improvement, and that they were removed from the document. Despite the multiple instances of questionable use of the chatbots, Meta only decided to suspend teen accounts' access to them last week. The company said it is temporarily removing access while it develops the parental controls that Zuckerberg had allegedly rejected using."Parents have long been able to see if their teens have been chatting with AIs on Instagram, and in October we announced our plans to go further, building new tools to give parents more control over their teens experiences with AI characters," a representative from Meta said. "Last week we once again reinforced our commitment to delivering on our promise of parental controls for AI, pausing teen access to AI characters completely until the updated version is ready."New Mexico filed this lawsuit against Meta in December 2023 on claims that the company's platforms failed to protect minors from harassment by adults. Internal documents revealed early on in that complaint revealed that 100,000 child users were harassed daily on Meta's services.Update, January 27, 2025, 6:52PM ET: Added statement from Meta spokesperson.Update, January 27, 2025, 6:15PM ET: Corrected misstated timeline of the New Mexico lawsuit, which was filed in December 2023, not December 2024.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/mark-zuckerberg-was-initially-opposed-to-parental-controls-for-ai-chatbots-according-to-legal-filing-230110214.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
2026-01-28 00:14:10|
Engadget
Meta has started blocking links to ICE List, a website that compiles information about incidents involving Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents, and lists thousands of their employees' names. It seems that the latter detail is what caused Meta to take action in a move that was first reported by Wired. ICE List is a crowdsourced Wiki that describes itself as "an independently maintained public documentation project focused on immigration-enforcement activity" in the US. "Its purpose is to record, organize, and preserve verifiable information about enforcement actions, agents, facilities, vehicles, and related incidents that would otherwise remain fragmented, difficult to access, or undocumented," its website states.Along with notable incidents, the website also lists the names of individual agents associated with ICE, CBP and other DHS agencies. According to Wired, the website's creators said much of that information had come from a "leak," though it appears to be based largely on public LinkedIn profiles. As Wired notes:The site went viral earlier this month when it claimed to have uploaded a leaked list of 4,500 DHS employees to its site, but a WIRED analysis found that the list relied heavily on information the employees shared publicly about themselves on sites such as LinkedIn.Links to ICE List have been spreading widely for several weeks, including on Meta's platforms. There are numerous links to the website on Threads, some of which go back several weeks. Now though, clicking on previously-shared links instead results in a message that the link can't be opened. Users who try to share new links on Threads or Facebook also see error messages. "Posts that look like spam according to our Community Guidelines are blocked on Facebook and can't be edited," the notice says. When reached for comment, a Meta spokesperson pointed to the company's privacy policy barring the disclosure of personally identifiable information (PII). The company didn't address why it chose to start blocking the website after several weeks, or whether it considers public LinkedIn profiles to be in violation of its rules against doxxing. It is, however, not the first time Meta has opted to remove users' posts tracking information about ICE actions. The social network previously took down a Facebook group that tracked ICE sightings in Chicago after pressure from the Justice Department. Have a tip for Karissa? You can reach her by email, on X, Bluesky, Threads, or send a message to @karissabe.51 to chat confidentially on Signal.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-blocks-links-to-ice-list-a-wiki-that-names-agents-231410653.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
2026-01-27 22:37:37|
Engadget
Adobe Photoshop introduced some new features that are rolling out for creators today. As you'd expect from any service operator in this day and age, there's some AI involved. Adobe has improved the tools for Generative Fill, Generative Expand and Remove that are powered by its Firefly generative AI platform. Using these tools for image editing should now produce results in 2K resolution with fewer artifacts and increased detail all while delivering better matches for the provided prompts. The Reference Image option for Generative Fill has also been upgraded to deliver "geometry-aware results that better match the scene." One of the other new updates is a beta version of Dynamic Text, which should allow simpler transformation of a text layer into a curved shape. Photoshop has also added new adjustment layers: Clarity, Dehaze and Grain. These allow non-destructive image editing on layers.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/adobe-photoshop-upgrades-its-firefly-powered-generative-ai-editing-tools-213737915.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
