Google-New Tack on Reigning In Explicit Deepfakes; Feds Rule Amazon Responsible for Defective 3rd Party Products on Platform; Meta Blames ‘Hallucinations’-It’s AI Claimed Trump Shooting Fake; Tesla Recall-1.8 Million Vehicles

Google is updating its ranking systems, in an effort to limit deepfakes. Explicit deepfakes have been a particularly vexing problem for female celebrities. Mashable.com reports that the Google change will do this: When someone uses terms to seek out nonconsensual deepfakes of specific individuals, the ranking system will attempt to instead provide “high-quality, non-explicit content,” such as news articles, when it’s available. Google product manager Emma Higham wrote in a blog post that “With these changes, people can read about the impact deepfakes are having on society, rather than see pages with actual nonconsensual fake images.” The ranking update has already decreased exposure to explicit image results on deepfake searches by 70%. Additionally, Google is updating systems that handle requests for removing nonconsensual deepfakes from Search. The changes should make the request process easier.

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission has ruled..unanimously…that Amazon is a distributor, and that it bears responsibility for faulty products it has sold on its marketplace. According to geekwire.com, this puts Amazon on the hook for recalled products sold by third-party sellers…that amounts to over half the company’s e-commerce sales. Amazon has always claimed that they shouldn’t be held liable for defective product sold by third party merchants on amazon.com…saying that the liability falls to the seller, not the marketplace ‘facilitating’ the sale. Amazon, as you might presume, plans to appeal. 

We just wrote about several professors publishing a paper about AI lying last week…or ‘bullshitting,’ as they termed it. Now Meta is blaming its AI assistant’s so-called ‘hallucinations’ for saying incorrectly that the assassination attempt on former President Trump didn’t happen. Theverge.com says that the company termed the screw up ‘unfortunate’ in a company blog post. Meta claims that Meta AI was first programmed to not respond to questions about the attempted assassination but the company removed that restriction after people started noticing. It’s not just Meta that is caught up here: Google on Tuesday also had to refute claims that its Search autocomplete feature was censoring results about the assassination attempt. Since ChatGPT burst on the scene, the tech industry has been grappling with how to limit generative AI’s propensity for falsehoods. It’s apparently still hard to overcome what large language models are inherently designed to do: make stuff up.

Tesla has recalled over 1.8 million US cars, due to a risk of software not notifying individuals of a detached hood. Engadget.com notes that if a hood isn’t latched properly, it can blow up and block the driver’s field of view. Tesla is sending out an over the air software update that is supposed to fix the issue. The recall is for 2021 to 2024 Models 3, S, and X. It also includes Model Y vehicles from 2020 to 2024. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.