The Trump administration is targeting U.S. and Chinese e-commerce sites — Amazon, Alibaba, eBay, and others — in an effort to curb an outbreak of counterfeit brand-name products.
What's happening: In a presidential memorandum today, President Trump ordered government agencies to report back by November on how to counteract an estimated half-trillion-dollar-a-year business.
President Trump signed a trade memorandum as part of an effort to track and curb the sale of counterfeit goods on online marketplaces such as Amazon, Alibaba and eBay, reports CNBC.
Details: In the memorandum, Trump said the value of counterfeit product sales internationally could hit half a trillion dollars annually, reports Reuters. The departments of Homeland Security, Justice and Commerce have been instructed to put together a data report with sales of counterfeit goods online and how they are being monitored, per CNBC. They have 210 days to present the information, and the administration will then provide recommendations and legislation.
Lyft — and now its shareholders — are banking on robotaxis to replace high-priced drivers and help turn ride-hailing into a profitable enterprise. Don't count on it.
The big picture: Creating and deploying a robotaxi service is an expensive proposition — pegged by one AV company at $5 billion to $6 billion for the vehicle, the AV technology and the fleet operations and maintenance.
Dan and Bloomberg's Mark Bergen discuss how YouTube executives not only turned a blind eye to extremist viral videos, but arguably encouraged their viewership in a quest for growth and profit.
As nationalism rises around the world, globally minded tech companies are finding their businesses increasingly hemmed in by association with their home countries.
The big picture: The bonds of international trade that for decades were viewed as a key driver of economic growth are instead coming to be seen as national security risks — by the U.S. as well as many of its trading partners.
A damning report from Bloomberg Tuesday revealed that top YouTube executives debated for years whether extremist viral videos on its platform were really a problem — often rejecting solutions to manage the situation — in an effort to maximize growth and profits.
Why it matters: Tech companies have long been criticized for harboring hate, but as the consequences of their inactions begin to unfold more visibly in the real world, companies like YouTube are facing more pressure to address whether their ignorance was actually malpractice.
Big Tech, top university labs and the U.S. military are pouring effort and money into detecting deepfake videos — AI-edited clips that can make it look like someone is saying something they never uttered. But video's forgotten step-sibling, deepfake audio has attracted considerably less attention — despite a comparable potential for harm.
What's happening: With video deepfakes, defenders are playing the cat to a fast-scurrying mouse: AI-generated video is getting quite good. The technology to create audio fakes, by contrast, is not as advanced — but experts say that's soon to change.
If you want to make a video deepfake, you can download free software and create it yourself. Someone with a bit of savvy and a chunk of time can churn out side-splitters like this one. Not so for audio deepfakes — at least not yet. Good synthetic audio is still the domain of startups, Big Tech and academic research.
What's happening: Pindrop, the audio biometrics company, is developing synthetic voices in order to train its own defenses to detect them. Vijay Balasubramaniyan, Pindrop's CEO, shared several fake voices with Axios.
