New York City filed a lawsuit against TikTok, Meta, Snap and Google's YouTube to hold the companies accountable "for fueling the nationwide youth mental health crisis," NYC Mayor Eric Adams announced Wednesday.
Driving the news: The lawsuit, filed in California Superior Court by the City of New York, the New York Department of Education and New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, alleges that companies intentionally manipulate and addict younger users, keeping them on their platforms.
The lawsuit contains three counts per New York state laws: negligence, gross negligence and public nuisance.
The plaintiffs are seeking a jury trial, company behavior changes and financial damages.
Such conduct has been a financial burden and crisis for the city, the lawsuit alleges; impacting schools, hospitals and other communities. In a press conference, Adams described New York City teens who are constantly in despair, glued to their phones and doing poorly in school, and lacking social skills as a result of social media addiction.
What they're saying: "Our city is built on innovation and technology, but many social media platforms end up endangering our children's mental health, promoting addiction, and encouraging unsafe behavior," Adams said in a release.
"We're taking bold action on behalf of millions of New Yorkers to hold these companies accountable for their role in this crisis, and we're building on our work to address this public health hazard."
"This lawsuit and action plan are part of a larger reckoning that will shape the lives of our young people, our city, and our society for years to come."
Context: In the absence of new federal laws protecting children online, lawsuits aiming to hold tech accountable are growing more prevalent across the country, filed by school districts and groups of parents who say their children were harmed by social media.
Other theories lawsuits have used include the idea that tech knowingly makes defective products that harm children or cause addiction.
There's a lot of attention to flashy Capitol Hill hearings where tech executives get grilled by members of Congress about children's online safety, but new bills continue to languish, while lawsuits are a costly and tangible threat to companies' business models.
The other side: "We want teens to have safe, age-appropriate experiences online, and we have over 30 tools and features to support them and their parents. We've spent a decade working on these issues and hiring people who have dedicated their careers to keeping young people safe and supported online," Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said.
"Providing young people with a safer, healthier experience online has always been core to our work," said Google spokesperson José Castañeda, "In collaboration with youth, mental health and parenting experts, we've built services and policies to give young people age-appropriate experiences, and parents robust controls. The allegations in this complaint are simply not true."
"TikTok has industry-leading safeguards to support teens' well-being, including age-restricted features, parental controls, an automatic 60-minute time limit for users under 18, and more," a spokesperson for TikTok told Axios.
"Snapchat was intentionally designed to be different from traditional social media, with a focus on helping Snapchatters communicate with their close friends. Snapchat opens directly to a camera — rather than a feed of content that encourages passive scrolling — and has no traditional public likes or comments. While we will always have more work to do, we feel good about the role Snapchat plays in helping close friends feel connected, happy and prepared as they face the many challenges of adolescence," a Snap spokesperson said in a statement.
Editor's note: This story has been updated with comment from Snap.
Israel will allow a United Arab Emirates field hospital in the Gaza Strip to use Elon Musk's Starlink satellite internet service, Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said on Wednesday.
The big picture: Israel must approve any use of the service in Gaza under the agreement between Starlink and the Israeli government, according to Karhi.
Slack announced on Wednesday a number of new AI-powered features, including the ability to get summaries of threads and recaps of what's happened in channels.
Why it matters: Slack is pitching the AI features as a great way for new workers to get up to speed and for overwhelmed employees to keep tabs on myriad threads and channels without having to read each message.
Hackers connected to the Chinese, Iranian, North Korean and Russian governments are already using AI chatbots to write phishing emails and study potential targets, according to new research from Microsoft and OpenAI.
Why it matters: Government officials and cybersecurity executives have been warning that ChatGPT and similar tools could speed up hackers' attacks. Now that reality is here.
Nearly allof the state legislatures currently in session are considering AI-related bills and nearly half of those bills address deepfakes, according to an analysis by software industry groupBSA, shared exclusively with Axios.
Why it matters: Rapid AI innovation and a federal regulatory vacuum have given state legislatures the impetus to generate a six-fold increase in AI draft legislation compared to a year ago.
American automakers increasingly view Chinese electric cars as an existential threat, despite the fact that Chinese-branded cars aren't even for sale in the U.S. yet.
Why it matters: For big legacy automakers like Ford and General Motors, budget-priced Chinese cars represent another Tesla-like seismic disruption.
New York City's pivot to remote learning amid a snowstorm on Tuesday was met with hiccups and frustration.
The big picture: As the biggest snowstorm in more than two years hit NYC, the district tested – and somewhat botched – a switch to pandemic-era online instruction, fueling a debate among parents on whether districts should opt for snow days instead.
"It's the most complicated governance structure I've ever seen my life," Khosla Ventures managing director Keith Rabois said at Axios' BFD event in Miami of OpenAI's corporate setup. "I can't really figure it out, honestly."
Why it matters: News of co-founder Sam Altman's (brief) ouster as CEO in November took its investors by surprise — including the fact that it could even happen.
OpenAI is adding a feature that will allow ChatGPT to remember both information about individual users and how they want the chatbot to respond to different types of queries.
Why it matters: It's another step in allowing the chatbot to customize itself to the person using it.
A new open-source generative AI model can follow instructions in more than 100 languages.
Why it matters: Most models that power today's generative AI tools are trained on data in English and Chinese, leaving a massive gap of thousands of languages — and potentially limiting access to the powerful technology for billions of people.
U.S. adults lost a record $10 billion to fraudsters in 2023, according to new Federal Trade Commission data.
Why it matters: More Americans fell for a variety of scams — including those related to investments, business decisions, romance and government services — last year.
Cybercriminal gangs are infiltrating popular online community platform Discord to plan their schemes and teach a new generation of hackers, according to a new report shared first with Axios.
Why it matters: Hackers have long used members-only online forums to discuss their activities, but the use of Discord shows these conversations are now taking place on more mainstream social media platforms — and moderators are having a hard time keeping up.
Artificial intelligence won't steal your job, Microsoft's Super Bowl ad promised on Sunday — instead, it will help you fulfill your dreams.
Why it matters: The 60-second spot deftly reframed AI for the general population, transforming it from a scary unknown novelty into a catalyst for personal and professional growth.
Transcription software company Otter announced a significant boost to its AI features on Tuesday, including the ability for its AI bot to join text-based chats and to use the technology to search across one's entire meeting history.
Why it matters: Otter wants to shift its app from a tool people use to get meeting transcripts to one workers turn to for a wide range of information.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman cautioned Tuesday that "very subtle societal misalignments" around artificial intelligence could have dangerous consequences.
Why it matters: Altman has been a vocal proponent of government regulation of generative AI and has previously warned of the new technology's rapid evolution.
FTC chair Lina Khan is hunting for evidence that Microsoft, Google and Amazon require cloud computing spend, board seats or exclusivity deals in return for their investments in AI startups.
Why it matters: At a Friday event, Khan framed today's AI landscape as an inflection point for tech that is "enormously important for opening up markets and injecting competition and disrupting existing incumbents."
