On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission ruled that robocalls employing voices generated by artificial intelligence are illegal. The decision follows a high-profile wave of misleading calls to potential voters featuring an AI voice mimicking President Joe Biden. Now, if only the agency could do something about the roughly 4 billion putatively human telemarketing calls Americans already receive each month.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Meta and TikTok Take EU to Court Over Content Moderation Fees
Don't hate us just because we're rich and popular.
Both Meta and TikTok filed legal actions against the EU this week, saying that the bloc's new Digital Services Act (DSA) lumbers them with unfairly large fees. The fees in question are paid out by tech giants — termed Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) in the act — to help the EU fund its enforcement of the act's content moderation requirements. Meta and TikTok also employ Very Large Legal Armies.
Cost of Doing Big Business
The DSA is a wide-reaching piece of new legislation that's supposed to curtail the power of Big Tech companies and increase enforcement in areas as diverse as fraud, misinformation, and harmful content. A European Commission spokesperson told The Daily Upside that the so-called supervisory fee would be calculated according to a platform's EU user base, with a ceiling of 0.05% of the company's annual worldwide net income. All companies classified as VLOPs already paid the fees due for this year, the spokesperson said.
Meta told Politico it was made to pay €11 million ($11.8 million) for 2024 — which appears to be less than the maximum the EU could have asked for, as the cap based on Meta's 2023 net income would have sat at $19.5 million. TikTok is a private company and it declined to tell Politico how much it had paid, but the maximum fee payable would probably be uncomfortably high given its ever-growing user base.
Now it seems like Meta and TikTok want to claw back some of that cash — or at least avoid paying higher fees in the future:
Meta's argument is that because it makes a lot of money and has a large user base it's expected to foot a much larger bill compared to, say, X or Snapchat, which although widely used are minnows when you compare user numbers. Meta says that's unfair because those smaller platforms might punch above their weight and create a disproportionate amount of work for regulators.
TikTok's director of corporate and policy communications Morgan Evans told The Verge that TikTok was challenging the law on a number of grounds, including a claim that the EU is relying on "flawed third party estimates of our monthly active user numbers as a basis for calculating the total amount."
Election Year Jitters: As the world heads into its biggest election year ever, the European Commission will be on red alert to see whether platforms are adhering to the DSA, Commissioner Thierry Breton said on Wednesday. Platforms will have to label AI-generated content, something Meta has already announced is in the works. OpenAI also announced this week it will digitally watermark images made by its tool DALL-E 3, although it's not a totally watertight measure.
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Top US VC Firms Invested Billions in Problematic Chinese Startups
American venture capital firms are venturing into places they shouldn't, as far as Congress is concerned at least.
A US House of Representatives committee found that top US-based VCs have pumped billions of dollars into blacklisted Chinese companies for years — in case you were wondering where some of your pension fund money has been going.
Follow the Money
The Trump administration reignited a rivalry with China in 2018, imposing sweeping tariffs against the nation for allegedly unfair trade practices. The Biden administration — while occasionally extending olive branches — has also kept up some of the heat, with numerous sanctions, especially on companies dealing in semiconductors, surveillance, and artificial intelligence.
The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party was formed last year to evaluate how best the US can further "de-risk" itself from China. Its latest report found that five large US VC firms — Sequoia Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Walden International, GGV Capital, and GSR Ventures — used investment money from its limited partners like pension funds and university endowments to invest at least $3 billion into Chinese businesses developing technology allegedly tied to human rights abuses, the country's military, and digital propaganda:
In addition to more than $1 billion going to more than 150 semiconductor companies, the report identified more than two dozen AI developers that received VC funding, including TikTok parent company ByteDance, which has been accused of supplying Beijing with US user data, and SZ DJI Technology — a company that allegedly supplies drones to authorities in Xinjiang, a region often associated with the exploitation of Uyghur minorities.
The report noted that most of the investments were made before the US government blacklisted many of the firms yet still benefited the Chinese government. "Decades of investment — including funding, knowledge transfer, and other intangible benefits — from US VCs have helped build and strengthen the PRC's priority sectors," the report says. "This bell cannot be unrung."
Cut It Out: The committee isn't saying the investments were illegal, nor is it looking to punish the VCs. Instead, the group called for policy changes. "Congress should pass legislation to generally prohibit investment in PRC companies included on key US government sanctions and red flag lists," the report says. This might not be the toughest pill for VCs to swallow, given that some of them have already sold their stakes and backed away from Chinese businesses. China just ain't the land of opportunity it used to be for US firms.
Written by Griffin Kelly
CONSUMER
Big Brands Gear Up For Another Super Bowl Ad Rush
Advertisers are emptying their wallets to be a part of maybe the only thing Americans can agree on anymore.
The NFL's big game is back once again, and, as per usual, brands are pulling out all the stops, including major celebrity endorsements – not just Taylor – to turn one Sunday's mega-monoculture event into an all-out advertising blitz.
In the Green Zone
In an era of increasingly fractured media spheres and declining TV ratings, the NFL — and the Super Bowl, in particular — remains one of the few events guaranteed to secure massive amounts of eyeballs. Last year's game grabbed 115.1 million viewers, according to Nielsen, making it the second most-watched TV broadcast in US history, second only to the Apollo 11 moon landing. In fact, of the top 15 most-watched broadcasts in US history, only three weren't Super Bowls: the moon landing, Richard Nixon's resignation speech, and the M*A*S*H finalein 1983.
That makes ad space incredibly valuable. Brands are paying more than ever, and featuring more celebrity endorsements than ever, to create buzz-worthy commercials:
For the second year in a row, a 30-second Super Bowl spot is expected to command about $7 million, up from around $2.4 million in 2010.
Also up: ads featuring celebrity endorsements. Roughly 40% of ads this year will feature a celebrity, according to a report from iSpot.tv, about a six-fold increase from 2010.
Own Goal: The NFL's increasing value isn't going unnoticed by its players union. In a press conference this week, the union's new executive director, Lloyd Howell, said he wants players to eventually become shareholders in the franchises they play for — a rebuke of a policy adopted by the league last year barring players and team employees from doing exactly that. The league reportedly blocked quarterback Aaron Rodgers' attempt to score equity in his contract with the New York Jets. But it smells to us like a double standard: the league had no issue with Rodgers owning the Chicago Bears over the previous decade.
Written by Brian Boyle
Extra Upside
Short leash: Snoop Dogg sues Walmart for allegedly hiding his cereal from customers.
An exclusive club: Delta Air Lines wants to have the fanciest lounges on the runway.
The Streaming Revolution Will Be Televised – But It Might Not Be By Netflix. The streaming giant may be beginning to show cracks, which has smart investors licking their chops. Check out the company The Motley Fool thinks is potentiallypoised to explode in this Stock Advisor report.**
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Election Year Jitters: As the world heads into its biggest election year ever, the European Commission will be on red alert to see whether platforms are adhering to the DSA, Commissioner Thierry Breton said on Wednesday. Platforms will have to label AI-generated content, something Meta has already announced is in the works. OpenAI also announced this week it will digitally watermark images made by its tool DALL-E 3, although it's not a totally watertight measure.
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