Big Tech is now one of the biggest lobbying groups in Washington, D.C. Facebook posted the greatest increase in spending last year, followed by Amazon, Apple and Microsoft. By increasing spending in lobbying, the companies hope to influence privacy legislation, pursue government contracts and rebut charges of unfair competition. Alphabet is the only Big Tech company to reduce its spending for lobbying in 2019, by 44 percent to $11.8 million. It also ended its relationship with lobbyists at six outside firms. Continue reading Big Tech Firms Increase Spending to Influence Lawmakers

Although many observers would name Microsoft’s Xbox as the tech company’s biggest hardware business, chief executive Satya Nadella instead points to the company’s cloud. In fact, Microsoft is building an entire cloud infrastructure from data centers to servers and network stack. Nadella said that he doesn’t want the company to be defined “by what we achieved.” He pointed to the Internet of Things about to emerge. “We look at if there’s going to be 50 billion endpoints,” he said. “Let’s go … and define a strategy for that.” Continue reading Microsoft Bets on Internet of Things, Ends Xbox TV Feature

Clearview AI has scraped over three billion photos from Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Venmo and hundreds of other websites to create a facial recognition database now used by the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and over 600 law enforcement agencies. Twitter just sent a cease-and-decease letter to the startup demanding that it stop taking photos and other data from its site and to delete any data it has already collected. Twitter accused Clearview AI of violating its policies. Continue reading Twitter Warns Clearview to Stop Scraping its Users’ Photos

Artificial intelligence and its potential to harm consumers has been much in the spotlight — now, more than ever, in Europe. Several Big Tech executives are in Europe, prior to heading to Davos for the annual World Economic Forum, and some, such as Microsoft president Brad Smith, are meeting with the European Union’s new competition chief Margrethe Vestager. Under the European Commission’s new president Ursula von der Leyen, new rules regulating free flow of data and competition are under consideration. Continue reading AI Regulation’s First Testing Ground Is the European Union

AI can enable many important tasks from manufacturing to medicine, but only if the applications are speedy and secure. Communication via the cloud adds latency and risks privacy, which is why Google worked on a solution — dubbed Coral — that avoids centralized data centers. Coral product manager Vikram Tank described Coral as a “platform of [Google] hardware and software components … that help you build devices with local AI — providing hardware acceleration for neural networks … right on the edge device.” Continue reading Google Bypasses Cloud to Offer AI to Enterprise Customers

During CES 2020, Spotify revealed plans to leverage its massive amount of user data in order to introduce targeted advertising in its exclusive podcast content. With its proprietary Streaming Ad Insertion (SAI) tech, Spotify will analyze data based on user location, type of device, gender, age and more to insert advertisements in real time (Spotify already automates dynamic ad insertion for its music streaming). The company could eventually become a major podcast ad network if it ends up placing ads in other networks’ content as well. Continue reading Spotify Plans to Run Targeted Ads in its Exclusive Podcasts

The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform held its third hearing in less than a year on facial recognition, planning to introduce legislation to regulate its use by the federal government, law enforcement and the private sector. Committee chair Carolyn Maloney (D-New York) stated the draft legislation will appear in the “very near future” and noted the need to “explore” the privacy protections already in place. Facial recognition is already in use with smartphones, job interviews and in airports. Continue reading Bipartisan Law Regulating Facial Recognition Being Planned

Since its debut two months ago, the Disney+ mobile app has been downloaded from the Apple Store and Google Play 41 million times — four times as many as HBO Now — earning nearly $100 million, reports Sensor Tower. That news sent Disney shares up two percent to $146.72. In Q4 2019, Disney+ was downloaded 30 million times, more than twice that of TikTok. According to a YouGov survey, 76 percent of respondents were satisfied or very satisfied with Disney+ compared to 48 percent for Apple TV+. Continue reading Disney+ Service Has Strong Start with 41 Million Downloads

CES 2020 expanded its media and entertainment-oriented C-Space to cover more interests, but four themes repeated across virtually every conversation and panel: data, privacy, quality and a genuine respect for the audience. Data was at the heart of the discussions. Never before has there been more information available, but how it is managed emerged as a consensus issue because few companies are organized to share data and insights across their enterprise. With the promise of optimizing experiences for consumers is a balance of privacy. Continue reading CES: Marketers and Creators Give Audience Starring Role

Quibi founders Meg Whitman and Jeffrey Katzenberg opened the second day of CES unveiling their new mobile specific entertainment — and NBCUniversal chairman of advertising and partnerships Linda Yaccarino underscored the value and role of entertainment in her afternoon keynote. Even as screen sizes get bigger in the living room, the ubiquity of mobile screens drives Katzenberg and Whitman’s pitch to deliver A-list entertainment to audiences everywhere. Diverse, quality content serving audiences wherever they choose is Yaccarino’s mission for NBCU. Continue reading CES 2020: Quibi and NBCU Envision Future of Entertainment

In a CES SuperSession led by Marketplace Tech senior editor Molly Wood, Qualcomm president Cristiano Amon talked about the 5G rollout and some of the less-discussed topics such as esoteric use cases. “We have a mature mobile landscape today,” he said. “We stream music rather than carry CDs around. Going forward, video will be mainly distributed on 5G. We’ll be able to distribute news and sports, and finally deliver on user-generated content. Everyone will become a broadcaster because you’ll have the speed.” Continue reading CES 2020: Qualcomm’s Amon Talks 5G Rollout, Use Cases

CTA chair/chief executive Gary Shapiro held court with two high-level government leaders: FTC chair Joseph Simons and FCC chair Ajit Pai, in two separate, 30-minute CES sessions. Simons first took the stage and described the Federal Trade Commission’s mission as two-fold: competition and consumer protection. “As we get further into the digital age, privacy concerns are becoming more important,” he said, noting that the FTC Act governing these concerns is 100 years old. “It’s time for Congress to adopt something more modern.” Continue reading CES 2020: A Fireside Chat with FTC Chair Joseph Simons

A conference on “Robots for Good” sought to allay increased fears that robot overlords will soon rule the world and make humans redundant in the workforce. UC Berkeley professor Ken Goldberg, who heads a robotics lab there, spoke about his “radically hopeful vision of the future.” Robots will not replace humans, he said, but rather enable people to focus on what they do best: creativity, innovation, empathy and other inherent human traits. Goldberg also put the fear of robots in historical perspective. Continue reading CES 2020: ‘Robots for Good’ Advocates See Hopeful Future

More than 300 conference sessions and 1,100 speakers across 22 different tracks offer first-person insight into the universe of topics to be featured at CES 2020 this week in Las Vegas. As the world’s largest showcase of tech innovation, CES gathers leaders and experts to share the latest developments in products and policies. This year’s lineup of SuperSessions captures the zeitgeist of the market as it advances from an imagined future to real issues, opportunities and challenges. ETC will report on many of the sessions most relevant to media and entertainment. Continue reading CES 2020: Conference Sessions Cover Big Ideas and Details

This month, Alphabet-owned YouTube will begin limiting the data it collects on children’s videos and stop showing data-driven personalized ads. Video creators will be responsible for designating their content as targeting children and will face Federal Trade Commission fines if they do not do so. The FTC also won’t allow comments or other features such as pop-ups meant to increase viewership. The new data collection limits will likely have negative financial implications for creators of free kids’ content. Continue reading YouTube Limits Data Collection, Targeted Ads on Kids’ Videos