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People around the world now spend hours a day on their smartphones. On average, daily smartphone use exceeds three hours, and for many adults, total screen time climbs to six hours or more, according to research. This constant close-up screen exposure has been linked to a growing list of eye-health issues, including dry and irritated eyes, eye fatigue, blurred vision, headaches, and the worsening of nearsightedness, per reports. Edenlux, a South Korea–headquartered startup, has developed technology to address eye and ear health issues caused by screen-heavy digital lifestyles. The company’s mission is personal. Edenlux founder and CEO Sungyong Park knows…
Open the website of one explicit deepfake generator and you’ll be presented with a menu of horrors. With just a couple of clicks, it offers you the ability to convert a single photo into an eight-second explicit videoclip, inserting women into realistic-looking graphic sexual situations. “Transform any photo into a nude version with our advanced AI technology,” text on the website says.The options for potential abuse are extensive. Among the 65 video “templates” on the website are a range of “undressing” videos where the women being depicted will remove clothing—but there are also explicit video scenes named “fuck machine deepthroat”…
The social platform hierarchy in AI citations is changing. Once dominated by Reddit, citations in large language models are now pointing more often to YouTube.New data from four sources finds that YouTube has overtaken Reddit as the most frequently cited social platform in AI-generated responses. YouTube had previously fallen behind other user-generated sources because of the difficulty large-language models, or LLMs, have in pulling information from videos, but transcripts, explainers, and other information associated with videos on YouTube have allowed the video platform to flourish as a source that machines can easily read. Bluefish found that YouTube appeared as a…
As demand grows for privacy-first enterprise AI that can run without sending sensitive data to the cloud, SpotDraft has raised $8 million from Qualcomm Ventures in a strategic Series B extension to scale its on-device contract review tech for regulated legal workflows. The extension values SpotDraft at around $380 million, the startup told TechCrunch, nearly double its $190 million post-money valuation following its $56 million Series B in February of last year. Across regulated sectors, enterprises have moved quickly to test generative AI, but privacy, security, and data governance concerns continue to slow adoption for sensitive workflows — especially in…
TikTok is currently experiencing a widespread service outage in the US, causing disruptions for millions of users only a few days after the company officially transferred control of its American business to a group of majority-US investors.The technical issues led many TikTok users to speculate about whether the app’s new owners were intentionally suppressing videos about political topics, particularly content related to recent federal immigration operations in Minnesota. TikTok has denied the allegations, attributing the problems to a power outage.TikTok users began reporting on Sunday that they were having trouble uploading videos to the app as well as viewing content…
The open letter signed by 60 CEOs of Minnesota-based companies is a rare example of the C-suite venturing out onto a political limb in these highly polarized times. But the note’s effort to walk a very fine line ultimately may not reward these brands for their bravery.The missive, issued on Jan. 25 by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, came on the heels of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer fatally shooting Alex Pretti, a legal observer at a protest against the agency’s tactics in pursuing “criminal illegal aliens,” as President Trump has termed them. Pretti’s death followed the Jan.…
Google agreed to pay $68 million to settle claims its voice assistant illegally spied on users to, among other things, serve them advertisements, Reuters reports. Google did not admit wrongdoing in the settlement of the class-action case, which accused the firm of “unlawful and intentional interception and recording of individuals’ confidential communications without their consent and subsequent unauthorized disclosure of those communications to third parties.” The suit further claimed that “information gleaned from these recordings was wrongly transmitted to third parties for targeted advertising and for other purposes.” The case centered on “false accepts,” wherein Google Assistant is alleged to…
After federal agents shot and killed Minneapolis nurse Alex Pretti on Saturday, Palantir workers pressed for answers from leadership on the company’s work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—and many questioned whether Palantir should be involved with the agency at all. Leadership defended its work as in part improving “ICE’s operational effectiveness.”Internal Slack messages reviewed by WIRED reveal growing frustration within Palantir over its relationship with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and in particular, ICE’s enforcement and investigations teams. In response, Palantir’s privacy and civil liberties team published an update to the company’s internal wiki detailing its work on…
You’d be forgiven for mistaking The Promenade in Davos, Switzerland for Fifth Avenue at Christmastime.Along the Promenade — a swiftly moving river of walkers during the week of the World Economic Forum — countries, tech companies, and NGOs jostle for attention with their storefront activations. ADWEEK gathered with the throng of foreign dignitaries, founders, CEOs, and celebrities with a hand‑selected group of CMOs. They joined ADWEEK CEO Will Lee and myself in the Alps for the inaugural Marketing Vanguard Inspiration Excursion.During the two‑day experience, hosted at The Female Quotient Lounge in partnership with Adobe and Microsoft, ADWEEK’s Marketing Vanguard program focused…
Ricursive Intelligence, a startup building an AI system to design and automatically improve AI chips, has raised $300 million at a $4 billion valuation. The company said Monday the round was led by Lightspeed. Ricursive says the system will be able to create its own silicon substrate layer and speed up AI chip improvements. Rinse and repeat to get to AGI, the founders say. The Series A comes just two months since the company formally launched with a seed investment led by Sequoia. It has raised $335 million total, reports the New York Times. Ricursive was founded by former Google…
A federal judge on Monday declined to immediately curb the federal operation that has put armed agents on the streets of Minneapolis and St. Paul, but ordered the government to file a new briefing by Wednesday evening answering a central claim in the case: that the surge is being used to punish Minnesota and force state and local authorities to change their laws and cooperate with the targeting of local immigrants.The order leaves the operation’s scope and tactics in place for now, but requires the federal government to explain whether it is using armed raids and street arrests to pressure…
In this uncertain world, we can count on two truths.The first is that Super Bowl 60 is coming. The second is that brands are increasingly focused on whether and how they’re appearing in generative search engines like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, or Google’s AI Mode. That’s why ADWEEK is partnering with Emberos on the day of the Super Bowl to power the first-ever Real Time AI Influence Index. Emberos is a startup whose tech is designed to help brands control how they show up in AI search results, focusing on ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Grok.On the day of the 2026 Super…
A group of YouTubers suing tech giants for scraping their videos without permission to train AI models has now added Snap to their list of defendants. The plaintiffs, internet content creators behind a trio of YouTube channels with roughly 6.2 million collective subscribers, allege that Snap has trained its AI systems on their video content for AI features like the app’s “Imagine Lens,” which allows users to edit images using prompts. The plaintiffs earlier filed similar lawsuits against Nvidia, Meta, and ByteDance over similar matters. In the newly filed proposed class action suit, filed on Friday in the Central District…
If your smartphone videos are sounding a little rough around the edges, the easiest way to improve your audio quality is with a wireless lavalier mic. Pocketable kits like the DJI Mic 3 easily connect to your phone, giving you the ease of shooting video on mobile and the quality you’d expect from more professional productions. You can scoop up a complete kit for $259 that includes a charging case, two transmitters, and receiver, a healthy discount from its usual $329 price point.DJIMic 3 Wireless MicrophoneDJI has made a number of improvements to this generation of wireless mic that make…
You don’t need to be chronically online to have your social media feeds overtaken by TV’s Heated Rivalry. My 21-year-old niece, multiple work Teams chats, Donatella Versace, hetero hockey podcasters, Helen Hunt, the NYC mayor’s Snow Day counsel, the Olympic torch relay committee and Naomi Fry in The New Yorker have all declared their intention to “come to the cottage.” As a gay Canadian who never fully got into hockey but has devoured more than two dozen (mainly hockey-based) MM romances (receipts in my Goodreads), my excitement began with the first announcement last year. (Full disclosure: I attended the same Montreal…
In the wake of TikTok’s U.S. ownership change last week, some users are seeking out alternative platforms. One app gaining traction is UpScrolled, a social network that pledges to remain impartial to political agendas. The app currently ranks 12th overall in Apple’s App Store and second in the social networking category. Upscrolled blends familiar features from Instagram and X, letting users share photos, videos, and text posts, discover new content, and send direct messages. The app was founded last year by Issam Hijazi, a Palestinian-Jordanian-Australian technologist, with the aim of giving users a place to “freely express thoughts, share moments,…