Elon Musk has unveiled a new black and white “X” logo to replace Twitter’s famous blue bird as he follows through with a major rebranding of the social media platform he bought for $44 billion last year.

Musk replaced his own Twitter icon with a white X on a black background and posted a picture on Monday of the design projected on Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters.

The X started appearing on the top of the desktop version of Twitter on Monday, but the bird was still dominant across the phone app.

Musk had asked fans for logo ideas and chose one, which he described as minimalist Art Deco, saying it “certainly will be refined.”

“And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Musk tweeted Sunday.

The X.com web domain now redirects users to Twitter.com, Musk said.

In response to questions about what tweets would be called when the rebranding is done, Musk said they would be called Xs.

Musk, CEO of Tesla, has long been fascinated with the letter. The billionaire is also CEO of rocket company Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly known as SpaceX. And in 1999, he founded a startup called X.com, an online financial services company now known as PayPal,

He calls his son with the singer Grimes, whose actual name is a collection of letters and symbols, “X.”

Musk’s Twitter purchase and rebranding are part of his strategy to create what he’s dubbed an ” everything app ” similar to China’s WeChat, which combines video chats, messaging, streaming and payments.

Linda Yaccarino, the longtime NBC Universal executive Musk tapped to be Twitter CEO in May, posted the new logo and weighed in on the change, writing on Twitter that X would be “the future state of unlimited interactivity — centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities.”

Experts, however, predicted the new name will confuse much of Twitter’s audience, which has already been souring on the social media platform following a raft of Musk’s other changes. The site also faces new competition from Threads, the new app by Facebook and Instagram parent Meta that directly targets Twitter users.
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Elon Musk said Sunday that he plans to change the logo of Twitter to an “X” from the bird, marking what would be the latest big change since he bought the social media platform for $44 billion last year. 

In a series of posts on his Twitter account starting just after 12 a.m. ET, Twitter’s owner said that he’s looking to make the change worldwide as soon as Monday. 

“And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Musk wrote on his account. 

Earlier this month, Musk put new curfews on his digital town square, a move that came under sharp criticism that it could drive away advertisers and undermine its cultural influence as a trendsetter. 

In May, Musk hired longtime NBC Universal executive Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s CEO in a move to win back advertisers. 

Luring advertisers is essential for Musk and Twitter after many fled in the early months after his takeover of the social media platform, fearing damage to their brands in the ensuing chaos. Musk said in late April that advertisers had returned, but provided no specifics. 

 
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The White House on Friday announced that the Biden administration had reached a voluntary agreement with seven companies building artificial intelligence products to establish guidelines meant to ensure the technology is developed safely.

“These commitments are real, and they’re concrete,” President Joe Biden said in comments to reporters. “They’re going to help … the industry fulfill its fundamental obligation to Americans to develop safe, secure and trustworthy technologies that benefit society and uphold our values and our shared values.”

The companies that sent leaders to the White House were Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI. The firms are all developing systems called large language models (LLMs), which are trained using vast amounts of text, usually taken from the publicly accessible internet, and use predictive analysis to respond to queries conversationally.

In a statement, OpenAI, which created the popular ChatGPT service, said, “This process, coordinated by the White House, is an important step in advancing meaningful and effective AI governance, both in the U.S. and around the world.”

Safety, security, trust

The agreement, released by the White House on Friday morning, outlines three broad areas of focus: assuring that AI products are safe for public use before they are made widely available; building products that are secure and cannot be misused for unintended purposes; and establishing public trust that the companies developing the technology are transparent about how they work and what information they gather.

As part of the agreement, the companies pledged to conduct internal and external security testing before AI systems are made public in order to ensure they are safe for public use, and to share information about safety and security with the public.

Further, the commitment obliges the companies to keep strong safeguards in place to prevent the inadvertent or malicious release of technology and tools not intended for the general public, and to support third-party efforts to detect and expose any such breaches.

Finally, the agreement sets out a series of obligations meant to build public trust. These include assurances that AI-created content will always be identified as such; that companies will offer clear information about their products’ capabilities and limitations; that companies will prioritize mitigating the risk of potential harms of AI, including bias, discrimination and privacy violations; and that companies will focus their research on using AI to “help address society’s greatest challenges.”

The administration said that it is at work on an executive order that would ask Congress to develop legislation to “help America lead the way in responsible innovation.”

Just a start

Experts contacted by VOA all said that the agreement marked a positive step on the road toward effective regulation of emerging AI technology, but they also warned that there is far more work to be done, both in understanding the potential harm these powerful models might cause and finding ways to mitigate it.

“No one knows how to regulate AI — it’s very complex and is constantly changing,” said Susan Ariel Aaronson, a professor at George Washington University and the founder and director of the research institute Digital Trade and Data Governance Hub.

“The White House is trying very hard to regulate in a pro-innovative way,” Aaronson told VOA. “When you regulate, you always want to balance risk — protecting people or businesses from harm — with encouraging innovation, and this industry is essential for U.S. economic growth.”

She added, “The United States is trying and so I want to laud the White House for these efforts. But I want to be honest. Is it sufficient? No.”

‘Conversational computing’

It’s important to get this right, because models like ChatGPT, Google’s Bard and Anthropic’s Claude will increasingly be built into the systems that people use to go about their everyday business, said Louis Rosenberg, the CEO and chief scientist of the firm Unanimous AI. 

“We’re going into an age of conversational computing, where we’re going to talk to our computers and our computers are going to talk back,” Rosenberg told VOA. “That’s how we’re going to engage search engines. That’s how we’re going to engage apps. That’s how we’re going to engage productivity tools.”

Rosenberg, who has worked in the AI field for 30 years and holds hundreds of related patents, said that when it comes to LLMs being so tightly integrated into our day-to-day life, we still don’t know everything we should be concerned about.

“Many of the risks are not fully understood yet,” he said. Conventional computer software is very deterministic, he said, meaning that programs are built to do precisely what programmers tell them to do. By contrast, the exact way in which large language models operate can be opaque even to their creators.

The models can display unintended bias, can parrot false or misleading information, and can say things that people find offensive or even dangerous. In addition, many people will interact with them through a third-party service, such as a website, that integrates the large language model into its offering, but can tailor its responses in ways that might be malicious or manipulative.

Many of these problems will become apparent only after these systems have been deployed at scale, by which point they will already be in use by the public.

“The problems have not yet surfaced at a level where policymakers can address them head-on,” Rosenberg said. “The thing that is, I think, positive, is that at least policymakers are expecting the problems.”

More stakeholders needed 

Benjamin Boudreaux, a policy analyst with the RAND Corporation, told VOA that it was unclear how much actual change in the companies’ behavior Friday’s agreement would generate.

“Many of the things that the companies are agreeing to here are things that the companies already do, so it’s not clear that this agreement really shifts much of their behavior,” Boudreaux said. “And so I think there is still going to be a need for perhaps a more regulatory approach or more action from Congress and the White House.”

Boudreaux also said that as the administration fleshes out its policy, it will have to broaden the range of participants in the conversation.

“This is just a group of private sector entities; this doesn’t include the full set of stakeholders that need to be involved in discussions about the risks of these systems,” he said. “The stakeholders left out of this include some of the independent evaluators, civil society organizations, nonprofit groups and the like, that would actually do some of the risk analysis and risk assessment.”
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Japan and India have signed an agreement for the joint development of semiconductors, in what appears to be another indication of how global businesses are reconfiguring post-pandemic supply chains as China loses its allure for foreign companies.

India’s Ashwini Vaishnaw, minister for railways, communications, and electronics and information technology, and Japan’s minister of economy, trade and industry, Yasutoshi Nishimura, signed the deal Thursday in New Delhi.

The memorandum covers “semiconductor design, manufacturing, equipment research, talent development and [will] bring resilience in the semiconductor supply chain,” Vaishnaw said.

Nishimura said after his meeting with Vaishnaw that “India has excellent human resources” in fields such as semiconductor design.

“By capitalizing on each other’s strengths, we want to push forward with concrete projects as early as possible,” Nishimura told a news conference, Kyodo News reported.  

Andreas Kuehn, a senior fellow at the American office of Observer Research Foundation, an Indian think tank, told VOA Mandarin: “Japan has extensive experience in this industry and understands the infrastructure in this field at a broad level. It can be an important partner in advancing India’s semiconductor ambitions.”

Shift from China

Foreign companies have been shifting their manufacturing away from China over the past decade, prompted by increasing labor costs.

More recently, Beijing’s push for foreign companies to share their technologies and data has increased uneasiness with China’s business climate, according to surveys of U.S. and European businesses there.

The discomfort stems from a 2021 data security law that Beijing updated in April and put into effect on July 1. Its broad anti-espionage language does not define what falls under China’s national security or interests. 

After taking office in 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a “Make in India” initiative with the goal of turning India into a global manufacturing center with an expanded chip industry.

The initiative is not entirely about making India a self-sufficient economy, but more about welcoming investors from countries with similar ideas. Japan and India are part of the QUAD security framework, along with the United States and Australia, which aims to strengthen cooperation as a group, as well as bilaterally between members, to maintain peace and stability in the region.

Jagannath Panda, director of the Stockholm Center for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs of the Institute for Security and Development Policy, said that the international community “wants a safe region where the semiconductor industry can continue to supply the global market. This chain of linkages is critical, and India is at the heart of the Indo-Pacific region” — a location not lost on chip companies in the United States, Taiwan and Japan that are reevaluating supply chain security and reducing their dependence on China.

Looking ahead

Panda told VOA Mandarin: “The COVID pandemic has proved that we should not rely too much on China. [India’s development of the chip industry] is also to prepare India for the next half century. Unless countries with similar ideas such as the United States and Japan cooperate effectively, India cannot really develop its semiconductor industry.”

New Delhi and Washington signed a memorandum of understanding in March to advance cooperation in the semiconductor field.

During Modi’s visit to the United States in June, he and President Joe Biden announced a cooperation agreement to coordinate semiconductor incentive and subsidy plans between the two countries.

Micron, a major chip manufacturer, confirmed on June 22 that it will invest as much as $800 million in India to build a chip assembly and testing plant.

Applied Materials said in June that it plans to invest $400 million over four years to build an engineering center in Bangalore, Reuters reported.  The new center is expected to be located near the company’s existing facility in Bengaluru and is likely to support more than $2 billion of planned investments and create 500 new advanced engineering jobs, the company said.

Experts said that although the development of India’s chip industry will not pose a challenge to China in the short term, China’s increasingly unfriendly business environment will prompt international semiconductor companies to consider India as one of the destinations for transferring production capacity.

“China is still a big player in the semiconductor industry, especially traditional chips, and we shouldn’t underestimate that. I don’t think that’s going to go away anytime soon. The world depends on this capacity,” Kuehn said. 

He added: “For multinational companies, China has become a more difficult business environment to operate in. We are likely to see them make other investments outside China after a period of time, which may compete with China’s semiconductor industry, especially in Southeast Asia. India may also play a role in this regard.” 

Bo Gu contributed to this report.
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Intel Corp. has introduced a processor in China that is designed for AI deep-learning applications despite reports of the Biden administration considering additional restrictions on Chinese companies to address loopholes in chip export controls.

The chip giant’s product launch on July 11 is part of an effort by U.S. technology companies to bypass or curb government export controls to the Chinese market as the U.S. government, citing national security concerns, continues to tighten restrictions on China’s artificial intelligence industry.

CEOs of U.S. chipmakers including Intel, Qualcomm and Nvidia met with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday to urge a halt to more controls on chip exports to China, Reuters reported. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, National Economic Council director Lael Brainard and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan were among other government officials meeting with the CEOs, Reuters said.

The meeting came after China announced restrictions on the export of materials that are used to construct chips, a response to escalating efforts by Washington to curb China’s technological advances.

VOA Mandarin contacted the U.S. chipmakers for comment but has yet to receive responses.

Reuters reported Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said in June that “over the long term, restrictions prohibiting the sale of our data center graphic processing units to China, if implemented, would result in a permanent loss of opportunities for the U.S. industry to compete and lead in one of the world’s largest markets and impact on our future business and financial results.”

Before the meeting with Blinken, John Neuffer, president of the Semiconductor Industry Association, which represents the chip industry, said in a statement to The New York Times that the escalation of controls posed a significant risk to the global competitiveness of the U.S. industry.

“China is the world’s largest market for semiconductors, and our companies simply need to do business there to continue to grow, innovate and stay ahead of global competitors,” he said. “We urge solutions that protect national security, avoid inadvertent and lasting damage to the chip industry, and avert future escalations.”

According to the Times, citing five sources, the Biden administration is considering additional restrictions on the sale of high-end chips used to power artificial intelligence to China. The goal is to limit technological capacity that could aid the Chinese military while minimizing the impact such rules would have on private companies.   Such a move could speed up the tit-for-tat salvos in the U.S.-China chip war, the Times reported. 

And The Wall Street Journal reported last month that the White House was exploring how to restrict the leasing of cloud services to AI firms in China.

But the U.S. controls appear to be merely slowing, rather than stopping, China’s AI development.

Last October, the U.S. Commerce Department banned Nvidia from selling two of its most advanced AI-critical chips, the A100 and the newer H100, to Chinese customers, citing national security concerns. In November, Nvidia designed the A800 and H800 chips that are not subject to export controls for the Chinese market.

According to the Journal, the U.S. government is considering new bans on the A800 exports to China.

According to a report published in May by TrendForce, a market intelligence and professional consulting firm, the A800, like Nvidia’s H100 and A100, is already the most widely used mainstream product for AI-related computing.

Combining chips

Robert Atkinson, founder and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, told VOA in a phone interview that although these chips are not the most advanced, they can still be used by China.  

“What you can do, though, is you can combine lesser, less powerful chips and just put more of them together. And you can still do a lot of AI processing with them. It just makes it more expensive. And it uses more energy. But the Chinese are happy to do that,” Atkinson said.

As for the Chinese use of cloud computing, Hanna Dohmen, a research analyst at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, told VOA Mandarin in a phone interview that companies can rent chips through cloud service providers.  

In practice, it is similar to a pedestrian hopping on an e-share scooter or bike — she pays a fee to unlock the scooter’s key function, its wheels.

For example, Dohman said that Nvidia’s A100, which is “controlled and cannot be exported to China, per the October 7 export control regulations,” can be legally accessed by Chinese companies that “purchase services from these cloud service providers to gain virtual access to these controlled chips.”

Dohman acknowledged it is not clear how many Chinese AI research institutions and companies are using American cloud services.

“There are also Chinese regulations … on cross-border data that might prohibit or limit to what extent Chinese companies might be willing to use foreign cloud service providers outside of China to develop their AI models,” she said.

Black market chips

In another workaround, Atkinson said Chinese companies can buy black market chips. “It’s not clear to me that these export controls are going to be able to completely cut off Chinese computing capabilities. They might slow them down a bit, but I don’t think they’re going to cut them off.”

According to an as yet unpublished report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, China is already ahead of Europe in terms of the number of AI startups and is catching up with the U.S.

Although Chinese websites account for less than 2% of global network traffic, Atkinson said, Chinese government data management can make up for the lack of dialogue texts, images and videos that are essential for AI large-scale model training.

 “I do think that the Chinese will catch up and surpass the U.S. unless we take fairly serious steps,” Atkinson said.  
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Artificial intelligence was the dominant topic at the United Nations Security Council this week.

In his opening remarks at the session, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, “AI will have an impact on every area of our lives” and advocated for the creation of a “new United Nations entity to support collective efforts to govern this extraordinary technology.”

Guterres said “the need for global standards and approaches makes the United Nations the ideal place for this to happen” and urged a joining of forces to “build trust for peace and security.”

“We need a race to develop AI for good,” Guterres said. “And that is a race that is possible and achievable.”

In his briefing, to the council, Guterres said the debate was an opportunity to consider the impact of artificial intelligence on peace and security “where it is already raising political, legal, ethical and humanitarian concerns.”

He also stated that while governments, large companies and organizations around the world are working on an AI strategy, “even its own designers have no idea where their stunning technological breakthrough may lead.”

Guterres urged the Security Council “to approach this technology with a sense of urgency, a global lens and a learner’s mindset, because what we have seen is just the beginning.”

AI for good and evil

The secretary-general’s remarks set the stage for a series of comments and observations by session participants on how artificial intelligence can benefit society in health, education and human rights, while recognizing that, gone unchecked, AI also has the potential to be used for nefarious purposes.

To that point, there was widespread acknowledgment that AI in every iteration of its development needs to be kept in check with specific guidelines, rules and regulations to protect privacy and ensure security without hindering innovation.

“We cannot leave the development of artificial intelligence solely to private sector actors,” said Jack Clark, co-founder of Anthropic, a leading AI company. “The governments of the world must come together, develop state capacity, and make the development of powerful AI systems a shared endeavor across all parts of society, rather than one dictated solely by a small number of firms competing with one another in the marketplace.”

AI as human labor

Yi Zeng, a professor at the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, shared a similar sentiment.

“AI should never pretend to be human,” he said. “We should use generative AI to assist but never trust them to replace human decision-making.”

The U.K. holds the council’s rotating presidency this month and British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, who chaired the session, called for international cooperation to manage the global implications of artificial intelligence. He said that “global cooperation will be vital to ensure AI technologies and the rules governing their use are developed responsibly in a way that benefits society.”

Cleverly noted how far the world has come “since the early development of artificial intelligence by pioneers like Alan Turing and Christopher Strachey.”

“This technology has advanced with ever greater speed, yet the biggest AI-induced transformations are still to come,” he said.

Making AI inclusive

“AI development is now outpacing at breakneck speed, and governments are unable to keep up,” said Omran Sharaf, assistant minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation for advanced science and technology, in the United Arab Emirates.

“It is time to be optimistic realists when it comes to AI” and to “harness the opportunities it offers,” he said.

Among the proposals he suggested was addressing real-world biases that AI could double down on.

“Decades of progress on the fight against discrimination, especially gender discrimination towards women and girls, as well as against persons with disabilities, will be undermined if we do not ensure an AI that is inclusive,” Sharaf said.

AI as double-edged sword

Zhang Jun, China’s permanent representative to the U.N., lauded the empowering role of AI in scientific research, health care and autonomous driving.

But he also acknowledged how it is raising concerns in areas such as data privacy, spreading false information, exacerbating social inequality, and its potential misuse or abuse by terrorists or extremist forces, “which will pose a significant threat to international peace and security.”

“Whether AI is used for good or evil depends on how mankind utilizes it, regulates it and how we balance scientific development with security,” he said.

U.S. envoy Jeffrey DeLaurentis said artificial intelligence offers great promise in addressing global challenges such as food security, education and medicine. He added, however, that AI also has the potential “to compound threats and intensify conflicts, including by spreading mis- and disinformation, amplifying bias and inequality, enhancing malicious cyber operations, and exacerbating human rights abuses.”

“We, therefore, welcome this discussion to understand how the council can find the right balance between maximizing AI’s benefits while mitigating its risks,” he said.

Britain’s Cleverly noted that since no country will be untouched by AI, “we must involve and engage the widest coalition of international actors from all sectors.” 

VOA’s Margaret Besheer contributed to this story.
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Tayba Hatimy studied and practiced dentistry for seven years before she realized her real passion was caring for the environment. Since then, she has founded a garbage collection app that helps people in Mombasa, Kenya reduce garbage along the coast. Saida Swaleh has the story. (Camera: Moses Baya )
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Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming part of our social media world on our cellphones and computers. Text, images, audio and video are becoming easier for anyone to create using new generative AI tools.

As AI-generated materials become more pervasive, it’s getting harder to tell the difference between what is real and what has been manipulated.

“It’s one of the challenges over the next decade,” said Kristian Hammond, a professor of computer science who focuses on artificial intelligence at Northwestern University.

AI-generated content is making its way into movies, TV shows and social media on Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat and other platforms.

AI has been used to change images of former President Donald Trump and Pope Francis. The winner of a prestigious international photo competition this year used AI to create a fake photo.

Victor Lee, who specializes in AI as an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University, said, “people need to exercise caution when looking at AI-generated materials.”

Whether it’s text, video, an image or audio, with generative AI we are seeing things that look like actual news or an image of a particular person but it’s not true, Lee said.

AI is also being used to create songs that sound like popular musical artists and replicating images of actors.

Recently, an anonymous person on TikTok used artificial intelligence to create a song with a beat, lyrics and voices that fooled many people into believing it was a recording by pop stars Drake and The Weeknd.

Among the demands of television and film actors and writers currently on strike in the U.S. are protections against the use of AI, which has advanced to replicate faces, bodies and voices on movies and TV.

“I think the Avatar movies have been so successful because people were able to identify with the animation of the simulated characters,” said Bernie Luskin, director of the Luskin community college leadership initiative at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Luskin, who does research on media psychology, thinks that as the use of AI becomes a worldwide phenomenon, it will affect people psychologically and influence their behavior.

“It’s definitely going to have a dramatic impact on social media,” he said. “As AI becomes more common, it will become increasingly deceptive, and abusers will abuse it.”

On a positive note, Hammond said AI will promote additional artistic elements.

“We’re going to have a new view of what it means to be creative,” he said, “and there will be a different kind of appreciation because the AI systems are generating things in partnership with a human.”

A major concern, however, is that people are already being duped by AI, and as the technology becomes even more sophisticated, it will be even more difficult to discern its imprint.

Krishnan Vasudevan, assistant professor in visual communication at the University of Maryland, worries that people may become immune to AI-generated materials and won’t care if they are real or not.

“They’ll be wanting visuals that reinforce their viewpoints, and they’ll use the tool as a way to discredit or make fun of political opponents,” he said.

Experts say norms, regulations and guardrails must be considered to keep AI in line.

“Does AI receive credit as a co-author?” Lee asked.

“I think there will be legal battles about using somebody’s voice or likeness,” Vasudevan said.

“We have to start looking hard at exactly what is going out there,” said Hammond. “For example, there should be regulations that say your image should not be associated with anything pornographic.”

Lee said artificial intelligence will create big changes the public will get used to, much like the Internet and social media have done.

“The Internet is not inherently a good or bad thing, but it changed society,” he said. “AI is also not good or bad, and it is going to do something similar.”
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Chinese livestreamers have set their sights on TikTok shoppers in the U.S. and Europe, hawking everything from bags and apparel to crystals with their eyes on a potentially lucrative market, despite uncertainties over the platform’s future in the U.S. and elsewhere.

In China, where livestreaming ecommerce is forecast to reach 4.9 trillion yuan ($676 billion) by the year’s end, popular hosts like “Lipstick King” Austin Li rack up tens of millions of dollars in sales during a single livestream. Many brands, including L’Oreal, Nike and Louis Vuitton, have begun using livestreaming to reach more shoppers.

But the highly competitive livestreaming market in China has led some hosts to look to Western markets to carve out niches for themselves.

Oreo Deng, a former English tutor, sells jewelry to U.S. customers by livestreaming on TikTok, delivering her sales pitches in English for about four to six hours a day.

“I wanted to try livestreaming on TikTok because it aligned with my experiences as an English tutor and my past jobs working in cross-border e-commerce,” Deng said.

Since 2019, western e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Facebook have experimented with livestreaming e-commerce after seeing the success of Chinese platforms like Alibaba’s Tmall and Taobao, and Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese counterpart in China.

TikTok started testing its live shopping feature last year. Registered merchants from the U.S., Indonesia, Vietnam and Singapore, among other countries, can now sell via livestreams online.

But livestreaming e-commerce has yet to take off in the U.S. The livestreaming e-commerce market in the U.S. — the world’s biggest consumer market — is expected to grow to $68 billion by 2026, according to research and advisory firm Coresight Research.

The relatively lukewarm reception led Facebook to shut down its live shopping feature last year. As for TikTok, the platform has the added risk of potentially facing U.S. restrictions due to tensions between Beijing and Washington.

TikTok, whose parent company is Chinese technology firm ByteDance, has been criticized for its Chinese ties and accused of being a national security risk due to the data it collects.

TikTok did not provide comment for this story.

Despite the scrutiny faced by TikTok, many Chinese hosts view the U.S. as a vast ocean of opportunity, an emerging market that has yet to be saturated with livestreaming hosts.

“There’s more opportunity for growth to target America because the competition is so fierce in China,” said Shaun Rein, founder and managing director of China Market Research Group in Shanghai. “Livestreaming in the U.S. is at a beginning starting point. There’s more opportunity to grab market share.”

Rein also said that Chinese merchants can often price items higher in the U.S., where customers are accustomed to paying higher prices compared to in China, where product margins are often razor-thin.

“The format is going to work, because it’s been proven,” said Jacob Cooke, CEO of e-commerce consultancy WPIC.

Smaller companies, including those in China that are attempting to sell on TikTok, might lack enough data on what customers want in markets like the U.S, he said. “Once they do get that figured out, they’ll start to have very good success,” Cooke said.

For some U.S. shoppers, the livestream format is a fascinating form of entertainment.

Freisa Weaver, a 36-year-old who lives in Florida, stumbled on a TikTok livestream selling crystals 10 months ago. It employed a popular tactic called a “lucky scoop” where buyers pay a set price to receive several random items scooped from a large container of crystals. TikTok earlier this year banned this practice from livestreams to comply with gambling laws, although some sellers still offer grab bags of goodies which appear to be scooped off-camera.

“I came across it scrolling through TikTok and at first I was entertained by the lucky scoops,” Weaver said, describing livestreaming shopping as an addictive hobby. “Now I’m a regular buyer in some of the live feeds on TikTok.”

“I personally enjoy the interactions with the host and the possibility of finding something special and unique just for me,” she said

Her favorite channel is Meow Crystals, an account operated by Chinese streaming hosts that often does flash sales selling crystals for as little as $2, and grab bags of crystals from $10. TikTok has yet to roll out its in-built shopping feature on a wide scale, so many streamers, including those from Meow Crystals, often redirect viewers to place orders on an external website.

“The host is willing to go to the warehouse for you and get special items, or they remember what you like and offer it to you as soon as you are online,” Weaver said.

Chinese livestreaming hosts try various tactics to stand out and build a loyal customer base. For some, it’s personalized customer service, while others use quirky catchphrases and concoct flamboyant online personalities to keep their customers entertained.

“Every host is always experimenting and develops their own tactics,” Deng, the livestream host said, declining to share the secrets of her own approach.

Boot camps to teach Chinese livestreamers how to increase their sales have sprung up, including a popular one hosted by Yan Guanghua, one of TikTok earliest livestreamers in China.

Like Deng, Yan is a former English tutor who turned to TikTok livestreaming after a government crackdown on the private education industry.

Yan started out hawking yoga clothes, electronics and apparel online. Finding she had a knack for selling to customers via livestreaming, she at times has racked up sales of 5,000 pounds ($6,510) per stream selling to customers in Britain.

Now she charges about $1,000 for two-day boot camps she holds two or three times a month, teaching people how to sell more on livestreams.

Yan says she has trained more than 600 people, mostly from China but also from the U.S. and Africa.

Like many other TikTok livestreaming hosts, she hopes the overseas livestreaming e-commerce market will take off like it has in China.

“It’s hard to say what the future of this industry is. It’s difficult to predict,” Yan said. “But what we know is that TikTok is the most popular platform right now and there is still opportunity here.”
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Does generative artificial intelligence pose a risk to humanity that could lead to our extinction?

That was among the questions put to experts by the head of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission at a workshop hosted with the National Science Foundation.

FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said she is more hopeful about artificial intelligence than pessimistic. “That might sound contrarian,” she said, given that so much of the news about AI is “dark,” raising questions such as, “How do we rein in this technology? What does it mean for the future of work when we have intelligent machines? What will it mean for democracy and elections?”

The discussion included participants from a range of industries including network operators and vendors, leading academics, federal agencies, and public interest representatives.  

“We are entering the AI revolution,” said National Science Foundation senior adviser John Chapin, who described this as a “once-in-a-generation change in technology capabilities” which “require rethinking the fundamental assumptions that underline our communications.” 

“It is vital that we bring expert understanding of the science of technology together with expert understanding of the user and regulatory issues.” 

Investing in AI 

FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington pointed out that while technology may sometimes give the appearance of arriving suddenly, in many cases it’s a product of a steady but unnoticed evolution decades in the making. He gave the example of ChatGPT as AI that landed seemingly overnight, with dramatic impact. 

“Where the United States has succeeded in technological development, it has done so through a mindful attempt to cultivate and potentiate innovation.”

Lisa Guess, senior vice president of Solutions Engineering at the firm Ericsson/Cradlepoint, expressed concern that her company’s employees could “cut and paste” code into the ChatGPT window to try to perfect it, thereby exposing the company’s intellectual property. ”There are many things that we all have to think through as we do this.” 

Other panelists agreed. “With the opportunity to use data comes the opportunity that the data can be corrupted,” said Ness Shroff, a professor at The Ohio State University who is also an expert on AI. He called for “appropriate guardrails” to prevent that corruption.

FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks said AI “has the potential to impact if not transform nearly every aspect of American life.” Because of that potential, everyone, especially in government, shoulders a responsibility to better understand AI’s risks and opportunities. “That is just good governance in this era of rapid technological change.”  

“Fundamental issues of equity are not a side salad here,” he said. “They have to be fundamental as we consider technological advancement. AI has raised the stakes of defending our networks” and ultimately “network security means national security.” 

Digital equity, robocalls 

Alisa Valentin, senior director of technology and telecommunications policy at the civil rights organization the National Urban League, voiced her concerns about the illegal and predatory nature of robocalls. “Even if we feel like we won’t fall victim to robocalls, we are concerned about our family members or friends who may not be as tech savvy,” knowing how robocalls “can turn people’s lives upside down.”

Valentin also emphasized the urgent need to close the digital divide “to make sure that every community can benefit from the digital economy not only as consumers but also as workers and business owners.” 

“Access to communication services is a civil right,” she said. “Equity has to be at the center of everything we do when having conversations about AI.” 

Global competition

FCC Commissioner Simington said global competitors are “really good, and we should assume that they are taking us seriously, so we should protect what is ours.” But regulations to protect the expropriation of American innovation should not go overboard.

“Let’s make sure we don’t give away the store, but let’s not do it by keeping the shelves empty.” 
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The White House on Tuesday along with companies such as Amazon.com Inc, Alphabet’s Google and Best Buy will announce an initiative that allows Americans to identify devices that are less vulnerable to cyberattacks.

A new certification and labeling program would raise the bar for cybersecurity across smart devices such as refrigerators, microwaves, televisions, climate control systems and fitness trackers, the White House said in a statement.

Retailers and manufacturers will apply a “U.S. Cyber Trust Mark” logo to their devices and the program will be up and running in 2024.

The initiative is designed to make sure “our networks and the use of them is more secure, because it is so important for economic and national security,” said a senior administration official, who did not wish to be named.

The Federal Communications Commission will seek public comment before rolling out the labeling program and register a national trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the White House said.

Other retailers and manufacturers participating in the program include LG Electronics U.S.A., Logitech, Cisco Systems and Samsung.

In March, the White House launched its national cyber strategy that called on software makers and companies to take far greater responsibility to ensure that their systems cannot be hacked.

It also accelerated efforts by agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Defense Department to disrupt activities of hackers and ransomware groups around the world.

Last week, Microsoft and U.S. official said Chinese state-linked hackers secretly accessed email accounts at around 25 organizations, including at least two U.S. government agencies, since May.
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Norway’s data protection agency said Monday it would ban Facebook and Instagram owner Meta from using the personal information of users for targeted advertising, threatening a $100,000 daily fine if the company continues. 

The business practices of big U.S. tech firms are under close scrutiny across Europe over concerns about privacy, with huge fines handed out in recent years. 

The Norwegian watchdog, Datatilsynet, said Meta uses information such as the location of users, the content they like and their posts for marketing purposes. 

“The Norwegian Data Protection Authority considers that the practice of Meta is illegal and is therefore imposing a temporary ban of behavioural advertising on Facebook and Instagram,” it said in a statement.  

The ban will begin on August 4 and last three months to give Meta time to take corrective measures. The company will be fined one million kroner ($100,000) per day if it fails to comply.  

“We will analyze the decision … but there is no immediate effect on our services,” Meta told AFP in a statement. 

The Norwegian regulator added that its ruling was neither a ban on Facebook and Instagram operating in the country nor a blanket ban on behavioral advertising. 

The Austrian digital privacy campaign group noyb, which has lodged a number of complaints against Meta’s activities, said it “welcomes this decision as a first important step” and hopes data regulators in other countries will follow suit. 

Meta suffered a major setback earlier this year when European regulators dismissed the legal basis Meta had used to justify gathering users’ personal data for use in targeted advertising. 

Meta suffered another major setback earlier this month when the European Court of Justice (ECJ) rejected its various workarounds and empowered antitrust regulators to take data privacy issues into account when conducting investigations. 
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