Apple Pays $13.65 Million Russian Fine Over Case Involving In-App Payments

U.S. tech giant Apple has paid a Russian fine of 1.2 billion roubles ($13.65 million), imposed over the company's alleged abuse of its dominant market position concerning in-app payments, Russia's FAS antitrust agency said on Monday. Apple, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has previously "respectfully disagreed" with a FAS ruling that Apple's distribution of apps through its iOS operating system gave its own products a competitive advantage.

OpenAI Bans Developer Over Bot Mimicking Presidential Candidate

The artificial intelligence company OpenAI banned the developer of a bot mimicking long shot Democratic presidential hopeful Rep. Dean Phillips — the first action that the maker of ChatGPT has taken in response to what it sees as a misuse of its AI tools in a political campaign. Delphi co-founder Dara Ladjevardian told The Post that the company “incorrectly” believed that OpenAI’s terms of service would let “a political action committee that supports Dean Phillips create a clone of him using our platform.”

Microsoft Says Russian-Backed Hackers Accessed Executives' Email

An elite hacking group sponsored by Russian intelligence gained access to the emails of some of Microsoft’s senior executives beginning in late November, the company disclosed in a blog post and regulatory filing. The hackers appeared to focus on combing through Microsoft’s corporate email accounts to look for information related to the hacking group, which Microsoft’s researchers called Midnight Blizzard.

New Hampshire Investigating Robocalls Impersonating President Biden

The New Hampshire attorney general's office says it is investigating what appears to be an "unlawful attempt" at voter suppression after NBC News reported on a robocall impersonating President Joe Biden that told recipients not to vote in the presidential primary. "Although the voice in the robocall sounds like the voice of President Biden, this message appears to be artificially generated based on initial indications," the attorney general's office said in a statement.

OpenAI CEO Says, 'We Do Not Want to Train on The New York Times'

Artificial intelligence doesn’t need vast quantities of training data from publishers like The New York Times Co., according to OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman, in a response to allegations his startup is poaching copyrighted material. “There is this belief held by some people that you need all my training data and my training data is so valuable,” Altman said at Bloomberg House at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos. “Actually, that is generally not the case. We do not want to train on the New York Times data, for example.”

Apple Seeks to Avoid Watch Ban by Removing Pulse Oximetry Feature

A U.S. law enforcement agency has determined that Apple, opens new tab can use a redesign to bypass an import ban on newer Apple Watch models stemming from its patent infringement dispute with Masimo, opens new tab, the medical-monitoring technology company said in a court filing. The import ban, issued by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), applies to Apple's current Series 9 and Ultra 2 watches and initially went into effect on Dec. 26.

Appels Court Rejects Twitter's Claims About Search Warrant on Trump

A federal appeals court has rejected Twitter’s claim that Donald Trump should have been alerted to the existence of a search warrant for his data by prosecutors investigating interference in the 2020 election, leaving in place a $350,000 fine imposed on the social media company for not complying on time. The ruling that X appealed was of a court order barring the company from telling Trump or his attorneys about the existence of a January 2023 search warrant for his data and a subsequent sanction for not handing over the information on time.

OpenAI Limits Tools for Political Campaigning, Candidate Impersonation

OpenAI outlined limits on using its tools in politics during the run-up to elections in 2024, amid mounting concern that artificial-intelligence systems could mass-produce misinformation and sway voters in high-profile races. Among a series of clarifications on its policies, OpenAI said people aren’t allowed to use its tools for political campaigning and lobbying or to create chatbots that impersonate candidates and other real people, or chatbots that pretend to be local governments.

Justice Department Charges eBay with Cyberstalking, Harassment

The Justice Department charged eBay with stalking, witness tampering and obstruction of justice in a rare criminal case against a well-known Silicon Valley company. The charges, which will be dropped under a deferred prosecution agreement if eBay maintains a good record for the next three years, stem from actions taken by the company in 2019 to undermine and silence the writers of an e-commerce newsletter that was mildly critical of some of its behavior.

Canada Limits Exports of Sensitive Tech to China, Iran, Russia

Canada unveiled new rules aimed at preventing sensitive technological research developed in the country from being transferred to China, Iran or Russia. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government produced a list of dozens of foreign institutes, schools and laboratories that it says are linked to entities that might pose a risk to Canada’s national security.

Australia Creates Advisory Board on Risks of Artificial Intelligence

Australia will set up an advisory body to mitigate against the risks of artificial intelligence, the government said, becoming the latest country to increase its oversight of the technology. The government also said it planned to work with industry bodies to introduce a range of guidelines, including encouraging technology companies to label and watermark content generated by AI.

Supreme Court Rejects Apple's Appeal of Order on App Store Rules

The Supreme Court allowed a court order to take effect that could loosen Apple’s grip on its lucrative iPhone app store, potentially siphoning billions of dollars away from one of the world’s most profitable companies. The justices rejected Apple’s appeal of lower-court rulings that found some of Apple’s app store rules for apps purchased on more than 1 billion iPhones constitute unfair competition under California law.

OpenAI Says New York Times 'Intentionally Manipulated' Prompts in Lawsuit

OpenAI is firing back at The New York Times after the company was sued for copyright infringement over the use of the publisher’s articles to train its artificial intelligence chatbot. In a blog post, the Sam Altman-led firm said that the Times is “not telling the full story” and claimed it “intentionally manipulated” prompts to make it appears as if ChatGPT generates near word-for-word excerpts of articles.

Justice Department Nears Decision on Antitrust Suit Against Apple

The Justice Department is in the late stages of an investigation into Apple and could file a sweeping antitrust case taking aim at the company’s strategies to protect the dominance of the iPhone as soon as the first half of this year, said three people with knowledge of the matter. The agency is focused on how Apple has used its control over its hardware and software to make it more difficult for consumers to ditch the company’s devices, as well as for rivals to compete, said the people, who spoke anonymously because the investigation was active.

Nonfiction Authors Sue OpenAI, Microsoft for Copyright Infringement

OpenAI and its financial backer Microsoft were sued in Manhattan federal court by a pair of nonfiction authors who say the companies misused their work to train the artificial-intelligence models behind the popular chatbot ChatGPT and other AI-based services. Writers Nicholas Basbanes and Nicholas Gage told the court in a proposed class action that the companies infringed their copyrights by including several of their books as part of the data used to train OpenAI's GPT large language model.

Cyberattack Prevents Prominent Museums from Displaying Collections Online

Several prominent museums have been unable to display their collections online since a cyberattack hit a prominent technological service provider that helps hundreds of cultural organizations show their works digitally and manage internal documents. The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Rubin Museum of Art in New York and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas were among the institutions confirming that their systems have experienced outages in recent days.

Scammers Increase 'Cyber Kidnappings' Targeting Exchange Students

A 17-year-old Chinese student who went missing in Utah has been found unharmed, police said, adding that he appeared to be the victim of an elaborate “cyber kidnapping” scheme, a “disturbing criminal trend” in which scammers put people under duress and convince their families that they are being held for ransom. Kai Zhuang, who was living in Riverdale, was discovered “alive but very cold and scared” inside a tent in remote mountains near Brigham City, Riverdale Police Chief Casey Warren said in a statement.

The GigaLaw Firm helps companies of all sizes protect their brands online, using domain name dispute policies – such as the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) – and other legal tools available to copyright and trademark owners on the Internet.