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Microsoft, Google and Meta Among Big Tech Firms Set to Face Overhaul Under New EU Tech Rules: Details
The European Union has picked out 22 so-called “gatekeeper” services, run by six of the biggest tech companies in the world, to face new rules as part of its latest crackdown on Big Tech. The wide-ranging Digital Markets Act (DMA) will apply to services from Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft and TikTok owner ByteDance.
Seen by many as a companion piece of legislation to the Digital Services Act (DSA), which imposes greater responsibilities on tech companies for the content shared on their sites, the DMA has been designed to level the playing field between Big Tech companies and smaller competitors.
The tech giants now have six months to comply with the provisions of the DMA, which aims to improve access and the compatibility of services in Europe and poses an unprecedented challenge to these companies’ business models.
Under the DMA, companies with more than 45 million monthly active users and a market capitalisation of 75 billion euros ($82 billion) are considered gatekeepers providing a core platform service.
Businesses labeled as such will be required to make their messaging apps interoperate with rivals and let users decide which apps to pre-install on their devices.
Alphabet’s Google had the highest number of services, including its Android operating system, Maps, and Search, which would face tougher rules. Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, Marketplace, and WhatsApp also qualified as gatekeepers.
Companies that fail to comply with their obligations can be fined up to 10% of their annual global turnover for DMA violations.
Gatekeepers could ask for an interim measure to suspend the application of the rules but they would need to launch a legal case in the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg to do that, a senior Commission official said. “We haven’t seen anything like that so far.”
Following the introduction of separate legislation, the Digital Services Act, Zalando took the Commission to court in June.
“It’s D-Day for #DMA!,” EU industry chief Thierry Breton said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The most impactful online companies will now have to play by our EU rules.”
Mixed reactions
A Microsoft spokesperson said it accepts its gatekeeper designation, while Meta, Google and Amazon spokespersons said they were reviewing the designations.
Apple and TikTok were less welcoming.
TikTok said it “fundamentally disagreed with this decision” and was “disappointed that no market investigation was conducted prior to this decision,” adding it was considering its next steps.
An Apple spokesperson said the company remained “very concerned about the privacy and data security risks the DMA poses for our users.”
The iPhone maker had earlier raised concerns that the DMA would lead to more installing of apps that do not come via Apple’s App Store, or “side-loading”.
“The Commission should balance the need to protect user security and privacy with the very real risk that gatekeeper app stores will use security and privacy as excuses to dilute compliance with their DMA obligations,” said Stavroula Vryna, partner at law firm Clifford Chance.
Alphabet’s Gmail, Microsoft’s Outlook and Samsung’s browser were exempted after the companies provided sufficiently justified arguments showing that these services do not qualify as gatekeepers, the Commission said.
The Commission has also opened four market investigations to further assess Microsoft’s and Apple’s submissions that some of their core platforms such as Bing, Edge Microsoft Advertising, and Apple’s iMessage services do not qualify as gateways.
“iMessage is designed and marketed for personal consumer communications, and we look forward to explaining to the commission why iMessage is outside the scope of the DMA,” an Apple spokesperson said.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
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YouTube will roll out a slew of artificial-intelligence-powered features for creators, the latest effort from parent company Alphabet to incorporate generative AI — technology that can create and synthesize text, images, music and other media given simple prompts — into its most important products and services.
Among the new products YouTube announced Thursday is a tool called Dream Screen that uses generative AI to add video or image backgrounds to short-form videos, which the company calls Shorts. It also announced new AI-enabled production tools to help with editing both short- and long-form videos on its platform.
“We’re unveiling a suite of products and features that will enable people to push the bounds of creative expression,” Toni Reid, YouTube’s vice president for community products, said in a blog post timed to the announcement Thursday. The Google-owned video platform first announced that it was developing the tools in March.
Google has been under pressure to show results and practical applications for its generative AI products. Some critics have been wary the company, which has long been seen as a leader in artificial intelligence, was falling behind upstarts like OpenAI or rival Microsoft, and that the products Google was rolling out weren’t yet ready for public consumption. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and a new Bing chatbot from Microsoft — which has invested $13 billion (nearly Rs. 1,08,100 crore) in OpenAI since 2019 — have been wildly popular and gained mainstream favour.
Over the past few months, Google launched its own ChatGPT competitor, Bard, and released a steady flow of updates to the product. It’s also incorporated experimental generative AI features into its most important services, including its flagship search engine, in what the company calls its experimental “search generative experience.” The product generates detailed summaries based on information it’s ingested from the internet and other digital sources in response to search queries.
The announcement of the new features also comes as YouTube is locked in fierce competition with ByteDance‘s TikTok and Meta Platforms‘s Instagram Reels to gain more share of the vertical, short-form video market. YouTube said it now sees more than 70 billion daily views on Shorts, and the new generative AI tools appear to be aimed at attracting even more users and creators and gaining a competitive edge over its rivals.
The company also announced YouTube Create, a mobile app aimed at helping the platform’s creators make video production work easier. The app includes AI-enabled features like editing and trimming, automatic captioning, voiceover capabilities and access to a library of filters and royalty-free music. The app is currently in beta on Android in “select markets,” the company said, and will be free of charge.
Beyond creation, YouTube said it would also provide creators with more tools to get AI-powered insights, help with automatic dubbing of videos and assist with finding music and soundtracks for videos.
© 2023 Bloomberg LP
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WhatsApp has begun rolling out support for a new feature that will allow you to log in to your account using the biometric authentication mechanism on your smartphone. The messaging service will soon allow you to create a passkey — a kind of login credential that eliminates the need to use or remember a password — on your device and use it to securely log in to apps and services using the facial recognition or fingerprint scanner on your device.
Feature tracker WABetaInfo spotted the new passkey feature on WhatsApp beta for Android 2.23.20.4 on Tuesday, that is rolling out to beta users. However, not all users who have updated to the latest beta release will have access to the feature, which is reportedly rolling out to a “limited number of beta testers”. Gadgets 360 was unable to access the feature on two different Android smartphones that are both enrolled in the beta program.
The new Passkeys feature on WhatsApp
Photo Credit: WABetaInfo
The new passkey feature is described as a “simple way to sign in safely” to WhatsApp in a screenshot shared by the feature tracker. This suggests that it could be used to help sign in to other devices via secure authentication on your primary device.
Authenticating using passkeys isn’t a novel concept and the technology is slowly gaining traction online— Google already allows you to log in to a new device by using fingerprint-based biometric authentication for passkeys in place of a password. These passkeys are securely stored on your device and used when biometric authentication is provided.
The screenshot posted by WABetaInfo also states that WhatsApp will store the passkey in the device’s password manager — for most users, that would be the device’s default password store that is handled by Google with autofill support. The feature is also expected to make its way to iOS, where it is likely to be stored in the iOS Keychain.
It is currently unclear whether WhatsApp will also support storing passkeys in third-party apps like Bitwarden, 1Password, or Dashlane. We can expect to learn more about how the feature works when it is rolled out to more users in the beta program and the feature is expected to arrive on all smartphones on the stable channel in the future.
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Britain urged Meta not to roll out end-to-end encryption on Instagram and Facebook Messenger without safety measures to protect children from sexual abuse after the Online Safety Bill was passed by parliament.
Meta, which already encrypts messages on WhatsApp, plans to implement end-to-end encryption across Messenger and Instagram direct messages, saying the technology re-enforced safety and security.
Britain’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman said she supported strong encryption for online users but it could not come at the expense of children’s safety.
“Meta has failed to provide assurances that they will keep their platforms safe from sickening abusers,” she said. “They must develop appropriate safeguards to sit alongside their plans for end-to-end encryption.”
A Meta spokesperson said: “The overwhelming majority of Brits already rely on apps that use encryption to keep them safe from hackers, fraudsters and criminals.
“We don’t think people want us reading their private messages so have spent the last five years developing robust safety measures to prevent, detect and combat abuse while maintaining online security.”
It said it would update on Wednesday on the measures it was taking, such as restricting people over 19 from messaging teens who do not follow them and using technology to identify and take action against malicious behaviour.
“As we roll out end-to-end encryption, we expect to continue providing more reports to law enforcement than our peers due to our industry leading work on keeping people safe,” the spokesperson said.
Social media platforms will face tougher requirements to protect children from accessing harmful content when the Online Safety Bill passed by Parliament on Tuesday becomes law.
End-to-end encryption is a bone of contention between companies and the government in the new law.
Messaging platforms led by WhatsApp oppose a provision that they say could force them to break end-to-end encryption.
The government, however, has said the bill does not ban the technology, but instead, it requires companies to take action to stop child abuse and as a last resort develop technology to scan encrypted messages.
Tech companies have said scanning messages and end-to-end encryption are fundamentally incompatible.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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