Good morning. We’re almost through to the end of the week. Let’s get into the tech news.
1. Canva dismissal case settled
The AFR has the story on Canva agreeing to settle an unfair dismissal case brought by former senior security engineer Michael Fountandez, who was sacked in January. Canva originally declined a cash settlement, but after three meetings the parties had agreed to bring proceedings to an end and settle. The terms of the settlement have not been disclosed.
2. YouTube prioritising news in light of bad actors
The Australian reports that YouTube is prioritising news from ‘authoritative’ sources, in an attempt to combat misinformation from bad actors. The news comes from Google-owned cybersecurity company Mandiant, with the firm identifying a misinformation group in China that was supposedly seeking to interfere with the upcoming U.S. presidential election via social media. “We have not attributed it to the Chinese government, but we have been looking at videos that they have been putting out that YouTube has taken down and they are aimed at attacking the idea of democracy,” Mandiant vice president of global intelligence Sandra Joyce said. The firm said that YouTube is removing “thousands and thousands” of accounts daily that contribute to misinformation.
3. Adobe is hungry for videos
Adobe is supposedly paying about $US3 per minute for videos to train its own text-to-video generator, attempting to catch up to the likes of OpenAI’s Sora, according to documents viewed by Bloomberg. Videos of people walking or expressing emotions are supposedly being bought up for as much as $US120 each, with the company hoping to add generative AI to its suite of products.
4. Meta doesn’t want to be left out
Hot off the heels of Intel’s new chip, Meta has debuted a new AI-focused chip as it attempts to be less reliant on processor giant Nvidia. The new chip is supposedly more powerful than what it was previously reliant on, with it poised to help power ad recommendations on Meta and Instagram. “This chip’s architecture is fundamentally focused on providing the right balance of compute, memory bandwidth and memory capacity for serving ranking and recommendation models,” the company said.
5. Google goes AI for all
Google’s AI photo editing tools, which were previously reserved for Google One subscribers and Google Pixel owners, are now being rolled out to all Google Photos users, without the need to pay anything extra. This means that Google’s terrific Magic Eraser tool, along with its Magic Editor tool, can now be freely accessed via the Google Photos app, be it Android, iOS, or even Chromebook (though there are minimum hardware requirements for processing). These tools are some of the best things about Google’s Pixel phones, and it’s great to see more people getting access. Note that some features aren’t available on web versions accessed via Windows or Mac.
BONUS ITEM: I could watch this all day.
Dive into nostalgia with Vindoroid as he restores an Atomic Purple Gameboy Color with a shiny new screen! 💜
— iFixit (@iFixit) April 10, 2024
— #iFixit
IG: Vindoroid pic.twitter.com/sDzHtefzze
Have a lovely day.
Image: Google