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The FTC reaches a record $520 million settlement with Epic Games

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Epic Games, maker of the hit Fortnite game, will pay the Federal Trade Commission a record $520 million to settle allegations that it violated children’s privacy.

The North Carolina-based company’s popular game defrauded millions of players into unintended purchases, the Federal Trade Commission said in a statement on Monday.

As a result, Epic agreed to pay $275 million for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act — the largest penalty ever obtained for breaching an FTC rule.

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Epic will also pay $245 million in refunds to consumers, which the regulator said was the largest refund in a gaming situation. Under the agreement, Epic will enforce new default privacy settings for children and teens that will ensure that voice and text communications are turned off by default.

Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina M. Khan said statement. “Protecting the public, especially children, from invasions of online privacy and dark patterns is a top priority for the commission, and these enforcement actions demonstrate to businesses that the FTC is cracking down on these illegal practices.”

Epic Games said in a statement It accepted the deal so as to be “at the forefront of consumer protection and delivering the best experience for our players”.

In its release, Epic referenced the ancient laws of gaming and said the video game industry is fast-moving and expectations are high.

“This proposed order sends a message to all online service providers that the collection of children’s personal information without parental consent will not be tolerated,” Associate Atty said. General Vanita Gupta in a statement.

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The FTC said Epic violated its rules by collecting personal information from children under 13 who played Fortnite, without notifying their parents. It also broke the rules by enabling real-time text and voice chat communications for kids and teens by default. The FTC has said that children and teens have been bullied, threatened, harassed, and experienced distressing issues such as suicide while in Fortnite.

The regulator said Epic employees were warning about the default settings as early as 2017. Although Epic added a button that allowed users to turn off voice chat, it was difficult to find, the FTC said.

Epic said Monday that it has already added additional high-privacy default settings for all players under 18, including changes like auto-hide profiles and players under 16 also have a mature language filter set by default.

In a separate complaint, the FTC alleged that Epic Games used so-called dark patterns to trick users into making purchases.

“Players can charge while trying to wake the game from sleep, while the game is in a loading screen, or by pressing an adjacent button while trying to preview an item,” said the organizer. “These tactics have resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in unauthorized fees being paid to consumers.”

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The FTC said Epic had received more than 1 million complaints from users, and there were concerns that a significant number of users had been wrongly accused.

“All game developers must rethink the steps they have taken to streamline payment flows in favor of practices that provide the greatest clarity to players when making purchasing decisions,” Epic said in its statement.

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I let the AI ​​pick my makeup for a week

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I Fine artist. Almost every aspect of my life is driven by a desire to create, no matter the medium — from DIY projects to Cosplay and elaborate facial makeupI am constantly making something new. I am always eager to try new technologies, tools and technology, so I am naturally fascinated by AI generators. While I am aware of the ongoing rhetoric surrounding AI art, incl Lawsuits and ethical discussions, my curiosity is much stronger than my apprehension about it.

That’s why I decided to let the AI ​​pick my makeup over the course of five days. For consistency, I used a A dream from Wombo The app to create all the themes featured below. (I also picked this app because there was a 200-character limit per prompt, and I loved the challenge of shorter prompts.) While I did my best to faithfully recreate the look in AI images, I took human liberties based on the supplies I had on hand. And my own hobbies. This is what I made with the help of a machine.



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Twitter will only put paid users on your feed

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This comes after a few days Twitter announced Those older verified accounts will lose their blue check mark starting April 1 unless they sign up for the paid Twitter Blue. At the same time, Twitter is working on a method for paid subscribers Hide blue checksprobably because it might seem awkward to have one if all it means is that you paid for it.

Together, both changes could get more subscribers (Twitter hopes), but also ensure that the For You page becomes a collection of shoppers, ramblers, and anyone else who wants to pay for Twitter. Oh, and the brands. By limiting amplification to only a small amount of paid users, it makes the For You page more open, and brands can get more traction and amplification in a free Tweet for paying for Blue than buying ads.

Normal, unpaid accounts are only supposed to be visible in the following feed, the time feed of only people you follow — basically, what Twitter used to be.



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We spoke to the man behind the viral photo of the Pope

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Over the weekend, a photo of Pope Francis looking dapper in a white puffer jacket went viral on social media. The 86-year-old seated pope appears to be suffering from some serious cataplexy. But there was just one problem: the photo wasn’t real. Created with Midjourney’s artificial intelligence technical tool.

As word spread across the internet that the image was created by artificial intelligence, many expressed their surprise. “I thought the pope’s puffer jacket was real and never thought about it again,” Chrissy Teigen chirp. “No way can I escape the future of technology.” Garbage Day newsletter writer and former BuzzFeed News correspondent Ryan Broderick invited him “The first real mass-level AI misinformation case,” it follows in the aftermath Fake photos of the arrest of Donald Trump by police in New York last week.

Now, for the first time, the image’s creator has shared the story of how he created the image that fooled the world.

Pablo Xavier, a 31-year-old construction worker from the Chicago area who declined to give his last name due to fears he would be attacked for taking the photos, said he was stumbling through dorm rooms last week when he came up with the idea for the photo.

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“I try to figure out ways to make something funny because that’s what I usually try to do,” he told BuzzFeed News. “I try to do funny things or tripartite-psychedelic things. It just dawned on me: I have to do the Pope. Then it came like water: “The Pope in a fluffy Balenciaga coat, Moncler, walking the streets of Rome, Paris, things like that.”

He generated the first three images at around 2pm local time last Friday. (He first started using Midjourney after the death of one of his brothers in November. “It almost all started, just dealing with grief and taking pictures of my ex,” he said. “I fell in love with her after that.”)

When Pablo Xavier first saw the Pope’s photos, he said, “I thought they were perfect.” So he sent it to a Facebook group called AI Art Universe, and then on Reddit. He was shocked when the photos went viral. He said, “I didn’t want it to explode like that.”



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