Welcome back to Lately, The Globe’s weekly tech newsletter. If you have feedback or just want to say hello to a real-life human, send me an e-mail.
In this week’s issue:
😎 Silicon Valley is trying to make wearable tech cool
📣 Do chatbots have the right to free speech?
🙅🏻♀️ How social media made us obsessed with naming and blaming other generations
🧨 Fortnite’s AI-voiced Darth Vader faces a new rebellion
HARDWARE
New wearable devices coming from Google and OpenAI
Other than smartwatches, wearable tech gadgets – i.e. something you’d actually want to wear every day – haven’t reached critical mass. Smart glasses, AR headsets and AI-powered pendants are cost-prohibitive, glitchy and, let’s face it, still mostly goofy-looking. But these challenges aren’t stopping the major tech companies from spending billions trying to make wearable tech happen. This week at Google’s annual developer conference, the company announced it was pairing up with glasses maker Warby Parker to produce AI-powered glasses, to be released next year.
Meanwhile, OpenAI said this week it was paying US$6.5-billion to acquire IO, the startup from Jony Ive, the former Apple executive who designed the iPhone. In a press release, OpenAI said the collaboration would launch “a new family of products,” but didn’t share any other specifics. During an internal OpenAI staff call that was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, however, CEO Sam Altman described the mysterious device as an AI “companion” that is screen-free and not eyewear. Altman’s interest in wearable devices isn’t new. He was an investor in Humane, the maker of the Ai Pin, which went under less than a year after its launch.
ARTIFICIAL COMPANIONS
Do chatbots have the right to free speech? A judge says no
Last year, 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III died by suicide in his Orlando home after becoming obsessed with messaging a chatbot based on the Game of Thrones character Daenerys. His mother, Megan Garcia, filed a lawsuit against Character.AI, the company that made the chatbot, and Google, its financial backer, alleging that the chatbot lacked proper safety precautions, which allowed children to become addicted.
Google and Character.AI had argued for the lawsuit to be dismissed, claiming that the chatbots are protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But this week, an Orlando judge rejected this argument, writing in an initial decision that the companies “fail to articulate why words strung together by [a large language model] are speech.” Character.AI said it will continue to fight the case and employ safety features on the platform. In a statement, Garcia’s lawyers at the Tech Justice Law Project described the decision as “historic” and said it sends a clear message to tech companies that they “cannot evade legal consequences for the real-world harm their products cause, regardless of the technology’s novelty.”
Are you a parent navigating AI use with your kid? I want to hear about your experience for an upcoming article. Send me an email at sedwards@globeandmail.com.
SOCIAL MEDIA
How social media made us obsessed with defining generations
Illustration by Kathleen Fu
The names we give to different generations, whether it’s “millennial” or “Gen Z,” have become everyday vernacular. Online, we use the names to describe ourselves and each other. They’re labels as essential to our identity as gender, race or religion, Globe reporter Ann Hui writes in a new feature. But the rise of social media has also amplified our obsession with generational labels. On TikTok and Instagram, users explain how any seemingly benign characteristic – from how we wear our jeans, how we pose for photos or the emojis we use – can be explained by our generation. But as Hui explains, somewhere along the way, things went sideways. The names, which originated as meaningful descriptors, became increasingly meaningless. Read the full story.
What else we’re reading this week:
Why are there so many ‘alternative devices’ all of a sudden? (The Atlantic)
The epic rise and fall of a dark-web psychedelics kingpin (Wired)
Inside China’s ‘stolen iPhone building’ (Financial Times)
Adult Money
HOMEWARES
Ikea and Sonos Symfonisk lamp speaker, $299
It's your last chance to get a Sonos Ikea lampIKEA
After several years of adding WiFi speakers to lamps, picture frames and other unexpected places, Ikea and Sonos are ending their Symfonisk line. Earlier this month Ikea announced that it would be phasing out the collection globally, with Sonos saying that existing products will continue to receive software updates. If you’ve been eyeing something from the Symfonisk line, you might already be too late. In-store inventory is slim, but there appear to be more options for delivery in Canada, including this table lamp.
Culture Radar
VIDEO GAMES
Fortnite is facing backlash over AI-voiced Darth VaderEvan Agostini/The Associated Press
Fortnite’s AI-voiced Darth Vader faces a new rebellion
Fortnite is in hot water over a new feature that allows players to talk to an AI-voiced Darth Vader NPC (or non-playable character) in its latest Star Wars event.
SAG-AFTRA, a major entertainment union that represents voice actors among others, filed an unfair labour practice charge against Llama Productions, a subsidiary of Epic, which makes Fortnite. Although the estate of the late James Earl Jones gave Fortnite permission to use the actor’s iconic voice, the union alleges that the company “chose to replace the work of human performers with AI technology” without bargaining the terms or conditions.
The union has been in a continuing battle with big players in the video-game industry since last year over protections against studios using their members’ digital likenesses for AI reproductions without permission. Many popular video-game voice actors have since spoken about the issue, including David Hayter, best known for voicing Solid Snake in the Metal Gear Solid game series.
Since the Darth Vader NPC went live last week, clips on social media have shown the character cursing and making inappropriate comments, including the use of a homophobic slur.
Such language is not befitting a Sith Lord, so Epic Games issued a hotfix to try to clean up Vader’s foul language. According to the game publisher, both the AI model Gemini, which powers their Darth Vader character, and their internal team check for anything the character might say that would violate their rules about hateful language. – Jordyn Streisfield