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AI models using individual's work without permission (or compensation) is nothing new, with entities like The New York Times and Getty Images initiating lawsuits against AI creators alongside artists and writers. In March, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati contributed to the ongoing uncertainty, telling The Wall Street Journal she wasn't sure if Sora, the company's new text-to-video AI tool, takes data from YouTube, Instagram or Facebook posts. Now, YouTube's CEO Neal Mohan has responded with a clear warning to OpenAI that using its videos to teach Sora would be a "clear violation" of the platform's terms of use.

In an interview with Bloomberg Originals host Emily Chang, Mohan stated, "From a creator's perspective, when a creator uploads their hard work to our platform, they have certain expectations. One of those expectations is that the terms of service is going to be abided by. It does not allow for things like transcripts or video bits to be downloaded, and that is a clear violation of our terms of service. Those are the rules of the road in terms of content on our platform."

A lot of uncertainty and controversy still surrounds how OpenAI trains Sora, along with ChatGPT and DALL-E, with The Wall Street Journal recently reporting the company plans to use YouTube video transcriptions to train GPT-5. On the other hand, OpenAI competitor Google is apparently respecting the rules — at least when it comes to YouTube (which it owns). Google's AI model Gemini requires similar data to learn but Mohan claims it only uses certain videos, depending on permissions are given in each creator's licensing contract.

Roku already serves ads through its platform, but it's also apparently exploring the idea of showing you ads while you're using third-party devices connected to its TVs. Based on a recent patent filing unearthed by Lowpass, the company is looking to develop a system or a method "for ad insertion by a display device coupled to a media device via a high-definition media interface (HDMI) connection." That means if you've connected another streaming device or console — say, an Apple TV, a Chromecast or a PlayStation — to a Roku TV via HDMI, the company would still be able to serve you advertisements. 

In particular, Roku is hoping to show you commercials while whatever you're watching or playing on the third-party device attached to it is on pause. In its patent, it described several methods on how it can detect whether the show or game on screen is paused, such as receiving a pause signal from the remote control, detecting a pause icon, looking at several video frames and determining that the image on screen hasn't changed for some time and getting a silent audio signal from the HDMI connection. 

If it works as intended, those ads wouldn't impact your viewing or playing experience (much), assuming you're truly stepping away or doing something else in the meantime. While you'd probably prefer those experiences to be free of ads altogether, Roku is at least looking to make sure that it's serving you relevant ads. It could analyze frozen video or audio frames and use automatic content recognition (ACR) technology to identify what's on screen. Or it could analyze metadata to show ads connected to what you're playing or watching. It could also serve commercials based on what third-party device is attached to your TV. 

As Lowpass notes, the company could have conjured the idea because manufacturers typically don't make a lot of money from hardware sales. For the fiscal year of 2023, Roku lost $44 million on smart TVs. Similarly, Samsung's visual display and digital appliances division posted $37.5 million in operating losses for last year's fourth quarter. Meanwhile, ads and services generated $1.6 billion in profit for Roku. This idea could potentially make it more money... if the prospect of watching commercials while your show or game is paused doesn't turn you off buying Roku TV, of course. This is just a patent at this point in time, though, and Roku may very well end up scrapping it and not implementing it at all. 

A new Carbon Majors Database report, which examines carbon dioxide emissions, found that just 57 companies were responsible for 80 percent of the global carbon dioxide emissions between 2016 and 2022. ExxonMobil, which topped the list of United States companies, contributed 1.4 percent of all global carbon dioxide emissions. It has net zero emissions targets.

Nearly 200 parties adopted the 2015 Paris Agreement, committing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, 58 of the 100 state- and investor-owned companies in the Carbon Majors Database have since increased their production.

The International Energy Agency found coal consumption increased by eight percent over the seven years to 8.3 billion tons — a record high. State-owned Coal India is one of the top three carbon dioxide producers. Russia’s state-owned energy company Gazprom and state-owned oil firm Saudi Aramco rounded out the group.

— Mat Smith

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The chaos of YouTube’s multicam Coachella stream

When you apply sports logic to a music festival.

YouTube

YouTube is hyping its exclusive Coachella streaming coverage, which starts next week. The headlining feature is the platform’s multiview experience (already familiar to sports fans) — but who wants to watch up to four stages simultaneously, with audio for one of them. It’s… a music festival. Coachella runs from April 12 to 14 and April 19 to 21.

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The latest Razer Blade 18 is now available to order

If you want 4K 200Hz display, you’ll need an extra $1,700 and a bit of time.

Razer

Finally, after a reveal at CES, the 2024 edition of the Razor Blade 18 arrives for $3,099. The base system has an i9-14900HX processor, 32GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD storage, Wi-Fi 7, a triple-fan cooling system and a six-speaker array with THX spatial audio support. You can equip the laptop with up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 (the base model has a 4070 graphics card). In what Razer claims is a first for a laptop, there’s Thunderbolt 5 connectivity, but only if you opt for a 4080 or 4090 GPU.

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Apple cuts over 700 jobs as it closes car and display projects

Eight offices in Santa Clara, California were affected by the layoffs.

Over 700 people at Apple have recently lost their jobs, mostly from offices in Santa Clara. The location that dealt with the company’s electric vehicle projects has lost 371 people. There may not be enough space at that new home robot project.

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Say goodbye to your best friend's neighbor's great aunt's Disney+ account. Disney CEO Bob Iger said in an interview with CNBC that the streamer is cracking down on password sharing worldwide this summer. The company enacted the same restrictions for Canadian subscribers last fall.

The move is hardly a surprise, as Disney's CFO Hugh Johnston shared the plan during an earnings call in February. "Paid sharing is an opportunity for us. It's one that our competitor is obviously taking advantage of, and one that sits in front of us. We've got some very specific actions that we're taking in the next couple of months." Disney-owned Hulu started its own crackdown on password sharing on March 14, and both streamers' terms of service explicitly ban people from using other customers' login information (Though its latest announcement indicates Disney is actually ready to enforce it). 

Streamers across the lineup are restricting password sharing, and it seems to be working — for them, not us. According to analytics firm Antenna, Netflix's United States signups increased by 102 percent during the first four days after the rule went into effect, compared to the 60 days prior. There were an average of 73,000 new signups daily, far outpacing cancelations. Max will also start restricting sharing this year, fully cracking down in 2025.  

Disney+ will start its clampdown in some countries come June, expanding to a second wave of countries in September. It's unclear as of now which group the US is in, but Disney will likely provide a breakdown when the dates get closer. Disney+ currently costs $8 monthly with ads and $14 monthly for ad-free viewing. 

Over the years, Engadget has been the target of a common SEO scam, wherein someone claims ownership of an image and demands a link bank to a particular website. A lot of other websites would tell you the same thing, but now the scammers are making their fake DMCA takedown notices and threats of legal action look more legit with the help of easily accessible AI tools. 

According to a report by 404Media, the publisher of the website Tedium received a "copyright infringement notice" via email from a law firm called Commonwealth Legal last week. Like older, similar attempts at duping the recipient, the sender said they're reaching out "in relation to an image" connected to their client. In this case, the sender demanded the addition of a "visible and clickable link" to a website called "tech4gods" underneath the photo that was allegedly stolen. 

Since Tedium actually used a photo from a royalty-free provider, the publisher looked into the demand, found the law firm's website, and upon closer inspection, realized that the images of its lawyers were generated by AI. As 404Media notes, the images of the lawyers had vacant looks in the eyes that's commonly seen in photos created by AI tools. If you do a reverse image search on them, you'll get results from a website with the URL generated.photos, which uses artificial intelligence to make "unique, worry-free model photos... from scratch." The publisher also found that the law firm's listed address that's supposed to be on the fourth floor of a building points to a one-floor structure on Google Street View. The owner of tech4gods said he had nothing to do with the scam but admitted that he used to buy backlinks for his website. 

This is but one example of how bad actors can use AI tools to fool and scam people, and we have to be more vigilant as instances like this will just likely keep on growing. Reverse image search engines are your friend, but they may not be infallible and may not always help. Deepfakes, for instance, have become a big problem in recent years, as bad actors continue to use them to create convincing videos and audio not just to scam people, but also to spread misinformation online. 

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Over 700 people at Apple have recently lost their jobs, according to the latest WARN report posted by the Employment Development Department of California (EDD). Most of the people who were laid off worked at Apple's offices in Santa Clara, with 371 of them coming from the company location that primarily dealt with the company's now-defunct electric vehicle project. Under California law, companies are required to file a report with the EDD for each location affected by layoffs under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) program. 

Eight Apple locations in Santa Clara were hit by layoffs, including the main car office, though one of them worked on its in-house MicroLED display project that was reportedly scrapped in March due to costs and technical difficulties. The company was hoping to produce its own screens for iPhones, Macs and its smartwatches, but that clearly isn't happening anytime soon. 

Apple's original car ambitions were to build a fully autonomous vehicle without pedals and a steering wheel, until it decided to develop an electric vehicle instead. A previous Bloomberg report said Apple canceled the initiative internally called "Project Titan" after investing billions of dollars and a decade into it. The employees who were developing the vehicle were given the chance to transfer to Apple's other divisions, including its teams that are reportedly working on artificial intelligence and home robotics. But based on Apple's WARN report, it wasn't able to re-integrate everyone into the company. 

Apple is believed to be in the very early stages of developing personal robotics for people's homes. One of the machines that's currently a work-in-progress is a robot that follows people around, while the other is a table-top device that uses a robot to move a display around, according to another Bloomberg report. The company's work on personal robotics is part of its efforts, which also include the Vision Pro, to find new sources of revenue. 

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Crypt of the Necrodancer just won’t die — and that’s a good thing. The nearly decade-old roguelike rhythm game received new content on Thursday, bringing virtual pop star Hatsune Miku into the fold as a playable character.

Developer Brace Yourself Games says Hatsune Miku is one of the more challenging characters in the game. She can move in all eight directions and takes out foes by boogying her way through groups of enemies. The developer’s press release explains, “She doesn’t have a shovel like most characters, so she must use her dance-like dash attack to break through walls instead.” Hell yeah.

She has a “Sing!” ability — entirely new to the game — that charms nearby enemies. When one of these charmed foes strikes Miku, she heals instead of losing her health. Brace Yourself Games says it even reskinned all of the game’s armors as official Miku outfits, so you can put on new threads as you shimmy and groove your way through legions of ghosts and skeletons.

Photo by Mat Smith / Engadget

If you aren’t familiar, Hatsune Miku is one of the world’s biggest virtual pop stars. She’s a perpetual 16-year-old because she’s the personification of a “Vocaloid,” software that synthesizes pre-recorded vocals to simulate human singing. The avatar has sold out 14,000-seat arenas, collaborated with Pharrell Williams and opened for Lady Gaga. She wasn’t the first digital celebrity, but she may be the most famous.

The Hatsune Miku DLC for Crypt of the Necrodancer is available now for $1.99 on the PlayStation Store and PC via Steam. The content arrives a little later on Switch — on April 13. Check out her moves in the trailer below.