Disney will invest $1.5 billion in Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, the company announced on Wednesday. As part of the initiative, Disney and Epic Games will create a brand new “games and entertainment universe” over the next few years, Disney said in a statement.

“Our exciting new relationship with Epic Games will bring together Disneys beloved brands and franchises with the hugely popular Fortnite in a transformational new games an entertainment universe,” wrote Disney CEO Bob Iger in the statement. “This marks Disney’s biggest entry ever into the world of games and offers significant opportunities for growth and expansion.”

Players will be able to “play, watch, shop and engage with content, characters and stories from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, Avatar, and more” in the new entertainment universe, which will be powered by Epic’s flagship Unreal Engine. Disney currently uses Unreal Engine to produce movies, video games, and content used in Disney theme parks around the world. It has also partnered with Epic Games previously to bring characters from Marvel, Tron, and Star Wars to Fortnite.

Neither company disclosed how much the valuation of Epic Games, a private company, would be after Disney's investment. Chinese technology conglomerate Tencent currently owns 40 percent of Epic Games, while Sony owns just over 5 percent.

“[We] are collaborating on something entirely new to build a persistent, open and interoperable ecosystem that will bring together the Disney and Fortnite communities,” said Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney in the statement. “Disney was one of the first companies to believe in the potential of bringing their worlds together with ours in Fortnite[.]”

The production pipeline for mainstream video games has always been hectic. The AAA factory is powered by rigid marketing plans and periods of soul-sucking crunch, and while this process has resulted in incredible games over the years, it's also been detrimental to developers' mental health and long-term job stability. Layoffs have long been baked into the video game industry, but in recent months, this trend has been running in overdrive, and it's happening at studios of all sizes.

This week's stories

Kojima Films

Hideo Kojima is partnering with Sony to build a new game that’s actually more like a movie. Of course, you could say this about any of Kojima’s games since Snatcher, but this time around, he’s doing the Hollywood thing on purpose. The new project is codenamed PHYSINT., and it’s a return to Kojima’s action-espionage roots, but it’s definitely not Metal Gear. Apparently it’s going to blur the boundaries between film and games, and it’ll take advantage of Sony’s connections in movies and music. Kojima Productions will start working on the new IP after finishing Death Stranding 2, which is set to come out in 2025. Kojima is also building OD, an Xbox movie — sorry, game — made in collaboration with horror director Jordan Peele.

Xbox on other platforms

It looks like Xbox is preparing to release some of its exclusive titles on PlayStation and Nintendo platforms. A handful of reports rolled out this week suggesting Starfield, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Sea of Thieves and Gears of War are all slated to hit PS5 or Switch in the near future. Xbox head Phil Spencer neither confirmed nor denied the reports, and instead teased an event next week that should clarify the studio’s multiplatform plans.

Layoffs in 2024

Both Sony and Microsoft have delivered their first showcases of 2024, highlighting all of the big, shiny games coming out soon, like Hellblade 2, Avowed, the Silent Hill 2 remake and Stellar Blade. The trailers for these titles are as vibrant as ever and the marketing beats are just as breathless — but, man, it’s really hard to get excited about video games right now. Rampant layoffs have cast a shadow over the industry, and even if 2024 turns out to be a banner year for video game debuts, it still feels shitty.

In the first month of 2024, an estimated 6,000 people in the video game industry lost their jobs. This figure is steadily climbing and it’s building on a rash of layoffs in 2023, when an estimated 10,500 video game jobs were cut. I don’t want to just drop these numbers without context — 2022 saw about 8,500 layoffs and this was considered terrible. 2023 eclipsed this total and, just six weeks in, 2024 is on track to do the same.

Here are some stats from January alone: Riot Games laid off 530 people, or about 11 percent of its workforce, and closed down its experimental publishing label. Devolver Digital laid off 28 people at Artificer, a team it purchased in 2021. Dead by Daylight studio Behaviour Interactive lost 45 people. Sega of America fired 61 workers. Microsoft laid off nearly 2,000 employees across Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax, and Xbox the same week that it became a $3 trillion company. Unity plans to drop 1,800 employees by March, and this is on top of the 1,000 jobs that the studio eliminated in 2023. Embracer Group gutted the team behind Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands and laid off 97 people at Eidos Montreal, canceling a new Deus Ex game in the process. The holding company already terminated about 1,000 jobs in 2023 and its restructuring efforts are expected to last until March.

Recent layoffs have affected studios of all sizes, and they’re happening even as the industry’s leading companies grow financially. If it sounds like I’m repeating myself, that’s because I am — I reported on the layoffs crisis at the end of last year, and things have only become more concerning in the first weeks of 2024. The video game industry received an influx of attention and cash during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, and today’s layoffs are a response to a period of unchecked growth and corporate consolidation.

All of this instability provides an unsettling backdrop for the hype coming out of the video game industry this year. It’s tough to get excited about Xbox’s Avowed when we know people lost their jobs during production, and it’s hard to enjoy Devolver’s next edgy showcase when it just downsized a studio it didn’t need to buy in the first place. 

At the same time, we’re seeing how unionization can help protect the people who make video games. Though dozens of people lost their jobs at Sega of America this year, the studio’s AEGIS-CWA union negotiated to save some roles and offer severance to temp workers. Unionization efforts have been on the rise since 2021, and the appeal of collective bargaining is only clarifying as the firing squads take aim.

Bonus Content

• The futuristic action-RPG Stellar Blade is coming out on April 26, exclusive to PS5.

• Dave the Diver, the pixelated non-indie game that somehow got nominated for Indie Game of the Year, is coming to PS4 and PS5 in April, and it’ll get Godzilla DLC in May.

• Johanna Faries has replaced Mike Ybarra as the president of Blizzard. Ybarra quit during Microsoft’s downsizing in January, and Faries was previously the head of Call of Duty under Activision.

Now Playing

Now that I can actually talk about it, I want to say that Persona 3 Reload is absolutely delicious. The Morning After host Mat Smith wrote our review, go give it a read if you’re a freak like us.

Bluesky, the open-source Twitter alternative, is now open to anyone. After being in beta for a little less than a year and with just over three million users, the social media platform is an option if the ruins of X (formerly Twitter) or Threads aren’t doing it for you.

Bluesky began life as an internal project at Jack Dorsey’s Twitter, but it ended its association with the entity now known as X after Elon Musk’s takeover. “We really believe that the future of social is, and should be, open and decentralized,” Bluesky CEO Jay Graber tells Engadget. “This is something that we think is good for the public conversation overall.”

Decentralized status aside, the service is functionally similar to X and Threads. Posts aren’t tweets but ‘skeets.’ There’s a chronological timeline, but you can also follow numerous other algorithmic feeds created by fellow users. (I’m intrigued by the feed for quiet friends — users you follow who don’t post that often.)

You can find me on there @thatmatsmith.bsky.social. I’m probably going to be one of those quiet friends.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

How security experts unravel ransomware

Former Mandalorian actor Gina Carano sues Disney — with X’s help

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth adds an addictive card game and some familiar social mechanics

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Disney+ starts cracking down on password sharing

The streaming service has reportedly warned US subscribers in an email.

If it worked for Netflix… Disney+ is emailing its subscribers, notifying them about a change in its terms of service. Its service agreement now states users may not share their passwords outside of their household “unless otherwise permitted by [their] service tier,” suggesting new subscription options in the future. It might be time for Mom and Dad to buy their own subscription. I say Mom and Dad, I mean you.

Continue reading.

Taylor Swift also doesn’t like her private jets being tracked

She threatened legal action against the same guy who ran the ElonJet account.

Taylor Swift has threatened legal action against a Florida student who set up multiple social media accounts that release real-time information of her personal aircraft’s whereabouts. The student facing legal action by Swift’s team is the same guy who ran the ElonJet account that tracked Elon Musk’s jet. Facebook and Instagram banned Sweeney’s accounts that track Swift’s air travel late last year, but they’re still live on Bluesky, Mastodon, Telegram and other sites.

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Nintendo thinks it’ll sell more Switch consoles than it predicted this year

And the Switch is old.

Engadget

At almost seven years old, the Nintendo Switch is proving there’s still life in the hybrid console. Enough life for Nintendo to up its predicted sales figures for its current fiscal year. In its third-quarter earnings release, the company announced it was increasing the Switch’s projected sales from 15 million to 15.5 million. That’s great and all, but where’s the Switch 2?

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Just one more hand. Just one more attempt to win at the card game, Queen’s Blood. In my limited preview time with Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, weeks before the game is due to be released, I may have spent a little too long learning the rules of this companion card game, introduced relatively early into the game. And I regret nothing. (For one, because I previewed most of the changes to the battle system a few months ago.)

This early addiction bodes well for the wider game. It’s a sign that the team behind this sequel-of-a-remake is making a world bigger and richer than the occasionally on-the-rails one in Remake. I’m hoping for a more open-world experience, now that the characters have finally escaped Midgar. (See: the plot of Final Fantasy 7 Remake) A change of location, too, shakes up the look of Rebirth. It has plants! Nature, everywhere! At least once you’re out of a satellite town called Kalm in Chapter 2.

Square Enix

First, I played through Chapter 1, which also acts as a tutorial. It’s a flashback to Nibelheim, which explains how protagonist Cloud and antagonist Sephiroth worked together before; well, the latter seemingly lost his mind and slaughtered everyone in town.

It’s a more story-weighted version of my earlier demo, but I could now explore the town that multiple party members grew up in. When Cloud explores his friend Tifa’s house – without her permission – it sets up some entertaining criticisms of his lack of boundaries. Still, it was all predicated on me choosing to be awful and barge into Tifa’s room, play her piano, and just be a bit of a creep.

The chapter also raises some unanswered questions around Cloud and his fuzzy memories of Nibelheim. Anyone who’s played the original knows where this is going, but given how some characters in the first third of the game didn’t die, I’m waiting to see how the developers further shake up the plot for new and old fans. There should be a significant death during this middle chapter of the game: Will they twist the knife?

Let’s go back to the new card game. Queen’s Blood follows on from Triple Triad, Tetra Master and that weird pinball-ish game in Final Fantasy XV that might best be forgotten. You’ll be able to customize your deck of cards, each with a different layout of tiles and occasional special effects. It’s almost Risk-like, aiming to dominate the board and rack up the highest score on three rows. Cards can reclaim territory, lower stats, and all the usual videogame card antics, and yes, I am struggling to explain it in words. But it’s fun. And I should have stopped playing to explore more of the grasslands than I did.

Square Enix

Once you’ve wrapped up your card games and stepped out from Kalm, I could explore in most directions. In the time I had leftover, I saw points of interest packed with treasure, unique monster packs, resources to collect, weapons with skills to master, chocobos to tame and race, chocobo stops to repair (which add fast-travel spots to the map); and the return of the terribly-named Chad with virtual battles and tasks for you to help unlock more materia for extra spells and abilities. I then ate dirt in a battle to unlock the summon spell for Titan.

I liked this pick-and-choose busy-ness, but some diversions felt like they were there for the sake of killing time, a la Assassin’s Creed. I hope the developers remember to pare down travel time where they can, because traversing an area can get boring, even when riding a giant bird.

Fortunately, getting from A to B is interrupted by entertaining, occasionally challenging, battles. One new addition to Rebirth is an enemy detection radar that shows enemies' aggression level, helping you avoid fights when you just want to get going.

Another new dynamic is the party’s bonds with each other, which are now integrated with your movesets and stats. This presented itself in dialogue choices and side quests, adding a popular social mechanic seen in so many JRPGs into this remake sequel. What’s notable is that the more you deepen this friendship, a separate skill tree improves characters’ stats and even unlocks new synergy attacks (which I elaborated on here) to use in battle. Square Enix teased that the level of bonds could affect the story too – but that could just reflect the theme park ‘date’ that Cloud goes on, later, in the original game. We’ll find out in a few weeks.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth launches on the PS5 on February 29, 2024.

Four days after the death of former costar Carl Weathers, onetime The Mandalorian actor Gina Carano is suing Disney and Lucasfilm for her departure from the series — with Elon Musk’s help. Carano, whose post-Disney credits include a film produced by conspiracy theorist Ben Shapiro, posted Tuesday on X, “The truth is I was being hunted down from everything I posted to every post I liked because I was not in line with the acceptable narrative of the time.” X confirmed its assistance in a statement to Engadget.

Carano shared news of the lawsuit in a 694-word post on X. In the essay, she claims never to have used aggressive language, compared Republicans to Jewish people during the Holocaust or written anything racist or transphobic. She insists her male costars were “permitted to speak without harassment & re-education courses or termination,” but she “was not afforded the same right to exercise my freedom of speech.”

“Artists do not sign away our rights as American citizens when we enter into employment,” Carano wrote Tuesday. However, since she wasn’t arrested or detained for her views, her rights as an American citizen appear fully intact. Meanwhile, American businesses like Disney have the right not to employ actors whose views clash with their brand.

The actor and former mixed martial arts competitor thanked Musk and X on Tuesday for “giving me an opportunity to bring my case to light” by helping fund her lawsuit. Musk previously said he would pay the legal costs of users who got in trouble for their posts on the platform.

X confirmed its monetary assistance in a statement to Engadget. “As a sign of X Corp’s commitment to free speech, we’re proud to provide financial support for Gina Carano’s lawsuit, empowering her to seek vindication of her free speech rights on X and the ability to work without bullying, harassment, or discrimination,” a company spokesperson wrote.

Disney+

Carano’s troubles with Disney arose from social media posts on X (Twitter at the time) and Instagram. In her posts, she questioned the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines, blamed the Biden administration for the deaths of vaccinated people, claimed Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself and added “boop/bop/beep” as her pronouns.

The final straw for Disney was when she shared a post on Instagram implying that the treatment of conservatives in Trump-era America had parallels to the targeting of Jews in Nazi-era Germany. The following day, Disney dropped Carano from The Mandalorian and the (since canceled) Rangers of the New Republic series.

“Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future,” a spokesperson wrote in a statement at the time. “Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.” Carano’s agency, United Talent Agency, dropped her around the same time.

Carano’s post-Star Wars career has included Terror on the Prairie, produced by Ben Shapiro’s The Daily Wire. She also starred in the 2022 film My Son Hunter, a “fictional retelling of the lifestyle and scandals of Hunter Biden, son of US President Joe Biden.”

It looks like Elon Musk isn’t the only billionaire who doesn’t like having their private jet tracked. Pop star Taylor Swift has threatened legal action against a Florida student who set up multiple social media accounts that release real-time information as to the whereabouts of her personal aircraft, according to The Washington Post.

This is eerily reminiscent of the whole ElonJet scandal of late 2022, in which Twitter banned an account that was tracking Musk’s jet. As a matter of fact, the student facing legal action by Swift’s team is the same guy who ran that account. Jack Sweeney, 21, runs various social media pages that log the takeoffs and landings of aircraft owned by billionaires, politicians and, of course, pop stars.

Back in December, Swift’s attorneys wrote Sweeney a cease-and-desist letter that said the pop star would “have no choice but to pursue any and all legal remedies” if he did not stop publishing details as to her jet’s whereabouts, likening it to “stalking and harassing behavior.”

The letter went on to say that Sweeney’s actions had caused Swift and her family “direct and irreparable harm, as well as emotional and physical distress,” and had heightened her “constant state of fear for her personal safety.” It’s worth noting that Swift has had numerous stalkers and harassers throughout her career. Just last month, a man was arrested for stalking her at home on several occasions.

“While this may be a game to you, or an avenue that you hope will earn you wealth or fame, it is a life-or-death matter for our client,” the legal team wrote. The letter added that there is “no legitimate interest in or public need for this information, other than to stalk, harass, and exert dominion and control.”

Tree Paine, a spokesperson for Swift, made a direct line from Sweeney’s social media accounts to Swift’s harassers, saying that the pop star’s team couldn’t “comment on any ongoing police investigation but can confirm the timing of stalkers suggests a connection.”

Sweeney told The Washington Post that this is just an attempt to scare him away from sharing public data, noting that all of his jet-tracking accounts draw location information from the Federal Aviation Administration and volunteer hobbyists. Aircraft regularly broadcast their locations via transponders so air traffic controllers can see what’s going on. Anyone on the ground can pick up these signals by using a device called an ADS-B receiver, which are widely available online. “This information is already out there,” Sweeney said. “Her team thinks they can control the world.”

Swift’s team wrote that Sweeney is “notorious for disregarding the personal safety of others in exchange for public attention and/or requests for financial gain”, citing an incident in which he asked Elon Musk for $50,000 to take down the ElonJet account.

Facebook and Instagram banned Sweeney’s accounts that track Swift’s air travel late last year, but they’re still live on Bluesky, Mastodon, Telegram and other social media sites. His live-tracking accounts have been banned on X, but he’s allowed to post location data with a 24-hour delay. In addition to the world’s biggest pop star, Sweeney also tracks people like Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos, Kim Kardashian and Mark Zuckerberg.

It doesn’t look like Sweeney's planning to stop tracking the pop star's jet anytime soon. He's lawyered up to defend himself from legal action.

Meta’s Oversight Board wants the company to update its manipulated media policy, calling the current rules “incoherent.” This follows the board’s decision about a misleadingly edited video of President Joe Biden.

The video featured footage from October 2022, when the president accompanied his granddaughter, who was voting in person for the first time. News footage shows him placing an “I voted” sticker on her shirt. A Facebook user later shared an edited version that looped the moment, so it appeared as if he repeatedly touched her chest, adding the caption that Biden was a “sick pedophile.”

The Oversight Board said the video did not violate Meta’s manipulated media policy because it wasn’t edited with AI tools, and because the edits were “obvious and therefore unlikely to mislead.” (Has the board been on Facebook?)

The board said it was concerned about the current manipulated media policy in many ways, including how it was overly focused on how content has been created rather than on which specific harms it prevents (like damaging electoral processes). It wrote Meta should “reconsider this policy quickly, given the number of elections in 2024.”

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

Final Fantasy 14 will require two subscriptions on Xbox

How to watch Super Bowl 2024

The best air fryers

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Microsoft may bring Bethesda’s Starfield and Indiana Jones games to the PS5 after all

The company may reveal ‘more details’ next week.

Microsoft

Microsoft’s gaming division appears to be considering a significant shift in its major-exclusives strategy. Rumors have been swirling for a while about the company bringing Hi-Fi Rush, a well-received game from last year, and Sea of Thieves to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5. But the company could add some of its more recent blockbuster Xbox exclusives to the PS5 as well, which would mark a monumental change in policy. Multiple publications suggested several games could make the jump, including the Gears of War series, Indiana Jones and Starfield. “We’re listening and we hear you,” Xbox boss Phil Spencer wrote on X: “We’ve been planning a business update event for next week, where we look forward to sharing more details with you about our vision for the future of Xbox. Stay tuned.”

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Microsoft is teaming up with Semafor on AI-assisted news stories

Signals will be written entirely by journalists, using Microsoft’s chatbot as a research tool.

Microsoft is teaming up with media website Semafor on a new project that uses ChatGPT to aid the creation of news stories, called signals. It’s one of several journalism collaborations Microsoft is announcing, conveniently following that New York Times lawsuit filed against the company and OpenAI for copyright infringement.

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YouTube may have an Apple Vision Pro app on its roadmap

Google said in January it had no immediate plans to support Apple’s headset.

Engadget

Google reportedly plans to develop a YouTube app for the Apple Vision Pro. A YouTube spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that the company plans to make a native Vision Pro app while optimizing YouTube for Safari as a stopgap solution. Despite Vision Pro launching with over 600 native apps, YouTube said on January 19 it had no plans for a Vision Pro app. Netflix is another high-profile holdout, while Disney+ went all in.

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Rivian will reveal the R2 on March 7. The company confirmed on Monday in a post on X (Twitter) that customers should “get ready to meet R2 on March 7th.” Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe previously said the next-generation platform would be smaller and cheaper than the R1 lineup.

The automaker hasn’t yet said where the event will take place, but it will all but certainly be in Laguna Beach, CA. Last month, its city council publicly posted an approved request in its minutes for a “Rivian R2 Launch,” part of a “worldwide product launch event at the Rivian Theater” on the same date. If that wasn’t enough of a clue, Rivian’s X teaser included audio of waves crashing, beachgoers playing and seagulls squawking.

Rivian representatives reportedly plan to hold the event at the Rivian South Coast Theater in Laguna Beach. The automaker bought the cinema (which opened in 1937 and closed in 2015) in 2021 before renovating and reopening it this past December. The company asked the council for permission to display six vehicles on a grassy public area near the theater, which sounds ideal for a media hands-on area after a formal presentation inside.

The R2 platform is expected to start with a smaller SUV (reportedly about the size of a Jeep Grand Cherokee) priced in the $40,000 to $60,000 range. R1 platform vehicles start at around $80,000, although some models are available for leasing, which makes them eligible for a full $7,500 tax credit.

When Scaringe held an Instagram Q&A last year, he said the vehicle’s expected delivery date had slipped from 2025 to 2026. So, unless Rivian’s plans have changed dramatically since then, expect the March event to precede a long waitlist period before you can take one home. Rivian still hasn’t started construction on an upcoming Georgia factory that will produce the R2 lineup.

Rivian loses about $31,000 on every R1 platform vehicle it makes as the EV maker positions its brand for an all-electric future. The R2 is expected to be more efficient (with more accessible pricing) as the automaker tries to pivot into profitability. The company’s CEO said in late 2023 that it was chatting with a “pipeline” of commercial customers for its electric vans after its four-year exclusivity agreement with Amazon ended. However, it still plans to fulfill its contract with Amazon, which calls for the delivery of 100,000 vans to the online retailer by 2030.

Microsoft is teaming up with media website Semafor on a new project that uses ChatGPT to aid in the creation of news stories, The Financial Times has reported. It's one of several journalistic collaborations Microsoft is set to announce today, and follows a New York Times lawsuit filed against the software giant and its partner, OpenAI, for copyright infringement.

Semafor, co-founded by former Buzzfeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith, will create a feed called "Signals" that will be sponsored by Microsoft for an undisclosed but "substantial" sum, the report states. It will highlight breaking news and analysis, offering a dozen or so posts per day. All stories will be written entirely by journalists, with the AI effectively acting as a research tool.

Signals responds to the deep and continuing shifts in the digital media landscape and the post-social news moment, and to the risks and opportunities posed by artificial intelligence, Semafor wrote.

Specifically, Semafor's team will use AI tools to rapidly find breaking event reporting from other news sources around the world in multiple languages, while providing translation tools. An article might therefore include Chinese, Indian or other sources, with reporters adding context and summarizing the different viewpoints. "Journalists need to adopt these tools in order to survive and thrive for another generation," former AP journalist Noreen Gillespie, now with Microsoft, told The Financial Times. 

The use of ChatGPT and other AI chatbots has been controversial in newsrooms, with sites like CNET recently using them to generate entire feature-length articles (albeit with the help of human editors). This despite the fact that AI can "hallucinate" (make up untrue content) and exhibit other kinds of bizarre behavior. Newsrooms are trying to figure out how to use them to improve reporting and potentially compete against chatbots churning out reams of SEO-friendly content.

Late last year, The New York Times announced that it was suing OpenAI and Microsoft for using published news articles to train its chatbots without providing compensation. The lawsuit, which potentially seeks billions in statutory and actual damages, marks the first time a major news organization has pursued ChatGPT's developers for copyright infringement.

Microsoft also announced collaborations today with the Craig Newmark School of Journalism, the GroundTruth Project, the Online News Association and other journalism organizations. 

The Oversight Board is urging Meta to update its manipulated media policy, calling the current rules “incoherent.” The admonishment comes in a closely watched decision about a misleadingly edited video of President Joe Biden.

The board ultimately sided with Meta regarding its decision to not remove the clip at the center of the case. The video featured footage from October 2022, when the president accompanied his granddaughter who was voting in person for the first time. News footage shows that after voting, he placed an “I voted” sticker on her shirt. A Facebook user later shared an edited version that looped the moment so it appeared as if he repeatedly touched her chest. The caption accompanying the clip called him a “sick pedophile,” and said those who voted for him were “mentally unwell.”

In its decision, the Oversight Board said that the video was not a violation of Meta’s narrowly-written manipulated media policy because it was not edited with AI tools, and because the edits were “obvious and therefore unlikely to mislead” most users. “Nevertheless, the Board is concerned about the Manipulated media policy in its current form, finding it to be incoherent, lacking in persuasive justification and inappropriately focused on how content has been created rather than on which specific harms it aims to prevent (for example, to electoral processes),” the board wrote. “Meta should “reconsider this policy quickly , given the number of elections in 2024.”

The company’s current rules only apply to videos that are edited with AI, but don’t cover other types of editing that could be misleading. In its policy recommendations to Meta, the Oversight Board says it should write new rules that cover audio and video content. The policy should apply not just to misleading speech but “content showing people doing things they did not do.” The board says these rules should apply “regardless of the method of creation.” Furthermore, the board recommends that Meta should no longer remove posts with manipulated media if the content itself isn't breaking any other rules. Instead, the board suggests Meta “apply a label indicating the content is significantly layered and may mislead.”

The recommendations underscore mounting concern among researchers and civil society groups about how the surge in AI tools could enable a new wave of viral election misinformation. In a statement, a Meta spokesperson said the company is “reviewing the Oversight Board’s guidance and will respond publicly” within the next 60 days. While that response would come well before the 2024 presidential election, it’s unclear when, or if, any policy changes may come. The Oversight Board writes in its decision that Meta representatives indicated the company “plans to update the Manipulated Media policy to respond to the evolution of new and increasingly realistic AI.”