The US House of Representatives has passed the Take It Down Act, a bipartisan bill that criminalizes the "publication of non-consensual, sexually exploitative images," including AI-generated deepfakes that depict "identifiable, real people." It would also compel platforms, such as social networks, to remove those images within 48 hours of being notified. The bill enjoyed overwhelming support in Congress and was cleared for approval by President Trump with a vote of 409 to 2. It passed Senate unanimously in February, and Trump, who previously talked about it while addressing Congress, is expected to sign the bill into law. 

Nearly every state in the country has its own laws revolving around revenge porn, and there are 20 states that already have laws that cover deepfakes. Take It Down's authors, who include Senator Ted Cruz, explained that those laws "vary in classification of crime and penalty and have uneven criminal prosecution." Victims are also still having a tough time getting their images removed under those laws. However, it's that takedown provision in the bill that has raised concerns among critics. 

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the provision could potentially apply to any image that's perceived as sexual or intimate even if it's not revenge porn. It has much broader definitions of what a "non-consensual, sexually exploitative image" is compared to its narrower definitions in other parts of the bill, the organization said. In addition, the EFF argued that the bill lacks safeguards against bad-faith takedown requests. Since online platforms typically use automated systems to remove content, and 48 hours are likely not enough time to verify each request's legitimacy, they'll most likely just depublish most reported images without checking them first. 

One of the Republican representatives who voted against the bill said it was "ripe for abuse, with unintended consequences." But Cruz previously said after introducing Take It Down that it will "protect and empower all victims" of revenge porn by "creating a level playing field at the federal level and putting the responsibility on websites to have in place procedures to remove these images."

Etsy is selling Reverb, six years after it purchased the online marketplace for musical instruments. Reverb didn't say how much money is changing hands, but Etsy purchased the company for $275 million in 2019. In its announcement, Reverb said that the investors Creator Partners, which was founded by former SoundCloud CEO Kerry Trainor, and Servco, the owner of Fender Musical Instruments Corporation, have entered an agreement to buy the company. The marketplace will not be merging with either investor and will be "privately-held [and] independently operated" like it was before Etsy's acquisition. 

Reverb CEO David Mandelbrot said the deal is expected to be completed in the coming weeks. He assured users that they can continue buying and selling on the platform without any disruption during the process. He also briefly talked about what the company is working on for its users, including preparing for the pilot of a new selling option that would allow people to get paid faster and to drop off their instruments locally without even needing to create a listing for them. This could help buyers who want to get their gear locally when available or those who don't want to pay extra on top for tariffs. Reverb is also working on a way to make it easier for find what a buyer is looking for and on a way for sellers to be able ship their instruments more safely. 

DoorDash is asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit filed by Uber in February, calling it meritless and a "cynical and calculated scare tactic." Uber sued the biggest food delivery provider in the US earlier this year, accusing it of putting pressure on restaurants to exclusively use its services. At the time, Uber said that it heard from "restaurants across the country" that DoorDash was charging higher commission rates from restaurants that also sell their food on Uber Eats. It also accused DoorDash of threatening to demote restaurants in its listings if they're also available on the Uber Eats app. But in its motion for dismissal, DoorDash said Uber's lawsuit isn't about protecting competition but avoiding it.

The food delivery provider asserted that Uber "has been unable to offer merchants, consumers, and couriers the high-quality services" that it provides, so Uber "resorted to asserting baseless legal claims" instead of competing on its own merits. It wrote in its motion that Uber's complaint is "rooted in the misguided notion" that it has to change its business practices, which it argued are pro-competitive, to give way to Uber's business. The company explained, however, that the law is "concerned with the protection of competition, not competitors."

Meanwhile, Uber told TechCrunch that DoorDash was "having a hard time understanding" its complaint. "When restaurants are forced to choose between unfair terms or retaliation, that’s not competition — it’s coercion," its spokesperson said. The Superior Court of San Francisco County, California is scheduled to hear Uber's lawsuit on July 11. 

While the Switch 2 has backwards compatibility, Nintendo is releasing upgraded versions of its old games with enhanced framerates and resolution, as well as extra content. It's also selling upgrades cheaper than full games, which you can get for titles you already own. The upgrades for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom will set you back $10. Now, the company has started revealing more upgrade prices for old games, and it looks like the ones for Kirby and the Forgotten Land and Super Mario Party Jamboree will cost you twice as much at $20. 

NintendoLife first posted about the upgrades' potential prices based on their eShop listings for Europe. The company has updated its US eShop since then to show that they're also being sold for $20 in the country. If you buy the upgrade for Kirby and the Forgotten Land, you're getting access to a new part of the game called Star-Crossed World, wherein you have to uncover the mystery surrounding the meteor that struck the world. Meanwhile Super Mario Party Jamboree comes with Jamboree TV, a game show hosted by Toad. The Switch 2 version of the title uses the console's Joy-Con 2 and microphone, and if you use its camera, you can also put your face into the action during mini-games. 

Super Mario Party Jamboree for the Switch 2 will be available on July 24, while Kirby's Switch 2 edition will be available on August 28. Both games will set you back $80 if you buy the full Switch 2 version instead of upgrading an old copy. Nintendo has yet to release the prices for the Switch 2 editions of Pokémon Legends: Z-A and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, which will be available later this year. 

OpenAI is giving free ChatGPT users limited access to its Deep Research tool without the need to pay for it. In addition, the company has expanded the tool's limits for all users by rolling out a lightweight version of it powered by its o4-mini model. It says the o4-mini Deep Research feature produces slightly shorter responses, but is "nearly as smart, more cost-efficient and delivers similarly high-quality results" as the original version. OpenAI previously released the tool for use by paying Pro, Plus, Team, Edu and Enterprise subscribers. But even they have a limited number of Deep Research queries per month. 

Plus users, for instance, only had access to 10 inquiries, whereas Pro subscribers paying $200 monthly had a limit of 125. Now, when users hit their limit on the original version, ChatGPT will switch over to the lightweight one. Plus and Team subscribers are now getting an extra 15 Deep Research inquiries a month on top of their 10, while Pro users are getting an additional 125 tasks powered by the lightweight version of the tool on top of their 125. Enterprise and Edu users are getting access to the lightweight tool next week and will get 15 more inquiries every month. As for free users, they can use the tool powered by o4-mini to get up to five answers monthly. 

Deep Research has the capacity to analyze websites and various sources to create thorough reports with citations. The company says the tool is "fine-tuned on the OpenAI o3 reasoning model," but the lightweight version is "significantly cheaper to serve."

Perplexity has rolled out an update for its iOS app, giving iPhone users access to its AI voice assistant that was initially released for Android users earlier this year. Its voice assistant can perform tasks for the user by browsing the web or accessing other apps for them. If they ask the assistant to find them a table for a specific restaurant, for instance, Perplexity can launch the OpenTable app with the number of people, the date and the time already filled out. The user still has to perform the final action and book a reservation, but it's already laid out for them — all they have to do is click the button. 

Users can also ask the assistant to draft emails for them for specific contacts, which they'll have to send themselves, and create reminders for them on the calendar. They can ask it to recommend them spots they could visit, such as restaurants serving food they want to eat, and Perplexity will mark locations on the map. Of course, they can ask the assistant to do web searches for them, such as finding specific videos that Perplexity can open on the YouTube app. 

As The Verge notes, Perplexity's voice assistant works on older iPhones, unlike Apple Intelligence that only works on the company's more recent models. The iOS assistant also doesn't have the capability to look at the world for the user and tell them what they're seeing yet, though the feature is already available on Android and could make its way to iPhones in the future. 

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More people worldwide will be seeing ads on Threads in the future. Back in January, Meta launched a small test of ads visible to a subset of users in the US and Japan, which included a handful of brands. Threads was completely ad-free since it became available a year-and-a-half before that, though Meta had been planning to put ads on the service months before the test began. Now, Meta is rolling out ads on Threads to over 30 countries globally. That means the advertisements will reach a bigger percentage of its 300 million users, though it will be interesting to see if their rollout will have any impact on the service's steady growth. 

Meta didn't list out those 30 countries, and it also didn't say how often ads will show up in people's feeds. Like in the initial test period though, the advertisements will appear in between organic content or posts from people and friends users follow. Meta is opening up ads on Threads to all its eligible advertisers around the world, as well, so users will be seeing placements from more companies, including ones local to their countries. The company told us that it's adopting a phased approach to its rollout, so advertisements might appear more and more frequently on the service as time goes on. 

Google will not make any to changes to how third-party cookies work on the Chrome browser at all. Anthony Chavez, Google VP for Privacy Sandbox, has announced that the company has "made the decision to maintain [its] current approach to offering users third-party cookie choice in Chrome." It will also "not be rolling out a new standalone prompt for third-party cookies" that would have allowed users to opt out of being tracked by advertisers. Google has made the announced a few days after a federal judge ruled that it has an illegal monopoly on online advertising. 

The company originally announced that it was going to phase out third-party tracking cookies in 2022 as part of its Privacy Sandbox initiative, which aims to make the web more secure and private to use. But due to a series of delays and regulatory hurdles — the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and the US Department of Justice both looked into Google's initiative out of concerns that it could harm smaller advertisers — the planned deprecation got delayed to 2024 and then again to 2025. 

Last year, Google ultimately decided that it wasn't going to kill third-party cookies and will instead introduce "a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing." That new experience isn't coming. In his new announcement, Chavez said that a lot has changed since the Privacy Sandbox initiative debuted, and Google has taken new developments in privacy-enhancing technologies that secure people's browsing into consideration when it made its decision.

Despite killing all its plans to remove third-party cookies from Chrome, Google will keep the Privacy Sandbox initiative alive. Chavez said it will continue enhancing tracking protections in Chrome's incognito mode, such as launching IP Protection later this year, and will continue working on features like Safe Browsing, Safety Check and built-in password protections.

If you think Just Dance would be a great addition to your library of virtual reality games and experiences, then mark this date: October 15. 2024. Ubisoft is launching Just Dance VR: Welcome to Dancity that day for the Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest Pro and Meta Quest 3. You'll be able to customize your avatars for the game and choose your own body shape, facial expression, skin color, hair and outfit. Once you're done creating a virtual version of yourself, you can enter the Dancity social hub to meet other players. 

You'll also have your own "apartment" in game, where you can dance with up to six players or do other interactive activities with the group, like play basketball. The game will let you send emote stickers to players who aren't in your friends list, but you can do voice chats with dancers who are. Welcome to Dancity features 360-degree environments and what Ubisoft describes as an "all-new gameplay with two-hand scoring."

You'll be able to dance to 25 hit and original songs at launch, including Don't Stop Me Now by Queen, Bad Liar by Selena Gomez, Starships by Nicki Minaj and Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen. As UploadVR notes, the game was supposed to be exclusively available to Pico headsets. However, after the ByteDance-owned company laid off a big portion of its workforce, Ubisoft started working with a new partner (Meta) to develop the game.

At Apple's WWDC presentation this year, the company said it was working with Blackmagic Design to make immersive videos for the Vision Pro easier to work with and capture. Turns out Blackmagic is currently developing a camera specifically to capture immersive films for Apple's mixed-reality headset. The digital cinema company and manufacturer announced the Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive camera on X/Twitter and made sure to add a few photos to give us a glimpse of what it would look like. 

It didn't share a lot of details about the device other than it's "designed to capture content for Apple Vision Pro" with 8,160 x 7,200 resolution per eye and "16 stops of dynamic range for 90fps stereoscopic 3D immersive cinema content." Based on the images Blackmagic attached to its post, users will even be able to strap the camera to a drone for aerial videos.

The company is hoping to release the camera sometime later this year, though it didn't say how much the device would cost. In the past, Blackmagic released a camera that can shoot in 12K for $9,995, which is much lower than what other comparable models cost. Last year, it unveiled its first full-frame model that can shoot video in 6K for $2,595. 

Blackmagic Design

Apple showed off the new lens Canon is working on for its R7 camera at WWDC, as well. The 7.8mm f/4 dedicated spatial lens is also meant to capture content for the Apple Vision Pro. While the brand has previously released lenses for virtual reality, it said that none of its current cameras are fast enough to offer video that matches Apple's headset. Like Blackmagic's announcement, Canon's was light on details, though we'll most likely hear more information the nearer we get to the lens' release date. 

Catch up here for all the news out of Apple's WWDC 2024.