Zoom has made changes to its terms of service after online blowback over recent updates to the company’s fine print allowing AI training on customer data. A report from StackDiary over the weekend highlighted how the changes, which rolled out in March without fanfare, appeared to grant the company sweeping control over customer data for AI training purposes. In response, Zoom published a blog post today claiming it wouldn’t do what its terms said it could do; the company then updated its terms in response to the continued blowback. It now says it doesn’t train AI models on consumer video, audio or chats “without customer consent.”

At least part of the issue stemmed from Zoom’s experimental AI tools, including IQ Meeting Summary (ML-powered summarizations) and IQ Team Chat Compose (AI-powered message drafting). Although account owners have to provide consent before starting a meeting using these tools, additional participants are only presented with two options: accept the terms and join the meeting, or reject them and leave the meeting.

“What raises alarm is the explicit mention of the company’s right to use this data for machine learning and artificial intelligence, including training and tuning of algorithms and models,” Alex Ivanovs wrote for Stack Diary. “This effectively allows Zoom to train its AI on customer content without providing an opt-out option, a decision that is likely to spark significant debate about user privacy and consent.” Ivanovs highlighted how the terms give it the right to “redistribute, publish, import, access, use, store, transmit, review, disclose, preserve, extract, modify, reproduce, share, use, display, copy, distribute, translate, transcribe, create derivative works, and process Customer Content and to perform all acts with respect to the Customer Content.”

In the company blog post published today, Zoom’s Chief Product Officer Smita Hashim stressed that account owners and administrators indeed have to provide consent before choosing to share their data for AI training, insisting it’s “used solely to improve the performance and accuracy of these AI services.” Hashim added that “even if you chose to share your data, it will not be used for training of any third-party models.” Continuing, she wrote, “We have permission to use this customer content to provide value-added services based on this content, but our customers continue to own and control their content. For example, a customer may have a webinar that they ask us to livestream on YouTube. Even if we use the customer video and audio content to livestream, they own the underlying content.”

“We will not use customer content, including education records or protected health information, to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent,” the blog post reads. A new section added to Zoom’s terms today makes it clearer: “Notwithstanding the above, Zoom will not use audio, video or chat Customer Content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent.”

“Our goal is to enable Zoom account owners and administrators to have control over these features and decisions, and we’re here to shed light on how we do that and how that affects certain customer groups,” Hashim wrote.

Amazon will reportedly meet with the FTC next week before the filing of a possible antitrust lawsuit against the online retailer. The New York Timesreports that FTC chair Lina Khan and commissioners Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya will sit down with Amazon representatives as the government agency nears a decision on whether to sue the company for antimonopoly laws. The scheduled conversation is viewed as a “last rites” meeting: Amazon’s final chance to persuade the FTC to back off before filing a suit.

The FTC began investigating Amazon in 2019 for using its influence to hurt competition. Investigators reportedly began the probe by interviewing third-party marketplace vendors, asking how their earnings on Amazon compared to those on competing platforms like eBay and Walmart. Politicoreported in July that the potential lawsuit “will likely challenge a host of Amazon’s business practices” and “could lead to a court-ordered restructuring of the $1.3 trillion empire.” This suit is separate from one the FTC filed in June against the retailer, accusing it of tricking customers into Prime subscriptions and making it hard to cancel the service.

Khan has been a longtime Amazon critic. While a law student at Yale, she wrote a paper suggesting the rethinking of antitrust laws in response to the company’s dominance. Her report criticized US antitrust laws for focusing too much on consumer prices while dismissing other ways companies can break the law to gain competitive advantages. “As consumers, as users, we love these tech companies,” she toldThe New York Times in 2018. “But as citizens, as workers, and as entrepreneurs, we recognize that their power is troubling. We need a new framework, a new vocabulary for how to assess and address their dominance.” Amazon has argued for Khan’s recusal from the case based on her academic work and previous statements.

The Biden administration has reportedly “grown increasingly concerned” about the influence of Big Tech companies. Bloombergdescribes the executive branch as “seeking to reverse what it has viewed as decades of lax oversight over corporate consolidation and market power.” The DOJ has sued Meta and Google multiple times (although a federal judge recently narrowed the scope of one of those cases).

Evo 2023 fighting game tournament attendees reported problems with damaged PlayStation 5 USB ports over the weekend. Participants took to social channels (viaKotaku) to show and tell accounts of USB accessories that seemingly got too hot and “melted” when plugged into the event’s numerous PS5 consoles.

Current Google (and former Meta and Microsoft) AR engineer Eduardo Cuervo, who said he attended the event for the first time this year, posted on X (formerly Twitter) the photo below of a controller’s USB plug that included melted pieces of the PS5’s blue port. “Mine was not the only controller that [melted] down,” he wrote. “This is just terrible. You need to do something about that lack of heat dissipation, especially if you are going to use PS5s in tournaments.”

Eduardo Cuervo / X

The incident appeared common enough that multiple users echoed his complaints. “After my [Street Fighter 6] set, my opponent courteously took out my cord for me and out came with it the PS5 USB receiver,” Reddit user u/SyrupyCereal posted. “Broke my Junkfood cable right then and there! Didn’t find out until I had my first match for [Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising], and feeling like an idiot that I couldn’t plug in my cable to the PS5. Lo’ and behold, the guy took who yanked it out earlier also took a souvenir from the other PS5.”

It isn’t clear what was behind the apparent overheating. This is far from the first esports tournament to use PS5 systems, and there haven’t exactly been similar widespread complaints about melting ports before. Of course, competitions like Evo include highly unusual conditions that most console owners will never face, including countless systems lined up nearby with rear USB accessories (located next to the console’s exhaust vents) plugging in and out throughout the frantic weekend. In addition, some attendees speculated that people plugged in unsupported USB converters, allowing them to use incompatible controllers, which may have damaged the console ports.

“Not all device USB ports are created equal in terms of quality,” u/xeleion, who says they attended the event, posted to Reddit. “And for PS5, some people [were] reliant on converters like the Wingman as their sticks aren’t natively PS5 compatible.” They also estimated that the convention area sat around a comfortable 70 to 72 degrees Fahrenheit the entire weekend and that event organizers took no chances in the championship rounds. “At the finals, every time there was an ad break, they were swapping out the PS5 for a different unit, probably just to minimize concerns.”

Engadget contacted PlayStation and Evo 2023 (acquired by Sony in 2021) via email for comments, but we haven’t yet heard back at the time of publication. We will update this article if either responds.

GameStop is pulling the plug on its crypto locker after only a year. An alert posted this week to the company’s website (viaGame Developer) says GameStop Wallet will be no more after November 1st. The retailer says its decision was “due to the regulatory uncertainty of the crypto space.”

The gaming retailer’s iOS and Chrome Extension lockers, billed as a “self-custodial Ethereum wallet,” will be removed on November 1st. The retailer recommends that customers have access to their Secret Passphrase to retrieve their NFTs by October 1st. “Any customer with access to their Secret Passphrase has the ability to recover their account in any compatible wallet,” the company wrote.

Like many companies in 2021 and 2022, GameStop invested heavily in NFTs in hopes of essentially printing money through digital collectible sales. Backed by a $100 million fund (in partnership with Immutable X) to provide developer incentives, the retailer aggressively pursued a Web3 future under then-CEO Matt Furlong.

But the effort sputtered as consumer backlash grew towards nonfungible tokens. The retailer forged an ill-fated partnership last September with the now-defunct FTX, only to be terminated two months later when the exchange collapsed. GameStop announced additional layoffs in December with Axiosreporting that its cryptocurrency division was hit hardest. The company simultaneously backpedaled from its NFT marketplace, with Furlong reassuring investors that it had “proactively minimized exposure to cryptocurrency.” However, he did leave some wiggle room by saying the retailer continued to see a long-term future for “digital assets in the gaming world.” Furlong was fired in June.

An enterprising developer is working on reviving a lost piece of gaming history. A YouTuber using the handle Tuxality has posted a video (viaGamesRadar) showing early work on an emulator that can play the games from an obscure rival to the Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3 that only launched in two countries.

There’s a good chance you’ve forgotten — or never heard of — the Zeebo gaming console. The Qualcomm-backed system (costing around $170 in US dollar conversions) launched in 2009 with a grand plan to target markets like Brazil and Mexico, where imports of its much-better-known rivals were priced out of reach for most people. It had cellular 3G functionality built in and supported around 40 games. Companies including Activision, Capcom, EA, Disney Interactive Studios and id Software lined up to develop software for the upstart system.

Launching the same year as the iPhone App Store, the Zeebo eschewed discs and cartridges, instead earning a footnote in gaming history as the first console that exclusively used digital downloads. Think of it as a precursor to homebound mobile-game consoles like the also-defunct Ouya.

Zeebo

However, the strategy didn’t go as planned, and the company announced the end of its operations in its only two markets by 2011. Although its website teased information about future launches in China and Russia and an upcoming Android-based system, nothing ever materialized. The company was never heard from again. Today, the URL that once served as the system’s online home is now the landing page for a supplements ad.

As you can see in the video below, Tuxality demonstrates early progress in loading the Zeebo’s operating system and firing up Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D. The emulation shows numerous graphical hiccups, typical of early emulator builds. However, the fact that a talented software engineer is eyeing the system as a personal project should be welcome news for video game preservationists. Even obscure and short-lived projects like the Zeebo played a part in the relatively brief legacy of gaming hardware, and — like any history — its library is better conserved than erased.

Patreon said today it has fixed the root cause of a problem that led to creators and patrons seeing widespread rejected payments this week, and it’s still working to solve the larger problem. The funding platform confirmed to Engadget that financial institutions have flagged “a slightly higher-than-normal number of patron payments” as fraudulent. In addition, some creators said they’re unable to access their funds, which Patreon describes as an unrelated problem stemming from a partner update.

The company describes the inability to access payouts as only affecting “creators using a single payment partner,” which its system status page identifies as Payoneer. It says it’s working “actively with Payoneer to restore payouts” and expects to see the transactions restored today.

The problem gained attention after various Patreon users posted on social channels about losing supporters en masse. Many reported that Patreon’s billing information appeared to have recently shifted to Dublin, which some users speculated was the root cause of banks flagging the transactions as fraudulent. “I just checked and have lost 80% of my patrons,” Dr. Brooke Magnanti, author of Secret Diary of a London Call Girl, posted on Bluesky today. “Awesome.”

Meanwhile, Reddit user u/Competitive_Fruit901 wrote on Wednesday that they lost 300 patrons. “Billing messed up way more than usual this month,” u/Koratl replied. “A lot of people’s cards flagged Patreon as fraudulent.” Redditor u/arzen 353 chimed in, “Not only that, there’s no way to re-try payment once you authorize it with your bank. People can’t re-subscribe even if they want to. Apparently you just have to wait for patreon to un-fuck itself.”

Patreon tells Engadget that the Dublin billing location is likely related to a recent upgrade. “We made a required upgrade with one of our payment processing partners,” company spokesperson Ellen Satterwhite wrote in an email response. “That may have changed the descriptors people are used to seeing in their statements. We are working closely with this payment processing partner to resolve the issue.” Patreon doesn’t expect the flagged payments to be a long-term issue. “As a matter of course, when payment declines happen for various reasons, and payments are retried, those patron relationships are restored,” the company told Engadget.

At least one user reported getting things back on track after calling their financial institution. u/Current-Confusion-67 described a lengthy ordeal of calling the card provider, verifying information and finally seeing their Patreon setup return to normal. “I don’t really know what’s going on myself, and I can’t really seem to track down an answer to why these things are happening, but I’d say the issues are probably related to the location of payments being processed suddenly changing to another country entirely causing cards to be flagged by fraud prevention.”

We’ll update this article as we receive more information. You can also check on Patreon’s system status page and its X (formerly Twitter) account for updates.

Microsoft is rolling out Windows Copilot in preview today. Windows 11 Insiders in the Beta Channel can install a preview build that offers the first semi-public availability for the AI-infused sidebar announced at Build 2023. “This first preview focuses on our integrated UI experience, with additional functionality coming down the road in future previews,” the company wrote in a blog post today.

Windows Copilot is a system-level version of the browser-based Copilot the company began previewing in February. Microsoft views the tool — also coming to Microsoft Office and Teams — as representing a monumental shift in how customers interact with Microsoft software. “AI is going to be the single largest driver of innovation for Windows in the years to come,” Panos Panay, Microsoft Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer, told Engadget’s Devindra Hardawar in an interview at Build 2023. “It’s going to change the way you work, change your interaction models to make it easier. It’s going to understand so much about what you need.”

Microsoft says the preview’s “controlled feature rollout” will hold back some of Copilot’s full functionality for future builds. The company also cautions that new Windows Insiders joining the Beta Channel today won’t be able to install this update. It says even some established Windows Insiders may not see the build immediately, but it will “increase the rollout in the coming weeks.” The rollout follows Microsoft’s release of a Copilot Preview in late June for developers running preview builds.

Microsoft

Once you have the correct preview installed (Build 22631.2129 or higher), you can activate Windows Copilot by clicking the corresponding button on the taskbar (a blue ribbon ring with a yellow “PRE” badge) or typing the shortcut Win + C. “Windows Copilot will appear as a side bar docked to the right where it won’t overlap with your desktop content and will run unobstructed alongside your open app windows, allowing you to interact with Windows Copilot anytime you need,” the company wrote.

Microsoft listed some examples of queries Copilot can handle in this early stage. For example, you can ask it to perform basic Windows tasks like “Change to dark mode” or “Turn on do not disturb.” In addition, it can summarize active websites in the Edge browser, compose stories and generate AI art. The company says an ellipses button at the top right of the Copilot sidebar lets you submit feedback.

Most taxpayers will have the option of going entirely paperless starting with the 2024 filing season. The IRS said today that it aims to “achieve paperless processing for all tax returns” by 2025. The agency says the IRS Paperless Processing Initiative will “eliminate up to 200 million pieces of paper annually, cut processing times in half and expedite refunds by several weeks.” The project is funded by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

The IRS expects the changes will solve the annoyance of transmitting digital documents in some cases but still having to mail paper ones in others. “For decades, taxpayers had to respond to notices for things like document verification through the mail, and IRS employees had to manually enter numbers from paper returns into computers one digit at a time, creating significant delays for taxpayers and challenges for IRS staff,” the US Treasury Department wrote today.

Starting next year (2024 filling season), taxpayers can digitally submit all correspondence — including many non-tax forms. The IRS says at least 20 additional e-File tax forms will be available digitally starting then. It estimates that over 94 percent of individual filers will never have to mail another tax form or document. The initiative will spare taxpayers from sending approximately 125 million paper documents annually.

By the 2025 filling season, “an additional 150 of the most used non-tax forms will be available in digital, mobile-friendly formats.” (The IRS cites research showing that around 15 percent of Americans rely solely on their phones for internet access.) It says all paper-filed tax and information returns — an estimated 76 million paper documents per year — will be processed digitally as soon as it receives them. Similarly, half of paper-submitted correspondence, non-tax forms and notice responses (another 60 million paper docs) will be recorded digitally. Finally, the IRS also plans to digitize up to one billion historical documents, making accessing older filing data easier for customer service agents and taxpayers.

The IRS says its Paperless Processing Initiative will help eliminate errors from manual data entry, speed up processing and let the agency pour more resources into taxpayer support. “Customer service employees do not currently have easy access to the information from paper returns and other correspondence submitted by mail,” the Treasury Department wrote. “Digitization and data extraction will give them access to that information they need to better serve taxpayers.”

The agency also expects digitization will help them to hold billionaires and corporations accountable. “When combined with an improved data platform, digitization and data extraction will enable data scientists to implement advanced analytics and pattern recognition methods to pursue cases that can help address the tax gap, including wealthy individuals and large corporations using complex structures to evade taxes they owe.”

Activision is bringing dogs (and one Dogg) back to Call of Duty. A decade after the debut of Riley, the faithful canine companion in Call of Duty: Ghosts, you can now take Merlin, the good boy pictured above, with you for quality companionship and savage finishing moves in season five (BlackCell) of CoD: Modern Warfare II and Warzone 2.0.

Activision says Merlin the Dog is an optional companion in multiplayer, battle Royale and DMZ modes. “[Merlin] provides the unparalleled benefit of companionship along with a devastating Finishing Move,” the announcement blog post reads. Strangely, players strap the canine to their belts when he isn’t in use. You can glimpse one of Merlin’s brutal finishes in the trailer below.

Activision stresses that “tactical pets” like Merlin can’t be harmed in the game. And since he’s only there for finishing moves and friendship, he doesn’t appear to provide a competitive advantage.

Activision

If you’re less into canines and more into D-O-Double Gs, Activision also has you covered. Snoop Dogg returns to the franchise, joining fellow hip-hop powerhouse Nicki Minaj, after his last appearance as an add-on for Call of Duty: Vanguard in 2022. A new season five operator bundle (including two skins) lets you play as the Long Beach rapper and cannabis connoisseur with a loadout that includes a “Toke Force 141” SMG, “Snoop Hustle” finishing move and “High Rider” hatchback vehicle skin.

Season five of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and Warzone 2.0 is available beginning today across all platforms. The BlackCell tier of Battle Pass, required to enjoy canine companionship, costs $30.

Samba de Amigo is coming to Apple Arcade. Sega’s classic maraca-shaking rhythm franchise is seeing a renaissance this year as the new installment arrives on Apple platforms and Nintendo Switch on the same day. A VR port for Meta Quest, announced in early June, is also scheduled to launch sometime this fall.

“Shake it with your maracas and groove to 40 hit songs from the world’s most popular genres,” the game’s App Store description reads. Exclusive songs for the Apple version include “The Edge of Glory” by Lady Gaga, “Daddy” by Psy (of “Gangnam Style” fame) and “The Walker” by Fitz and the Tantrums. The Apple Arcade version’s title, Samba de Amigo: Party-To-Go, emphasizes its portable nature. The Switch version is called Samba de Amigo: Party Central, while the Meta Quest version is simply Samba de Amigo.

Neither Sega nor Apple has said much about how gameplay details may differ between Apple’s variant and the other platforms, except that the Apple Arcade version will exclusively have the series’ first story mode. “Embark on a quest with Amigo to return lost music to the world,” the blurb reads.

Sega / Apple

Apple Arcade subscribers can shake it with Samba on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV. The App Store listing doesn’t precisely say how controls work, but using your phone as a faux maraca (with touchscreen controls as a fallback) would be a logical guess. (However, it does mention that external controllers are also supported.) The Switch version uses Joy-Cons, and the Quest version relies on its Touch Controllers.

Samba de Amigo: Party-To-Go is scheduled to hit the App Store on August 29th. Apple Arcade costs $5 per month after a one-month free trial, and none of its games have in-app purchases. The Switch version, also due August 29th, is priced at $40, and the Quest VR variant will be $30. You can brush up on your Dreamcast-era moves while watching the trailer for the Switch version below.