TikTok begins US testing of 'Footnotes' similar to 'Community Notes' by X
The feature allows users to add "more context" and "relevant information" about content on the platform, the company said.
"It will add to our suite of measures that help people understand the reliability of content and access authoritative sources, including our content labels, search banners, our fact-checking program and more," TikTok's head of operations and trust and safety Adam Presser said in a blog post.
TikTok became the latest company to add a crowd-sourced model to its platform with this update, after Meta in March began testing "Community Notes" in the U.S. using technology developed by Elon Musk-owned X.
The future of TikTok, used by nearly half of all Americans, has been up in the air since a 2024 law, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, required China-based parent, ByteDance, to divest the app by January 19.
U.S. President Donald Trump extended that deadline for the second time in April and reassured a potential deal is still "on the table".
TikTok said on Wednesday users in the U.S. can apply to be a "Footnotes" contributor and the company will also notify those who meet the criteria for eligibility.
Footnotes contributors must be 18 years or above with an account more than six months old and without a recent history of a community guidelines violation.
TikTok said it would allow contributors with differing opinions to vote on the helpfulness of a footnote.
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Sky News
17 minutes ago
- Sky News
Donald Trump latest: Trump 'to take a look' at whether to deport Elon Musk; US president visits 'Alligator Alcatraz'
Explained: What is 'Alligator Alcatraz'? After finishing his news conference, Donald Trump is wrapping up his visit to "Alligator Alcatraz". The detention centre is a symbol of the White House's determination to deport migrants from America which it says do not have a right to be in the country. Located on a mostly abandoned airport once built to house supersonic jets, detainees would have to "know how to run away from an alligator" to escape the facility, Trump said.. But for critics, it's a dehumanising "theatricalisation of cruelty" that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to run each year. 'Music to my ears': Trump reacts as Senate passes spending bill Back to Florida now, where Donald Trump has been asked for his reaction to his "big beautiful bill" being passed in the US Senate. "Wow, music to my ears," the US president told reporters after he was told the result of the vote. The bill narrowly passed after vice president JD Vance made his tie-breaking vote. "He's doing a good job," Trump said. The bill now goes to the House of Representatives, where it will be debated and voted on tomorrow. Tesla share value falls as Musk and Trump reignite war of words By Sarah Taaffe-Maguire, business and economics reporter Elon Musk's fresh attack on Donald Trump's "insane" spending bill - followed by the reaction of the US president - appears to have hit the share price of Tesla. Musk's latest outburst on the spending bill - that has now been passed by the US Senate - reignited the tit-for-tat insults between the former close allies. Mr Trump has said he will "take a look" at whether to deport the Tesla founder and has threatened to cut subsidies for the billionaire's space and satellite businesses. The reignited row has not gone unnoticed by investors, and Tesla's share value has tumbled more than 5%. Previously, after months of share price tumbles and protests at Tesla showrooms, Musk left his work with the Trump administration in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Signs of a more politically occupied Musk appear to again be spooking investors. US Senate passes Trump's spending bill The US Senate has passed Donald Trump's sweeping tax and spending bill, sending it to the House of Representatives. The legislation narrowly passed after vice president JD Vance cast his tie-breaking vote. The bill includes $4.5trn in tax cuts, according to the latest Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis. This includes his no tax on tips campaign pledge. The CBO said the package would increase the deficit by nearly $3.3trn over the next decade. The package rolls back billions of dollars in green energy tax credits, which Democrats warn will wipe out wind and solar investments. It imposes $1.2trn in cuts, largely to Medicaid and food stamps, by imposing work requirements on able-bodied people, including some parents and older citizens. It slashes funding for education, public housing, environmental programs, scientific research and some national park and public land protection. Additionally, the bill provides $350bn for border and national security, including for deportations. The "big beautiful bill" is the main subject in today's episode of Trump100 - our team breaks down what it's all about... US Senate begins voting on Trump's spending bill While Donald Trump is speaking in Florida, senators have started voting on the US president's sweeping tax and spending bill. Earlier, Trump told reporters "I think it's going to be the greatest bill ever passed". We'll keep across any developments from the vote and will bring you updates on this live page. Trump says detention centre will host 'some of the most vicious people on the planet' Donald Trump is speaking again as he takes his seat for a news conference at the "Alligator Alcatraz" detention centre in Florida. Trump says that name is "very appropriate because I looked outside and that's not a place I want to go hiking anytime soon". He says the facility will soon have some of the most "menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet". "We're surrounded by miles of treacherous swamp land and the only way out is really deportation, and a lot of these people are self-deporting back to their country they came from," he adds. Trump says the most impactful step that the US can take is to "fully reverse the Biden migration invasion". "We've never had an invasion like this and we have some very bad people out there looking to do big harm," he says. In pictures: Trump shown around 'Alligator Alcatraz' detention centre We're now getting these pictures from inside the "Alligator Alcatraz" detention centre in Florida, where Donald Trump is being shown around. He's joined by Florida governor Ron DeSantis and US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem. Trump warns Musk against 'playing that game with me' Donald Trump has also been asked whether he's concerned Republicans are going to be swayed by Elon Musk, who has been critical of the spending bill. "No, I don't think so," Trump replies. "I think what's going to happen is DOGE is going to look at Musk." The US president goes on to say "we're going to save a fortune" and ends with a warning for Musk. "I don't think he should be playing that game with me," he says. Trump insists spending bill will be 'greatest bill ever passed' As usual when Donald Trump speaks to the media, he covers a wide range of topics. That was no different as he fielded questions ahead of his visit to the "Alligator Alcatraz" migrant detention centre in Florida. Trump was asked about his "big beautiful bill" with senators in a marathon "vote-a-rama" (see 12.00 post). "We're doing well, Ron," Trump said as he turned to Florida governor DeSantis. But Trump refused to say whether he was confident over the bill passing. "I don't know, what is confident?" he replied. "I think it's going to be the greatest bill ever passed. "Even for you," he told DeSantis. Migrant detention centre has 'cops in form of alligators', says Trump Speaking to reporters after arriving in Florida, Donald Trump thanks the state's governor Ron DeSantis, saying he "did great" to help construct the "Alligator Alcatraz" facility in eight days. "You don't always have land so beautiful and so secure," Trump says. "You have a lot of bodyguards and a lot of cops in the form of alligators. You don't have to pay them so much, but I wouldn't want to run through the Everglades for long." Trump tells reporters he was surprised by the size of the Everglades as he flew over, saying "we did a little circle... that's a big piece of land". He asks DeSantis whether there is potential for enlargement or additional facilities, to which Florida's governor says "there may be". "I think what we're doing is, because this is an important part of Florida, we're using the existing footprint of this airport," DeSantis adds. He also praises Trump over his work on America's borders, saying: "You did that so quick, which is great."
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
AI companies start winning the copyright fight
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. If you need me after this newsletter publishes, I will be busy poring over photos from Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez's wedding, the gaudiest and most star-studded affair to disrupt technology news this year. I found it a tacky and spectacular affair. Everyone who was anyone was there, except for Charlize Theron, who, unprompted, said on Monday: 'I think we might be the only people who did not get an invite to the Bezos wedding. But that's OK, because they suck and we're cool.' Last week, tech companies notched several victories in the fight over their use of copyrighted text to create artificial intelligence products. Anthropic: A US judge has ruled that Anthropic, maker of the Claude chatbot, use of books to train its artificial intelligence system – without permission of the authors – did not breach copyright law. Judge William Alsup compared the Anthropic model's use of books to a 'reader aspiring to be a writer.' And the next day, Meta: The US district judge Vince Chhabria, in San Francisco, said in his decision on the Meta case that the authors had not presented enough evidence that the technology company's AI would cause 'market dilution' by flooding the market with work similar to theirs. The same day that Meta received its favorable ruling, a group of writers sued Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement in the creation of that company's Megatron text generator. Judging by the rulings in favor of Meta and Anthropic, the authors are facing an uphill battle. These three cases are skirmishes in the wider legal war over copyrighted media, which rages on. Three weeks ago, Disney and NBC Universal sued Midjourney, alleging that the company's namesake AI image generator and forthcoming video generator made illegal use of the studios' iconic characters like Darth Vader and the Simpson family. The world's biggest record labels – Sony, Universal, and Warner – have sued two companies that make AI-powered music generators, Suno and Udio. On the textual front, the New York Times' suit against OpenAI and Microsoft is ongoing. The lawsuits over AI-generated text were filed first, and, as their rulings emerge, the next question in the copyright fight is whether decisions about one type of media will apply to the next. 'The specific media involved in the lawsuit – written works versus images versus videos versus audio – will certainly change the fair use analysis in each case,' said John Strand, a trademark and copyright attorney with the law firm Wolf Greenfield. 'The impact on the market for the copyrighted works is becoming a key factor in the fair use analysis, and the market for books is different than that for movies.' To Strand, the cases over images seem more favorable to copyright holders, as the AI models are allegedly producing identical images to the copyrighted ones in the training data. A bizarre and damning fact was revealed in the Anthropic ruling, too: the company had pirated and stored some 7m books to create a training database for its AI. To remediate its wrongdoing, the company bought physical copies and scanned them, digitizing the text. Now the owner of 7 million physical books that no longer held any utility, Anthropic destroyed them. The company bought the books, diced them up, scanned the text, and threw them away, Ars Technica reports. There are less destructive ways to digitize books, but they are slower. The AI industry is here to move fast and break things. Anthropic laying waste to millions of books presents a crude literalization of the ravenous consumption of content necessary for AI companies to create their products. Google's emissions up 51% as AI electricity demand derails efforts to go green Inside a plan to use AI to amplify doubts about the dangers of pollutants Two stories I wrote about last week saw significant updates in the ensuing days. The website for Trump's gold phone, 'T1', has dropped its 'Made in America' pledge in favor of 'proudly American' and 'brought to life in America', per the Verge. Trump seems to have followed the example of Apple, which skirts the issue of origin but still emphasizes the American-ness of iPhones by engraving them with 'Designed in California.' What is unsaid: Assembled in China or India, and sourced from many other countries. It seems Trump and his family have opted for a similar evasive tagline, though it's been thrown into much starker relief by their original promise. The third descriptor that now appears on Trump's phone site, 'American-Proud Design', seems most obviously cued by Apple. The tagline 'Made in the USA' carries legal weight. Companies have faced lawsuits over just how many of their products' parts were produced in the US, and the US' main trade regulator has established standards by which to judge the actions behind the slogan. It would be extremely difficult for a smartphone's manufacturing history to measure up to those benchmarks, by the vast majority of expert estimations. Though Trump intends to repatriate manufacturing in the US with his sweeping tariffs, he seems to be learning just what other phone companies already know. It is complicated and limiting to make a phone solely in the US, and doing so forces severe constraints on the final product. Read last week's newsletter about the gold Trump phone. Last week, I wrote about Pornhub's smutty return to France after a law requiring online age verification was suspended there. This week, the US supreme court ruled in favor of an age-check law passed in Texas. Pornhub has blocked access to anyone in Texas in protest for the better part of two years, as it did in France for three weeks. Clarence Thomas summed up the court's reasoning: 'HB 1181 simply requires adults to verify their age before they can access speech that is obscene to children,' Clarence Thomas wrote in the court's 6-3 majority opinion. 'The statute advances the state's important interest in shielding children from sexually explicit content. And, it is appropriately tailored because it permits users to verify their ages through the established methods of providing government-issued identification and sharing transactional data.' Elena Kagan dissented alongside the court's two other liberal justices. The ruling affirms not only Texas's law but the statutes of nearly two dozen states that have implemented online age checks. The tide worldwide seems to be shifting away from allowing freer access to pornography as part of a person's right to free expression and more towards curtailing Experts believe the malleable definition of obscenity – the Texas law requires an age check for any site whose content is more than a third sexual material – will be weaponized against online information on sexual health, abortion or LGBTQ identity, all in the name of child protection. 'It's an unfortunate day for the supporters of an open internet,' said GS Hans, professor at Cornell Law School. 'The court has made a radical shift in free speech jurisprudence in this case, though it doesn't characterize its decision that way. By upholding the limits on minors' access to obscenity – a notoriously difficult category to define – that also creates limits on adult access, we can expect to see states take a heavier hand in regulating content.' I'll be closely watching what happens in July when Pornhub willingly implements age checks in compliance with the Online Services Act. Read more: UK study shows 8% of children aged eight to 14 have viewed online pornography Number of new UK entry-level jobs has dived since ChatGPT launch – research Fake, AI-generated videos about the Diddy trial are raking in millions of views on YouTube Denmark to tackle deepfakes by giving people copyright to their own features New features are a dime a dozen, but even a small tweak to the most popular messaging app in the world may amount to a major shift. WhatsApp will begin showing you AI-generated summaries of your unread messages, per the Verge. Apple tried message summaries. They did not work. The company pulled them. For a firm famed for its calculated and controlled releases, the retraction of the summaries was a humiliation. The difference between Apple and Meta, though, is that Meta has consistently released AI products for multiple years now. In other AI news, I am rarely captivated by new technologies, but a recent release by Google's DeepMind AI laboratory seems promising for healthcare. Google DeepMind has released AlphaGenome, an AI meant to 'comprehensively and accurately predicts how single variants or mutations in human DNA sequences impact a wide range of biological processes regulating genes,' per a press release. The creators of AlphaGenome previously won the Nobel prize in chemistry for AlphaFold, a software that predicts the structures of proteins. A major question that hovers over Crispr, another Nobel-winning innovation, is what changes in a person when a genetic sequence is modified. AlphaGenome seems poised to assist in solving that mystery. Disabled Amazon workers in corporate jobs allege 'systemic discrimination' Six arrested at protest of Palantir, tech company building deportation software for Trump admin Online hacks to offline heists: crypto leaders on edge amid increasing attacks 'Lidar is lame': why Elon Musk's vision for a self-driving Tesla taxi faltered 'It's like being walled in': young Iranians try to break through internet blackout
NBC News
an hour ago
- NBC News
Lululemon sues Costco over selling alleged dupes
Love your Costco dupes? Lululemon is coming after them. Lululemon has filed a lawsuit against Costco, accusing the big box store of selling knockoffs of the athleisure brand's apparel for a fraction of the price. According to the complaint filed Friday in the Central District of California, Costco allegedly "unlawfully traded" on Lululemon's "reputation, goodwill and sweat equity" by selling unauthorized and unlicensed knockoffs and dupes, infringing on the company's popular patents. The complaint lists several Costco items that appear to rip off Lululemon's designs and patents: Costco's "Danskin Half-Zip Pullover" that retails for just $8. The lawsuit claims it's a dupe for Lululemon's SCUBA pullover that sells for $118. Costco's "Jockey Ladies Yoga Jacket" and "Spyder Women's Yoga Jacket," which sell for $22, appear to be a dupe of Lululemon's DEFINE jacket with a price tag of $128. The "Kirkland 5 Pocket Performance Pant," sold online for $10, is a dupe for Lululemon's $128 ABC Pant, the complaint contended. The lawsuit alleged trade dress infringement, unfair competition under the Lanham Act, patent infringement, and violation of the California Unfair Business Practices Act. Lululemon seeks to recover monetary damages from lost profits, claiming it suffered "significant harm" to its brands and reputation. Dupes have surged in popularity, fueled by social media and young people seeking trendy, high-quality clothing without breaking the bank. The suit noted that hashtags like "LululemonDupes" have trended on social media platforms like TikTok, with influencers promoting "these copycat products." Lululemon, based in Vancouver, acknowledged some companies have replicated its proprietary apparel designs and sold them as "dupes." The company said it has sent cease and desist letters to such companies, including Costco. Specifically, the suit claimed Costco sells dupes of Lululemon's popular SCUBA, DEFINE, and ABC lines, "which have earned substantial fame and considerable goodwill among the public." Costco allegedly profited off confusion and allowed customers to believe the products are authentic, the lawsuit claimed. The suit said Costco is known to use manufacturers of popular branded products for its own Kirkland label products. "This source ambiguity preconditions at least some consumers into believing that private label, Kirkland-branded dupes are in fact manufactured by the authentic suppliers of the 'original' products. Defendant does not dispel this ambiguity," the complaint said. In November, Lululemon wrote to Costco about the infringement, and Costco subsequently removed at least some of the products that infringed Lululemon's SCUBA mark, but later began selling the Hi-Tec Men's Scuba full zip, the complaint said. The suit seeks a jury trial and for the court to order Costco to pay Lululemon damages in the form of lost profits, an order to permanently restrain Costco from making or selling more dupes, and an order to remove any ads or posts displaying the infringing products. Costco did not immediately respond to NBC News' request for comment on Tuesday. Lululemon said in a statement that "as an innovation-led company that invests significantly in the research, development, and design of our products, we take the responsibility of protecting and enforcing our intellectual property rights very seriously and pursue the appropriate legal action when necessary."
