Top News – AppleGPT being tested by Apple, ChatGPT’s facial recognition feature, and more

ChatGPT’s image analysis feature tested by OpenAI

An advanced version of the AI-based chatbot ChatGPT featuring an image analysis feature is being tested by its parent company OpenAI. Worried about what the chatbot would say about people’s faces, the company is working to address the privacy concerns from this feature. This technology can identify public figures but does not work as a comprehensive tool built to identify faces on the internet. Read more

Instagram agrees to pay a $68.5 million fine in a class action lawsuit

Meta, social media giant, and Instagram’s parent company, agreed to pay a $68.5 million fine to Illinois users for violating the state’s biometric law. A class action lawsuit was filed against Meta with allegations that the app’s facial recognition feature violated the Biometric Information Privacy Act, one of the strictest regulations in Illinois. The lawsuit alleges that the platform had captured the users’ biometric information without informed consent, violating the privacy law. Read more

Immigration Directorate Data Breach exposed 34 million Indonesian Passports

A massive data breach led to the leak of 34 million Indonesian passports, affecting the country’s citizens. Reportedly, a hacker stole the passport data and is now offering 4GB of the total data on a hacking forum for 10 thousand USD. The exposed data includes full names, dates of birth, passport issue and expiry dates, and gender of the country’s passport holders. Indonesian authorities confirmed being notified of the leak, and the breach is under investigation. Read more

Apple tests AppleGPT, its new AI-based chatbot

Apple Inc is testing its generative AI tool, AppleGPT, a chatbot similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard. The company has built its own language model framework, Ajax, to create large language models. Reportedly, the tool can summarise texts and answer questions similar to other AI-based chatbots. Read more

Amazon agrees to a $25 million settlement for Alexa’s Children's Privacy Violations

The FTC and the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Amazon agreed to a $25 million dollar civil penalty toward a settlement against its voice assistant Alexa’s violations of children's privacy. The order from the Federal Court imposed a permanent injunction that required Amazon to identify and delete inactive child accounts. A complaint filed against the company alleged that Amazon retained the voice recordings of children and engaged in unlawful practices against geolocations. Read more