Elon Musk has sued the World Federation of Advertisers, in addition to several large corporations. Arstechnica.com reports that musk claims that they “conspired, along with dozens of non-defendant co-conspirators, to collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue” from the social network formerly known as Twitter. “We tried peace for 2 years, now it is war,” Musk wrote today, a little over eight months after telling boycotting advertisers to “go eff yourself.”

News flash to Mr Musk…advertisers have avoided controversial programming for decades…on radio and TV and on the web. There used to be a list of controversial shows that advertisers refused to pay for ads if they were even within an hour of a controversial show on the list…let alone right IN the show. Even though he filed in the Northern District of Texas, I think he will lose this…at least on appeal. Advertisers have the right to not run ads on a platform that their target audience finds repugnant. 

Google has already rolled out the 4th edition of the Nest thermostat ahead of their upcoming hardware event. Now, they have bowed another hardware product in advance…the Google TV Streamer. According to theverge.com, it’s a $99.99 set top box that bests Chromecast with Google TV, delivering substantially better performance. It has Thread and Matter integration, so will work with other home systems besides Google’s…for example the Apple Home one. It also has a remote finder if you are one of those who is always misplacing your remote. Oh, and in addition to all that, it comes with Gemini AI. There is no dongle included, so you will have to buy or come up with your own HDMI cable. The Google TV Streamer ships September 24th. 

The government, and Congress specifically, moves at a snails pace much of the time. Here’s a little good news that seems to be making its way towards becoming law. Mashable.com says a bill called the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (Defiance) Act, has passed a Senate vote with unanimous consent, pushing the first of potentially many AI-focused regulations one step closer to federal law. It is expected to get a vote in the House soon, and hopefully will clear that body as well. Apparently, deepfake porn of actresses hasn’t bothered the politicians all that much, but let them see or hear a deepfake of a politician saying things they never really said, and they are all over things. Even though their motivation may not be in the right place, if it gets these laws put into effect, then I’m for it.

After threatening to for some time, it looks like Disney+ is finally about to crack down on password sharing. 9to5mac.com reports that Disney CEO Bob Iger has said the crackdown will start quote ‘in earnest’ starting in September. There was a small trial rollout in a few countries over this summer. Disney+ is expected to prompt users to get their own account if they’re found to be using someone else’s. Disney has also teased its plans to add paid sharing features for an “additional fee,” but there still aren’t any other details on that offering yet. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now. 

musk. twitter, advertisers, Disney, google, deepfakes