Didn’t we just have Prime Day…for about a week? Amazon has announced its next Prime Day. Zdnet.com reports that this one will only be a 48 hour long Prime Day, starting on Tuesday October 7th, and running through October 8th. Expect the usual crazy deals on all sorts of stuff, particularly Amazon’s own. With the Amazon hardware event coming up on September 30th, deep discounts on the older model Kindles, Echo speakers, and Fire TVs are likely. As usual, expect ‘early deals’ between September 30th and the start of Prime Day.

The US and China have been continuing trade talks in Europe, and it looks like we may finally…finally see an actual deal with a US owned version of TikTok. According to gizmodo.com, the plan is to have it be owned by several American investors, but it would continue to rely on the Chinese algorithm running the platform. That is the main sticking point, by the way. The highly addictive algorithm is something China has been unwilling to give up, and it is a main draw for the platform. It now appears that the Trump administration has agreed to a licensing deal with ByteDance retaining the intellectual property rights but that Chinese company would “entrust the operation of TikTok’s U.S. user data and content security.” Negotiations are ongoing, so it isn’t quite a done deal yet.

YouTube has unveiled new generative AI tools for Shorts creators. TechCrunch.com notes that YouTube is getting a custom version of Google’s text-to-video generative AI model…Veo 3…to Shorts. In addition, Shorts will get a new remixing tool, and ‘Edit with AI’ feature, and more. This will make it the first time that Shorts creators can make video clips with AI with sound. The update is being pushed out now in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. YouTube will be distributing the functionality to other areas in the upcoming months. 

In the aftermath of a teen suicide, Open AI is working on a system aimed at automatically identifying teen users of ChatGPT, and restricting their usage. Engadget.com says that the teen restrictions would include a block of graphic sexual content, among other things. “In cases of acute distress,” the system will also have the capability to contact law enforcement to ensure user safety. In scenarios where ChatGPT can’t definitively estimate the age of a user, it will default them to the new gated experience. OpenAI will provide a way for adult users to verify their age and unlock ChatGPT’s full capabilities. This is an iffy game…Google is at it as well, as are some British companies. Critics point out that AI doesn’t have great accuracy at this sort of thing so far, and that having to prove you are of legal age exposes more of your private identity documentation and proof that could be used to steal your identity…not that that isn’t already a big problem. OpenAI hasn’t disclosed when they will be taking the teen identifying system live. 

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