Connor Hughes

European Union regulators on Thursday opened investigations into the American tech giant Meta for the potentially addictive effects Instagram and Facebook have on children, an action with far-reaching implications because it cuts to the core of how the company’s products are designed.Meta’s products may “exploit the weaknesses and inexperience of minors” to create behavioral dependencies that threaten their mental well-being, the European Commission, the executive branch of the 27-member bloc, said in a statement. E.U. regulators could ultimately fine Meta up to 6 percent of its global revenue, which was $135 billion last year, as well as force other product…

Ilya Sutskever, the OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist who in November joined three other board members to force out Sam Altman, the company’s high-profile chief executive, before saying he regretted the move, is leaving the San Francisco A.I. company.Dr. Sutskever’s departure, which the company announced in a blog post on Tuesday, closes another chapter in a story that stunned Silicon Valley and that raised questions about whether Mr. Altman and his company were prepared to lead the tech industry into the age of artificial intelligence.After returning to OpenAI just five days after he was ousted, Mr. Altman reasserted his control…

When a children’s jewelry maker began advertising on Instagram, she promoted photos of a 5-year-old girl wearing a sparkly charm to users interested in parenting, children, ballet and other topics identified by Meta as appealing mostly to women.But when the merchant got the automated results of her ad campaign from Instagram, the opposite had happened: The ads had gone almost entirely to adult men.Perplexed and concerned, the merchant contacted The New York Times, which in recent years has published multiple articles about the abuse of children on social media platforms. In February, The Times investigated Instagram accounts run by parents…

Apple’s top software executives decided early last year that Siri, the company’s virtual assistant, needed a brain transplant.The decision came after the executives Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea spent weeks testing OpenAI’s new chatbot, ChatGPT. The product’s use of generative artificial intelligence, which can write poetry, create computer code and answer complex questions, made Siri look antiquated, said two people familiar with the company’s work, who didn’t have permission to speak publicly.Introduced in 2011 as the original virtual assistant in every iPhone, Siri had been limited for years to individual requests and had never been able to follow a conversation.…

Apple doesn’t make mistakes often and seldom apologizes, but on Thursday, its head of advertising said the company had erred in making a new iPad commercial that showed an industrial compressor flattening tools for art, music and creativity.“Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world,” said Tor Myhren, the company’s vice president of marketing communications, in a statement provided to the publication AdAge. “Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We…