Social media companies appear to be reducing efforts to combat misinformation at a time when the capabilities to foist false narratives is reaching new levels of sophistication. As a result of staff cuts at Alphabet, Google’s YouTube subsidiary is reportedly left with one person overseeing worldwide misinformation policy. Twitter eliminated its safety and trust division, while Meta also made changes to its disinformation filtering. Meanwhile, The Guardian has unearthed Israeli misinformation contractors operating under the name “Team Jorge” that says it manipulated more than 30 presidential elections worldwide. Read more

Social VR firm Bigscreen has opened pre-orders for Beyond, its first virtual reality headset. The $999 model, which the company says is the “world’s smallest,” offers a custom-fit from a 3D scan of each purchaser’s face. The PC-only wearable is also lightweight, at just under 6 ounces, including the strap. Delivery int eh U.S. is slated for Q3. The slight packaging doesn’t come at the expense of resolution, with dual 5K (5,120 x 2,560) micro OLED displays. However, some say the 93- degree horizontal field of view (90 degrees vertical) is a drawback. Read more

Neeva is promising a more intelligent form of AI-powered search. The company — which says it has amassed more than 2 million subscribers since it began globally launching its ad-free, subscription-based Neeva engine in 2020 — is now going global with NeevaAI, which became commercially available in the U.S. in January following a monthlong beta test. Positioned as a direct competitor to ChatGPT, NeevaAI is styling itself as a smarter, more accurate form of artificial intelligence, one that “combines the best of large language models such as ChatGPT with the authority and timeliness of search.” Read more

TikTok is launching new targeting and boosting features for Promote, a tool designed to drive traffic to a profile or brand home page. First launched in 2021, Promote is touted as a way to turn viewers into potential leads. TikTok says Promote improves audience targeting while letting small businesses and creators strengthen ties with communities by customizing how users interact with their ads. A recent study shows that positioning an “organic” TikTok video before a paid ad “increases aided brand recall by 27 percent” and holds attention to the ad “12 percent longer,” according to the social platform. Read more

The Entertainment Technology Center@USC has begun releasing its case study entitled “Fathead: Virtual Production & Beyond.” Section 1 of the four-part white paper is “Cloud Computing: Growth Without Bounds.” “Everything on this production was done in the cloud, minus the shoot on set,” explains ETC@USC head of virtual & adaptive production Erik Weaver, executive producer of the 20-minute “Fathead” film. “We did some very innovative work, ingesting ARRI Alexa RAW to Amazon S3 buckets on the AWS cloud in real time, which had never been done before and I don’t think has been done since.” Read more