The Federal Trade Commission has proposed new rules to strengthen the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), further limiting the collection of children’s data, particularly those who seek to monetize the information through targeted advertising. FTC Chair Lina Khan says the proposed changes aim to prevent tech firms “from outsourcing their responsibilities to parents” when it comes to ensuring privacy for children’s data. The FTC says it has issued fines totaling hundreds of millions of dollars to Google’s YouTube, and to a lesser extent, ByteDance’s TikTok, for mishandling the data of children 13-years-old and younger. Continue reading FTC Seeks to Bolster COPPA So Firms Can’t Surveil Children

Meta Platforms continues to make progress on a mission to develop artificial intelligence that can teach itself to learn how the world works. Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun has taken a special interest in developing the new model, called Image Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture, or I-JEPA, which learns by building an internal representation of the outside world and analyzing image abstracts instead of comparing pixels. The approach allows AI techto learn more like humans do, with their ability to figure out complex tasks and adapt to new situations. Continue reading Meta Develops Computer Vision AI That Learns Like Humans

Disney Publishing Worldwide is developing a series of learning apps for children. The apps belong to a greater learning initiative called Disney Imagicademy aimed at children between the ages of 3 and 8. Under Imagicademy, Disney plans to launch as many as 30 apps to cover a wide range of academic subjects. The company also plans to release books and interactive toys to complement the apps. Disney expects these toys to encourage active participation in completing game lessons. Continue reading Disney Imagicademy Develops New Learning Apps for Children

Disney has named the first 11 startups to participate in its 15-week Accelerator program. The diverse first class of tech-driven media and entertainment startups will be mentored by top Disney execs and receive up to $120,000 in seed funding. Mentors will include leaders from ABC, ESPN, Lucasfilm, Marvel, Pixar and Walt Disney Imagineering. The companies will be advised how to best develop effective business plans, product launches and marketing campaigns. Continue reading Disney Accelerator Program Announces its First 11 Startups

When an Ohio State University study tested how well facial recognition software could detect emotions, it received a 96.9 percent accuracy rate with the six basic emotions and a 76.9 percent accuracy rate with compound emotions such as “happy surprise” and “angry fear.” Emotient, a company that uses machine-learning algorithms, is developing an app for Google Glass that detects emotions in real time. Lead scientist Marian Bartlett says the app will be on the market soon. Continue reading Detect Emotions via Google Glass with Facial Recognition App

Researchers at MIT have developed a method for teaching computers to understand what is happening in video content. The method uses a similar approach to textual analysis, such as natural language processing, by looking at each part of a video to figure out what the whole thing means. The researchers created an algorithm to identify what occurs in individual frames of the video, and then determines what those mean when combined in a certain order. Continue reading Researchers Use Algorithm for Computers to Understand Video

In another deal involving “deep learning,” Google is purchasing London-based DeepMind Technologies, a somewhat secretive artifical intelligence startup. The move is viewed as a talent acquisition to bring CEO Dennis Hassabis to Google. The games prodigy and neuroscientist was named “probably the best games player in history” by the Mind Sports Olympiad. While it is unclear what DeepMind does exactly, its website describes building algorithms for games, e-commerce and simulations. Continue reading Deep Learning: Google Plans to Acquire AI Startup DeepMind