The Center for Data Innovation spoke with Nageela Yusuf, CEO and founder of TikBox, an online platform that simplifies the legal workflow and metadata tagging for copyright and provenance assertions on various digital files to better support creatives in the new era of large language models. Yusuf discussed how the changing technological landscape is affecting the creative industry, the need for searchable copyrighted metadata on the Internet, and how we can ensure the voices of the creative industry are kept relevant in AI development. This interview has been edited. Ayesha Bhatti: What is yo ..read more

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) submitted comments to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK’s principal market competition regulator, on the Microsoft-Mistral AI partnership. These comments make three points. First, the Microsoft-Mistral AI partnership does not meet the criteria set for a “relevant merger situation” as set forth in the Enterprise Act 2002, and thus the CMA should not intervene. Second, even if the CMA believes that the partnership reaches the threshold to create a relevant merger situation, the partnership does not have a negative impa ..read more

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) submitted comments to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK’s principal market competition regulator, on the recent events related to Microsoft and Inflection AI. These comments make three points. First, Microsoft’s non-exclusive licensing of Inflection AI’s model and its hiring of former Inflection AI employees (which the CMA refers to collectively as “the Transaction”) does not meet the criteria set for a “relevant merger situation” as set forth in the Enterprise Act 2002, and thus the CMA should not intervene. Second ..read more

Pleias, a French startup that builds energy-efficient  large language models (LLMs) for information-sensitive industries, has released a dataset called YouTube-Commons that contains over two million copyright-free video transcripts. YouTube-Commons includes full transcripts of each YouTube video, making it one of the largest collections of conversational data with nearly 30 billion words. The dataset provides LLM developers with large amounts of freely available data for training.  Get the data. Image credit: Alexander Shatov ..read more

Reporters Without Borders (RSF), a Paris-based nonprofit, has published its annual world press freedom index. Each year, the organization collects a tally of abuses against journalists in connection with their work and testimonies of press freedom specialists to assign scores ranging from 0-100 to each country. RSF then turns the data into an interactive map that shows the global state of press freedom, with the countries in red denoting the most serious violations. Take a look. Image credit: Voice of America ..read more

The Center for Data Innovation submitted comments to the Competition Bureau Canada’s consultation on artificial intelligence (AI) and competition. In its comments, the Center argues that Canada’s AI sector is vibrant and diverse. At this stage, there is no clear evidence of market failure, substantial barriers to entry, or exclusionary practices that would necessitate intervention by the Competition Bureau. Read the submission.  ..read more

This week’s list of top data news highlights covers April 27, 2024 to May 3, 2024 and includes articles on the world’s first “AI diplomat” and using a digital twin of an airport to reduce carbon emissions. 1. Reinventing the Passenger Experience A Paris-based tech firm called Valeo has partnered with Unity, a gaming software developer, to produce an extended-reality racing video game for passenger’s seat. The game blends in virtual reality (VR) technology with the physical surrounding of a moving car to enhance the passenger experience.  2. Streamlining Digital Enterprise Amazon has added ..read more

The Center for Data Innovation spoke with Mark Gagas, Vice President of Sensory Robotics, a company that develops and promotes robotic safety systems that track both robots and humans and allow safe collaboration with heavy robots that would otherwise be dangerous. Gagas spoke about the inspiration behind Sensory Robotics, the unique features of the technology, and how AI and data are enhancing robotics safety. Martin Makaryan: What does Sensory Robotics do? Mark Gagas: Sensory Robotics provides 3D safe sensing technology that works with robotic and autonomous applications, including AI. Our f ..read more

The Center for Data Innovation submitted comments to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s independent body set up to uphold information rights, on its generative AI consultation. The Center provided evidence on the third chapter of the consultation relating to the accuracy principle outlined in the UK GDPR, and how this might affect model outputs. The Center offered a number of recommendations for how the ICO can better evaluate this, including: The ICO should recognise alternative metrics to statistical accuracy in the measure of model performance and reliability. The ICO sh ..read more

Reviews play a major role in e-commerce sales by allowing consumers to make informed decisions about products and businesses based on information from previous customers. However, fake reviews can impact trust in products and businesses by deceptively influencing consumer behavior. Following a series of enforcement actions against companies that it determined intentionally suppressed negative reviews and paid for fake reviews, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has taken steps to specify certain illegal review practices.  On June 30, 2023, the FTC proposed the Trade Regulation Rule on the ..read more