Hi, I’m Samantha Edwards, an editor at The Globe and Mail. Welcome back to Lately, The Globe’s new tech newsletter – and if you’re here for the first time, welcome! Every Friday morning, I break down the week’s biggest tech stories and how they intersect with, and even change, our world.
In this week’s issue:
🚨 The European Union goes after Apple and Microsoft
🎶 Music publishers sue generative artificial intelligence companies
👶 The new dumb smartphone for kids arrives in Canada
🎤 Summer concerts get up close and personal (VR headset recommended)
Apple and Microsoft first companies targeted under EU digital competition laws
Apple could face a $38-billion fine if it doesn’t comply with the EU’s new rules.Andy Wong/The Associated Press
This week Apple was charged with breaking the European Union’s new digital rules. The landmark Digital Markets Act, passed in 2022, was designed to rein in the dominance of “online gatekeepers” – specifically Apple, Amazon, Meta, Google, ByteDance and Microsoft – and allow users to more easily move between platforms. Otherwise, these companies can face hefty fines. Imagine being able to chat with your iMessage and green bubble friends all in one platform? That could be a reality!
The EU says Apple prevents app makers from communicating directly with customers and pointing them to sales and offers outside of the App Store, a practice known as anti-steering. Apple could be fined 10 per cent of its annual global revenue for infringement, or $38-billion based on last year’s revenue.
Apple has a chance to respond and a final decision will be made next March. Microsoft also came under fire this week, with the EU accusing the company of bundling its video and messaging app Teams with its core apps like Microsoft 365. The company says it’s working to address the EU’s concerns.
Record labels sue generative AI song generators
Startups Udio and Suno allow you to create realistic tunes with instrumentation and vocals based on a song description. For example, the prompt “2000s, nu metal, rap, aggressive male vocalist, radio single, keep rolling, dj scratches” creates an eerily familiar version of a Limp Bizkit song. (ICYMI, nu metal and all things Y2K are cool again.)
This is a problem for major record labels, who are suing the two companies alleging copyright infringement “on an almost unimaginable scale” in the lawsuits. They claim that the companies must be illegally scraping large volumes of copyrighted music to train their algorithms.
The issue of generative AI and copyright has sparked a number of high-profile lawsuits from authors, artists and news outlets against OpenAI and Meta. But as my colleague Joe Castaldo writes, the key question is if AI companies should be required to license copyrighted material to train their models for commercial purposes, or whether it’s fair use.
A new dumb smartphone for kids
How addictive are smartphones? Some parents are resorting to lock boxes for their kids’ deviceJennifer Roberts/The Globe and Mail
Earlier this year, my colleague Dave McGinn spoke to parents about how they’re trying to curb their kids’ phone use, including exiling their devices to timed lock boxes and buying them basic flip phones. Seeing the market opportunity of desperate parents, a wave of manufacturers are releasing “kid-safe” smartphones.
One of those is Pinwheel, now available in Canada, that has features like photo-sharing, texting and games, but no internet browsing or social media. Parents can manage contact lists, set usage schedules and monitor text messages remotely. Pinwheel says the phone is geared for ages eight to 14+, although it’s hard to imagine that many teenagers would be cool with their parents reading their text messages.
You will soon have the right to repair your Mac
Apple says Canadians will soon be able to get their hands on the parts, tools and manuals they need to fix their devices, including Macbook Airs and iPhones. In 2025, you’ll be able to buy kits for basic repairs, like replacing a cracked iPhone screen or a dead battery.
The announcement is part of the long consumer fight for the “right to repair,” which companies like Apple have lobbied against for years. In the United States, California and Oregon have passed “right to repair” laws, which helped spur Apple to open up, and in Canada, the Senate is considering an amendment that would make home repairs cheaper and easier.
What else we’re reading this week:
Indonesia is trying to block LGBTQIA content from the internet (Rest of the World)
The scourge of self-checkout (The Walrus)
I am Laura Kipnis-Bot, and I will make reading sexy and tragic again (Wired)
Soundbite
“Me using ‘gay’ to mean awesome and cool gets thrown in the same pile as a Nazi using ‘gay’ to mean despicable and terrible, right? This is all the same pile that these models learn from.” – computer scientist and ethicist Dr. Sabine Weber on training AI datasets, as heard on this week’s episode of Lately.
Adult Money
Who needs a carabiner when your speaker has a built in clip?Supplied
JBL Clip 5, $99
This week I have a straight up recommendation. I own this Bluetooth speaker, and if you’re someone who also listens to music and podcasts at home and afar, you should too. I hang it on my shower curtain rod (it’s waterproof), bring it travelling (it weighs only around half a pound) and never stress about it dying (it holds a 12-hour charge). Despite its compact stature – it’s about the size of your palm – the sound is full and surprisingly bassy.
Culture Radar
Missing Sabrina Carpenter’s fall tour? Catch in the metaverseCheney Orr/Reuters
Sabrina Carpenter is working late, because she’s performing in the metaverse
Pop star Sabrina Carpenter, the artist behind the ridiculously catchy Espresso, is on tour in North America this fall. But if you want to catch her sooner, all you need is a Meta Quest series VR headset and a moderate threshold for motion sickness.
On July 19, Carpenter is performing a 45-minute VR concert in Meta’s virtual platform Horizon Worlds. During the height of the pandemic, acts like Travis Scott and Charli XCX (or rather their avatars) put on shows in Fortnite and Minecraft to make up for a lack of live entertainment. Those restrictions may be gone, but virtual concerts have remained popular, so much so that the Emmy Awards introduced an Outstanding Emerging Media Program award.
More tech and telecom news:
MDA wins $1-billion contract to build Canadarm3 for NASA-led moon missions
U.S. probing China Telecom, China Mobile over internet, cloud risks
‘Godfather’ of AI Geoffrey Hinton offers $1-million for Ontario Science Centre roof