‘Sextortion' Scams Leverage Apple's Message Platform to Build Trust With Teens - Tech News Briefing
Criminals are exploiting the trust that young iPhone users have in the device's built-in message platform to make relentless demands for money. WSJ family and tech columnist Julie Jargon reports on the tragic results of those scams, and what parents need to know. Plus: Artificial intelligence companies have been the leading backers of technologies like solar energy and battery storage. Now, WSJ tech and crypto reporter Amrith Ramkumar reports those firms are trying to convince Congress to leave their clean-energy tax credits alone.
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CNN
13 minutes ago
- CNN
Meta sues maker of explicit deepfake app for dodging its rules to advertise AI ‘nudifying' tech
Meta is suing the Hong Kong-based maker of the app CrushAI, a platform capable of creating sexually explicit deepfakes, claiming that it repeatedly circumvented the social media company's rules to purchase ads. The suit is part of what Meta (META) described as a wider effort to crack down on so-called 'nudifying' apps — which allow users to create nude or sexualized images from a photo of someone's face, even without their consent — following claims that the social media giant was failing to adequately address ads for those services on its platforms. As of February, the maker of CrushAI, also known as Crushmate and by several other names, had run more than 87,000 ads on Meta platforms that violated its rules, according to the complaint Meta filed in Hong Kong district court Thursday. Meta alleges the app maker, Joy Timeline HK Limited, violated its rules by creating a network of at least 170 business accounts on Facebook or Instagram to buy the ads. The app maker also allegedly had more than 55 active users managing over 135 Facebook pages where the ads were displayed. The ads primarily targeted users in the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany and the United Kingdom. 'Everyone who creates an account on Facebook or uses Facebook must agree to the Meta Terms of Service,' the complaint states. Some of those ads included sexualized or nude images generated by artificial intelligence and were captioned with phrases like 'upload a photo to strip for a minute' and 'erase any clothes on girls,' according to the lawsuit. CNN has reached out to Joy Timeline HK Limited for comment on the lawsuit. Tech platforms face growing pressure to do more to address non-consensual, explicit deepfakes, as AI makes it easier than ever to create such images. Targets of such deepfakes have included prominent figures such as Taylor Swift and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as high school girls across the United States. The Take It Down Act, which makes it illegal for individuals to share non-consensual, explicit deepfakes online and requires tech platforms to quickly remove them, was signed into law last month. But a series of media reports in recent months suggest that these nudifying AI services have found an audience by advertising on Meta's platforms. In January, reports from tech newsletter Faked Up and outlet 404Media found that CrushAI had published thousands of ads on Instagram and Facebook and that 90% of the app's traffic was coming from Meta's platforms. That's despite the fact that Meta prohibits ads that contain adult nudity and sexual activity, and forbids sharing non-consensual intimate images and content that promotes sexual exploitation, bullying and harassment. Following those reports, Sen. Dick Durbin, Democrat and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking 'how Meta allowed this to happen and what Meta is doing to address this dangerous trend.' Earlier this month, CBS News reported that it had identified hundreds of advertisements promoting nudifying apps across Meta's platforms, including ads that featured sexualized images of celebrities. Other ads on the platforms pointed to websites claiming to animate deepfake images of real people to make them appear to perform sex acts, the report stated. In response to that report, Meta said it had 'removed these ads, deleted the Pages responsible for running them and permanently blocked the URLs associated with these apps.' Meta says it reviews ads before they run on its platforms, but its complaint indicates that it has struggled to enforce its rules. According to the complaint, some of the CrushAI ads blatantly advertised its nudifying capabilities with captions such as 'Ever wish you could erase someone's clothes? Introducing our revolutionary technology' and 'Amazing! This software can erase any clothes.' Now, Meta said its lawsuit against the CrushAI maker aims to prevent it from further circumventing its rules to place ads on its platforms. Meta alleges it has lost $289,000 because of the costs of the investigation, responding to regulators and enforcing its rules against the app maker. When it announced the lawsuit Thursday, the company also said it had developed new technology to identify these types of ads, even if the ads themselves didn't contain nudity. Meta's 'specialist teams' partnered with external experts to train its automated content moderation systems to detect the terms, phrases and emojis often present in such ads. 'This is an adversarial space in which the people behind it — who are primarily financially motivated — continue to evolve their tactics to avoid detection,' the company said in a statement. 'Some use benign imagery in their ads to avoid being caught by our nudity detection technology, while others quickly create new domain names to replace the websites we block.' Meta said it had begun sharing information about nudifying apps attempting to advertise on its sites with other tech platforms through a program called Lantern, run by industry group the Tech Coalition. Tech giants created Lantern in 2023 to share data that could help them fight child sexual exploitation online. The push to crack down on deepfake apps comes after Meta dialed back some of its automated content removal systems — prompting some backlash from online safety experts. Zuckerberg announced earlier this year that those systems would be focused on checking only for illegal and 'high-severity' violations such as those related to terrorism, child sexual exploitation, drugs, fraud and scams. Other concerns must be reported by users before the company evaluates them.
News24
14 minutes ago
- News24
Trump says unilateral tariffs to be set within weeks
US president Donald Trump plans to inform trading partners of unilateral US tariff rates in the coming weeks, as a July deadline approaches for steeper levies to kick in on dozens of economies. "We're going to be sending letters out in about a week and a half, two weeks, to countries telling them what the deal is," Trump told reporters late on Wednesday, at the Kennedy Center in Washington where he was attending a theatre performance. In April, Trump imposed a blanket 10 percent tariff on most US trading partners and unveiled higher individual rates on dozens of economies including India and the European Union -- although he swiftly paused the elevated rates. While negotiations have been ongoing, the pause on those higher duties is due to expire on July 9. So far, Washington has only announced a trade deal with the UK, alongside a temporary tariff de-escalation with China. Tensions remain elevated between the world's two biggest economies, with Washington recently accusing Beijing of slow-walking export approvals for rare earth minerals. It remains unclear if the steeper levies will return for all countries in early July. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told lawmakers earlier Wednesday that an extended pause is possible for those "negotiating in good faith." "There are 18 important trading partners. We are working toward deals on those," he said. Bessent said it is likely that for countries or trading blocs such as the EU, Washington would decide to "roll the date forward to continue the good faith negotiations." The Treasury chief added that following conversations with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, "it's my belief that with smaller countries where we have lower levels of trade, we may be able to do a one-size-fits-all regional deal." Trump's wide-ranging tariffs and higher rates on goods from China have roiled financial markets, snagged supply chains and weighed on consumer sentiment. While many of the levies also face court challenges, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has dismissed concerns that these could prompt countries to slow-run negotiations.
Yahoo
30 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Dear Apple: Thanks for Fixing the Photos App. Sincerely, Every iOS User
PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing. At WWDC 2024, Apple introduced radical updates to its Photos app for iOS 18, seemingly in an attempt to modernize the experience. It had good intentions, but these changes ended up seriously annoying users, including me. As I sat in the audience for WWDC 2025 at Apple's campus in Cupertino, I was pleased to see that Apple is correcting this misstep for iOS 26. Gone were the clear sections across the bottom of the app for Library, For You (for Memories, Shared Albums, and suggested edits), Albums, and Search. In its place was a sea of square thumbnails with some suggested groupings along the bottom, such as Recent Days and People. When I first saw the iOS 18 Photos app, it struck me as extremely disorganized and somewhat radical. Apple has a history of making disruptive changes that later become the norm, but that wasn't the case this time. The iOS 18 version's interface was altogether unhelpful and light on structure. Apple hasn't fully restored the pre-iOS 18 Photos interface in iOS 26, but it has at least reintroduced separate tab views for Collections and Libraries. At WWDC 2025, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, acknowledged the controversy with a few words: "Many of you missed using tabs in the Photos app." I have to congratulate the company on acknowledging the error of its ways. But mind you, it's not a complete backtrack. Only two tab-view buttons will be in the app—Library and Collections—while a big, clear Search magnifying glass icon sits alongside them. Here's how the new app looks: I'm mostly concerned with iOS 26 here, but note that these buttons are at the top of the interface in the iPadOS 26 version of Photos, and that there's a left-hand menu view with many more options. Naturally, iPads have a lot more real estate to work with, so those extra choices make sense. I actually prefer the simpler look of the iPhone's new Photos interface, however. I haven't heard many complaints about the iOS Camera app, but Apple revamped it anyway. The redesigned interface is clear and far less complex than in previous versions. (It's simpler than the app for competing Samsung Galaxy phones, too.) I often find myself hunting through shooting modes with an iPhone, even though I usually only want to switch between photo and video modes. The latest version puts those two modes at the forefront, seemingly as a reflection that this is the case for most of its users. You can still swipe left to see more shooting options, however. And swiping up reveals controls for Aperture, Aspect, Flash, and more. Apple knows that the Camera and Photos apps are of paramount importance to iPhone users, and the changes it made to them for iOS 26 will serve its users well. In the case of Photos, it's rare but admirable for the company to change course based on user feedback. No, Apple didn't completely restore the old Photos interface, but a response to this criticism is still good to see.
