Latest news with #MetaAIApp
USA Today
07-05-2025
- Business
- USA Today
WhatsApp hack: Israel's NSO Group fined $168M for spyware breach
WhatsApp hack: Israel's NSO Group fined $168M for spyware breach Show Caption Hide Caption Mark Zuckerberg's Meta to launch rival ChatGPT app Mark Zuckerberg's technology conglomerate Meta is set to launch a standalone artificial intelligence app that will rival OpenAI's ChatGPT. The Meta AI App is set to be released in the latter quarter of 2025, with the company hoping it will become a leader in the field by the end of the year. unbranded - Newsworthy Israel's NSO Group was handed a $168 million penalty by a federal jury in California on Tuesday for hijacking the servers of WhatsApp in order to hack users of the Meta-owned chat platform on behalf of foreign spy agencies. The case caps a six-year battle between the American social media giant and the surveillance firm. It has also cast an unusual amount of light on the inner workings of the spyware industry. Here is what we have learned: Top-shelf spyware is not cheap Between 2018 and 2020 NSO charged its European government customers a "standard price" of $7 million for use of its platform to hack 15 different devices at a time, according to Sarit Bizinsky Gil, NSO's vice president of global business operations. The executive said the ability to hack a phone outside the customer's country was a separate add-on worth approximately $1 million or $2 million. "It is a highly sophisticated product," Meta lawyer Antonio Perez told the court in his opening statement, "And it carries a hefty price tag." NSO hacked thousands of devices Between 2018 and 2020 the Israeli spyware firm was responsible for breaking into thousands of devices, according to Tamir Gazneli, NSO's vice president of research and development. During the trial, Gazneli said he disagreed with the idea that his company sold "spyware," leading to an exchange with Perez in which Gazneli insisted his firm's tools were used to gather intelligence on targets but "not people." In case you missed it: Musk, Zuckerberg top Forbes' richest people in world. Who else made the list? "You don't consider the targets people, Mr. Gazneli?" Perez asked him. "That's not what I said," he responded. "What I said is that the targets are intelligence targets of intelligence agencies." American taxpayers sent millions to NSO's coffers The Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation collectively paid NSO $7.6 million, according to court records. The agencies' past dealings with the Israeli spyware company had previously been disclosed by The New York Times, which said the CIA bankrolled Djibouti's purchase of NSO spyware and the bureau bought it for testing, but the trial put a price tag on the relationship. NSO targeted WhatsApp's infrastructure during the lawsuit The lawsuit against NSO did not deter the spyware firm from continuing to abuse WhatsApp's infrastructure, Meta's lawyers said in a court document filed late last month. "NSO repeatedly targeted Plaintiffs, Plaintiffs' servers, and Plaintiffs' mobile client even after this litigation was filed," the filing said. The filing seeks a permanent injunction against NSO, which it said "poses a significant threat of ongoing and prospective harm" to Meta, its platform, and its users. Reporting by Raphael Satter; Editing by David Gregorio
The National
29-04-2025
- Business
- The National
Meta AI App: Zuckerberg beats OpenAI to social network punch
Meta introduced its second new app in less than two weeks on Tuesday, as it continues to fight for its future in court amid accusations that it sought to eliminate competition. The social media giant introduced the Meta AI App, built with the company's Llama 4 artificial intelligence model. 'People around the world use Meta AI daily across WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger, and now, people can choose to experience a personal AI designed around voice conversations with Meta AI inside a standalone app,' the Californian technology company said in a statement. The app, available on iOS and Android, includes a much-touted discovery feed, which Meta describes as a 'place to share and explore how others are using AI'. For users in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, it also offers what Meta describes as 'full duplex speech technology', which it says has significantly more natural voice experience 'trained on conversational tongue'. It is not yet clear if or when Meta plans on opening access to the feature for users in other countries. 'Meta AI is built to get to know you, so its answers are more helpful,' the press release continued. It said the app would inevitably be compared to OpenAI's ChatGPT, which was launched in 2022 and fuelled a rapid investment in artificial intelligence research around the world. The release of Meta AI App comes several weeks after media reports quoted OpenAI employees as saying their company was working on its own social network that would be fuelled by its AI offerings. Last week, Meta also released a video app called Edits, which the company said is designed to make it easier for content creators to edit mobile videos for distribution on social media platforms. Edits is expected to compete in the same space as Captions, CapCut and other apps used by social media creators. Meanwhile, Meta is fighting to protect itself against accusations from the US Federal Trade Commission that it engaged in anti-competitive behaviour to squash competition and hurt consumers. Meta's chief executive Mark Zuckerberg was among the first in a long list to be called to the witness box in the Washington court as the legal battle between the company and regulators continues. If Meta is found to have illegally stifled competition, the judge presiding over the closely watched case could force it to divest Instagram and WhatsApp from its portfolio of platforms.
