Tech News
Landmark EU Tech Rules Holding Back Innovation, Google Says
technology - Posted On:2025-07-01 17:30:00 Source: slashdot
Google will tell European Union antitrust regulators Tuesday that the bloc's Digital Markets Act is stifling innovation and harming European users and businesses. The tech giant faces charges under the DMA for allegedly favoring its own services like Google Shopping, Google Hotels, and Google Flights over competitors. Potential fines could reach 10% of Google's global annual revenue. Google lawyer Clare Kelly will address a European Commission workshop, arguing that compliance changes have forced Europeans to pay more for travel tickets while airlines, hotels, and restaurants report losing up to 30% of direct booking traffic. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Tech Hobbyist Destroys 51 MicroSD Cards To Build Ultimate Performance Database
it - Posted On:2025-07-01 16:45:00 Source: slashdot
Tech enthusiast Matt Cole has created a comprehensive MicroSD card testing database, writing over 18 petabytes of data across nearly 200 cards since July 2023. Cole's "Great MicroSD Card Survey" uses eight machines running 70 card readers around the clock, writing 101 terabytes daily to test authenticity, performance, and endurance. The 15,000-word report covering over 200 different cards reveals significant quality disparities. Name-brand cards purchased from Amazon performed markedly better than identical models from AliExpress, while cards with "fake flash" -- inflated capacity ratings -- performed significantly worse than authentic storage. Sandisk and Kingston cards averaged 4,634 and 3,555 read/write cycles before first error, respectively, while Lenovo cards averaged just 291 cycles. Some off-brand cards failed after only 27 cycles. Cole tested 51 cards to complete destruction during the endurance testing phase. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
AT&T Now Lets Customers Lock Down Account To Prevent SIM Swapping Attacks
technology - Posted On:2025-07-01 16:15:00 Source: slashdot
AT&T has launched a new Account Lock feature designed to protect customers from SIM swapping attacks. The security tool, available through the myAT&T app, prevents unauthorized changes to customer accounts including phone number transfers, SIM card changes, billing information updates, device upgrades, and modifications to authorized users. SIM swapping attacks occur when criminals obtain a victim's phone number through social engineering techniques, then intercept messages and calls to access two-factor authentication codes for sensitive accounts. The attacks have become increasingly common in recent years. AT&T began gradually rolling out Account Lock earlier this year, joining T-Mobile, Verizon, and Google Fi, which already offer similar fraud prevention features. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
IT Worker Sentenced To Seven Months After Trashing Company Network
it - Posted On:2025-07-01 15:30:01 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader shares a report: A judge has sentenced a disgruntled IT worker to more than seven months in prison after he wreaked havoc on his employer's network following his suspension, according to West Yorkshire Police. According to the police, Mohammed Umar Taj, 31, from the Yorkshire town of Batley, was suspended from his job in nearby Huddersfield in July 2022. But the company didn't immediately rescind his network credentials, and within hours, he began altering login names and passwords to disrupt operations, the statement says. The following day, he allegedly changed access credentials and the biz's multi-factor authentication settings that locked out the firm and its clients in Germany and Bahrain, eventually causing an estimated $274,200 in lost business and reputational harm. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Cloudflare Flips AI Scraping Model With Pay-Per-Crawl System For Publishers
technology - Posted On:2025-07-01 14:15:00 Source: slashdot
Cloudflare today announced a "Pay Per Crawl" program that allows website owners to charge AI companies for accessing their content, a potential revenue stream for publishers whose work is increasingly being scraped to train AI models. The system uses HTTP response code 402 to enable content creators to set per-request prices across their sites. Publishers can choose to allow free access, require payment at a configured rate, or block crawlers entirely. When an AI crawler requests paid content, it either presents payment intent via request headers for successful access or receives a "402 Payment Required" response with pricing information. Cloudflare acts as the merchant of record and handles the underlying technical infrastructure. The company aggregates billing events, charges crawlers, and distributes earnings to publishers. Alongside Pay Per Crawl, Cloudflare has switched to blocking AI crawlers by default for its customers, becoming the first major internet infrastructure provider to require explicit permission for AI access. The company handles traffic for 20% of the web and more than one million customers have already activated its AI-blocking tools since their September 2024 launch, it wrote in a blog post. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
AI Arms Race Drives Engineer Pay To More Than $10 Million
technology - Posted On:2025-07-01 13:30:00 Source: slashdot
Tech companies are paying AI engineers unprecedented salaries as competition for talent intensifies, with some top engineers earning more than $10 million annually and typical packages ranging from $3 million to $7 million. OpenAI told staff this week it is seeking "creative ways to recognize and reward top talent" after losing key employees to rivals, despite offering salaries near the top of the market. The move followed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's claim that Meta had promised $100 million sign-on bonuses to the company's most high-profile AI engineers. Mark Chen, OpenAI's chief research officer, sent an internal memo saying he felt "as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something" after recent departures. AI engineer salaries have risen approximately 50% since 2022, with mid-to-senior level research scientists now earning $500,000 to $2 million at major tech companies, compared to $180,000 to $220,000 for senior software engineers without AI experience. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Windows User Base Shrinks By 400 Million In Three Years
technology - Posted On:2025-06-30 20:15:00 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: Microsoft EVP Yusuf Mehdi said in a blog post last week that Windows powers over a billion active devices globally. This might sound like a healthy number, but according to ZDNET, the Microsoft annual report for 2022 said that more than 1.4 billion devices were running Windows 10 or 11. Given that these documents contain material information and have allegedly been pored over by the tech giant's lawyers, we can safely assume that Windows' user base has been quietly shrinking in the past three years, shedding around 400 million users. This is probably why Microsoft has been aggressively pushing users to upgrade to Windows 11 after the previous version of the OS loses support -- so that its users would install the latest version of Windows on their current system (or get a new PC if their system is incapable of running the latest version). Although macOS is a threat to Windows, especially with the launch of Apple Silicon, we cannot say that those 400 million users all went and bought a MacBook. That's because, as far back as 2023, Mac sales have also been dropping, with Statista reporting the computer line, once holding more than 85% of the company revenue, now making up just 7.7%. The shrinking Windows user base can be attributed to a combination of factors -- a major one being the global move toward a mobile-first world, where smartphones and tablets are increasingly replacing traditional PCs for everyday computing needs. At the same time, Microsoft's strict hardware requirements for Windows 11 have alienated users with perfectly functional older machines, prompting some to stick with unsupported versions or abandon Windows entirely. Additionally, many users find Windows 11 less intuitive than its predecessor and are frustrated by Microsoft's push toward data collection and Apple-style design changes. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Tumblr's Move To WordPress and Fediverse Integration Is 'On Hold'
technology - Posted On:2025-06-30 19:15:01 Source: slashdot
Automattic has put its plan to migrate Tumblr's backend to WordPress on hold, with CEO Matt Mullenweg citing a shift in focus toward features users are actively requesting. "I still want to do it," Mullenweg says. "It's just cleaner. But right now, we're not working on it." The Verge reports: The decision to halt the change also appears to mean that Tumblr posts won't be available in the fediverse in the near future. WordPress.com currently offers an ActivityPub plug-in, so Tumblr moving onto WordPress would theoretically let people bring Tumblr posts to the fediverse. "That would've been a free way to get it," Mullenweg says. "And so that was one of the arguments for migrating everything to WordPress." In the meantime, however, "I think if there was a big push to implement fediverse, we would just do it on the Tumblr code base," according to Mullenweg. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
WordPress CEO Regrets 'Belongs to Me' Comment Amid Ongoing WP Engine Legal Battle
technology - Posted On:2025-06-30 15:00:00 Source: slashdot
Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg said he regrets telling the media that "WordPress.org just belongs to me personally" during a new interview about his company's legal dispute with hosting provider WP Engine. The comment has been "taken out of context so many times" and represents "the worst thing ever," Mullenweg said in a new podcast interview with The Verge. The dispute began when Mullenweg accused WP Engine of "free-riding" on WordPress's open-source ecosystem without contributing adequate resources back to the project. Mullenweg filed a lawsuit against WP Engine while cutting off the company's access to core WordPress technologies. WP Engine countersued, and Automattic was forced to reverse some retaliatory measures. The controversy triggered significant internal upheaval at Automattic. The company offered "alignment" buyouts to employees who disagreed with the direction, reducing headcount from a peak of 2,100 to approximately 1,500 people. Mullenweg said this was "probably the fourth big time" WordPress has faced such community controversy, though the first in the current media landscape. WordPress powers 43% of websites globally. Mullenweg said he wants to return to "the most collaborative version of WordPress possible" but noted the legal proceedings continue with both sides spending "millions of dollars a month on lawyers." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Microsoft Authenticator Will Stop Supporting Passwords
it - Posted On:2025-06-30 12:45:00 Source: slashdot
Avantare writes: Microsoft Authenticator houses your passwords and lets you sign into all of your Microsoft accounts using a PIN, facial recognition such as Windows Hello, or other biometric data, like a fingerprint. Authenticator can be used in other ways, such as verifying you're logging in if you forgot your password, or using two-factor authentication as an extra layer of security for your Microsoft accounts. In June, Microsoft stopped letting users add passwords to Authenticator, but here's a timeline of other changes you can expect, according to Microsoft: July 2025: You won't be able to use the autofill password function. August 2025: You'll no longer be able to use saved passwords. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
That Dropped Call With Customer Service? It Was on Purpose
it - Posted On:2025-06-30 12:15:00 Source: slashdot
Companies deliberately design customer service friction to discourage refunds and claims, according to research into a practice academics call "sludge." The term, coined by legal scholar Cass R. Sunstein and economist Richard H. Thaler in their updated version of "Nudge," describes tortuous administrative demands, endless wait times, and excessive procedural fuss that impede customers. ProPublica reported in 2023 that Cigna saved millions of dollars by rejecting claims without having doctors read them. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ordered Toyota's motor-financing arm to pay $60 million for alleged misdeeds including deliberately setting up dead-end hotlines for canceling products and services. The 2023 National Customer Rage Survey found that the percentage of American consumers seeking revenge for customer service hassles had tripled in three years. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
New NSA/CISA Report Again Urges the Use of Memory-Safe Programming Language
it - Posted On:2025-06-29 16:15:00 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader shared this report from the tech news site The Register: The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the National Security Agency (NSA) this week published guidance urging software developers to adopt memory-safe programming languages. "The importance of memory safety cannot be overstated," the inter-agency report says... The CISA/NSA report revisits the rationale for greater memory safety and the government's calls to adopt memory-safe languages (MSLs) while also acknowledging the reality that not every agency can change horses mid-stream. "A balanced approach acknowledges that MSLs are not a panacea and that transitioning involves significant challenges, particularly for organizations with large existing codebases or mission-critical systems," the report says. "However, several benefits, such as increased reliability, reduced attack surface, and decreased long-term costs, make a strong case for MSL adoption." The report cites how Google by 2024 managed to reduce memory safety vulnerabilities in Android to 24 percent of the total. It goes on to provide an overview of the various benefits of adopting MSLs and discusses adoption challenges. And it urges the tech industry to promote memory safety by, for example, advertising jobs that require MSL expertise. It also cites various government projects to accelerate the transition to MSLs, such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Translating All C to Rust (TRACTOR) program, which aspires to develop an automated method to translate C code to Rust. A recent effort along these lines, dubbed Omniglot, has been proposed by researchers at Princeton, UC Berkeley, and UC San Diego. It provides a safe way for unsafe libraries to communicate with Rust code through a Foreign Function Interface.... "Memory vulnerabilities pose serious risks to national security and critical infrastructure," the report concludes. "MSLs offer the most comprehensive mitigation against this pervasive and dangerous class of vulnerability." "Adopting memory-safe languages can accelerate modern software development and enhance security by eliminating these vulnerabilities at their root," the report concludes, calling the idea "an investment in a secure software future." "By defining memory safety roadmaps and leading the adoption of best practices, organizations can significantly improve software resilience and help ensure a safer digital landscape." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Has an AI Backlash Begun?
it - Posted On:2025-06-29 14:00:00 Source: slashdot
"The potential threat of bosses attempting to replace human workers with AI agents is just one of many compounding reasons people are critical of generative AI..." writes Wired, arguing that there's an AI backlash that "keeps growing strong." "The pushback from the creative community ramped up during the 2023 Hollywood writer's strike, and continued to accelerate through the current wave of copyright lawsuits brought by publishers, creatives, and Hollywood studios." And "Right now, the general vibe aligns even more with the side of impacted workers." "I think there is a new sort of ambient animosity towards the AI systems," says Brian Merchant, former WIRED contributor and author of Blood in the Machine, a book about the Luddites rebelling against worker-replacing technology. "AI companies have speedrun the Silicon Valley trajectory." Before ChatGPT's release, around 38 percent of US adults were more concerned than excited about increased AI usage in daily life, according to the Pew Research Center. The number shot up to 52 percent by late 2023, as the public reacted to the speedy spread of generative AI. The level of concern has hovered around that same threshold ever since... [F]rustration over AI's steady creep has breached the container of social media and started manifesting more in the real world. Parents I talk to are concerned about AI use impacting their child's mental health. Couples are worried about chatbot addictions driving a wedge in their relationships. Rural communities are incensed that the newly built data centers required to power these AI tools are kept humming by generators that burn fossil fuels, polluting their air, water, and soil. As a whole, the benefits of AI seem esoteric and underwhelming while the harms feel transformative and immediate. Unlike the dawn of the internet where democratized access to information empowered everyday people in unique, surprising ways, the generative AI era has been defined by half-baked software releases and threats of AI replacing human workers, especially for recent college graduates looking to find entry-level work. "Our innovation ecosystem in the 20th century was about making opportunities for human flourishing more accessible," says Shannon Vallor, a technology philosopher at the Edinburgh Futures Institute and author of The AI Mirror, a book about reclaiming human agency from algorithms. "Now, we have an era of innovation where the greatest opportunities the technology creates are for those already enjoying a disproportionate share of strengths and resources." The impacts of generative AI on the workforce are another core issue that critics are organizing around. "Workers are more intuitive than a lot of the pundit class gives them credit for," says Merchant. "They know this has been a naked attempt to get rid of people." The article suggests "the next major shift in public opinion" is likely "when broad swaths of workers feel further threatened," and organize in response... Read more of this story at Slashdot.
To Spam AI Chatbots, Companies Spam Reddit with AI-Generated Posts
technology - Posted On:2025-06-29 12:45:00 Source: slashdot
The problem? "Companies want their products and brands to appear in chatbot results," reports 9to5Mac. And "Since Reddit forms a key part of the training material for Google's AI, then one effective way to make that happen is to spam Reddit." Huffman has confirmed to the Financial Times that this is happening, with companies using AI bots to create fake posts in the hope that the content will be regurgitated by chatbots: "For 20 years, we've been fighting people who have wanted to be popular on Reddit," Huffman said... "If you want to show up in the search engines, you try to do well on Reddit, and now the LLMs, it's the same thing. If you want to be in the LLMs, you can do it through Reddit." Multiple ad agency execs confirmed to the FT that they are indeed "posting content on Reddit to boost the likelihood of their ads appearing in the responses of generative AI chatbots." Huffman says that AI bots are increasingly being used to make spam posts, and Reddit is trying to block them: For Huffman, success comes down to making sure that posts are "written by humans and voted on by humans [...] It's an arms race, it's a never ending battle." The company is exploring a number of new ways to do this, including the World ID eyeball-scanning device being touted by OpenAI's Sam Altman. It's Reddit's 20th anniversary, notes CNBC. And while "MySpace, Digg and Flickr have faded into oblivion," Reddit "has refused to die, chugging along and gaining an audience of over 108 million daily users..." But now Reddit "faces a gargantuan challenge gaining new users, particularly if Google's search floodgates dry up." [I]n the age of AI, many users simply "go the easiest possible way," said Ann Smarty, a marketing and reputation management consultant who helps brands monitor consumer perception on Reddit. And there may be no simpler way of finding answers on the internet than simply asking ChatGPT a question, Smarty said. "People do not want to click," she said. "They just want those quick answers." But in response, CNBC's headline argues that Reddit "is fighting AI with AI." It launched its own Reddit Answers AI service in December, using technology from OpenAI and Google. Unlike general-purpose chatbots that summarize others' web pages, the Reddit Answers chatbot generates responses based purely on the social media service, and it redirects people to the source conversations so they can see the specific user comments. A Reddit spokesperson said that over 1 million people are using Reddit Answers each week. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Duolingo Stock Plummets After Slowing User Growth, Possibly Caused By 'AI-First' Backlash
it - Posted On:2025-06-28 16:45:01 Source: slashdot
"Duolingo stock fell for the fourth straight trading day on Wednesday," reported Investor's Business Daily, "as data shows user growth slowing for the language-learning software provider." Jefferies analyst John Colantuoni said he was "concerned" by this drop — saying it "may be the result of Duolingo's poorly received AI-driven hiring announcement in late April (later clarified in late May)." Also Wednesday, DA Davidson analyst Wyatt Swanson slashed his price target on Duolingo stock to 500 from 600, but kept his buy rating. He noted that the "'AI-first' backlash" on social media is hurting Duolingo's brand sentiment. However, he expects the impact to be temporary. Colantuoni also maintained a "hold" rating on Duolingo stock — though by Monday Duolingo fell below its 50-day moving average line (which Investor's Business Daily calls "a key sell signal.") And Thursday afternoon (2:30 p.m. EST) Duolingo's stock had dropped 14% for the week, notes The Motley Fool: While 30 days' worth of disappointing daily active user (DAU) data isn't bad in and of itself, it extends a worrying trend. Over the last five months, the company's DAU growth declined from 56% in February to 53% in March, 41% in April, 40% in May [the month after the "AI-first" announcement], and finally 37% in June. This deceleration is far from a death knell for Duolingo's stock. But the market may be justified in lowering the company's valuation until it sees improving data. Even after this drop, the company trades at 106 times free cash flow, including stock-based compensation. Maybe everyone's just practicing their language skills with ChatGPT? Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Call Center Workers Are Tired of Being Mistaken for AI
it - Posted On:2025-06-28 14:45:00 Source: slashdot
Bloomberg reports: By the time Jessica Lindsey's customers accuse her of being an AI, they are often already shouting. For the past two years, her work as a call center agent for outsourcing company Concentrix has been punctuated by people at the other end of the phone demanding to speak to a real human. Sometimes they ask her straight, 'Are you an AI?' Other times they just start yelling commands: 'Speak to a representative! Speak to a representative...!' Skeptical customers are already frustrated from dealing with the automated system that triages calls before they reach a person. So when Lindsey starts reading from her AmEx-approved script, callers are infuriated by what they perceive to be another machine. "They just end up yelling at me and hanging up," she said, leaving Lindsey sitting in her home office in Oklahoma, shocked and sometimes in tears. "Like, I can't believe I just got cut down at 9:30 in the morning because they had to deal with the AI before they got to me...." In Australia, Canada, Greece and the US, call center agents say they've been repeatedly mistaken for AI. These people, who spend hours talking to strangers, are experiencing surreal conversations, where customers ask them to prove they are not machines... [Seth, a US-based Concentrix worker] said he is asked if he's AI roughly once a week. In April, one customer quizzed him for around 20 minutes about whether he was a machine. The caller asked about his hobbies, about how he liked to go fishing when not at work, and what kind of fishing rod he used. "[It was as if she wanted] to see if I glitched," he said. "At one point, I felt like she was an AI trying to learn how to be human...." Sarah, who works in benefits fraud-prevention for the US government — and asked to use a pseudonym for fear of being reprimanded for talking to the media — said she is mistaken for AI between three or four times every month... Sarah tries to change her inflections and tone of voice to sound more human. But she's also discovered another point of differentiation with the machines. "Whenever I run into the AI, it just lets you talk, it doesn't cut you off," said Sarah, who is based in Texas. So when customers start to shout, she now tries to interrupt them. "I say: 'Ma'am (or Sir). I am a real person. I'm sitting in an office in the southern US. I was born.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Researchers Accuse Uber of Using Opaque Algorithm To Dramatically Boost Its Profits
technology - Posted On:2025-06-28 13:45:00 Source: slashdot
"A second major academic institution has accused Uber of using opaque computer code to dramatically increase its profits at the expense of the ride-hailing app's drivers and passengers," reports the Guardian: Research by academics at New York's Columbia Business School concluded that the Silicon Valley company had implemented "algorithmic price discrimination" that had raised "rider fares and cut driver pay on billions of ... trips, systematically, selectively, and opaquely". The Ivy League business school research — which is based on an analysis of "tens of thousands of trips ... as well as an analysis of over 2 million ... trip requests" — follows a similar academic paper based on 1.5m UK trips that was published last week by the University of Oxford. The British study found that many UK Uber drivers were making "substantially less" each hour since the ride-hailing app introduced a "dynamic pricing" algorithm in 2023 that coincided with the company taking a significantly higher share of fares... [Len Sherman, the US report's author] added: "Since implementing upfront pricing, Uber has increased rider prices, has cut driver pay, has increased its take rates, and, of course, has greatly improved its cashflow during the period covered by this study...." The Columbia paper, which focused on 24,532 trips made by a single US Uber driver, concluded that the introduction of the new algorithm had allowed Uber to "significantly increase its take rate — the per cent of rider fares net of driver pay captured by the company — from about 32% at the start of upfront pricing to upwards of 42% by the end of 2024". Last week's University of Oxford research found that, since the launch of dynamic pricing, Uber's median take rate per UK driver had "increased from 25% to 29%, and on some trips ... is over 50%". Thanks to Slashdot reader votsalo for sharing the news. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
How a Crewless, AI-Enhanced Vessel Will Patrol Denmark's and NATO's Waters
technology - Posted On:2025-06-28 11:45:00 Source: slashdot
After past damage to undersea cables, Denmark will boost their surveillance of Baltic Sea/North Sea waters by deploying four uncrewed surface vessels — about 10 meters long — that are equipped with drones and also AI, reports Euronews. The founder/CEO of the company that makes the vessels — Saildrone — says they'll work "like a truck" that "carries the sensors." And then "we use on-board sophisticated machine learning and AI to fuse that data to give us a full picture of what's above and below the surface." Powered by solar and wind energy, they can operate autonomously for months at sea. [Saildrone] said the autonomous sailboats can support operations such as illegal fishing detection, border enforcement, and strategic asset protection... The four "Voyagers" will be first in operation for a three-month trial, as Denmark and NATO allies aim at extending maritime presence, especially around critical undersea infrastructure such as fibre optic cables and power lines. NATO and its allies have increased sea patrolling following several incidents. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Mercedes-AMG to Drop Four-Cylinder for Inline-Sixes and V-8s
technology - Posted On:2025-06-28 10:45:01 Source: slashdot
"Mercedes-AMG is transitioning away from the four-cylinder plug-in hybrid powertrain," reports Car and Driver, "and back towards the inline-six and V-8 powertrains more traditionally associated with the brand." That isn't to say that AMG had a change of heart concerning the merits of the four-cylinder powertrain, but rather that the automaker is responding to customer criticisms. "Technically, the four-cylinder is one of the most advanced drivetrains available in a production car. It's also right up there on performance. But despite this, it failed to resonate with our traditional customers. We've recognized that," a source at Mercedes told Autocar... Car and Driver also spoke with AMG chief Michael Schiebe at the reveal of the AMG GT XX electric concept car... Although the four-cylinder may be on its way out, Schiebe did say AMG remains committed to plug-in hybrids. "There are a lot of advantages of combining electric motors with combustion engines," Schiebe said. "We want to offer different kinds of drivetrain opportunities on the combustion side to our customers, so they can choose for whatever purpose they want to use the car." Much of the criticism of the C63 and GLC63's powertrain was focused on the lackluster sound when compared with the symphony of a V-8. The M139 drew our ire for sounding "reedy" and "buzzy" in our test of the current C63. The C63's hybrid system also brings the car's curb weight up to nearly 5000 pounds, meaning it didn't provide a meaningful performance boost over its V-8 predecessor despite offering significantly more horsepower.... AMG wouldn't confirm exactly when the four-cylinder will be phased out, telling Autocar that it will remain in production for the time being before "eventually" being replaced. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sinij for sharing the news. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Graphics Artists In China Push Back On AI and Its Averaging Effect
technology - Posted On:2025-06-28 06:15:00 Source: slashdot
Graphic artists in China are pushing back against AI image generators, which they say "profoundly shifts clients' perception of their work, specifically in terms of how much that work costs and how much time it takes to produce," reports The Verge. "Freelance artists or designers working in industries with clients that invest in stylized, eye-catching graphics, like advertising, are particularly at risk." From the report: Long before AI image generators became popular, graphic designers at major tech companies and in-house designers for large corporate clients were often instructed by managers to crib aesthetics from competitors or from social media, according to one employee at a major online shopping platform in China, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from their employer. Where a human would need to understand and reverse engineer a distinctive style to recreate it, AI image generators simply create randomized mutations of it. Often, the results will look like obvious copies and include errors, but other graphic designers can then edit them into a final product. "I think it'd be easier to replace me if I didn't embrace [AI]," the shopping platform employee says. Early on, as tools like Stable Diffusion and Midjourney became more popular, their colleagues who spoke English well were selected to study AI image generators to increase in-house expertise on how to write successful prompts and identify what types of tasks AI was useful for. Ultimately, it was useful for copying styles from popular artists that, in the past, would take more time to study. "I think it forces both designers and clients to rethink the value of designers," Jia says. "Is it just about producing a design? Or is it about consultation, creativity, strategy, direction, and aesthetic?" [...] Across the board, though, artists and designers say that AI hype has negatively impacted clients' view of their work's value. Now, clients expect a graphic designer to produce work on a shorter timeframe and for less money, which also has its own averaging impact, lowering the ceiling for what designers can deliver. As clients lower budgets and squish timelines, the quality of the designers' output decreases. "There is now a significant misperception about the workload of designers," [says Erbing, a graphic designer in Beijing who has worked with several ad agencies and asked to be called by his nickname]. "Some clients think that since AI must have improved efficiency, they can halve their budget." But this perception runs contrary to what designers spend the majority of their time doing, which is not necessarily just making any image, Erbing says. Read more of this story at Slashdot.