Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash
Judge Allows Google to Keep Chrome, Orders It to Share Data With Rivals
- Written by Andrea Miliani Former Tech News Expert
- Fact-Checked by Sarah Frazier Former Content Manager
A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that Google can keep its Chrome browser during the ongoing antitrust battle, in what is considered a win for the tech giant. However, the company has been ordered to share the data it uses to improve search results, granting competitors access to information that was previously private.
In a rush? Here are the quick facts:
- A federal judge denied the DOJ’s request to force Google to sell its browser Chrome or Android operating system in the ongoing antitrust case.
- Google has been ordered to share the data it uses to improve search results, allowing competitors to access previously private information.
- The impact of artificial intelligence has played a centric role in the judge’s decision.
According to CBS News , U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta denied the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) request to force Google to sell parts of its business , such as its browser Chrome or Android operating system, as a remedy for its search monopoly.
This comes just months after U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled in April that Google had violated antitrust laws , stating that the tech giant had been “willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power.” The latest hearing, however, took a different approach.
In a 226-page opinion issued in Washington, Judge Mehta explained that the rapid development of technologies such as artificial intelligence is reshaping the search industry and affecting general search engines (GSEs).
“Today, tens of millions of people use GenAI chatbots, like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude, to gather information that they previously sought through internet search,” states the document. “These GenAI chatbots are not yet close to replacing GSEs, but the industry expects that developers will continue to add features to GenAI products to perform more like GSEs.”
Judge Mehta added that this case is unusual because a decision cannot be based solely on historical facts: “The court is asked to gaze into a crystal ball and look to the future.”
Instead of requiring Google to sell parts of its business—such as Chrome, which already had buying offers such as Perplexity’s $34.5 billion bid —, the judge ordered the company to share the data gathered for users’ trillions of queries, used by the tech giant to optimize searches.
“Today’s decision recognizes how much the industry has changed through the advent of AI, which is giving people so many more ways to find information,” wrote Google in a recent statement on its website . “This underlines what we’ve been saying since this case was filed in 2020: Competition is intense and people can easily choose the services they want. That’s why we disagree so strongly with the Court’s initial decision in August 2024 on liability.”
Image by vecstoc, from Freepick
Historians Alarmed As AI Floods YouTube With Inaccurate History
- Written by Kiara Fabbri Former Tech News Writer
- Fact-Checked by Sarah Frazier Former Content Manager
AI is taking over YouTube’s history content, threatening authentic creators while altering how people understand historical events.
In a rush? Here are the quick facts:
- AI videos often repeat shallow, inaccurate information with low-quality visuals.
- AI-generated videos run hours long, covering obscure or sensationalized topics.
- Some historians are adapting by appearing in videos to prove authenticity.
AI-generated history videos are flooding YouTube, confusing viewers and threatening the work of real historians and creators, as detailed in a new report by 404Media .
The press release reports how viewer recalls waking up at 3 a.m. to a glitching video called ‘ Boring History for Sleep | How Medieval PEASANTS Survived the Coldest Nights and More ’. “In the end, Anne Boleyn won a kind of immortality… FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE,” the AI narrator said in a fake British accent.
The next night, the viewer discovered multiple new channels on their homepage, including ‘Sleepless Historian’, ‘Boring History Bites’, and ‘Dreamoria’. 404 Media notes how these videos span more than three hours, covering obscure topics such as medieval diseases and brothels from Pompeii.
However, most of these videos are “slop content,” which consists mainly of AI-generated narratives that repeat shallow information.
“It’s completely shocking to me,” Pete Kelly, who runs the popular ‘History Time’ channel, said to 404 Media. “It used to take six months to make a video, now someone can do the same thing in a day. The visuals they use are completely inaccurate often. And I’m fearful because this is everywhere,” Kelly added.
“I absolutely hate it, primarily the fact that they’re historically inaccurate… We need to be looking at the past and it needs to be nuanced and we need to be aware of where the evidence or an argument comes from,” Kelly said to 404Media. He has even begun appearing in videos himself to show viewers he is a real person.
Amateur anthropologist Pete from ‘Ancient Americas’ agreed, noting that AI videos often produce “vague and surface-level” content and “slideshow-quality” visuals, failing to replicate the depth of human research, as noted by 404Media.
‘The French Whisperer’, another creator, said to 404Media that his YouTube views dropped by 60% over the past year, and attributes this loss to AI content surge. “An entire niche can be threatened overnight by AI […] Unless you have millions of followers, this is not a reasonable career choice,” he said.
AI-generated content has already caused significant damage to historical content beyond YouTube. On Facebook, spammers used Meta’s monetization program to create fake Auschwitz prisoner images , deceiving users.
Social media users create fake stories, which Pawel Sawicki from the Auschwitz Memorial describes as, “Here we have somebody making up the stories… for some kind of strange emotional game that is happening on social media,” occurring on these platforms.
More broadly, researchers warn that historical content created by AI poses a threat by implanting false memories, creating false historical narratives that alter how people remember actual events.
Despite the AI flood, creators like Kelly and Pete remain committed. “AI may be polluting the river but I still have to swim in it or sink,” Pete said to 404 Media. “I take the research very seriously […] I’ve never seen AI do this. It’s always a slideshow of crappy AI images,” Pete added.
Kelly concluded: “It’s worrying to me just for humanity […] for the state of knowledge in the world.”
