EU to Investigate Apple, Google, Meta for Potential Digital Markets Act Breaches

FILE - The Apple logo is illuminated at a store in Munich, Germany, Monday, Nov. 13, 2023.  (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader, File)
FILE - The Apple logo is illuminated at a store in Munich, Germany, Monday, Nov. 13, 2023. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader, File)
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EU to Investigate Apple, Google, Meta for Potential Digital Markets Act Breaches

FILE - The Apple logo is illuminated at a store in Munich, Germany, Monday, Nov. 13, 2023.  (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader, File)
FILE - The Apple logo is illuminated at a store in Munich, Germany, Monday, Nov. 13, 2023. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader, File)

EU antitrust regulators on Monday opened their first investigations under the Digital Markets Act into Apple, Alphabet's Google and Meta Platforms for potential breaches of the landmark EU tech rules.

"The (European) Commission suspects that the measures put in place by these gatekeepers fall short of effective compliance of their obligations under the DMA," the EU executive said in a statement.

The EU competition enforcer will investigate Alphabet's rules on steering in Google Play and self-preferencing on Google Search, Apple's rules on steering in the App Store and the choice screen for Safari and Meta's 'pay or consent model'.

The Commission also launched investigatory steps relating to Apple's new fee structure for alternative app stores and Amazon's ranking practices on its marketplace.



Alphabet to Roll out Image Generation of People on Gemini after Pause

A large Google logo is seen at Google's Bay View campus in Mountain View, California on August 13, 2024. (AFP)
A large Google logo is seen at Google's Bay View campus in Mountain View, California on August 13, 2024. (AFP)
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Alphabet to Roll out Image Generation of People on Gemini after Pause

A large Google logo is seen at Google's Bay View campus in Mountain View, California on August 13, 2024. (AFP)
A large Google logo is seen at Google's Bay View campus in Mountain View, California on August 13, 2024. (AFP)

Alphabet's Google said on Wednesday it has updated Gemini's AI image-creation model and would roll out the generation of visuals of people in the coming days, after months-long pause of the capability.

In February, Google had paused its AI tool that creates images of people, following inaccuracies in some historical depictions generated by the model.

The issues, where the AI model returned historical images which were sometimes inaccurate, drew flak from users.

The company said it has worked to improve the product, adhere to "product principles" and simulated situations to find weaknesses.

The feature will be made available first to paid users of the Gemini AI chatbot, starting in English and later roll out the model to bring more users and languages.

Google said it has improved the Imagen 3 model to create better images of people, but it would not generate images of specific people, children or graphic content.

OpenAI's Dall-E, Microsoft's CoPilot and recently xAI's Grok are among other AI chatbots that can now generate images.

The search engine giant also said over the coming days, subscribers to Gemini Advanced, Business and Enterprise would have access to chatting with "Gems" or chatbots customized for specific purposes.

Users can write specific instructions for particular purposes and create a Gem, saving them time from rewriting prompts for repetitive use cases.