Traveling tech: Global news
Joining Australia and Indonesia in banning social media for youth users, Greece announced a national social media ban for citizens younger than 15 on Wednesday. The legislation is predicted to pass this summer and take effect on January 1, 2027, according to a statement from Greece’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis. The ban does not include messaging apps.
“I talk to a lot of parents who say roughly the same thing: that their children aren’t sleeping properly, get anxious easily and are on their phones a lot,” Mitsotakis explained in a social media post directed to youth social media users. “I also talk to a lot of you, who say you’re tired of comparisons, comments and of the constant pressure to be there all the time.”
Roughly 1,500 miles north of Greece, TikTok is building its second data center in Finland, the Chinese ByteDance-owned app announced on Wednesday. TikTok plans to invest $1.16 billion into the Lahti facility, as part of its $14 billion data sovereignty initiative, according to Reuters.
Speaking of tech and travel, self-driving vehicle company Waymo and GPS navigation platform Waze announced a data-sharing deal to track potholes on Thursday. Waymo taxis — which currently operate in 11 U.S. cities — will share detected pothole locations with Waze users, according to an announcement from the brands, which are both owned by Google owner Alphabet.
Tech on trial: OpenAI vs. Elon Musk
Ahead of an April 27 jury selection for an upcoming trial between OpenAI and Elon Musk, OpenAI wrote a letter to the California and Delaware attorneys general requesting a probe into the X owner’s alleged “anti-competitive behavior” on Wednesday.
OpenAI chief strategy officer Jason Kwon accused Musk of coordinating with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to form “attacks” on OpenAI, which Musk cofounded in 2015 with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Musk departed the company in 2018 and launched a competing company, xAI, in 2023.
In other OpenAI legal news, the tech giant released its Child Safety Blueprint to aid AI-enabled child sexual exploitation detection, reporting and investigations on Wednesday. The Child Safety Blueprint comes weeks after New Mexico sued Meta for $375 million for violating child safety laws, and after multiple lawsuits against OpenAI on the topic of child safety and mental health.
Speaking of New Mexico’s trial against Meta, Instagram announced plans to internationally restrict Teen Account video access based on 13-plus movie rating guidelines on Thursday. The Meta-owned app began implementing the restrictions in the U.S., Canada, Australia and the U.K. last October.
Chip central: Uber taps Amazon; Google taps Intel
Uber and Amazon Web Services (AWS) expanded their existing partnership on Tuesday. Uber will use more of AWS’ AI capabilities and infrastructure, along with using Amazon’s AI chips. The company’s “in-house chips” were a driving force behind the deal, experts say.
Uber uses Amazon’s Graviton4 chip to match customers with drivers in less than a second, and uses Amazon’s Trainium3 chip to create AI-powered predictions of fastest routes and ETAs, Amazon said in a statement. The expanded partnership is less of a threat to chip technology leader Nvidia, and more of a threat to AWS-competing cloud companies, including Google and Oracle, according to TechCrunch.
Google and Intel also expanded their partnership on Thursday. Google will use various kinds of Intel chips to power its AI data centers. Financial details of the deal remain undisclosed. Following the news on Thursday morning, Intel’s shares spiked 2%, and Google owner Alphabet’s shares dropped 1%.
This story first appeared on PRWeek U.S.
