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Amazon Must Promise to Rank iRobot Rivals Fairly, EU Watchdog Warns

6Dec

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Technology

Amazon Must Promise to Rank iRobot Rivals Fairly, EU Watchdog Warns

[ad_1] Amazon.com Inc. must pledge to fairly rank rival robot vacuum cleaners sold on its online marketplace if it is to secure European Union approval for its $1.4 billion buyout of Roomba maker iRobot Corp., the bloc's interim competition chief Didier Reynders warned. His comments follow last week's move by the European Commission to issue a formal statement of objections cataloging potential reasons to block the deal unless Amazon comes up with an offer to fix them. “The main issue is to be sure to have a fair treatment of all the different actors,” Didier Reynders, the EU's acting commissioner for competition, told reporters after an event in Brussels. Reynders, who's standing in for competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager while she runs for the top job at the European Investm...

Lina Khan is coming for Amazon, armed with an FTC antitrust suit

[ad_1] Lina Khan's Federal Trade Commission has already filed three cases against Amazon.com Inc. Now she's gearing up for the Big One.In the coming weeks, the agency plans to file a far-reaching antitrust suit focused on Amazon's core online marketplace, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg and three people familiar with the case. The main allegation is expected to be that Amazon leverages its power to reward online merchants that use its logistics services and punish those who don't. FTC investigators and Khan's office have been honing the complaint for several months, two of the people said, and finalizing key details such as where to file suit. Khan and her colleagues are keen to file before personnel changes in August, according to the people, who cautioned that the timing ...

Creative AI Is Generating Some Messy Problems

[ad_1] The hot new trend in tech circles comes with thorny legal and ethical challenges. A tense scene in the 2004 movie iRobot shows the character played by Will Smith arguing with an android about humanity's creative prowess. “Can a robot write a symphony?” he asks, rhetorically. “Can a robot turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?” “Can you?” the robot answers. Machines wouldn't need the snarky reply in our current reality. The answer would simply be “yes.” In the last few years, artificial-intelligence systems have shifted from being able to process content – recognizing faces or reading and transcribing text — to creating digital paintings or writing essays. The digital artist Beeple was shocked in August when several Twitter users generated their own versions of one o...