AI spots legal problems with tech T&Cs in GDPR research project

Technology is the proverbial double-edged sword. And an experimental European research project is ensuring this axiom cuts very close to the industry’s bone indeed by applying machine learning technology to critically sift big tech’s privacy policies — to see whether AI can automatically identify violations of data protection law.

The still-in-training privacy policy and contract parsing tool — which is called ‘Claudette‘: Aka (automated) clause detector — is being developed by researchers at the European University Institute in Florence.

They’ve also now got support from European consumer organization BEUC — for a ‘Claudette meets GDPR‘ project — which specifically applies the tool to evaluate compliance with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.

Early results from this project have been released today, with BEUC saying the AI was able to automatically flag a range of problems with the language being used in tech T&Cs.

The researchers set Claudette to work analyzing the privacy policies of 14 companies in all — namely: Google, Facebook (and Instagram), Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, WhatsApp, Twitter, Uber, AirBnB, Booking, Skyscanner, Netflix, Steam and Epic Games — saying this group was selected to cover a range of online services and sectors.

And also because they are among the biggest online players and — I quote — “should be setting a good example for the market to follow”. Ehem, should.

The AI analysis of the policies was carried out in June, after the update to the EU’s data protection rules had come into force. The regulation tightens requirements on obtaining consent for processing citizens’ personal data by, for example, increasing transparency requirements — basically requiring that privacy policies be written in clear and intelligible language, explaining exactly how the data will be used, in order that people can make a genuine, informed choice to consent (or not consent).

In theory, all 15 parsed privacy policies should have been compliant with GDPR by June, as it came into force on May 25. However some tech giants are already facing legal challenges to their interpretation of ‘consent’. And it’s fair to say the law has not vanquished the tech industry’s fuzzy language and logic overnight. Where user privacy is concerned, old, ugly habits die hard, clearly.

But that’s where BEUC is hoping AI technology can help.

It says that out of a combined 3,659 sentences (80,398 words) Claudette marked 401 sentences (11.0%) as containing unclear language, and 1,240 (33.9%) containing “potentially problematic” clauses or clauses providing “insufficient” information.

BEUC says identified problems include:

• Not providing all the information which is required under the GDPR’s transparency obligations. “For example companies do not always inform users properly regarding the third parties with whom they share or get data from”
• Processing of personal data not happening according to GDPR requirements. “For instance, a clause stating that the user agrees to the company’s privacy policy by simply using its website”
• Policies are formulated using vague and unclear language (i.e. using language qualifiers that really bring the fuzz — such as “may”, “might”, “some”, “often”, and “possible”) — “which makes it very hard for consumers to understand the actual content of the policy and how their data is used in practice”

The bolstering of the EU’s privacy rules, with GDPR tightening the consent screw and supersizing penalties for violations, was exactly intended to prevent this kind of stuff. So it’s pretty depressing — though hardly surprising — to see the same, ugly T&C tricks continuing to be used to try to sneak consent by keeping users in the dark.

We reached out to two of the largest tech giants whose policies Claudette parsed — Google and Facebook — to ask if they want to comment on the project or its findings.

A Google spokesperson said: “We have updated our Privacy Policy in line with the requirements of the GDPR, providing more detail on our practices and describing the information that we collect and use, and the controls that users have, in clear and plain language. We’ve also added new graphics and video explanations, structured the Policy so that users can explore it more easily, and embedded controls to allow users to access relevant privacy settings directly.”

At the time of writing Facebook had not responded to our request for comment.

Commenting in a statement, Monique Goyens, BEUC’s director general, said: “A little over a month after the GDPR became applicable, many privacy policies may not meet the standard of the law. This is very concerning. It is key that enforcement authorities take a close look at this.”

The group says it will be sharing the research with EU data protection authorities, including the European Data Protection Board. And is not itself ruling out bringing legal actions against law benders.

But it’s also hopeful that automation will — over the longer term — help civil society keep big tech in legal check.

Although, where this project is concerned, it also notes that the training data-set was small — conceding that Claudette’s results were not 100% accurate — and says more privacy policies would need to be manually analyzed before policy analysis can be fully conducted by machines alone.

So file this one under ‘promising research’.

“This innovative research demonstrates that just as Artificial Intelligence and automated decision-making will be the future for companies from all kinds of sectors, AI can also be used to keep companies in check and ensure people’s rights are respected,” adds Goyens. “We are confident AI will be an asset for consumer groups to monitor the market and ensure infringements do not go unnoticed.

“We expect companies to respect consumers’ privacy and the new data protection rights. In the future, Artificial Intelligence will help identify infringements quickly and on a massive scale, making it easier to start legal actions as a result.”

For more on the AI-fueled future of legal tech, check out our recent interview with Mireille Hildebrandt.

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Light is building a smartphone with five to nine cameras

Light, the company behind the wild L16 camera, is building a smartphone equipped with multiple cameras. According to The Washington Post, the company is prototyping a smartphone with five to nine cameras that’s capable of capturing a 64 megapixel shot.

The entire package is not much thicker than an iPhone X, the Post reports. The additional sensors are said to increase the phone’s low-light performance and depth effects and uses internal processing to stick the image together.

This is the logical end-point for Light. The company introduced the $1,950 L16 camera back in 2015 and starting shipping it in 2017. The camera uses 16 lenses to capture 52 megapixel imagery. The results are impressive, especially when the size of the camera is considered. It’s truly pocketable. Yet in the end, consumers want the convenience of a phone with the power of a dedicated camera.

Light is not alone in building a super cameraphone. Camera maker RED is nearing the release of its smartphone that rocks a modular lens system and can be used as a viewfinder for RED’s cinema cameras. Huawei also just released the P21 Pro that uses three lenses to give the user the best possible option for color, monochrome and zoom. Years ago, Nokia played with high megapixel phones, stuffing a 41 MP sensor in the Lumia 1020 and PureView 808.

Unfortunately, additional details about the Light phone are unavailable. It’s unclear when this phone will be released. We reached out to Light for comment and will update this report with its response.

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Google releases Beta 3 of Android P

It still doesn’t have an official name (Popsicle? Peppermint? Your guess is as good as ours), but Google’s just dropped what it says is a near final version of Android P. The new version arrives a month after Beta 2, bringing with it what largely amounts to bug fixes and stability tweaks.

This is the last major beta update the company is sending out to developers prior to the final version of the mobile operating system, due out for the rest of us, later this summer. From the sound of it, there shouldn’t be too major major visible tweaks this time out — Google brought a number of those with Beta 2.

“With the developer APIs already finalized in the previous update,” Android VP of Engineering Dave Burke says in a blog post tied to the announce, “Beta 3 now takes us very close to what you’ll see in the final version of Android P.”

Among the key updates this time out are finalized APIs so developers can start testing and building apps for the new version of the software. Among the system tools available here are multi-camera support, enhanced notifications, display cutout (notches for days) and ImageDecoder.

The update is available today for developers with access to a Pixel device. Those who are already running Beta 2, meanwhile, will get the update automatically. For good measure, the company will also be hosting a Reddit AMA on July 19 to field all of those technical questions about the new OS.

 

 

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Original Stitch’s new Bodygram will measure your body

After years of teasing, Original Stitch has officially launched their Bodygram service and will be rolling it out this summer. The system can scan your body based on front and side photos and will create custom shirts with your own precise measurements.

“Bodygram gives you full body measurements as accurate as taken by professional tailors from just two photos on your phone. Simply take a front photo and a side photo and upload to our cloud and you will receive a push notification within minutes when your Bodygram sizing report is ready,” said CEO Jin Koh. “In the sizing report you will find your full body measurements including neck, sleeve, shoulder, chest, waist, hip, etc. Bodygram is capable of producing sizing result within 99% accuracy compared to professional human tailors.”

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The technology is a clever solution to the biggest problem in custom clothing: fit. While it’s great to find a service that will tailor your clothing based on your own measurements, often these measurements are slightly off and can affect the cut of the shirt or pants. Right now, Koh said, his team offers free returns if the custom shirts don’t fit.

Further, the technology is brand new and avoids many of the pitfalls of the original body scanning tech. For example, Bodygram doesn’t require you to get into a Spandex onesie like most systems do and it can capture 40 measurements with only two full-body photos.

“Bodygram is the first sizing technology that works on your phone capable of giving you highly accurate sizing result from just two photos with you wearing normal clothing on any background,” said Koh. “Legacy technologies on the market today requires you to wear very tight fitting spandex suit, take 360 photos of you, and require a plain background to work. Other technologies gives you accuracy with 5 inches deviation in accuracy while Bodygram is the first technology to give you sub 1-inch accuracy. We are the first to use both computer vision and machine learning techniques to solve the problem of predicting your body shape underneath the clothes. Once we predicted your body shape we wrote our proprietary algorithm to calculate the circumferences and the length for each part of the body.”

Koh hopes the technology will reduce returns.

“It’s not uncommon to see clothing return rate reaching in the 40%-50% range,” he said. “Apparel clothing sales is among the lowest penetration in online shopping.”

The system can also be used to measure your body over time in order to collect health and weight data as well as help other manufacturers produce products that fit you perfectly. The app will launch this summer on Android and iOS. The company will be licensing the technology to other providers who will be able to create custom fits based on just a few side and front photos. Sales at the company grew 175% this year and they now have 350,000 buyers who are already creating custom shirts.

A number of competitors are in this interesting space, most notably ShapeScale, a company that appeared at TechCrunch Disrupt and promised a full body scan using a robotic scale. This, however, is the first commercial use of standard photos to measure your appendages and thorax and it’s an impressive step forward in the world of custom clothing.

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Spotify is testing a data-friendly ‘Lite’ app for Android

Spotify is the latest tech company to join the ‘Lite’ app party after a data-friendly version of its music streaming app surfaced for Android devices.

‘Spotify Lite’ — which was first spotted by the eagle eyes at Android Police — is designed to take up less space on smartphones and to consume less data, too. That’s particularly important for cheaper smartphones, which tend to have less memory, and people who use metered mobile data. In that respect, the app is just 15MB in size, as opposed to 100MB for the main Spotify app, while it also tracks the amount of data that the app uses each month.

However, like most things in life, there’s a compromise here… although we can’t quite be sure exactly what. That’s because the app is being trialed in Brazil only — tough luck if you live elsewhere and want to get it — although Android Police got hold of an SDK which it said shows the app is devoid of some key features. That apparently includes — or, rather, doesn’t include — offline playback and Spotify Connect for streaming to other devices. It looks like Lite app users can’t select specific songs and must instead rely on the shuffle button, even if they are a Spotify Premium subscriber.

Of course, the app is in beta right now so that list of missing features may change as/when it gets a full worldwide release. For now, app tracking firm Sensor Tower suggests Spotify Lite has racked up just 4,000 downloads so this is very much a test deployment.

Here’s Spotify’s non-committal statement on the Lite app.

“At Spotify, we routinely conduct a number of tests in an effort to improve our user experience. Some of those tests end up paving the path for our broader user experience and others serve only as an important learning. We aren’t going to comment on specific tests at this time,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch.

The company has tested other apps on Android in the past, like Spotify Hopper back in 2016, and more recently, a pared-down radio app called Spotify Stations.

Spotify Lite isn’t the first time Spotify has helped its users save on data consumption. The company added a low-data mode to its service in April as part of a wider product launch focused on bringing more value to its free-tier users. The Lite app could add another element to attract more users, giving Spotify an additional competitive advantage over rivals like Apple Music and Pandora.

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This could be Apple’s next iPhone USB-C fast charger

Right now, the cable that comes with a new iPhone does not plug into a new MacBook Pro without a dongle. #donglelife is for real. If this leak is correct, though, that wrong might soon be righted.

Photos have surfaced showing what is an engineering prototype of an Apple 18 W USB-C charger, which is supposedly to be bundled with the next iPhone. If correct, this will let owners take advantage of the iPhone’s fast charging capabilities without purchasing anything else. Plus, it will let users connect the iPhone to a MacBook Pro out of the box.

This rumor surfaced last year, too, though no photos ever surfaced to back up the claim.

If true, this adapter will mark the first major change in the iPhone’s wall charger. Apple has long bundled a 5W charger with the iPhone. It works fine, but does not supply the phone with the necessary power to charge at its fastest possible speed. Even if the photos here show something other than an official Apple product, chances are Apple is readying something similar. Previous leaks show something similar.

Apple included fast charging in the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X but didn’t include the necessary charger to take advantage of the technology. Owners have to buy a third party charger of the $50 30W charger from Apple.

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HTC is gone

Gather around, campers, and hear a tale as old as time.

Remember the HTC Dream? The Evo 4G? The Google Nexus One? What about the Touch Diamond? All amazing devices. The HTC of 2018 is not the HTC that made these industry-leading devices. That company is gone.

It seems HTC is getting ready to lay off nearly a quarter of its workforce by cutting 1,500 jobs in its manufacturing unit in Taiwan. After the cuts, HTC’s employee count will be less than 5,000 people worldwide. Five years ago, in 2013, HTC employed 19,000 people.

HTC started as a white label device maker giving carriers an option to sell devices branded with their name. The company also had a line of HTC-branded connected PDAs that competed in the nascent smartphone market. BlackBerry, or Research in Motion as it was called until 2013, ruled this phone segment, but starting around 2007 HTC began making inroads thanks to innovated touch devices that ran Windows Mobile 6.0.

In 2008 HTC introduced the Touch line with the Touch Diamond, Touch Pro, Touch 3G and Touch HD. These were stunning devices for the time. They were fast, loaded with big, user swappable batteries and microSD card slots. The Touch Pro even had a front-facing camera for video calls.

HTC overplayed a custom skin onto of Windows Mobile making it a bit more palatable for the general user. At that time, Windows Mobile was competing with BlackBerry’s operating system and Nokia’s Symbian. None were fantastic, but Windows Mobile was by far the most daunting for new users. HTC did the best thing it could do and developed a smart skin that gave the phone a lot of features that would still be considered modern.

In 2009 HTC released the first Android device with Google. Called the HTC Dream or G1, the device was far from perfect. But the same could be said about the iPhone. This first Android phone set the stage for future wins from HTC, too. The company quickly followed up with the Hero, Droid Incredible, Evo 4G and, in 2010, the amazing Google Nexus One.

After the G1, HTC started skinning Android in the same fashion as it did Windows Mobile. It cannot be overstated how important this was for the adoption of Android. HTC’s user interface made Android usable and attractive. HTC helped make Android a serious competitor to Apple’s iOS.

In 2010 and 2011, Google turned to Samsung to make the second and third flagship Nexus phones. It was around this time Samsung started cranking out Android phones, and HTC couldn’t keep up. That’s not to say HTC didn’t make a go for it. The company kept releasing top-tier phones: the One X in 2012, the One Max in 2013, and the One (M8) in 2014. But it didn’t matter. Samsung had taken up the Android standard and was charging forward, leaving HTC, Sony, and LG to pick from the scraps.

At the end of 2010, HTC was the leading smartphone vendor in the United States. In 2014 it trailed Apple, Samsung, and LG with around a 6% market share in the US. In 2017 HTC captured 2.3% of smartphone subscribers and now in 2018, some reports peg HTC with less than a half percent of the smartphone market.

Google purchased a large chunk of HTC’s smartphone design talent in 2017 for $1.1 billion. The deal transferred more than 2,000 employees under Google’s tutelage. They will likely be charged with working on Google’s line of Pixel devices. It’s a smart move. This HTC team was responsible for releasing amazing devices that no one bought. But that’s not entirely their fault. Outside forces are to blame. HTC never stopped making top-tier devices.

The HTC of today is primarily focused on the Vive product line. And that’s a smart play. The HTC Vive is one of the best virtual reality platforms available. But HTC has been here before. Hopefully, it learned something from its mistakes in smartphones.

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