Cyber police register case against X user over deepfake video of Ranveer Singh
Mumbai, Apr 23: The cyber cell of Maharashtra police on Tuesday registered an FIR against an X user for allegedly uploading a `deepfake' or manipulated video where actor Ranveer Singh appeared to be making an appeal to vote for Congress.
The First Information Report was registered on a complaint filed by the actor's father, Jugjeet Singh Bhavnani, against the user @sujataindia1st, an official said.
Deepfake videos are videos that have been altered, in a convincing way, to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said. Recently, city police had registered an FIR against an unidentified person in connection with a similar deepfake video of actor Aamir Khan where he was purportedly seen promoting a political party.
Ranveer Singh gave an interview to the media while he was in Varanasi to promote a fashion show and praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as per his father's complaint.
As per the FIR, the actor said "it is Modi ji's purpose and goal to celebrate our rich culture, heritage, history, and legacy because we are moving ahead towards modernity very fast but we should never forget our roots, our cultural heritage."
But X account holder @sujataindia1st made a deepfake video in which he is heard saying it is "Modi ji's purpose and goal to celebrate our painful life, fear, and unemployment because we are moving ahead towards injustice but we should never stop asking for our development and justice, vote for justice, vote for Congress," the FIR said.
Ranveer Singh never said this, and he does not have any relation with any political party, his father said in the complaint.
The FIR was registered under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code including 417 (cheating), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating), 469 (forgery for the purpose of harming reputation) and sections of the Information Technology Act, and further probe was on, the official said.
Here's the edited video:
AI is Scary what if HE :pic.twitter.com/mcWmdpDSvo
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US regulators seek to break up Google, forcing Chrome sale as part of monopoly punishment
Washington, Nov 21: US regulators want a federal judge to break up Google to prevent the company from continuing to squash competition through its dominant search engine after a court found it had maintained an abusive monopoly over the past decade.
The proposed breakup floated in a 23-page document filed late Wednesday by the US Department of Justice calls for sweeping punishments that would include a sale of Google's industry-leading Chrome web browser and impose restrictions to prevent Android from favouring its own search engine.
A sale of Chrome “will permanently stop Google's control of this critical search access point and allow rival search engines the ability to access the browser that for many users is a gateway to the internet”, Justice Department lawyers argued in their filing.
Although regulators stopped short of demanding Google sell Android too, they asserted the judge should make it clear the company could still be required to divest its smartphone operating system if its oversight committee continues to see evidence of misconduct.
The broad scope of the recommended penalties underscores how severely regulators operating under President Joe Biden's administration believe Google should be punished following an August ruling by US District Judge Amit Mehta that branded the company as a monopolist.
The Justice Department decision-makers who will inherit the case after President-elect Donald Trump takes office next year might not be as strident. The Washington, DC, court hearings on Google's punishment are scheduled to begin in April and Mehta is aiming to issue his final decision before Labour Day.
If Mehta embraces the government's recommendations, Google would be forced to sell its 16-year-old Chrome browser within six months of the final ruling. But the company certainly would appeal any punishment, potentially prolonging a legal tussle that has dragged on for more than four years.
Besides seeking a Chrome spinoff and a corralling of the Android software, the Justice Department wants the judge to ban Google from forging multibillion-dollar deals to lock in its dominant search engine as the default option on Apple's iPhone and other devices. It would also ban Google from favouring its own services, such as YouTube or its recently-launched artificial intelligence platform, Gemini.
Regulators also want Google to license the search index data it collects from people's queries to its rivals, giving them a better chance at competing with the tech giant. On the commercial side of its search engine, Google would be required to provide more transparency into how it sets the prices that advertisers pay to be listed near the top of some targeted search results.
Kent Walker, Google's chief legal officer, lashed out at the Justice Department for pursuing “a radical interventionist agenda that would harm Americans and America's global technology”.
In a blog post, Walker warned the “overly broad proposal” would threaten personal privacy while undermining Google's early leadership in artificial intelligence, “perhaps the most important innovation of our time”.
Wary of Google's increasing use of artificial intelligence in its search results, regulators also advised Mehta to ensure websites will be able to shield their content from Google's AI training techniques.
The measures, if they are ordered, threaten to upend a business expected to generate more than USD 300 billion in revenue this year.
“The playing field is not level because of Google's conduct, and Google's quality reflects the ill-gotten gains of an advantage illegally acquired,” the Justice Department asserted in its recommendations. “The remedy must close this gap and deprive Google of these advantages.”
It's still possible that the Justice Department could ease off attempts to break up Google, especially if Trump takes the widely expected step of replacing Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, who was appointed by Biden to oversee the agency's antitrust division.
Although the case targeting Google was originally filed during the final months of Trump's first term in office, Kanter oversaw the high-profile trial that culminated in Mehta's ruling against Google.
Working in tandem with Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, Kanter took a get-tough stance against Big Tech that triggered other attempted crackdowns on industry powerhouses such as Apple and discouraged many business deals from getting done during the past four years.
Trump recently expressed concerns that a breakup might destroy Google but didn't elaborate on alternative penalties he might have in mind. “What you can do without breaking it up is make sure it's more fair,” Trump said last month.
Matt Gaetz, the former Republican congressman that Trump nominated to be the next US Attorney General, has previously called for the breakup of Big Tech companies.
Gaetz faces a tough confirmation hearing.
This latest filing gave Kanter and his team a final chance to spell out measures that they believe are needed to restore competition in search. It comes six weeks after Justice first floated the idea of a breakup in a preliminary outline of potential penalties.
But Kanter's proposal is already raising questions about whether regulators seek to impose controls that extend beyond the issues covered in last year's trial, and — by extension — Mehta's ruling.
Banning the default search deals that Google now pays more than USD 26 billion annually to maintain was one of the main practices that troubled Mehta in his ruling.
It's less clear whether the judge will embrace the Justice Department's contention that Chrome needs to be spun out of Google, and the recommendation that Android should be completely walled off from the company's own search engine.
“It is probably going a little beyond,” Syracuse University law professor Shubha Ghosh said of the Chrome breakup. “The remedies should match the harm, it should match the transgression. This does seem a little beyond that pale.”
Google rival DuckDuckGo, whose executives testified during last year's trial, asserted the Justice Department is simply doing what needs to be done to rein in a brazen monopolist.
“Undoing Google's overlapping and widespread illegal conduct over more than a decade requires more than contract restrictions: it requires a range of remedies to create enduring competition,” Kamyl Bazbaz, DuckDuckGo's senior vice president of public affairs, said in a statement.
Trying to break up Google harks back to a similar punishment initially imposed on Microsoft a quarter century ago following another major antitrust trial that culminated in a federal judge deciding the software maker had illegally used his Windows operating system for PCs to stifle competition.
However, an appeals court overturned an order that would have broken up Microsoft, a precedent many experts believe will make Mehta reluctant to go down a similar road with the Google case.
