Author: Fast Company

11.20.24

Why is Jaguar rebranding?

BY Fast Company 4 MINUTE READ

Jaguar, the 90-year-old sports car brand operated under parent company Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), has plans to “completely reset” its image to become an ultra-luxury, fully electric-vehicle brand. To make the change, the brand is scrapping its iconic jaguar logo.

At a recent press briefing from its headquarters in England, Jaguar executives announced that the brand is aiming to fully relaunch to capture a growing audience of EV buyers. In the coming years, the carmaker plans to transition to an entirely battery-electric fleet of vehicles, each of which will be about twice as expensive as existing models. The move upmarket is complete with a new logo, color scheme, maker’s marks, and some pretty weird concept videos.

Jaguar’s bold rebrand is an amped-up version of a strategy that other companies, like Audi and General Motors, have used for new EV lines: moving away from recognizable brand touches to signal an entirely new, more tech-centric era.

BEHIND JAGUAR’S RISKY NEW STRATEGY

As a brand, Jaguar has a storied history going back to 1935, when the first-ever Jaguar car hit the market. Throughout the 20th century, the company experimented widely with form and silhouette, becoming especially notable for the skinny, low-profile 1961 E-Type. Founder Sir William Lyons based the brand in a spirit of risk-taking design innovation, famously stating that, “A Jaguar should be a copy of nothing.”

Jaguar was purchased by the company Tata Motors in 2008, which then merged the brand with Land Rover in 2013, forming what’s now JLR. Over the past several years, Jaguar has fallen into relative obscurity compared to its heyday. Last year, it sold 43,000 vehicles globally compared to 179,000 in 2017.

“[Jaguar] wasn’t always distinctive enough in the last decade,” CEO Adrian Mardell said at the recent press briefing.

The company is now making an aggressive play to combat its major sales slump. In 2021, it announced a plan to move toward luxury, all-electric vehicles by 2025, courting a new audience of young, wealthy, sustainably minded, first-time buyers. Jaguar already ceased production in June of its three remaining internal combustion cars, and the company previously reported plans to end production of a fourth model by the end of this year—leaving the brand without any new vehicles until its upcoming electric line, which it expects to debut by late 2025 or early 2026.

It’s a bullish move, signaling that Jaguar’s existing business model is simply no longer working—and the company sees a way forward with EVs, which have grown globally by 24% in sales in January through October 2024 compared to the same period in 2023, according to Rho Motion.

THE ICONIC “GROWLER” GROWLS NO MORE

Back in 2023, Jaguar hinted that the pricing of its upcoming model could sit somewhere around $127,000—a hefty jump from its existing cars on the market. To fit the lofty price tag, the brand debuted an all-new, gold-plated look today.

Most notably, the Jaguar rebrand scraps its recognizable “growler” logo, which displayed a snarling jaguar’s face in the center of a roundel, topped by the brand name in an all-caps font. The new logo is a pared-down, sans-serif wordmark with lowercase letters (except, somewhat frustratingly, the “G”). The new “j” and “r” also appear in one of two maker’s marks, which is a simple circular design featuring the mirrored letters.

“[The wordmark] is a powerful celebration of modernism—geometric form, symmetry, and simplicity—demonstrating the unexpected by seamlessly blending upper and lowercase characters in visual harmony,” the brand explains in a press release.

While the seamless visual harmony is somewhat debatable, the new logo’s rounded edges and simplicity certainly signal a move away from the 20th century and toward a more tech-forward, modernized brand. The rebrand does include a nod to the brand’s heritage with a second maker’s mark, which uses another previous jaguar logo—the “leaper”—against a striped background.

The new branding materials are all rendered in a luxurious gold, though Jaguar has described its future color scheme as “inspired by the painters palette,” with yellow, red, and blue accents. The brand is calling its new aesthetic “exuberant Modernism,” a descriptor that’s perhaps best illustrated by a series of wacky, futuristic concept videos posted to its newly designed web page. Overall, the new branding is a departure from Jaguar’s existing assets, which, according to Jaguar managing director Rawdon Glover, is essentially the point.

“This is about a reset,” Glover told Design Week UK.

A BROADER BRANDING TREND

Jaguar isn’t the first brand to reinvent itself for a new EV line—nor is it the first to experiment with distancing itself from iconic brand symbols in pursuit of creating a distinct electric identity.

In 2021, General Motors traded its old logo for a more techy, rounded, light blue logo to represent its new focus on electric vehicles. And just this month, Audi ditched its famous four-ringed logo for a line of EVs in China, opting instead for a Tron-esque all-caps wordmark.

For many brands, EV lines seem to present an opportunity to break away from heritage standards. This presents the dual opportunity of experimenting with new visual assets and ensuring that a brand’s EVs have a distinct look compared to their gas-powered vehicles, considering that EVs tend to appeal to a younger consumer base.

Audience-wise, Glover told Design Week UK that he anticipates 80% to 90% of Jaguar’s upcoming electric model sales to go to first-time Jaguar buyers.

“We think there will be a lot of new customers,” Glover said.

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11.18.24

Inside a plan to ban Tik Tok for under 16’s in Australia

BY Fast Company 3 MINUTE READ

ASSOCIATED PRESS

How do you remove children from the harms of social media? Politically the answer appears simple in Australia, but practically the solution could be far more difficult.

The Australian government’s plan to ban children from social media platforms including X, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram until their 16th birthdays is politically popular. The opposition party says it would have done the same after winning elections due within months if the government hadn’t moved first.

The leaders of all eight Australian states and mainland territories have unanimously backed the plan, although Tasmania, the smallest state, would have preferred the threshold was set at 14.

But a vocal assortment of experts in the fields of technology and child welfare have responded with alarm. More than 140 such experts signed an open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemning the 16-year age limit as “too blunt an instrument to address risks effectively.”

Details of what is proposed and how it will be implemented are scant. More will be known when legislation is introduced into the Parliament next week.

THE CONCERNED TEEN

Leo Puglisi, a 17-year-old Melbourne student who founded online streaming service 6 News Australia at the age of 11, laments that lawmakers imposing the ban lack the perspective on social media that young people have gained by growing up in the digital age.

“With respect to the government and prime minister, they didn’t grow up in the social media age, they’re not growing up in the social media age, and what a lot of people are failing to understand here is that, like it or not, social media is a part of people’s daily lives,” Leo said.

“It’s part of their communities, it’s part of work, it’s part of entertainment, it’s where they watch content—young people aren’t listening to the radio or reading newspapers or watching free-to-air TV—and so it can’t be ignored. The reality is this ban, if implemented, is just kicking the can down the road for when a young person goes on social media,” Leo added.

Leo has been applauded for his work online. He was a finalist in his home state Victoria’s nomination for the Young Australian of the Year award, which will be announced in January. His nomination bid credits his platform with “fostering a new generation of informed, critical thinkers.”

THE GRIEVING MOM-TURNED-ACTIVIST

One of the proposal’s supporters, cyber safety campaigner Sonya Ryan, knows from personal tragedy how dangerous social media can be for children.

Her 15-year-old daughter Carly Ryan was murdered in 2007 in South Australia state by a 50-year-old pedophile who pretended to be a teenager online. In a grim milestone of the digital age, Carly was the first person in Australia to be killed by an online predator.

“Kids are being exposed to harmful pornography, they’re being fed misinformation, there are body image issues, there’s sextortion, online predators, bullying. There are so many different harms for them to try and manage and kids just don’t have the skills or the life experience to be able to manage those well,” Sonya Ryan said.

“The result of that is we’re losing our kids. Not only what happened to Carly, predatory behavior, but also we’re seeing an alarming rise in suicide of young people,” she added.

Sonya Ryan is part of a group advising the government on a national strategy to prevent and respond to child sexual abuse in Australia.

She wholeheartedly supports Australia setting the social media age limit at 16.

“We’re not going to get this perfect,” she said. “We have to make sure that there are mechanisms in place to deal with what we already have which is an anxious generation and an addicted generation of children to social media.”

A major concern for social media users of all ages is the legislation’s potential privacy implications.

Age estimation technology has proved inaccurate, so digital identification appears to be the most likely option for assuring a user is at least 16.

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, an office that describes itself as the world’s first government agency dedicated to keeping people safer online, has suggested in planning documents adopting the role of authenticator. The government would hold the identity data and the platforms would discover through the commissioner whether a potential account holder was 16.

THE SKEPTICAL INTERNET EXPERT

Tama Leaver, professor of internet studies at Curtin University, fears that the government will make the platforms hold the users’ identification data instead.

The government has already said the onus will be on the platforms, rather than on children or their parents, to ensure everyone meets the age limit.

“The worst possible outcome seems to be the one that the government may be inadvertently pushing towards, which would be that the social media platforms themselves would end up being the identity arbiter,” Leaver said.

“They would be the holder of identity documents which would be absolutely terrible because they have a fairly poor track record so far of holding on to personal data well,” he added.

The platforms will have a year once the legislation has become law to work out how the ban can be implemented.

Ryan, who divides her time between Adelaide in South Australia and Fort Worth, Texas, said privacy concerns should not stand in the way of removing children from social media.

“What is the cost if we don’t? If we don’t put the safety of our children ahead of profit and privacy?” she asked.

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11.14.24

Tech is ready to take care of your Aging parents. Try these 5 devices

BY Fast Company 4 MINUTE READ

BY MICHAEL GROTHAUS

Most of us wish our parents would live as long as humanly possible, but some challenges arise if our wishes come true. While every individual is different, advanced aging usually brings about mobility issues and increased risk from things that may not have impacted us too much when we were younger, such as minor falls. The older a person gets, the more likely they will need care around the house and require more frequent observation.

Yet even though we may want to be there at all times, making sure they are okay, the simple fact is that work, other family commitments, and distance can limit our ability to provide care. Thankfully, while not at all a replacement for personal attention, there are now several pieces of everyday tech you can use to help make sure your aging parents are staying safe while also making their everyday lives more manageable in the process.

SMARTWATCHES WITH FALL DETECTION, LIKE THE APPLE WATCH

As someone with an aging parent, the biggest thing I worry about is them having a fall. When we’re younger, tripping over a rug might just cause bruising and minor embarrassment. For an older person, the same accident can have devastating consequences—broken bones or even death. A 2023 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report found that unintentional falls are the leading cause of injury-related deaths of adults 65 or older. In 2021 alone, 39,000 older adults in America died due to falls. That’s more than 106 fall-related deaths each day.

This is why I got my mom an Apple Watch. All Apple Watches have built-in fall detection. If a person stumbles, the Apple Watch can detect this, text all their emergency contacts, and call 911. Should your aging loved one fall, even alone, others will know they need help nearly instantly.

Recent Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel watches, as well as other activity trackers, also offer fall detection.

INDOOR SECURITY CAMERAS LIKE RING

A security camera is probably the next best gadget for monitoring aging parents. Of course, this comes with privacy issues, and it’s critical to get your parents’ consent before you install one in their home.

What is particularly nice about many home security cameras, such as Amazon’s Ring system, is that they feature motion detection. If you can’t reach your parent, a camera’s motion alert can reveal where they were last seen. While it’s understandable that people may not want cameras surveilling them in every room of the house, it is worth talking with your parent to see if they would be willing to have cameras pointing at areas of particular risk—such as the bottom of a staircase or the driveway, where they are more likely to stumble and fall.

ITEM TRACKERS LIKE AIRTAGS

Some people’s minds stay sharp their entire lives, but others may become more forgetful. If you find a parent telling you they always forget where they leave their keys or wallet, an item tracker, like Apple’s AirTag, is a nice, cheap gadget that could really help.

Item trackers can easily be attached to keys, purses, and remote controls. To locate an item, the user simply has to open the tracking app on their phone.

SMART PLUGS FOR LIGHTS AND APPLIANCES

I once had a friend complain to me that whenever she went to her father’s house, she would find nearly every light on, whether it was 10 a.m. or 2 a.m. When she asked her father why, he said it was too much of a pain to go around the house turning them on and off every day (her father had mobility issues).

Leaving lights on around the clock can lead to electrical safety issues, though, not to mention increased energy costs. So my friend went out and bought smart plugs for nearly every lamp in her father’s house. A smart plug is a small adapter that plugs into an outlet. When you plug a lamp into it (or any other electrical device), you can turn it on or off via a simple tap in the associated smartphone app. They can be found on Amazon and in home improvement retailers.

My friend showed her father how to use the app, and the next time she visited, she says only the lights he needed were on. She even put a smart plug on his toaster oven so he could turn it off from the couch if he forgot to do so after cooking his meal.

SMART SPEAKERS LIKE HOMEPODS AND ECHOS

A final gadget that can really help an aging parent around the house is a smart speaker, like Apple’s HomePod or Amazon’s Echo. Smart speakers are a repository of information that can be accessed using just your voice, and they can also help control other connected gadgets without having to get up.

For example, if you wirelessly connect your smart plugs to a smart speaker system, your parent can tell Alexa or Siri to turn on the lights in the dining room. Connecting smart plugs to a smart speaker system is usually as simple as scanning a QR code on the smart device with a phone’s camera, and once you’ve set it up, your parents won’t have to mess with connecting them again. The resulting voice control ability may be a better option than app-based controls for some people, especially if they find using a smartphone app cumbersome.

Smart speakers can also make it easier for aging parents to contact you or others should they want to talk or need help. For example, users can instruct a HomePod to text someone or even initiate a FaceTime audio call. If your parent has fallen and can’t get up, a smart speaker may allow them to use their voice to call for outside help.

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11.13.24

Will Trump ban Tik Tok?

BY Fast Company 4 MINUTE READ

After a tumultuous year filled with anxiety and a legal battle about its future in the U.S., TikTok may have just been thrown a lifeline by the man who was once its biggest foe: Donald Trump.

The president-elect, who tried to ban the social media platform the last time he was in the White House, has repeatedly pledged during his most recent campaign to oppose a ban on the short-form video app, which could happen as soon as mid-January if the company loses a court case that’s currently underway in Washington.

For months, TikTok and its China-based parent company ByteDance have been embroiled in a legal battle with the U.S. over a federal law that forces them to cut ties for national security reasons or stop operating in one of their biggest markets in the world. The measure, signed by President Joe Biden in April, gives ByteDance nine months to divest its stakes, with a possible three-month extension if a sale is in progress. If that happens, the deadline could be extended into the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency.

The companies have claimed that divestiture is not possible, and the law, if upheld, would force them to shut down by January 19, just a day before Trump’s second inauguration. Attorneys for both sides have asked a federal appeals court reviewing the case to issue a ruling by December 6. The losing side is expected to appeal to the Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority and could decide to take up the case, potentially dragging out the process even longer.

When reached for comment, the Trump transition team did not offer details on how Trump plans to carry out his pledge to “save TikTok,” as he said on a Truth Social post in September while encouraging people who care about the platform to vote for him. But Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the transition team, indicated in a statement that he plans to see it through.

“The American people reelected President Trump by a resounding margin, giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail,” Leavitt said. “He will deliver.”

During a March interview with CNBC, Trump said he still believed TikTok posed a national security risk but opposed banning it because doing so would help its rival, Facebook, which he has continued to lambast over his 2020 election loss. He also denied changing his mind on the issue because of Republican megadonor Jeff Yass, a ByteDance investor who Trump, at the time, said he had only met “very briefly.” He said Yass “never mentioned TikTok” during their meeting.

Still, ByteDance—and groups connected to Yass—have been attempting to exert their influence. Lobbying disclosure reports show that this year, ByteDance paid veteran lobbyist and former Trump campaign aide David Urban $150,000 to lobby lawmakers in Washington in favor of TikTok. The company has also spent more than $8 million on in-house lobbyists and another $1.4 million on other lobbying firms, according to the nonprofit OpenSecrets.

Meanwhile, in March, Politico reported that Kellyanne Conway, a former senior Trump aide, was being paid by the Yass-funded conservative group Club for Growth to advocate for TikTok in Congress. A spokesperson for the organization said Conway was hired as a consultant to conduct polling. Conway and Urban did not respond to requests for comment. TikTok, which has long denied it’s a national security risk, declined to comment.

If the courts uphold the law, it would fall on Trump’s Justice Department to enforce it and punish any potential violations with fines. The fines would apply to app stores that would be prohibited from offering TikTok, and internet hosting services who would be barred from supporting it. Leah Plunkett, a lecturer at Harvard Law School, said from her reading of the statute, the attorney general has to investigate violations but can decide whether or not to drag such companies to court and force them to comply.

Trump could do other things to prevent TikTok from disappearing.

He could issue an executive order to nullify the ban—which Plunkett believes would not be lawful—or urge Congress to repeal the law. That would require support from Congressional Republicans who have aligned themselves with Trump but have also supported the prospects of getting TikTok out of the hands of a Chinese company.

In a statement sent to the AP after the election, Republican Representative John Moolenaar of Michigan, chairman of the House Select Committee on China, said Trump’s “long-standing concerns” about TikTok align with the law’s requirement for divestment.

“The Trump Administration will have a unique opportunity to broker an American takeover of the platform,” he said.

ByteDance, though, has previously said it has no intention of selling the platform despite interest from some investors, including Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Analysts say the company is even less likely to sell the proprietary algorithm that fuels what users see on the app. That means even if TikTok is sold to a qualified buyer, it is likely to be a shell of its current self and would need to be rebuilt with new technology.

Sarah Kreps, director of Cornell University’s Tech Policy Institute, said it’s also possible that Trump could take the issue back to the drawing board and direct his administration to negotiate a new deal with TikTok.

TikTok said in 2022 that it presented the Biden administration with a draft agreement that would bolster protections for users and provide it more oversight over the company’s U.S. operations. But the administration has argued in court documents in recent months that it would be challenging to enforce the agreement due to the size and the technical complexity of the platform.

Trump hasn’t been privy to new intelligence material on the matter for a few years and it’s possible he could change his mind—and abandon his campaign promise—once he does, Kreps said.

Plunkett, the Harvard Law lecturer and author of Sharenthood: Why We Should Think Before We Talk About Our Kids Online, said if she were counseling TikTok, she would advise it to come up with a divesture plan that is compliant with the law and as favorable to the company as possible, noting, “There is too much uncertainty about what a Trump administration is likely to do.”

By Haleluya Hadero, Associated Press

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11.07.24

What’s In It for Elon Musk

BY Fast Company 4 MINUTE READ

If there’s one person former president Donald Trump can thank for his decisive election night victory, it’s Elon Musk. The tech billionaire propelled Trump to a second term on a wave of $119 million in funding to his America PAC, a spree of $1 million giveaways to registered voters, a spate of misleading ads online, and an aggressive voter turnout operation in swing states.

And that’s to say nothing of the way Musk used his own bully pulpit—the social media platform X—to beat the drum for Trump and boost conspiracies about immigration and election fraud.

Given all the ways in which Musk shaped the election, it seems undeniable that he’ll also be a chief architect of Trump’s second term. The former president (and now, president-elect) has already said he would make Musk head of a new commission focused on eliminating government waste and spent at least four minutes of his victory speech praising Musk as a “super genius.”

The question now is: What exactly does Musk want?

Here’s a look at where the world’s richest man stands on the issues that matter to tech.

ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Musk recently supported a controversial bill in California that would have required developers of the most advanced AI models to “mitigate the risk of catastrophic harms.” Musk posted on X about the bill (which was later vetoed by Governor Gavin Newsom), writing that AI should be regulated “just as we regulate any product/technology that is a potential risk to the public.” Indeed, Musk was one of the people behind the infamous 2023 letter calling for an industry-wide “pause” on giant AI experiments. He also sued OpenAI, which he helped found, for allegedly prioritizing commercial ambitions over the public interest.

And yet, none of this has stopped Musk from racing ahead with development of his own AI startup, xAI. Unlike OpenAI, xAI’s chatbot, Grok, is open-sourced, an indication that Musk may encourage the Trump White House to embrace open-source development of AI over the closed approaches favored by competitors like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.

ON ELECTRIC VEHICLES

Under the Biden administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a rule limiting future vehicle tailpipe emissions to ensure that, by 2032, the majority of vehicles sold are either electric or hybrid. Trump has vowed to undo this rule—which he erroneously refers to as an “EV mandate”—on Day One. Musk, for one, has seemed unbothered by that news. The Tesla CEO has, in the past, argued against government subsidies both for EV purchases and for charging infrastructure and has said that they benefit Tesla’s competitors more than Tesla.

But it is possible that Musk could sway the Trump administration when it comes to restrictions on self-driving vehicles, including an ongoing investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) into Tesla’s “full self-driving” technology. On a recent earnings call, Musk said one of his top priorities under a possible “department of government efficiency” would be to create a federal approval system for autonomous vehicles.

ON BROADBAND

Musk’s satellite internet service, Starlink, has a complicated history with the federal government. Under the Biden administration, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) denied Starlink nearly $1 billion in subsidies that it had previously been awarded to serve rural homes and businesses. The FCC argued that Starlink could not meet the service speeds required to receive the grants. Musk has said the FCC revoked the awards “illegally.”

At the same time, The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which is charged with doling out $48 billion in broadband infrastructure grants approved under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, has said that Starlink service may be necessary to close connectivity gaps in the hardest to reach places. With Trump as president, it seems likely that whatever barriers stood in the way of Starlink deployment until now will be lowered substantially.

ON HIGH-SKILLED IMMIGRATION

Since the beginning of this year, Musk has posted relentlessly on X about illegal immigration and alleged voter fraud, making it the topic he discusses most on the platform, according to a Bloomberg analysis. But he has simultaneously argued that the U.S. should “greatly increase legal immigration.” Musk has said that Trump will “fix” what he’s argued is an “upside-down system.”

But if Trump were to push for the expansion of high-skilled worker visas, known as H-1Bs, it would be a dramatic about-face from his first term. In 2020, the former president issued temporary halts both on the issuance of new green cards and new H-1B visas.

ON CHINA

The biggest potential area of conflict for Trump and Musk may be their respective approaches to China. Where Trump has threatened to impose 60% tariffs on Chinese goods, Musk has said he opposes tariffs on Chinese EVs and produces half of Tesla’s vehicles in China. And yet, these apparent differences could also make Musk a powerful messenger for Chinese interests as the Trump administration faces a range of issues related to China, from tariffs to EVs to Taiwan.

ON CRYPTO

In addition to Musk’s massive donations, the Trump campaign benefited from a flood of crypto donations this cycle. Trump, in turn, became a major crypto booster, appearing at a Bitcoin conference this summer where he vowed to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, Trump’s election sent crypto prices soaring, including Musk’s favorite memecoin, Dogecoin.

In office, Trump has promised to fire Securities and Exchange Commission chair (SEC) Gary Gensler (though it seems more likely Gensler would step down), which could solve another problem for Musk: Gensler has been leading an investigation at the SEC into Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter.

ON ONLINE CONTENT MODERATION

Perhaps the issue that connects Trump and Musk more than any other is the topic of online speech. Restoring “free speech” to Twitter was, after all, the main reason Musk gave for acquiring the platform in 2022. Trump, meanwhile, spent his first term as president castigating tech giants for supposed censorship and calling for the breakup of big tech.

At the time, Trump’s proposed solution to the problem was repealing Section 230, the law that protects online platforms from legal liability for the things their users post. Such a change would be a legal disaster for X, as well as Truth Social, the online platform Trump launched in 2021. Not coincidentally, the former president was virtually silent about Section 230 this time around.

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11.06.24

Meta gets a $15 million fine from South Korea, here’s why

BY Fast Company 2 MINUTE READ

BY ASSOCIATED PRESS

South Korea’s privacy watchdog on Tuesday fined social media company Meta 21.6 billion won ($15 million) for illegally collecting sensitive personal information from Facebook users, including data about their political views and sexual orientation, and sharing it with thousands of advertisers.

It was the latest in a series of penalties against Meta by South Korean authorities in recent years as they increase their scrutiny of how the company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, handles private information.

Following a four-year investigation, South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission concluded that Meta unlawfully collected sensitive information about around 980,000 Facebook users, including their religion, political views and whether they were in same-sex unions, from July 2018 to March 2022.

It said the company shared the data with around 4,000 advertisers.

South Korea’s privacy law provides strict protection for information related to personal beliefs, political views and sexual behavior, and bars companies from processing or using such data without the specific consent of the person involved.

The commission said Meta amassed sensitive information by analyzing the pages the Facebook users liked or the advertisements they clicked on.

The company categorized ads to identify users interested in themes such as specific religions, same-sex and transgender issues, and issues related to North Korean escapees, said Lee Eun Jung, a director at the commission who led the investigation on Meta.

“While Meta collected this sensitive information and used it for individualized services, they made only vague mentions of this use in their data policy and did not obtain specific consent,” Lee said.

Lee also said Meta put the privacy of Facebook users at risk by failing to implement basic security measures such as removing or blocking inactive pages. As a result, hackers were able to use inactive pages to forge identities and request password resets for the accounts of other Facebook users. Meta approved these requests without proper verification, which resulted in data breaches affecting at least 10 South Korean Facebook users, Lee said.

In September, European regulators hit Meta with over $100 million in fines for a 2019 security lapse in which user passwords were temporarily exposed in an un-encrypted form.

Meta’s South Korean office said it would “carefully review” the commission’s decision, but didn’t immediately provide more comment.

In 2022, the commission fined Google and Meta a combined 100 billion won ($72 million) for tracking consumers’ online behavior without their consent and using their data for targeted advertisements, in the biggest penalties ever imposed in South Korea for privacy law violations.

The commission said then that the two companies didn’t clearly inform users or obtain their consent to collect data about them as they used other websites or services outside their own platforms. It ordered the companies to provide an “easy and clear” consent process to give people more control over whether to share information about what they do online.

The commission also hit Meta with a 6.7 billion won ($4.8 million) fine in 2020 for providing personal information about itsx users to third parties without consent.

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10.31.24

Edward Enninful on his fashion move

BY Fast Company 3 MINUTE READ

You’ve never seen a puffer coat do this before.

For the finale of Shanghai fashion week, the Italian outdoor luxury brand Moncler debuted its latest “Genius” collections. Since 2017, Moncler has partnered with external creatives in a crème de la crème of artist collabs, resulting in the release of limited edition collections that push the brand’s design purview somewhere new.

This year included fashion mainstays like Rick Owens and Hiroshi Fujiwara, alongside artists including A$AP Rocky, Willow Smith, and Donald Glover.

For Edward Enninful, the former editor-in-chief of British Vogue, it marked the shift from covering and shaping the world of fashion, to actually creating it. What he presented was less a line than an entire wardrobe of performance garments: sweaters, skirts, peacoats, trenches, scarves—designed for our changing climate, and facing the end of the world head-on.

Enninful’s story is the stuff of literal biography; the Ghana-born boy moved to London as a child, and was appointed as fashion editor to i-D magazine by age 18. He worked there 20 years, before taking the helm of British Vogue where he pushed the storied brand toward wider representation—and resigned with what was perhaps the greatest flex cover in the history of magazine publishing. Along the way, he’s consulted for several labels, ranging from Calvin Klein and Giorgio Armani. But he’s never debuted a collection of his own until now.

“All the feelings are there,” he tells me the morning before his inaugural show. “Nervousness—and excitement.”

Enninful presented dozens of garments and accessories, all of them in black, in the ultimate plea to dress in mix-and-match (but everything will match) layers. “The idea was really inspired by climate change,” says Enninful. “The idea of a woman who really wears everything on her back. Everything she owns, essentially.”

CELEBRATING CONTRASTS WITHOUT COLOUR

Since everything is black, the system is defined by contrasts in texture and cut. That approach begins with technical knit material—which makes up base layers like leggings, cardigans, and capes. Atop that sits tricot, the shiny waterproof outwear material that defines so much of Moncler’s winter gear. The effect mixes sofa softness with indestructible-feeling tech equipment.

“In the absence of colour, you have to deal with textures and shapes. How can we make black versatile?” asks Enninful. “It was all about that push and pull: How do you create something that’s not just undefined and flat?”

Along the way, Enninful injects plenty of classic femininity into a traditionally masculine space. That begins with the icon of the collection, a tricot bonnet that looks ready for 20° below—a move in line with Enninful’s own penchant for scarves and neckerchief wraps, but also a flawless reconstitution of male materiality.

In an exploration of cuts, Enninful displayed a penchant for ground-kissing fabrics that have no fear of extreme environments. That includes the unconcerned drape of a fringed scarf, a nylon skirt that exudes serious boho vibes, and a modified A-line trench coat that hugs the body before blossoming around one’s feet. These opulent lines, however, are in direct contrast to a high cut bomber and a puffer coat that cuts at the midriff, like a vintage mink cape.

A NEW WARDROBE FOR THE END OF THE WORLD

In aggregate, the effect seems to work—you could pair about any garment in the collection with another, so long as you respect the juxtaposition of texture and cut. Though admittedly, small the pile of accessories—just look at those mitt gauntlets complete with change-purse-sized storage on top!—do a lot to add visual glue.

“It’s very easy to create one-off fantastical pieces, but I really wanted to create a wardrobe,” says Enninful.

Enninful’s collection will go on sale in mid 2025, and he teases that while it’s being presented on women, many pieces will be tailored for men—and they may eventually come in more colors than black. But for now, he’s still just buzzing about the first time that his work will reach the runway.

“I have such a newfound respect for designers,” says Enninful. “I spent my whole career working with designers on fashion shows, and it’s like ‘oh my god, you really work on something for so long!’ And they do it so many times a year! I was always on the side advising, but to do it on your own is just incredible. Real respect to designers who do it all the time.”

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Wilson is the Global Design Editor at Fast Company, who covers the entirety of design’s impact on culture and business.. An authority in product design, UX, AI, experience design, retail, food, and branding, he has reported landmark features on companies ranging from Nike to Google to MSCHF to Canva to Samsung to Snap to IDEO to Target, while profiling design luminaries including Tyler the Creator, Jony Ive, and Salehe Bembury

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10.29.24

How LinkedIn is using AI to help recruiters to match with top candidates

BY Fast Company 3 MINUTE READ

LinkedIn is hoping to use AI to make it easier for job recruiters and qualified candidates to find one another.

A new AI Hiring Assistant will soon let recruiters supply job descriptions and notes on qualifications, then automatically generate a short list of LinkedIn users who look like a good match for the job. And as recruiters go through the list of suggested candidates, the AI will indicate which of a job’s required and preferred qualifications each person appears to have.

“It’s telling you this person might be a top fit,” says Hari Srinivasan, LinkedIn’s vice president of product. “This person might be a fit.”

The Assistant is designed to automate what in the past might have been tedious manual searches through LinkedIn and other candidate databases and, since the AI is able to parse the text of job descriptions and user profiles, it can ideally help surface potential hires that might not show up through simple keyword matching. So far, it’s been rolled out to a select group of LinkedIn customers, including AMD, Canva, Siemens and Zurich Insurance, with the goal of making it more broadly available to recruiters.

Users can adjust what qualifications the AI is looking for and even provide examples of LinkedIn profiles that would make a good match. They can also enter or copy and paste other descriptions of what a company is looking for, like email correspondence from a hiring manager. Businesses can also connect the system to a supported applicant tracking system, which can let them resurface candidates who previously applied for another position.

As recruiters verify the AI’s suggested candidates are a good match, they can also have the AI draft messages to them, referencing specific elements of their background and skills that make them seem like a good fit for the job. They can also optionally have the AI system handle certain screening tasks, like making sure interested candidates have basic qualifications for the job.

In testing so far, those AI messages appear to be performing well—hirers who use AI-assisted messages get a 44% higher acceptance rate and get their LinkedIn outreach messages accepted 11% faster than those who don’t use AI to draft messages, the company says, and AI-assisted search sessions see an 18% higher message acceptance rates than manual ones.

And the AI also frees up more time for recruiters to focus on working with promising candidates and converting them to hires, which many say they wish they had more time to focus on, Srinivasan says. “But they’re spending more of their time on the much more repetitive and tedious tasks,” he says.

The Hiring Assistant is part of an overall push by LinkedIn to improve the quality of business-to-candidate matching, in a time when online search and application tools can incentivize both job seekers and recruiters to cast a wide net, meaning both sides waste time on connections that ultimately won’t lead to a hire.

“Quantity actually wastes everybody’s time,” says Rohan Rajiv, LinkedIn’s head of career products. “Job seekers send hundreds of applicant applications to jobs where they are under fit and won’t hear back, and in doing so, hirers actually struggle to get back to qualified candidates.”

The company is also testing AI tools that will give job seekers more insight into jobs posted on the platform for which they could be a good potential match—including whether, based on their LinkedIn profiles, they appear to be a strong applicant and meet the job’s listed qualifications. Users who find the system isn’t picking up on their qualifications can update their profiles to emphasize their strengths but, like the Hiring Assistant, the AI is designed to go beyond basic keyword matches, so users shouldn’t need to include every possible synonym for a skill in their profiles to be deemed a good match.

As with recruiters writing to potential candidates, jobseekers will also then be able to use LinkedIn’s AI to help draft a cover letter or customized resume for a particular position.

The system, which Rajiv expects will begin to roll out to LinkedIn Premium users within a few weeks, could help assuage concerns about opaque AI systems—or quick keyword searches and scans by harried recruiters—throwing out qualified candidates because their resumes didn’t include the right keyword.

“I think that is going to be a thing of the past, very, very soon,” says Rajiv. “So you can just focus on putting in what you actually did, and the system will understand you and actually share what it understands.”

FastCompany

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10.28.24

The Apple AI Moment is here

BY Fast Company 3 MINUTE READ

After months of anticipation, Apple’s official foray into the world of artificial intelligence launches this week. That’s when the company will roll out its Apple Intelligence AI platform to eligible devices. Apple isn’t being shy about how profound of an event this will be for the company and its future. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that Apple Intelligence would make the experience of using Apple products “profoundly different” and likened Apple’s AI technology to the iPhone’s touch interface and the iPod’s click wheel in terms of innovation and importance.

That’s a high bar—and possibly a problematic one. That’s because the Apple Intelligence that gets rolled out this week won’t be a finished product but rather a work in progress. All of the Apple Intelligence features the company previewed in June won’t be coming to your iPhone or other devices just yet. So, what features are coming this week? Here’s what you need to know.

APPLE INTELLIGENCE FEATURES ON LAUNCH DAY

When Apple Intelligence launches this week, it will include a swath of new AI features baked into the iPhone’s operating system—iOS 18.1 (Apple Intelligence is also coming to supported iPads and Macs this week). These features can be broken down into four main categories, according to the release notes (published by 9to5Mac). They are:

– Writing tools: Apple Intelligence will allow you to use AI to proofread, rewrite, and summarize text nearly everywhere you can type words in iOS—emails, messages, documents, and more. The proofreading function includes Grammarly-like features that allow you to choose better words and fix grammatical mistakes; rewriting abilities let you make your text sound more friendly, concise, or professional; and “summarizing” means that Apple Intelligence can read your text and generate a summary of the most salient points.

– Photos: The most visually eye-catching feature of the Apple Intelligence launch will be the ability to quickly erase unwanted objects from photos. For example, you can tap on a street sign to delete it from that beautiful city sunset shot you took. Another cool feature is the ability to find photos and videos simply by describing what is in them, such as “black cat near cauldron.”

– Siri: The iPhone’s digital assistant is a big beneficiary of the Apple Intelligence launch. Siri gets a revamped look—the borders of your iPhone’s screen glow when Siri is engaged—along with a more natural voice and the ability to understand requests in the context of previous requests.

– Notifications: Perhaps the biggest productivity benefit included in the Apple Intelligence launch is the ability for Apple Intelligence to summarize notifications from multiple apps, showing you the most important information you need to act on.

In addition to the above Apple Intelligence features, others launching this week include the ability to use auto-generated, contextually relevant smart replies so you can quickly respond to emails and text messages with a tap, and the ability to generate a text-based summary of audio recordings, which saves you the time of having to listen to the entire recording.

MISSING FEATURES

While many people will find the above features useful, they are, unfortunately, just a handful of the ones Apple promised when the company first previewed Apple Intelligence in June. Most of the headline-prompting, eye-catching features of Apple Intelligence are still months away—with some likely not making an appearance until 2025.

For example, Image Playground, the name Apple gives to Apple Intelligence’s ability to generate images in the style of sketches and illustrations that can be used in messages, presentations, and documents, is nowhere to be seen in Apple Intelligence in iOS 18.1. Neither is what is perhaps the most fun feature—Genmoji—which allows users to create custom emojis. Both these features are rumored to not be arriving until iOS 18.2 is released in December, according to Bloomberg.

But other features of Apple Intelligence are even further away. The most powerful features of Apple Intelligence likely won’t arrive until iOS 18.4, which isn’t expected until Spring of 2025, at the earliest. Bloomberg says that’s when Apple Intelligence will finally gain the ability to understand context and allow Siri to control apps and “see” what is currently on users’ iPhone screen to help them complete tasks. These features will let Siri help you edit a photo and then send it to your friend—all you have to do is ask.

HOW TO GET APPLE INTELLIGENCE ON YOUR IPHONE

Although the launch of Apple Intelligence might feel to some users like an appetizer ahead of the main dish (that won’t arrive until 2025), Tim Cook and Apple believe it is a watershed moment for Apple.

Indeed, whether or not Apple Intelligence ends up being “iPhone moment” or “iPod moment,” iPhones are about to start performing tasks that the devices never could before—provided you have the right iPhone.

To get Apple Intelligence this week, you’ll need to download iOS 18.1 onto any iPhone 16 model or an iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max. While other iPhones will be able to install iOS 18.1, only the 15 Pro series and above will be able to run Apple Intelligence features.

To upgrade to iOS 18.1, go to the Settings app on your iPhone, tap General, and then Software Update. Apple hasn’t officially announced a release date for iOS 18.1, but rumors say the company could make the software available for download as soon as Monday, October 28.

FastCompany

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10.24.24

Soon we may work with Robots

BY Fast Company 5 MINUTE READ

They marched in line, interacted with guests, and poured drinks while making small talk. The vision of the future Elon Musk put forward with his Optimus humanoid robots at Tesla’s recent Cybercab event earlier this month was as astounding as it was unbelievable.

That latter word was important: It turned out the robots weren’t operating under their own steam, but were instead remotely operated by humans. While the robots were able to walk down the street in Tesla’s grand parade to show off its tech under their own steam, pretty much everything else they did that night involved human intervention.

“We are in the proof of concept phase for robotics. While we’ve seen many demos online and on stage, the capabilities of these machines have been designed for controlled environments and limited use cases,” says Nayan Jain, executive director of AI at digital product studio ustwo. “If you look deeper at live demos and videos, the generic walk cycles and manipulation tasks like pick and place or tool use are technically impressive, but not robust enough to work independently.”

Jain was optimistic about the potential future of robots—but believes that for some of the higher-profile public examples, it’ll take some time to come to fruition. “We are not at the point yet of true automation with humanoids,” he says. “The robotic future is coming, but it may take longer than we expect.”

But while Tesla’s vision of the future may be a little while off, there are indications that—outside of the limelight that Musk draws to himself and his companies—humanoid robots are on the cusp of mass adoption. In factories in the United States right now, human-like robots work on the same factory floors as humans, albeit in their own fenced-off areas. And elsewhere in the world, the robotic future is even closer to reality, and in some instances, is already upon us.

In August, China hosted the World Robot Conference in Beijing, more than 30 humanoid robots from private companies and university labs were on display. The name is a misnomer: Almost all the 30 representatives came from China, but it highlighted how developed the technology is in the country. The Chinese government announced at the event that they hoped the most developed humanoid robots would be entering mass production in 2025, and would be allocating government funding to the fight.

China is the powerhouse of the humanoid robot industry at present, with half of all robotic installations worldwide in 2022 within the country’s borders. The country—and its cities—are willing to fund the development of robots significantly.

There has always been an interest in humanoid robots throughout history, and in theory, their development shouldn’t be too taxing as the world is designed by—and inhabited by—humans. But it’s not quite so easy, says Jonathan Aitken, an expert in robotics at the University of Sheffield. “The complexities of the real world have often proved significant roadblocks to humanoid development, whether that be the quality of actuators to produce motion, or decision-making being too slow to catch-up with real world events,” he says.

Historically, that’s required programming—and a lot of it. The hardware required for humanoid robots has been around for years, but it’s the way that the robot moves and interacts that has proven trickier to tackle. Companies like Boston Dynamics have had to carefully code decision making processes within their robots, including Atlas, its humanoid robot, to make it work. But that could change with the development of foundation models, thanks to the arrival of generative AI.

“Programming a humanoid is a complex task, especially because of the number of degrees of freedom that these robots have, which means that applying precise control at this scale is extremely difficult,” says Aitken. “Foundation models offer a shortcut through this problem.” Nvidia has developed its own foundational AI model for robots, Gr00t, which stands for Generalist Robot 00 Technology, to try and help improve the rollout of humanoid robots.

Aitken points out that they would need more checks and balances to ensure any foundation models powering robots are thoroughly tested, checked and verified, so there’s no odd behavior traits that come out when such robots are out in the wild. Yet if that can be achieved, it could be a game-changer. “The ability to generate code to control a robot at this scale of degrees of freedom, interacting efficiently with a wide variety of sensors with optimal decision making is a very desirable set of qualities,” he says.

Despite those challenges, there are American success stories when it comes to robots in the U.S. Third-party logistics provider GXO Logistics is testing humanoid robots from three different providers—Agility Robotics, Apptronik and Reflex—in its facilities across the country. Agility, whose robot Digit is one of the best-known examples of a humanoid robot, and which has ties to Oregon State University through its founder, has said it has several dozen so-called “alpha units” across a number of institutions and organizations, including GXO.

“I would say humanoids are having a moment right now, and much of that is because of the introduction of AI that definitely delivers value, just like it’s doing in other industries,” says Peggy Johnson, CEO of Agility Robotics. “We use AI to teach our robot new skills very quickly, rather than having engineers program it. With these LLMs like ChatGPT now, we can teach our robot Digit skills very, very quickly.”

“As the first logistics provider in the world to deploy humanoid robots into live operations, we are paving the way for the entire logistics industry and beyond,” says Adrian Stoch, chief automation officer at GXO Logistics. The company’s Operational Incubator program is testing the robots from all three companies in a variety of roles to see where they’re best suited.

So far, GXO’s Operational Incubator program claims credit for providing feedback and data that has resulted in longer battery life for such robots, the ability to handle heavier payloads, and enhanced gripping and stability of prototype robots. “Right now we aim for par with humans, but as we train it with new skills, we’re going to see the robot doing better than humans, maybe areas that it can operate faster than humans, with the introduction of more AI,” says Agility CEO Johnson. “So that that’ll be a real accelerant for various types of tasks across different industries.”

Others are also seeing robots start to move onto their production lines. In Spartanburg, South Carolina, Figure 02, the eponymous robot from robotics startup Figure AI, was tested within a BMW plant. Figure 02 has onboard visual language models, understanding and comprehending how to react to the input it receives from six on-board cameras, learning as it goes. Figure AI raised $675 million in Series B funding in February 2024 from notable investors like Jeff Bezos, Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI, bringing its valuation to $2.6 billion.

That level of investment is significant—and is just the beginning, reckon analysts at Morgan Stanley. The bank believes the total addressable market for humanoid robots will reach multi-decatrillion-dollar levels. That investment will help bring down the cost of building and running robots to levels that make them competitive with the human labor force. Morgan Stanley estimates that a humanoid robot costing $50,000 with a lifespan of 50,000 hours equates to an operational cost of approximately $1 per hour, making it cost-effective compared to human labour, which is typically around $20 per hour and is increasing due to wage inflation.

However, being on the cusp of a movement doesn’t mean that it’s ready for prime time all the time. “While we’re incredibly excited about the opportunities presented by humanoids,” Stoch says, “there is a long way to go before mass deployment is achievable.”

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