EU adds Meta, Snap to online child protection probes

It's the first day of the last month of 2023, and we might be in for an exciting period in artificial intelligence space as companies continue developing this technology while protest groups keep highlighting its dangers. In the first news, Meta executives said that they found no downside to openly sharing its AI technology. This comes as the tech company keeps releasing open-source versions of its large language models. In other news, a group of visual artists has filed an amended lawsuit against text-to-image generating AI models after a US district judge dismissed parts of the lawsuit last month. This and more in today's AI roundup. Let us take a closer look.

Publisher Paradox Interactive and developer The Chinese Room have revealed Banu Haqim as the thidr playable clan in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2.

Someone in China created thousands of fake social media accounts designed to appear to be from Americans and used them to spread polarizing political content in an apparent effort to divide the U.S. ahead of next year's elections, Meta said Thursday.

MyDearest has acquired global publishing rights for Ming Studio-developed virtual reality roguelike action game Mecha Force, the company announced. It will launch for SteamVR, Quest, and Pico in 2024 with English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean language support.

Marvel Snap developers Second Dinner have reassured players of the digital card game that it will continue to “operate and flourish in the future”, in the wake of reports that publishers Nuverse are set to step away from the mainstream games space.

Chinese company ByteDance is best known for its ownership of TikTok, the international video platform, but it owns a number of other companies as well. One of those companies is Nuverse, a game publisher best known in the West for its work on Marvel Snap. Fans of the superhero card-battler had reason for concern this morning, as an article from Reuters reported that ByteDance had plans to leave the gaming space entirely, with intentions to «divest from titles already launched.» This seemed to spell doom for Marvel Snap.

Chinese internet technology firm ByteDance is restructuring the video games side of its business.

TikTok owner ByteDance is looking to get out of mainstream gaming, including at its subsidiary Nuverse, the publisher of Marvel Snap. ByteDance confirmed Monday in a statement to Polygon that it will “restructure” its gaming business. The decision is expected to lead to hundreds of layoffs, according to Reuters, which first reported the news. ByteDance has not confirmed the scope of its layoffs.

By Jess Weatherbed, a news writer focused on creative industries, computing, and internet culture. Jess started her career at TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews.

Diablo Immortal is preparing for its next major content update, but before that arrives, here comes the Season 20 Battle Pass and seasonal theme: Unholy Passengers.

Fractured Online  player cities were deleted as the result of a hack and the team has promised to get the servers back up and explain just what happened. Dynamight Studios has continued updating the community. Getting the game back online has finally happened, after extended maintenance.

This is the era of AI-powered chatbots. After the success of ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Copilot (formerly Bing AI), most tech platforms rushed to integrate similar tools. Discord got Clyde AI (which is soon going to be shut down), Snapchat introduced My AI, and China's Baidu launched its Ernie chatbot. Now, it's the turn of WhatsApp. As per reports, the instant messaging platform will soon get an AI chatbot too, and the latest beta version of the app also features a dedicated button to quickly launch it.