分类： technology

Two leading U.S. child safety advocacy groups have lodged a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), calling for a full investigation into popular gaming platform Roblox over what they describe as unfair and deceptive business practices that put children as young as five at risk. The filing, submitted Wednesday by Fairplay and the National Centre on Sexual Exploitation, outlines three core areas of concern: predatory in-game monetization, manipulative engagement-focused design, and insufficient safeguards that leave minors vulnerable to unwanted contact from strangers.

At the heart of the complaint is Roblox’s complex in-game economy built around its virtual currency, Robux. Users purchase Robux with real-world money to unlock in-game access, avatar customizations, upgrades and other digital items. The advocacy groups argue that the layered system of virtual currency makes it nearly impossible for young children to grasp the actual real-world cost of the items they are buying, a vulnerability that has led to extreme cases of overspending. One parent included in the filing reported that their 10-year-old daughter racked up more than $7,000 in charges over just two months, even after the family put purchase limits in place.

The complaint also calls out what advocates label “engagement-maximising” design choices intentionally built to keep children playing for extended periods. These include daily login reward streaks that incentivize consistent use, and social comparison systems that publicly display other players’ rare and expensive virtual possessions, pushing children to spend to keep up with peers. The groups additionally highlight chance-based reward systems such as loot boxes, which they argue function like gambling mechanics that minors lack the developmental maturity to understand. All of these features, the complaint argues, intentionally exploit children’s known developmental vulnerabilities around impulse control and peer pressure.

Communication features on the platform represent another major point of concern. Even after Roblox implemented new safety controls, the complaint alleges that text and voice chat functions still expose underage users to inappropriate content and unsolicited contact from adult strangers. Researchers testing the platform using under-13 accounts reported encountering sexual references and abusive language within minutes of joining certain public games, and the filing references documented cases of child grooming and exploitation occurring on the platform.

Roblox has forcefully rejected all of the claims laid out in the complaint. In a statement, a company representative said the platform was “built for fun and connection, not short-term engagement,” noting that the company already maintains clear policies banning both actual and simulated gambling, as well as strict rules governing paid random items. The company emphasized that the vast majority of games on Roblox are free to play, and users are under no obligation to purchase Robux. According to company data, only 1.4% of Roblox’s 132 million daily active users made any purchases on the platform during the first quarter of 2026.

In response to previous criticism over child safety protections, Roblox has already introduced new measures: it now blocks chat between children and adult users who are not connected through parent-approved friend links, and uses automated age-estimation technology to assign minors to age-appropriate accounts with restricted features. But these changes have failed to ease the concerns of campaigners and many parents, who still worry about excessive screen time and unregulated spending by minors on the platform.

Industry observers echoed the skepticism around Roblox’s incremental changes. Drew Benvie, CEO of social media consultancy Battenhall and founder of youth safety nonprofit Raise, noted that young digital-native users are often able to bypass basic age-based safety controls with little effort. “What’s needed is greater user and parental awareness of the impact social features in games can have on children, as well as wide scale legislative changes to address addictive or problematic features, not just the digital sticking plaster of age limits,” Benvie said.

The complaint comes as Roblox continues to see explosive revenue growth: company figures show it generated $4.9 billion in revenue in 2025, a 36% jump from the previous year. The FTC has not yet publicly confirmed whether it will launch a formal investigation into the claims. This action comes amid a broader wave of regulatory scrutiny into how large social media and gaming platforms protect minor users and generate revenue from young audiences. Following a successful California lawsuit that held Meta and YouTube liable for knowingly designing addictive platform features, legal and regulatory experts expect more platforms to face increased scrutiny over manipulative engagement design tactics such as infinite scroll and auto-play.

More than ten years after its high-profile first attempt at wearable smart eyewear ended in public backlash and commercial failure, Google is making a second push into the emerging smart glasses space, with a new AI-integrated model slated to hit the market in autumn this year.

The tech giant first unveiled the new device during its annual I/O developer conference held on Tuesday in Mountain View, California. The upcoming launch will feature two distinct style variants, one co-designed by popular direct-to-consumer eyewear brand Warby Parker and the other by Seoul-based fashion eyewear label Gentle Monster.

Google’s original 2013 Google Glass product was pulled from the market in 2015, just seven months after its UK rollout, crippled by widespread criticism over its steep price point and sweeping privacy risks. For its second iteration, Google is leaning heavily on integration with its flagship large language model, Gemini, to deliver a hands-free, heads-up user experience. The new glasses come equipped with a compact camera built into the front frame and small speakers embedded in the arms, and are compatible with both Android and Apple iOS operating systems.

Unlike the original Google Glass, which included a head-mounted micro-display, the initial launch version will operate exclusively via private audio, delivering Gemini-powered responses directly to the wearer’s ear rather than displaying visual information on a screen. “They are designed to give you all-day help with Gemini that’s spoken into your ear privately rather than shown on a display,” explained Shahram Izadi, a senior Google executive who presented the device at the conference. Izadi confirmed that Google is already developing a follow-up version with an in-lens display capable of showing text and other visual data, but that model is not yet scheduled for public release, with additional details expected to be shared by the end of 2025. Developers are already at work building custom applications for the display-enabled variant, the company added.

Google’s new entry mirrors the product architecture of rival Meta’s existing AI smart glasses line, which also pairs a small camera and speakers to enable voice interaction with Meta’s in-house AI assistant. Meta’s Ray-Ban co-branded smart glasses have already hit a major sales milestone of seven million units sold, according to company data, but the product has reignited the same privacy concerns that doomed Google’s first attempt: multiple reports have emerged of unknowing members of the public being recorded in public and private spaces by glasses wearers, with footage later uploaded to public online platforms without consent.

Google is far from the only major tech player racing to capture a share of the growing smart eyewear market. Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, is preparing to launch an updated version of its own smart glasses line this year, and Apple is widely reported to be developing its mixed-reality glasses product as the next major expansion of its wearable device ecosystem.

Industry observers have largely framed Google’s return to the space as a positive step for the emerging category. Christine Tsai, an investor at early-stage venture capital firm 500 Global, who attended this week’s developer conference, noted that mainstream adoption of smart glasses is widely seen as the next major computing shift following the rise of the smartphone. “It’s good for consumers. And it’s good for early stage start ups, where we tend to invest, because they’re a platform where people can build more capabilities,” Tsai said.

Independent developers also see clear opportunities to leverage Google’s existing ecosystem of services. Anil Shah, founder of startup tixfix.ai which builds event management tools, says the form factor holds huge promise for integrating existing Google tools from Maps to Voice into a seamless, hands-free experience. For his own business, Shah is already considering building a dedicated integration that would let users find nearby events directly via voice commands to the glasses, without needing to open a smartphone app. “I think being able to just talk with the smart glasses without opening the app would be a very nice integration,” he said.

For weeks, a high-profile legal battle in Oakland, California, has pulled back the curtain on the cutthroat power struggle unfolding between the most influential men at the peak of the global artificial intelligence industry. When the gavel fell on the case pitting billionaire Elon Musk against OpenAI, the verdict sent a clear message: fierce competition and profit-driven ambition in the fast-growing AI sector are just standard business practice, even as Musk walked away with a technical defeat that leaves his original claims unaddressed.

What many have framed as a watershed moment for the industry does more than resolve one dispute between two former collaborators. It has torn away the carefully cultivated public image of unified collective action that top AI firms have long presented to the public. For years, industry leaders have positioned themselves as collaborative partners working together to advance safe, inclusive AI research for the good of humanity. But this trial has exposed the deep cracks running through that carefully constructed facade.

This is not the first time the veil of unity has been pulled back. Earlier this year, at a global AI summit hosted in New Delhi by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, tech leaders were invited on stage to hold hands in a show of collective purpose. Among them were Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, and Dario Amodei, head of rival AI firm Anthropic – one-time colleagues at OpenAI who are now bitter industry competitors. Rather than clasp hands as directed, both men clenched their hands into tight fists to avoid any physical contact, a small but loaded act that laid bare their deep personal and professional animosity.

The same brand of dramatic, ego-fueled tension played out across the California courtroom over the course of the trial. No party emerged from the proceedings looking like a hero: the entire spectacle laid bare the oversized personal ambitions that drive many of the men vying for control and profit in the multibillion-dollar AI sector.

For OpenAI, the verdict comes at a critical moment. The company has burned through hundreds of millions in investor capital in its race to scale its AI products, and has recently brought on Denise Dresser, a veteran executive from workplace communication platform Slack, as its new chief revenue officer to build out sustainable income streams. In a recent meeting, Dresser declined to comment on the trial, but outlined OpenAI’s plan to split future revenue equally between consumer users and enterprise clients. She also highlighted the company’s underdiscussed coding tool Codex, which she described as her internal “chief of staff” for day-to-day work.

Prior to the ruling, economist and author Sebastian Mallaby projected that OpenAI faced a 50% chance of collapsing into bankruptcy by 2027, driven by its massive spending and mounting competitive pressure. Avoiding a multibillion-dollar damage payout to Musk has drastically improved those odds, and clears the way for OpenAI to move forward with its long-rumored initial public offering, which insiders hint could value the company at as much as $1 trillion. Amid widespread market concerns that the AI sector is a overinflated bubble poised to burst, the court outcome has arguably bought the industry vital time to prove its long-term value.

For Musk, the technical loss is unlikely to cause lasting damage. The world’s richest man has a long history of high-stakes courtroom battles, and his well-documented tendency to hold grudges means he will almost certainly continue to attack OpenAI and Altman via his social media platform X. While the two AI titans have been distracted by their legal clash, competing firms have surged ahead. Anthropic has drawn global attention with its latest large language model Claude Mythos, which the company claims has advanced hacking capabilities – a claim dismissed by some as empty hype but hailed by others as a defining turning point for AI capability. Meanwhile Google, whose early AI advances originally prompted Musk, Altman and other founders to launch OpenAI as a competitor, continues to rapidly integrate generative AI across its most popular consumer and enterprise services.

Industry analysts and policy experts say the trial leaves far more questions unanswered than it resolves. “The trial served as a reminder of how much the future of AI still depends on a remarkably small group of powerful tech figures and their personal rivalries,” explained Sarah Kreps, director of the Cornell University Tech Policy Institute. The ruling’s focus on a legal technicality “leaves a lot of questions and debates unresolved,” she added, ranging from how cutting-edge AI systems should be regulated to who gets to capture the massive economic gains the sector is projected to generate. The case also highlighted a wider gap between the small group of people building AI technology and the much larger global population that is now expected to live and work alongside increasingly capable systems, Kreps noted.

Veteran tech journalist Kara Swisher argued the spectacle has done lasting damage to public trust in the AI industry. Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s *Today* programme, Swisher noted that widespread mistrust of AI, particularly among younger generations, has only been amplified by the trial’s drama. “Right now the brand of AI has just been trashed and this certainly doesn’t help,” she said. “When you look at these testimonies of people who are very petty, there’s a lot of weird drama, obsession with money… the whole thing feels weird and dramatic.”

On balance, the verdict confirms that the global AI sector still holds enormous market value. But it has also definitively exposed the oversized personal egos and cutthroat competition that are driving its fastest growth – a reality that industry leaders have spent years working to hide from public view.

In a high-stakes legal showdown that has gripped the global tech industry, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has emerged on the losing end of his courtroom battle against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, rooted in a bitter dispute over the AI research lab’s dramatic transformation from a non-profit entity to a for-profit enterprise. BBC technology correspondent Lily Jamali was present inside the courtroom to observe the proceedings as Musk laid out his core allegation: that Altman had violated the terms of the original non-profit founding agreement that shaped OpenAI’s creation when he oversaw the company’s transition to a for-profit operating model.

The conflict traces back to OpenAI’s founding in 2015, when it was launched as a non-profit research organization with a stated mission of developing artificial general intelligence that benefits all humanity. Musk was an early founding investor and board member, though he stepped down from the board in 2018 and eventually cut ties with the organization he helped bring to life. After OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022 and rapidly grew its user base and commercial valuation, Musk renewed his public criticism of the company, arguing that it had abandoned its original non-profit, public-benefit roots in pursuit of corporate profit.

Musk’s lawsuit centered on the claim that Altman and other OpenAI leaders breached the binding founding contract that committed the company to remaining non-profit and open in its research activities. The legal battle has been closely watched across the technology sector, as it raises fundamental questions about the governance of high-stakes AI development, the fiduciary duties of founders of mission-driven tech organizations, and the balance between commercial innovation and public benefit in the rapidly growing AI industry. With the court’s ruling siding with Altman and OpenAI, the decision clears a key legal hurdle for the company as it continues its commercial expansion, while leaving Musk’s public campaign to hold OpenAI to its original founding mission without a legal victory.

In a landmark legal ruling that closes one chapter of a high-stakes feud over the future of artificial intelligence, a California jury has delivered a unanimous verdict dismissing Elon Musk’s major lawsuit against OpenAI and its chief executive Sam Altman. The case was thrown out entirely on the grounds that Musk filed his legal claims well after the legally mandated statute of limitations for such disputes had expired.

Musk, one of the original co-founders of OpenAI, launched the suit accusing Altman of breaking a foundational non-profit agreement that guided the company’s early days. When OpenAI was launched in 2015, Musk contributed $38 million in initial funding to support the organization’s stated mission: developing AI technology for the collective benefit of humanity, rather than private profit. Musk alleged that Altman deliberately deceived him by accepting his charitable seed funding, then abandoned the original non-profit mission to transition OpenAI—the creator of the wildly popular ChatGPT—into a for-profit entity. He also named Microsoft and its CEO Satya Nadella as co-defendants, claiming the tech giant aided in what Musk framed as a breach of agreement.

Over the course of three weeks, jurors pored over thousands of pages of internal OpenAI correspondence and heard testimony from all key parties to the dispute. Both Musk and Altman took the stand to present their competing accounts of the company’s origins and trajectory, while Nadella also appeared as a witness to address Musk’s allegations against Microsoft. Following the close of evidence, jurors deliberated for roughly two hours on Monday before reaching their unanimous decision to dismiss the case.

During his opening testimony on the first day of the trial, Musk appeared in court in a dark suit and tie, framing his legal action as a defense of the principle of charitable giving. When asked by his legal team to explain the core of his complaint, Musk told the court: “It’s actually very simple. It’s not OK to steal a charity… If it’s okay to loot a charity, the entire foundation of charitable giving will be destroyed.”

Altman pushed back forcefully against Musk’s narrative during his own testimony, arguing that Musk not only supported the push to convert OpenAI to a for-profit structure—he also pushed for long-term personal control of the company. Altman recalled a pivotal early meeting where Musk’s stance on control became clear, telling jurors: “A particularly hair-raising moment was when my co-founders asked, ‘If you have control, what happens when you die?’ He said something like, ‘maybe it should pass to my children.’”

Following the jury’s ruling on the claims against OpenAI, Musk’s remaining allegations against Microsoft were also dismissed as a matter of law. The long-running rift between Musk and Altman dates back to 2018, when Musk stepped down from OpenAI’s board after co-founders rejected his request for full control over the organization. The dismissal of the suit brings a definitive legal end to this particular clash between two of the most influential figures in global AI development, though ongoing industry competition between their respective AI projects is expected to continue.