Positive I.D. The tech world recently took a giant step forward in the quest to create computers that accurately mimic human sensory and thought processes, thanks to Fei-Fei Li and Andrej Karpathy of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. The pair developed a program that identifies not just the subjects of a photo, but the action taking place in the image. Called NeuralTalk, the software captioned a picture of a man in a black shirt playing guitar, for example, as “man in black shirt is playing guitar,” according to The Verge. The program isn’t perfect, the publication reports, but it’s often correct and is sometimes “unnervingly accurate.” Potential applications for artificial “neural networks” like Li’s obviously include giving users the ability to search, using natural language, through image repositories both public and private (think “photo of Bobby getting his diploma at Yale.”). But the technology could also be used in potentially life-saving ways, such as in cars that can warn drivers of potential hazards like potholes. And, of course, such neural networks would be incredibly valuable to marketers, allowing them to identify potential consumers of, say, sports equipment by searching through photos posted to social media for people using products in that category. As we discussed in a recent blog post, the explosive of growth of the Internet of Things, wearables, big data analytics and other hot new technologies is being fueled at least in part by marketing uses—are artificial neural networks the next big thing to be embraced by marketers?
Cruel intentions. Laws seeking to regulate speech on the Internet must be narrowly drafted to avoid running afoul of the First Amendment, and limiting such a law’s applicability to intentional attempts to cause damage usually improves the law’s odds of meeting that requirement. Illustrating the importance of intent in free speech cases, an anti-revenge-porn law in Arizona was recently scrapped, in part because it applied to people who posted nude photos to the Internet irrespective of the poster’s intent. Now, a North Carolina Court of Appeals has held that an anti-cyberbullying law is constitutional because it, among other things, only prohibits posts to online networks that are made with “the intent to intimidate or torment a minor.” The court issued the holding in a lawsuit brought by a 19-year-old who was placed on 48 months’ probation and ordered stay off social media websites for a year for having contributed to abusive social media posts that targeted one of his classmates. The teen’s suit alleged that the law he was convicted of violating, N.C. Gen. Stat. §14-458.1, is overbroad and unconstitutional. Upholding his conviction, the North Carolina Court of Appeals held, “It was not the content of Defendant’s Facebook comments that led to his conviction of cyberbullying. Rather, his specific intent to use those comments and the Internet as instrumentalities to intimidate or torment (a student) resulted in a jury finding him guilty under the Cyberbullying Statute.”
A dish best served cold. Restaurants and other service providers are often without effective legal recourse against Yelp and other “user review” websites when they’re faced with negative—even defamatory—online reviews because Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA)—47 U.S. Code § 230—insulates website operators from liability for content created by users (though there are, of course, exceptions). That didn’t stop the owner of KC’s Rib Shack in Manchester, New Hampshire, from exacting revenge, however, when an attendee of a 20-person birthday celebration at his restaurant wrote a scathing review on Yelp and Facebook admonishing the owner for approaching the party’s table “and very RUDELY [telling the diners] to keep quiet [since] others were trying to eat.” The review included “#boycott” and some expletives. In response, the restaurant’s owner, Kevin Cornish, replied to the self-identified disgruntled diner’s rant with his own review—of her singing. Cornish reminded the review writer that his establishment is “a family restaurant, not a bar,” and wrote, “I realize you felt as though everybody in the entire restaurant was rejoicing in the painful rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody you and your self-entitled friends were performing, yet that was not the case.” He encouraged her to continue her “social media crusade,” including the hashtag #IDon’t NeedInconsiderateCustomers. Cornish’s retort has so far garnered close to 4,000 Facebook likes and has been shared on Facebook more than 400 times.