Paul Stenhouse: Microsoft faces a multi-billion dollar fine in the EU & AI is coming to the Olympics broadcast

Microsoft faces a multi-billion dollar fine in the EU 

This is to do with the complaint Slack brought to the European Commission, arguing that Microsoft's bundling of Teams with Office was anti-competitive. Preliminary findings of the investigation side with Slack, so Microsoft could be fined up to $21 billion. The Commission says Microsoft has been "forcing" Office customers to acquire Teams. It says it also doesn't help that Teams isn't interoperable with competitors' offerings. Microsoft has already committed to stopping the bundling. 
 
Earlier this week, European Union regulators accused Apple of breaking tough new digital competition rules under the Digital Markets Act by preventing app developers from freely directing consumers to cheaper services away from Apple's payment ecosystem. 

 
AI is coming to the Olympics broadcast 

"Your Daily Olympic Recap" will be a personalized show of highlights found on Peacock (the streaming service with rights to the Olympics) of the big moments you might have missed, based on your sporting preferences. To take it to the next level, the show will be narrated by a now-retired former Olympic broadcaster, whose voice will be computer generated. NBC said the AI system was trained using prior NBC broadcast audio - nothing else was required to make it happen - which is rather incredible when you think of all the voices which might be able to be "brought back". 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks at b.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
AI is coming to the Olympics. Not a great surprise,
I suppose, given the hype around the technology. But it's
amazing to consider the ways in which one streaming service
is going to be applying artificial intelligence to its products.
Our tech expert Paul Stenhouse is here with the details.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
What's it going to mean, Paul, Yeah, I think you
need to be watching Jack very closely because your job
could be in jeopardy here based on some of these advancements.
Let me tell you so, there's an Olympic broadcaster who's
worked over here for both the ABC and NBC, considered
one of the great voices of the Olympics, and they
have managed to computer generate his voice and he will

(00:52):
be narrating, right personalized for you a show called Your
Daily Olympic Recap, which will be on the big streaming
service in the US called Peacock, which has the rights
to the Olympics during the course of the games. And
I'm bringing you all all of the big highlights. Well
he's not, I say you the folks in America bringing
all of the big highlights and it will be personalized.

(01:13):
So if you say that you really like rowing where
I really like I don't know, archery, you'll be getting
more of that in your personalized feed. And they don't
even need to have a human behind the microphone because
they can do all of it with this computer generated
voice of a bit of a legend. That's amazing scary
huh yeah, yeah, can I can I go one step

(01:35):
further of vis factor? They didn't even have to put
them back behind the microphone to create this voice. So
what they did is they grabbed all of his broadcasts
from back in the day, train the AI on that
and then have effectively unleashed it. Now good news, he
is being compensated, so maybe there's some hope for your
future check tame.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, I don't know. I mean I feel sort of
mixed on this, like I can really see some upsides
to it, and of course you know, some downsides as well,
But yeah, I don't know. It sounds like a sounds
like kind of a novel use of AI, and from
a consumer perspective, it sounds odd. Dare want to say,
kind of good.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
It's an interesting use case for it, right, Yeah, you're
going to get to see the things that matter to you,
but you're also going to get it in a way
that is going to feel familiar. Long what if you
were just watching it on TV? Yeah, so terribly interesting.
I'm interested to see what other voices maybe come back
from the past.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Right, So remember they did it with Anthony Bourdain. That
was a bit creepy and that was very controversial when
they did it. But yeah, you're right, you can bring
back all sorts of voices with AI. Now, given the
state of the technology, Hey, i am Microsoft is facing
a multi billion dollar fine in the EU. What's happening?

Speaker 3 (02:46):
Yeah, so the European Commission has sided with Slack basically
to say that when Microsoft put teams in with their
Office bundle that that was anti competitive. Slack went to
them and said, hey, we've got a collaboration platform at
the time that was really about instant messaging, and they said,
how do we compete with this? You know people are
getting this for free, We're trying to basically charge people

(03:08):
for bucks a month per user. And they have sided
with them and said that Microsoft was forcing office customers
to acquire teams. Right, it also does not help And
the Commission said this too, that teams isn't really operable
with any other competitors. So it may have looked at
it a little more favorably if say it integrated with
Slack or you could easily have Slacked teams type conversations

(03:31):
and maybe it was a little more of an open
standard or open platform. But they said no, and so
they could be fined up to ten percent of their
global revenue, which puts the fine if they go through
with it, up to twenty one billion US dollars, which
is no small sneeze. And it's not the only time
actually this week, Jack, that the EU regulators have cracked down.

(03:54):
They've accused Apple two of breaking some of its digital
competition rules under the recently past Digital Markets Act, which
basically is trying to allow startups and small companies to
actually have a shot at competing against some of these
big giants. And this is all to do with how
you basically pay for apps on the app store. So

(04:14):
Apple has also been slapped on the rest. It's going
to be fascinating to see how much they actually try
to crack down on this, because they really have been
leading in many ways some of this tech regulation globally.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, that's fascinating. Thanks Paul, appreciate it. As always, that
is our texpert, Paul Stenhouse.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to Newstalks ed B from nine am Saturday, or follow
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