23/01/2026

FRIDAY | JAN 23, 2026

17

BIZ & FINANCE

Top US court sceptical of bid to fire Fed governor

algorithms of addicting a 19-year-old woman, causing severe mental health problems. The trial before Judge Carolyn Kuhl in state court is expected to start the first week of February, after a jury is selected. Lawsuits accusing social media platforms of practices endangering young users are also making their way through federal court in Northern California and state courts across the country. – AFP YouTube to match OpenAI with AI likeness feature SAN FRANCISCO: YouTube announced plans on Wednesday to allow its users this year to create AI versions of themselves for video sharing, matching a feature from Sora, the video-creation app from ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. “AI will be a boon to the creatives who are ready to lean in,” CEO Neal Mohan wrote in an annual letter outlining the platform’s priorities for 2026. The Google-owned video platform sees AI as the next transformative technology for content creation, comparing it to earlier innovations like the music synthesiser and Photoshop. More than one million channels used YouTube’s AI creation tools daily in December, according to the company. Mohan said YouTube plans to dramatically expand artificial intelligence tools for its creators this year, including allowing them to produce games from simple text prompts. The ability to generate short videos using your own likeness would follow Sora’s cameo feature, which was launched last year by OpenAI and allows users to insert their likeness and voice into AI-generated videos. Google and OpenAI are caught in an intense AI rivalry, with the search engine giant pushing out generative AI abilities to products such as Gmail and Maps, as well as promoting its Gemini chatbot, a competitor to ChatGPT. In an e-mail to AFP, Google said it would release more details about the feature soon. In his letter, Mohan insisted that “AI will remain a tool for expression, not a replacement” for human creators. This addressed growing concerns about AI-generated content quality and authenticity as well as fears about the long-term survival of creative industries in the face of the technology. The platform will require creators to disclose altered or synthetic content and plans to give them tools to manage unauthorised use of their likeness in AI-generated videos. Mohan said YouTube is also building systems to combat “AI slop” – low-quality automated content – by adapting existing anti-spam and clickbait measures. The video service has been the top streaming platform by watch time in the United States for nearly three years, according to Nielsen data. Its short-form video feature, Shorts, now averages 200 billion daily views. – AFP

WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court appeared sceptical on Wednesday of President Donald Trump’s effort to fire a Federal Reserve governor, in a case testing the central bank’s independence. Trump sought in August to dismiss Fed governor Lisa Cook, a key official on the bank’s interest rate-setting committee, accusing her of mortgage fraud. She denies the allegations. The conservative-dominated Supreme Court barred the Republican president in October from immediately removing Cook, allowing her to stay on the job until it could hear the case contesting her dismissal. During two hours of oral arguments on Wednesday, a majority of the nine justices on the top court – both conservatives and liberals – expressed doubts that the president had shown sufficient cause to remove Cook or had provided her with appropriate due process. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, said setting a “very low bar for cause” could allow presidents to dismiss Fed governors at will and “weaken, if not shatter, the independence of the Federal Reserve”. “All of the current president’s appointees o Trump accuses Cook of making false statements on mortgage agreements

Jerome Powell personally attended the hearing, which comes as the Trump administration intensifies its pressure on the central bank. Powell revealed this month that prosecutors had launched a criminal inquiry into him over an ongoing renovation of the Fed’s headquarters. Powell has dismissed the investigation as a politically motivated attempt to influence the central bank’s interest rate setting. Trump’s bid to fire Cook and the Powell probe are a dramatic escalation of his efforts to control the Fed, which he has repeatedly criticised for spurning his demands to slash interest rates more aggressively. By ousting Cook, the president could potentially add another voice to the Fed’s board to try and shift interest rates in his favoured direction. The Supreme Court has overwhelmingly sided with Trump since he returned to office and it recently allowed him to fire members of other independent government agencies. But it created a carve-out for the “quasi-private” Fed in its ruling. Cook became a Fed governor in 2022 and was reappointed to the board in 2023. In a statement released after the hearing, she said the case “is about whether the Federal Reserve will set key interest rates guided by evidence and independent judgment or will succumb to political pressure”. “For as long as I serve at the Federal Reserve, I will uphold the principle of political independence in service to the American people,” Cook said. – AFP

would likely be removed for cause on Jan 20, 2029 if there’s a Democratic president,” Kavanaugh said, referring to the next inauguration day. Justice Samuel Alito, another conservative, took issue with the “hurried manner” in which the court was being asked to decide the case while the facts remain in dispute. Solicitor General John Sauer, representing the Trump administration, pushed back, saying the allegations against Cook merited her dismissal. “Deceit or gross negligence by a financial regulator in financial transactions is cause for removal,” Sauer said. “The American people should not have their interest rates determined by someone who was, at best, grossly negligent in obtaining favourable interest rates for herself.” Trump has accused Cook, the first black woman to serve on the central bank’s board of governors, of making false statements on one or more mortgage agreements, allegedly claiming two primary residences, one in Michigan and another in Georgia. Paul Clement, Cook’s lawyer, said she had “at most” made an “inadvertent mistake” on her loan documents and noted that no previous US president has ever tried to remove a Fed governor. “It’s less important that the president have full faith in every single governor, and it’s more important that the markets and the public have faith in the independence of the Fed from the president and from Congress,” Clement said. In a sign of public support for Cook, Fed chair

Cook (left) and attorney Abbe Lowell (centre) leave the Supreme Court in Washington. – AFPPIC

Snapchat settles to avoid social media addiction trial SAN FRANCISCO: Snapchat on Wednesday confirmed it made a deal to avoid a US civil trial accusing it, along with Meta, TikTok, and YouTube, of addicting young people to social media. coordinated by the Social Media Victims Law Centre, a legal organisation dedicated to holding social media companies accountable for harms caused to young people online. and even suicide. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel was slated to testify at the trial along with other social media firm executives, including Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg.

Internet titans have argued that they are shielded by US law that frees them of responsibility for what social media users post, but these cases argue they are culpable due to business models designed to hold people’s attention and promote content that winds up harming their mental health. Social media firms are accused in suits of addicting young users to content that has led to depression, eating disorders, psychiatric hospitalisation,

“Unfortunately, there are many potential dangers in using online social media, and the owners of these platforms bear responsibility for its proper use,“ a law centre spokesperson contended in a posted video. The suit heading for jury trial in Los Angeles accuses social media

“The parties are pleased to have been able to resolve this matter in an amicable manner,” parent company Snap and the Social Media Victims Law Centre said, disclosing no details regarding the settlement in the case playing out in Los Angeles.

A jury trial is set to begin in Los Angeles next week in what is being called a “bellwether” proceeding because its outcome could set the tone for a tidal wave of similar litigation across the United States. Many of those cases are being