Amazon Will Pay $2.5 Billion to Settle FTC Suit That Alleged'Dark Patterns' in Prime Sign-Ups Amazon will pay both the Federal Trade Commission and consumers directly to settle a lawsuit alleging that it used manipulative and deceptive tactics to encourage sign-ups for Prime. Amazon has agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission, which alleged that the company has "knowingly duped" millions of people into enrolling in its Amazon Prime membership program by using what the FTC has described as " dark patterns, " or, manipulative, coercive, or deceptive user-interface designs." The settlement claimed that Amazon "obtains consumers' billing information before it discloses all material terms for an Amazon Prime subscription," and in doing so, was in violation of the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act, which was signed into law in 2010 to prevent the use of deception to prompt or encourage online purchases. The $2.5 billion payment includes $1 billion that has to be paid to the FTC, and $1.5 billion that will go directly to consumers who unknowingly signed up for Prime, or tried and failed to cancel their Prime subscriptions due to Amazon's online interface, between June 23, 2019 and June 23, 2025. Individual consumers can get compensated up to $51 each. In a statement released by the FTC on Tuesday, agency chairman Andrew Ferguson said that the settlement "made history and secured a record-breaking, monumental win for the millions of Americans who are tired of deceptive subscriptions that feel impossible to cancel." "Today, we are putting billions of dollars back into Americans' pockets, and making sure Amazon never does this again," Ferguson said. Amazon spokesperson Alisa Carroll tells WIRED that there was "no admission of guilt in this settlement by the company or any executives.

While there are already multiple services that can create copies of your voice, they usually demand substantial input. Microsoft claims its model can simulate someone's voice from just a three-second audio sample. The speech can match both the timbre and emotional tone of the speaker – even the acoustics of a room. It could one day be used for customized or high-end text-to-speech applications, but like deepfakes, there are risks of misuse. Researchers trained VALL-E on 60,000 hours of English language speech from 7,000-plus speakers in Meta's Libri-Light audio library.

Shortly after setting up Amazon's Fire TV Cube streaming box, I temporarily lost the remote control. In theory, this shouldn't have been a problem. Amazon says its $120 Fire TV Cube is primarily a hands-free device that you can control with Alexa voice commands, and I knew Alexa would at least let me turn on the TV, control the volume, and start watching video in apps like Amazon Prime Video and PlayStation Vue without needing the remote. Still, it didn't take long with my Fire TV Cube review unit to uncover voice control's many blind spots. While the hardware does a fine job of recognizing voice commands, Alexa often fails at searching for content, is inconsistent at controlling video playback, and doesn't yet work with a large number of apps.