Flock CEO defends surveillance technology

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2:31That's framer.com slash fcdaily. Rules and restrictions may apply. Amid national backlash, Flock's CEO, well, he defends surveillance technology. I'm Imran Shaikh and your daily crunch for Friday starts right now. Google on Thursday said Universal Cart, a tool that lets users collect and monitor products they find across Search and in the Gemini app is now available to U.S. users. Now, the company first previewed this tool at Google I.O. in May. The idea here is to make online shopping easier to manage. Find something you like, save it to your cart, and just move on. When you return later, your items and shopping progress are still there so you don't have to hunt down the same products or start all over again.

3:19Universal Cart can collect items from multiple retailers, turning it into a central hub for browsing and keeping track of potential purchases. Google says the cart can also help shoppers stay on top of deals and availability. The tool can send notifications when a saved product's price drops or when an out-of-stock item becomes available again. The tool is also designed to offer more tailored help during the shopping process. Google says it can even take credit card perks into account when helping users choose how to pay and also surface relevant promo codes. Checkout is tied to Google's Universal Commerce Protocol, or UCP, an open standard the company introduced earlier this year.

4:00UCP is designed to help AI agents and retailers work together across different parts of the shopping journey, including Checkout. Google's already deeply invested in AI-powered shopping, and Universal Card is its latest effort to make the experience, well, more convenient. It joins features such as conversational product discovery in Search's AI mode and Google's Let Google Call tool, which uses an AI agent to contact nearby stores and check whether an item is in stock. YouTube Music announced Wednesday the rollout of a new labeling system aimed at improving transparency around songs created with the help of Generative AI.

4:40Now listeners will be able to easily identify tracks created using AI, including those involved in composition and vocals. The label will appear on the player page. Clicking on this label provides additional info about the specific role of AI in the track's creation. Notably, these labels will also extend to the main YouTube app. YouTube said it collaborated with various music partners and deployed its own detection tools to identify AI-generated music. According to its help page, partners using YouTube can declare their work's use of generative AI through one of three designations. Fully Gen AI, Partly Gen AI, or No Gen AI.

5:20Fully Gen AI applies to tracks that are entirely generated by AI, while Partly Gen AI refers to works where artists may have incorporated AI-generated components but added their own live elements. Tracks edited using pitch correction tools such as AutoTune fall under the NoGenAI category. Now the move comes as AI-generated music rapidly expands across streaming services, and many platforms are adopting their own approaches. For instance, Apple Music has plans to introduce Made with AI labels as part of its AI transparency tags later this year. Spotify also has AI labels as well as a music spam filter.

5:58YouTube is focusing on disclosure rather than blanket restrictions. Its new labels are intended to inform listeners about AI's role in music creation. But AI involvement alone doesn't make a track ineligible for monetization. YouTube even experiments with AI-powered music creation, including its tool DreamTrack, which lets select creators generate soundtracks featuring AI-generated versions of participating artists' voices. Flox founder and CEO Garrett Langley doesn't think the risks of introducing surveillance tech at scale outweigh the rewards. If we want to live in a society where, if you commit a crime, you have a higher probability of being held accountable, we shouldn't pause progress, Langley said, speaking on stage during a panel at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 in San Francisco on Wednesday.

6:48During the interview, the controversial founder of the surveillance maker of licensed plate cameras and other recording devices deflected hard questions about the criticism Flock now faces, which has since led to canceled contracts and even layoffs. Instead, Langley tended to respond to questions with anecdotes from conversations with police chiefs and city leaders across the United States and tales of the supposed numerous crimes Flock has solved, rather than offer tangible solutions to people's concerns. In doing so, Langley positioned Flock as an advance in technology that was somewhat inevitable.

7:24He stressed that if people wanted to live in a better society, that is, one with reduced crime, they would have to offer up their privacy in return. A similar argument about the trade-offs and rewards could be made for AI, which is marketed to the public as vastly improving our lives, automating tedious tasks, and making things more convenient. The flip side is the cost of sharing everything about ourselves with the makers of the AI agents themselves, and the possibility of the destruction of humanity, according to some. It's no surprise that the AI backlash shares some overlap with Flock. Much like AI, Flock is a technology that some feel has been forced upon the public without their consent.

8:06For Langley, this is just the nature of progress, he explained. But driverless car makers don't shrug their shoulders at crashes. The companies pause their fleets and apply fixes. Flock, meanwhile, seems to wrestle as a company with understanding when it's the company's responsibility to intervene. From Langley's answers, it's clear that the ethics around how Flock should be used is a decision he would much rather leave up to others. And folks, that's your Daily Crunch! Today's stories were reported by Lauren Forrestal, Sarah Perez, and more awesome TechCrunch journalists. We'll see you here tomorrow.

8:41Same Tech Time, same Crunch channel. And until then, find us at TechCrunch.com.

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