OpenAI has been accused by many parties of training its AI on copyrighted content sans permission. Now a new paper by an AI watchdog organization makes the serious accusation that the company increasingly relied on nonpublic books it didn’t license to train more sophisticated AI models. AI models are essentially complex prediction engines. Trained on … Read more
TikTok is shutting down its Instagram competitor, TikTok Notes, on May 8. The photo-sharing app launched in testing in Canada, Australia, and Vietnam last year. The company is notifying TikTok Notes users of its decision to retire the app and is directing them to ByteDance-owned Lemon8, which isn’t surprising given that the apps are quite … Read more
OpenAI’s new image generator, powered by its GPT-4o model, is now available to all users, CEO Sam Altman said in a post on X. The feature was until now available only to paying users of ChatGPT. While it is not clear how many images users on the free tier can generate, Altman last week had … Read more
Construct Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in startups applying technology to sectors like manufacturing, transportation, and defense, has closed its third fund with $300 million in capital commitments. The Washington, D.C.-based firm previously raised a $225 million second fund and a $75 million capital pool for later-stage companies in 2022. While many … Read more
CaaStle, a startup that launched in 2011 as a plus-sized clothing subscription service and in 2018 became an inventory monetization platform for clothing retailers, is facing financial difficulties, reports Axios. The company is almost out of money, CEO Christine Hunsicker has resigned, and law enforcement is investigating alleged financial misconduct, Axios reported, citing a leaked … Read more
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas recently took to Reddit to address users’ product complaints and reassure them that the company is not under serious financial pressure. Srinivas seemed to be responding, in part, to a user theory that the company is “doing horribly financially” and “making lots of changes to cut costs.” As an example, the … Read more
Apple is developing a new version of its Health app that includes an AI coach that can advise users on how to get healthier, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Gurman first reported that something like this was in the works back in 2023, but now he says development is moving ahead, with the new features … Read more
Last weekend, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, found himself at the center of a digital fiasco when he was unexpectedly added to a Signal group chat with 17 U.S. government officials who were discussing imminent airstrikes in Yemen. For some, the incident has raised questions about how phone numbers end up in contact lists … Read more
A year ago, Bluesky was opening up to the public and was known as one of the many X competitors that emerged after Elon Musk acquired the network formerly known as Twitter. Today, Bluesky’s social network has grown to over 33 million users, while the technology it’s built upon — the AT Protocol (or ATProto … Read more
Amazon announced this week that Jennifer Salke is stepping down as the head of Amazon MGM Studios — a move that could indicate high-level dissatisfaction with the company’s streaming strategy over the past few years. To be clear, Salke’s boss Mike Hopkins (the head of Amazon MGM Studios and Prime Video) praised her work in … Read more
