Techmeme
May 25, 2023, 6:55 PM

Top News

Financial Times:
Morgan Meaker / Wired:
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman visited London this week, part of a tour to ~17 cities, including Paris, Warsaw, and Lagos, to discuss AI, balanced regulation, and more  —  On a stop in London, the OpenAI CEO called for balanced regulation and warned of the risks of deepfake disinformation.
Cat Zakrzewski / Washington Post:
A profile of Microsoft President Brad Smith, a DC veteran testing his well-worn playbook to shape AI regulation, such as by endorsing the creation of an agency  —  In 2017, Microsoft president Brad Smith made a bold prediction.  Speaking on a panel at the Davos World Economic Forum …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google starts rolling out its LLM-powered Search Generative Experience, with features like a conversational mode and shopping aspects, to Search Labs members  —  Announced at I/O 2023, Google is now rolling out the AI/LLM-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE) to users that signed up for the Search Labs program.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
TikTok is testing its chatbot, Tako, in select markets; from the right side of the app, the bot helps users discover new content and ask questions about a video  —  AI chatbots, like ChatGPT, are all the rage, so it's no surprise to learn that TikTok is now testing its own AI chatbot, as well.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
YouTube plans to shut down Stories on June 26, 2023, as the company focuses on other key areas, like Shorts, Community posts, live videos, and its usual content  —  Stories are over — at least on YouTube, that is.  The Google-owned video site announced today that YouTube Stories will be shutting …
Emily Nicolle / Bloomberg:
Fahrenheit, bidders led by Arrington Capital, wins an auction for Celsius Network's assets, including loans, investments, and $500M in “liquid cryptocurrency”  —  Failed crypto lender Celsius Network LLC is poised to restart as a new company after Fahrenheit LLC …
Hannah Miller / Bloomberg:
Tools for Humanity, co-founded by Sam Altman to build Worldcoin, raised a $115M Series C led by Blockchain Capital, aiming to scan everyone's eyes to create IDs  —  A crypto startup co-founded by OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman has raised new funding to further its mission of providing a digital ID for everyone on the planet.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Access Now:
Pegasus was used in the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict to target a government worker, a UN official, and others in 2021 and 2022, the first documented use in a war  —  The Armenia spyware victims include a former Human Rights Defender of the Republic of Armenia (the Ombudsperson) …
The Block:
Paradigm appears to have removed crypto and Web3 mentions from its website's home page, as sources say the VC is expanding its focus to “frontier” tech like AI  —  - VC firm Paradigm is taking its crypto-only focus to include “frontier” technologies such as AI, two sources with knowledge of the situation told The Block.
Samuel Stolton / Bloomberg:
Margrethe Vestager says the EU and the UK disagreeing on Microsoft's Activision deal raises “important questions” and that the remedies offered convinced the EU  —  The European Union's decision to approve Microsoft Corp.'s $69 billion plan to buy Activision Blizzard Inc …
Wall Street Journal:
A look at Disney and Comcast's Hulu fight; sources say their Hulu valuations vary by tens of billions, they're in arbitration, and Comcast stopped funding Hulu  —  Parent companies are in final phase of battle marked by legal threats, broken promises and secret arbitration
WABetaInfo:
A beta version of WhatsApp suggests the company is working on adding usernames, which may allow users to chat without sharing their phone numbers  —  WhatsApp is rolling out a new update through the Google Play Beta Program, bringing the version up to 2.23.11.15.  —  What's new in this update?
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Google DeepMind details how its visual language model Flamingo generates descriptions for YouTube Shorts, stored as metadata and helping improve discoverability  —  Google just combined DeepMind and Google Brain into one big AI team, and on Wednesday, the new Google DeepMind shared details …
Oliver Whang / New York Times:
A study describes how a patient who was paralyzed from the waist down was able to walk naturally again with brain and spine implants using an AI thought decoder  —  In a new study, researchers describe a device that connects the intentions of a paralyzed patient to his physical movements.

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The Verge:
Rohan Goswami / CNBC: