Techmeme
July 25, 2024, 5:55 PM

Top News

Kylie Robison / The Verge:
OpenAI unveils SearchGPT, a search tool powered by GPT-4 that can organize links and summarize its findings, available as a prototype to 10,000 users at launch  —  OpenAI is announcing its much-anticipated entry into the search market, SearchGPT, an AI-powered search engine with real-time access to information across the internet.
Deepa Seetharaman / Wall Street Journal:
Samantha Cole / 404 Media:
Source and doc: Runway scraped thousands of videos from YouTube creators and brands, including Disney and VICE News, to train its Gen-3 AI video generation tool  —  A leaked internal document shows Runway's celebrated Gen-3 AI video generator collected thousands of YouTube videos and pirated movies for training data.
Sarah Parvini / Associated Press:
SAG-AFTRA announces a strike starting Friday against major video game companies, including EA, after talks for a new contract broke down over AI protections  —  Hollywood's video game performers voted to go on strike Thursday, throwing part of the entertainment industry into another work stoppage …
Bloomberg:
Google DeepMind rolls out AlphaProof AI model, which specializes in math reasoning, and AlphaGeometry 2, an updated version of a model focused on geometry  —  AI models, trained on text, have historically struggled with math reasoning  —  Google DeepMind, Alphabet Inc.'s artificial …
Maia Spoto / Bloomberg:
California's Supreme Court upholds Prop 22, allowing Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and other companies to keep classifying California drivers as independent contractors  —  The unanimous ruling upholding California's Proposition 22 was released Thursday.  —  The favorable ruling …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Google updates its Gemini chatbot with Gemini 1.5 Flash and a 32K-token context window in its free tier, links to related content for some prompts, and more  —  Google's Gemini AI chatbot will be able to respond to you more quickly and process more content in prompts thanks to an upgrade to the company's Gemini 1.5 Flash AI model.
Epic Games:
Epic plans to bring its mobile games to AltStore on iOS in the EU, and remove its games from the Galaxy Store due to Samsung blocking sideloading by default  —  We are fast approaching a quantum leap in Epic's efforts to bring our games to players on mobile devices.
Todd Spangler / Variety:
The new Disney+, Hulu, and Max streaming bundle goes on sale in the US for $16.99 per month with ads and $29.99 per month without ads  —  Dragons, Jedis, Marvel and DC superheroes, Harry Potter, Disney princesses — and more from Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery — are now available to stream for a reduced monthly price.
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
FTC's newly unredacted filings quote an Adobe exec comparing early termination fees to “heroin”; Adobe's Dana Rao says the person was not on the leadership team  —  Early termination fees are “a bit like heroin for Adobe,” according to an Adobe executive quoted …
Sam Altman / Washington Post:
We need a US-led global coalition of like-minded countries and a new strategy to ensure that a democratic vision for AI prevails over an authoritarian one  —  Sam Altman is co-founder and CEO of OpenAI.  —  Who will control the future of AI?  —  That is the urgent question of our time.
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Sonos CEO Patrick Spence apologizes for Sonos' redesigned app, which launched in May to widespread criticism, and promises biweekly app updates through the fall  —  The big Sonos app redesign was intended to make the company's software more modern, customizable, and easier to use.
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Microsoft says “Bing stopped crawling Reddit” after Reddit updated its robots.txt file on July 1 to prohibit “all crawling of their site”  —  Reddit has updated its robots.txt file, preventing Bing and many other search engines from crawling the site.
Financial Times:
Akila Quinio / Financial Times:
Revolut secures a UK banking license, ending a more-than-three-year-long regulatory battle; the London-based fintech has ~9M UK customers and 45M+ globally  —  London-based fintech receives approval from regulators in boost to expansion plans  —  Revolut has secured a UK banking licence …
TechCrunch:
Google debuts new Maps features in India to help users easily navigate through flyovers and narrow roads, says it made an AI model specifically for Indian roads  —  Google is adding a slew of new features to Google Maps in India as it seeks to become a one-stop-shop for navigation and travel in the country.
Spencer Soper / Bloomberg:
Amazon says a judge has dismissed a Washington state case, alleging that Amazon exposed warehouse workers to injuries, for lack of evidence  —  - State had investigated conditions at four company faciliites  — The ruling is a major victory for the e-commerce giant
Omkar Godbole / CoinDesk:
DefiLlama and Wintermute: the aggregate market cap of stablecoins crossed $164B for the first time since the collapse of Terra in May 2022; USDT is at $114.26B  —  Renewed expansion in stablecoins is bullish for the broader crypto market.  — Expansion of the stablecoin market is bullish for the broader crypto ecosystem.

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