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January 24, 2025, 9:25 AM
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Top News

Jay Peters / The Verge:
OpenAI releases a “research preview” of its Operator AI agent that can automate web-based tasks, launching to US subscribers of its $200/month ChatGPT Pro tier  —  OpenAI is releasing a “research preview” of an AI agent called Operator that can “go to the web to perform tasks for you,” according to a blog post.
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
OpenAI partners with DoorDash, eBay, Instacart, Priceline, StubHub, Uber, and other companies to ensure that Operator respects their terms of service agreements  —  OpenAI CEO Sam Altman kicked off this year by saying in a blog post that 2025 would be big for AI agents, tools that can automate tasks and take actions on your behalf.
Every:
Hands-on with Operator: limited in what it can browse, can autonomously perform repetitive workflows, and can do lengthy tasks on its own with minimal prompting
Will Douglas Heaven / MIT Technology Review:
OpenAI says Operator is powered by Computer-Using Agent, or CUA, which is built on top of its multimodal GPT-4o and trained similarly to its “reasoning” models
Politico:
While Trump downplayed Elon Musk's Stargate criticism, assuring reporters “they're putting up the money”, key White House sources say they're furious with Musk  —  “It's clear he has abused the proximity to the president,” said one ally of the president.
Financial Times:
Sources: Stargate lacks a fully developed plan, hasn't yet secured funding, will get no government financing, and will exclusively serve OpenAI once operational  —  Donald Trump has called the SoftBank-backed venture a 'resounding declaration of confidence in America's potential'
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
Trump signs an EO to create a crypto working group led by David Sacks to consider a national digital asset stockpile “potentially derived” from seized crypto  —  President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to promote the advancement of cryptocurrencies in the U.S …
Associated Press:
Trump signs an EO to develop AI systems “free from ideological bias or engineered social agendas”, revoking Biden policies that “act as barriers” to innovation
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
The CMA says Google has agreed to curb UK businesses using fake reviews to boost ratings and must report to the CMA on its efforts for the next three years  —  Google will take firmer action against British businesses that use fake reviews to boost their star ratings on the search giant's reviews platform.
Jon Keegan / Sherwood News:
DeepSeek's latest AI model R1 sticks to Chinese government restrictions on sensitive topics like Tiananmen Square, Taiwan, and the treatment of Uyghurs in China  —  Those who train the AI models get to decide what the truth is.  —  5H  —  The AI world was abuzz this week with the release …
Saritha Rai / Bloomberg:
Sources: Mukesh Ambani's Reliance is buying Nvidia's AI chips and plans to build a 3-gigawatt data center in Jamnagar, India, set to be the largest in the world  —  - Reliance joins rush of tech companies building data centers … Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Group is building what may become …
Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
Epic launches a free games program on mobile and promises to pay the Apple Core Technology Fee for participants in the program on iOS for one year  —  Epic Games is adding nearly 20 third-party games onto its mobile app store worldwide on Android and in the European Union on iOS and launching …
Gian Volpicelli / Bloomberg:
On January 31, the EC will question Meta, X, Snap, Google, TikTok, and LinkedIn on their plans to counter disinformation ahead of elections in Germany  —  - X, Google, Snap and LinkedIn to be tested on disinformation  — EU is working to combat false information around elections
More: Reuters
New York Times:
Instagram and Facebook removed posts from two abortion pill providers; Instagram also suspended accounts; Meta confirmed and restored some of the accounts  —  Some posts related to obtaining abortion pills were recently hidden on Instagram and Facebook and some accounts were suspended, before being later restored.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Anthropic debuts Citations, a new API feature letting developers “ground” answers in source documents, available for Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Claude 3.5 Haiku  —  In an announcement perhaps timed to divert attention away from OpenAI's Operator, Anthropic Thursday unveiled a new feature …
Kyle Chan / High Capacity:
How China's progress across a range of overlapping industries like smartphones, AI, robotics, and drones creates a mutually reinforcing feedback loop  —  EVs, batteries, lidar, drones, robotics, smartphones, AI.  China's progress across a range of overlapping industries creates a mutually reinforcing feedback loop.
Forums: r/China

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:25 AM ET, January 24, 2025.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

Paul Hiebert / Adweek:
IAB and PWC: online ad spend hit $258.6B in 2024, up 15% YoY, with 39.8% going to search, 28.7% to display, 24% to video, and $2.4B to podcasts, up 26.4% YoY

NPR:
An interview with NPR CEO Katherine Maher on the impact of Trump's proposed budget cuts; $100M of the $121M NPR receives annually goes to member stations

Ted Johnson / Deadline:
In an X post, the FCC chairman suggests Comcast may be violating its licenses and accuses it of “news distortion” after MSNBC didn't air a WH press hearing

More News

Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
The US DOJ charges the former CEO of AI chatbot startup GameOn and his wife for allegedly defrauding investors of more than $60M between 2018 and 2024
Dominic Preston / The Verge:
Google rolls out the first public beta of Android 16 for Pixel devices, introducing Live Updates, a limited version of Apple's Live Activities, and more
Bloomberg:
At Davos, Trump blasts the EU for targeting Apple, Google, and Meta, calling regulators' cases “a form of taxation”, and references Apple's €13B Irish tax bill

Earlier Picks

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Perplexity launches Perplexity Assistant in its Android app, which can take “multi-app actions” like hailing a ride, initially free for users in 15 languages
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Brave Search rolls out Rerank to let users boost or downgrade domains from their search results through thumbs up or thumbs down buttons
Devindra Hardawar / Engadget:
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 review: fastest Blender benchmark score ever, DLSS4 frame generation works well, and good cooling but very expensive and power hungry
Munir Ahmed / Associated Press:
Pakistan's parliament passes a controversial bill giving the government sweeping controls on social media, including prison terms for spreading “disinformation”
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
The UK CMA opens investigations into Apple's and Google's mobile ecosystems, including OSes, app stores, and browsers, to see the impact on users and businesses
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google acquihires “some of the HTC VIVE engineering team” in Taiwan with “a proven track record in VR” for $250M in cash, to “accelerate” Android XR development
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