Strange bedfellows
As independent journalism faces ongoing revenue challenges, major media outlets may have found some unlikely business partners: OpenAI and Google.
The big picture:
In addition to licensing content for training data, Google is using the Associated Press within Gemini answers, and OpenAI is funding the expansion of Axios into four new cities.
News organizations have something quite valuable to offer - no matter how smart ChatGPT gets, it's not (yet) able to report on major news stories firsthand.
Ultimately, though, these may be Faustian bargains - AI is poised to capture far more user sessions (and their related ad impressions) than social media ever did.
Elsewhere in the FAANG free-for-all:
Microsoft and Google are bundling AI-powered features into Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, while also raising prices.
Microsoft rebrands its free business offering as Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, introducing pay-as-you-go AI agents powered by OpenAI's GPT-4.
LinkedIn introduces free AI tools for job matching and small business recruitment, built on its proprietary AI technology and data.
And Apple's 2025 roadmap suggests a year of incremental progress rather than major innovation, serving as a bridge to more revolutionary future products.
Elsewhere in OpenAI:
OpenAI launched Tasks, a new beta feature for paid subscribers that enables scheduling up to ten active reminders.
The company has added BlackRock executive Adebayo Ogunlesi to its board.
And a new economic vision for "AI in America," laid out by OpenAI, urges the Trump administration to encourage Middle Eastern investment while avoiding strict regulatory measures.
Original sin
Of course, the elephant in the media room is whether LLMs should be allowed to train on unlicensed copyrighted data at all. And this week brought damaging new documents in Meta's copyright defense.
Between the lines:
Newly released internal messages suggest Meta used copyrighted data (from book piracy site LibGen) when training its AI systems, and worked to conceal it from the public.
Meta has tried various arguments (both in the courts and in the press) to justify its approach - such as OpenAI's scraping precedent or Google's court win around scanning books.
The LLM/media debate is closely mirrored by the video model/YouTube debate. It is an open secret that nearly all of today’s video models have been trained with unauthorized YouTube videos, though that appears to be changing.
Elsewhere in AI anxiety:
A 28-year-old describes her "relationship" with ChatGPT, which became her therapist, erotic partner, and adviser.
Multiple police departments have made wrongful arrests based solely on facial recognition AI without corroborating evidence.
The global banking sector may eliminate up to 200,000 jobs in the coming years due to AI automation.
And OpenAI's web crawlers accidentally crashed an e-commerce site through aggressive data scraping attempts.
Not that kind of diffusion
With just days left in office, President Biden issued two new Executive Orders and an export rule with major implications for the industry.
What to watch:
While the EOs cover additional government use of AI and accelerating AI data center construction, the most impactful is the "AI Diffusion rule" which ramps up export controls on GPUs.
Previous regulation mainly focused on China and Russia; the new rule limits all countries (with exceptions for 18 allies) from stockpiling US chips, building AI data centers, and accessing closed model weights.
The Biden administration sees America as having somewhere between a 6-18 month advantage in AI and wants to preserve that lead - but with a new Trump admin taking power, the rule's future is uncertain.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, these drastic steps are already garnering pushback from industry executives - Nvidia, in particular, published its arguments against the "misguided" rule.
Elsewhere in AI geopolitics:
The US FTC has referred a complaint against Snapchat to the Department of Justice over concerns its My AI chatbot poses risks to young users.
The US Commerce Department has added 25 Chinese companies to its restricted trade list.
Northern Ireland's AI regulations will differ from Britain's as the EU's AI Act takes effect, potentially creating friction in the UK tech sector.
And the UK Prime Minister has unveiled plans to boost public sector computing power by 20x, in an attempt to walk a different path from the US and EU.
Things happen
Chinese AI company MiniMax debuts three LLMs, including a 456B-parameter model. Mira Murati's AI startup has poached about 10 researchers from rivals. Anduril plans to build a $1B factory in Columbus, Ohio called Arsenal-1. Mistral announces a content deal with AFP to improve Le Chat's accuracy. Nepenthes is a tarpit to catch AI web crawlers. India deploys AI at the Maha Kumbh Mela to ensure pilgrim safety. Tech giants face delays from glitchy AI chip racks. CEO of AI music company says people don't like making music. Replit's revenue grew 5x after releasing a new AI coding tool. François Chollet and Mike Knoop launch Ndea, an AI research lab focused on AGI. AI chatbots offering financial advice often sell high-interest loans to young users. Amazon's AGI team lead says Alexa will relaunch as an AI agent. AI Brad Pitt dupes French woman out of €830k. European tech firms offer AI tools to help governments surveil travelers. The UAE's intelligence chief who wants to make the UAE an AI superpower. Singapore sees potential in AI tools for preventive illness care. Microsoft creates new "CoreAI - Platform and Tools" unit. Bloomberg EIC predicts AI's impact on journalism. AI founders will learn the bitter lesson. The voices trying to envision a world awash in AI. AI agents may soon surpass people as primary application users. Nvidia announces new Inference Microservices for enterprise AI agents. Test-driven development with an LLM for fun and profit. Instagram ads send 90% of traffic to a nudify site. 60% of paid Gemini users kept subscriptions after six months. DoubleVerify reports a jump in AI click farms. Apple joins UALink, an industry group challenging Nvidia's hardware dominance. UK plans to create geographic "AI Growth Zones". AI Engineer Reading List for 2025. Nvidia might do for desktop AI what it did for desktop gaming. Hobbyist builds AI-assisted rifle robot using ChatGPT. How outdated information hides in LLM token generation probabilities.
