Good morning! This is your daily ☕️ Techpresso.
On this day, 22 years ago, Disney CEO Michael Eisner testified at a Senate hearing in Washington, D.C., advocating for stronger copyright law enforcement and criticized Apple’s iPod ads for promoting piracy.
In today's Techpresso:
🚗 Apple shuts down its secretive electric car project
🤷♀️ OpenAI claims New York Times paid someone to 'hack' ChatGPT
💸 Tumblr and WordPress blogs will be exploited for AI model training
🤬 Google CEO slams 'completely unacceptable' Gemini AI errors
🤯 Klarna’s AI bot is doing the work of 700 employees
💰 Google reportedly paying publishers thousands of dollars to use its AI to write stories
🎁 + 7 other news you might like
🔮 + 5 handpicked research papers and tools
🚗 Apple shuts down its secretive electric car projectLINK
Apple has ceased work on its electric car project known as "Project Titan," with Bloomberg reporting the decision to shift many of the team's 2,000 members to focus on generative AI.
The discontinuation was communicated to employees by Jeff Williams and Kevin Lynch, leading to unspecified layoffs within the project's team.
Despite years of speculation and development efforts, including autonomous driving tests and recruitment from the automotive industry, Apple is redirecting its resources from the electric car project to AI technologies.
🤷♀️ OpenAI claims New York Times paid someone to 'hack' ChatGPTLINK
OpenAI has accused The New York Times of using "deceptive prompts" to make ChatGPT replicate its articles, seeking to dismiss several claims in a copyright infringement lawsuit.
The Times has countered OpenAI's allegations, arguing that their actions were an attempt to find evidence of copyright infringement, with OpenAI acknowledging the unauthorized use of Times content within legal limits.
OpenAI is attempting to narrow down the lawsuit's scope, including seeking dismissal of direct copyright infringement that happened more than three years ago, among other allegations, amidst a wider backdrop of legal challenges in the AI industry.
💸 Tumblr and WordPress blogs will be exploited for AI model trainingLINK
The owner of Tumblr and WordPress.com, Automattic, is reportedly in negotiations with AI companies OpenAI and Midjourney to use user posts as training data.
Automattic is expected to introduce a setting allowing users to opt out of their data being shared with third parties, amid revelations of a data scrape containing all public Tumblr posts from 2014 to 2023.
Automattic aims to only share publicly posted content on WordPress.com and Tumblr with AI companies that align with community values on attribution, opt-outs, and control, following backlash against AI training data use.
🤬 Google CEO slams 'completely unacceptable' Gemini AI errorsLINK
Google CEO Sundar Pichai described the inaccuracies produced by Gemini AI, including racially incorrect images and texts, as "completely unacceptable" in an internal memo.
After Gemini AI inaccurately generated images, including racially diverse historical figures, Google paused its image generation capabilities and issued an apology.
Pichai expressed Google's commitment to addressing the issues with Gemini AI, emphasizing ongoing efforts to improve despite acknowledging that no AI is perfect.
🤯 Klarna’s AI bot is doing the work of 700 employeesLINK
Klarna has integrated an AI chatbot developed with OpenAI, achieving the workload of 700 full-time employees, enhancing customer service efficiency and contributing to the company's path towards profitability.
The adoption of AI technology by Klarna has led to a hiring freeze, particularly affecting non-engineering positions, as the company leverages AI to grow without significantly increasing its headcount.
Encouraged by AI-driven operational improvements and significant financial progress in 2023, Klarna is exploring an IPO in the third quarter of 2024, aiming for a valuation of $20 billion.
💰 Google reportedly paying publishers thousands of dollars to use its AI to write storiesLINK
Google is reportedly entering agreements with publishers to use its AI for writing stories, with contracts worth tens of thousands of dollars as part of the Google News Initiative.
The AI tools provided by Google allow publishers to efficiently create content by summarizing reports from various sources like government agencies and other news outlets.
Publishers are paid a five-figure sum annually to produce a minimum number of articles and other content using AI, without the obligation to disclose the AI's use in content creation.
Other news you might like
Google Genie lets users generate AI outputs resembling video games.LINK
Bitcoin breaks $60K for first time since November 2021.LINK
Tesla aims to ship Roadster cars next year, Musk says.LINK
Intel's 1nm node is coming in 2027 with "double-digit" improvements in performance and efficiency.LINK
Meta might demo a pair of ‘true’ AR smart glasses later in 2024.LINK
It turns out that Odysseus landed on the Moon without any altimetry data.LINK
Grand Theft Auto and AI help team turn dog pics into 3D models.LINK
Latest research and tools
The Era of 1-bit LLMs: ternary parameters make computing cheaper.LINK
SuperTux: a classic jump'n'run game that pays homage to Super Mario Bros., featuring Tux the penguin on a quest to rescue Penny from Nolok's fortress, with downloadable versions for major platforms and support for keyboard and gamepad controls.LINK
Pingora: a Rust framework designed for building fast, reliable, and highly customizable networked systems and proxies, boasting memory safety, high performance, and extensive programmability.LINK
Synthetic Data Vault (SDV): a Python library that creates synthetic data for tabular data, utilizing machine learning algorithms to emulate patterns found in real data for various applications including data anonymization and quality improvement.LINK
Tea.xyz: causes a flood of spam pull requests to open-source projects, disrupting their development process.LINK
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