AI funding rounds, acquisitions, partnerships and leadership changes, plus regulation, copyright lawsuits and big compute deals.
Meta just unveiled the next generation of its custom AI inference accelerator, MTIA. Built on TSMC's 5nm process, the new silicon more than doubles compute and memory bandwidth, delivering 3x the performance of MTIA v1 across key models. Why it matters: Meta is scaling its in-house chip lineup to slash inference costs and ease reliance on commercial GPUs.
US Representative Adam Schiff just introduced the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act, a bill that would force companies to reveal copyrighted material used in their models. AI makers would have to file a record of protected works with the Register of Copyrights at least 30 days before releasing new tools, or face financial penalties. It wouldn't ban using copyrighted data, but it aims to crack open the secretive black box behind systems like ChatGPT.
Apple just made a big push to bring Vision Pro into corporate workspaces. Powered by on-device ML and M2's Neural Engine, the headset integrates with Microsoft 365 Copilot for spatial productivity and taps Nvidia Omniverse APIs to stream complex 3D digital twins in real time. Why it matters: Apple is positioning spatial computing as a serious enterprise AI tool, moving far beyond casual consumer entertainment.
Champions of Otherworldly Magic just revealed it paid an anonymous AI artist $90,000 over six months to produce more than 1,000 card illustrations. The creator worked just 10 hours a month for $15,000, delivering generated and hand-retouched art astronomically faster than traditional teams. Why it matters: Studio-level game art production is rapidly moving from theoretical debates into commercial deployment.
Microsoft just announced a new AI hub in central London led by former DeepMind and Inflection scientist Jordan Hoffmann. The team will focus on advancing frontier language models and foundational tooling alongside partners like OpenAI. It directly builds on Microsoft’s £2.5 billion commitment to bolster the UK AI ecosystem.
Restaurants and grocery stores are now using AI to analyze discarded food and cut down on waste. Startups like Winnow mount cameras over trash bins to track what gets tossed, while Afresh optimizes grocery inventory. Why it matters: The system has helped commercial kitchens slash food purchasing costs by up to 8% by shrinking portion sizes or dropping unpopular items.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau just announced a $2.4 billion funding package to cement Canada's position in global AI. The bulk of the funds—$2 billion—will go toward expanding computing infrastructure and launching a sovereign compute strategy, alongside $50 million to create a new Canadian AI Safety Institute. Why it matters: As the race for AI compute tightens worldwide, Canada is doubling down on public hardware investment to keep local talent and startups from heading abroad.
OpenAI reportedly transcribed over a million hours of YouTube videos using Whisper to train GPT-4 after burning through high-quality text data. The New York Times reports leadership knew it was legally risky but bet on fair use, while Google and Meta are similarly scrambling in legal gray zones.
Cisco, Google, Microsoft, and IBM just launched the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium to tackle AI-driven job disruption. Led by Cisco, the group plans to evaluate AI's impact on 56 tech roles and suggest actionable training programs. Why it matters: With tech layoffs continuing and companies openly planning to replace workers with automation, the industry is trying to prove it can reskill the workforce it's disrupting.
Netflix just revealed the cast for Season 6 of its reality competition The Circle, featuring an AI bot disguised as a human player named "Max." The bot will chat, strategize, and flirt alongside human contestants competing for the $100,000 grand prize. It turns the show into a mainstream Turing test to see if humans can catch the bot before getting outplayed.
The estate of late comedian George Carlin just settled its lawsuit against the creators of the Dudesy podcast, who used AI to mimic his voice in an unauthorized comedy special. The podcasters agreed to permanently scrub the hourlong video and stop using Carlin’s likeness or voice entirely. The swift resolution dodges a major legal test around fair use and parody, but sends an early warning against unauthorized AI resurrections.
Amazon just got caught putting a human backbone into its flagship AI checkout tech. A report reveals its Just Walk Out system relied on roughly 1,000 workers in India reviewing about 700 of every 1,000 transactions in 2022. Amazon says the team mostly trains models, but it is already ditching the tech at Fresh stores for smart carts.
Over 200 prominent musicians, including Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj, and Katy Perry, just signed an open letter demanding tech developers stop using their work without permission to train AI music models. The coalition warned that unchecked generative AI threatens artist likenesses and risks devastating the livelihoods of working songwriters.
Yahoo just acquired the underlying technology behind Artifact, the AI news app built by Instagram’s co-founders. While the standalone app is shutting down, its personalization and recommendation engine will power Yahoo News and its 185 million monthly readers. Co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger will stay on as special advisors.
Jon Stewart just took aim at Silicon Valley's overblown AI promises on The Daily Show, revealing that Apple previously forbade him from discussing AI or interviewing FTC Chair Lina Khan on his Apple TV+ show. Khan noted that such corporate sensitivity illustrates the danger of concentrating unchecked power inside a handful of tech giants.
Microsoft and OpenAI are reportedly plotting a massive data-center project featuring an AI supercomputer dubbed "Stargate," which could cost up to $100 billion. The system would pack millions of chips, demand gigawatts of power, and potentially launch as early as 2028. It highlights their massive bet on compute, though Microsoft's ultimate green light reportedly hinges on OpenAI actually delivering major model breakthroughs.
NYC Mayor Eric Adams just announced a 90-day pilot to test AI-powered gun detection scanners at subway turnstiles, partnering with security firm Evolv. The move is raising eyebrows: Evolv is under federal investigation by the FTC and SEC after reports revealed its scanners repeatedly mistook umbrellas and lunchboxes for weapons while missing real knives.
Microsoft is preparing to run parts of its Copilot AI locally on PCs to cut latency and boost privacy, according to Intel. The catch? Next-gen AI PCs will reportedly require NPUs pushing over 40 TOPS, a bar no consumer chip on the market currently clears.
The White House just issued new OMB guidance requiring every US federal agency to appoint a Chief AI Officer and set up an internal governance board. Agencies must now submit annual inventories of deployed AI models, conduct safety reviews, and pull the plug on any systems that fail to meet anti-discrimination safeguards.
Amazon just completed its $4B commitment to Anthropic by injecting another $2.75B into the Claude maker. The deal requires Anthropic to rely on AWS and Amazon's custom chips, tightening the cloud giant's grip in the generative AI race against Microsoft and OpenAI.
