AI funding rounds, acquisitions, partnerships and leadership changes, plus regulation, copyright lawsuits and big compute deals.
OpenAI just concluded its independent review into Sam Altman's brief ouster, officially reinstating him to the board of directors. The WilmerHale investigation found the sudden firing was sparked by a breakdown in trust, not issues with AI safety or finances. To patch up oversight, OpenAI also added three heavyweight female board members and introduced a whistleblower hotline.
Midjourney just slapped an indefinite ban on all Stability AI employees after bot-like scraping brought its service down for 24 hours. The rival was allegedly trying to harvest prompt-image pairs to train its own models. Now, Midjourney is enforcing a nuclear policy: crash our servers with aggressive automation, and your entire company gets banned.
The US Army Research Laboratory is testing OpenAI's GPT-4 Turbo and Vision models to assist with operational planning inside military video games. While GPT-4 outperformed older AI models in formulating attack and defense strategies, researchers found it also caused significantly more casualties to achieve mission objectives. Why it matters: as militaries accelerate AI adoption, models that prioritize ruthless efficiency highlight mounting ethical and safety risks.
A new bipartisan advocacy group, Americans for Responsible Innovation, just launched to push a pragmatic framework for AI governance. Instead of reinventing the wheel, the group wants regulators to adapt proven playbooks from nuclear energy, cybersecurity, and banking—such as creating an auditing oversight board and restricting cloud training access.
Microsoft just cited the humble VCR in a motion to dismiss key claims in The New York Times’ copyright lawsuit. The company argued that large language models are like video recorders or personal computers—technologies with substantial lawful uses that shouldn't be outlawed due to potential misuse. Why it matters: If accepted, this classic defense could protect the entire generative AI sector from crushing copyright liability.
Perplexity is finalizing a new funding round that will push the AI search startup to a $1 billion valuation, according to The Wall Street Journal. That nearly doubles its $520 million valuation from just two months ago, alongside topping $10 million in annual revenue. Investors are clearly eager to back a challenger to Google's search empire.
OpenAI just published a sharp rebuttal to Elon Musk's lawsuit, releasing old emails to push back against his claims. The records show Musk once pushed to merge OpenAI into Tesla, demanded controlling equity, and explicitly agreed that building AGI didn't require open-sourcing the science. Why it matters: OpenAI is dismantling Musk's narrative before the court, showing he backed their pivot until he walked away.
AI chipmaker Groq just acquired analytics startup Definitive Intelligence for an undisclosed sum to scale its on-demand platform, GroqCloud. Definitive Intelligence previously helped build the cloud infrastructure, which lets developers access Groq's ultrafast LPUs on demand. Its CEO Sunny Madra will now take charge of GroqCloud, alongside a new Groq Systems division targeting government and enterprise deployments.
Elon Musk just filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman, claiming the startup breached its founding agreement by chasing profits instead of benefiting humanity. Musk alleges OpenAI has become a closed-source subsidiary of Microsoft and asks the court to declare GPT-4 an AGI to block commercial licensing.
Google and Stack Overflow just announced a partnership powered by the new OverflowAPI. Google will integrate Stack Overflow's verified developer Q&A directly into Gemini for Google Cloud and its console, citing sources so coders can double-check answers. Meanwhile, Stack Overflow plans to build AI features on Google's Vertex AI.
Apple CEO Tim Cook just told shareholders that the company will "break new ground" in generative AI later this year, right as reports confirmed Apple shuttered its electric car project to shift staff to AI. The move signals an aggressive push to catch up with rivals by baking generative intelligence directly into Siri and built-in system tools.
Apple just pulled the plug on Project Titan, its decadelong autonomous car initiative, moving most of the team over to generative AI. After years of shifting strategies, Wall Street welcomed the exit as a smart pivot back to software and disciplined spending.
Klarna just revealed that its OpenAI-powered customer service bot handled 2.3 million chats in its first month, doing the equivalent work of 700 full-time reps and cutting resolution times from 11 minutes to 2. Klarna laid off 700 people back in 2022, and while the company denies a direct connection, putting an exact headcount on AI replacement is sparking plenty of backlash.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg just met with LG Electronics leadership in Seoul to discuss teaming up on next-gen extended reality devices and on-device AI. Facing fresh heat from Apple's Vision Pro, Meta is looking to marry its large language models with external hardware muscle. Zuckerberg's South Korea itinerary also includes talks with Samsung and President Yoon.
A Chinese internet court just found an AI service liable for copyright infringement after generating images substantially similar to Ultraman, ordering 10,000 yuan in damages. The ruling, seen as a world first, puts AI training data and output liability front and center for developers everywhere.
OpenAI just asked a federal judge to dismiss key parts of The New York Times' copyright lawsuit, arguing the publisher used "deceptive prompts" and exploited bugs to force ChatGPT into spitting out verbatim text. The Times fired back, claiming it was merely hunting for evidence of unlicensed copying.
Automattic is reportedly finalizing deals with OpenAI and Midjourney to feed user posts from Tumblr and WordPress.com into their AI models. An internal scrape reportedly scooped up a decade of posts, including some private content by mistake, prompting Automattic to promise a quick opt-out toggle. Why it matters: Platforms are desperate to cash in on user data, even at the cost of alienating the creative communities that built them.
The Justice Department just appointed Princeton professor Jonathan Mayer as its first chief AI officer and chief science advisor. Mayer will build an expert team to help federal law enforcement keep pace with rapidly evolving tech. Why it matters: In line with the Biden administration's executive order, his team will help establish crucial fairness guidelines for AI in sentencing, parole, and surveillance.
Google just deepened its partnership with Reddit, gaining direct access to Reddit's Data API to show fresher forum content in search and train its AI models. In return, Reddit will use Google Cloud's Vertex AI to overhaul its platform search. Why it matters: authentic human discussions have become the rarest commodity in the AI race, and Google just plugged straight into the web's largest conversation board.
AI marketing copilot Jasper just acquired image platform Clipdrop from Stability AI, closing the deal on February 20. The Paris-based team joins Jasper immediately to spearhead multimodal research. Enterprise clients get instant access via the Jasper API, while the standalone consumer app stays live.
