Europe’s Digital Markets Act Is Breaking Open the Empires of Big Tech

Europe’s Digital Markets Act Is Breaking Open the Empires of Big Tech

Citizens of the European Union live in an internet built and ruled by foreign powers. Most people in the EU use an American search engine, shop on an American ecommerce site, thumb American phones, and scroll through American social media feeds. That fact has triggered increasing alarm in the corridors of Brussels, as the EU … Read more

Google Is Finally Trying to Kill AI Clickbait

Google Is Finally Trying to Kill AI Clickbait

Google is taking action against algorithmically generated spam. The search engine giant just announced upcoming changes, including a revamped spam policy, designed in part to keep AI clickbait out of its search results. “It sounds like it’s going to be one of the biggest updates in the history of Google,” says Lily Ray, senior director … Read more

Over 600 Google Workers Urge the Company to Cut Ties With Israeli Tech Conference

Over 600 Google Workers Urge the Company to Cut Ties With Israeli Tech Conference

More than 600 Google workers and counting have signed a letter addressed to Google marketing leadership demanding that it drop its sponsorship of Mind the Tech, an annual conference promoting the Israeli tech industry taking place in New York this week. “Please withdraw from Mind the Tech, issue an apology, and stand with Googlers and … Read more

Sergey Brin says Google ‘definitely messed up’ with Gemini launch

Sergey Brin says Google ‘definitely messed up’ with Gemini launch

Sergey Brin, president of Alphabet and co-founder of Google David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images Google co-founder Sergey Brin, in a rare public appearance over the weekend, told a group of artificial intelligence enthusiasts that he came out of retirement “because the trajectory of AI is so exciting.” Brin, 50, spoke to entrepreneurs … Read more

OpenAI says Musk claims in lawsuit ‘stem from Elon’s regrets’ he’s out

OpenAI says Musk claims in lawsuit ‘stem from Elon’s regrets’ he’s out

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, at the Hope Global Forums annual meeting in Atlanta on Dec. 11, 2023. Dustin Chambers | Bloomberg | Getty Images OpenAI executives disputed claims Elon Musk laid out in a lawsuit on Thursday, and said the Tesla CEO is upset that he’s no longer part of the artificial intelligence startup. … Read more

Here Come the AI Worms

Here Come the AI Worms

As generative AI systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini become more advanced, they are increasingly being put to work. Startups and tech companies are building AI agents and ecosystems on top of the systems that can complete boring chores for you: think automatically making calendar bookings and potentially buying products. But as the tools … Read more

The Apple Car Project Was Always Doomed

The Apple Car Project Was Always Doomed

Apple announced to its employees earlier this week that the long-running Apple Car project — Project Titan — is no more. The news isn’t exactly a surprise, given that the last few years have been filled with story after story after story about the project’s struggles, but a new postmortem shows that Titan floundered from … Read more

Google’s Deal With StackOverflow Is the Latest Proof That AI Giants Will Pay for Data

Google’s Deal With StackOverflow Is the Latest Proof That AI Giants Will Pay for Data

Last year Stack Overflow became one of the first websites to announce it would charge AI giants for access to content used to train chatbots. Now the popular Q&A service for coders has signed up its first customer—Google—in what CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar says is the start of a “meaningful” new stream of revenue. The deal … Read more

European news companies sue Google over ad tech dominance

European news companies sue Google over ad tech dominance

European news media companies sued Google for roughly $2.1 billion in damages Wednesday over allegations that the tech giant’s ad technology practices have harmed them.   The case, filed by more than 30 European news media companies, including the German-based company Axel Springer that owns Politico, is the latest challenge to the California-based company over … Read more

Google CEO calls Gemini AI images ‘completely unacceptable’

Google CEO calls Gemini AI images ‘completely unacceptable’

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said recent “problematic” text and image responses from the company’s Gemini artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot were “completely unacceptable.” “I know that some of its responses have offended our users and shown bias – to be clear, that’s completely unacceptable and we got it wrong,” Pichai said in an email to employees … Read more