In Brief

Classic Christmas song gets authorized Spanish reworking thanks to ‘responsible’ AI

Media & Entertainment /

In the decades following its 1958 release, Brenda Lee’s rockabilly-tinged “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” has attained status as an all-time holiday classic. Sixty-six years later, it’s getting a Spanish language rework courtesy of “responsible” AI. Universal on Friday announced the release of “Noche Buena y Navidad,” which utilized SoundLabs AI’s MicDrop technology to reconstruct […]

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Perplexity says it’s now serving 100M search queries a week

AI /

Aravind Srinivas, the CEO of Perplexity, says that the AI-powered search engine is now performing 100 million queries each week. Extrapolated out to a month, that’s roughly 400 million queries — up from 250 million queries in July. Perplexity’s rapid rise comes as the company teases ecommerce features, including the ability for subscribers to its

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Elon Musk reportedly chats often with Putin

Government & Policy /

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been in regular contact with Russian president Vladimir Putin since late 2022. That’s according to The Wall Street Journal, which reports that the conversations have raised national security concerns among some intelligence officials. At one point, Putin reportedly asked Musk to avoid activating Starlink, his satellite-based internet service,

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OpenAI reportedly plans to release its Orion AI model by December

AI /

OpenAI is reportedly planning to release its next frontier AI model, codenamed Orion inside the company, by December of this year, The Verge reported on Thursday. Unlike previous releases, the company reportedly plans to release the model gradually to trusted partners before a broader rollout through ChatGPT. An OpenAI spokesperson tells TechCrunch the report is

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Apple Vision Pro production reportedly scaled back due to disappointing demand

Hardware /

Apple has dramatically scaled back Vision Pro production, according to a new report from The Information. The news comes days after CEO Tim Cook admitted in an interview that the $3,500 mixed reality headset is for early adopters and “not a mass-market product.” The production slowdown is believed to be a response to disappointing sales,

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New White House memo calls for agencies to protect AI from foreign adversaries

AI /

President Joe Biden on Thursday is expected to sign a memorandum detailing how intelligence and national security agencies, including the Pentagon, should use and implement guardrails around AI, reports The New York Times. The order urges keeping humans “in the loop” of AI tools that may be used as targeting weapons, and prohibits letting AI

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Intel’s $1.45 billion EU antitrust fine is officially history

Hardware /

A €1.06 billion EU antitrust penalty on chipmaker Intel for abuse of dominance dating back to 2009 (when it was equivalent to $1.45 billion) has been consigned to the history books after the bloc’s top court rejected the Commission’s appeal against a 2022 lower court ruling that annulled the sanction. “The Court of Justice dismisses

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Bessemer, Index, and a16z alum launch VC firm Chemistry

Fundraising /

New VC firm Chemistry raised $350 million for its debut fund, Forbes reported on Wednesday. The firm was launched by Mark Goldberg, former partner at Index Ventures; Kristina Shen, former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz; and Ethan Kurzweil, former partner at Bessemer (pictured above in that order). Axios first reported in April that the three

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Thousands of creatives sign petition against AI data scraping

AI /

What do the actor Kevin Bacon, the novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, the musician Robert Smith, and the journalist and historian Sidney Blumenthal have in common? They are among the 11,500 signatories of a petition against unlicensed use of creative works for AI training. “The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major,

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