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OpenAI announced this week that it will be removing Sky, one of the voices used by its new GPT-4o model, after users discovered that it sounded eerily similar to Scarlett Johansson’s AI character in her.” The actress issued a statement stating that she hired legal counsel to ask how the voice was developed. While the company claims that the voice was not based on Johansson’s, the actress said that OpenAI had previously approached her to use her voice for the model.
The US Department of Justice and 30 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit vs. Live Nation Entertainment, parent company of Ticketmaster, for alleged monopolistic practices. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a news conference that Live Nation “stifles its competition.” The lawsuit comes after lawmakers took a closer look at the entertainment giant’s control over the industry, sparked by frustrating attempts by Taylor Swift fans. buy tickets for the Eras tour at the end of 2022.
This week there was also a big shakeup at Techstars. CEO Maëlle Gavet announced she is leaving the company at the end of the month, being replaced by co-founder and chairman of the board, David Cohen. Gavet’s leadership style was the subject of controversy during her tenure. A TechCrunch investigation found allegations of a “autocratic and punishing” culture that caused a significant labor exodus.
News
Slack may be training its AI from your messages: Slack is leveraging data from its own users to train some of its new artificial intelligence services. If you do not want your data to be part of a training set, you must email Slack to opt out. Read more
Humane could be looking for a buyer: After a rocky launch of Humane’s $700 Ai Pin, Bloomberg reports that the company may be considering selling, and has been valued between $750 million and $1 billion. Read more
Microsoft Build explores AI-based hardware: At its annual developer conference, Microsoft launched Copilot+ PCs and announced new AI capabilities for Windows, including an upcoming “Recall” feature. Read more
Spotify tests Spanish-speaking AI DJ: Spotify is developing an alternative version of its AI DJ feature that will speak Spanish. Tech veteran and reverse engineer Chris Messina spotted references to “DJ Livi” in the app’s code. Read more
Free laundry trick?: Two UC Santa Cruz students discovered a security flaw that allowed anyone to avoid paying for laundry provided by more than one million Internet-connected laundry machines. Read more
Lords of memes for Biden: President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign is looking to hire a meme manager as it continues to try to appeal to younger voters. Read more
ChatGPT App Gets an Increase in Revenue: The launch of OpenAI’s GPT-4o has driven the largest mobile revenue growth in the company’s history, despite the model being freely available on the web. The app earned $4.2 million on the App Store and Google Play upon release. Read more
FCC Takes On AI-Generated Political Ads: The FCC has raised a requirement that AI-generated content be disclosed in political ads. The proposal would apply to “cable operators, radio and satellite television providers,” but not streamers or YouTube. Read more
The secret to entering Y Combinator: Y Combinator accepts less than 1% of the applications it receives. In a conversation with General Catalyst’s Teresa Carlson, CEO Garry Tan revealed the “secret sauce” to getting into the startup accelerator. Read more
Adobe Emulator vs iOS: Adobe threatened legal action against retro game emulator Delta because it believed the app’s logo looked too similar to its own. The Delta icon was intended to be a stylized Greek letter delta, but updated the logo to avoid problems. Read more
Analysis
Meta’s AI board lacks diversity: Meta announced a new AI advisory board, and it’s made up entirely of white men. Unfortunately, it’s not that surprising. Dominic-Madori Davis, Amanda Silberling, and Kyle Wiggers explore how women and people of color have played a key role in the AI revolution, even as they continue to be ignored. Read more
Behind the OpenAI resignations: OpenAI’s Superalignment team was formed to develop ways to govern and direct “super-intelligent” AI systems. The company prevented the team from doing that work and limited its resources, forcing several team members to resign, including co-director Jan Leike. Read more