Welcome back to TechCrunch’s Week in Review, an email that goes over the biggest news stories of the week. Want it sent to your email every Saturday? Click here to sign up.
This week, OpenAI said it would be removing Sky, one of the sounds its new GPT-4o model used, because users said it sounded a lot like Scarlett Johansson’s AI character in “Her.” In a statement, the actor said that she had hired a lawyer to find out how the voice was created. The company says the voice wasn’t based on Johansson’s, but the actress said OpenAI had asked her to use her voice for the model before.
The U.S. Department of Justice and 30 state attorneys general sued Live Nation Entertainment, which owns Ticketmaster, for what they say are unfair business tactics. Merrick Garland, the U.S. attorney general, told the press that Live Nation “suffocates its competition.” Lawmakers looked more closely at how much power the entertainment giant had over the business after Taylor Swift fans had a hard time getting tickets to her Eras tour in late 2022. This led to the lawsuit.
Techstars also had a lot of changes this week. CEO Maëlle Gavet said she will be leaving the company at the end of the month. David Cohen, co-founder and board head, will take her place. Gavet’s way of leading was controversial while she was in office. TechCrunch looked into the claims of a “autocratic and punishing” attitude that caused a lot of workers to leave.
News
Your Slack messages may be used to teach its AI: Some of Slack’s new AI services are being trained with data from its own users. You have to email Slack to say that you don’t want your info to be used for training.
Humane might be trying to sell something: Bloomberg says that Humane may be looking to sell after a rough start with its $700 Ai Pin. The company has set its price at between $750 million and $1 billion.
Microsoft Build looks into technology that is AI-first: Microsoft released the Copilot+ PCs and talked about new AI features for Windows at its yearly developer conference. One of these features is called “Recall,” and it will be available soon.
Spotify tries an AI DJ that speaks Spanish: Spotify is working on a different version of its AI DJ feature that will speak Spanish. An experienced tech worker and reverse engineer named Chris Messina found references to “DJ Livi” in the app’s code.
Free laundry hack?: Two students at UC Santa Cruz found a security hole that lets anyone use over a million internet-connected washing machines for free.
Presidential candidate: Joe Biden wants to hire a meme manager to help him win re-election. The campaign is trying to reach out to younger people.
ChatGPT’s app makes more money: Even though the model is free to use on the web, OpenAI’s biggest ever increase in income on mobile came from the launch of GPT-4o. After it came out, the game made $4.2 million in the game Store and Google Play.
The FCC is looking into political ads made by AI: The FCC has suggested that political ads with AI-generated material should say so. “Cable operators, satellite TV and radio providers” would have to follow the plan, but streamers and YouTube would not have to.
The trick to getting into Y Combinator: is that the company only accepts about 1% of the applications it gets. In an interview with Teresa Carlson of General Catalyst, CEO Garry Tan talked about the “secret sauce” for getting into the company accelerator.
Adobe vs. iOS simulator: Adobe said it would sue Delta, an iOS emulator for old games, because it thought the app’s logo looked too much like its own. Delta’s image used to be a stylized Greek letter delta, but the company has changed it to avoid any problems.
Analysis
Meta revealed a new AI advisory council, but it’s only made up of white men. We need more diversity on this council. It’s too bad that it’s not really a surprise. Dominic-Madori Davis, Amanda Silberling, and Kyle Wiggers look at how women and people of color have been very important in the AI change, but are still often forgotten.
Also Read: Openai Asked Scarlett Johansson to Use Her Voice, She Says
The people who quit OpenAI were working on ways to control and direct “superintelligent” AI systems. This is why they quit. The company wouldn’t let the team do that work and limited its resources, which caused several team members to quit, including Jan Leike, who was co-lead.
What do you say about this story? Visit Parhlo World For more.
