Artificial Intelligence

Microsoft is still fighting The New York Times over AI copyright rules, and it’s got a new line of attack: if the Times is so mad at chatbots, why does its tech podcast host love them? Its lawyers’ appreciation of Hard Fork, unfortunately, does not extend to learning Kevin Roose’s name.

It will be headed up by Clara Shih, who was most recently the CEO of Salesforce AI, Axios reports.

The idea with Azure AI Foundry is that it will help organizations manage their AI tools. As Microsoft says in a blog post:

Azure AI Foundry helps bridge the gap between cutting-edge AI technologies and practical business applications, empowering organizations to harness the full potential of AI efficiently and effectively.

Microsoft is making Places, its new app to coordinate in-office days with colleagues, available to everyone today. Microsoft Places uses AI and a dedicated location plan section where you can set and share the days you’ll use the office and view which days your co-workers are heading in. Microsoft is also planning to integrate this all into Copilot soon, too.

A new “improved” Windows search will allow you to search for documents, photos, and other files by just describing them — even when you’re not connected to the internet. The new AI search experience will roll out to Windows Insiders on Copilot Plus PCs early next year.

Dotdash Meredith, the publisher of People, Better Homes & Gardens, and InStyle, announced a licensing deal with OpenAI in May (as did The Verge's parent company, Vox Media). Now, AdWeek is reporting this $16 million minimum figure based on comments from a recent earnings call:

If you look at Q3 24, licensing revenue was up about $4.1 million year-over-year. The lion’s share of that would be driven by the OpenAI license...the variable components will be calculated and recognized in the future.

Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie has enlisted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and nine other San Francisco leaders to guide his administration’s efforts to revitalize the city (and win back the support of its disgruntled tech elite).

The move comes as prominent figures like Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Elon Musk, and YCombinator president Gary Tan openly criticize San Francisco’s public safety failures, with some even threatening to relocate.

Owners of the smart glasses in France, Italy, Ireland, and Spain will get Meta AI features starting today, the company announced.

For now, Meta AI can answer general questions, but it won’t get multimodal features like using the Ray-Bans’ camera to tell you about things you see — the company has called the EU regulatory environment too “unpredictable” to do that right now.

On this day, one year ago, Sam Altman was fired from OpenAI — an event known internally as “The Blip.”

His influence has seemingly only increased since he overcame the attempted coup. The board that ousted him was gutted and key executives, like Ilya Sutskever and Mira Murati, have departed. Next year, OpenAI will likely be restructured into a for-profit company, becoming exactly what it was created to avoid.

I’m glad Apple Intelligence summaries exist. Because this is a beautiful mess.

And life-changing, just like Tim Cook said.

One of the ads, which you can see below, is an AI recreation of the brand’s classic Coke caravan commercial. All three of Coke’s AI commercials will air across TVs and online video platforms this holiday season, according to AdAge.

The Elon Musk-run social media company is trying to stop a California law that would require platforms to block “materially deceptive” election content during set periods before and after voting, Bloomberg reports. X is arguing the law violates the First Amendment, pointing to “a long history” of Constitutional protections for critiques of government “that includes tolerance for potentially false speech made in the context of such criticisms.”

The app launched last month, but was initially was only available for paid users. Now, all users can try it, OpenAI says.