You can no longer use ChatGPT as your personal doctor, as it defies the EU AI Act and FDA guidance, according to OpenAI. (Picture: Adobe)UPDATE: OpenAI says there are no changes, simply a consolidation of several usage policies that might have lead to confusion.
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OpenAI has updated ChatGPT’s usage policies of October 29, banning a vast swath of content where it was arguably the most useful — as in interpreting medical imagery and helping with medical diagnosis, and offering legal or financial advice.
The idea is to stop ChatGPT (and any other OpenAI model) from giving advice that could be interpreted as professional, fiduciary, or legally binding guidance, as required by the EU AI Act and American FDA guidance.
The AI lab is now open to investments, but will have a purpose baked into its corporate structure. (Picture: Adobe)The AI lab is now a less regulated $500 billion public benefit corporation, controlled by a non-profit arm with about $130 billion in equity.
The new governance makes it possible for them to reach for a market debut at some time in the future, and unlocks the investment of some $30 billion from SoftBank, which was contingent on the regulatory change.
Happy and clean ChatGPT is coming for teens, and it will call the cops if you cross the line. (Picture: generated).Trying to balance freedom with safety, OpenAI is going all in on an age-appropriate version of ChatGPT.
Teen use of chatbots and their potential harm is rapidly becoming a hot-button political issue, complete with a Congressional hearing and an FTC probe.
OpenAI is therefore reiterating their new policies on teen use and parental controls, and says they will be rolling out automatic age verification for under-18 users that should default to the teen version when in doubt.
Speaking for the entire media industry, Penske says AI Overviews are creating havoc on their business model. (Picture: screenshot)Penske Media Corporation claims Google is siphoning off traffic to their websites and stealing their content with the overviews feature.
This is the first major publisher suing Google for the feature, as research from Pew shows that less than one percent of users click on from links that have an AI Overview on the results.
20% drop in traffic
PMC, which is also the parent company of Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, has seen traffic drop by some 20% and affiliate revenue decline 30% since Google’s overviews started on their stories.
Made with «OpenAI resources,» this movie is built from animated uploaded drawings and prompts. (Picture: Screenshot, Critterz)Microsoft agrees with OpenAI to keep talking
Microsoft is in a complex business relationship with OpenAI, where the early investor gets access to the latest AI tech and OpenAI gets access to computing power. They have just reached a “non-binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) for the next phase of our partnership.” This could allow OpenAI to go for-profit, under the control of a non-profit entity said to retain an ownership stake of more than $100 billion. Many takes on this today, but OpenAI has been moving away from Microsoft for funding, operations and cloud computing lately. The final deal will likely include some kind of a new investment in the now $500 billion company, and may unlock further market opportunities for OpenAI. More at: OpenAI and Microsoft’s joint statement, x.com announcement, Reuters, Axios.
OpenAI goes to the movies
A new animated a-list movie, «Critterz» is under development using «OpenAI’s resources.» It should be ready for the Cannes Film Festival, meaning production time will be drastically sped up to only nine months. The script is written by part of the team from «Paddington in Peru», and it is spearheaded by Chad Nelson, who is a creative specialist at OpenAI. The technique looks to be to feed drawings to a large language model and have it animate them. The movie therefore streamlines animation, but wont skimp on voice actors, Gizmodo writes. More at: The Wall Street Journal, Gizmodo and Engadget.
The Anthropic settlement is predicted to push other AI labs into negotiations over similar claims. (Picture: Adobe)The landmark court settlement will be the largest copyright payout in history, but Anthropic avoids admitting guilt.
The epic class action lawsuit concerned a library of 7 million pirated books used in training, and had Anthropic looking at $150,000 in penalties per instance of copyright theft, but it was settled last week without disclosing terms.
The settlement removes the threat of a debilitating loss in court, but the details have yet to be worked out. (Picture: Adobe)UPDATE: The settlement details are in. The binding agreement was reached in principle on Tuesday, and the parties have asked the court to halt further proceedings.
The center of the suit was Anthropic’s library of 7 million pirated books in their training data, that could carry a penalty of $150,000 per infringement — and as a class action case, a loss would entail damages for every single author.
An unfavorable ruling would therefore be debilitating to Anthropic, and send dark clouds across the industry, likely forcing them toward a settlement.
Zuckerberg sits down with The Information to explain his Superintelligence spending. (Picture: Screenshot) Executive order coming on «Woke AI»
The US President is planning a new Executive Order regarding balance in AI models. They are going to have to incorporate more right-wing ideology in order to remain in contention for government contracts.
The order would «dictate that AI companies getting federal contracts be politically neutral and unbiased in their AI models.» No news yet on who will be the arbiter of what is «neutral,» but we can guess, right? More on The Wall Street Journal, discussion on r/singularity
Anthropic copyright case moves to class action
While Anthropic’s use of purchased books in training was ruled «fair use» by U.S. District Judge William Alsup in late june, their archive of 7 million pirated books was not.
In this phase of the trial, Alsup has okayed it proceeding as a class action suit, on behalf of all pirated authors.
At a maximum penalty of $150,000 for each infringement, that could total a competely debilitating bill if Anthropic is found guilty, and greatly impact the AI industry. More at Reuters.
Perplexity gets huge India boost
The AI search engine has sealed a deal to give 360 million customers of the Airtel telco their Perplexity Pro service for free. Airtel is the second largest telecoms operator in India. The trial lasts a year and comes with no strings attached, and offers access to ChatGPT models along with Claude Sonnet and Opus 4. It would normally cost $200 per year.
Previously, Google has offered Gemini for free for all students in India, as everyone is trying to capture the enormous market. More at India Dispatch, TechCrunch, and a press release by Airtel.
Zuckerberg explains «Superintelligence» hires
The Meta CEO just announced a 5GW data center with even more to be built, some the size of Manhattan, in a push worth «hundreds of billions.» In a recent interview with The Information, he explained his reasoning on his expensive AI hires — by saying infrastructure investments pale in comparison to human costs. And, he says, his new hires «want the fewest number of people reporting to them — and the most GPUs.» See the interview here (25 minutes), and Business Insider on talent motivations.
Fair use is a provision in copyright that makes it legal to copy for «transformative works.» (Picture: Alan Levine, CC BY 2.0)After initially being sceptical of declaring the training on copyrighted books «fair use,» U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria relented — but not the strength on Meta’s case.
Instead, he clearly says in his summary judgement that it «is generally illegal to copy protected works without permission,» (CNBC) but the plaintiffs «made the wrong arguments and failed to develop a record in support of the right one.» (The Verge.)
Anthropic keeps a library of pirated books, too, and that does infringe on copyrights. (Picture: >littleyiye<, CC BY 2.0)Anthropic’s argument that the training was «transformative» and little different from training school kids in writing held up in court yesterday.
This is the same argument used by the AI labs in a flurry of lawsuits by authors, newspapers and stock photographers, and could have wide repercussions across both the publishing and AI industries.
OpenAI reveals just enough about its hardware project to keep people guessing. (Picture: OpenAI)More news has emerged about the ChatGPT owner’s «breathrough hardware device» through court filings in their recent trademark case.
It is clear now that the device won’t be an in-ear device or some kind of glasses.
The Ive/Altman partnership shook the internet and generated plenty of hype in May. Now the page is taken down. (Picture: OpenAI)The page and announcement of the Jony Ive partnership to build AI devices has had a hard a meeting with a trademark lawsuit.
The name of the company purchased by OpenAI for 6.5 billion dollars in late may, has, for all its hype at the time, been taken down by a court order.
Reddit has clear terms in its user agreement against AI scraping, and has made lucrative deals for it’s data.The company, home to a valuable archive of 20 years of human exchanges, says Anthropic illegally copied from its archives at least 100 000 times.
The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday at the San Francisco superior court, claims Reddit reached out to Anthropic several times to discuss licensing issues with the scraping but found they «refused to engage.»
Not a white knight
The suit calls Anthropic a «late-blooming artificial intelligence company that bills itself as the white knight of the AI industry,» adding that «it is anything but.»
Google could lose Chrome and golden default deals in its antitrust trial. (Picture: Pietro & Silvia, CC BY 2.0)The question for the courts last day of closing arguments was this: Are AI competitors also operating in the search market?
Both sides argued they weren’t, as it could interfere with long standing DOJ arguments that Google is a search monopoly, and for Google looking to avoid scrutiny of its recent behavior.
A young teen was allegedly encouraged into suicide. Now the question is whether an AI chatbot can be held accountable. (Picture: Character.ai)In a Florida court case that could one day define First Amendment rights for AI, a judge has declined to consider the defendant’s arguments for dismissal — setting the stage for a trial showdown over whether AI chatbots are faulty products or entities entitled to rights previously reserved for humans.
The case revolves around a teen whom Character.ai allegedly encouraged into suicide over a long interaction, and whether the developers should be held accountable for his tragic death, in a wrongful death lawsuit.
