Katie Roof / Bloomberg:
Ujet, which uses AI to help businesses with customer support, raised $76M led by Sapphire Ventures, valuing the company at $500M, and promotes its COO to co-CEO — Customer service startup UJET Inc. has raised $76 million from investors and named a new co-chief executive officer.
Caroline Ellison, a star witness in the prosecution of FTX founder and former boyfriend SBF, is sentenced to two years in prison for her role in the FTX scandal (Brady Dale/Axios)
Brady Dale / Axios:
Caroline Ellison, a star witness in the prosecution of FTX founder and former boyfriend SBF, is sentenced to two years in prison for her role in the FTX scandal — – “I’ve seen a lot of cooperators in 30 years. … – She talked to the government prior to Bankman-Fried’s arrest …
OpenAI adds five voices to Advanced Voice Mode, which is now rolling out to ChatGPT Plus and Teams users and, next week, to enterprise and education users (Maxwell Zeff/TechCrunch)
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
OpenAI adds five voices to Advanced Voice Mode, which is now rolling out to ChatGPT Plus and Teams users and, next week, to enterprise and education users — OpenAI announced it is rolling out Advanced Voice Mode (AVM) to an expanded set of ChatGPT’s paying customers on Tuesday.
The US DOJ sues Visa, alleging it has an illegal monopoly over debit network markets and has tried to unlawfully crush competitors, including PayPal and Square (Gaby Del Valle/The Verge)
Gaby Del Valle / The Verge:
The US DOJ sues Visa, alleging it has an illegal monopoly over debit network markets and has tried to unlawfully crush competitors, including PayPal and Square — The financial service company reportedly tried to ‘smother’ competitors and feared Apple as an ‘existential threat.’
Microsoft debuts Correction in preview as part of the Azure AI Content Safety API; the service tries to find and revise AI-generated text that’s factually wrong (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Microsoft debuts Correction in preview as part of the Azure AI Content Safety API; the service tries to find and revise AI-generated text that’s factually wrong — AI is a notorious liar, and Microsoft now says it has a fix for that. Understandably, that’s going to raise some eyebrows, but there’s reason to be skeptical.
Duolingo unveils an interactive AI feature to “video call” with its Lily mascot, as part of its $30/month Duolingo Max tier; the dialogue is generated by GPT-4o (Richard Nieva/Forbes)
Richard Nieva / Forbes:
Duolingo unveils an interactive AI feature to “video call” with its Lily mascot, as part of its $30/month Duolingo Max tier; the dialogue is generated by GPT-4o — Luis von Ahn, who grew up with little money in Guatemala, aims to transform the popular language-learning app into an automated AI tutor.
Marques Brownlee says “I hear you” after criticism of his new freemium wallpaper app Panels, which asks for many permissions and costs $50/year for full access (Emma Roth/The Verge)
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Marques Brownlee says “I hear you” after criticism of his new freemium wallpaper app Panels, which asks for many permissions and costs $50/year for full access — Marques Brownlee, the YouTuber known as MKBHD, has responded to backlash over the launch of his new wallpaper app, called Panels.
Meta says it will not sign the EU’s voluntary AI safety pledge that’s planned as a stopgap before the EU’s AI Act takes full effect in 2027, but may join later (Gian Volpicelli/Bloomberg)
Gian Volpicelli / Bloomberg:
Meta says it will not sign the EU’s voluntary AI safety pledge that’s planned as a stopgap before the EU’s AI Act takes full effect in 2027, but may join later — – Company could join at a later date, spokesperson says — EU wants compliance with AI Act rules before they take effect
In a controversial move, Israel’s ISA clears AI startup Bridgewise to launch a chatbot that gives stock picking advice, slated to debut with a big Israeli bank (Saritha Rai/Bloomberg)
Saritha Rai / Bloomberg:
In a controversial move, Israel’s ISA clears AI startup Bridgewise to launch a chatbot that gives stock picking advice, slated to debut with a big Israeli bank — Other governments have raised alarms that artificial intelligence might destabilize financial markets.
Google Cloud debuts Gemini 1.5 Flash and 1.5 Pro with a 2M context window, twice as big as before, “grounding” for better Google search accuracy, and new agents (Larry Dignan/Constellation Research)
Larry Dignan / Constellation Research:
Google Cloud debuts Gemini 1.5 Flash and 1.5 Pro with a 2M context window, twice as big as before, “grounding” for better Google search accuracy, and new agents — Google Cloud launched a series of updates including new Gemini 1.5 Flash and 1.5 Pro models with a 2 million context window …
