Wendy Lee / Los Angeles Times:
How the AI-generated music video for Washed Out’s The Hardest Part was created entirely using OpenAI’s Sora, a first from a major record label — “The Hardest Part,” a new song from indie pop artist Washed Out, is all about love lost, among the most human of themes.
Filing: CRM software maker Freshworks acquires Connecticut-based Device42, which helps companies manage their IT infrastructure and had raised $38.5M, for $230M (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Filing: CRM software maker Freshworks acquires Connecticut-based Device42, which helps companies manage their IT infrastructure and had raised $38.5M, for $230M — Freshworks, the publicly listed SaaS firm, is acquiring U.S.-based startup Device42 for $230 million, the company disclosed in an SEC filing.
Natron Energy starts production of sodium-ion batteries that it says charge and discharge 10x faster than lithium-ion, initially for use at data centers (C.C. Weiss/New Atlas)
C.C. Weiss / New Atlas:
Natron Energy starts production of sodium-ion batteries that it says charge and discharge 10x faster than lithium-ion, initially for use at data centers — VIEW 3 IMAGES — VIEW GALLERY – 3 IMAGES — Two years ago, sodium-ion battery pioneer Natron Energy was busy preparing …
Google employees have mostly ignored the DOJ’s antitrust case, and some expect only small business tweaks and some fines; closing arguments concluded on May 3 (Nico Grant/New York Times)
Nico Grant / New York Times:
Google employees have mostly ignored the DOJ’s antitrust case, and some expect only small business tweaks and some fines; closing arguments concluded on May 3 — They shrugged off concerns about the company’s fate ahead of closing arguments in the Justice Department’s lawsuit this week.
Google updates its ad policy to ban the promotion of services that generate, distribute, or store synthetic sexually explicit content, starting May 30, 2024 (Barry Schwartz/Search Engine Roundtable)
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Roundtable:
Google updates its ad policy to ban the promotion of services that generate, distribute, or store synthetic sexually explicit content, starting May 30, 2024 — Google Ads, Shopping Ads, Admob, and other Google Ads products will soon disallow deepfake sexual content, synthetic sexually explicit content …
Russian national Alexander Vinnik, one of the operators of crypto exchange BTC-e from 2011 to 2017, pleads guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering (Nikhilesh De/CoinDesk)
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
Russian national Alexander Vinnik, one of the operators of crypto exchange BTC-e from 2011 to 2017, pleads guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering — Vinnik was first arrested in 2017, but faced a lengthy extradition process that saw him spend time in Greece and France before being sent to the U.S.
CSET: global AI research more than doubled between 2017 and 2022; Chinese Academy of Sciences was the top producer of highly cited AI papers, followed by Google (Alison Snyder/Axios)
Alison Snyder / Axios:
CSET: global AI research more than doubled between 2017 and 2022; Chinese Academy of Sciences was the top producer of highly cited AI papers, followed by Google — – Roughly 32% of AI research focused on computer vision, which grew 121% in those five years.
In a letter, several Democrats serving as their state’s top election officials ask Meta to repeal a policy allowing ads that claim the 2020 election was stolen (Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press)
Christina A. Cassidy / Associated Press:
In a letter, several Democrats serving as their state’s top election officials ask Meta to repeal a policy allowing ads that claim the 2020 election was stolen — Several Democrats serving as their state’s top election officials have sent a letter to the parent company of Facebook …
X launches Stories on X, with news curated and summarized by Grok AI, available for Premium subscribers in the Explore tab on iOS and on the web (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
X launches Stories on X, with news curated and summarized by Grok AI, available for Premium subscribers in the Explore tab on iOS and on the web — X, formerly Twitter, is now using Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok to power a feature that summarizes the personalized trending stories in the app’s Explore section.
Elon Musk says he wants Grok to create news summaries by relying solely on X posts, without looking at article text, and improved story citations are coming (Alex Kantrowitz/Big Technology)
Alex Kantrowitz / Big Technology:
Elon Musk says he wants Grok to create news summaries by relying solely on X posts, without looking at article text, and improved story citations are coming — Musk emails with details on AI-powered news inside X. An AI bot will summarize news and commentary, sometimes looking through tens of thousands of posts per story.
