TikTok finally closed a deal meant to bring it into compliance with the law that should have banned it a year ago, and the lawmakers who passed that law still don’t seem to know what’s going on. The company announced Tuesday that its US service is now part of the separate TikTok USDS Joint Venture […]
TikTok is officially under new ownership in the US, and that could spell big changes for the video-sharing app. On January 22nd, ByteDance – TikTok’s Chinese parent company – and a group of investors closed a $14 billion deal to spin off the platform’s US operations, introducing a new slate of American executives. The Silver […]
Where’s the Trump Phone? We’re going to keep talking about it every week. We’ve reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump Phone’s whereabouts. As usual, we’re still waiting for a response. In the meantime, it turns out we might have two Trump Phones to worry about. The Trump Phone may be no more […]
Just over a year after it briefly disappeared from app stores, TikTok in the US is now part of a new entity, TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC. With approval from both the US and China closing on the schedule laid out in December, ByteDance’s ownership of the new joint venture is now only 19.9 percent […]
A judge is questioning whether Epic Games and Google are settling their long-running antitrust fight partly because of a previously unannounced partnership involving the Unreal Engine, Fortnite, and Android. In a hearing in San Francisco today, the court revealed that Epic and Google have struck a new deal that apparently includes “joint product development, joint […]
Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) is pressing OpenAI about its move to bring ads to ChatGPT, and is asking several other companies whether they have similar plans. In letters to the CEOs of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Snap, and xAI, Markey writes that embedding ads into AI chatbots “raises significant concerns for consumer protection, privacy, […]
The sun was already beginning to set as Portlanders in weatherproof jackets and fleeces lined up around Revolution Hall. It wasn’t yet 5PM on a Wednesday but the crowd was gathering well before the town hall was scheduled to begin. Just a day earlier, news outlets reported that Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison had been […]
Today, I am sitting in the courtroom that may decide the fate of Android. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney is here. Google Android boss Sameer Samat is here. Together, they’ll try to convince Judge James Donato that they’re no longer enemies – that Google’s illegal monopoly on Android app stores can be resolved with a mutual […]
Today’s episode of Decoder is about X, Grok, and Elon Musk. By now we’re several weeks into one of the worst, most upsetting, and most stupidly irresponsible AI controversies in the short history of generative AI. Grok, the chatbot made by Elon Musk’s xAI, is able to make all manner of AI-generated images, including nonconsensual […]
Around 800 artists, writers, actors, and musicians signed on to a new campaign against what they call “theft at a grand scale” by AI companies. The signatories of the campaign – called “Stealing Isn’t Innovation” – include authors George Saunders and Jodi Picoult, actors Cate Blanchett and Scarlett Johansson, and musicians like the band R.E.M., […]