tech

Jon Keegan10/3/24

OpenAI's new product could undercut its own investors

In between raising $6.6 billion from investors and shedding senior executives as it attepts to morph into a for-profit company, this week OpenAI announced a new editor that could hurt some companies’ similar products.

Canvas is a simple text editor that integrates ChatGPT in a side panel to help you write words and code, eliminating the need for users to jump between windows to get their work done while using ChatGPT.

While a simple text editor may not seem to be that big of a deal, it does hint at OpenAI’s product plans starting to “Sherlock” some of its competitors — and its investors.

The term refers to Apple’s pattern of occasionally launching a built-in feature or product that effectively kills an existing product in the marketplace, like it did when it announced its “Sherlock” search feature in 2002, dooming the third-party “Watson” MacOS app to irrelevancy.

Awkwardly, the release of Canvas could mean trouble for its partner Microsoft’s GitHub Co-Pilot (not to be confused with Microsoft Copilot), which also integrates generative AI into coding tools.

Introducing canvas

Introducing canvas

While a simple text editor may not seem to be that big of a deal, it does hint at OpenAI’s product plans starting to “Sherlock” some of its competitors — and its investors.

The term refers to Apple’s pattern of occasionally launching a built-in feature or product that effectively kills an existing product in the marketplace, like it did when it announced its “Sherlock” search feature in 2002, dooming the third-party “Watson” MacOS app to irrelevancy.

Awkwardly, the release of Canvas could mean trouble for its partner Microsoft’s GitHub Co-Pilot (not to be confused with Microsoft Copilot), which also integrates generative AI into coding tools.

More Tech

Microsoft falls as it lays out plan for “Humanist Superintelligence” without OpenAI

Microsoft AI’s CEO explained its vision for superintelligence that prioritizes human control.

Microsoft Celebrates Its 50th Anniversary With Copilot AI Event

tech

Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams and banned goods, Reuters reports

Meta has been making billions of dollars per year from scam ads and sales of banned goods, according internal Meta documents seen by Reuters.

The new report quantifies the scale of fraud taking place on Meta’s platforms, and how much the company profited from them.

Per the report, Meta internal projections from late last year said that 10% of the company’s total 2024 revenue would come from scammy ads and sales of banned goods — which works out to $16 billion.

Discussions within Meta acknowledged the steep fines likely to be levied against the company for not stopping the fraudulent behavior on its platforms, and the company prioritized enforcement in regions where the penalties would be steepest, the reporting found. The cost of lost revenue from clamping down on the scams was weighed against the cost of fines from regulators.

The documents reportedly show that Meta did aim to significantly reduce the fraudulent behavior, but cuts to its moderation team left the vast majority of user-reported violations to be ignored or rejected.

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told Reuters the documents were a “selective view” of internal enforcement:

“We aggressively fight fraud and scams because people on our platforms don’t want this content, legitimate advertisers don’t want it, and we don’t want it either.”

Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show

Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show

Per the report, Meta internal projections from late last year said that 10% of the company’s total 2024 revenue would come from scammy ads and sales of banned goods — which works out to $16 billion.

Discussions within Meta acknowledged the steep fines likely to be levied against the company for not stopping the fraudulent behavior on its platforms, and the company prioritized enforcement in regions where the penalties would be steepest, the reporting found. The cost of lost revenue from clamping down on the scams was weighed against the cost of fines from regulators.

The documents reportedly show that Meta did aim to significantly reduce the fraudulent behavior, but cuts to its moderation team left the vast majority of user-reported violations to be ignored or rejected.

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told Reuters the documents were a “selective view” of internal enforcement:

“We aggressively fight fraud and scams because people on our platforms don’t want this content, legitimate advertisers don’t want it, and we don’t want it either.”

OpenAI says its AI device will be “multimodal” but doesn’t give many more details

Here’s what we know about the Jony Ive and OpenAI device so far.

Jony Ive and Sam Altman

Google wants to invest even more money into Anthropic, with the search giant in talks for a new funding round that could value the AI startup at $350 billion, Business Insider reports. That’s about double its valuation from two months ago, but still shy of competitor OpenAI’s $500 billion valuation.

Citing sources familiar with the matter, Business Insider said the new deal “could also take the form of a strategic investment where Google provides additional cloud computing services to Anthropic, a convertible note, or a priced funding round early next year.”

In October, Google, which has a 14% stake in Anthropic, announced that it had inked a deal worth “tens of billions” for Anthropic to access Google’s AI compute to train and serve its Claude model.

tech

Rani Molla11/5/25

Apple to pay Google $1 billion a year for access to AI model for Siri

Apple plans to pay Google about $1 billion a year to use the search giant’s AI model for Siri, Bloomberg reports. Google’s model — at 1.2 trillion parameters — is way bigger than Apple’s current models.

The deal aims to help the iPhone maker improve its lagging AI efforts, powering a new Siri slated to come out this spring.

Apple had previously been considering using OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, but decided in the end to go with Google as it works toward improving its own internal models. Google, which makes a much less widely sold phone, the Pixel, has succeeded in bringing consumer AI to smartphone users where Apple has failed.

Google’s antitrust ruling in September helped safeguard the two companies’ partnerships — including the more than $20 billion Google pays Apple each year to be the default search engine on its devices — as long as they aren’t exclusive.

Apple Plans to Use 1.2 Trillion Parameter Google Gemini Model to Run New Siri

Apple Plans to Use 1.2 Trillion Parameter Google Gemini Model to Run New Siri

Apple had previously been considering using OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, but decided in the end to go with Google as it works toward improving its own internal models. Google, which makes a much less widely sold phone, the Pixel, has succeeded in bringing consumer AI to smartphone users where Apple has failed.

Google’s antitrust ruling in September helped safeguard the two companies’ partnerships — including the more than $20 billion Google pays Apple each year to be the default search engine on its devices — as long as they aren’t exclusive.

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