Thursday, June 26, 2024

Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we bring you notes on the latest win for AI companies on the copyright battlefront; fresh cash for predictive marketplaces; Sam Altman duking it out with the NYT; YouTube's latest AI efforts; Creative Commons' new project to protect against AI scraping, and more. Let's get to work!

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP / Getty Images

1. Authors vs AI: A U.S. federal court has ruled that Meta's use of copyrighted books for training its AI models is "fair use," just a few days after Anthropic won a similar copyright lawsuit. It's not great news for authors, but the silver lining here is that both judges noted their cases were limited in scope. Read More

2. Bet it all on a guess: It seems venture firms are loving the success of AI-enabled prediction marketplaces. Kalshi just raised a $185 million round, and its biggest rival Polymarket is reportedly raising $200 million — both looking at $1 billion+ valuations. Read More

3. Change to keep up: Creative Commons, the nonprofit which revolutionized licensing in the Internet age, is adapting to the oncoming of AI. The organization has launched CC Signals, a project that lets data owners define how their content can be used by machines. Read More

Morning Must-Reads

Image Credits: Brandon Dill for The Washington Post / Getty Images

😷 Semantics are important: Elon Musk's xAI data centers in Memphis are the subject of some air quality testing semantics that may spell trouble. The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), which is threatening to sue xAI on behalf of the NAACP, says the tests skipped some key pollutants, like ozone. Read More

🤖 Even more AI: YouTube is rolling out an AI-powered search results carousel that will show up in searches for shopping, places, or things to do. The feature's only available to YT Premium subscribers in the U.S., and looks similar to Google's AI Overviews. Read More

🛩️ Drones ahoy! Indian drone startup Raphe mPhibr has raised $100 million to continue developing and improving its drones that are being employed by its government customers on battlefields and for border surveillance as the demand for UAVs keeps rising. Read More

🤑 Buy, don't build: Meta has just scored three OpenAI researchers for its Superintelligence team: Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai, who established OpenAI's Zurich office, are joining the bigger tech company, which has been rumored to be offering $100 million sign-on bonuses to AI experts. Read More

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Around the Web

🧑 A button's not enough: U.K. citizens may soon have to prove that they're adults to visit PornHub, as the site's parent company has committed to implement "government approved age assurance methods" to make users prove they're over 18, the BBC reports. Read More

🎉 IPO nerds rejoice! Indian fintech Pine Labs, which sells point-of-sale machines and payments solutions to merchants, has filed for a $300 million IPO, Reuters reports. The filing comes as the country's IPO market thaws as foreign investors return and global trade stabilizes. Read More

Before You Go

👊 Hit hard, hit early: Peeved at the New York Times' lawsuit against his company, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sought to throw off his hosts at a recent live recording of the popular tech podcast, Hard Fork. "Are you going to talk about where you sue us because you don't like user privacy?" Altman asked the hosts, one of whom is a columnist at NYT. Read More