 | Jan 17, 2025 | | | | Supported by  | | | | | TGIF! The Federal Trade Commission alleges Snap's artificial intelligence chatbot poses risks to young users. Microsoft adds AI Copilot features by default in Office 365 apps for consumers. A Microsoft executive in charge of chips and data centers is leaving the company.
| | | | The Federal Trade Commission said Thursday it had referred a legal complaint it made against Snap to the Department of Justice and alleged the company's artificial intelligence chatbot poses "risks and harms to young users of the application" and that Snap "is violating or is about to violate the law." The DOJ handles criminal inquiries, unlike the FTC, which enforces consumer protection and antitrust laws. In a statement, a Snap spokesperson said the company had used "rigorous safety and privacy processes" in creating the chatbot, My AI, and said the FTC's complaint was "based on inaccuracies, and lacks concrete evidence." The FTC didn't provide further details about its complaint against the company, which hasn't been filed in court, but several reports have detailed the company's struggle to police content on its messaging app. A 2023 Washington Post report said Snap's chatbot, which was powered by technology from OpenAI, allowed users to pose as minors and ask for advice about sexual encounters with adults or masking the smell of alcohol. | | | | Microsoft on Thursday said it will start including artificial intelligence Copilot features by default in Office 365 apps for consumers and will raise the basic Office bundle price 30% to $13 per month per household or $10 per month for individuals. The new plan will be the only option available to new customers, but existing customers will have the option to keep their current subscription without getting the Copilot features. Previously, Microsoft charged $20 per month per person or household for Copilot features, which use models from OpenAI to automate tasks like summarizing a Word document, creating visuals based on an Excel spreadsheet, or generating Powerpoint presentations based on written prompts. The price hike could foreshadow a similar move involving Microsoft's corporate customers of Office and comes after Google said Wednesday it would include similar AI features in its Workspace productivity app suite. The moves show how these companies are trying to drive more usage of and revenue from AI. | | | | Microsoft chips and data center executive Zaid Kahn is leaving the company to pursue other opportunities, according to an internal email announcing the move on Thursday. Kahn, a vice president of cloud artificial intelligence and advanced systems engineering, played a key role in developing the clusters of data center servers OpenAI used to develop ChatGPT and other products. The internal email said that late last year, Microsoft hired Mario Zeng, a former executive at Lenovo, to work alongside Kahn, helping to lead the company's system engineering teams. Kahn also has led the development of Microsoft's new data center chips and hardware systems, including a central processing unit, Cobalt, and an AI chip, Maia. Kahn represented Microsoft at the Open Compute Project Foundation, where he serves as the board chair. Spokespeople for Microsoft and Lenovo did not immediately respond to a request for comment. | | | | Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and President Brad Smith met with president-elect Donald Trump and vice-president elect J.D. Vance at Mar-a-Lago in Florida on Wednesday, Microsoft said in a statement. Elon Musk, who has been tapped by Trump to lead a government efficiency initiative and recently sued Microsoft over its deal with OpenAI, also joined the meeting. The Microsoft executives and Trump discussed the data centers needed to power artificial intelligence as well as cybersecurity and other tech policy issues, according to the statement. Microsoft is hoping Trump and his appointees will loosen energy and permitting restrictions in order to make it easier for Microsoft to build and power data centers, The Information previously reported. The company has said it plans to spend $80 billion on data centers in the 12 month period that ends in August, with $50 billion of that spending in the U.S. Microsoft has also been attempting to assuage the U.S. government after a series of high-profile hacks impacted government agencies. | | | | Amazon is laying off about 200 employees in its North America stores division, the company said Thursday. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the cuts to the division, which includes a wide variety of teams working on everything from fashion and fitness products to private brands under senior vice president Christine Beauchamp. "We've made the difficult decision to eliminate a small number of roles, and we're committed to supporting affected employees through their transition," the spokesperson said. Amazon laid off 27,000 employees in mass layoffs in late 2022 and early 2023 and has made several rounds of more incremental cuts since then. Business Insider first reported the most recent round of cuts. | | | | Blue Origin launched its New Glenn rocket into orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in a major milestone for the quarter-century old space company owned by Amazon's founder Jeff Bezos. The 320-foot rocket reached orbit and deployed its payload, a prototype of a space vehicle called Blue Ring that Blue Origin has developed to move satellites and other objects into different orbits. While getting to orbit was Blue Origin's primary objective for the mission, the company didn't succeed in landing the first stage of the rocket on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean after the launch. New Glenn is a critical part of Bezos' plans to turn Blue Origin into a viable business that doesn't rely on funding from the billionaire to survive. But the development of the rocket has faced years of delays. New Glenn is also one of the best options for introducing more competition into the commercial launch business, which is currently dominated by Elon Musk's SpaceX. Musk didn't seem bothered by the new competition. "Congratulations on reaching orbit on the first attempt! @JeffBezos," he wrote on X after the launch. | | | | E-commerce software company Rokt said Thursday it would sell $335 million in existing shares to investors including Tiger Global Management and Australian venture capital firm Square Peg Capital, as well as the company's board members, in a deal that values the company at $3.5 billion. That's up from when the company last raised money at a $1.63 billion valuation in December 2021, according to PitchBook. Rokt's software helps big retailers and other companies like Uber, Live Nation and PayPal show targeted ads to shoppers after they make a purchase or add an item to their cart. Rokt said it grew revenue more than 40% to $600 million in 2024 and that the company is profitable. Bruce Buchanan, the company's CEO, told Bloomberg the company was targeting an initial public offering as soon as the first half of 2026. The company also said it would acquire customer data software company mParticle in a $300 million deal. | | | | Coinbase says it's launching a bitcoin-backed loan program that will allow customers to borrow up to $100,000 worth of USDC stablecoins using bitcoin in their accounts as collateral. The loans will be offered through Morpho, a decentralized lending protocol that runs on Base, the blockchain that Coinbase developed. The loans will be overcollateralized, meaning Coinbase users have to hold more bitcoin as collateral than what they borrow, and the funding for the loans will come from pools of capital contributed by Morpho's users. Over time, Coinbase users will be able to borrow against more types of crypto and access services beyond lending, Max Branzburg, Coinbase's vice president of product said. In 2023, Coinbase started to shutter a previous earlier bitcoin-backed loan program, citing re-evaluation of customer needs. A rise in bitcoin prices since then could boost demand for such loans, since they allow users to make other bets or spend money without selling the bitcoin and incurring a big taxable gain. Currently, Coinbase's institutional business also has a lending service, catering to exchange-traded fund issuers, hedge funds, crypto miners and others. | | | | Retail trading app eToro has confidentially filed for an initial public offering in the U.S., Financial Times reported. It's seeking more than $5 billion valuation and could list in New York as soon as the second quarter this year, FT said. Goldman Sachs, Jefferies and UBS are banks working with the company on its plans, the publication said. In 2023, eToro raised $250 million in a funding round that valued it at $3.5 billion from investors including ION Group and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, after its proposed merger with a blank-check company fell through. Last year, eToro agreed to limit the types of crypto tokens available in the U.S. as part of a settlement with the SEC. | | | | Brian Shroder, the former CEO of crypto exchange Binance.US, has launched a startup called 1Money, which builds a decentralized payment network dedicated to processing stablecoin transactions. The company says it has raised over $20 million in seed funding from Galaxy Ventures, Kraken Ventures, Tribe Capital, Hack VC, MoonPay Ventures and others. Shroder, who left Binance.US in 2023 and previously worked at Ant Group and Uber, is 1Money's CEO and a co-founder. Stablecoins are crypto tokens pegged to government currency such as a dollar. Initially used for crypto trading and increasingly adopted in cross-border payments, stablecoins have emerged as a focus for venture investors. Unlike most blockchains, 1Money will charge a fixed transaction fee in the same form of the stablecoin that's being used for each transaction. It will not launch a token. Set to launch in the second quarter, it plans to partner with crypto exchanges, custodians and decentralized finance platforms at the start, followed by fintech firms. It aims to be "used ultimately by larger firms like Uber or Amazon or Starbucks for accepting stablecoin payments," Shroder said. | | | | | Popular articles By Qianer Liu and Anissa Gardizy
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