News

David Gilbert / Wired: Gab launched 91 chatbots over the last month, including AI versions of Hitler and Trump, several of which deny the Holocaust, call climate change a scam, more  —  The proliferation of generative AI chatbots on extremist… Read More »Gab launched 91 chatbots over the last month, including AI versions of Hitler and Trump, several of which deny the Holocaust, call climate change a scam, more (David Gilbert/Wired)

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Bluesky opens up federation, letting anyone run their own server connecting to Bluesky’s network, which uses the AT Protocol; Mastodon uses ActivityPub  —  Social network Bluesky, a competitor to X, Threads, Mastodon, and others, is opening… Read More »Bluesky opens up federation, letting anyone run their own server connecting to Bluesky’s network, which uses the AT Protocol; Mastodon uses ActivityPub (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

Abner Li / 9to5Google: Google strikes a deal with Reddit, reportedly for $60M/year, giving Google access to the Reddit Data API to surface more Reddit content and train AI models  —  Google today announced an “expanded partnership” with Reddit that… Read More »Google strikes a deal with Reddit, reportedly for $60M/year, giving Google access to the Reddit Data API to surface more Reddit content and train AI models (Abner Li/9to5Google)

Sheila Dang / Reuters: Google plans to integrate Gemini into its Performance Max ad placement tool, helping brands generate longer headlines, after adding Gemini to Google Workspace  —  Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) Google said on Thursday it will integrate its Gemini artificial… Read More »Google plans to integrate Gemini into its Performance Max ad placement tool, helping brands generate longer headlines, after adding Gemini to Google Workspace (Sheila Dang/Reuters)

Abner Li / 9to5Google: Google says its standalone Google Pay app GPay and its peer-to-peer payment feature will stop working in the US starting on June 4, 2024  —  When Google Wallet launched in 2022, Google kept the “GPay” app… Read More »Google says its standalone Google Pay app GPay and its peer-to-peer payment feature will stop working in the US starting on June 4, 2024 (Abner Li/9to5Google)

Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Google rolls out its Gemini-powered “Help me write” tool in Chrome for macOS and Windows for English-speaking US users, offering shortform writing suggestions  —  Google has started rolling out “Help me write” — an experimental… Read More »Google rolls out its Gemini-powered “Help me write” tool in Chrome for macOS and Windows for English-speaking US users, offering shortform writing suggestions (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)

Ismail Shakil / Reuters: The US FTC says Avast needs to pay $16.5M and stop selling web browsing data for ads to settle charges that the UK company misrepresented its use of such data  —  Software provider Avast Plc will… Read More »The US FTC says Avast needs to pay $16.5M and stop selling web browsing data for ads to settle charges that the UK company misrepresented its use of such data (Ismail Shakil/Reuters)

Sara Fischer / Axios: Substack says 3M+ customers subscribe to paid newsletters on its platform, up from 2M in February 2023, and credits its recommendations feature for the growth  —  – The company said it plans to expand the recommendations… Read More »Substack says 3M+ customers subscribe to paid newsletters on its platform, up from 2M in February 2023, and credits its recommendations feature for the growth (Sara Fischer/Axios)

Financial Times: Sources: Nigeria ordered telecoms to restrict access to the websites of some of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, including Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken  —  Local consumers given only restricted access to markets like Binance and Coinbase  —  Authorities… Read More »Sources: Nigeria ordered telecoms to restrict access to the websites of some of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, including Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken (Financial Times)

Dr Richard Fletcher / Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism: Analysis: by the end of 2023, 48% of the most popular news websites in the US, UK, and eight others blocked OpenAI’s crawler and 24% blocked Google’s crawler  — … Read More »Analysis: by the end of 2023, 48% of the most popular news websites in the US, UK, and eight others blocked OpenAI’s crawler and 24% blocked Google’s crawler (Dr Richard Fletcher/Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism)