AI Cuts Up the Web 🌍🤔

AI COMPANIES ARE CARVING UP INTERNET “KNOWLEDGE”

👀 TLDR:

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover OpenAI’s new publisher content deals, which potentially compartmentalize access to knowledge, threatening the ideals of the open web. We have news on Apple’s big iPhone 16 event, the Telegram CEO’s arrest and McDonald’s inadvertently launching a crypto scam, as well as our App and Stat of the Week, and web-3 focused What’s dAppening.

Our Top Take 🎬

📰🤝 OpenAI – Content Deal Signed with Condé Nast Publishing Group

Traditional search is dying, and with it, perhaps the ideals of the open web, too. For all its flaws, Google Search means access to (almost) everything. Yet its mooted successors, AI search engines, are going down the route of exclusivity by tying up deals with publications. Condé Nast (The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, et al.) has followed News Corp and TIME in agreeing to a content deal with OpenAI. Perplexity, on the other hand, has deals with publications as diverse as Fortune, Der Spiegel, and The Texas Tribune. Google will surely look to do the same for Gemini. While not every deal will be exclusive, it does imply exclusions — one AI model could ‘know’ something that another doesn’t, putting up barriers to discovery and knowledge, and veering away from the philosophy of the open web. #OpenDeals Read more here.

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

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📲 App of the Week: Sonos S2 🤦🏻‍♂️

This week’s featured app is a lesson in what not to do in app development. Now, it’s one thing upsetting your users with a redesign that challenges their habits, quite another if you release an app that just doesn’t work. For new startups, it’s okay to rush your product out - in fact, we think you should do everything to get to market quicker. But with millions of users out there, you need to slow down, perform your Q&A, and have a backup plan. The best Sonos could do after its app update debacle was an apology letter. We feel for Sonos: Its hardware is stellar, but its apps have always lagged behind. Learn more about this disaster and avoid this kind of thing by hiring 3Advance.

🧐 🧐 Stat of the Week: 4.5K Dev Years

📈📉 AI – Amazon CEO Points to Time and Financial Savings

Andy Jassy has shared some of the data on how its AI assistant, Amazon Q, has saved Amazon huge amounts of time and money since being integrated into Amazon’s internal systems. The CEO reckons the company has saved up to 4,500 developer years (typical annual hours worked) and a cool $260 million to boot. #AIEfficent Read more here.

🗞️ Other Stories

🍔 Not Lovin’ It. McDonald’s Instagram page appeared to be hacked, and then promoted a fake ‘Grimace’ cryptocurrency that cost ‘investors’ up to $700,000. Careful out there, folks. Story here.

🧑‍⚖️ Authors Sue Anthropic for “Piracy”. Yet another group of artists heads to court to battle an AI platform for stealing (their words, not ours) their work. We expect more of this. More here.

🍏Apple Sets Date for Sweet 16. The iPhone 16 will be unveiled on September 9th as part of Apple’s “It’s Glowtime” event. We’ll bring you the best bits in What’s Appening, of course. More here.

🚓 Telegram CEO arrested in Paris. Pavel Durov has been arrested over Telegram’s failure to stop crime, including child exploitation. Free speech absolutists are shouting, “conspiracy”. Details here.

📽️ Luma Dream Machine 1.5 Arrives. Yet another AI video generator, but the new Dream Machine is turning heads, with some saying it’s much superior to OpenAI’s Sora. See it here.

🪙 The Crypto Elections. Move over, Big Oil. A report says 48% of corporate donations thus far in the 2024 Presidential Election came from crypto firms and interest groups. Find details here.

🕸️ What’s d’Appening

🎮⛓️ Sony – PlayStation Company Develops Soneium Blockchain

Sony has announced the development of Soneium, an L2 blockchain that it claims is a solution to the centralization of the web. It’s based on the Optimism L1 chain and will invite developers to build dApps, launch NFTs, etc. However, the rumor mill is all focused on whether Sony will bring PlayStation games to its new blockchain. #Soneium Read more here.

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