OpenAI secures record-breaking $40 billion funding, valuation soars to $300 billion

OpenAI has closed a historic $40 billion funding round, marking the largest private tech investment ever recorded. The deal, led by SoftBank with a $30 billion commitment, values the ChatGPT maker at $300 billion, placing it among the world’s most valuable private companies alongside SpaceX ($350 billion) and ByteDance. The investment syndicate includes Microsoft, Coatue, …

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ChatGPT’s new image generator goes viral, causing server overload

OpenAI’s rollout of a new image generation feature in ChatGPT has sparked a viral trend of Studio Ghibli-style images that has overwhelmed the company’s servers. Within 24 hours of the feature’s release, social media platforms were flooded with AI-generated images mimicking the distinctive style of the famous Japanese animation studio. The new image generation capability, …

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New AGI benchmark shows major gap between human and AI reasoning abilities

The Arc Prize Foundation has released ARC-AGI-2, a new benchmark designed to measure artificial general intelligence that has proven extremely difficult for even the most advanced AI systems. This second-generation test specifically evaluates test-time reasoning abilities – requiring AI to adapt to novel, never-before-seen tasks rather than relying on memorization. The results reveal a stark …

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Perplexity expands e-commerce features with Firmly.ai partnership

AI search engine Perplexity is partnering with Seattle-based startup Firmly.ai to expand its shopping capabilities. According to Perplexity chief business officer Dmitry Shevelenko, in an interview with Fortune’s Jason Del Rey, over 150 merchants have expressed interest in selling through the platform since its shopping tools launched in November. The Firmly.ai integration will allow thousands …

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US court rules AI cannot author copyrighted works, citing human requirement in law

A federal appeals court has ruled that works created solely by artificial intelligence cannot receive copyright protection under US law. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously upheld the US Copyright Office’s decision to reject computer scientist Stephen Thaler’s attempt to register an artwork created by his AI system called the …

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Meta’s Llama AI models reach 1 billion downloads

Meta’s Llama AI models have reached 1 billion downloads, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement on Threads. Kyle Wiggers reports that this represents a 53% increase from the 650 million downloads recorded in December 2024. The models, available under a proprietary license, power Meta’s AI assistant across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Despite commercial restrictions in …

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Hollywood artists oppose AI companies’ attempts to weaken copyright laws

Over 400 Hollywood creative leaders have signed an open letter opposing AI companies’ efforts to weaken copyright protections. According to Todd Spangler of Variety, the letter was sent to the Trump administration’s Office of Science and Technology Policy in response to submissions from OpenAI and Google. Ben Stiller, Mark Ruffalo, Cate Blanchett, and Paul McCartney …

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Report: Apple’s leadership reorganizes as Siri falls behind in AI race

In a major shake-up of Apple’s executive structure, CEO Tim Cook has reportedly reassigned Vision Pro creator Mike Rockwell to lead the troubled Siri virtual assistant team, according to a Bloomberg report by Mark Gurman. Rockwell will now report to software chief Craig Federighi, removing Siri completely from AI head John Giannandrea’s authority. The reorganization …

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Google’s Gemini model used to remove image watermarks

A recent discovery shows that Google’s Gemini 2.0 Flash AI model can remove watermarks from images, including those from Getty Images and other stock photo providers. According to reporting by Kyle Wiggers for TechCrunch, users on social media platforms have been sharing examples of this controversial capability. Unlike some competing AI models such as Anthropic’s …

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Amazon to end local processing of Alexa requests

Amazon will eliminate a privacy feature that allowed Echo users to process Alexa requests locally without sending voice recordings to the cloud. According to Scharon Harding at Ars Technica, this change takes effect March 28 and coincides with the rollout of Alexa+, Amazon’s new subscription-based assistant. All voice commands to Echo devices will now be …

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