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Twitter is accusing Microsoft of using the social media company's data in ways that were unauthorized and never disclosed. However, for one of the Microsoft services using Twitter data, "account information outright states that it intends to allow its customers to 'go around throttling limits,'" Spiro wrote. A Microsoft spokesperson acknowledged receipt of the letter and told CNBC the company will review it and "respond appropriately." "Today we heard from a law firm representing Twitter with some questions about our previous use of the free Twitter API," the spokesperson said in an email. Read the full letter from Twitter to Microsoft, here.

☆ Google plans to use new A.I. models for ads and to help YouTube creators, sources say
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-17 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks on-stage during the Google I/O keynote session at the Google Developers Conference in Mountain View, California, on May 10, 2023. Google 's effort to rapidly add new artificial intelligence technology into its core products is making its way into the advertising world, CNBC has learned. The company has given the green light to plans for using generative AI, fueled by large language models (LLMs), to automate advertising and ad-supported consumer services, according to internal documents. For creators, the company has been using the technology to experiment with the idea of providing five video ideas based on topics that appear relevant. Specific to Google, paid search advertising conversion rates have decreased this year across most industries.

☆ SAP and Microsoft to deepen collaboration on generative AI in recruiting
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

May 15 (Reuters) - SAP (SAPG.DE) will deepen collaboration with Microsoft (MSFT.O) on joint generative AI projects in the field of personnel recruiting, the German software maker announced on Monday. SAP's SuccessFactors solutions will be integrated with Microsoft's 365 Copilot and Azure OpenAI Service to access language models and generate natural language, it added. "We're very excited about the opportunities generative AI unfolds for our industry and our customers," SAP's Chief Executive Christian Klein said. In late April, Klein said the firm would embed Microsoft-backed OpenAI's ChatGPT in its productsReporting by Andrey Sychev, Editing by Rachel MoreOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Google will label fake images created with its A.I.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Kif Leswing | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Google will embed information called a markup inside images created by its AI models, in order to warn people that they were originally created by a computer, it said on Wednesday. "Image self-labeled as AI generated," reads one example warning provided by Google. One issue facing the AI industry is that there is no reliable way to determine generated images. Google's approach is to label the images when they come out of the AI system, instead of trying to determine whether they're real later on. Google held its annual developer's conference on Wednesday, where it announced a $1,799 folding phone, and additional AI features for other Google products, including an image generator.

May 4 (Reuters) - French IT consulting group Capgemini (CAPP.PA) on Thursday reported weaker revenue growth in the first quarter of 2023, compared with the year-ago period, citing a tense economic environment with clients adopting a "wait-and-watch stance". Still, the company's quarterly revenue reached 5.73 billion euros ($6.35 billion), 10.9% above the first three months in 2022. The Paris-based company reiterated its outlook for 2023, pointing to revenue growth in a range between 4% and 7% in constant currency terms, down from a 21.1% increase in 2022, and an operating margin between 13.0% and 13.2%. "The economic context remains tense (...) It's all about postponements, but our clients' agenda hasn't changed, digital transformation remains their priority", Ezzat added. Growth in new hires remains strong in tech products, the CEO specified, including research on generative AI.

☆ Bitcoin breaks its all-time record for daily transactions amid surging interest in new network protocol
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Morgan Chittum | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

The daily number of Bitcoin transactions jumped to an all-time high on Monday. Many were from Bitcoin Ordinals, a protocol that expands the blockchain's use case. Bitcoin is currently trading at $28,790, up 2.78% in the past 24 hours. Sign up for our newsletter to get the inside scoop on what traders are talking about — delivered daily to your inbox. The daily number of Bitcoin transactions jumped to 682,300 on Monday, according to data provider BitInfoCharts, after hitting a previous high of 568,300 the day before.

☆ How Runway's idea for AI-driven video and photo editing and generation went from a "crazy" concept to a Silicon Valley darling worth half a billion dollars
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

When Runway's founders first came up with the idea for an AI art startup, they were called crazy. Now, the generative AI startup has become a fan favorite of VCs and the public alike. When Cristóbal Valenzuela began building his generative AI company Runway in 2018, investors, filmmakers, and advertisers told the cofounder that he was crazy. "They were saying, 'why would you want to build AI tools for video and filmmaking?'" Many of these features were developed hand-in-hand with customers, who often described to Runway the problems and obstacles they ran into while creating videos, Valenzuela said.

The logo of German software group SAP is pictured at the headquarters of SAP (Schweiz) AG in Regensdorf, Switzerland January 22, 2021. Revenue from SAP's lucrative cloud business grew 24% year-on-year, broadly in line with consensus. For the year, SAP expects non-IFRS operating profit in the range of 8.6-8.9 billion euros, 200 million euros less than before. Cloud revenue forecast is seen down by 1.3 billion euros to between 14 and 14.4 billion euros. "Underlying guidance is essentially unchanged, although updated to reflect the disposal of Qualtrics," Jefferies analysts wrote in a client note.

☆ Doctors are building tech startups to help fix a healthcare system reeling from crisis after crisis
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-17 | by ( Riddhi Kanetkar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

But with increasing patient demand and complexity, there are not enough doctors in the healthcare system to match that level of care, he said. With its promise of free universal healthcare, the UK's National Health Service has long been a source of national pride. A growing number of clinicians are becoming "doctorpreneurs," applying their first-hand experience in healthcare to build startups to help fill that gap. As clinicians in the UK expand their startups abroad, they predict the doctorpreneur trend will become a global phenomena — with health startups in other countries looking to the UK for inspiration. Selim noted that many doctors — across continents — are also incentivized by a unifying mission, which is to offer patients hope.

☆ Christine Lagarde says she has ‘huge confidence’ that the US won’t default on its own debt
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-16 | by ( Ramishah Maruf | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

New York CNN —Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, said she has “huge confidence” the US will not allow the country to default on its own debt during an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday. “I just cannot believe that they would let such a major, major disaster happen,” Lagarde said, adding if a debt default did happen, it would have a “very, very negative impact” both in the US and around the world. “(The US is) a major leader in economic growth around the world. It cannot let that happen,” Lagarde said. It now expects economic growth to slow from 3.4% in 2022 to 2.8% in 2023.

☆ Global Executives Say Greenwashing Remains Rife
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Rochelle Toplensky | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +4 min

Most global executives think greenwashing is widespread in their industry, and despite customers becoming more vocal about preferring sustainable brands, many companies are cutting corners on their environmental, social and corporate governance initiatives. PREVIEWThe risk of greenwashing is increasing with crackdowns on overstated green claims on both sides of the Atlantic. Despite that threat, the figures are consistent with last year’s findings: Nearly 60% say their own organization is overstating its sustainability methods. Nearly three-quarters of executives said they want to advance sustainability efforts but don’t actually know how to go about doing it. Most executives surveyed—85%—said customers and clients are becoming more vocal about their preference for engaging with sustainable brands.

☆ How digital ecosystems can build a closer, more inclusive world
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Sponsor Post | Created Insider Studios With Tata Communications | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

How to build a world that looks after everyoneThe conference highlighted the need to embrace equity in all walks of life. Tata Communications’ Genius Wong pledges to build a more inclusive digital economy and work with Georgette Tan (pictured) and the team at United Women Singapore to bridge the digital divide. Adopting Tata Communications' remote broadcast solution helped his organization reduce its normal on-site staff count by over 30% without compromising content delivery. Tata Communications leadership along with SMS Tan Kiat How stand together to build a secure and inclusive digital economy. Find out how Tata Communications is hyperconnecting Formula 1 fans globally to the world-class track-side F1 experience.

☆ Elon Musk and Substack are beefing. Here's a rundown of the back and forth between the Twitter CEO and the blogging site.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-09 | by ( Hannah Getahun | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Twitter users began noticing Substack links were being suppressed beginning Thursday evening. One of these claims is that Substack was trying to "download a massive portion of the Twitter database," Musk wrote on Twitter Saturday, to help support its recently announced Twitter competitor, Substack Notes. Thursday evening: Users begin reporting that Substack links are being suppressedSubstack bloggers who use Twitter to promote their work began noticing Thursday evening the Substack links seemed to be suppressed on Twitter, and Twitter users who tried to interact with posts that contained Substack links would receive an error message. Saturday: Musk clarifies that Twitter never blocked Twitter notesMusk clarified in a tweet early Saturday that Substack links were never blocked on Twitter. In the same post, Musk called Substack Notes a "Twitter clone" and claimed that Substack was "trying to download a massive portion of the Twitter database to bootstrap" their new feature.

☆ Vector database Chroma scored $18 million in seed funding at a $75 million valuation. Here's why its technology is key to helping generative AI startups.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Chroma helps manage vector embeddings, or numerical representations of data AI models can process. The startup raised $18 million in seed funding at a $75 million valuation led by Quiet Capital. The company recently closed a $18 million seed round led by Quiet Capital at a $75 million valuation. Originally, Chroma's tech aimed to serve machine learning engineers who were training and deploying AI models. Because this limits the model's context window, this approach tends to prevent hallucinations, or confident but incorrect responses from AI, Troynikov told Insider.

LONDON, April 5 (Reuters) - As "fragmentation" of politics and economics becomes the new buzzword for a world that appears to be splintering into blocs, the related costs of the new order are only now being totted up. Corporate rethinking of foreign direct investment (FDI) - bricks-and-mortar developments overseas as well as mergers and acquisitions - would make the hit even scarier. And if FDI fragmentation is defined by a permanent rise in cross-bloc barriers to imported investment inputs, the IMF said developments could cut world output by 2% in the long term. "Fragmentation of the global economy will likely put inflation at a higher structural level, and the cost of capital will likely go up, squeezing low-quality and leveraged companies." Reuters GraphicsBIS chart on global trade as share of GDPBCG projections on world trade to 2031The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.

Text-to-image tools like OpenAI's DALL-E, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and DreamUp can render images in various styles in seconds with a few words of direction. Now those purchasers can use the artist's work without compensating the artist at all," the class-action court filing against Stable Diffusion states. Stable Diffusion did not provide a comment by press time. Companies are selling AI-generated prints and Stable Diffusion can learn to copy an artist's style within hours. Given how new generative AI is, it's not surprising the legal system has yet to catch up.

☆ Premarket stocks: How big of a problem is greedflation?
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

“Executives at SVB and Signature [Bank] took wild risks and must be held accountable for exploding their banks,” Warren said. Republican Senators say the Fed’s focus on climate change led to banking turmoilRepublican Senators repeatedly insinuated on Tuesday that the recent US banking turmoil came as a result of the Federal Reserve’s focus on climate change. In his opening statement, Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the ranking member of the banking committee, called the Fed’s focus on climate change a waste of time. It’s what our supervisors do all the time.”In an interview with Montana Public Radio in 2014, Daines said that “the jury’s still out” on whether climate change is real. The public reasonably expects supervisors to require that banks understand, and appropriately manage, their material risks, including the financial risks of climate change.”

☆ This fintech enables banks to offer charitable giving services. Check out the 13-slide pitch deck Spiral used to raise $28 million.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-28 | by ( Callum Burroughs | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Spiral, a fintech startup that helps banks offer charitable giving services, has raised $28 million. The startup believes it can help banks differentiate their brand and attract Gen Z customers. Check out Spiral's 13-slide Series A pitch deck below:A startup that enables financial institutions to embed charitable giving into their services has raised $28 million in fresh funds. New York City-based Spiral has developed a system it calls "impact-as-a-service" that it offers to banks, credit unions, and other financial service providers. The startup believes it can help banks differentiate their brand, attract Gen Z customers who are keen on more sustainable products, and increase customer loyalty and retention.

☆ Bitcoin is poised to blow up Africa's $86 billion banking system
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-26 | by ( Mackenzie Sigalos | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +16 min

Then there's mobile money, which has been around since the early 2000s. Africa's mobile money transactions rose 39% to more than $700 billion in 2021, according to data from the GSM Association, a non-profit representing mobile network operators worldwide. That cash network was extraordinarily difficult and expensive to build, which is why there aren't a lot of direct competitors. Bitnob is SMS-based and piggybacks on the mobile money system, making it easier for people to send money directly into bank accounts and mobile money wallets in African countries. "We're able to settle into bank accounts or mobile money accounts, without the recipients having to interact with bitcoin themselves," Parah tells CNBC.

☆ Some US volunteers in Ukraine have become embroiled in infighting that has undermined the war effort, with one individual having lied about being a Marine: NYT
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-25 | by ( John L. Dorman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

The squabbles have not only threatened the war effort, but have exposed deeply consequential lies. Some volunteers have left the war effort in Ukraine after questions arose about their backgrounds. Foreign Legion volunteers in Ukraine. And while Ukrainian officials estimated that there were possibly 20,000 Legion volunteers, that number was officially much smaller. Lackey told Legion members that he was a Marine and said that he had been an assistant manager at LongHorn Steakhouse.

☆ Ex-Google employees' A.I. chatbot startup valued at $1 billion after Andreessen Horowitz funding
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Character.AI, an artificial intelligence start-up founded by two former Google employees, is capitalizing on venture capitalists' unquenchable thirst for deals in technology's hottest space. The two-year-old company said on Thursday that it raised $150 million at a $1 billion valuation in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Andreessen Horowitz has been a significant player in driving up prices in both markets. The firm announced a $4.5 billion crypto fund in mid-2022 as the digital currency market was in freefall. A year earlier, it added to its investment in audio app Clubhouse, valuing the early-stage startup at $4 billion.

☆ Amazon's devices head ditched the Echo in his living room for a smart TV
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-22 | by ( Annie Palmer | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Amazon said Wednesday it has sold more than 200 million Fire TV devices globally, up from 150 million last January. "I don't have an Echo in there anymore, I just use my TV," Limp said. Limp, as you'd expect, rejects the idea that an Alexa-powered Fire TV will cannibalize the company's Echo devices. A portion of the layoffs, which are expected to total 27,000 employees, landed in Limp's organization, which oversees the development of products such as Alexa, Echo smart speakers and Kindle e-readers. WATCH: Amazon TV is next step for company to move into internet of things

☆ China's answer to ChatGPT? Baidu shares tumble as it unveils Ernie Bot
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( Eduardo Baptista | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

"For sure we cannot say that it's perfect," said Baidu CEO Robin Li, presenting Ernie Bot. But the limited presentation of Ernie Bot, restricted to brief, pre-recorded videos, failed to match market hopes and Baidu's Hong Kong-listed shares in the firm tumbled as much as 10% before clawing back some ground. Starting Thursday, Ernie Bot will be open to an initial group of users with invitation codes, and companies can apply to embed the bot into their products via Baidu's cloud platform. "Ernie Bot is not a tool of confrontation between China and the United States," he said. Chinese state media outlets and a Shaolin temple were among the first sign-ups to become Ernie Bot partners.

The company's Ernie bot is based off its AI-driven deep learning model, Ernie - short for "Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration". During the presentation at Baidu's Beijing headquarters that was also livestreamed over nine platforms, Li cautioned it was not perfect. "After the release of ChatGPT, only Baidu has made a benchmark product among the major tech companies in the world," it said. "We continue to advise investors to patiently hold BIDU shares as the best 'national champion' play in China’s (semi-segregated) AI space," he said. "Ernie Bot is not a tool of confrontation between China and the United States," he said.

☆ To Counter China, U.S. and Allies Seek to Make Militaries ‘Interchangeable’
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-12 | by ( Mike Cherney | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

A U.S. Marine and an Australian soldier taking part in an exercise in Townsville, Australia. When the top general for the U.S. Air Force in the Pacific traveled overseas recently to meet with U.S. allies, responsibility for 46,000 personnel across the region fell to an unusual second-in-command: an air vice-marshal from the Australian air force. The Australian officer was appointed recently to be one of two deputy commanders for the U.S. Air Force in the region at its base in Hawaii. Although it isn’t unusual for people from friendly nations to embed in the U.S. military, it is the first time an allied officer has held such a top operational role in the U.S. Air Force’s Pacific command.

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