AI

Per a regulatory filing, Google will pay SpaceX $920 million per month from October 2026 through June 2029, as reported by TechCrunch.

The CEO pitched the idea as a way to bring economic benefits from AI to the public, according to NOTUS, which added that Altman first pitched the idea to President Donald Trump early last year.

State lawmakers passed a bill that, if signed by Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, would restrict AI companies from letting teens use chatbots that suggest they’re human. It comes after some AI companies have faced lawsuits (some of which have settled) over allegations their chatbots coaxed teen users toward suicide or self-harm.

Hoffman, who joined Microsoft’s board in 2017, won’t stand for reelection at the company’s next shareholder meeting, as reported earlier by Bloomberg.

After removing some features from the AI image-maker in February, Google has shut down the app completely and directs users to Gemini instead, as reported by 9to5Google. Pixel Studio launched in 2024 alongside the Pixel 9.

The bubble is very delicate, even a social media slop filter might burst it.

I wasn’t able to enable it in Google’s Chrome Canary developer sandbox, but Windows Report got it working using a Ctrl+Shift+Space keyboard shortcut on Windows. It opens as a standalone window centered on the screen, with AI Mode at the heart of the experience.

OG Silicon Valley founder / CEO types just can’t resist the lure of AI. At least Chesky will reportedly remain at Airbnb, unlike Dropbox’s Drew Houston who jumped ship entirely with his billions.

Adrian Bliss never misses. I might actually start being nicer to my Google Nest orbs.

OpenAI is building upon its “dreaming” feature that allows ChatGPT to sort through your conversations and save information in the background. With the update, OpenAI says ChatGPT is better at updating memories and “remembering” your preferences across conversations.

Meta isn’t happy about the framing of the report.

RSI is also defined as an “AI system capable of fully autonomously designing and developing its own successor,” per Anthropic’s blog post. “We are not there yet, and recursive self-improvement is not inevitable. But it could come sooner than most institutions are prepared for.”

The Book of Life director Jorge Gutierrez cancelled an AI animation collaboration with Amazon last week following massive backlash. A new project by two Pixar alums, premiering at Tribeca Film Festival this weekend, shows that not every use of the tech is about fast, cheap slop.

Following a report from a bitcoin policy think tank and claims from Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary, three Republican lawmakers asked the Trump administration to brief them about investigations into alleged foreign influence campaigns. The lawmakers are concerned that adversaries are pushing anti-AI sentiment to slow US infrastructure development.

The company just raised $250 million in November against a $2.45 billion valuation — already a staggering jump from its roughly $500 million valuation in 2024. Now it’s more than doubled its valuation to $5.4 billion in just over six months, suggesting that investors haven’t been scared off by looming lawsuits.

Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-CA) and Lori Trahan (D-MA) are releasing a highly anticipated 269-page draft bill as a launching pad for discussion about federal AI regulation, Politico reported. In a Bloomberg Law op-ed, the lawmakers said a national standard is necessary to extend protections across state lines.

I enjoyed this piece from Ted Chiang in The Atlantic because it’s a well-deserved smack in the face to the clowns who suggest LLMs might be conscious. Nope, we’re just falling for one of the most obvious confidence tricks of all time: giving in to “someone” who appears to like us.

Young people do hate AI. “Creatively, I get no enjoyment from using those tools. It defeats the purpose entirely for me,” 20-year-old director of A24’s horror hit Backrooms told The Australian. “To me, generative AI feels less like innovation than a symptom of a broader cultural and economic rot.” Read more about Backrooms on The Verge:

You all know how much we here at The Verge love market consolidation. SwitchBot’s acquisition of Nanoleaf offers all that, plus a sprinkling of something extra.

Grimes County, Texas, awarded the company a property tax exemption for its planned $55 billion Terafab semiconductor plant. Local residents seem to feel the same way about the project as many do about data centers, and this tax break won’t help. As local landowner Rhonda Nesloney put it in court:

The company is lagging behind Anthropic, OpenAI, and even Microsoft when it comes to AI coding tools, but 404 Media reports it’s found a novel way to expand its training base of code: offering to pay Android developers for access to the innards of their apps.

CNBC reports details from a new filing ahead of SpaceX’s IPO on June 12th and notes a mention that xAI, which merged with SpaceX earlier this year, bought $269 million worth of Tesla megapack batteries in April.

According to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, ChatGPT reached the milestone last month, roughly three years after launching, Reuters reports. It apparently passed 1 billion MAUs faster than the other apps that have hit the benchmark, including Google Maps, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.

According to the Steam page for Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis:

AI data center projects are continuing to pop up across the US, with frequent opposition from locals concerned about their impact. Here are a few recent articles about the projects:

Microsoft has a vision for its future AI hardware concepts, including an AI ID badge. It doesn’t feel entirely new, but it does feel very Microsoft.