With more than 8 million concurrent live streams for the event, spokesperson Allison Toh says Super Bowl LVIII is now the most-watched event ever on YouTube TV — and more broadly was the “most-watched telecast in history.”
TV is shaping up to be a focus for YouTube. Earlier in February, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan announced that the platform’s subscription TV service had more than 8 million subscribers.
AI-generated obituaries litter search results, turning the deaths of private individuals into clunky, repetitive content.
Kids applying to high school are using ChatGPT to write their personal essays — and then paying editors to de-AI them to evade detection.
Consultants on platforms like Fiverr told Forbes that like other AI-generated writing, the essays have repetitive “tells” that indicate AI tools were involved. Some clunky phrases like “aligns seamlessly with my aspirations” and “stems from a deep-seated passion” understandably set off alarm bells. Then there are the innocuous words that are now apparently red flags:
“I no longer believe there’s a way to innocently use the word ‘tapestry’ in an essay; if the word ‘tapestry’ appears, it was generated by ChatGPT.”
I love living in New York because there’s always something exciting happening — like a curbside demo of a very normal-looking garbage truck lifting a bin while Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ “Empire State of Mind” is blasting in the background.
New York is undergoing “trash containerization,” meaning buildings won’t be able to just throw bags of garbage on the sidewalk (yes, it’s disgusting, and yes, the rats love it). The new trucks will be able to pick up extra large bins made to accommodate millions of pounds of trash everyday.
The New York Times reports that the outlet will stop publishing, though it’s unclear when that will happen. The Messenger hired 300 people and was aiming to generate $50 million this year. Despite the initial hiring spree, the outlet struggled to build dedicated readers:
The Messenger’s fatal flaw was over-relying on tech companies like Google and Meta for its readership instead of engaging directly with its audience through newsletters and in-person events, said S. Mitra Kalita, founder of Epicenter-NYC and URL Media.
“The Messenger was built off expertise of an internet that no longer exists,” said Ms. Kalita. “Facebook was not going to surface its links no matter how clickable those headlines were.”
[The New York Times]
What started as a kid’s dancing app has changed significantly in recent years. At a Senate hearing on child safety happening now, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said the average user on the platform is well into adulthood.
Chew is among the group of tech executives testifying today. Read his full opening statement below.
The company is building livestreaming studios in cities including Los Angeles, according to The Information. Influencers will then stream and sell products to their followers from the TikTok studios.
TikTok’s future is increasingly looking like an endless digital shopping mall: in an effort to cram more shopping links into content, the company is testing a feature that automatically identifies items in a video and prompts viewers to buy them.
[The Information]
Stanley, the maker of the obscenely large adult sippy cups that people are going feral over, confirms that yes, one part of the cups is made with lead — but that exposure to it would be “rare.” Lead in drinking cups has been a problem with other brands’ products in the past.
Some background: people are stockpiling Stanley cups in a rainbow of colors. They’re losing their jobs at Target for these things. There are Stanley cup flippers who buy up limited edition colors and sell them for $200 on Facebook Marketplace. I have a feeling the lead will not dissuade the fans.
