Technology
OpenAI bets you’ll pay $200 a month for ChatGPT
Welcome back to the week in review. This week, we delve into OpenAI’s unexpected 12 days of reveals, the disappointing Spotify Wrapped, and an app that may inform you whenever you’re going to die. 😰 Let’s get right down to business.
OpenAI is moving into the vacation spirit. During the surprise “12 Days of OpenAI” event, the corporate will broadcast live updates and recent features every weekday until December 23. The biggest reveals to date include a $200/month subscription tier for ChatGPT advanced users and the discharge of the total ChatGPT tool. his model of “reasoning” o1. Over the subsequent few weeks, you’ll give you the option to maintain up with all of the product announcements by following our live blog.
The Spotify roundup took place this weekbut many users feel disenchanted with the music streamer’s personalized annual review feature. The biggest complaints stem from the podcast’s inclusion of AI quite than the opposite clever and inventive data stories it normally offers (remember Burlington, Vermont?). Users are also upset by the dearth of more detailed statistics and the omission of data they expect, similar to the most well-liked music genres.
A judge within the Chancery Court in Delaware denied Tesla’s request to reverse its decision to chop CEO Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package – despite shareholders voting at the corporate’s annual meeting this 12 months to “re-ratify” the deal. Her decision, described in 103-page opinion, claims that Tesla’s legal team has “no procedural basis to reverse the outcome” and that the try to change her mind was fatally flawed.
This is TechCrunch’s week in review, where we round up the largest news of the week. Want this delivered as a newsletter to your inbox every Saturday? Register here.
News
Google loses three key leaders: Three members of the Google NotebookLM team go to a recent hidden startup. It’s unclear whether the startup will deal with the things that made NotebookLM viral, similar to AI-generated podcasts, or do something else entirely. Read more
SpaceX Considers Large Tender Offer: SpaceX’s valuation is skyrocketing, and the corporate is reportedly in talks to sell insider shares at a price that may value it at around $350 billion. Read more
Electric popemobile: Mercedes-Benz delivered the primary fully electric popemobile to the Vatican. The modified version of the G-Class SUV is supplied with a special height-adjustable swivel seat, allowing the pope to appeal to a larger audience. Read more
Intel’s CEO is retiring: Intel announced that CEO Pat Gelsinger has retired and stepped down from the corporate’s board of directors. Gelsinger could receive a severance package of just over $10 million, based on documents filed with the SEC. Read more
Hello, She: The Browser Company has announced its next product as a successor to the favored Arc browser – a recent web browser called Dia. According to the corporate’s promoting, Dia will focus mainly on AI tools, and the launch is anticipated to happen in early 2025. Read more
Can ads appear on Bluesky? During our StrictlyVC event, we asked Bluesky CEO Jay Graber if promoting was not allowed on the social network. Graber told us that Bluesky may eventually experiment with promoting, but in a way that does not negatively impact the core user experience. Read more
All eyes on David Mayer: ChatGPT users discovered that asking questions on “David Mayer” caused the chatbot to crash. While the strange behavior has spawned conspiracy theories, at its core is a way more extraordinary reason – demands for digital privacy. Read more
Get your Mac in the vacation spirit: A cute recent macOS app called Festivitas will enable you to decorate your Mac screen with twinkling holiday lights hanging out of your menu bar and illuminating your dock. Read more
Tesla enters the fart market: Tesla has revealed plans for an Apple Watch app that may do a lot of what the smartphone app does, but perhaps the silliest update is the flexibility to prank a friend within the passenger seat using a pillow sound effect. Read more
Khloé Kardashian, VC: SEC filings show that Khloé Kardashian and Kris Jenner want to lift $10 million for a recent company called Khloud. Trademarks related to Khloud have been filed to cover popcorn, granola and other sorts of snacks. Read more
Do you would like to know whenever you will die? A brand new app called Death Clock claims to predict its users’ death date and offers tips about find out how to move that date forward. My friend Anthony Ha, who is far braver than me, tried it out for himself. Read more
Analysis
The extreme strangeness of AI promoting.
These are examples of the newest ads for AI products and firms, but what do they even mean? As Maxwell Zeff writes, most AI promoting means nothing. Companies have resorted to painting AI as an amorphous, magical character from kid’s books with no specific use case, while implying that it will possibly do almost anything. We find ourselves in a strange place in terms of artificial intelligence, and the banal tapestry of promoting is indicative of the larger rut we discover ourselves in. Most firms don’t really know what AI is nice for, and possibly that is the point. Read more