Week in Review: Meta’s AI recruiting blitz
Welcome back to Week in Review! Lots of news for you this week — Travis Kalanick is possibly returning to the world of self-driving vehicles, CoreWeave’s CEO is now worth $10 billion, Apple users aren’t happy with how the company is promoting its new “F1” movie, and much more.
Quick note that we will be off next week for the July 4 holiday. Have a great weekend!
And another one: Meta snagged a key OpenAI researcher, Trapit Bansal, to boost its new AI superintelligence team. He’s the same guy who helped kick off OpenAI’s reasoning model work alongside Ilya Sutskever. As Zuckerberg rolls out the red carpet (and likely a giant paycheck), Meta’s brainy new squad is shaping up to be a who’s who of AI talent poached from rival labs.
Revolving doors: Travis Kalanick might be plotting his return to the self-driving car game, this time by trying to buy the U.S. arm of Pony AI, with some help from Uber, according to The New York Times. The move would mark a full-circle moment for the Uber founder, who’s been cooking up ghost kitchens since getting ousted in 2017 and now seems ready to steer back into autonomous vehicles.
A federal judge just handed AI companies a major legal win: Training on copyrighted books without permission can count as fair use. Creatives are reeling from the blow, but the court will still go to trial over Anthropic’s alleged use of pirated books to build a “central library” of everything ever written.
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News
Fashion forward: Google released a new experimental app called Doppl that lets you virtually try on outfits using an AI-generated version of yourself, all from one photo. You can mix and match looks from thrift finds, social media, or your camera roll, and even generate short videos to see how your new outfit would move in real life.
Out in the Nevada desert: JB Straubel’s Redwood Materials flipped the switch on the largest microgrid in North America, powered by 805 retired EV batteries and fueling an AI data center. With his new venture, Redwood Energy, Straubel is turning yesterday’s car batteries into tomorrow’s clean, profitable power source. And it may be outpacing the company’s core recycling business in the process.
To the moon: CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator is now worth a jaw-dropping $10 billion, just months after his AI cloud firm’s bumpy IPO. What began as a scrappy crypto mining hustle is now a GPU-fueled AI powerhouse serving OpenAI and Microsoft. But with $8.8 billion in debt and eye-watering interest rates, it’s still walking a tightrope.
Copyright issues: OpenAI quietly pulled its splashy video hyping the Sam Altman and Jony Ive partnership and $6.5 billion device startup deal. But it’s not because the deal is falling apart.
Never forget U2 in your iTunes: As a Formula 1 fan, I don’t mind any promotion for Apple’s “F1: The Movie,” but I might be in the minority. Apple users aren’t happy about the ad, which showed up in their Wallet app uninvited, reigniting complaints that Apple is using core apps to market its own content without consent.
Oh my: Just a day after Tesla began giving rides in its new robotaxis in Austin, Texas, federal safety regulators are already asking questions. The NHTSA confirmed it’s in contact with Tesla after videos surfaced showing the autonomous vehicles speeding and swerving into the wrong lane, raising fresh concerns about the safety of Tesla’s unsupervised Full Self-Driving tech, even with a human monitor riding shotgun.
Thanks for the help? With AI search features eating into publisher traffic, Google is rolling out a new tool in Ad Manager called Offerwall to help sites make money in other ways, like micropayments, surveys, or even letting readers watch ads to unlock content. Early tests show modest revenue bumps, but it’s another sign that Google knows it’s squeezing the ecosystem.
Changes afoot: Elon Musk reportedly fired Omead Afshar, Tesla’s vice president in charge of sales and manufacturing in North America and Europe — and apparently one of Musk’s inner circle members. His departure comes at a time when the company’s sales growth has vanished.
Ban hammer: Instagram and Facebook users have complained of mass bans, and now people are complaining that Facebook Groups are also being affected by mass suspensions. The reason for the mass bans is not yet known, but faulty AI-based moderation could be to blame.
Before you go
Pour one out: The iconic Windows error screen is getting a makeover nearly 40 years after its debut in the first version of Windows. Instead of a blue screen of death, users will now be shown a black screen of death. RIP to a real one.
Karyne Levy is the deputy managing editor of TechCrunch. Before joining TC, Karyne was deputy managing editor at Protocol, helping manage a newsroom of more than 40 people. Prior to that she was a senior producer at Scribd, an assigning editor at NerdWallet, a senior tech editor at Business Insider, and assistant managing editor at CNET, where she also hosted Rumor Has It for CNET TV. She lives outside San Francisco.
