The NYTimes sues OpenAI + Microsoft

Happy New Year! Here’s everything important that happened in AI over the last 2 weeks. 

Today’s Highlights:

📰 News:  The New York Times sues OpenAI + Microsoft, alleging AI chatbots were trained on millions of its articles without authorization

💰 Funding: Perplexity AI raised $70M+ for its AI-powered search engine that is aimed at challenging Google Search

⚡️ Top News Stories:

1. The New York Times sues OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging AI chatbots were trained on millions of its articles without authorization.

• The lawsuit claims millions of Times articles were used to train chatbots that now compete with the newspaper as a source of information.

• The Times seeks billions in damages and the destruction of chatbot models and training data using its copyrighted material.

• The Times approached Microsoft and OpenAI in April for a resolution but did not reach an agreement.

• OpenAI expressed surprise and disappointment at the lawsuit, emphasizing respect for content creators' rights.

• The lawsuit could set a precedent for the legal treatment of generative AI technologies and their use of copyrighted content.

• The Times's lawsuit also views ChatGPT and similar AI systems as potential competitors in the news industry.

• Meanwhile OpenAI has offered media firms licensing deals for their news articles.

• Some media firms have been offered as little as $1M to $5M annually.

• These offers have been made to several executives who have recently negotiated with OpenAI and the amounts offered are considered small, even for smaller media firms.

2. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts highlights AI's growing role in law in the court’s official year-end report, cautioning against overreliance and potential risks.

• Roberts acknowledged AI's likely increased role in the work of attorneys and judges but did not foresee full replacement by AI. He predicted that human judges would still be necessary, especially in areas requiring human judgment.

• Roberts envisioned a future where legal research without AI assistance would be "unimaginable." AI could also provide access to legal resources for Americans who otherwise couldn't afford them.

• However, Roberts warned of risks and drawbacks, including privacy invasion and dehumanization of the law. Popular AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Google's Bard can often produce false information, known as "hallucinations."

• As an example, Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's former lawyer, mistakenly used AI-generated non-existent court cases in legal filings.

• Roberts urged legal workers to exercise "caution and humility" when relying on AI for their work.

• The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals proposed a rule requiring lawyers to certify their use of AI in drafting briefs or confirm human fact-checking and editing of AI-generated text.

3. Google's DeepMind Robotics announces AutoRT system, leveraging Visual Language Models (VLMs) for situational awareness and video input for robotic learning, paving the way for more intuitive robot training and increased control. 

4. A list of over 4,700 artists, including Tim Burton, Hayao Miyazaki, Seth MacFarlane, and Wes Anderson, was revealed to have been used to train a popular AI art generator. The list was revealed  after being used as a court exhibit in a lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI, DeviantArt, and Runway AI which have been accused of misusing copyrighted work to train their AI systems

5. Stanford students have built an AI tool that can guess geolocation just from the background of a photo. 

6. Google layoffs are expected to impact 30,000 employees in 2024, primarily in the ad sales division, as a result of the new AI tech.

7. Microsoft introduces a new Copilot key for Windows 11 PCs, the first major change to the Windows PC keyboard in nearly three decades, marking a significant shift towards AI-powered computing. 

8. Samsung plans to unveil the next generation of Galaxy phones on Jan 17, which are planned to heavily feature new AI features.

9. Intel is spinning out a new enterprise-focused AI software company, Articul8 AI, to expand into the generative AI market.

10. OpenAI annual revenue is reportedly over $1.6Bn.

11. Anthropic projects to reach $850M in annual revenue. 

💰 Top Funding News:

1. Shield AI, a defense tech company building an AI pilot, expanded its Series F by $300M, to a total of $500M.

2. Perplexity AI, a search engine leveraging gen-AI, raised a $73.6M Series B led by IVP, w/ NEA, Elad Gil, Nat Friedman, and Databricks, as well as new investors NVIDIA, Jeff Bezos, Tobias Lutke, Bessemer Venture Partners, Naval Ravikant, Balaji Srinivasan, Guillermo Rauch, Austen Allred, Factorial Funds, and Kindred Ventures, among others.

3. Robin AI, an AI-powered legal copilot that speeds up the process of drafting and negotiating contracts, raised a $26M Series B led by Temasek.

4. Intrinsic, a startup that provides technical infrastructure to support trust and safety teams for moderating both user- and AI-generated content, raised a $3.1M Seed Round from Urban Innovation Fund, Y Combinator, 645 Ventures, and Okta

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