James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
Meta is laying off hundreds of staff across multiple divisions
Meta Platforms Inc. today began laying off hundreds of employees, with the company’s Reality Labs virtual reality division hit the hardest. It’s believed the number of staff who will find themselves without a job could number as many as 700, as Meta bets big on artificial intelligence and winds down its efforts to get its customers ...
Meta ordered to pay $375 million in major child safety trial
A jury today found Meta Platforms Inc. violated New Mexico law in a “historic” case that accused the company of misleading consumers about the safety of its platforms and failing to protect children from exploitation. “The jury’s verdict is a historic victory for every child and family who has paid the price for Meta’s choice ...
Jeff Bezos is planning to raise $100 billion to speed up manufacturing automation
Jeff Bezos has reportedly been traveling around the Middle East and Southeast Asia trying to raise in the region of $100 billion to transform major industries with artificial intelligence. As first reported today by the Wall Street Journal, Bezos has met with some of the region’s largest asset managers and presented prospective investors with a plan ...
Court rules Perplexity’s AI bots can stay on Amazon
A U.S. appeals court has suspended a California judge’s order that had barred Perplexity AI Inc. from using its artificial intelligence-powered shopping agent, Comet, on Amazon.com Inc.’s marketplace. The reprieve was issued by a two-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. How long it will last isn’t certain. Circuit Judges Eric Miller and ...
Teens launch lawsuit against xAI over Grok deepfakes
Three Tennessee teenagers launched a lawsuit today against Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok for allegedly generating sexually explicit deepfake images of them without their consent. Earlier this year, X Corp. met with widespread criticism after reports emerged saying there had been a proliferation of deepfake sexualized images being promulgated on various platforms, images generated by ...
Grammarly shuts down ‘Expert Review’ after pushback from the real experts
After lighting the ire of journalists, academics, and authors this week, Superhuman Platform Inc. this week pulled a feature from Grammarly that impersonated writers. The “Expert Review” let users of Grammarly improve their writing by selecting from a roster of “leading professionals, authors, and subject-matter experts,” whose artificial-intelligence-generated advice imitated the style and judgment of ...
Meta told by Oversight Board better moderation is needed for AI-generated deepfakes
Meta Platforms Inc. has been warned by its Oversight Board that it needs to do a lot more about the “proliferation” of deepfake videos shared on its platforms made by artificial intelligence tools. The 21-person board told the company today that its current policies around misinformation aren’t enough. They said Meta should invest in better detection ...
Anthropic launches tool to monitor jobs lost to AI systems
Anthropic PBC today announced it has introduced a detection tool that measures artificial intelligence’s displacement of jobs. The forecasts so far of what AI will do to the labor force have ranged from dystopian to mild. No one knows what will happen, although Anthropic PBC Chief Executive Dario Amodei has been at the forefront of ...
Google responds to lawsuit alleging Gemini coached a man to kill himself
The father of a man who committed suicide after interactions with Google LLC’s Gemini chatbot launched a lawsuit today alleging that Gemini fueled his son’s delusions. Thirty-six-year-old Florida resident Jonathan Gavalas started using Gemini last year for help with writing and shopping. Court documents show he was impressed, writing after the company introduced the Gemini ...
Anthropic makes switching from competitors easier with new transfer memory tool
As Anthropic PBC’s Claude chatbot moves to the top of the app charts after a spat with the Trump administration, the company has introduced a memory import feature that will allow new customers to import their conversations from rival chatbots and start again with Claude. Late last week, Anthropic fell out with the Pentagon after ...