German data protection official wants Apple, Google to remove DeepSeek from the country’s app stores

A German data protection official has reported Chinese AI app DeepSeek to Apple and Google, saying the app transfers users’ information to China illegally. Meike Kamp, Berlin’s commissioner for data protection and freedom of information, told the companies that DeepSeek did not provide “convincing evidence” that users’ data was protected as required by EU laws. … Read more

Big Tech lands an early win in legal battles against publishers

This week, two major AI companies scored early wins in court, with federal judges siding with Meta and Anthropic in separate lawsuits over how their models were trained on copyrighted material. The decisions represent the first real legal validation of AI companies’ argument that training models on books, images, and other creative works can be … Read more

Meta is offering multimillion-dollar pay for AI researchers, but not $100M ‘signing bonuses’

Meta is definitely offering hefty multimillion-dollar pay packages to AI researchers when wooing them to its new superintelligence lab. But no one is really getting a $100 million “signing bonus,” according to a poached researcher and comments from a leaked internal meeting. During a company-wide all-hands meeting on Thursday leaked to The Verge, some of … Read more

Meta reportedly hires four more researchers from OpenAI

Looks like Meta isn’t done poaching talent from OpenAI. Earlier this week, TechCrunch reported that Meta had hired influential OpenAI researcher Trapit Bansal, and according to The Wall Street Journal, it also hired three other researchers from the company. Now The Information is reporting four more Meta hires from OpenAI: Researchers Shengjia Zhao, Jiahui Yu, … Read more

Authors call on publishers to limit their use of AI

An open letter from authors including Lauren Groff, Lev Grossman, R.F. Kuang, Dennis Lehane, and Geoffrey Maguire calls on book publishers to pledge to limit their use of AI tools, for example by committing to only hire human audiobook narrators. The letter argues that authors’ work has been “stolen” by AI companies: “Rather than paying … Read more