Google’s Waymo has expanded its coverage area by 80 miles in California, for a total of 250 square miles, The Verge reports. Waymo recently surpassed a quarter of a million paid autonomous rides per week across its markets in San Francisco, LA, Austin, and Phoenix. Teslahasn’t yet disclosed how big its geofenced area of operation will be when it serves its first paid robotaxi ride in Austin next week.
Apple plans to pay Google about $1 billion a year to use the search giant’s AI model for Siri, Bloomberg reports. Google’s model — at 1.2 trillion parameters — is way bigger than Apple’s current models.
The deal aims to help the iPhone maker improve its lagging AI efforts, powering a new Siri slated to come out this spring.
Apple had previously been considering using OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, but decided in the end to go with Google as it works toward improving its own internal models. Google, which makes a much less widely sold phone, the Pixel, has succeeded in bringing consumer AI to smartphone users where Apple has failed.
Google’s antitrust ruling in September helped safeguard the two companies’ partnerships — including the more than $20 billion Google pays Apple each year to be the default search on its devices — as long as they aren’t exclusive.
Apple had previously been considering using OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, but decided in the end to go with Google as it works toward improving its own internal models. Google, which makes a much less widely sold phone, the Pixel, has succeeded in bringing consumer AI to smartphone users where Apple has failed.
Google’s antitrust ruling in September helped safeguard the two companies’ partnerships — including the more than $20 billion Google pays Apple each year to be the default search on its devices — as long as they aren’t exclusive.
It’s not quite WeWork’s community-adjusted EBITDA but it’s also not quite a real number: Netflix announced today that it has 190 million “monthly active viewers” for its lower-cost advertising tiers. The company came up with MAVs by measuring the number of subscribers who’ve watched “at least 1 minute of ads on Netflix per month” and multiplies that by what its research assumes is the number of people in that household.
The metric builds on Netflix’s previous attempt at measuring ad viewership, monthly active users, which is the number of profiles that have watched ads (94 million as of May). The MAV measurement, of course, is a lot bigger and bigger numbers are more attractive to advertisers, who are spending more and more on streaming platforms.
“After speaking to our partners, we know that what they want most is an accurate, clear, and transparent representation of who their ads are reaching,” Netflix President of Advertising Amy Reinhard explained in a press release. “Our move to viewers means we can give a more comprehensive count of how many people are actually on the couch, enjoying our can’t-miss series, films, games and live events with friends and family.”
Netflix last reported its long-followed and more easily understood paid membership numbers at the beginning of the year, when it crossed 300 million.
The metric builds on Netflix’s previous attempt at measuring ad viewership, monthly active users, which is the number of profiles that have watched ads (94 million as of May). The MAV measurement, of course, is a lot bigger and bigger numbers are more attractive to advertisers, who are spending more and more on streaming platforms.
“After speaking to our partners, we know that what they want most is an accurate, clear, and transparent representation of who their ads are reaching,” Netflix President of Advertising Amy Reinhard explained in a press release. “Our move to viewers means we can give a more comprehensive count of how many people are actually on the couch, enjoying our can’t-miss series, films, games and live events with friends and family.”
Netflix last reported its long-followed and more easily understood paid membership numbers at the beginning of the year, when it crossed 300 million.
Ahead of Tesla’s CEO compensation vote at its annual shareholder meeting tomorrow, The Wall Street Journal did a deep dive into how Elon Musk, who stands to gain $1 trillion if he stays at Tesla and hits a number of milestones, spends his time.
Like a similar piece from The New York Times in September, this one has a lot of fun details. Read it all, but here are some to tide you over:
Musk spent so much time at xAI this summer that he held meetings there with Tesla employees.
He personally oversaw the design of a sexy chatbot named Ani, who sports pigtails and skimpy clothes and for whom “employees were compelled to turn over their biometric data” to train.
The chatbot, which users can ask to “change into lingerie or fantasize about a romantic encounter with them,” has helped boost user numbers, which are still way lower than ChatGPT’s.
Executives and board members have told top investors in the past few weeks that they can’t make Musk work at Tesla full time. Board Chair Robyn Denholm explained that in his free time, Musk “likes to create companies, and they’re not necessarily Tesla companies.”
Like a similar piece from The New York Times in September, this one has a lot of fun details. Read it all, but here are some to tide you over:
Musk spent so much time at xAI this summer that he held meetings there with Tesla employees.
He personally oversaw the design of a sexy chatbot named Ani, who sports pigtails and skimpy clothes and for whom “employees were compelled to turn over their biometric data” to train.
The chatbot, which users can ask to “change into lingerie or fantasize about a romantic encounter with them,” has helped boost user numbers, which are still way lower than ChatGPT’s.
Executives and board members have told top investors in the past few weeks that they can’t make Musk work at Tesla full time. Board Chair Robyn Denholm explained that in his free time, Musk “likes to create companies, and they’re not necessarily Tesla companies.”
In October, Meta announced that its updated Instagram Teen Accounts would by default limit content to the “PG-13” rating.
The Motion Picture Association, which created the film rating standard, was not happy about Meta’s use of the rating, and sent the company a cease and desist letter, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
The letter from MPA’s law firm reportedly said the organization worked for decades to earn the public’s trust in the rating system, and it does not want Meta’s AI-powered content moderation failures to blow back on its work:
“Any dissatisfaction with Meta’s automated classification will inevitably cause the public to question the integrity of the MPA’s rating system.”
Meta told the WSJ that it never claimed or implied the content on Instagram Teen Accounts would be certified by the MPA.
The letter from MPA’s law firm reportedly said the organization worked for decades to earn the public’s trust in the rating system, and it does not want Meta’s AI-powered content moderation failures to blow back on its work:
“Any dissatisfaction with Meta’s automated classification will inevitably cause the public to question the integrity of the MPA’s rating system.”
Meta told the WSJ that it never claimed or implied the content on Instagram Teen Accounts would be certified by the MPA.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, like prediction markets, thinks Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s $1 trillion pay package will receive “overwhelming shareholder approval” at the company’s annual shareholder meeting Thursday afternoon. The Tesla bull, like the Tesla board, has maintained that approval of the performance-based pay package is integral to keeping Musk at the helm of the company, which in turn is integral to the success of the company. Ives is also confident that investors will back the proposal allowing Tesla to invest in another of Musk’s companies, xAI.
“We expect shareholders to show overwhelming support tomorrow for Musk and the xAI stake further turning Tesla into an AI juggernaut with the autonomous and robotics future on the horizon,” Ives wrote in a note this morning.
The compensation package has received pushback, including from Tesla’s sixth-biggest institutional investor, Norway’s Norges Bank Investment Management, and from proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services.
