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Welcome back to Review Week. This week we’ll dive into OpenAI’s surprising 12-day reveal, its amazing Spotify Wrapped, and the app that tells you when you’ll die. 😰 Let’s get into it.
OpenAI gets into the holiday spirit. In a surprise event titled “12 Days of OpenAI,” the company will be livestreaming updates and new features every weekday until December 23. The biggest offers so far include a $200 per month subscription tier for premium ChatGPT users and a release of the full version of ChatGPT. His “inference” model o1. You can keep up with all the product announcements over the next few weeks by staying up to date with our live blog.
Spotify was Wrapped this weekbut many users are frustrated with the music player’s dedicated annual review feature. The biggest complaints stem from the podcast’s inclusion of AI over the other smart and creative data stories it usually presents (remember Burlington, Vermont?). Users are also annoyed by the lack of more detailed statistics and the exclusion of information they expect, such as the best types of music.
A Delaware Chancery Court judge denied Tesla’s request To review its decision to cancel CEO Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package – despite shareholders voting at the company’s annual meeting this year to “re-certify” the deal. Its decision, set out in A 103-page opinion article, It says Tesla’s legal team had “no procedural basis to overturn the outcome” and that the attempt to change its mind contains multiple fatal flaws.
This is TechCrunch Review Week, where we recap the week’s top stories. Want this delivered as a newsletter to your inbox every Saturday? Register here.
news
Google loses three main leaders: Three members of the NotebookLM team are leaving Google to start a new stealth project. It’s unclear whether the startup will focus on the things NotebookLM has become popular for, like AI-generated podcasts, or whether it will do something completely different. Read more
SpaceX is considering a large tender offer: SpaceX’s valuation continues to rise at a dizzying pace, with the company reportedly in talks to sell internal shares at a price that could reach around $350 billion. Read more
Bubamobile electric: Mercedes-Benz has delivered the first fully electric Bobamobile to the Vatican. The modified version of the G-Class SUV features a custom height-adjustable swivel seat so the Pope can address more of his audience. Read more
Intel CEO retired: Intel announced that CEO Pat Gelsinger has retired and stepped down from the company’s board of directors. According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gelsinger could receive just over $10 million in severance pay. Read more
Hello Diya: Browser has teased its next product following the popular Arc Browser – a new web browser called Dia. According to an announcement from the company, Dia will focus heavily on AI tools and is scheduled to launch in early 2025. Read more
Can ads come to Bluesky? At a StrictlyVC event, we asked Jay Graber, CEO of Bluesky, if advertising is off the table on the social network. Graber told us that Bluesky may eventually experiment with ads, but in a way that doesn’t impact the core user experience. Read more
All eyes on David Mayer: ChatGPT users discovered asking questions about “David Mayer” caused the chatbot to freeze. While this bizarre behavior has generated conspiracy theories, there is a more common cause at its heart: digital privacy requests. Read more
Get your Mac into the holiday spirit: A cute new macOS app called Festivitas can help you decorate your Mac computer screen with twinkling holiday lights hanging from your menu bar and illuminating your dock. Read more
Tesla enters the wind joke market: Tesla has revealed plans for an Apple Watch app that will do much of what the smartphone app does, but perhaps the most ridiculous update is the ability to prank your friend in the passenger seat with a whoopie cushion sound effect. Read more
Khloe Kardashian, VC: Khloe Kardashian and Kris Jenner are looking to raise $10 million for a new company called Kholoud, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Kholoud’s trademarks have been registered to include popcorn, granola and other types of snacks. Read more
Do you want to know when you will die? A new app called Death Clock claims to predict the death date of its users and offers advice on how to delay that date. My colleague Anthony Ha, who is much braver than me, tried it himself. Read more
analysis
The gross weirdness of artificial intelligence ads.
“Intelligence so great, you could swear it was from Texas.”
“Adapt your workforce to the speed of AI.”
“AI that talks to cars and talks to wildlife.”
These are examples of recent advertisements for AI products and companies, but what do they basically mean? As Maxwell Ziff writes, most AI announcements mean nothing at all. Companies tend to paint AI as an amorphous, magical character in children’s books with no specific use case, while also suggesting that it can do almost anything. We’re in a strange place with AI, and the banal texture of advertising speaks to a larger state we’re in. Most companies don’t really know what AI is for, and maybe that’s the point. Read more
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