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August 15, 2025, 6:40 PM
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| Jonathan Vanian / CNBC: |
Senator Josh Hawley says he will investigate Meta after a report on its AI policy allowing sensual chats with kids, tells Meta to produce docs by September 19 — Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said Friday that he will investigate Meta following a report that the company approved rules allowing …
More: New York Times, Engadget, TechCrunch, Josh Hawley, Reuters, San Francisco Chronicle, 1819 News, Yahoo Finance, Ars Technica, Baltimore Sun, Simon Willison's Weblog, MLex, Euractiv, Townhall, Fox News, MobileSyrup, PCWorld, Washington Examiner, PC Gamer, The Hill, and Mashable
Bluesky: @dimitridrekonja. X: @hawleymo, @senkatiebritt, @senkatiebritt, @sayssimonson, @benbrodydc, @hawleymo, @emrwilkins, and @realdcochrane
Forums: r/technology and r/technology
| Cecilia D'Anastasio / Bloomberg: |
Roblox shares closed down 6.34% on Friday after the company was accused in two lawsuits of failing to sufficiently protect youngsters on its platform — Roblox Corp. shares fell more than 6% Friday after the company, which operates an online video-game service popular with children … | Todd Spangler / Variety: |
| Monique Mulima / Bloomberg: |
Winklevoss twins' Gemini files for a US IPO and reports a $282.5M net loss on $67.9M revenue in H1 2025, vs. a $41.4M net loss on $73.5M revenue a year earlier — Gemini Space Station Inc., led by the billionaire Winklevoss twins, filed for an IPO as the cohort of crypto businesses seeking to list on public markets continues to swell.
More: The Block, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, PR Newswire, Reuters, and Crypto Briefing
| Ina Fried / Axios: |
An interview with Sam Altman on spending billions on AI infrastructure, wanting Chrome if it's really for sale, AI models saturating the chat use case, and more — OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is still talking like the future belongs to him, a week after the rollout of the company's latest model raised …
More: Platformer, Bloomberg, The Verge, Tech in Asia, Implicator.ai, Sherwood News, and Cautious Optimism
X: @stshank, @inafried, @shiringhaffary, and @verge
Forums: r/singularity and r/artificial
| Alex Heath / The Verge: |
Sam Altman says OpenAI “totally screwed up some things” on the GPT-5 rollout and confirms plans to fund a brain-computer interface startup to rival Neuralink — Over dinner, OpenAI CEO's addressed criticism of GPT-5's rollout, the AI bubble, brain-computer interfaces, buying Google Chrome, and more.
More: CNBC, Wired, Bloomberg, The Register, Gizmodo, The Verge, Mashable, The Crypto Times, The Decoder, Livemint, Crypto Briefing, Futurism, iPhone in Canada, Inc.com, Tech in Asia, Business Insider, and Breitbart
Bluesky: @davidcrespo, @warnercrocker, @alexeheath.com, @adeincambodia, and @jake—k.bsky.social. Threads: @crumbler
X: @shakeelhashim and @laurengoode
Forums: r/singularity, r/OpenAI, and Slashdot
| Bloomberg: |
A US district court judge temporarily blocks an FTC probe into Media Matters, part of an antitrust investigation into ad boycotts, calling the probe retaliatory — Nonprofit Media Matters for America won a court order blocking a Federal Trade Commission information demand for documents … | Norah Mulinda / Bloomberg: |
Opendoor CEO Carrie Wheeler steps down, with Shrisha Radhakrishna named president and interim CEO; OPEN closed up 4.28% — Opendoor Technologies Inc., a real estate company that became a meme stock in recent months, said Chief Executive Officer Carrie Wheeler is stepping down immediately as the board searches for a replacement.| Jesse Hamilton / CoinDesk: |
The Federal Reserve continues its relaxation of crypto oversight by ending a program created in 2023 to scrutinize fintech and crypto activities by banks — The Federal Reserve has shuttered the Novel Activities Supervision Program it built in 2023 that was — in part — meant to focus on banks' crypto activity.| Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: |
Appfigures: ChatGPT's app for iOS and Android hit $2B in global consumer spending, including $1.35B so far in 2025, up 673% YoY; Grok made ~$25.6M this year — ChatGPT's mobile app is raking in the revenue. — Since launching in May 2023, ChatGPT's app for iOS and Android devices …
More: 9to5Mac, iPhone in Canada, TestingCatalog, and GreenBot
Bluesky: @fry69.dev and @stevenjcbuckley
| Kalley Huang / The Information: |
Sources: Meta plans its fourth AI restructuring in six months, dividing its superintelligence lab into TBD Lab, a product team, an infrastructure team, and FAIR — Meta Platforms is planning the fourth restructuring of its artificial intelligence efforts in six months, according to three people familiar with the matter.| Bloomberg: |
Meta's standalone Meta AI app, launched in April 2025, offers an uneven experience, hallucinating and not personalizing replies despite access to Meta accounts — The Meta AI app offers an uneven experience, posing a sharp contrast to Mark Zuckerberg's lofty artificial intelligence ambitions.| Lauren Goode / Wired: |
Some developers say GPT-5 excels at technical reasoning and planning coding tasks and is cost-effective, but Claude Opus and Sonnet still produce better code — Software engineers are finding that OpenAI's new GPT-5 model is helping them think through coding problems—but isn't much better at actual coding.| David Keohane / Financial Times: |
SoftBank-owned PayPay files for a US listing; sources: it aims to raise $2B+ at a $10B+ valuation, and the listing could happen by the end of the year — Sale of American depositary shares could value payments company above $10bn and help fund AI bets — PayPay has filed for a US listing … | Anne Trafton / MIT News: |
Researchers say they used generative AI algorithms to design novel antibiotics targeting drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae and MRSA — The team used two different AI approaches to design novel antibiotics, including one that showed promise against MRSA. — PRESS INQUIRIES
More: BBC, BGR, eWeek, Semafor, The Gateway Pundit, Euro Weekly News, and GB News
Bluesky: @emilycurates, @quinnypig.com, and @shlead
LinkedIn: Adil Mohammed, Julia Chambers, Hassan Syed, Margaux Gaborieau, and Hisham Al-Assam. Forums: r/artificial
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