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August 30, 2025, 1:20 AM
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Top News

Jeff Horwitz / Reuters:
Meta created and let users create flirty chatbots and intimate images using the names and likenesses of Taylor Swift and other celebs without their permission  —  Meta has appropriated the names and likenesses of celebrities - including Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway and Selena Gomez …
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
WhatsApp fixed a zero-click bug in its iOS and Mac apps that was being used, alongside a now-fixed Apple flaw, to hack into devices of “specific targeted users”  —  WhatsApp said on Friday that it fixed a security bug in its iOS and Mac apps that was being used to stealthily hack …
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple's Xcode 26 beta 7 adds support for GPT-5 and Claude Sonnet 4, which developers can use by signing into their paid Claude account  —  Apple has released a new beta of Xcode 26 for developers today with a pair of notable changes.  There's now support for ChatGPT 5, as well as built-in integration with Anthropic's Claude.
Blake Brittain / Reuters:
xAI sues a former employee in federal court in California for allegedly stealing Grok trade secrets and taking them to OpenAI, where he recently accepted a job  —  Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI has sued a former engineer at the company for allegedly stealing trade secrets related …
Washington Post:
In a trial over a fatal Autopilot crash, Tesla denied having crash-snapshot data, until a hacker hired by the plaintiffs recovered the data from the vehicle  —  The critical evidence was presented last month to a jury, which found the company partially liable for the 2019 crash in Key Largo, Florida.
Zoë Schiffer / Wired:
Sources: the US government restored xAI to its vendors list after removing it for Grok's antisemitic content; email: the White House asked GSA to add xAI “ASAP”  —  A partnership between xAI and the US government fell apart earlier this summer.  Then the White House apparently got involved, per documents obtained by WIRED.
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Meta is updating how it trains AI chatbots to prioritize teen safety and will limit teen access to certain characters, as it works on long-term safety updates  —  Meta says it's changing the way it trains AI chatbots to prioritize teen safety, a spokesperson exclusively told TechCrunch …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Mastodon says it does not “have the means to apply age verification” to its services and it's up to server admins to observe local laws in places they operate  —  Decentralized social network Mastodon says it can't comply with Mississippi's age verification law …
Isabelle Bousquette / Wall Street Journal:
Taco Bell, which deployed voice AI-powered ordering at 500+ drive-through locations, is now reconsidering the tech after viral videos of glitches and pranks  —  More artificial intelligence isn't always better, the chain is realizing, as it considers when and how bots should be deployed
Andreessen Horowitz:
Top 100 AI consumer apps: Gemini ranks #2 behind ChatGPT on mobile with ~50% of its MAUs, with Grok at #4; on the web, Gemini has ~12% of ChatGPT's visits  —  5th edition  —  This is the fifth edition of our Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps which reflects two and a half years of data on how everyday AI usage is evolving.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Alibaba developed a new AI inference chip to compete with H20; it is manufactured by a Chinese company unlike an earlier AI chip made by TSMC  —  Chinese tech companies spark market exuberance by signaling they are catching up to U.S.  —  Click for Sound
Richard Bravo / Bloomberg:
French President Emmanuel Macron vows a strong response if any country takes measures that undermine Europe's digital sovereignty  —  French President Emmanuel Macron vowed a strong response if any country takes measures that undermine Europe's digital sovereignty.
Financial Times:
EU competition commissioner Teresa Ribera says the EU must be ready to walk away from the US trade deal if the US demands a watered-down DSA and DMA

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The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

Katie Robertson / New York Times:
Baltimore Banner parent The Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism acquires the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Block Communications to run it as a nonprofit

Ali Lyon / City A.M.:
Axel Springer says it received approval from the UK Department for Culture, Media, and Sport to proceed with its £575M deal to acquire the Telegraph Media Group

Caroline Davies / The Guardian:
Gary Neville's soccer media group The Overlap acquires Mark Goldbridge's The United Stand and That's Football YouTube channels, a source says for seven figures

More News

Los Angeles Times:
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers strike a deal with Uber and Lyft allowing drivers to unionize while remaining classified as independent contractors
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Valve adds credit card-based age checks for UK users to access “mature content” games on Steam; Discord and others are using selfies for verification

Earlier Picks

Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
Reliance launches a subsidiary called Reliance Intelligence, aiming to create national-scale AI infrastructure in India, in partnership with Google and Meta
Financial Times:
Sources: ChatGPT co-creator Shengjia Zhao threatened to quit Meta within days of joining and return to OpenAI; later, he was given the chief AI scientist title
BBC:
An investigation finds spammers are deploying Holocaust-themed AI slop images across Facebook, in an attempt to game Meta's content monetization program
Lydia Beyoud / Bloomberg:
The CFTC says non-US crypto exchanges have a path to bringing on US users, in an advisory clarifying how they can register as so-called foreign boards of trade
Bloomberg:
The US starts publishing GDP data on nine public blockchains including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, with the help of Coinbase, Kraken, and Gemini
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