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Techmeme
January 23, 2025, 7:00 PM
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Top News

Jay Peters / The Verge:
OpenAI releases a “research preview” of its Operator AI agent that can automate web-based tasks, launching in the US to subscribers of the $200/month Pro tier  —  OpenAI is releasing a “research preview” of an AI agent called Operator that can “go to the web to perform tasks for you,” according to a blog post.
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
OpenAI partners with DoorDash, Instacart, Priceline, StubHub, and Uber to ensure that Operator respects these businesses' terms of service agreements  —  OpenAI CEO Sam Altman kicked off this year by saying in a blog post that 2025 would be big for AI agents, tools that can automate tasks and take actions on your behalf.
Every:
Hands-on with Operator: limited in what it can browse, can perform repetitive workflows, and can do lengthy tasks on its own with minimal prompting  —  Operator (Could you help me do this task?) … Today, OpenAI announced Operator, a new research preview of ChatGPT that acts as an agent for your repetitive tasks.
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
Trump signs an EO to create a crypto working group led by David Sacks to consider a national digital asset stockpile “potentially derived” from seized crypto  —  President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to promote the advancement of cryptocurrencies in the U.S …
Associated Press:
Trump signs an EO to develop AI systems “free from ideological bias or engineered social agendas”, revoking Biden policies that “act as barriers” to innovation  —  President Donald Trump signed an executive order on artificial intelligence Thursday …
Donald Judd / CNN:
Trump shrugs off Musk's criticism of Stargate, saying Musk “hates one of the people in the deal” and his comments are not an indictment of the deal's viability
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Researchers detail Subaru's now-fixed web vulnerabilities that would've let them unlock and start millions of Subarus via Starlink in the US, Canada, and Japan  —  Now-fixed web bugs allowed hackers to remotely unlock and start millions of Subarus.  More disturbingly, they could also access …
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
CAIS and Scale AI release “Humanity's Last Exam”, which they claim is the hardest AI test yet, consisting of ~3,000 multiple-choice and short answer questions  —  If you're looking for a new reason to be nervous about artificial intelligence, try this: Some of the smartest humans …
Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
Epic launches a free games program on mobile and promises to pay the Apple Core Technology Fee for participants in the program on iOS for one year  —  Epic Games is adding nearly 20 third-party games onto its mobile app store worldwide on Android and in the European Union on iOS and launching …
Dominic Preston / The Verge:
Google rolls out the first public beta of Android 16 for Pixel devices, introducing Live Updates, a limited version of Apple's Live Activities, and more  —  Android 16's first public beta will start rolling out later today, bringing with it dynamic lockscreen notifications for ride-sharing and food delivery …
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
The UK CMA opens investigations into Apple's and Google's mobile ecosystems, including OSes, app stores, and browsers, to see the impact on users and businesses  —  LONDON — Britain's competition regulator on Thursday launched an investigation into Apple and Google's huge mobile ecosystems …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Perplexity launches Perplexity Assistant in its Android app, which can take “multi-app actions” like hailing a ride, initially free for users in 15 languages  —  AI-powered search engine Perplexity has launched an “agent,” of sorts, called Perplexity Assistant …
Benoit Berthelot / Bloomberg:
France says David Balland, a co-founder of French crypto wallet startup Ledger, was kidnapped on January 21 and freed on January 22 after a police operation  —  - A crypto ransom has been partly paid, traced and seized  — Balland's partner was also kidnapped and released on Thursday
Reuters:
ByteDance debuts Doubao-1.5-pro, claiming its latest flagship AI model outperforms OpenAI's o1 in AIME benchmarks, joining DeepSeek in China's AI reasoning push  —  TikTok owner ByteDance on Wednesday released an update to its flagship AI model aimed at challenging Microsoft-backed OpenAI's …
Bloomberg:
At Davos, Trump blasts EU for targeting Apple, Google, and Meta, describing regulatory cases as “a form of taxation”, and references Apple's €13B Irish tax bill  —  - Comments mark start of clash between Trump, EU over tech  — Apple lost case last year over $14.4 billion Irish tax bill
Bloomberg:
ByteDance board member Bill Ford says ByteDance is exploring alternatives to selling TikTok US, including a change to local control to comply with the US law  —  - Firm's options with Trump team include change of control  — Bill Ford runs General Atlantic, which owns stake in ByteDance
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Anthropic debuts Citations, a new API feature letting developers “ground” answers in source documents, available for Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Claude 3.5 Haiku  —  In an announcement perhaps timed to divert attention away from OpenAI's Operator, Anthropic Thursday unveiled a new feature …
Sankalp Phartiyal / Bloomberg:
Sources: India's technology ministry asked Apple, Google, and other smartphone makers to provide Indians direct access to the state-backed GOV.in app store  —  India is trying to pry open the doors of the world's biggest app stores, setting up a likely clash with Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google acquihires “some of the HTC VIVE engineering team” in Taiwan with “a proven track record in VR” for $250M in cash, to “accelerate” Android XR development  —  To “accelerate” Android XR development, Google announced this evening that it …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Daniel Guarnera, a DOJ lawyer who helped file US antitrust lawsuits against Google and Apple, has been picked to lead the FTC's Bureau of Competition  —  - Daniel Guarnera picked to lead FTC's Bureau of Competition  — Chris Mufarrige tapped to head Bureau of Consumer Protection
Bluesky: @schock.cc

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:00 PM ET, January 23, 2025.

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

CNBC:
Letter: Paramount expresses concern to WBD about the “fairness and adequacy” of the sales process, accusing WBD of favoring Netflix's offer

The Guardian:
Ireland, Spain, Slovenia, and the Netherlands exit Eurovision after Israel received an all-clear to compete; the BBC and Germany's SWR plan to participate

James Faris / Business Insider:
Kalshi strikes a deal with CNBC that will integrate Kalshi's prediction data into CNBC's channel, site, and app starting in 2026, days after striking a CNN deal

More News

Devindra Hardawar / Engadget:
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 review: fastest Blender benchmark score ever, DLSS4 frame generation works well, and good cooling but very expensive and power hungry
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenAI fixes issues that caused a major ChatGPT outage and downtime for its API on January 23, after disruptions in December 2024

Earlier Picks

Andy Chalk / PC Gamer:
A GDC survey of 3,000+ developers: 80% are currently making PC games, up from 66% in 2024, compared to 38% for the PlayStation 5 and 34% for the Xbox Series X/S
Jonathan Briskman / Sensor Tower:
State of Mobile 2025: in 2024, iOS and Google Play app downloads dropped ~1% YoY to 136B, while IAP and paid apps and games revenue rose 13% YoY to $150B
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Microsoft and OpenAI were arguing over Microsoft's ability to fulfill OpenAI's computing needs, in the months leading up to the Stargate announcement
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