Techmeme
June 26, 2025, 7:55 AM

Top News

Blake Brittain / Reuters:
A group of authors sue Microsoft in a NY federal court, claiming the company used nearly 200,000 pirated books without permission to train its Megatron AI model  —  Microsoft (MSFT.O) has been hit with a lawsuit by a group of authors who claim the company used their books without permission …
Isaiah Poritz / Bloomberg Law:
A US judge rules that Meta's use of books to train Llama is protected by fair use but says his opinion is more a reflection of the plaintiffs' poor arguments  —  Meta Platforms Inc. escaped a first-of-its-kind copyright lawsuit from a group of authors who alleged the tech giant hoovered …
Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch:
Anthony Robledo / USA Today:
Trump Organization scrubs the Trump Mobile site of language indicating the T1 Phone phone is to be made in the US, now says it is “brought to life” in the US  —  President Donald Trump's newly launched cellular service is defending its claims that its T1 cellphone are produced …
Chris Dolmetsch / Bloomberg:
US prosecutors charge Kai West, who is known as IntelBroker and was arrested in February in France, with conspiring to steal data from dozens of companies  —  A 25-year-old British man known as “IntelBroker” was accused by US authorities of conspiring with a group of hackers to steal data …
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Report: French authorities arrested four individuals allegedly involved in operating the BreachForums cybercrime forum on Monday and one in February  —  The French police have reportedly arrested five operators of the BreachForum cybercrime forum, a website used by cybercriminals to leak …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Creative Commons debuts CC Signals, a framework that will allow dataset holders to detail how their content can or cannot be reused for training AI models  —  Nonprofit Creative Commons, which spearheaded the licensing movement that allows creators to share their works while retaining copyright, is now preparing for the AI era.
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
FHFA Director William Pulte orders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to explore crypto as an asset for single-family mortgage applications without converting it to USD  —  In a landmark shift for the U.S. housing finance system, the Federal Housing Finance Agency has issued a directive ordering Fannie Mae …
Callan Quinn / Decrypt:
Kraken secures a MiCA license from the Central Bank of Ireland to offer crypto services across the EU, following Coinbase's approval in Luxembourg last week  —  Approval from Ireland's central bank gives Kraken the ability to operate across 27 EU states as it races to catch up to rival Coinbase.
Meghan Bobrowsky / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Meta has poached three OpenAI researchers, Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai, for its superintelligence efforts  —  Social-media giant has hired Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov and Xiaohua Zhai for its superintelligence effort  —  Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg …
Stephen Totilo / Game File:
Sony says its PlayStation Plus three-tier overhaul has “surpassed our expectations” and that the $160/year Premium tier has grown 18% in the past 12 months  —  Sony kicks off PS Plus' 15th anniversary by chatting with Game File about the past, present and future …
Amber Neely / AppleInsider:
US senators reintroduce the bipartisan Open App Markets Act to challenge Apple's and Google's grip on app stores; the 2021 version never made it to a floor vote  —  Big Tech's grip on the app economy is under fire again as lawmakers reintroduce the bipartisan “Open App Markets Act” …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Anthropic now lets Claude app users build, host, and share AI-powered apps directly in Claude via Artifacts, launching in beta on Free, Pro, and Max tiers  —  The upgrade, launching in beta, builds upon Anthropic's Artifacts feature introduced last year that lets you see and interact with what you ask Claude to make.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
WhatsApp launches optional Meta AI-generated summaries of unread messages in the US; Meta can't read the messages and summaries are hidden from other chat users  —  Meta announced on Wednesday that it's adding an AI-powered summaries feature to WhatsApp.  The optional new feature uses Meta AI to summarize unread messages in a chat.
Berber Jin / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Microsoft is pushing to remove the AGI clause from its OpenAI contract, which lets OpenAI limit Microsoft's access to its IP once its systems reach AGI  —  Silicon Valley is at odds over whether AI can reach and exceed humanlike intelligence, a milestone with major implications …
Kate Clark / Bloomberg:
Kalshi raised $185M led by Paradigm at a $2B valuation; sources: Polymarket is completing a $200M+ investment led by Founders Fund at a ~$1B pre-money valuation  —  Kalshi Inc., a prediction market that competes with Polymarket, said it has raised $185 million at a valuation of $2 billion.
Grace Sihombing / Bloomberg:
Indonesia changes rules to require e-commerce platforms like TikTok Shop to withhold income tax from sellers, instead of asking sellers to pay the government  —  A rule change in Indonesia will require online merchants to pay income tax to e-commerce platforms rather than directly to the government …
More: Reuters and Comparitech
Sam Blum / Inc:
Internal docs: Scale AI's efforts to train Google's Gemini were flooded with “spammy behavior” from unqualified independent contractors submitting shoddy work  —  How the startup that just scored a $14 billion investment from Meta struggled to contain ‘spammy behavior’ from unqualified contributors as it trained Gemini.
Menaka Doshi / Bloomberg:
Amazon launches at-home diagnostic services in six Indian cities in partnership with Orange Health Labs, marking its entry into India's diagnostics market  —  With diagnostic services the e-commerce giant now offers a ‘trifecta of digital health’ … Will Amazon Draw Blood?
Joseph Cox / 404 Media:
License plate reader company Flock has stopped US agencies from accessing cameras in CA, IL, and VA after reports of lookups related to ICE and an abortion case  —  Flock, the automatic license plate reader (ALPR) company with a presence in thousands of communities across the U.S. …

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