Sunshine, the consumer AI startup founded by former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer in 2018, has seen brighter days. The small startup is shutting down, and its assets are being sold to a new entity incorporated by Mayer called Dazzle, according to an email viewed by WIRED. Mayer sent the email to Sunshine shareholders on September […]
OpenAI Is Preparing to Launch a Social App for AI-Generated Videos
OpenAI is preparing to launch a stand-alone app for its video generation AI model Sora 2, WIRED has learned. The app, which features a vertical video feed with swipe-to-scroll navigation, appears to closely resemble TikTok—except all of the content is AI-generated. There’s a For You–style page powered by a recommendation algorithm. On the right side […]
Amazon Will Pay $2.5 Billion to Settle FTC Suit That Alleged ‘Dark Patterns’ in Prime Sign-Ups
In the six-year time frame established in the settlement, anyone who “unsuccessfully attempted” to cancel their Prime subscription online is eligible to get paid up to $51 from Amazon. People who signed up for Prime during that same period can also get up to $51 if they signed up through a “challenged enrollment flow”—a page […]
Broadcast TV Is a ‘Melting Ice Cube.’ Kimmel Just Turned Up the Heat
Jimmy Kimmel returned to ABC this week. Sort of. About a quarter of ABC’s usual audience couldn’t see the talk show host this week after two major owners of ABC affiliates, Sinclair and Nexstar, refused to carry the show. Those right-leaning companies apparently felt that Kimmel’s joke—which included some disputed facts—was so unpardonable that they […]
Is Silicon Valley Still the Tech Capital?
On this special episode of Uncanny Valley recorded in front of a live audience in San Francisco, our hosts discuss Silicon Valley’s history and future.
Trump Executive Order Will Hand TikTok Over to US Investors
On Thursday, US president Donald Trump signed an executive order to transfer ownership of TikTok’s US operation to a group of American investors, including Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison. “I had a very good talk with president Xi. We talked about TikTok. He gave us the go-ahead,” Trump said during a White House press conference. He […]
This AI-Powered Robot Keeps Going Even if You Attack It With a Chainsaw
A four-legged robot that keeps crawling even after all four of its legs have been hacked off with a chainsaw is the stuff of nightmares for most people. For Deepak Pathak, cofounder and CEO of the startup Skild AI, the dystopian feat of adaptation is an encouraging sign of a new, more general kind of […]
OpenAI Teams Up With Oracle and SoftBank to Build 5 New Stargate Data Centers
OpenAI is planning to build five new data centers in the United States as part of the Stargate initiative, the company announced on Tuesday. The sites, which are being developed in partnership with Oracle and SoftBank, bring Stargate’s current planned capacity to nearly 7 gigawatts—roughly the same amount of power as seven large-scale nuclear reactors. […]
$3,800 Flights and Aborted Takeoffs: How Trump’s H-1B Announcement Panicked Tech Workers
After a six-week work trip, Xiayun, an employee at a semiconductor company in Silicon Valley, had landed at her hometown in China for vacation when she saw the news about H-1B visas. On Friday afternoon, US president Donald Trump signed a proclamation saying that any H-1B visa holder’s entry into the US will be “restricted, […]
YouTube Thinks AI Is Its Next Big Bang
Google figured out early on that video would be a great addition to its search business, so in 2005 it launched Google Video. Focused on making deals with the entertainment industry for second-rate content, and overly cautious on what users could upload, it flopped. Meanwhile, a tiny startup run by a handful of employees working […]