Welcome back to Week in Review. This week, we’re looking at GM’s decision to pull out of the robotaxi business, Google alluding to the existence of multiple universes, and how you can make some serious cash by getting an AI bot to fall in love with you. Let’s get into it.
General Motors will no longer fund the development of its commercial robotaxi business and will instead absorb Cruise, its self-driving car subsidiary, and combine it with the automaker’s own efforts to develop driver-assistance features — and eventually fully autonomous personal vehicles. Several Cruise employees told TechCrunch they were “blindsided” by the decision. GM acquired Cruise in 2016 for $1 billion and has since spent more than $10 billion on the company’s efforts.
If you’d like to receive Week in Review in your inbox every Saturday, sign up here!
News
Duolingo joins “Squid Game”: Ahead of the release of the next season of “Squid Game,” Netflix has teamed up with Duolingo to help viewers learn Korean. The companies also released an exclusive TikTok filter inspired by the show’s Red Light, Green Light game. Read more
Google soft launches the multiverse: Google announced Willow, its latest quantum computing chip. But tucked into the blog post about the chip is a claim that the chip is so mind-bogglingly fast that it must have borrowed computational power from other universes. Read more
What did you Google this year? Google released its annual list of top trending searches for 2024, including the CrowdStrike outage, the late One Direction member Liam Payne, and Dubai chocolate bars. Read more
RIP, Car Thing: Spotify has officially discontinued Car Thing, its in-car streaming device. If you bought one, you have a little more than a month to provide proof of purchase and receive a refund. Read more
Bluesky teases a paid subscription: Bluesky has published mock-ups teasing an upcoming subscription tier on its GitHub. It appears that Bluesky is considering paid features for the tier, like custom app icons, post analytics, and bookmark folders. Read more
Is Sora trained on video games? Through our tests of OpenAI’s video generator Sora, it appears that at least some of the data it was trained on might’ve come from Twitch streams and walkthroughs of games. Legal experts say that could be a problem. Read more
Grok has a new image generator: Grok released its latest image generator, code-named Aurora, that is very unrestricted when it comes to reproducing public figures. This is certainly indicative of my timeline, as I’m seeing a ton of AI images of “Real Housewives” cast members. Read more
Krispy Kreme gets hit with a cyberattack: Doughnut chain Krispy Kreme disclosed a security incident that has caused “certain operational disruptions.” The company said that its shops are open and there is no interruption to deliveries to retail and restaurant partners. Read more
Can you get an AI bot to fall in love with you? Freysa.ai is creating challenges designed to influence how humans think about AI safety. If you’re the first person to successfully trick its AI character Freysa to say “I love you,” you could win tens of thousands of dollars. Read more
Firefox gets rid of a useless feature: Mozilla’s Firefox browser has removed its “Do Not Track” feature. Since websites have no real reason to respect the signal, the setting is effectively useless (and misleading). Read more
You can now buy a car on Amazon: Amazon is expanding into the online car sales market with the launch of Amazon Autos, an e-commerce business that lets customers find, order, and buy new cars, trucks, and SUVs from dealerships. Read more
Hey, I am a multifaceted professional excelling in the realms of blogging, YouTube content creation, and entrepreneurship.
With a passion for sharing knowledge and inspiring others, I established a strong presence in the digital sphere through his captivating blog articles and engaging video content.
