Latest AI News
Patreon CEO calls AI companies’ fair use argument ‘bogus,’ says creators should be paid
PatreonCEO Jack Conte says he’s not anti-AI. He can’t be. “I run a frickin’ tech company,” he told the audience at the SXSW conference in Austin this week. Still, the founder of the creator platform has limits. Conte doesn’t think AI companies should be able to train their models on the work of creators without compensation, calling their decision to dub this “fair use” a “bogus” argument. Conte’s SXSW talk positioned AI as another moment within the ongoing cycle of disruption that creators have been through many times before in the internet age. Like the transition from buying music on iTunes to streaming, or shifting video to the vertical format favored by TikTok, AI will likely break a lot of the models that creative people have worked hard to build over the years. Still, he believes they will thrive. “I learned a very important thing as an artist, which is that change does not mean death. You can get back up, and you can fucking go again,” said Conte, who created Patreon to solve a problem he had faced as a musician: getting people to pay creators for their work. Similarly, he doesn’t believe that AI companies should be able to scoop up creators’ content to train their models without some sort of compensation. “The AI companies are claiming fair use, but this argument is bogus,” Conte said, reading from a printout of his speech, or rather, his manifesto. “It’s bogus because while they claim it’s fair to use the work of creators as training data, they do multimillion-dollar deals with rights holders and publishers like Disney and Condé Nast and Vox and Warner Music.” If the AI companies’ argument around fair use was legal and sound, then they wouldn’t be paying these large rightsholders, he noted. “If it’s legal to just use it, why pay?” he asked rhetorically. “Why pay them and not creators — not the millions of illustrators and musicians and writers — whose work has been consumed by these models to build hundreds of billions of dollars of value for these companies?” Reading between the lines, it’s clear that Conte would like to tap into some of those payouts, too, for Patreon’s own community of creators. And he’s using Patreon’s scale as a creator community filled with hundreds of thousands of people to make that argument. The founder also clarified that his decision to call out AI companies’ behavior is not because he’s anti-AI or anti-tech or even anti-change. “I accept the inevitability of change, and I feel agency in discovering my next path through the chaos. A part of that challenge even excites me,” Conte said. “Still, the AI companies should pay creators for our work, not because the tech is bad — but because a lot of it is good, or it will be soon — and it’s going to be the future. And when we plan for humanity’s future, we should plan for society’s artists, too, not just for their sake, but for the sake of all of us. Societies that value and incentivize creativity are better for it,” he added. The talk ended on a hopeful note, with Conte expressing his belief that humans will make and enjoy the work of other humans for a long time, despite whatever progress AI makes on this front. “Great artists don’t play back what already exists,” Conte said, referencing large language models’ (LLMs) ability to predict the appropriate output. “They stand on the shoulders of giants. They push culture forward.”
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Itel Unveils Zeno AI Weaver Voice Recorder in India With Up to 40 Hours Recording Capacity, Live Transcription
Itel has unveiled its first AI-powered voice recorder in India, dubbed Zeno AI Weaver. The new device is confirmed to be launched in the country and will be available for purchase via an e-commerce platform in a single colourway. The Hong Kong-based tech firm positions the device as an AI companion that can record, transcribe, and summarise voice notes, which can then be viewed on the user's phone. It also supports one-tap recording. Moreover, it features a small screen on the front to notify users that the device has started recording. However, Itel is not the only tech firm with an AI voice recorder. Plaud Note, another AI voice recorder, is currently available in select global markets.
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DOD says Anthropic’s ‘red lines’ make it an ‘unacceptable risk to national security’
The U.S. Department of Defense said on Tuesday evening that Anthropic poses an “unacceptable risk to national security,” marking the agency’s first rebuttal tothe AI lab’s lawsuitschallenging Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision last month tolabel the company a supply chain risk. As part of its complaints, Anthropic had requested the court temporarily block the DOD from enforcing its label. The crux of the DOD’s argument, made in a40-page filingin a California federal court, is the concern that Anthropic might “attempt to disable its technology or preemptively alter the behavior of its model” before or during “warfighting operations” if the company “feels that its corporate ‘red lines’ are being crossed.” Anthropic last summer signed a $200 million contract with the Pentagon to deploy its technology within classified systems. In later negotiations over the terms of the contract,Anthropic saidit did not want its AI systems to be used for mass surveillance of Americans, and that the technology wasn’t ready for use in targeting or firing decisions of lethal weapons. The Pentagon contested that a private company shouldn’t dictate how the military uses technology. Chris Mattei, a lawyer specializing in First Amendment issues and a former Justice Department attorney, told TechCrunch there has been no investigation to support the DOD’s concerns of Anthropic potentially disabling or altering its AI models during warfighting operations. Without that evidence, the department’s argument fails to adequately explain how Anthropic’s negotiating position rendered it an “adversary,” Mattei argued. “The government is relying completely on conjectural, speculative imaginings to justify a very, very serious legal step they’ve taken against Anthropic,” Mattei said. He added the department failedto “articulate a credible or even comprehensible rationale for why Anthropic’s refusal to agree to an ‘all lawful use’ provision rendered it a supply chain risk as opposed to a vendor that DOD simply didn’t want to do business with.” Many organizations have spoken out against the DOD’s treatment of Anthropic, arguing that the department could have just ended its contract. Several tech companies and employees — including fromOpenAI, Google, and Microsoft — as well as legal rights groups have filed amicus briefs in support of Anthropic. In its lawsuits, Anthropic accused the DOD of infringing on its First Amendment rights and punishing the company based on ideological grounds. “In many ways, the government’s nonsensical arguments are themselves the best evidence that the administration’s conduct was plainly a retaliatory punishment for Anthropic’s refusal to agree to the government’s terms, which, contrary to the government’s brief, is a form of protected expression,” Mattei told TechCrunch. A hearing on Anthropic’s request for a preliminary injunction is set for next Tuesday. Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment. This article has been updated to include information from Chris Mattei, a constitutional rights lawyer.
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The PhD students who became the judges of the AI industry
Artificial intelligence models are multiplying fast, and competition is stiff. With so many players crowding the space, which one will be the best — and who decides that? Arena, formerly LM Arena, has emerged as the de facto public leaderboard for frontier LLMs, influencing funding, launches, and PR cycles. In just seven months, the startup went from a UC Berkeley PhD research project tobeing valued at $1.7 billion. On this episode of TechCrunch’sEquitypodcast, Rebecca Bellan catches up with Arena co-foundersAnastasios AngelopoulosandWei-Lin Chiangto determine how a team like theirs can build a neutral benchmark when the companies they’re ranking are also their backers. Listen to the full episode to hear: Subscribe to Equity onYouTube,Apple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotifyand all the casts. You also can follow Equity onXandThreads, at @EquityPod.
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Microsoft hires the team of Sequioa-backed AI collaboration platform, Cove
The team behindCove, a Sequioa-backed startup that was working on an AI-powered collaboration board, has joined Microsoft, according to an email sent to customers informing them that Cove’s service is shutting down. Cove was founded in late 2023 by Stephen Chau, Andy Szybalski, and Mike Chu, who worked on Google Maps features like Street View. The startupraised $6 million in a seed roundfrom Sequoia Capital, Elad Gil, Homebrew, Adverb, Scott Belsky, and Lenny Rachitsky in 2024. Its tool was an infinite whiteboard that let users use AI to generate different blocks for tasks like trip planning. The founders felt that the chat interface for AI was not editable, and a canvas provided more flexibility when going in different directions with prompts. Cove also allowed users to use a built-in browser, PDFs, and images to give more context to its AI, which could create new cards, tables, and lists. The startup competed with the likes ofMiro,TLDraw, andKosmik. The company said in an email to customers that the entire Cove team is joining Microsoft and the product will shut down on April 1, and all user data will be deleted. Cove mentioned that it has refunded all subscriptions for March and is offering adata export process. “When we started Cove, we set out to reimagine how people collaborate with AI. As model capabilities have accelerated, our conviction in that mission has only grown stronger. We’re thrilled to continue this work at Microsoft AI, where we’ll have the opportunity to pursue an even bigger vision,” the companysaid in a blog post on its site. In addition, the company said that “the ideas behind it [Cove] will live on” within Microsoft. Notably, Microsoft added Copilot to its own collaboration product,Whiteboard, in 2023. TechCrunch reached out to Microsoft to understand how it plans to integrate Cove’s technology within its ecosystem, but did not immediately hear back.
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India’s Data Centre Capacity Quadruples to 1,500 MW as Submarine Cable Expansion Gathers Pace
Mumbai and Navi Mumbai account for the largest share at 790 MW, followed by Chennai at 305 MW.
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How Apna’s Hiring Problem Led to Blue Machines Voice AI Startup
‘Blue Machines is not a foundation model company.’
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OpenAI is Hiring in Bengaluru
The role involves partnering with startup customers to take AI products from ideation to production.
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Snowflake Launches SnowWork to Execute Multi-Step Business Tasks with AI
Project SnowWork is being rolled out to a limited set of customers.
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Microsoft Considering Legal Action Over OpenAI: Report
The latest development stems from the $50 billion deal with Amazon that could undermine OpenAI’s exclusive API agreements with Microsoft.
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OpenAI Introduces GPT-5.4 Mini, Nano as Faster Models Optimised for Coding and AI Agents
OpenAI introduced two new artificial intelligence (AI) models in the GPT-5.4 family on Tuesday. Dubbed GPT-5.4 mini and GPT-5.4 nano, the two smaller AI models are faster compared to the larger models in the family, and are aimed at low-latency workloads. Some of the key strengths of these models include coding proficiency, computer use, multimodal understanding, and subagent handling. For developers, these models will also be cost-efficient, given the lower cost of input and output tokens.
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Google’s Personal Intelligence Is Now Rolling Out to More Users
Google is now expanding Personal Intelligence to more users in the US. The feature, which allows the chatbot to connect to various Google apps and draw context to generate personalised responses, was first introduced in January. At the time, it was only available to US-based paying users. Now, the capability is available inside the Gemini app, Gemini assistant in Google Chrome, and via AI Mode in Search to those on the free tier. Notably, the Mountain View-based tech giant is yet to expand the feature outside of the US.
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