February 2025

Are friends electric?

February 25, 2025
To the best of my knowledge, I am not a robot. And yet, like other humans who spend too much time on the internet, I’m routinely asked to prove this fact by clicking on crosswalks and motorcycles in photos, deciphering distorted numbers and letters, and checking little white boxes that affirm my non-robot status. These…

How AI is used to surveil workers

February 25, 2025
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Opaque algorithms meant to analyze worker productivity have been rapidly spreading through our workplaces, as detailed in a new must-read piece by Rebecca Ackermann, published Monday in MIT Technology Review.  Since the…

Thoma Bravo raises €1.8B for its first European fund

February 25, 2025

Private equity firm Thoma Bravo has closed its inaugural European fund at €1.8 billion ($1.9 billion), through which it plans to take equity stakes in mid-sized software companies across the continent. Europe has no shortage of homegrown venture capital (VC) funds — the likes of Atomico and Cherry Ventures have closed early and growth-stage funds […]

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Fyre Festival 2 is coming, and it already sounds bananas (and not in a good way)

February 25, 2025

Billy McFarland is back, with Fyre Festival 2. Scheduled to take place in Isla Mujeres, Mexico from May 30 to June 2, tickets just went on sale, ranging from $1,400 to a truly brazen $1.1 million — even though no artists have been confirmed, and McFarland himself isn’t sure if he can legally leave the […]

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Automattic-owned Beeper is releasing redesigned desktop and iOS apps

February 25, 2025

WordPress.com owner Automattic last year acquired the multi-service messaging app Beeper for $125 million and said it would merge it with Texts.com, an earlier acquisition in the same category. Now, Beeper is releasing the first set of redesigned apps for iOS and desktop in beta after the merger. In a blog post, Beeper said that […]

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1,000 artists release ‘silent’ album to protest UK copyright sell-out to AI

February 25, 2025

The U.K. government wants to move full steam ahead on big plans to use and build AI across the country, but not everyone is marching to the beat of its drum. On Monday, a group of 1,000 musicians released a “silent album”, in protest of planned changes to copyright law — changes the artists say […]

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UK’s internet watchdog toughens approach to deepfake porn

February 25, 2025

Ofcom, the U.K.’s internet safety regulator, has published another new draft guidance as it continues to implement the Online Safety Act (OSA) — the latest set of recommendations aim to support in-scope firms to meet legal obligations to protect women and girls from online threats like harassment and bullying, misogyny, and intimate image abuse. The […]

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Web Summit attendees aren’t buying Scale AI CEO’s push for America ‘to win the AI war’

February 25, 2025

In a bold move last month, Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang took out a full-page ad in the Washington Post, telling President Trump that “America must win the AI war.” The statement sparked mixed reactions, as seen during Wang’s appearance Sunday during the opening night of Web Summit Qatar. When Wang’s interviewer Axios’s Felix Salmon […]

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Anthropic reportedly ups its next funding round to $3.5B

February 25, 2025

Anthropic’s next funding round is reportedly growing larger. Anthropic, which makes the AI chatbot Claude, is finalizing a $3.5 billion fundraising round that values the company at $61.5 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. Anthropic initially set out to raise $2 billion, but investors have now agreed to a larger tranche, per the WSJ. […]

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