GM ‘blindsides’ Cruise by giving up on robotaxis

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. 

OpenAI has finally released the real-time video capabilities for ChatGPT that it demoed nearly seven months ago. ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Pro subscribers can use the app to point their phones at objects and have ChatGPT respond in near real time. The feature can also understand what’s on a device’s screen through screen sharing. There are still a few more reveals planned for “12 Days of OpenAI,” so stay up to date with our live blog.

Google this week unveiled its first-ever AI agent that can take actions on the web. Called Project Mariner, the Gemini-powered agent takes control of your Chrome browser, moves the cursor on your screen, clicks buttons, and fills out forms, allowing it to use and navigate websites much like a human would. While still a prototype from its DeepMind division, it represents Google’s shift to move users away from interacting with websites directly.

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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