The Information

How to Grease a Chatbot: E-Commerce Companies Seek a Backdoor Into AI ResponsesRead more

Newsletters

The Weekend
The Short Seller Who Told Us So
May 27, 2023
Pro Weekly
Pro Weekly: Creator Funding Flows to More Places
May 26, 2023
The Briefing
Big Tech Investors Have Drunk the AI Kool-Aid
May 25, 2023
Creator Economy
The Sudden Rise of Twitch Rival Kick
May 25, 2023
Dealmaker
The Perils of Venture Patriotism
May 25, 2023
The Electric
The Electric: Ford EVs Will Use Iron-Based Batteries, but Not Many and Not for a While
May 25, 2023
Crypto Global
The Volatility of Crypto Customer Loyalty
May 24, 2023

Briefings

Temu Takes on Heavy Losses to Win U.S. Customers
May 28, 2023
Sam Altman Says OpenAI Will Not Leave Europe
May 26, 2023
Shopify Nominates Bret Taylor For Board Seat
May 26, 2023
Tesla Whistleblower Leaks 100 Gb of Data to German News Outlet
May 26, 2023
Neuralink Wins Regulatory Approval for First Human Trial
May 26, 2023
Barry Silbert’s DCG Shutting TradeBlock Subsidiary
May 25, 2023
Twitter Engineering Director Dabiri Resigns
May 25, 2023
Venture Firm Paradigm Broadens Focus Amid Crypto Winter
May 25, 2023
JPMorgan to Cut About 1,000 First Republic Workers
May 25, 2023
Michael Arrington-Backed Fahrenheit LLC Wins Bid to Buy Bankrupt Celsius
May 25, 2023
OpenAI Closes $175 Million Startup Fund
May 24, 2023
DeSantis Campaign Announcement Plagued by Twitter Glitches
May 24, 2023
Nvidia Shares Jump 25% as Generative AI Adoption Surges
May 24, 2023
Snowflake Shares Drop 12% as Revenue Growth Slows
May 24, 2023
Meta Announces Layoffs on Business Teams
May 24, 2023
Skepticism Rises Over AWS’s AI Strategy
May 24, 2023
Semafor Raises $19 Million
May 24, 2023
Amazon Aggregators Suma and D1 Brands Merge
May 23, 2023
JPMorgan Adds More Former SVB Tech Bankers
May 23, 2023
ChatGPT Is Using Microsoft’s Bing to Deliver Answers
May 23, 2023
Comcast Unveils New Online TV Bundle, Including Peacock
May 23, 2023
Shutterstock Agrees to Acquire Giphy From Meta
May 23, 2023

Subscriber comments

Carsten Schmidt

Carsten Schmidt

on TikTok Is Not the Enemy

While TikTok is certainly shady, there hasn’t been any clear evidence that shows they are guilty. I think the government owes it to the people to provide clear evidence of this being a clear security threat before banning a service.

Ivan Bou

on Musk Tells Tesla Staff He Must Approve All Hiring—Again

Carly Fiorina and Mark Hurd did the same at HP for many years. It kept creating a situation where sales people would love and territories would stay open for months and months because approvals took forever. When you don't trust people to manage to a budget and then use use blunt instruments to massage numbers to quarterly targets, this is what you do.

Andrew Hopkins

on Scared of Leaking Data to ChatGPT? Microsoft Tests a Private Alternative

Controlling the data feeding "private models" is part of the problem though. The more data you can feed a "private model", the more likely you are to derive value from it... but, how do you control access to data that could be sensitive or regulated? You have to control the output as well.

Jason Geater

on Silicon Valley’s Realtors, Like Its Bankers, Are Having a Tough Month

Shows just how much free money has artificially inflated assets prices (into the stratosphere) in the most highly-levered asset class. Exacerbate the issue by making said loans against fantasy VC valuations sounds like a recipe for success: ‘This founder has liquidity issues, but they have a billion in founder stock.…We’re going to ascribe value to that and give them a loan. We’re not like the boring banks who need a salary" This will certainly end well when all of the "unicorn" founder borrowers start defaulting on their mega-mansions.

Amber Hayes

on LinkedIn Faces Growing Complaints From Recruiters Over Rising Prices

Amber Hayes VP of recruiting, HR Operations and Mobility - Unity Technologies Totally agree. Their product has not improved, and prices continue to rise, significantly. We have partnered with seekout as the continued cost increases with LinkedIn are not sustainable in the long term.

Anshu Sharma

on Twitter Cuts Salesforce Bill 75% as More Buyers Scrutinize Software Spending

The $400 per year sounds like a lot for Slack. But when your employees each fully loaded cost is close to $250,000 - it’s a rounding error, especially if it makes them even 1% more productive.

Abed Agha

on What Creators on Meta Should Learn from News Publishers on Meta

I think the situation with publishers and creators differs for the following reasons: Creators are the users themselves and as the creator economy grows, so will the number of creators. I suspect the line that draws a distinction between a "creator" and a "user" will get very blurry in the future. In this context, ignoring creator demands = ignoring users; and this will inevitably lead to the decline of such platforms who do this. Equitability between platforms and creators is an important pillar to the advertising-led creator economy and so far YouTube is the only platform that has done it right and baked it in their business model. Meta already scaled their business model outside of creators, so sharing revenue with creators will cannibalize their existing revenue. TikTok should do it while they are still early in their monetization journey.

Latest Articles

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Photo by Bloomberg.

Exclusive

Twitter Cut Key Software Before DeSantis Audio Glitch

By Kevin McLaughlin and Erin Woo · May 26, 2023 2:12 PM PDT · 6 comments

On Wednesday night, Twitter experienced multiple outages during a high-profile live audio forum on the app in which Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis launched his presidential campaign. While the specific reason...

Image: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Photo by Bloomberg.

Art by Clark Miller

How to Grease a Chatbot: E-Commerce Companies Seek a Backdoor Into AI Responses

By Chris Stokel-Walker · May 27, 2023 6:00 AM PDT · 4 comments

When Andy Wilson’s company received its first successful client referral through ChatGPT, he was shaken to his core. The founder and CEO of Logikcull, a San Francisco–based legal technology company, Wilson “had the exact same reaction to ChatGPT as I had to the internet browser in the early ’90s,” he said.... When Andy Wilson’s company received its first successful client referral through ChatGPT,...

Art by Clark Miller.

The Day TikTok Went Dark in India

By Amanda Florian · May 26, 2023 11:00 AM PDT · 5 comments

On June 29, 2020, as thunderstorms swept Mumbai and daily Covid-19 cases in India surged by almost 20,000, millions of people began experiencing a flood of network errors on their mobile devices. TikTok—and nearly 60 other Chinese apps—had been driven offline in the world’s largest democracy. A sweeping government crackdown on... On June 29, 2020, as thunderstorms swept Mumbai and daily Covid-19 cases in India surged by...

Art by Clark Miller

markets Finance

The Master of Destruction Rides Again

By Michelle Celarier · May 26, 2023 9:00 AM PDT · 8 comments

In the spring of 2022, the irascible Wall Street short seller Marc Cohodes was in a particularly foul mood. The 62-year-old’s second marriage was on the rocks. He was recuperating from shoulder surgery after his horse rammed him. He couldn’t do much of anything besides fume and tweet about the financial markets. On April 29,... In the spring of 2022, the irascible Wall Street short seller Marc Cohodes was in a particularly...

Chris Britt, co-founder and CEO of Chime.

Chime’s Slowdown Highlights Limits of Bank Disruptors

By Mark Matousek and Erin Woo · May 26, 2023 6:14 AM PDT · 9 comments

Chris Britt, co-founder and CEO of Chime.

startups Finance

Chime’s Slowdown Highlights Limits of Bank Disruptors

By Mark Matousek and Erin Woo · May 26, 2023 6:14 AM PDT · 9 comments

Chime found a way to offer zero-fee banking services without being a bank itself. But that approach is starting to show its limits. While Chime brought in more than $1 billion in revenue last year, according to two people familiar with the figure, Chime’s revenue growth has slowed dramatically since 2020. And behind the scenes, the... Chime found a way to offer zero-fee banking services without being a bank itself. But that...

Photo by Bloomberg.

JPMorgan Culling First Republic Bank’s Personal Credit Lines

By Maria Heeter and Michael Roddan · May 25, 2023 10:02 AM PDT · 1 comment

JPMorgan has told customers with personal credit lines at First Republic Bank that it will no longer offer those lines when they come up for renewal, according to correspondence viewed by The Information. The failed lender, which has been sold to JPMorgan, had offered personal lines of credit to its wealthy client base as a key way of attracting... JPMorgan has told customers with personal credit lines at First Republic Bank that it will no...

Art by Clark Miller, Shutterstock (2).

entertainment media/telecom

It’s Storytelling, Stupid

By Andrew A. Rosen · May 25, 2023 9:00 AM PDT · 7 comments

Sign up for Rosen’s newsletter, The Medium, part of The Information’s newsletter network. I doubt the shareholder lawsuit filed against former Disney CEO Bob Chapek and current Chief Financial Officer Christine McCarthy a couple weeks ago will go to trial. If Disney is guilty of fraud in how it represented the performance of its... Sign up for Rosen’s newsletter, The Medium, part of The Information’s newsletter...

Microsoft's Satya Nadella, left, and Peter Lee. Photo by Bloomberg, Microsoft

How Microsoft Swallowed Its Pride to Make a Massive Bet on OpenAI

By Aaron Holmes · May 25, 2023 6:00 AM PDT · 13 comments

Satya Nadella didn’t want to hear it. Last December, Peter Lee, who oversees Microsoft’s sprawling research efforts, was briefing Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, and his deputies about a series of tests Microsoft had conducted of GPT-4, the then-unreleased new artificial intelligence large-language model built by OpenAI. Lee told... Satya Nadella didn’t want to hear it. Last December, Peter Lee, who oversees...

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai

Shareholder Advisory Firms Call for Alphabet Chair’s Ouster

By Jon Victor · May 24, 2023 3:13 PM PDT · 8 comments

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai

Shareholder Advisory Firms Call for Alphabet Chair’s Ouster

By Jon Victor · May 24, 2023 3:13 PM PDT · 8 comments

Two influential shareholder advisory firms have taken an aggressive stance against Alphabet’s board of directors ahead of the company’s June 2 annual meeting, telling clients they should vote in favor of a majority of proposals submitted by shareholders to improve the company’s corporate governance—proposals the board... Two influential shareholder advisory firms have taken an aggressive stance against...

Photo by Tony Webster via Flickr

After Years of Resistance, AWS Opens Checkbook for Open-Source Providers

By Kevin McLaughlin and Anissa Gardizy · May 24, 2023 8:00 AM PDT · 2 comments

Several years ago, providers of open-source software had a beef with Amazon Web Services. They complained that AWS was selling cloud-based versions of their software, depriving them of hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue. The dispute was a public relations nightmare for AWS and risked inviting trouble from competition regulators.... Several years ago, providers of open-source software had a beef with Amazon Web Services. They...

Art by Mike Sullivan

Venture Capitalists Face Pressure to Divest From China

By Kate Clark · May 24, 2023 6:00 AM PDT · 5 comments

Silicon Valley venture capitalists are coming to terms with a new reality: Their once-prized China investments may be victims of a simmering cold war. As tensions between the U.S. and China have risen, some firms have sought ways to distance themselves from China’s tech scene. NEA, a VC firm whose Chinese investments date back two decades... Silicon Valley venture capitalists are coming to terms with a new reality: Their once-prized...

Art by Clark Miller.

Black Founders Needed SVB

By Rodney Williams · May 23, 2023 9:00 AM PDT · 1 comment

My first SXSW was 11 years ago. Arriving there in 2012 with just an idea for my first company—a secure communications platform called Lisnr—was scary, to say the least. I wasn’t on any event lists. But more than that, there wasn’t any programming aimed at encouraging Black founders, or even seemingly any desire to do so.... My first SXSW was 11 years ago. Arriving there in 2012 with just an idea for my first...

Chart by Mike Sullivan.

Enterprise Software’s Laggards: Firms Growing Slowly And Still Burning Cash

By Akash Pasricha · May 23, 2023 7:47 AM PDT · 1 comment

Chart by Mike Sullivan.

Enterprise Software’s Laggards: Firms Growing Slowly And Still Burning Cash

By Akash Pasricha · May 23, 2023 7:47 AM PDT · 1 comment

It’s the age-old refrain in American business: You have to spend money to make money. And it’s particularly true of the tech industry, where startups pour millions into untested new businesses and technologies. Investors usually don’t mind companies burning cash as long as they’re growing quickly—but some enterprise... It’s the age-old refrain in American business: You have to spend money to make money. And...

Photo by Bloomberg

Google and OpenAI’s Next Battleground: Firefox?

By Jon Victor · May 23, 2023 6:00 AM PDT · 1 comment

The race between Google, OpenAI and Microsoft for chatbot supremacy has only just begun. But the companies may soon compete to put their artificial intelligence–powered chatbots in front of nearly 200 million people who use Mozilla’s Firefox web browser each month. Mozilla plans to prominently feature a chatbot like Google’s... The race between Google, OpenAI and Microsoft for chatbot supremacy has only just begun. But the...

Shou Zi Chew, CEO of TikTok. Photo by Bloomberg

TikTok Says U.S. Survival Plan is Going Forward. Its Cloud Provider Isn’t So Sure

By Anissa Gardizy · May 22, 2023 7:30 AM PDT · 1 comment

TikTok’s leaders have spent much of this year telling Washington insiders the company was moving forward with Project Texas, a plan to run the viral video app in a way that alleviates U.S. government concerns about potential meddling by China. The reality isn’t so simple. Project Texas requires Oracle, the app’s cloud provider,... TikTok’s leaders have spent much of this year telling Washington insiders the company was...

Graphic by Shane Burke. Photos via Shutterstock/Wikimedia.

How Meta’s Acquisition of Giphy Went South

By Sylvia Varnham O'Regan and Maria Heeter · May 22, 2023 6:00 AM PDT · 1 comment

When a U.K. antitrust regulator initially ordered Meta Platforms to sell Giphy 18 months ago, it hoped to ensure that the startup—a library for animated images known as GIFs—would prosper as an independent company. Instead, Giphy’s once-promising business has atrophied under Meta’s ownership, making finding a buyer a tall... When a U.K. antitrust regulator initially ordered Meta Platforms to sell Giphy 18 months ago, it...

Art by Clark Miller.

While Hollywood Writers Fret About AI, Visual Effects Workers Welcome It

By Scott Alan Lucas · May 20, 2023 6:00 AM PDT · 7 comments

Art by Clark Miller.

Scene and Heard

entertainment ai

While Hollywood Writers Fret About AI, Visual Effects Workers Welcome It

By Scott Alan Lucas · May 20, 2023 6:00 AM PDT · 7 comments

Is there anybody here who is afraid of AI taking their job?” Visual effects veteran James Blevins, whose credits include “The Mandalorian,” “Icarus,” “Air Force One” and “Space Jam,” was speaking last Wednesday to a crowd of several hundred people at the Hollywood offices of FYI, the... Is there anybody here who is afraid of AI taking their job?” Visual effects veteran James...

What'll you have? Expensify CEO and founder David Barrett has high hopes for his workspace-cafe-lounge concept in San Francisco. Art by Clark Miller

A Lounge, an Office and a Strike Against Silicon Valley’s ‘Factory Mentality’

By Jon Steinberg · May 19, 2023 11:00 AM PDT · 19 comments

On May 9, Expensify issued a quarterly earnings report that even its likable longtime CEO couldn’t soften. It had been a “nuclear winter” for the economy, David Barrett told shareholders. There were silver linings for his expense management software company, but “don’t get me wrong, this quarter sucked.” His... On May 9, Expensify issued a quarterly earnings report that even its likable longtime CEO...

From left, Major League Pickleball owners Dude Perfect, Heidi Klum, Eva Longoria, Gary Vaynerchuk, Mark Cuban, Naomi Osaka, Kate Upton, David Dobrik, LeBron James and Tom Brady. Photo-composite by Clark Miller. Gary Vaynerchuk by Michael Nagle/Bloomberg, Kate Upton by Humberto Vidal, Lebron James by Ashley Landis-Pool/Getty Images.

The Hot New Trophy Asset: A Pro Pickleball Team

By Abram Brown · May 19, 2023 9:00 AM PDT · 11 comments

It was power lunch hour in midtown Manhattan and Central Park’s new pickleball courts had filled up with the type of sporty executives who once preferred to talk business over 18 holes of golf. I’d gone to paddle around with Samin Odhwani, an investor at NBA star Kevin Durant’s 35 Ventures, to hear about one of the firm’s... It was power lunch hour in midtown Manhattan and Central Park’s new pickleball courts had...

Art by Mike Sullivan.

google entertainment

YouTube Undercuts Amazon on Streaming Push

By Sahil Patel · May 19, 2023 6:00 AM PDT

YouTube and Netflix are the most-watched streaming services in America. But it is Amazon that has come closest to building a streaming version of cable TV with its Prime Video Channels service, which lets Prime subscribers easily sign up for a wide range of streaming services run by other companies. It’s an enormously profitable business,... YouTube and Netflix are the most-watched streaming services in America. But it is Amazon that has...

Art by Clark Miller.

How to Be a Crypto Whistleblower

By Poppy Alexander · May 18, 2023 9:00 AM PDT · 1 comment

Art by Clark Miller.

How to Be a Crypto Whistleblower

By Poppy Alexander · May 18, 2023 9:00 AM PDT · 1 comment

In the past few months, both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have brought aggressive enforcement actions against crypto exchanges. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, Tron founder Justin Sun and Terra founder Do Kwon have all been either charged or sued by one of these two agencies. Meanwhile, the... In the past few months, both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures...