Waymo Launches Robotaxi Service to San Francisco Airport Amidst Safety Concerns, While AI Companies Face Legal and User Engagement Challenges
Waymo, the Alphabet-owned autonomous vehicle company, began offering robotaxi service to and from San Francisco International Airport (SFO) on Thursday, after years of negotiations, according to a blog post by the company. The service will initially be available to a select number of riders, with plans to expand to all customers in the coming months. Pickups and drop-offs will occur at the SFO Rental Car Center, accessible via AirTrain. Waymo stated it intends to serve additional airport locations in the future.
The launch comes as Waymo faces increased scrutiny regarding safety. The company revealed that one of its robotaxis struck a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is investigating the incident.
Meanwhile, in the AI sector, music publishers, including Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group, filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, alleging "flagrant piracy" of over 20,000 copyrighted songs. The publishers claim Anthropic illegally downloaded sheet music, song lyrics, and musical compositions. The lawsuit seeks damages potentially exceeding $3 billion, which, according to a statement by the publishers, would be one of the largest non-class action copyright cases in U.S. history. The legal team is the same as in the Bartz v. Anthropic case, where authors accused Anthropic of using their copyrighted works to train AI models. Judge William Alsup ruled in the previous case that training models on copyrighted content is legal, but pointed out the potential for copyright infringement in the output.
OpenAI's video-generation app, Sora, is experiencing a decline in user engagement after a successful launch. According to data from market intelligence provider Appfigures, the iOS version of Sora, powered by OpenAI's video generation model Sora 2, topped 100,000 installs on its first day and quickly reached the No. 1 spot on the U.S. App Store, surpassing ChatGPT in reaching 1 million downloads. However, the app is now seeing declines in both app downloads and consumer spending.
Google DeepMind is also making moves in the AI space, opening up access to Project Genie, its AI tool for creating interactive game worlds from text prompts or images. Starting Thursday, Google AI Ultra subscribers in the U.S. can experiment with the research prototype, powered by Genie 3, Nano Banana Pro, and Gemini. This move aims to gather user feedback and training data as DeepMind develops more advanced world models.
In other news, Minneapolis is seeing increased mobilization of local rapid response networks and mutual aid groups in response to federal immigration agents. According to Al Jazeera, organizers are drawing on lessons from movements that emerged after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, building a sustained movement for community defense.
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