It may be hard to remember, but George Clooney and Brad Pitt co-starred in a movie, “Wolfs,” that Apple released just two months ago.
On Friday, the film’s writer and director Jon Watts said Friday that a sequel is no longer happening; in a follow-up interview with Deadline, he explained that he “no longer trusted [Apple] as a creative partner.”
The company is reportedly scaling back its movie strategy. “Wolfs,” for example, was supposed to get a big theatrical release, but instead, it played in a limited number of theaters for just one week before launching on Apple TV+.
Watts, who also created the new Star Wars show “Skeleton Crew,” said Apple’s shift “was a total surprise and made without any explanation or discussion.”
“I was completely shocked and asked them to please not include the news that I was writing a sequel,” Watts said. “They ignored my request and announced it in their press release anyway, seemingly to create a positive spin to their streaming pivot.”
As a result, Watts said he “quietly returned the money they gave me for the sequel” and canceled the project.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Welcome back to Week in Review. This week, we’re exploring the DOJ telling Google to sell off Chrome to break up its monopoly, OpenAI accidentally deleting potential evidence in The New York Times’ copyright lawsuit against it, and how AI companies are using TikTok brainrot for study tools. Let’s do this.
The U.S. Department of Justice argued that Google should divest its Chrome browser to help break up the company’s illegal monopoly in online search. District Court judge Amit Mehta ruled in August that Google was an illegal monopoly for abusing its power over the search business, and the DOJ’s latest filing suggests that Google’s ownership of Android and Chrome pose “a significant challenge” to apply remedies for making the search market competitive.
Anthropic has raised an additional $4 billion from Amazon and has agreed to make Amazon Web Services the primary place it’ll train its flagship generative AI models. Anthropic is also working with Annapurna Labs, AWS’ chipmaking division, to develop future generations of Trainium accelerators, AWS’ custom-built chips for training AI models. The new cash infusion from Amazon brings the tech giant’s total investment in Anthropic to $8 billion.
OpenAI accidentally deleted potential evidence in The New York Times and Daily News’ copyright lawsuit, lawyers for the publishers allege. As part of the suit, OpenAI agreed to provide two virtual machines so that counsel could perform searches for their copyrighted content in its AI training sets. But in a letter, attorneys for the publishers say that OpenAI engineers erased all the publishers’ search data stored on one of the virtual machines.
If you’d like to receive the Week in Review newsletter in your inbox every Saturday, sign up here!
Kim Kardashian meets Optimus: The fashion mogul got some hands-on experience with Tesla’s bipedal, humanoid robot. In videos posted to X, Kardashian prompts Optimus to make a heart with its hand, dance like it’s at a luau, and play rock, paper, scissors. Read more
Oura’s valuation surpasses $5B: The smart ring maker received a $75 million investment from glucose device maker Dexcom. The investment, which marks Oura’s Series D funding round, brings the company’s valuation to more than $5 billion. Read more
Let’s throw a party for Partiful: The customizable event-planning app challenging older solutions like Evite, Eventbrite, and Facebook Events is a favorite among Gen Z users — and has just been named Google’s best app of 2024. Read more
Talk to me in your language: Microsoft will soon let Teams users clone their voices so they can have their sound-alikes speak to others in up to nine languages: English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Mandarin Chinese, and Spanish. Read more
Hackers go after Andrew Tate: According to The Daily Dot, hackers breached an online course founded by the influencer and self-described misogynist, leaking data on close to 800,000 users. Tate is currently under house arrest awaiting trial on charges of human trafficking and rape. Read more
What makes a bank a bank? The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ruled that all digital services that handle a significant number of transactions should be subject to bank-like supervision, which could affect Apple Pay, Cash App, Google Pay, PayPal, and Venmo. Read more
A more conversational Siri: Apple is developing a new version of Siri powered by advanced large language models, according to sources cited by Bloomberg, in an attempt to catch up with more natural-sounding competitors like Google’s Gemini Live. Read more
Cashing in on TikTok brainrot: Several AI-based study tools are capitalizing on a “PDF to Brainrot” trend, in which the text of a document you upload is read to you in a monotone voice over “oddly satisfying” vertical videos like Subway Surfers gameplay. Read more
Threads takes a stab at Bluesky: As Bluesky tops 20 million users, Instagram Threads has begun rolling out a new feature called custom feeds in an effort to capitalize on the user demand for more personalization. Read more
ChatGPT in the classroom: OpenAI released a free online course designed to help K-12 teachers learn how to bring ChatGPT into their classrooms. But some educators are wary of the technology — and its potential to go awry. Read more
Do we need another daily word game? I am a daily word game and crossword puzzle evangelist, but it feels like we’re quickly approaching oversaturation in the market. Netflix, in collaboration with TED, launched its new daily word puzzle called TED Tumblewords. Read more
Please don’t upload your X-rays to a chatbot: People frequently turn to generative AI chatbots to ask questions about their medical concerns and to better understand their health. Since October, X users have been encouraged to upload their X-rays, MRIs, and PET scans to the platform’s AI chatbot, Grok, to help interpret their results. Medical data is a special category with federal protections that, for the most part, only you can choose to circumvent. But just because you can doesn’t mean you should. As Zack Whittaker writes, it’s good to remember that what goes on the internet never leaves the internet. Read more
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
The European Commission (EC) has quietly closed a longstanding antitrust investigation into Apple over rules it enforces against third-party e-book and audiobook app developers.
The EC opened the probe back in 2020 after receiving complaints over how Apple forced competing e-book and audiobook app developers to use Apple’s own in-app payment system, while also preventing them from informing customers of alternative ways to pay — a practice known as anti-steering. The EC opened a parallel investigation into similar practices vis à vis music-streaming apps, a move prompted by complaints made by Spotify.
For the music-streaming part, Apple was hit by a $2 billion fine in March. However, the undisclosed complainant in the e-book / audiobook aspect of the investigation has since withdrawn their complaint, leading the Commission to close the probe with no further action.
“The closure of an investigation is not a finding that the conduct in question complies with EU competition rules,” the announcement clarified.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
A report claims Apple’s ‘LLM Siri’ will essentially be Gemini Live for iPhone. Still, Apple’s better off not rushing things.
An inquiry group setup by the U.K.’s antitrust authority has provisionally found that Apple’s policies are “holding back innovation in the browsers we use to access the web on mobile phones.”
While the report focuses substantively on Apple, it also highlighted a revenue-sharing agreement with Google, noting that the duo “earn significant revenue” when Google Chrome is used on iOS, which reduces their “financial incentives to compete.”
The announcement comes in the same week as the Department of Justice (DoJ) in the U.S. said that Google should divest its Chrome browser, after a judge ruled in August that the internet giant was tantamount to an illegal monopoly on online search.
Today’s findings have been a long-time in the making. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched a market study back in 2021, looking into Apple and Google’s dominance in mobile, including practices and policies around their respective app stores and browsers. The following year, the CMA confirmed it was launching a formal antitrust probe into this Android-iOS “mobile duopoly,” focused on browsers and cloud gaming, noting at the time that it had concerns that they could be restricting competition and harming consumers.
Today, the CMA said it wouldn’t be moving forward with the cloud gaming aspect of its probe, due to changes Apple has already made which “look to have positive implications for competition in this market,” the report noted.
However, many of the other complaints remain. The CMA said that Apple forces competing mobile browsers in the U.K. to use Apple’s browser engine, Webkit, which limits what these browsers are able to do and curbs their ability to differentiate. Moreover, browsers that do use WebKit haven’t been given the same level of access and functionality as Apple’s own Safari has, which “has a negative impact on competition and innovation.” This also includes limitations on how third-party apps can leverage so-called “in-app browsing,” meaning access to the open web from within native iOS apps.
“We have provisionally found that Apple’s restrictions limit the traffic available to challenger browsers in this type of browsing and also limit the extent to which apps can customise their users’ browsing experience, as companies with millions of users like Meta would like to do,” the report notes. “We have provisionally found that this limits competition and choice in terms of the options available to app developers to offer in-app browsing.”
An Apple spokesperson said that it disagrees with the findings, and any changes could ultimately “undermine user privacy and security.” The spokesperson said:
“Apple believes in thriving and dynamic markets where innovation can flourish. We face competition in every segment and jurisdiction where we operate, and our focus is always the trust of our users. We disagree with the findings in the report regarding Safari, WebKit, and in-app browsing on iOS. We are concerned that the interventions discussed in the report for future consideration under the Digital Markets, Competition, and Consumers Act would undermine user privacy and security and hinder our ability to make the kind of technology that sets Apple apart. We will continue to engage constructively with the CMA as their work on this matter progresses.”
This is a common refrain Apple has used in other similar complaints it has faced, including the expansive lawsuit launched by the Department of Justice (DoJ) in the U.S. earlier this year, which accused Apple of constructing its privacy and security practices to benefit the company financially.
A Google spokesperson said that “Android’s openness has helped to expand choice, reduce prices and democratize access to smartphones and apps,” adding that it will “continue to engage constructively with the CMA on these matters in the months ahead.”
The long and short of all this is that nothing will actually change for now. But the inquiry notes that the U.K.’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, rules that are set to come into force next year, should be used by CMA to address these practices.
For now, the CMA said that it’s inviting further comments on its provisional findings, and it expects to make a final decision by March, 2025.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Apple is developing a new version of its voice assistant, Siri, powered by advanced large language models (LLMs), according to sources cited by Bloomberg. This more conversational Siri is part of Apple’s attempt to catch up in AI, where competitors have released impressive features, like Google’s Gemini Live, that are far more natural to talk to than Siri.
The new assistant reportedly will fully replace the Siri interface that users rely on today, and Apple is planning to release the feature in the spring of 2026. The feature seems like it will be similar to OpenAI’s Advanced Voice Mode but with all the same access to personal information and apps that Siri has today.
Until then, Apple is relying on third parties to power the iPhone’s advanced AI features. OpenAI’s ChatGPT will become available inside Apple Intelligence in December, and Apple has reportedly discussed similar deals with other AI providers, such as Google and Anthropic.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch