All posts tagged: Company

AI Company Known for Teen Suicides Launches New Feature to Turn Books Into Roleplaying Experiences

AI Company Known for Teen Suicides Launches New Feature to Turn Books Into Roleplaying Experiences

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech AI company Character.AI has long garnered a reputation for hosting some extremely dubious content. Though it built its early success off explosive popularity among teen users, it was repeatedly caught hosting wildly inappropriate bots — like ones modeled after real-world mass shooters or designed to encourage eating disorders. Outrage grew when a teen died by suicide after developing an intense emotional connection to a Character.AI chatbot, followed by at least two other suicides and related lawsuits. The situation got so bad that last year, the company banned underage users from interacting with its bots entirely. Now the company has announced “c.ai Books,” a bizarre feature designed to turn books into “choose your own adventure” novels. “Interactive AI storytelling is powerful, but a blank page can be intimidating,” the company wrote in its announcement. “Books gives you a familiar starting point — characters you know, narratives you love, and stakes that are already built in.” The company scraped classic …

Kevin Weil and Bill Peebles exit OpenAI as company continues to shed ‘side quests’

Kevin Weil and Bill Peebles exit OpenAI as company continues to shed ‘side quests’

Published by skeptic

OpenAI is losing two of the architects of its most ambitious moonshots. Kevin Weil, who led the company’s science research initiative, and Bill Peebles, the researcher behind AI video tool Sora, both announced their departures on Friday. The exits come as OpenAI consolidates around enterprise AI and its forthcoming “superapp.” The departures follow OpenAI’s decision to cut back on “side quests,” including customer-facing bets like Sora and OpenAI for Science. Sora, which was losing an estimated $1 million per day in compute costs, was shut down last month. OpenAI for Science was the internal research group behind Prism, an AI-powered platform that promised to accelerate scientific discovery. It’s being absorbed into “other research teams,” according to Weil’s social media post announcing the news. “It’s been a mind-expanding two years, from Chief Product Officer to joining the research team and starting OpenAI for Science,” Weil wrote. “Accelerating science will be one of the most stunningly positive outcomes of our push to AGI.” The team had a short and bumpy road after its formal announcement in October …

OpenAI Executive Kevin Weil Is Leaving the Company

OpenAI Executive Kevin Weil Is Leaving the Company

Published by skeptic

Kevin Weil, OpenAI’s former chief product officer who was recently tapped to build a new AI workspace for scientists, Prism, is leaving the company, WIRED has confirmed. Weil was previously an early executive leading product at Instagram. OpenAI is also sunsetting Prism, which the company launched as a web app in January this year to give scientists a better way to work with AI. The company is folding the roughly 10-person team behind it under OpenAI’s head of Codex, Thibault Sottiaux, and aims to incorporate Prism’s capabilities into its desktop Codex app. An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed the changes, and tells WIRED this is part of the company’s effort to unify its business and product strategy. OpenAI has broader ambitions to turn Codex, its AI coding application, into an “everything app.” Weil, who joined OpenAI in June 2024, announced last September that he would be starting a new initiative inside of the company called “OpenAI for Science.” Now, OpenAI is dispersing those employees throughout the company’s product, research, and infrastructure teams. An OpenAI spokesperson reiterated the …

Ex-CEO, ex-CFO of bankrupt AI company charged with fraud

Ex-CEO, ex-CFO of bankrupt AI company charged with fraud

Published by Sam Flores

NEW YORK, April 17 : The former chief executive and chief financial officer of iLearningEngines, which provided AI-driven business automation technology, were indicted on charges they defrauded investors and lenders by fabricating “virtually all” of the now-bankrupt company’s customer relationships and revenue. Former CEO Puthugramam Chidambaran, who founded iLearningEngines in 2010, and ex-CFO Sayyed Farhan Ali Naqvi were charged in a 10-count indictment with running a continuing financial crimes enterprise, securities fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud. The indictment was made public on Friday in the Brooklyn, New York, federal court. Chidambaran, 57, was arrested in Potomac, Maryland, where he lives, while Naqvi, 44, of Houston, was arrested in San Jose, California, prosecutors said. The criminal enterprise charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. Lawyers for the defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Prosecutors said iLearning marketed itself as an artificial intelligence-driven digital education company with an “out-of-the-box AI platform,” and claimed to earn revenue mainly by selling licenses for its educational and training platforms …

More companies go bust in March as fears mount over Iran war impact

More companies go bust in March as fears mount over Iran war impact

Published by Sam Flores

Tom Russell, president of restructuring professionals trade group R3, said: “While it may be too early to see the full impact of the worsening economic situation in the formal insolvency statistics, energy and fuel costs have risen significantly, and for many businesses this has come at the same time as customers are becoming more cautious with their spending. Source link

How one company built £14m business by buying up flagging B2B titles

How one company built £14m business by buying up flagging B2B titles

Published by Sam Flores

Datateam homepage on 13 April 2026 A Kent-based communications business has grown to over £14m in turnover by acquiring more than 70 underperforming specialist magazines. Many of its print titles, such as Process and Control Engineering and School Building, are incredibly niche. Datateam has spent twenty years buying up small to medium-sized specialist titles, expanding them through events and newsletters while reducing their print costs where possible. Most of the mainly monthy titles Datateam has acquired have been at risk of slipping out of profitability. “We’d like to consider ourselves to be one of the largest independently-owned publishing media businesses in the UK,” Datateam media director Paul Ryder said, having managed to turn “a lot of these acquisitions” into “profitable magazines”. This revenue is made through print and online advertising across newsletters and websites (sponsored takeovers, banners and button ads), as well as through paid subscriptions, which, for a free magazine, “guarantees that you can receive a printed copy”. “Our goal would be that anyone who wanted a printed copy, we’ll send it to them, …

Senate overturns Boundary Waters protections, a boon for Chilean mining company

Senate overturns Boundary Waters protections, a boon for Chilean mining company

Published by Sam Flores

Outdoor enthusiasts travel by canoe through several of the hundreds of fresh water lakes that make up the Boundary Waters in the northern woods of Minnesota. Andrew Lichtenstein | Corbis News | Getty Images The Senate on Thursday overturned a mining moratorium in Minnesota’s Superior National Forest, a boon for a Chilean mining company subsidiary and a stinging loss for environmentalists trying to protect the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The chamber voted 50-49 to overturn a protection imposed by President Joe Biden in 2023 that he set for 20 years. It clears the way for a long-stalled mine project proposed by Twin Metals Minnesota to restart plans to access the immense stores of copper and other minerals in the Superior National Forest near the Boundary Waters. It’s the latest step in a long battle over mining in the area, which has seesawed for years between Democratic and Republican administrations as environmental groups warn the project could pollute the country’s most visited wilderness area. The mine sought by Twin Metals, a subsidiary of Chilean mining …

Xanax sourced to West Virginia-based company recalled nationwide. What you need to know

Xanax sourced to West Virginia-based company recalled nationwide. What you need to know

Published by Sam Flores

A specific allotment of the medication Xanax, typically prescribed to treat mental health challenges including anxiety and panic disorders, has been recalled due to the product’s potential to cause adverse health effects. U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials announced the voluntary recall of Xanax, also known as alprazolam, distributed by Viatris Specialty, a limited liability company in West Virginia. “The voluntary recall of Xanax XR is specific to one lot of one strength of the brand product only, and no other batches of the Xanax XR brand product, or its generics, are impacted,” said a Viatris spokesperson. “The vast majority of patients in the U.S. are dispensed generic alprazolam, which this recall does not affect.” Xanax is one of the most widely prescribed medications by doctors to treat generalized anxiety and panic disorders, but addiction experts say it’s considered to be a highly addictive substance given its psychodynamic properties that include creating feelings of euphoria, according to a report in the National Library of Medicine. The drug is generally safe and helpful when used as …

Anthropic co-founder confirms the company briefed the Trump administration on Mythos

Anthropic co-founder confirms the company briefed the Trump administration on Mythos

Published by skeptic

Jack Clark, one of Anthropic’s co-founders who also serves as Head of Public Benefit for Anthropic PBC, confirmed that the AI company had briefed the Trump administration about its new Mythos model. The model, announced last week, is so dangerous that it’s not being released to the public, largely due to its alleged powerful cybersecurity capabilities. In an interview at the Semafor World Economy summit this week, Clark explained why the company was still engaged with the U.S. government while simultaneously suing them. This March, Anthropic filed a lawsuit against Trump’s Department of Defense (DOD) after the agency labeled the company a supply-chain risk. Anthropic had clashed with the Pentagon over whether the military should have unrestricted access to Anthropic’s AI systems for use cases that included mass surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weapons. (OpenAI ended up winning the deal instead.) At the conference, Clark downplayed the administration’s labeling of its business as a supply-chain risk, saying it was merely a “narrow contracting dispute” and that Anthropic didn’t want it to get in the …

Water company boss to forgo bonus following water outage | Money News

Water company boss to forgo bonus following water outage | Money News

Published by Sam Flores

The boss of South East Water has said he will not accept a bonus for the current financial year. Chief executive David Hinton announced his decision after an appearance at the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Committee of MPs. He is still in receipt of a £400,000 salary. Customers of the utility company had suffered a drinking water outage in Tunbridge Wells in December and January. Money blog: Stores ‘taking mickey’ out of olive oil shoppers, says Filippo Berio boss People were left with no tap water, unable to shower or bathe and could not flush their toilets, while some schools were forced to close. Last month, watchdog Ofwat said the firm was to be fined £22m for repeated supply failures. The fine relates to the water company’s supply interruptions in Kent and Sussex between 2020 and 2023, which affected more than 286,000 people. Ofwat had, in January, begun an investigation into South East Water for outages since November. An apology In a statement on Tuesday, Mr Hinton said, “We apologise unreservedly to all …