AI Cuts Up the Web 🌍🤔

👀 TLDR:

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover OpenAI’s new publisher content deals, which potentially compartmentalize access to knowledge, threatening the ideals of the open web. We have news on Apple’s big iPhone 16 event, the Telegram CEO’s arrest and McDonald’s inadvertently launching a crypto scam, as well as our App and Stat of the Week, and web-3 focused What’s dAppening.

Our Top Take 🎬

📰🤝 OpenAI – Content Deal Signed with Condé Nast Publishing Group

Traditional search is dying, and with it, perhaps the ideals of the open web, too. For all its flaws, Google Search means access to (almost) everything. Yet its mooted successors, AI search engines, are going down the route of exclusivity by tying up deals with publications. Condé Nast (The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, et al.) has followed News Corp and TIME in agreeing to a content deal with OpenAI. Perplexity, on the other hand, has deals with publications as diverse as Fortune, Der Spiegel, and The Texas Tribune. Google will surely look to do the same for Gemini. While not every deal will be exclusive, it does imply exclusions — one AI model could ‘know’ something that another doesn’t, putting up barriers to discovery and knowledge, and veering away from the philosophy of the open web. #OpenDeals Read more here.

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

Firstly, thanks to those who have already signed up for early access to the What’s Appening Community. If you’re interested in joining other subscribers — engineering and product leaders, entrepreneurs, and the 3Advance team — now is the time to claim your spot! 🙋‍♂️ Don’t say we never told ya!

📲 App of the Week: Sonos S2 🤦🏻‍♂️

This week’s featured app is a lesson in what not to do in app development. Now, it’s one thing upsetting your users with a redesign that challenges their habits, quite another if you release an app that just doesn’t work. For new startups, it’s okay to rush your product out - in fact, we think you should do everything to get to market quicker. But with millions of users out there, you need to slow down, perform your Q&A, and have a backup plan. The best Sonos could do after its app update debacle was an apology letter. We feel for Sonos: Its hardware is stellar, but its apps have always lagged behind. Learn more about this disaster and avoid this kind of thing by hiring 3Advance.

🧐 🧐 Stat of the Week: 4.5K Dev Years

📈📉 AI – Amazon CEO Points to Time and Financial Savings

Andy Jassy has shared some of the data on how its AI assistant, Amazon Q, has saved Amazon huge amounts of time and money since being integrated into Amazon’s internal systems. The CEO reckons the company has saved up to 4,500 developer years (typical annual hours worked) and a cool $260 million to boot. #AIEfficent Read more here.

🗞️ Other Stories

🕸️ What’s d’Appening

🎮⛓️ Sony – PlayStation Company Develops Soneium Blockchain

Sony has announced the development of Soneium, an L2 blockchain that it claims is a solution to the centralization of the web. It’s based on the Optimism L1 chain and will invite developers to build dApps, launch NFTs, etc. However, the rumor mill is all focused on whether Sony will bring PlayStation games to its new blockchain. #Soneium Read more here.

📣 Promos

🤖 Get your free AI consultation: Book Now
🎧 Listen to our What’s Appening Podcast
🎥 Watch on YouTube / Facebook / LinkedIn
📱 Enjoy our ‘shorts’ on TikTok / Instagram
🔔 Subscribe to our YouTube channel so you’ll always know what’s appening in tech.
🌐 Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok
💬 We appreciate you and we’d love to hear your feedback. Just hit ‘Reply’!