Rabbit Punch 🍏🤜🐰

👀 TLDR:

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover some major leaks ahead of next week’s Apple WWDC 2024. The pressure is on Apple to go big on AI, and it seems that will include an AI version of Siri. Bloomberg reports that the new AI features will allow Siri to access apps via voice commands. If the rumors are true, it’s even more bad news for the makers of the Rabbit r1. We also cover news on Starlink soon providing internet for your smartphone, the “Little Tech” movement in Washington, Google’s mea culpa, and AI at a major festival. Our Stat looks at the needs of data centers, What’s dAppening sees legal clarification on digital collectibles, and our GPT of the Week comes from our podcast guest, AI entrepreneur Julie Helmer.

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Our Top Take 🎬

🍏🗣️ Apple – Leak Suggests AI-Powered Siri Will Be Announced Next Week

Apple WWDC 2024 is on Monday, so you can be sure we will be all over the event in next week’s What’s Appening. For now, we get to peruse the leaks, and the biggest one seems to be that Apple will announce an AI version of Siri, one that will give you the ability to control your apps with voice commands: “Hey, Siri, edit that photo.” or “Hey, Siri, send that email.” Some have noted that this could effectively render obsolete what Rabbit r1 AI has been trying to achieve (with very mixed results), and it would put Siri somewhere close to OpenAI’s concept of Agents. As you might expect, Siri isn’t the only Apple product that’s (reportedly) getting an AI makeover next week, as Messages, Mail, Notes, and Voice Memo are among others predicted to get an AI “boost”. Clearly, Monday is going to be crucial for Apple – perhaps the most critical WWDC of the Tim Cook era. While the rumor mill has been grinding to suggest that Apple will announce OpenAI or Google as an AI partner for iOS 18 next week, it’s worth noting that Siri’s new AI features are expected to be powered by Apple’s proprietary Ajax LLM. Regardless, the consensus is that Apple must demonstrate it is ready for an AI-powered future. We will know the answer in six days. #HeySiri Read more here.

🦾 GPT of the Week: Diabetic Lifestyle Resource

This week’s Custom GPT is Diabetic Lifestyle Resource! While we must advise you never trust medical advice from an AI chatbot, that doesn’t mean GPTs can’t help caregivers. In our What’s Appening podcast this week, we interviewed GPT Creator and AI entrepreneur Julie Helmer, who created this GPT for her own personal use, and has now opened it up to the world. You can watch on YouTube or listen to it on your favorite Podcast Player — Spotify, Apple Music or Amazon Music.

Other Stories 🗞️

🛰️ SpaceX Plans to Launch Cellular Phone Starlink Connection. In an FCC filing (pending approval), SpaceX has stated it plans to launch its Starlink satellite internet connection for phones by the fall. More here.

🤏 “Little Tech” Comes to Washington to Lobby. Hugely interesting story in Politico, covering how Y-Combinator is building a “Little Tech” lobbying operation in the nation’s capital. The idea is simple: thousands of startups will fight for their slice of the nascent AI economy, and banding together could mean Big Tech doesn’t get a monopoly. Story is here.

🎬 Tribeca Film Festival Announces AI Category. Hmmm, there’s been a lot of pushback on this, but the Tribeca Film Festival has announced a “Sora Shorts” category, where AI-generated videos will be judged alongside traditional entries. Read Tribeca’s reasoning here.

🙇 AI Overviews, Google’s Mea Culpa. In a blog post that outlined some of the issues with AI Overviews, Google has kind of said sorry, promised to get better, and, to an extent, fought its corner. Read the blog from Head of Google Search Liz Reid here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 750K Homes

⚡🏭 AI – 9% of US Electricity Could Power Data Centers by 2030

We have touched on the challenges of fueling the AI boom in recent weeks, but there is a growing consensus that finding enough electricity will be just as important as chip-making. Estimates suggest that the demand for electricity will at least double by the end of the decade as demand for data centers grows. A typical large data center requires about the same amount of electricity as 750,000 homes. #ElectricDreams Read more here.

🕸️ What’s dAppening?

🧑‍⚖️🏀 Dapper Labs – Lawsuit Settlement Clarifies Status of Digital Collectibles

In a ‘favorable’ lawsuit settlement, Dapper Labs appears to have established that NBA Top Shot Moments – the popular NFT collection that captures iconic moments in NBA history – should not be considered securities under federal law. The lawsuit saw the application of the “Howey Test”, a measurement to deem whether a cryptoasset is an investment contract, thereby coming under securities law. The ruling could be broadly positive for the NFT market, even if that clarity might not be set in stone in the eyes of bodies like the SEC. #DapperLabsWin Read more here.

Meanwhile at 3Advance...

The all-new Today's Front Pages has arrived and last week was D-DAY. While technically, the team at 3Advance launched TFP 2.0 last month it was still officially in “Preview” when the news broke last Friday of Former President Trump’s convictions in the Stea. This MAGA mega news day highlights the value of this incredible resource: 100s of newspaper front pages from around the world covering an unprecedented day in American History. We developed this new Al-powered platform for the Freedom Forum, using generative Al, among other things to automatically categorize by topic (eg. #TRUMP, #FELONY etc) and to highlight first amendment freedoms that apply to stories. Head on over to https://frontpages.freedomforum.org/ for today’s cover pages. You can get a glimpse of last week’s experience below:

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