Contextual AI Raises $80 Million, Google Is a Monopoly, Bytedance Creates New AI Jimeng Text-To-Video

“Google is a monopoly,” federal judge Amit Mehta ruled Monday. “It operates like a monopoly to maintain its monopoly.” The tech giant was found guilty of illegally maintaining a monopoly by paying partners like Apple and Samsung to make it the default search engine on their platforms. Google will no doubt appeal the verdict and could win in a conservative legal environment, arguing that companies have a right to get as much for their traffic as possible. It argues that Microsoft and others could outbid Google for Apple’s search traffic but won’t. The sentencing phase is still to come, and potential remedies would require years of litigation. Google could be barred from buying distribution. Apple would lose the $20 billion a year that Google pays it, but search is still behind AI answers.

Contextual AI raises $80 million in Series A funding Sells a tool for improving the performance of AI models. Data provider PitchBook estimates the company’s post-money valuation at about $609 million. Led by venture capital firm Greycroft, it includes existing investors Bain Capital Ventures and Lightspeed, which previously invested $20 million to launch the company in 2023.

MixRift raises $1.6 million to support mixed reality casual gaming. The investment will be used to develop a platform that combines virtual elements with real-world environments to provide an immersive gaming experience. The company aims to make MR games accessible and engaging for a wide audience, focusing on casual players rather than hardcore enthusiasts. This round of funding underscores the growing interest in MR as a promising area in the gaming industry.

X sues its former advertisers for lack of advertising. Elon Musk, the billionaire who runs some of the country’s most important and innovative start-ups, has continued his experiment in the media industry formerly known as Twitter. A year after telling advertisers unhappy with X’s recently relaxed moderation rules to piss off at a conference, X’s ad revenue has fallen by more than 50%. This week, Musk sued GARM, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, a small nonprofit that advises companies on online safety. GARM was promptly shut down, but X also named CVS, Unilever, Mars, and the Danish energy company Ørsted as defendants in the lawsuit. His lawsuit against the nonprofit progressive watchdog group Media Matters, which has amplified what it said was hate speech about X, goes to trial in March.

Meta Shutters, the acclaimed gaming studio, ready at dawn. Meta has decided to shut down popular VR games Ready At Dawn A lonely echo AND Lonely Echo IIalong with the multiplayer game Echo VRso it follows that it has closed Ready at Dawn. The games will no longer be available on August 1, 2024. This decision is part of Meta’s broader strategy to focus on its core products and new VR experiences. A lonely echo was well-regarded for its zero-G gameplay and immersive story, making this a significant release in the VR community. It’s the clearest sign yet that AAA games are really not doing it for the Meta and are moving on to other things, leaning more towards growing categories like lifestyle, fitness, and education.

ByteDance Launches ‘Jimeng AI’ Text-to-Video App. Currently only available in China, Jimeng creates short videos based on text prompts like RunwayML, Pica, the Chinese Kling, and OpenAI’s Sora, which is still not publicly available. Jimeng AI will undoubtedly integrate with TikTok soon, further democratizing and accelerating content creation on its platform. Expect Meta’s social media to do the same with its rapidly expanding generative AI applications.

Microsoft gets big AI client as TikTok spends $20 million a month. TikTok reportedly spends $20 million per month on Microsoft’s cloud services, making it a major AI customer. Eight months ago, OpenAI suspended ByteDance’s account after it allegedly used GPT to build a competing AI product, possibly even Jimeng. Oh well. Looks like Bytedance took its money and moved across the street to a like-minded OpenAI competitor.

Top five Coursera courses on generative AI:

1. Introduction to Generative AI (Google Cloud)
2. Rapid Engineering for ChatGPT (Vanderbilt University)
3. Generative AI for Everyone (DeepLearning.AI)
4. Generative AI with Large Language Models (AWS; DeepLearning.AI)
5. Google Artificial Intelligence Fundamentals (Google)

This column, formerly called This Week in XR, is also a podcast hosted by author Charlie Fink, Ted Schilowitz, former studio executive and co-founder of Red Camera, and Rony Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap. This week, our guest is Val Vacante, VP of Solution Innovation at Dentsu Interactive. You can find us on Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube.

What are we reading?

Do you want a friend who will always listen to you? Bari Weiss of Free Press, a Medium blog, describes a new AI device called “Friend” that listens to everything you say as “terrifying.”

Exploring the Samsung-Google-Qualcomm XR Collaboration. CNet editors Scott Stein and Lisa Eadicicco analyze the evidence to find out how the giants plan to respond to Meta and Apple.