1. Moonfire VC: The Sure-fire Way to 10x Your Money, Other than Wiring 10 G's to that Nigerian Prince in Your Spam Folder
Moonfire VC, a UK-based venture capital firm, has raised $115 million for its second fund, imaginatively named "Fund II," which will continue its "data-driven", "AI-enabled" and other buzzword buzzword approach to investing in early-stage startups. The firm, founded by former Atomico co-founder Mattias Ljungman, has developed custom A.I. models and a tech stack to identify potential startup investments, claiming to review up to 50,000 companies every week. Cough, cough this figure has not been independently verified because no one has bothered to check, but ignore that minor detail. Moonfire has already led 23 deals and co-invested in 27 others, partnering with prominent VCs such as Sequoia, Accel, Index, General Catalyst, and Accel. Moonfire fancies itself a trailblazer, revolutionizing the venture capital world by harnessing the awe-inspiring power of A.I. and human collaboration. Robots and humans joining forces is how we conquer the universe, one unprofitable startup at a time.
2. Adobe Releases "Generative Fill" Tool in Photoshop Beta, Because A.I. Knows What You Really Meant to Capture in That Photo
In a groundbreaking move that further blurs the line between reality and manipulation, Adobe has announced its latest product: "Generative Fill." This tool uses AI-generated content to fill or modify selected areas of an image based on text descriptions and can seamlessly blend synthesized imagery into the existing image. For example, users can say, "remove the screaming baby from the background", "change my mother-in-law's hair color to neon green", or "make my ex 20 lbs heavier" and voilah! Your commands come true and the augmented photo looks scarily real. Don't worry though, Adobe blocks certain keywords and has terms of use to prevent the generation of harmful or illegal content, just like how Facebook is able to prevent dangerous content from circulating... oh wait. By now we know that with great A.I. power comes the potential for great hilarity, mischief, or utter chaos. But hey, at least your photos will never be boring or blemish-ridden again!
3. Netflix Cracks Down on Sharing Passwords Like a Desperate Ex Trying to Win You Back
Hold onto your remotes because Netflix has begun cracking down on password sharing in the US and global markets. Subscribers are being forced to choose between booting out freeloaders or paying an additional fee. The company believes this will benefit its long-term growth, despite the short-term hit in initial cancellations. The launch coincides with industry developments like HBO Max transforming into Max, a service combining HBO and Discovery+, and Paramount+ announcing it will be adding Showtime content to its platform. We're keen to see which streaming provider comes out on top in this war, especially given other platforms are offering more content whereas Netflix is begging you to pay more for the same old shows. Hmmmm give us your best guess on that one...
4. Microsoft's New Fabric Platform: Where Data Dreams Come True and A.I. Reigns Supreme
Microsoft unveiled its latest creation, Microsoft Fabric, a platform that helps businesses manage and analyze their data. With a wave of its digital wand, Fabric combines a plethora of tools and services, making data integration, analysis, and visualization digitally seamless. It's like having a personal data genie that can fetch information from Microsoft's own data lake or other cloud platforms like Amazon and Google. And shocking no one, it leverages artificial intelligence like everything else under the sun to enhance data analytics, provide intelligent insights, and enable features like AI-based analytics and visualization. Additionally, Microsoft Copilot, an AI-powered tool, is integrated into Fabric to assist users in building data pipelines, generating code, and developing machine learning models. It also ensures secure access and governance of data... or so they say. Only time will tell until we hear of a gnarly data breach that threatens national security or something cool like that.
5. White House Deep Dives into A.I. Risks and Workers' Woes
The White House is going full sci-fi on us, investigating the dangers of A.I. and how it's messing with workers' lives. They're even taking a break from their busy schedule of policy writing and conspiracy theories to actually listen to workers' horror stories about A.I. surveillance and monitoring. Why are they doing this? The administration plans to use what it learns to update its A.I. research roadmap and release a report no one will read on AI's effect on education. Meanwhile, President Biden, who's apparently been playing around with A.I. like a 4-year-old with a new slinky, had a powwow with tech CEOs to chat about transparency and safety. Brace yourselves for a surge in political ads featuring A.I. magic or manipulation we should say. It's the future people!