Author: Jaxon Bennett

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the worldTrump Mobile has backed away from the claim that its golden smartphone will be “Made in the USA”, just a week after it was announced.The phone network launched by the Trump Organization has changed its website to say that the $499 smartphone will be “brought to life right here in the USA” and “designed with American values in mind”, after last week pledging the product would be manufactured in the US.Statements that the T1 phone would start shipping in August…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.A year ago, the generative AI mania sweeping through Silicon Valley and Wall Street faced a serious reality check.In a widely quoted note, Goldman Sachs’ head of equity research, Jim Covello, questioned whether the companies planning to pour $1bn into building generative AI would ever see a return on the money. A partner at venture capital firm Sequoia, meanwhile, estimated that tech companies needed to generate $600bn in extra revenue to justify their extra capital spending in 2024 alone — around six…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Artificial intelligence myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.One of my relatives heard some strange stories when working on a healthcare helpline during the Covid pandemic. Her job was to help callers complete the rapid lateral flow tests used millions of times during lockdown. But some callers were clearly confused by the procedure. “So, I’ve drunk the fluid in the tube. What do I do now?” asked one.That user confusion may be an extreme example of a common technological problem: how ordinary people use a product or service in the…

After decades of being labelled risk-averse technology laggards, corporate legal departments are emerging as enthusiastic early adopters of artificial intelligence.Legal services — often information-dense, analytical and procedural — are fertile ground for the AI-powered automation of tasks including drafting contracts and providing initial legal opinions, experts say.For in-house legal teams considering AI legal tools, an early and important question is whether to build tools in-house or buy them from a software supplier. What are the pros and cons of each approach?The buildersGiven the complexity and cost of designing, testing and rolling out proprietary software, many companies building their own legal…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Private equity-backed software group Visma has chosen London over Amsterdam for the planned initial public offering of the €19bn software company next year, scoring a rare win for the UK’s beleaguered stock market.British buyout firm Hg has owned Visma, which provides small to medium-sized businesses with accounting and payroll software, since 2006 when it took the company private at a valuation of about £380mn. Since then the UK-based private equity firm has repeatedly reinvested in Visma through its newer funds and cashed…

Reddit is in an “arms race” to protect its devoted online communities from a surge in artificial intelligence-generated content, with the authenticity of its vast repository of human interaction increasingly valuable in training new AI-powered search tools. Chief executive Steve Huffman told the Financial Times that Reddit had “20 years of conversation about everything”, leaving the company with a lucrative resource of personal interaction. This has allowed it to strike multimillion dollar partnerships with Google and OpenAI to train their large language models on its content, as tech companies look for real-world data that can improve their generative AI products.But Huffman…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Artificial intelligence myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Meta’s use of millions of books to train its artificial intelligence models has been judged “fair” by a federal court on Wednesday, in a win for tech companies that use copyrighted materials to develop AI. The case, brought by about a dozen authors, including Ta-Nehisi Coates and Richard Kadrey, challenged how the $1.4tn social media giant used a library of millions of online books, academic articles and comics to train its Llama AI models.Meta’s use of these titles is protected under copyright…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Nvidia shares hit a record high on Wednesday, marking a turnaround for the chip company following a rocky start to the year marked by US-China tensions over critical artificial intelligence technology.The US chip designer’s shares rose 4 per cent, surpassing an all-time high intraday price set in January, as it vies with Microsoft and Apple to be the world’s most valuable company.The rally came as Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang gave a bullish outlook at the company’s annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Artificial intelligence myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.The writer is programme director of the Institute for Global Affairs at Eurasia GroupWhen OpenAI and Mattel announced a partnership earlier this month, there was an implicit recognition of the risks. The first toys powered with artificial intelligence would not be for children under 13.Another partnership last week came with seemingly fewer caveats. OpenAI separately revealed that it had won its first Pentagon contract. It would pilot a $200mn programme to “develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Expecto pecuniam! Said Harry Potter never. The boy wizard and star of book, screen, stage and game did not want for money though, unlike the UK’s creative industries. The government aims to spend £380mn to generate £14bn of investment, it revealed in this week’s “modern industrial strategy” proposal. At least it is targeting a sector where magic wands exist and dreams come true. The term creative industries spans segments ranging from advertising and architecture through to books, films and virtual reality. That it…