It may be a real-life case of AI coming to take our jobs—if not our identities. Journalist, author, and professor Jane Friedman revealed on Monday that Amazon has refused her request to remove books falsely attributed to her from its website, in part because she did not hold a trademark to her own name. Friedman has amassed a solid following…
Video-conferencing platform Zoom has updated its terms of service after widespread backlash over a section concerning AI data scraping, clarifying that it won’t use user content to train AI without consent. In an Aug. 7 post, Zoom said its terms of service were updated to further confirm it would not use chat, audio, or video content from its customers to…
OpenAI has released a new web crawling bot, GPTBot, to expand its dataset for training its next generation of AI systems—and the next iteration apparently has an official name. The company trademarked the term “GPT-5,” hinting at an upcoming release, while giving web publishers a heads up on how to keep their content out of its massive corpus. The web…
Paypal’s new Ethereum-based stablecoin, PYUSD has been seen as bittersweet news for the crypto community. While it could finally see Ethereum find its place in mainstream adoption, it could also spell trouble for decentralization and personal control of assets, warns the community. The new stablecoin, Paypal USD, was launched on Aug. 7 and is issued by Paxos Trust Co. —…
Solana-based decentralized futures exchange Cypher Protocol halted its smart contract after an estimated $1 million exploit. On Aug. 7, Cypher alerted its 13,500 followers on X (formerly known as Twitter) that it had experienced a security incident and had thus frozen its smart contract. The team added it is investigating the cause of the exploit and has reached out to…
Crypto exchange Blockchain.com has been granted a payments license from Singapore’s central bank — the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). Blockchain.com announced on Aug. 7 it received its major payment institution (MPI) from MAS on Aug. 1 allowing it to provide what the regulator calls digital payment token services to institutional and accredited investors. The exchange’s full license comes after it…
DREX will be the official name of Brazil’s new central bank digital currency (CBDC), also known as the digital real, according to a Monday announcement from the Central Bank of Brazil. The name was revealed during a live broadcast on the Bank’s YouTube channel hosted by Fábio Araújo, coordinator of the digital real, and Aristides Cavalcante, deputy head of the…
Elon Musk-backed biotechnology company Neuralink announced the raise of $280 million in Series D funding, led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, in a short tweet on Monday. We’re happy to announce our $280M Series D round led by @foundersfund. We’re extremely excited about this next chapter at Neuralink. If you’d like to help make the first human experience incredible and…
Our weekly roundup of news from East Asia curates the industry’s most important developments. Chinese man’s $10M loss as court says Bitcoin lending not protected by law A man in China’s Jiangsu province, identified as Mr. Xu, appears to be out of luck after a court ruled that his 341 Bitcoin loan ($9.9 million) to counterparty Mr. Lin is not…
BlackRock, a multinational investment company, shocked many in the cryptocurrency industry in June when it filed an application for an exchange-traded fund (ETF), the iShares Bitcoin Trust. It’s seeking to overcome 10-year-long opposition from United States regulators to cryptocurrency ETFs. A spot Bitcoin ETF would be tradable on a traditional stock exchange and track with the market. While supporters argue…
