Last week didn’t turn out so well for Google after all. Despite rumors that the EU would bow to U.S. threats, the European Commission assessed a €2.95 billion ($3.46 billion) fine for adtech anti-trust violations. Google also has to change self-preferencing practices and avoid future conflicts of interest.
While the company claims personal credit information was not compromised, hackers did get names, birth dates, and social security numbers.
In what might be considered another setback for Big Tech, Anthropic has agreed to pay authors $1.5 billion to settle a lawsuit over its use of books to train AI. It’s a small victory at best, since the judge had already accepted Anthropic’s claim that using copyrighted books was legal. The settlement is limited to compensation for using pirated texts.
One of the normal stages in the maturation of a new technology is appearance of industry-specific applications. AI agent-powered end-to-end marketing campaigns have reached that stage remarkably quickly. Case in point: Birdeye has released an agentic marketing platform for its base of multi-location brand marketers.