The saga continues with TikTok now available for download again in Google Play and the Apple App store in the U.S. Attorney-General Pam Bondi has provided Google and Apple with assurances that they will not face future penalties for making the app available. Oracle had continued (as cloud provider) to support the app for users who had already downloaded it to their devices.
Meta has moved to provide more support for ad placement controls and thus brand safety (presumably because there are many places you don’t want your brand to show up on Facebook). In particular, it has expanded its third-party “blocklist” program; brands can now work with IAS, DoubleVerify and Zefr to create blocklists across Meta’s platforms. Meta is also conducting limited tests with a tool to turn off comments on ads.
The Anthropic Economic Index, just launched, is intended to track AI’s economic impact, for example its usage across Department of Labor job categories. The first results are based on a privacy-sensitive analysis of millions of conversations among Claude.ai users. Among the things they’re saying: 4% of professions are using AI for a remarkable 75% or more of their tasks.
Disney has agreed to license more than 200 characters, costumes, and environments (but not voices or talent likenesses) to OpenAI for Sora, its gen AI video platform. This is highly unusual for Disney, which generally sues AI models for copyright infringement; in fact, it sued Google for that a day before announcing the OpenAI deal. Disney will also invest $1 billion in OpenAI, nicely illustrating how very eager they are to join the AI party.