“A WIRED analysis and one carried out by developer Robb Knight suggest that Perplexity is able to achieve this partly through apparently ignoring a widely accepted web standard known as the Robots Exclusion Protocol to surreptitiously scrape areas of websites that operators do not want accessed by bots, despite claiming that it won’t. WIRED observed a machine tied to Perplexity—more specifically, one on an Amazon server and almost certainly operated by Perplexity—doing this on WIRED.com and across other Condé Nast publications.”

“Last year, the Liberal government passed the Online News Act, which requires some tech companies to negotiate licensing agreements with news publishers to use their content. The government won’t say if the law should also apply to AI services, such as massively popular chatbots.”

“There are more than 170 million global users watching video podcasts on Spotify, and the number of monthly active users watching video podcasts has grown by 40% year-over-year. Additionally, the platform recorded a bigger increase in video consumption hours compared to audio-only consumption hours in the same period.”

“Will Lewis, the Washington Post publisher, advised Boris Johnson and senior officials at 10 Downing Street to “clean up” their phones in the midst of a Covid-era political scandal, according to claims by three people familiar with the operations inside No 10 at the time … The claims suggest Lewis’s advice contradicted an email sent to staff at No 10 in December 2021 which instructed them not to destroy any material that could be relevant to an investigation.”

“Unlike propensity models, however, which must be periodically adjusted, Sub(x) will constantly intake information about the efficacy of its past offers and recalibrate future offers accordingly. As a result, the technology claims it will eliminate A/B testing, automating away the manual process of trial and error that paywall providers have historically used to improve their conversion rates over time.”

“‘This work ban comes as a big shock: it was communicated to me on the eve of the Indian general elections, the largest democratic elections in the world, which I was hence forbidden to cover,’ said Farcis in his post on X. ‘This appeared to me as an incomprehensible censorship.’ India’s national elections began on April 19. Votes were counted on June 4, with Modi reelected as prime minister for a third consecutive term.”

“If the public face of podcasting was once thinky narrative shows vying for high-art legitimacy, these days it’s chat and interview programs that hustle their way into your life.”

“The letter, dated last Thursday, demands that Perplexity remove the misleading source articles, reimburse Forbes for all advertising revenues Perplexity earned via the infringement, and provide ‘satisfactory evidence and written assurances’ that it has removed the infringing articles.”

“These companies claim they need our work to succeed but can’t afford to pay for it.”