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Maximilian Schreiner

Max is the managing editor of THE DECODER, bringing his background in philosophy to explore questions of consciousness and whether machines truly think or just pretend to.

Hollywood's MPA calls Bytedance's Seedance 2.0 a machine built for "systemic infringement"

Hollywood is done asking nicely. First Netflix, then Warner Bros., Disney, Paramount, and Sony. Now the MPA itself. Hollywood is closing ranks against Bytedance’s Seedance 2.0, arguing the AI video generator was built on stolen content. The API launch might already be on hold.

Read full article about: Nvidia reportedly set to invest $30 billion in OpenAI

Nvidia is close to investing $30 billion in OpenAI, Reuters reports, citing a person familiar with the matter. The investment is part of a funding round in which OpenAI aims to raise more than $100 billion total - a deal that would value the ChatGPT maker at roughly $830 billion, making it one of the largest private fundraises in history.

SoftBank and Amazon are also expected to participate in the round. OpenAI plans to spend a significant portion of the new capital on Nvidia chips needed to train and run its AI models.

According to the Financial Times, the investment replaces a deal announced in September, under which Nvidia was set to provide up to $100 billion to support OpenAI's chip usage in data centers. That original agreement took longer to finalize than expected.

Read full article about: Claude now available directly in PowerPoint for Pro users

Anthropic brings Claude's PowerPoint integration to Pro subscribers. Max, Team, and Enterprise customers get access too. The feature is currently in beta as a Research Preview.

Claude can create, edit, and generate full presentations from text descriptions directly inside PowerPoint. The model reads layouts, fonts, and colors from the slide master, so changes match the existing design. The add-in is available through the Microsoft Marketplace.

That said, users on the Marketplace are already reporting error messages and other issues. Anthropic itself notes that Claude can make mistakes and recommends reviewing all results.

AWS AI coding tool decided to "delete and recreate" a customer-facing system, causing 13-hour outage, report says

Amazon’s cloud division AWS experienced at least two outages involving its own AI tools, according to a Financial Times report. Amazon denies the connection and blames user error.

Read full article about: New benchmark shows AI agents can exploit most smart contract vulnerabilities on their own

OpenAI and crypto investment firm Paradigm have built EVMbench, a benchmark that measures how well AI agents can find, fix, and exploit security vulnerabilities in Ethereum smart contracts. The dataset covers 120 vulnerabilities drawn from 40 real-world security audits.

In the most realistic test setup, AI agents interact with a local blockchain and have to carry out attacks entirely on their own.

The top-performing model, GPT-5.3-Codex, successfully exploited 72 percent of the vulnerabilities and fixed 41.5 percent. For detection, Claude Opus 4.6 came out ahead at 45.6 percent.

The biggest challenge for the AI agents isn't exploiting or fixing vulnerabilities - it's finding them in large codebases, the researchers say. When agents were given hints about where a vulnerability was located, exploit success rates jumped from 63 to 96 percent, and fix rates climbed from 39 to 94 percent.

With over $100 billion locked in smart contracts, the authors see both an opportunity for better security and a growing risk if these capabilities fall into the wrong hands.

Read full article about: Meta pours $65 million into state elections to back AI-friendly politicians

Meta is investing $65 million to influence state-level elections across the US, backing politicians friendly to AI. It's the company's largest political spending push to date, the New York Times reports.

To do this, Meta has set up four Super PACs: two new groups - "Forge the Future Project" targeting Republicans and "Making Our Tomorrow" targeting Democrats - alongside two that already existed. Spending kicks off this week in Texas and Illinois. In Texas, where Meta is building three AI data centers, the money will go toward boosting Republican candidates. In Illinois, it's flowing into at least four races for seats in the state legislature.

The push appears driven by Meta's concern over a patchwork of state-level AI regulations. State races are relatively cheap to influence, which means $65 million can go a long way.

Comment Source: NYT
Read full article about: Apple's smart glasses are further along than expected, with production targeted for late 2026

Apple is pushing ahead with three wearable AI devices: smart glasses, a pendant, and AirPods with a camera, according to Bloomberg. While these product categories had been rumored for a while, new details are now emerging.

The smart glasses (codenamed N50) appear to be further along than previously known. Bloomberg reports that Apple is already distributing wider prototypes internally, developing custom frames, and targeting production to start in December 2026. The glasses will reportedly feature two cameras - one for high-resolution photos and another for computer vision similar to the Vision Pro.

The pendant is said to be roughly the size of an AirTag, worn via a clip or chain, with processing power comparable to AirPods. Apple is still debating internally whether to include a speaker. According to the report, the camera-equipped AirPods could ship as early as this year, while the pendant wouldn't arrive until 2027 at the earliest. All three devices are built around Siri and designed as iPhone accessories. The Vision Pro team is now working on the glasses and pendant as well.

Read full article about: Perplexity pulls advertising from its search engine, calling itself an "accuracy business"

AI startup Perplexity says it has dropped advertising from its search platform because it could undermine user trust. Perplexity was one of the first generative AI companies to test ads back in 2024. By late last year, though, the company started pulling them.

A Perplexity executive told the Financial Times that ads made users start questioning every answer they received. The company sees itself in the "accuracy business" and is betting on subscription plans ranging from 20 to 200 dollars a month instead. Perplexity says it has over 100 million users and is valued at 18 billion dollars.

The move puts Perplexity at odds with some major competitors. OpenAI just started running ads in ChatGPT, and Google shows ads in its AI mode as well. Anthropic has also committed to keeping its chatbot Claude ad-free, even running a Super Bowl spot to make the point. The timing of Perplexity's announcement is also a bit of a marketing play - something the company has done before, like when it offered to buy TikTok and Chrome.

Comment Source: FT