AI and society

Anthropic settles landmark AI copyright lawsuit for at least $1.5 billion

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Microsoft presents its first large AI models and signals greater independence from OpenAI

AI and society

Google downplays AI's environmental impact in new study

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AI and society
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LLM hype critic Gary Marcus argues in a conversation with chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov that large language models only create the appearance of understanding, not genuine intelligence.

"It's one of the most profound illusions of our time that most people see these systems and attribute an understanding to them that they don't really have."

Gary Marcus

He explains that while language models can, for example, mimic the rules of chess by generating text based on examples, they can't actually play the game because they lack any real internal sense of what's happening on the board.

"They will repeat the rules, because in the way that they create text based on other texts, they'll be there. [...] But when it actually comes to playing the game, it doesn't have an internal model of what's going on."

For Marcus, this gap between surface-level performance and true comprehension is at the heart of the AI "illusion of intelligence."

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Alibaba unveils Qwen3-Max-Preview, its largest language model yet, featuring more than one trillion parameters. The model is available through Qwen Chat and the Alibaba Cloud API. According to Alibaba, Qwen3-Max-Preview outperforms the previous top model, Qwen3-235B-A22B-2507, in internal benchmarks and with early users. Improvements show up in knowledge, conversation, task handling, and instruction following, with reduced "model knowledge hallucinations."

Image: Qwen

Qwen3-Max-Preview accepts up to 258,048 input tokens and generates up to 32,768 output tokens. Pricing starts at $2,151 per million input tokens and $8,602 per million output tokens. The model does not support image processing.

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Apple is facing a lawsuit in California from authors Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson, who claim the company violated their copyrights by using their books to train AI models like OpenELM and Apple Intelligence. The lawsuit alleges Apple used the Books3 dataset, a collection of more than 196,000 pirated books that includes works by both authors. The complaint also accuses Apple of using its Applebot web crawler to copy website content and pull material from so-called shadow libraries.

The plaintiffs are seeking damages and a court order barring Apple from using their works. This case follows a recent lawsuit against Anthropic, which ended in a settlement after similar copyright claims.

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Warner Bros. Discovery is suing AI image generator company Midjourney for copyright infringement in federal court in California. The studio accuses Midjourney of building its business on the mass theft of content and using copyrighted characters like Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Bugs Bunny, and Rick and Morty. Warner Bros. Discovery is joining Disney and Universal, which filed similar lawsuits earlier this year. The complaint includes side-by-side comparisons of Midjourney outputs and original film images, such as Christian Bale's Batman from "The Dark Knight." According to Warner Bros. Discovery, the AI tool generates Warner-owned characters even for prompts as generic as "classic comic superhero battle." Midjourney offers four paid subscription tiers ranging from $10 to $120 per month. The company has not commented on the allegations. Warner Bros. Discovery is seeking damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work.

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OpenAI plans to launch a new AI-powered job platform and introduce a certification program for AI skills next year. The goal is to connect businesses and government agencies with qualified professionals. According to Bloomberg, the project is backed by major partners, including US retail giant Walmart. The initiative aims to certify ten million people in the US by 2030. The plans were announced at an AI education meeting at the White House, attended by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and other tech leaders. The platform will let job seekers prove their skills and be matched with relevant opportunities. By helping workers adapt to the growing impact of AI across many professions, the project is intended to address concerns about AI's disruptive potential - and probably to bolster OpenAI's public image.

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AI and society

Anthropic settles landmark AI copyright lawsuit for at least $1.5 billion

AI in practice

Microsoft presents its first large AI models and signals greater independence from OpenAI

AI and society

Google downplays AI's environmental impact in new study

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