🕶️ Publishers alarmed by AI evading web protocols

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Six bullets of updates

1. 🇫🇷 France tops Europe in generative AI funding, while London boasts 3x more AI startups.

2. 🔍 OpenAI acquired Rockset, known for its vector search technology, to enhance AI-powered applications.

3. 🏅 Anthropic claims its new AI model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, is “best-in-class” and twice as fast, with a 200,000-token context window.

4. 📱 Roots introduces a screen time app to track digital dopamine, with 300K users already on board daily.

5. 👁️ Worldcoin faces backlash in Kenya, raising privacy concerns as 350K citizens sign up for its iris-scanning tech.

6. ☑️ Fact-checking startup Factiverse secures $1.2M to combat AI "hallucinations" and launches a 30-day free trial program.

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NASA tech to the rescue: tackling school shootings

A new startup by Figure's founder is licensing NASA tech to reduce school shootings. Think Iron Man, but with a focus on safety rather than supervillains. The startup, Cover, uses NASA's sensor technology to detect concealed weapons and alert authorities in real-time.

This move highlights the startup's innovation and sets a precedent for tech transfer from space to public safety. While the startup ecosystem often revolves around software, this approach showcases hardware and sensor tech's critical role in addressing societal issues.

It may be a first step for more startups to explore similar avenues, blending advanced tech with real-world applications. Read more here! 

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Startup Events and Deadlines

1. How to close a Funding Round (it’s not just the pitch deck) | July 2 | Webinar

2. Crash Course in Financial Modeling | July 10 | Webinar

3. Financial Modeling Bootcamp | July 22 | Bootcamp  

4. SaaStock: Dublin | August 14 | Conference

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These companies just raised money

1. 🇮🇳 India's OYO, once valued at $10B, secures new funding at $2.5B, an eye-opening drop in valuation! 

2. 🌎 Fintech company A55 secures funding from Paysecure to expand its $65M credit portfolio and reach global SMEs.

3. ⏲️ Tinybird raises $30M to transform data into real-time APIs, dealing a significant win for metrics-driven startups.

4. 🌿 Plant-based alt meat startup will use the $21M gathered in Series C funding for fresh capital to grow its product range in the UK.

5. 🚀 Brazilian logistics SaaS platform LogShare raised a $2.4M seed round to boost features and expand into new markets.  

6. 🌙 Moonflow raises $1.74M in seed funding to boost its receivables automation platform, now serving 22 countries.

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AI firms bypass web standards, worrying publishers

The content licensing startup TollBit claims that several AI companies are bypassing a common web standard that blocks the extraction of media content for generative AI systems. Reuters reports that this occurs amid a public dispute between the AI search startup Perplexity and Forbes over the same web standard.

The issue includes allegations of plagiarism of investigative stories in AI-generated summaries without citing Forbes. A Wired investigation found that Perplexity likely bypassed efforts to block its web crawler using the Robots Exclusion Protocol, or "robots.txt."

The News Media Alliance, representing over 2,200 U.S. publishers, expressed concern about the impact of ignoring "do not crawl" signals on its members.

Read the whole story.

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If you’re looking for a date, go ahead; if you’re looking for a relationship, then you better know that love may not be what these apps are trying to find. Or do they? 👨🏼‍❤️‍👨🏼 Remember to subscribe!