- The AI Report
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- 🍎 Apple’s shocking Siri blunder
🍎 Apple’s shocking Siri blunder
🪆 Putin schmoozes China for AI help
Martin Crowley, Liam Lawson & Amanda Greenwood
January 03, 2025
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LATEST IN AI
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🍎 Apple’s shocking Siri blunder
🚨 Our Report — Apple has agreed to pay $95M to resolve a decade-long lawsuit, accusing its virtual assistant, Siri, of listening to and recording users' conversations, without permission, and handing that information over to third-party advertisers (an accusation Google is also currently facing).
🔓 Key Points:
The lawsuit states that Siri was recording confidential conversations without being activated by its wake word “Hey Siri,” but instead by things like a zipper, a specific movement of an Apple Watch, or hearing a voice.
Apple would allegedly share these conversations with third-party advertisers, who would then show users tailored ads for products or services that aligned with these confidential conversations.
Users who owned an Apple device from 17th September 2014 to 31st December 2024, could receive up to $20 per device if they inadvertently activated Siri "during a conversation intended to be confidential."
🔐 Relevance — These allegations contradict Apple's longstanding commitment to privacy, with CEO, Tim Cook, previously describing it as “a fundamental human right,” and although the $95M settlement is a mere drop in Apple’s ocean (having made over $705B since 2014), they have refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing.
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🪆 Putin schmoozes China for AI help
🚨 Our Report — Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has told the Russian government and Sberbank—one of Russia's largest banks—to collaborate and build partnerships with China to advance the nation's “technological research and development in the field of AI.”
🔓 Key Points:
This comes 3 weeks after Putin announced that Russia would team up with BRICS partners—an alliance with AI experts from places like China, India, and Brazil—to reduce reliance on Western tech and drive progress in AI.
Russia’s progress in AI has been hampered by Western sanctions which, after its ongoing conflict with Ukraine, have reduced their access to advanced AI chips and other technologies, essential for AI development.
Putin hopes that by teaming up with China—who ranks 2nd on the Global AI Index (behind the US)—Russia can gain access to advanced hardware so it can continue its AI development, despite the restrictions.
🔐 Relevance — Russia is currently just 31st on the Global AI Index (out of 83 countries), way behind the US—and even fellow BRICS members, including India and Brazil, rank higher in AI implementation, innovation, and funding—so Putin is desperate to solidify this collaboration with China, to try and challenge Western dominance.
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🪙 AI meme coin frenzy
According to the cryptocurrency-related data platform, CoinGecko, the overall market value of AI meme coins—such as ai16z, Fartcoin, and PEPE Coin—has surpassed $10B, growing 26.4% within the last 24 hours.
With a market cap of $2.65B, ai16z is the largest AI meme coin, surpassing leaders Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, and PEPE, after it saw a 40% price surge in one day, and is trading at $2 per coin (rivals are below $1).
This is even after Elon Musk added a PEPE-themed avatar to his profile on X on December 31st—possibly to show his alliance with PEPE Coin—which spurred the coin price to surge by nearly 12%.
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TOGETHER WITH FATHOM
Why are 26,000+ companies using Fathom to boost productivity?
Fathom records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings in under 30 seconds so you can concentrate on the conversation, not taking notes.
It works with Zoom, Teams, and Meet and integrates with your CRM, meaning no more post-meeting data entry
It syncs meeting summaries & tasks to your CRM, so Fathom users are saving 20+ minutes of work, per meeting
You can share clips from specific parts of your meetings and drop them into emails, documents, or Slack to give context to your conversations.
Teams across the world are praising Fathom for its note-free, focus-friendly calls, quick transcriptions, and CRM sync that streamlines follow-ups.
“It solves every pain point I have when it comes to capturing, summarizing, and acting on remote conversations/meetings.”
TRENDING AI TOOLS
PRACTICAL AI
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RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
STARTUPS
Name: Insistro
Industry: Drug Discovery and Development
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Funding raised: $643M
Insistro founder and CEO, Daphne Koller (who was the first ML professor at Stanford), uses ML to analyze patterns in human genes and cells to discover new drugs and help pharma companies get their new drug developments through heavily regulated pharmaceutical approval processes.
PODCASTS
In this episode of The AI Report Live, Sooz Young—Entrepreneur and Founder of Technology Coaching—discusses the importance of a digital mindset, cultural differences in education, the role of AI in modern learning, and how businesses must adapt to the changing landscape of technology.
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