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Mark Zuckerberg Says He’s Surprised the ‘Discourse’ From AI Companies ‘Is So Filled With Doom’
Mark Zuckerberg Says He’s Surprised the ‘Discourse’ From AI Companies ‘Is So Filled With Doom’ Variety
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Nielsen agrees to acquire DoubleVerify and take it private in an all-cash deal with an enterprise value of around $2.15B, expected to close by Q1 2027 (Brian Steinberg/Variety)
Brian Steinberg / Variety: Nielsen agrees to acquire DoubleVerify and take it private in an all-cash deal with an enterprise value of around $2.15B, expected to close by Q1 2027 — Audience-measurement giant…
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Roku reports Q2 revenue up 22% YoY to $1.35B vs. $1.3B est., net income of $164.2M, ad revenue up 25% to $673M, and subscription revenue up 26% to $548M (Todd Spangler/Variety)
Todd Spangler / Variety: Roku reports Q2 revenue up 22% YoY to $1.35B vs. $1.3B est., net income of $164.2M, ad revenue up 25% to $673M, and subscription revenue up 26% to $548M — Roku kept its streaming engines…
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Spotify reports Q2 revenue up 14% YoY to €4.8B, Premium Subscribers up 9% YoY to 300M, MAUs up 12% YoY to 777M, below 778M guidance, and a €545M net income (Todd Spangler/Variety)
Todd Spangler / Variety: Spotify reports Q2 revenue up 14% YoY to €4.8B, Premium Subscribers up 9% YoY to 300M, MAUs up 12% YoY to 777M, below 778M guidance, and a €545M net income — Music streamer's Q2…
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Apple reports Q3 revenue from Services, which includes the App Store, Apple TV, and more, grew 12% YoY to $30.74B, vs. $31.36B est.; AAPL drops 5%+ after hours (Todd Spangler/Variety)
Todd Spangler / Variety: Apple reports Q3 revenue from Services, which includes the App Store, Apple TV, and more, grew 12% YoY to $30.74B, vs. $31.36B est.; AAPL drops 5%+ after hours — For the three months…
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Amazon Q2 Ad Revenue Up 26% as Tech Giant’s Profit Booms to $62.6 Billion on Anthropic Investments
Amazon Q2 Ad Revenue Up 26% as Tech Giant’s Profit Booms to $62.6 Billion on Anthropic Investments Variety
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Meta reports $2.4B in charges related to legal proceedings in Q2 and $1.18B in severance expenses in connection with the May 2026 layoff of about 8,000 staff (Todd Spangler/Variety)
Todd Spangler / Variety: Meta reports $2.4B in charges related to legal proceedings in Q2 and $1.18B in severance expenses in connection with the May 2026 layoff of about 8,000 staff — The company, the parent of…
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Patreon lays off 20% of its employees, or 93 people, citing a "painful" restructuring due to "profound" changes in the creator economy (Corbin Bolies/Variety)
Corbin Bolies / Variety: Patreon lays off 20% of its employees, or 93 people, citing a “painful” restructuring due to “profound” changes in the creator economy — Patreon, the…
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Alphabet reports YouTube's Q2 ad revenue rose 13% YoY to $11.06B, vs. $10.8B est., and Google's ad revenue reached $81.63B, up from $71.34B in Q2 2025 (Todd Spangler/Variety)
Todd Spangler / Variety: Alphabet reports YouTube's Q2 ad revenue rose 13% YoY to $11.06B, vs. $10.8B est., and Google's ad revenue reached $81.63B, up from $71.34B in Q2 2025 — Video giant YouTube, one of the…
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A coalition of 12 states led by California files an antitrust lawsuit to block Paramount's WBD merger, alleging it lessens competition in three markets (Gene Maddaus/Variety)
Gene Maddaus / Variety: A coalition of 12 states led by California files an antitrust lawsuit to block Paramount's WBD merger, alleging it lessens competition in three markets — A coalition of 12 states filed an…
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Meta says it will discontinue a feature that allowed users to generate images in Meta AI using public Instagram accounts, following days of criticism (Corbin Bolies/Variety)
Corbin Bolies / Variety: Meta says it will discontinue a feature that allowed users to generate images in Meta AI using public Instagram accounts, following days of criticism — Meta said it will discontinue an AI…
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Meta AI Can Now Use Your Instagram Photos Without Consent. SAG-AFTRA Urges App Users to Opt Out: ‘Take Action to Protect Your Likeness’
Meta AI Can Now Use Your Instagram Photos Without Consent. SAG-AFTRA Urges App Users to Opt Out: ‘Take Action to Protect Your Likeness’ Variety
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Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s No. 2 Executive, to Step Down to Focus on Recovery From Chronic Illness
Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s No. 2 Executive, to Step Down to Focus on Recovery From Chronic Illness Variety
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New York Times and News Outlets Demand Legal Sanctions Against OpenAI
New York Times and News Outlets Demand Legal Sanctions Against OpenAI Variety
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Kaon AI, which builds personalized story worlds using its AI-based FlowGPT and Emochi tools, raised $60M from B Capital and others, and says Emochi has 2M DAUs (Corbin Bolies/Variety)
Corbin Bolies / Variety: Kaon AI, which builds personalized story worlds using its AI-based FlowGPT and Emochi tools, raised $60M from B Capital and others, and says Emochi has 2M DAUs — Kaon AI, a start-up…
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Netflix signs deals with Penske Media, Condé Nast, Hearst, People, and other publishers to carry a range of programming from 2 to 20+ minutes, starting August 3 (William Earl/Variety)
William Earl / Variety: Netflix signs deals with Penske Media, Condé Nast, Hearst, People, and other publishers to carry a range of programming from 2 to 20+ minutes, starting August 3 — Netflix is further…
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Midjourney wants Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. to reveal in court how they use AI across their companies; studios sued Midjourney in 2025 for infringement (Gene Maddaus/Variety)
Gene Maddaus / Variety: Midjourney wants Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. to reveal in court how they use AI across their companies; studios sued Midjourney in 2025 for infringement — The studios sued the AI…
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Neon Closing in on Luca Guadagnino’s Sam Altman Open AI Movie ‘Artificial’ After Amazon Drops Controversial Film
Neon Closing in on Luca Guadagnino’s Sam Altman Open AI Movie ‘Artificial’ After Amazon Drops Controversial Film Variety
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Walmart acquires Paris-based Vibe.co, which lets businesses create and run targeted ads on streaming services; Vibe.co's co-founders will join Walmart Connect (Brian Steinberg/Variety)
Brian Steinberg / Variety: Walmart acquires Paris-based Vibe.co, which lets businesses create and run targeted ads on streaming services; Vibe.co's co-founders will join Walmart Connect — Walmart is one of the…
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Amazon MGM Studios drops Luca Guadagnino's mostly finished movie on Sam Altman; Amazon struck a major deal with OpenAI in February, including a $50B investment (Variety)
Variety: Amazon MGM Studios drops Luca Guadagnino's mostly finished movie on Sam Altman; Amazon struck a major deal with OpenAI in February, including a $50B investment — The film, starring Andrew Garfield as the…
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Luca Guadagnino’s Nearly Finished Sam Altman Movie ‘Artificial’ Dropped by Amazon After OpenAI Partnership
Luca Guadagnino’s Nearly Finished Sam Altman Movie ‘Artificial’ Dropped by Amazon After OpenAI Partnership Variety
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Apple's Craig Federighi says some companies "appear to be racing forward" to develop "AI for the sake of AI" without regard for the humans using the technology (Todd Spangler/Variety)
Todd Spangler / Variety: Apple's Craig Federighi says some companies “appear to be racing forward” to develop “AI for the sake of AI” without regard for the humans using the technology &mdash…
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ESA and YouGov: 212.3M people in the US between the ages of 5 and 90 play video games every week, up 3% from 2025; the average age of players rises to 37 (Jennifer Maas/Variety)
Jennifer Maas / Variety: ESA and YouGov: 212.3M people in the US between the ages of 5 and 90 play video games every week, up 3% from 2025; the average age of players rises to 37 — Two-thirds of Americans play an…
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Reactor, which says its AI platform can generate video in real-time with near-zero latency, emerges from stealth with a $59M Series A led by Lightspeed (Todd Spangler/Variety)
Todd Spangler / Variety: Reactor, which says its AI platform can generate video in real-time with near-zero latency, emerges from stealth with a $59M Series A led by Lightspeed — Existing generative AI models are…
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Associated Press, OpenAI Strike Deal for Election Data
Associated Press, OpenAI Strike Deal for Election Data Variety
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YouTube makes its AI content labels more prominent on desktop and mobile, and will apply them automatically if it detects "significant photorealistic AI use" (Todd Spangler/Variety)
Todd Spangler / Variety: YouTube makes its AI content labels more prominent on desktop and mobile, and will apply them automatically if it detects “significant photorealistic AI use” — Is that YouTube…
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Star Citizen, a video game in development since 2012, has reached $1B in lifetime funding; it remains in alpha and does not have a confirmed release date (Jennifer Maas/Variety)
Jennifer Maas / Variety: Star Citizen, a video game in development since 2012, has reached $1B in lifetime funding; it remains in alpha and does not have a confirmed release date — Cloud Imperium Games marked a…
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Apple plans to broadcast an MLS game on Saturday shot entirely on 15 iPhone 17 Pros, the first major live sports event to be captured using only smartphones (Todd Spangler/Variety)
Todd Spangler / Variety: Apple plans to broadcast an MLS game on Saturday shot entirely on 15 iPhone 17 Pros, the first major live sports event to be captured using only smartphones — Apple has frequently touted the…
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Spotify and UMG plan to let Premium users create AI covers and remixes using music from participating UMG artists as a paid add-on, without giving a launch date (Jem Aswad/Variety)
Jem Aswad / Variety: Spotify and UMG plan to let Premium users create AI covers and remixes using music from participating UMG artists as a paid add-on, without giving a launch date — Spotify and Universal Music Group…
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Amazon's Alexa+ now produces AI-generated "podcasts" on various topics in the US, featuring chats between two AI "co-hosts", using content from media outlets (Todd Spangler/Variety)
Todd Spangler / Variety: Amazon's Alexa+ now produces AI-generated “podcasts” on various topics in the US, featuring chats between two AI “co-hosts”, using content from media outlets — The podcast sector suddenly may…
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A look at Matthew McConaughey's novel legal strategy to fight unauthorized AI use of his image and likeness, by trademarking video and audio clips of himself (Todd Spangler/Variety)
Todd Spangler / Variety: A look at Matthew McConaughey's novel legal strategy to fight unauthorized AI use of his image and likeness, by trademarking video and audio clips of himself — The actor has secured trademarks…
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Dua Lipa files a $15M lawsuit against Samsung, alleging that it used her likeness to sell TVs without paying her and without permission starting in 2025 (Gene Maddaus/Variety)
Gene Maddaus / Variety: Dua Lipa files a $15M lawsuit against Samsung, alleging that it used her likeness to sell TVs without paying her and without permission starting in 2025 — Dua Lipa has filed a $15 million…
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Trump Media and Technology Group reports Q1 net sales up 6% YoY to $871,200 and a $405.9M net loss; DJT is down 35% so far in 2026 for a market cap of ~$2.47B (Todd Spangler/Variety)
Todd Spangler / Variety: Trump Media and Technology Group reports Q1 net sales up 6% YoY to $871,200 and a $405.9M net loss; DJT is down 35% so far in 2026 for a market cap of ~$2.47B — Trump Media and Technology…