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Microsoft said Tuesday it is partnering with artificial intelligence company Anthropic and chipmaker Nvidia as part of a cloud infrastructure deal that moves the software giant further away from its longtime alliance with OpenAI. Anthropic, maker of the chatbot Claude that competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, said it is committed to buying $30 billion in computing capacity from Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform. As part of the partnership, Nvidia will also invest up to $10 billion in Anthropic, and Microsoft will invest up to $5 billion in the San Francisco-based startup. The joint announcements by CEOs Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, and Jensen Huang of Nvidia came just ahead of the opening of Microsoft’s annual Ignite developer conference. This is all about deepening our commitment to bringing the best infrastructure, model choice and applications to our customers, Nadella said on a video call with the other two executives, adding that it builds on the critical partnership Microsoft still has with OpenAI. Microsoft was, until earlier this year, the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI and made the technology behind ChatGPT the foundation for its own AI assistant, Copilot. But the two companies moved farther apart and their business agreements were amended as OpenAI increasingly sought to secure its own cloud capacity through big deals with Oracle, SoftBank, and other data center developers and chipmakers. Asked in September if OpenAI could do more with those new computing partnerships than it could with Microsoft, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told The Associated Press his company was severely limited for the value we can offer to people. At the same time, Microsoft holds a roughly 27% stake in the new for-profit corporation that OpenAI, founded as a nonprofit, is forming to advance its commercial ambitions as the world’s most valuable startup. Anthropic, founded by ex-OpenAI leaders in 2021, said Claude will now be the only frontier model available to customers of the three biggest cloud computing providers: Amazon, which remains Anthropic’s primary cloud provider, and Google and Microsoft. AI products like Claude and ChatGPT take huge amounts of energy and computing power to build and operate, and neither OpenAI nor Anthropic is yet turning a profit. As part of the deal, Nvidia said Anthropic will have access to up to a gigawatt of capacity from its specialized AI chips. Huang said he’s admired the work of Anthropic and Dario for a long time, and this is the first time we are going to deeply partner with Anthropic to accelerate Claude. Matt O’Brien, AP technology writer
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E-Commerce
National Public Radio will receive approximately $36 million in grant money to operate the nations public radio interconnection system under the terms of a court settlement with the federal government’s steward of funding for public broadcasting stations. The settlement, announced late Monday, partially resolves a legal dispute in which NPR accused the Corporation for Public Broadcasting of bowing to pressure from President Donald Trump to cut off its funding. On March 25, Trump said at a news conference that he would love to defund NPR and PBS because he believes they are biased in favor of Democrats. NPR accused the CPB of violating its First Amendment free speech rights when it moved to cut off its access to grant money appropriated by Congress. NPR also claims Trump, a Republican, wants to punish it for the content of its journalism. On April 2, the CPBs board initially approved a three-year, roughly $36 million extension of a grant for NPR to operate the interconnection satellite system for public radio. NPR has been operating and managing the Public Radio Satellite System since 1985. But the CPB reversed course under mounting pressure from the Trump administration, according to NPR. The agency redirected federal interconnection funds away from NPR to an entity that didnt exist and wasnt statutorily authorized to receive it, NPR says. CPB attorneys denied that the agency retaliated against NPR to appease Trump. They had argued that NPRs claims are factually and legally meritless. On May 1, Trump issued an executive order that called for federal agencies to stop funding for NPR and PBS. The settlement doesnt end a lawsuit in which NPR seeks to block any implementation or enforcement of Trump’s executive order. U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss is scheduled to preside over another hearing for the case on Dec. 4. The settlement says NPR and CPB agree that the executive order is unconstitutional and that CPB won’t enforce it unless a court orders it to do so. Katherine Maher, NPR’s president and CEO, said the settlement is a victory for editorial independence and a step toward upholding the First Amendment rights of NPR and the public media system.” Patricia Harrison, the corporations CEO, said in a statement that the settlement marks an important moment for public media. Michael Kunzelman, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
As we head into the holiday season, toys with generative AI chatbots in them may start appearing on Christmas lists. A concerning report found one innocent-looking AI teddy bear gave instructions on how to light matches, where to find knives, and even explained sexual kinks to children. Consumer watchdogs at the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) tested some AI toys for its 40th annual Trouble in Toyland report and found them to exhibit extremely disturbing behaviors. With only minimal prompting, the AI toys waded into subjects many parents would find unsettling, from religion to sex. One toy in particular stood out as the most concerning. FoloToys AI teddy bear Kumma, powered by OpenAIs GPT-4o model, the same model that once powered ChatGPT, repeatedly dropped its guardrails the longer a conversation went on. “Kumma told us where to find a variety of potentially dangerous objects, including knives, pills, matches, and plastic bags,” PIRG, which has been testing toys for hazards since the 1980s, wrote in its report. In other tests, Kumma offered advice on how to be a good kisser and veered into overtly sexual topics, breaking down various kinks and even posing the wildly inappropriate question: What do you think would be the most fun to explore? Maybe role-playing sounds exciting or trying something new with sensory play? Following the reports release, FoloToy pulled the implicated bear. Now, it has confirmed it is pulling all of its products. On Friday, OpenAI also confirmed that it had cut off FoloToys access to its AI models. FoloToy told PIRG: [F]ollowing the concerns raised in your report, we have temporarily suspended sales of all FoloToy products The company also added that it is carrying out a company-wide, end-to-end safety audit across all products. Report coauthor RJ Cross, director of PIRGs Our Online Life Program, praised the efforts but made it clear far more needs to be done before AI toys become a safe childhood staple. Its great to see these companies taking action on problems weve identified. But AI toys are still practically unregulated, and there are plenty you can still buy today, Cross said in a statement. Removing one problematic product from the market is a good step, but far from a systemic fix. These AI toys are marketed to children as young as three, but they run on the same large language model technology behind adult chatbots — the very systems companies like OpenAI say arent meant for children. Earlier this year, OpenAI shared the news of a partnership with Mattel to integrate AI into some of its iconic brands such as Barbie and Hot Wheels, a sign that not even childrens toys are exempt from the AI takeover. Other toymakers say they incorporate chatbots from OpenAI or other leading AI companies, said Rory Erlich, U.S. PIRG Education Funds New Economy campaign associate and report co-author. Every company involved must do a better job of making sure that these products are safer than what we found in our testing. We found one troubling example. How many others are still out there?
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E-Commerce
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