Welcome back to Week in Review. This week, we’re diving into OpenAI’s surprise 12 days of reveals, an underwhelming Spotify Wrapped, and an app that tells you when you’ll die. 😰 Let’s get into it.
OpenAI is getting into the holiday spirit. In a surprise “12 Days of OpenAI” event, the company will livestream updates and new features every weekday through December 23. The biggest reveals so far include a $200 per month subscription tier for power users of ChatGPT and the release of the full version of its “reasoning” o1 model. You can follow along with all of the product announcements over the next few weeks by staying up to date with our live blog.
Spotify Wrapped was this week, but many users are feeling underwhelmed by the music streamer’s personalized year-in-review feature. The biggest complaints stem from the inclusion of an AI podcast over other, clever and creative data stories that it typically offers (remember Burlington, Vermont?). Users are also upset over the lack of more detailed stats and the exclusion of information they’ve come to expect, like top music genres.
A Delaware Chancery court judge denied Tesla’s request to revise her decision to strike down CEO Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package — despite shareholders voting at the company’s annual meeting this year to “re-ratify” the deal. Her decision, laid out in a 103-page opinion piece, says that Tesla’s legal team has “no procedural ground for flipping the outcome” and that the attempt to change her mind contained multiple fatal flaws.
This is TechCrunch’s Week in Review, where we recap the week’s biggest news. Want this delivered as a newsletter to your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here.
News
Google loses three key leaders: Three members of Google’s NotebookLM team are leaving for a new stealth startup. It’s unclear if the startup will focus on things that NotebookLM went viral for, such as AI-generated podcasts or if it will do something totally different. Read more
SpaceX mulls a big tender offer: SpaceX’s valuation continues to rise at an eye-popping pace, with the company reportedly in talks to sell insider shares at a price that would value it at around $350 billion. Read more
Electric popemobile: Mercedes-Benz has delivered the first all-electric popemobile to the Vatican. The modified version of the G-Class SUV features a dedicated height-adjustable swiveling seat so the pope can address more of his audience. Read more
Intel’s CEO retires: Intel announced that CEO Pat Gelsinger has retired and stepped down from the company’s board of directors. Per a filing with the SEC, Gelsinger could be walking away with just over $10 million in severance pay. Read more
Hello, Dia: The Browser Company teased its next product to follow its popular Arc Browser — a new web browser called Dia. According to an ad from the company, Dia will focus heavily on AI tools and is set to launch in early 2025. Read more
Could ads come to Bluesky? At our StrictlyVC event, we asked Bluesky CEO Jay Graber if ads were off the table for the social network. Graber told us that Bluesky may eventually experiment with ads — but in a way that doesn’t compromise the core user experience. Read more
All eyes on David Mayer: ChatGPT users discovered asking questions about a “David Mayer” caused the chatbot to freeze. While the strange behavior spawned conspiracy theories, a much more ordinary reason is at the heart of it — digital privacy requests. Read more
Get your Mac into the holiday spirit: A cute new macOS app called Festivitas can help you decorate your Mac computer screen with twinkling, holiday lights that are strung up from your menu bar and illuminate your dock. Read more
Tesla gets into the fart prank market: Tesla revealed plans for an Apple Watch app that will do much of what the smartphone app does, but perhaps the silliest update is the ability to prank your friend in the passenger seat with a whoopie cushion sound effect. Read more
Khloé Kardashian, VC: Khloé Kardashian and Kris Jenner are looking to raise $10 million for a new business called Khloud, according to an SEC filing. Trademarks affiliated with Khloud were filed to cover popcorn, granola, and other types of snacks. Read more
Do you want to know when you will die? A new app called Death Clock claims to predict the date of its users’ deaths and offers tips on how to push that date back. My colleague Anthony Ha, who is far braver than I, tried it out for himself. Read more
Analysis
The abject weirdness of AI ads.
“Intelligence so big, you’d swear it was from Texas.”
“Adapt your workforce at the speed of AI.”
“AI that talks to cars and talks to wildlife.”
These are examples of recent ads for AI products and companies, but what do they even mean? As Maxwell Zeff writes, most ads for AI mean nothing at all. Companies are resorting to painting AI as this amorphous, magical children’s book character with no specific use case, while also implying that it can do almost anything. We’re in a weird place with AI, and the banal tapestry of advertisements speaks to a larger rut we’re in. Most companies don’t really know what AI is good for, and maybe that’s the point. Read more
