Vote AI and Vote Often
Silicon Valley bigwigs have launched a new AI-friendly super-PAC network called Leading the Future, reports Wall Street Journal.
Leading the Future will use campaign donations and digital ads to “identify and elevate candidates who support a bold, forward-looking approach to AI,” as well as “oppose policies that stifle innovation,” per the organization’s press release.
The network has already received more than $100 million in funding from backers like OpenAI president Greg Brockman and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (the founders of which were openly calling for Trump to win in 2024, it’s worth pointing out).
Although the organization’s leading political strategists are nominally bipartisan – Zac Moffatt founded Republican ad tech provider Targeted Victory, and Josh Vlasto previously worked for Senator Chuck Schumer and Governor Andrew Cuomo – Leading the Future expects to align with the policies of White House AI Czar David Sacks.
Indeed, it feels pretty safe to assume that Republican candidates are going to get the most benefit out of working with this new super PAC. That’s essentially what happened with Fairshake, a similar crypto-focused network that spent almost $200 million in the 2024 election cycle and reportedly propelled Trump to victory.
A Perplexing Pivot
It turns out shaming and suing AI companies sorta works.
Perplexity is rolling out a revenue-sharing program for publishers whose content is used by its generative AI tech, Bloomberg reports.
Perplexity will set aside $42.5 million to be distributed to participating publishers when they receive traffic from the company’s Comet web browser, when their content appears in Comet’s generative AI search results and when their content is used by Comet’s AI assistant. The funding will come from Comet’s new subscription tier, which will also feature curated content from publisher partners.
The move comes after a steady stream of critics dragged Perplexity for its approach to generative AI content scraping.
Earlier this month, Cloudflare blasted Perplexity for ignoring publishers’ robots.txt files that give bot crawlers permission to scrape their sites for data, and also for hiding its AI crawler’s identity from attempts to block it.
Plus, publisher-supporting trade groups have begun to openly attack Perplexity. Last week, IAB Tech Lab CEO Anthony Katsur called Perplexity out for not engaging with the Tech Lab’s publisher working group.
There’s also the copyright lawsuit News Corp brought against Perplexity for unauthorized use of its content. Forbes and Condé Nast also threatened legal action over Perplexity scraping their content without permission.
UK Pay to Play
First Brexit, now this.
Sixteen of the biggest UK-based news organizations have started using a controversial “consent or pay” advertising model within the last six months, the Press Gazette reports.
As you’d expect from the name, “consent or pay” (or sometimes “pay or OK”) offers website users a binary choice between accepting all cookies and allowing the use of personalized ads or paying a monthly fee for either ad-free or nonpersonalized site usage.
“Consent or pay” is technically permitted by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office, which updated its guidance in January. But within the past few years, the EU has soured on this practice.
Under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which went into effect in 2022, platforms and publishers are now required to provide a third option, where users can opt into a free version that uses less personal data. Similarly, the European Data Protection Board came out against binary models in a nonbinding opinion last year, saying that they don’t meet current requirements for valid consent.
And sure, the UK’s not a part of the EU anymore (Thanks, Boris Johnson!) But neither is Meta or Apple, and back in April both US-based companies got slapped with multimillion-dollar fines for violating the DMA with their own “consent or pay” models.
But Wait! There’s More!
Spectrum Reach acquires cloud-based order management system ShowSeeker. [Street Insider]
What should legislators do about AI sexual harassment of child users? [Tech Policy Press]
Trump threatens NBC’s and ABC’s broadcast licenses over news coverage. [Bloomberg]
What Blue Apron’s decision to move its influencer marketing strategy in-house says about the creator economy. [Digiday]
A North Carolina State Senator sues Omnicom, DM9, DBB and Whirlpool on the grounds that her likeness was manipulated with AI in DM9’s Cannes-winning (but withdrawn) case study. [Campaign]
The first two locations of Netflix House, the streaming service’s IP-branded, free-to-enter attractions, have announced their opening dates. [Variety]
