Top Stories
Supreme Court: AI-Generated Art Cannot Be Copyrighted
The US Supreme Court has declined to hear a challenge to the rule that AI-generated art cannot receive copyright protection, effectively cementing this principle in US law. The decision comes after Stephen Thaler, a computer scientist, appealed a lower court ruling that upheld the Copyright Office’s 2022 rejection of his AI-created image “A Recent Entrance to Paradise.”
The Copyright Office’s position - that works require “human authorship” for copyright protection - now stands as settled law. This has significant implications for the AI art industry, where companies and users alike have been uncertain about their legal standing. AI-generated images, music, and text will remain in a copyright grey zone, unprotected by law but also potentially not infringing on others’ rights in the same ways human-created works would.
Source: The Verge
ChatGPT Uninstalls Surge 295% Following Pentagon Deal
The consumer backlash against OpenAI’s Pentagon contract is now quantifiable: app analytics show ChatGPT uninstalls surged by 295% in the days following the announcement. Meanwhile, Claude downloads increased substantially as users voted with their feet.
The exodus comes as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s claims about “technical safeguards” in the Pentagon deal face increasing scrutiny. Critics note that the company accepted terms that Anthropic walked away from, specifically around mass surveillance and lethal autonomous weapons. The contrast has become a marketing boon for Anthropic, even as it faces potential loss of government contracts.
Source: TechCrunch
Cursor Hits $2 Billion Annual Revenue Run Rate
The AI coding assistant Cursor has reportedly surpassed $2 billion in annualized revenue, with the run rate doubling over the past three months. The four-year-old startup has become synonymous with the “vibe coding” movement, where developers describe what they want in natural language and let AI write the code.
The milestone underscores the explosive growth in AI-powered development tools. Cursor competes directly with GitHub Copilot and a growing field of AI coding assistants, but its laser focus on the coding experience has attracted a devoted following among developers who have integrated it deeply into their workflows.
Source: TechCrunch
Anthropic Makes It Easy to Import Memories from Other Chatbots
Anthropic is leaning into the ChatGPT exodus with a new feature: Claude can now import your memories from competing chatbots. The company released a dedicated prompt and tool at claude.com/import-memory that helps users export their conversation history and preferences from ChatGPT, Gemini, and other assistants, then import that context into Claude.
The feature also extends Claude’s memory capabilities to free users, who previously couldn’t access the feature. It’s a savvy competitive move - reducing the switching costs that keep users locked into one AI assistant. As Simon Willison noted, Anthropic’s “import your memories” feature is essentially a carefully crafted prompt that instructs your old chatbot to output everything it knows about you in a portable format.
Source: The Verge
Quick Hits
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Apple and Google deepen AI ties: Apple has reportedly asked Google to set up dedicated servers for a new Gemini-powered version of Siri that meets Apple’s privacy requirements. The partnership goes beyond just licensing models - Apple may rely heavily on Google infrastructure to catch up in AI. The Verge
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Nvidia bets $4B on photonics: Nvidia announced $2 billion investments each in Lumentum and Coherent, both developing photonics technology for data centers. Optical components could dramatically improve energy efficiency and data transfer speeds as AI compute demands continue to explode. The Verge
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Tech workers rally for Anthropic: Over 12,000 tech workers have signed an open letter urging the Department of Defense and Congress to withdraw Anthropic’s “supply chain risk” designation, calling the label an overreach that punishes the company for maintaining ethical boundaries. TechCrunch
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Deutsche Telekom adds AI to every call: The German telecom giant (majority owner of T-Mobile) is partnering with ElevenLabs to enable an AI assistant on all network calls in Germany. No app needed - the AI will be available mid-call to any Deutsche Telekom customer. Wired
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Data centers reach the Arctic: As AI labs consume ever more compute, data center operators have headed north to the edge of the Arctic Circle in search of cheap, abundant energy and natural cooling. The infrastructure race is reshaping remote regions of Scandinavia. Wired
Worth Watching
The Supreme Court’s AI copyright decision, while expected, sets important precedent. AI companies have been operating in legal limbo regarding both training data and output ownership. This ruling addresses only one side - AI outputs aren’t copyrightable - but leaves open the thornier questions about training on copyrighted material.
The ChatGPT exodus numbers are striking. A 295% surge in uninstalls is a massive consumer backlash, and it suggests the Pentagon deal may have been a significant strategic miscalculation for OpenAI. Consumer sentiment matters for AI products in ways it doesn’t for enterprise software, and OpenAI has built its brand on being the accessible, friendly face of AI.
Meanwhile, Cursor’s revenue milestone highlights a different path: AI tools that enhance human work rather than replacing it. The coding assistant space is where AI capability and user value most clearly align, and $2B ARR in four years is venture capital’s dream.