Plex CEO Keith Valory confirmed the round closed this month, but was unable to disclose Plex’s new valuation.
Recently, the company has been developing social features, as well, allowing Plex users to opt into a feature that tracks their viewing and shares it with friends.
To date, however, it’s Plex’s ad-supported streaming that’s been helping Plex grow its revenue.
And we’re in, at least, the top five if not higher in this space, and we feel like we’re doing really, really well,” he said.
As a result of Plex’s ability to track users’ media discovery behavior and consumption across platforms and services, the company has a unique perspective from a data standpoint.
Case in point, OpenAI today announced a partnership with Common Sense Media, the nonprofit organization that reviews and ranks the suitability of various media and tech for kids, to collaborate on AI guidelines and education materials for parents, educators and young adults.
As a part of the partnership, OpenAI will work with Common Sense Media to curate “family-friendly” GPTs — chatbot apps powered by OpenAI’s GenAI models — in the GPT Store, OpenAI’s GPT marketplace, based on Common Sense’s rating and evaluation standards, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says.
Common Sense’s framework aims to produce a “nutrition label” for AI-powered apps, according to Common Sense co-founder and CEO James Steyer, toward shedding light on the contexts in which the apps are used and highlight areas of potential opportunity and harm against a set of “common sense” tenets.
An Impact Research poll commissioned by Common Sense Media late last year found that 58% of students aged 12 to 18 have used ChatGPT compared to 30% of parents of school-aged children.
“Together, Common Sense and OpenAI will work to make sure that AI has a positive impact on all teens and families,” Steyer said in an emailed statement.
Among the changes in iOS 17.4 is support for auto-generated transcripts in the Apple Podcasts app, making it easier for listeners to follow along to their favorite shows.
Similar to how lyrics work in Apple Music, users can view a live text version of an episode, and the words are highlighted as they listen.
To pull up the transcript, users click on the new “quote” icon at the bottom of the Now Playing screen.
Creators can also release their own transcripts by changing the setting in Apple Podcasts Connect within the Availability tab.
Earlier this week, Apple made iOS 17.3 widely available, giving users access to its Stolen Device Protection feature and collaborative playlists for Apple Music.
Shazam now lets you identify music while wearing headphones, the Apple-owned company announced this week.
You can open up the Shazam app, click to Shazam and then head back to TikTok.
Or, say you’re wearing headphones in a coffeeshop and want to know what song is playing in the café.
It’s worth noting that Shazam already allowed users to identify songs playing in apps, as it rolled out the ability to identify songs on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok last year.
But up until now, you couldn’t do so if you were wearing headphones.
Cruise lost the permits it needed to operate commercially in the state of California and has since grounded its fleet elsewhere.
Problems with Cruise began almost immediately after the company received the last remaining permit required to operate its robotaxi service commercially throughout San Francisco.
On that day, a pedestrian crossing a street in San Francisco was initially hit by a human-driven car and landed in the path of a Cruise robotaxi and run over.
Even after obtaining the Full Video, Cruise did not correct the public narrative but continued instead to share incomplete facts and video about the Accident with the media and the public.
This conduct has caused both regulators and the media to accuse Cruise of misleading them.”This story is developing …
Amazon today announced that it is end-of-lifing Request for Assistance (RFA), a controversial tool that allowed police and fire departments to request doorbell video through Ring’s Neighbors app.
“Public safety agencies like fire and police departments can still use the Neighbors app to share helpful safety tips, updates, and community events,” Neighbors app head, Eric Kuhn, noted in a blog post.
“They will no longer be able to use the RFA tool to request and receive video in the app.
Public safety agency posts are still public, and will be available for users to view on the Neighbors app feed and on the agency’s profile.”The feature has been a major concern for privacy advocates for a number of years.
In 2021, Amazon made police requests public as part of its biannual transparency report.
Amazon today announced that it is end-of-lifing Request for Assistance (RFA), a controversial tool that allowed police and fire departments to request doorbell video through Ring’s Neighbors app.
“Public safety agencies like fire and police departments can still use the Neighbors app to share helpful safety tips, updates, and community events,” Neighbors app head, Eric Kuhn, noted in a blog post.
“They will no longer be able to use the RFA tool to request and receive video in the app.
Public safety agency posts are still public, and will be available for users to view on the Neighbors app feed and on the agency’s profile.”The feature has been a major concern for privacy advocates for a number of years.
In 2021, Amazon made police requests public as part of its biannual transparency report.
Telegram is rolling out a bunch of upgrades as part of its January feature drop including “view-once” video and audio messages, the ability to pause recording while sending a video or an audio message, and new read-time controls.
Now, the company is extending this feature to voice and video messages.
Users can hit the mic icon to start recording and then pull up to tap on the “view-once” icon to allow the recipient to hear the voice message or look at the video message just once.
Additionally, Telegram is rolling out the ability to pause and resume recording for voice and video messages through the same menu.
Telegram is also adding a way for people to see when the recipient reads your message in one-on-one private chats.
Apple will pay artists more to have a spatial audio version on Apple MusicApple will pay additional royalties starting this month to artists if they have a spatial audio version on Apple Music, according to multiple reports.
The company will pay up to 10% additional royalty if an artist has all their songs in spatial audio, per a report by 9to5Mac.
The extra money doesn’t depend on users playing the spatial audio version, though.
In December, Bloomberg reported that Apple was planning to introduce incentives for artists to add songs to Apple Music that are mixed on Dolby Atmos technology.
Apple Music rivals including Amazon Prime Music, Tidal, and Deezer offer spatial offers.
Beijing has quietly pulled the proposed curbs on the video game industry from the official website, weeks after the draft guidelines wiped tens of billions of dollars off the market value of local titans.
The link to the draft rules was no longer accessible as of this morning, as first reported by Reuters.
The move follows Beijing also removing a key official – the head of the publication bureau of Communist Party’s Propaganda Department – over the handling of the release of the draft rules, which caught investors and gaming giants by surprise.
Local media reported in recent weeks — after the wipeout — that authorities may be open to walking back on some of the proposed rules.
Last month, China’s video game regulator proposed new measures to curb excessive time and money spent on computer and smartphone games.
