Craig Piggott on raising US$100m
Craig Piggott gives advice to entrepreneurs on raising US$100m from Silicon Valley venture capital firms that have backed Airbnb, Meta & Stripe. Video / NZ Herald
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1News
4 hours ago
- 1News
What to know about Jeff Bezos' star-studded wedding in Venice
Details of the wedding between Amazon multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez are sketchy, but it's certainly causing a storm, not least in Venice, where they're set to tie the knot this weekend. Here's a guide by the numbers: His net worth: US$231 Billion, that is. That's the net worth of Jeff Bezos, according to real-time data from Forbes, making him the fourth-richest person in the world behind tech bros Elon Musk, Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg. Not bad, considering that he founded Amazon out of his garage in Seattle in 1994, with not much more than a desk, a fax machine and a long orange extension cord that was needed to supply the room with additional power. ADVERTISEMENT Kim Kardashian, center, and sister Khloé Kardashian, arrive in Venice, Italy. (Source: Associated Press) From its origins as an online bookstore, Amazon's tentacles are now felt all around the world. If you want anything, it'll likely be for sale there. Amazon also now produces movies, runs the Whole Foods grocery chain and has become the leader in voice-activated speakers. Bezos stepped down as chief executive of Amazon in early 2021, citing the desire to devote more time to philanthropy and other projects, including The Washington Post, the newspaper he bought in 2013 and his rocket company, Blue Origin. But Bezos still has broad influence over Amazon as executive chair and the company's biggest shareholder, though his stake has diminished over the years to under 10%. Times down the aisle: 2 This is the second time that Bezos — and Sanchez — will be walking down the aisle. Usher arrives in Venice, Italy. (Source: Associated Press) ADVERTISEMENT Bezos, 61, was married to MacKenzie Bezos for 25 years until their divorce in April 2019. TV anchor Sanchez, 55, also divorced her first husband of 14 years, talent agent Patrick Whitesell, in 2019. The divorce came at a high price for Jeff Bezos. Only the divorce of Bill Gates and Melinda Gates has been more expensive. As part of the settlement, MacKenzie, who has taken her middle name Scott as her new surname, received 25% of Bezos' stake in Amazon. According to Forbes, she is worth a cool US$30 billion (NZ$49 billion), easily placing her in the world's top 100. US President Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump, center, waves as she and her husband Jared Kushner, right, arrive in Venice, Italy. (Source: Associated Press) The hotel room price: €2456 According to travel website Kayak, that's the euro price (NZ$4735) for the next available room at the Aman Venice, the hotel where the couple are believed to be staying during their three-day wedding extravaganza. A gondola sails past the Aman Hotel in Venice, Italy. (Source: Associated Press) ADVERTISEMENT The hotel is a grand spectacle in a city of spectacles. Like Venice itself, the hotel blends mystery and grandeur, opulence and solitude. The rooms are decorated with works by a number of Italy's greatest artists, including 16th-century architect Sansovino and 18th-century painter Tiepolo. Given his wealth, Bezos would be expected to reside in one of the suites. Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, inside boat, pass by the San Giorgio Maggiore Church on their way to their pre wedding reception, in Venice, Italy. (Source: Associated Press) The 97sq metre Grand Canal Suite would surely meet the moment. According to the hotel, it "beguiles with views of the Grand Canal and an abundance of light". Or how about the Alcova Tiepolo Suite? It is slightly bigger at 103sq metres, which allows guests the opportunity to stay among 18th-century frescoes by Tiepolo. Venice's population: 48,000 Or thereabouts. That's the approximate population of Venice's historic centre, which is composed of over 100 islands connected by footbridges and traversed by its famed canals. ADVERTISEMENT And it's clear not everyone is thrilled by the arrival of Bezos, his wife-to-be and their 200 or so guests, which are expected to include Mick Jagger, Ivanka Trump, Oprah Winfrey and Leonardo DiCaprio, to name just a few. Oprah Winfrey, centre right, arrives in Venice, Italy. (Source: Associated Press) And it doesn't seem as though the protesters will stay silent. About a dozen Venetian organisations, including housing advocates, anti-cruise ship campaigners and university groups, have united to protest the multi-day event under the banner "No Space for Bezos," a play on words that refers to Sanchez's recent space flight. Protesters display a sign "No Kings No Bezos" in St. Mark's Square, in Venice, Italy. (Source: Associated Press) To many Venetians, overtourism has made the city increasingly unliveable, expensive and crowded. The resident population has dwindled over the decades, leading to the corresponding reduction in services. Residents complain nothing is being done to encourage other types of economic activity, creating a culture of monotourism. This photo released by Greenpeace shows a large banner against Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' planned wedding, in St. Mark Square, in Venice, Italy. (Source: Associated Press) Number of private jets: 90 ADVERTISEMENT That's the number of wedding-related private jets that are expected to land at Treviso and Venice airports. Veneto Governor Luca Zaia reckons the Bezos wedding is all worth it and has a price tag of around US$50 million, generating revenue for the city and a celebrity quotient that would "bring visibility and promotion" to Venice worth more than five American Super Bowls. A gondolier tours tourists along the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy. (Source: Associated Press) Celebrities already spotted in Venice ahead of the nuptials are Kim Kardashian sister Khloé, Domenico Dolce, Usher, Oprah Winfrey, and Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump with her husband Jared Kushner.
1News
10 hours ago
- 1News
Judge dismisses authors' copyright lawsuit against Meta over AI training
A federal judge sided with Facebook parent Meta Platforms in dismissing a copyright infringement lawsuit from a group of authors who accused the company of stealing their works to train its artificial intelligence technology. The Thursday ruling from US District Judge Vince Chhabria was the second in a week from San Francisco's federal court to dismiss major copyright claims from book authors against the rapidly developing AI industry. Chhabria found that 13 authors who sued Meta 'made the wrong arguments' and tossed the case. But the judge also said that the ruling is limited to the authors in the case and does not mean that Meta's use of copyrighted materials is lawful. 'This ruling does not stand for the proposition that Meta's use of copyrighted materials to train its language models is lawful,' Chhabria wrote. 'It stands only for the proposition that these plaintiffs made the wrong arguments and failed to develop a record in support of the right one.' Lawyers for the plaintiffs — a group of well-known writers that includes comedian Sarah Silverman and authors Jacqueline Woodson and Ta-Nehisi Coates — said in a statement that the "court ruled that AI companies that 'feed copyright-protected works into their models without getting permission from the copyright holders or paying for them' are generally violating the law. Yet, despite the undisputed record of Meta's historically unprecedented pirating of copyrighted works, the court ruled in Meta's favour. We respectfully disagree with that conclusion.' ADVERTISEMENT Meta said it appreciates the decision. 'Open-source AI models are powering transformative innovations, productivity and creativity for individuals and companies, and fair use of copyright material is a vital legal framework for building this transformative technology,' the Menlo Park, California-based company said in a statement. Although Meta prevailed in its request to dismiss the case, it could turn out to be a pyrrhic victory. In his 40-page ruling, Chhabria repeatedly indicated reasons to believe that Meta and other AI companies have turned into serial copyright infringers as they train their technology on books and other works created by humans, and seemed to be inviting other authors to bring cases to his court presented in a manner that would allow them to proceed to trial. The judge scoffed at arguments that requiring AI companies to adhere to decades-old copyright laws would slow down advances in a crucial technology at a pivotal time. "These products are expected to generate billions, even trillions of dollars for the companies that are developing them. If using copyrighted works to train the models is as necessary as the companies say, they will figure out a way to compensate copyright holders for it.' On Tuesday, from the same courthouse, US District Judge William Alsup ruled that AI company Anthropic didn't break the law by training its chatbot Claude on millions of copyrighted books, but the company must still go to trial for illicitly acquiring those books from pirate websites instead of buying them. But the actual process of an AI system distilling from thousands of written works to be able to produce its own passages of text qualified as 'fair use' under US copyright law because it was 'quintessentially transformative', Alsup wrote. In the Meta case, the authors had argued in court filings that Meta is 'liable for massive copyright infringement' by taking their books from online repositories of pirated works and feeding them into Meta's flagship generative AI system Llama. ADVERTISEMENT Lengthy and distinctively written passages of text — such as those found in books — are highly useful for teaching generative AI chatbots the patterns of human language. 'Meta could and should have paid' to buy and license those literary works, the authors' attorneys argued. Meta countered in court filings that US copyright law 'allows the unauthorized copying of a work to transform it into something new' and that the new, AI-generated expression that comes out of its chatbots is fundamentally different from the books it was trained on. "After nearly two years of litigation, there still is no evidence that anyone has ever used Llama as a substitute for reading Plaintiffs' books, or that they even could,' Meta's attorneys argued. Meta says Llama won't output the actual works it has copied, even when asked to do so. 'No one can use Llama to read Sarah Silverman's description of her childhood, or Junot Diaz's story of a Dominican boy growing up in New Jersey,' its attorneys wrote. Accused of pulling those books from online 'shadow libraries", Meta has also argued that the methods it used have 'no bearing on the nature and purpose of its use' and it would have been the same result if the company instead struck a deal with real libraries. Such deals are how Google built its online Google Books repository of more than 20 million books, though it also fought a decade of legal challenges before the US Supreme Court in 2016 let stand lower court rulings that rejected copyright infringement claims. ADVERTISEMENT The authors' case against Meta forced CEO Mark Zuckerberg to be deposed, and has disclosed internal conversations at the company over the ethics of tapping into pirated databases that have long attracted scrutiny. 'Authorities regularly shut down their domains and even prosecute the perpetrators,' the authors' attorneys argued in a court filing. "That Meta knew taking copyrighted works from pirated databases could expose the company to enormous risk is beyond dispute: it triggered an escalation to Mark Zuckerberg and other Meta executives for approval. Their gamble should not pay off.' The named plaintiffs are Jacqueline Woodson, Richard Kadrey, Andrew Sean Greer, Rachel Louise Snyder, David Henry Hwang, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Laura Lippman, Matthew Klam, Junot Diaz, Sarah Silverman, Lysa TerKeurst, Christopher Golden and Christopher Farnsworth. Chhabria said in the ruling that while he had 'no choice' but to grant Meta's summary judgment tossing the case, 'in the grand scheme of things, the consequences of this ruling are limited. This is not a class action, so the ruling only affects the rights of these 13 authors -- not the countless others whose works Meta used to train its models.'
NZ Herald
17 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Craig Piggott on raising US$100m
Craig Piggott gives advice to entrepreneurs on raising US$100m from Silicon Valley venture capital firms that have backed Airbnb, Meta & Stripe. Video / NZ Herald
