9 hours ago
Lately: Meta, Anthropic win copyright lawsuits against authors, and a made-in-Canada social platform
Welcome back to Lately, The Globe's weekly tech newsletter. I'm Prajakta Dhopade from the digital team, covering for Samantha Edwards this week. If you have any newsletter feedback or just want to say hello to a real-life human, send me an e-mail.
📚 Artificial intelligence wins two lawsuits against authors over copyright
🍁 Tech leaders urge startups to dig in their heels and stay in Canada
🛡️ A defence spending boom may be coming to the tech industry
💬 A made-in-Canada social-media platform
It was a big week for developments in that uneasy, grey area of copyright when it comes to training AI. In two separate cases of authors suing companies for using their books to train their artificial intelligence models, both judges ruled in favour of the tech companies - Anthropic and Meta. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria said the authors had not provided enough evidence to suggest Meta's AI would dilute the market for their work. He said the ruling did not mean the tech giant's use of copyrighted materials was lawful, just that the authors' arguments were not the right ones to win the case.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who ruled in favour of Anthropic, had a different take, saying that using the copyrighted materials to train chatbot Claude did not break the law. Claude's ability to distill the authors' work into its own passages counted as 'fair use' under U.S. copyright law because it was 'quintessentially transformative.' However, Anthropic must still go on trial over how it got a hold of the books; the company apparently downloaded pirated copies of the works. Ah, yes, why buy the books with your billions of dollars when you can just … not? And once Claude is trained up, why have an original thought when you can just ask the chatbot and … not?
One more lawsuit was filed this week by another group of authors, this time against Microsoft. Maybe this time will be different.
'Don't do it.' That's Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez's message to tech companies thinking about following the siren call of U.S. capital and moving down south. Gomez made his case for a 'nationalistic stance to build for Canada' during a conversation with Shopify's Harley Finkelstein at a Toronto Tech Week event. Apparently, both companies refused that sweet American capital in their early days; a large, U.S.-based firm tried to acquire Cohere, while Shopify declined to take money from American investors in an early round.
AI-for-enterprise Cohere and e-commerce giant Shopify may be the poster children for saying 'no' to a hunk of USD but it sounds like it's going to become more difficult to resist. Opportunities to accept U.S. funding may be on the rise, as more of Uncle Sam's venture capitalists turn their attention to Canadian startups, according to Ajay Agrawal, founder of an accelerator program and a professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Canada's first-ever AI Minister, meanwhile says 'sovereignty does not mean solitude.' Evan Soloman says that the country needs to work with France, Germany, Britain, and yes, even the United States, to scale up the artificial intelligence industry.
Canada's tech industry is gearing up for a big boost in defence spending. But after decades of underinvestment in defence, it'll be a tough job to ramp up expertise. Time is not a luxury the country has, industry experts said this week. 'There are governments around the world getting behind it, and Canada is in the early stages of waking up to that,' said Daniel Sax, founder and CEO at the Canadian Space Mining Corporation during a panel.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that Canada will spend more than $60-billion on defence for 2025-26. And just this week, at a NATO summit, he committed the country to boosting defence spending to 5 per cent of gross domestic product by 2035 – the biggest increase since the Second World War.
And this cash infusion will mostly be spent on Canadian defence companies, the Prime Minister said, to reduce reliance on the U.S. for military goods. (Are you seeing a theme here?) The key is to focus on dual-use technologies, which can be used both commercially and for defence. Think robot-maid that can also disarm a bomb. Communications company founder Bogdan Frusina stressed that companies being tapped for these dual-use technologies need government support to do the job right. 'You're asking for somebody who's been selling to a bank, an infrastructure, to go out and sell that to an army person that's worried about getting their head shot off and making sure that stuff works. Completely different thing,' he said. Good point! 😬
What if instead of wading into the toxicity of X or Truth Social, you could instead have a civil discussion on a social-media platform made by a bunch of polite Canadians? Gander Social Inc. an app created by five Canadian co-founders, hopes to be that safe space. Like the social-media platform Bluesky, Gander is built on AT Protocol, which means it's part of an open, decentralized network and not controlled by a billionaire. And, users will have the option to toggle between having their posts appear on the larger, open network or the Canada-only network. Early access opened in April and the app will publicly launch in October. Will it be the utopia Canadian social-media users dream of? Or a bunch of goose crap? Hard to say. I'm also wondering if the terminology for posting will be 'honk,' how Twitter users would 'tweet.'
Jeff Bezos is reportedly courting Trump after public spat with Musk (Tech Crunch)
Google Earth adds old Street View captures to rewind time from the street level (The Verge)
Danny Boyle says shooting on iPhones let him capture 'startling' violence in 28 Years Later (Wired)
Narwal Freo Versatile Self Mop Clean Robot with DirtSense, $1,399.98
This two-in-one robot vacuum mop may be a high-tech - and admittedly pricey - solution for dirty floors. It not only cleans your hardwood or tile, but sanitizes its own mop heads and even dries them with heat so you don't have to worry about dirt-encrusted cleaning pads scouring your home. But at a whopping $1,400, it costs as much as a new iPhone in Canada. Though, famously, iPhones cannot clean your home.
This TikTok trend is neither dangerous nor does it require you to spend loads of money. It's in fact, quite wholesome and cheap. People are turning their apartments into aesthetically pleasing little cafés, baking goods and inviting their friends to bring their own. It's not just any old potluck, though. The key is to print out signage or write little labels on butcher paper or even draft a logo for your fake café. With wars, political strife and general garbage-fire vibes in the world right now, a fun little party – a sweet-treat bonanza, if you will – is just what the doctor ordered. If you're looking to get in on this trend, here's a recipe for glazed doughnuts. Doughnuts and coffee – perfect!
