🎥 Sora's Creative Leap, Meta Ends Transparency Tool, Musk's Surveillance Paradox

Today’s pick

OpenAI shows off first examples of third-party creators using Sora. OpenAI has been releasing a steady drip of videos generated by its new highly realistic AI model, Sora, but the text-to-video (and image-to-video) tool remains out of reach to the public still. Now, for the first time, the generative AI startup is showing off Sora creations made by a select group of outside filmmakers, artists, advertising agencies, and musicians that have been given access to the model. By Carl Franzen via VentureBeat

𝕏: Sora for artists and filmmakers - Greg Brockman (@gdb)

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Meta Kills a Crucial Transparency Tool At the Worst Possible Time. Earlier this month, Meta announced that it would be shutting down CrowdTangle, the social media monitoring and transparency tool that has allowed journalists and researchers to track the spread of mis- and disinformation. It will cease to function on August 14, 2024—just months before the US presidential election. Meta’s move is just the latest example of a tech company rolling back transparency and security measures as the world enters the biggest global election year in history. By Vittoria Elliott via WIRED

𝕏: Meta is winding down the transparency tool CrowdTangle. Its cofounder, @brandonsilverm, told me the only way we'll ever get that kind of insight into platforms again is through regulation. - Tori Elliott (@telliotter)

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Elon Musk Fought Government Surveillance - While Profiting Off Government Surveillance. Ten years ago, the internet platform X, then known as Twitter, filed a lawsuit against the government it hoped would force transparency around abuse-prone surveillance of social media users. X's court battle, though, clashes with an uncomfortable fact: The company is itself in the business of government surveillance of social media. By Sam Biddle via The Intercept

𝕏: Emails I obtained via FOIA request show Elon Musk's Twitter/X was selling user data for government surveillance at the exact same time it was fighting government surveillance in court - Sam Biddle (@samfbiddle)

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How Ember is building an all-electric intercity bus network in the UK. A Scottish company building one of the U.K.'s first all-electric intercity bus networks has raised $14 million (£11 million) in a Series A round of funding as it looks to expand across the entire country. Building any bus network from scratch — electric or otherwise — isn’t something anyone can conjure up overnight with a laptop and endless amounts of coffee. By Paul Sawers via TechCrunch

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Canva Acquires Affinity Design Suite in Push to Rival Adobe. Australian unicorn buys British team behind Affinity art suite Affinity offers alternative tools to Adobe's flagship products The deal, which is a mix of cash and stock, is valued at “several hundred million pounds,” Canva co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Cliff Obrecht. By Olivia Poh via Bloomberg

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