SpaceX IPO Filing Opens Up xAI Finances
The filing, which includes’ Elon Musk’s AI company, is the first for the major generative labs, with Anthropic and OpenAI expected to follow soon with their own IPOs.
Generative AI
New York Times Issues Stark Warning About AI Use to Its Freelancers After String of Incidents
After a string of AI controversies, The New York Times emailed a “periodic reminder” to freelancers on Tuesday reminding them of the paper’s AI policy.
“To be clear on AI: All writing and visuals that freelancers submit to The Times must be the product of human creativity and craft, and all submissions must consist solely of their original reporting, writing and other work,” reads the email, reviewed by Futurism. “Freelance contributors must not submit any material for publication that contains content generated, modified or enhanced by [generative AI] tools, or that has been input into these tools.”
The email pointed its contributors to a detailed document on its “policy on freelancers’ use of generative AI tools,” which forbids the inclusion of AI-generated or AI-modified text and images in any reporting contributed to the paper. While AI tools are acceptable for “high-level” brainstorming, the notice warns, freelancers “may not use [generative AI] tools to help you write any part of a story.”
“Using [generative AI] tools to create, draft, guide, clean up, edit, improve, or rephrase your writing is strictly prohibited,” it continues. As for what specific tools the company’s actually speaking to, the document forbids “chatbots like Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT and Perplexity; AI-powered search products like Google AI Overviews; and image generators like Adobe Firefly, DALL-E and MidJourney.”
The reminder comes as the paper of record continues to grapple with AI-generated content, including preventable AI-spun errors, making its way into its pages. Back in March, the NYT faced scrutiny after a contributor to its competitive “Modern Love” column was publicly accused of using AI to generate an emotional personal essay; that writer later told Futurism that she’d used chatbots to conceptualize and edit the piece. Then, in April, the paper cut ties with a freelancer who admitted to using AI to cook up a book review that was found to be riddled with plagiarism after its publication.
And while these controversies indeed stemmed from the work of freelancers, the institution found itself in hot water yet again last week, when a substantial correction revealed that an article bylined by the NYT’s Canada Bureau chief contained an AI-fabricated quote weeks after publication. (As Futurism reported in March, a writer at Condé Nast’s Ars Technica was fired for a similar error.)
“An article on April 15 about the success that Mark Carney, the Liberal prime minister of Canada, has had in building cross-party alliances was updated after The Times learned that a remark attributed to Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader, was in fact an AI-generated summary of his views about Canadian politics that AI rendered as a quotation,” reads the update. “The reporter should have checked the accuracy of what the AI tool returned.”
Futurism reached out to the NYT to ask whether this kind of reminder is normal, and whether the notice has anything to do with its recent flurry of AI scandals. We didn’t immediately hear back.
More on the New York Times: We Talked to a Writer Accused of Publishing An AI-Generated Essay in The New York Times
The post New York Times Issues Stark Warning About AI Use to Its Freelancers After String of Incidents appeared first on Futurism.
Analysts at LightShed recommend that Apple replace CEO Tim Cook
Apple Inc. is under growing pressure to consider changing leadership as its artificial intelligence (AI) efforts lag behind rivals.
Analysts at LightShed Partners have openly urged the company to replace CEO Tim Cook, warning that Apple risks falling behind in a rapidly evolving tech landscape.
Apple should “absolutely” replace CEO Tim Cook with a more forward-thinking new leader, one analyst told a news outlet Wednesday. “Apple now needs a product-focused CEO, not one centered on logistics,” wrote the analysts Walter Piecyk and Joe Galone.
The call for changes is occurring in a period of transition. The company said Jeff Williams, Apple’s longtime chief operating officer, would leave the firm this month. Williams was widely considered to be in the running to succeed Cook, and his departure is thought to pave the way to a major shake-up in the brand’s leadership. Sabih Khan, who has been with Apple for 30 years, is the company veteran who will replace William.
With Williams on his way out, the focus is already shifting on John Ternus (Apple’s Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering), who may emerge as the top internal candidate to replace Cook. Ternus has been leading the development of Apple’s key products, such as the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
AI failures damage Apple’s market position
Apple’s slow adoption of generative AI has not escaped investors’ notice or the wider tech ecosystem. Unlike Microsoft and Google, which have moved aggressively to push AI-based tools and alliances, Apple has made only slight past forays. But that silence is starting to come at a cost for the company.
In 2025, Apple stock fell 16%, versus increases of 25% in shares of AI-forward companies including Meta Platforms Inc. and Microsoft Corp. And Apple’s stock market performance is a reflection of investors’ jitters that the company is failing to keep up in a sector that is already revolutionizing industries from software to hardware and beyond.
Start-ups are wading in too, releasing hardware and software that is directly competitive with Apple’s once unassailable ecosystem. Consumers are also increasingly drawn to AI-enabled devices, which learn, predict, and adjust. At this rate, if Apple doesn’t have a good comeback ready soon, it’s going to see its market share and cultural influence start to wane.
Apple revealed a handful of features called “Apple Intelligence” at its Worldwide Developers Conference in 2024. Still, analysts say the update was more evolutionary than revolutionary regarding AI features, which could not be said about what rivals offered.
Cook’s legacy faces a new AI reality
The performance of Tim Cook, as CEO, is nothing less than historic. Under Mr. Cook’s watch since 2011, Apple’s stock has risen more than 1,400 percent, far outpacing the broader S&P 500, which has climbed roughly 430 percent over the same period. During his tenure, Apple was the first company to reach a $3 trillion market capitalization and added new devices and services to its product lineup.
Cook has also steered Apple through multiple international crises, including COVID-19 and global supply chain problems. He was able to keep the ship running and growing, which made him a trusted figure on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley.
But for some analysts, that legacy alone doesn’t justify keeping things as they are. Piecyk and Galone acknowledged that Tim Cook was the right CEO when he took over and credited him for doing an exceptional job. However, they argued that the current era demands new leadership—someone who can drive the bold product innovation that originally made Apple a global leader. They noted that with Jeff Williams stepping down, the moment calls for more disruptive change, not less.
The push for Cook to leave hasn’t reached the point where it’s a common demand of investors or among directors, and there’s no sign the CEO intends to abandon the ship himself. However, the note from LightShed is one of an increasing number chastising Apple’s direction in the era of accelerated progress in the field of AI.
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Apple’s top AI executive to join Meta’s superintelligence team
Apple Inc. is losing one of its top artificial intelligence leaders to rival Meta Platforms Inc., marking a significant setback in the iPhone maker’s efforts to build its generative AI capabilities.
Ruoming Pang, a distinguished engineer and head of Apple’s foundation models team, is leaving the company to join Meta’s newly formed superintelligence group, according to sources familiar with the matter. Pang, who joined Apple in 2021 from Alphabet, had been overseeing a team of roughly 100 engineers responsible for its large language models that underpin “Apple Intelligence” features across its devices.
Meta lures Apple’s AI chief with multimillion-dollar offer amid talent war
To secure Pang, Meta reportedly offered a compensation package worth tens of millions of dollars annually. The move adds to a growing list of high-profile AI talent Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has poached recently, including Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang, entrepreneur Daniel Gross, and ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman.
On Monday, Meta also brought on Yuanzhi Li, formerly of OpenAI, and Anton Bakhtin from the Claude developer Anthropic, continuing a hiring spree that has seen AI talent from leading labs snap up. While Meta declined to comment, Apple, Pang, OpenAI, and Anthropic have not responded to requests for comment.
Meta has declared AI its top priority, with Zuckerberg deeply involved in building out the company’s AI unit. He’s known to personally recruit engineers, hosting them at his homes in Silicon Valley and Lake Tahoe. The company recently reorganized its AI division to concentrate on “superintelligence” — AI systems capable of matching or surpassing human-level cognitive tasks — and has committed tens of billions of dollars this year toward AI infrastructure, including chips and data centers.
Apple’s AI division faces internal struggles as morale dips and departures mount
Pang’s departure comes at a time of internal friction at Apple. Although his team’s foundation models are used in Apple Intelligence features such as Genmoji, email summarization, and the revamped Siri, the company has been exploring third-party AI solutions. Apple has held talks with both OpenAI and Anthropic to power future Siri iterations, reportedly impacting morale within Pang’s team.
Apple is leaning heavily on external partners despite publicly touting its in-house AI efforts. At its Worldwide Developers Conference in June, only a few AI features were presented as native innovations, with several reliant on partnerships, including call translation and text analysis powered by OpenAI and Google. Apple’s updated Xcode tool taps into third-party models like Claude and ChatGPT for code completion.
The departure of Pang — considered the most critical AI exit since Apple began developing Apple Intelligence — signals broader turbulence in Cupertino’s AI division. Sources say that Pang’s deputy, Tom Gunter, exited last month, and several engineers within the foundation models team, internally known as AFM, are also planning to leave for Meta or other companies.
The AFM group, once under Pang’s direct leadership, will now be led by Zhifeng Chen, with a new hierarchical structure involving multiple managers such as Chong Wang, Zirui Wang, Chung-Cheng Chiu, and Guoli Yin.
Apple’s AI strategy is steered by software head Craig Federighi and Mike Rockwell; the engineering lead behind the Vision Pro and now Siri. Meanwhile, AI research remains under John Giannandrea, who was recently stripped of direct oversight of key AI consumer products amid delays and criticism of Apple’s AI rollout.
As the talent war in AI intensifies, Pang’s high-profile defection underscores Apple’s challenges in retaining top minds — and the pressure it’s under to stay competitive against faster-moving rivals like Meta, OpenAI, and Google.
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Amazon CEO warns AI will shrink workforce as tech replaces routine work
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has acknowledged that the rapid adoption of generative artificial intelligence is set to reduce the number of employees needed for certain roles, as computers increasingly handle tasks traditionally performed by humans.
“Like with every technical transformation, there will be fewer people doing some of the jobs that the technology actually starts to automate,” Jassy told CNBC’s Jim Cramer in an interview on Monday. “But there’s going to be other jobs.”
The shift comes amid growing competition for top AI talent. Just a couple of days ago, Amazon lost a key vice president helping oversee generative artificial intelligence development and the company’s Bedrock service, as the competition for talent heats up.
Vasi Philomin said that he left Amazon for another company, without providing specifics. A company spokesperson confirmed that Philomin had recently left after eight years with Amazon. Philomin helped lead generative AI efforts and product strategy, and oversaw foundation models known as Amazon Titan.
Reports indicate that Rajesh Sheth, a vice president previously overseeing Amazon Elastic Block Store, had assumed some of Philomin’s responsibilities. Philomin left Amazon earlier in June.
Tech leaders embrace AI as workforce shifts toward innovation and efficiency
While AI is expected to eliminate some positions, Jassy emphasized that Amazon will continue expanding its workforce in AI, robotics, and advanced technologies. He noted that the shift will allow employees to move away from repetitive tasks and instead focus on more innovative and engaging work.
Just recently, Jassy noted that he expects the company’s workforce to decline in the next few years as Amazon embraces generative AI and AI-powered software agents. He told staffers in a memo that it would be “hard to know exactly where this nets out over time” but that the corporate workforce would shrink as Amazon wrings more efficiency out of the technology.
The message is resonating across the tech industry. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently stated that AI now handles between 30% and 50% of the workload at his company. Meanwhile, Shopify and Microsoft encourage employees to integrate AI into their daily tasks. Klarna’s CEO noted in May that the company has reduced its workforce by approximately 40%, attributing the decline partly to AI adoption and natural staff turnover.
According to Jassy, AI will free employees from routine and “make all our jobs more interesting,” while enabling staffers to invent better services more quickly than before.
AI-driven efficiencies fuel job cuts and mixed market performance across tech sector
Amazon and other tech companies have also been shrinking their workforces through layoffs over the past several years. Amazon has cut more than 27,000 jobs since the start of 2022, and it has announced smaller, more targeted layoffs in its retail and devices units in recent months.
Amazon shares are flat this year, underperforming the Nasdaq, which has gained 5.5%. The stock is about 10% below its record reached in February, while fellow megacaps Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia are all trading at or near record highs.
BT Group Chief Executive Allison Kirkby notes that the progress in artificial intelligence could deepen significant job cuts at the British telecoms company, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.
Kirkby told the newspaper that BT’s plans to cull more than 40,000 jobs and strip out 3 billion pounds ($4 billion) of costs by the end of the decade “did not reflect the full potential of AI”.
“Depending on what we learn from AI … there may be an opportunity for BT to be even smaller by the end of the decade,” Allison Kirkby said.
Amazon races to produce more advanced AI, and it expects its own success will lead to fewer corporate jobs, according to a memo from CEO Andy Jassy. Job growth limits will be driven in particular by so-called agentic AI, which can perform tasks with minimal or even no additional input from people.
Amazon is working to bolster its reputation in AI development, after rivals like OpenAI and Google have taken an early lead, particularly with consumer-focused models.
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