ChatGPT goes pro, layoffs at Alphabet, and Dungeons & Dragons flirts with restrictive new licensing
Reading Time: 4 minutesmost read
ChatGPT goes pro: OpenAI this week signaled it’ll soon begin charging for ChatGPT, its viral AI-powered chatbot that can write essays, emails, poems and even computer code. A ‘pro’ version of the tool called ChatGPT Professional will throw in no unavailability windows, no throttling and an unlimited number of messages with ChatGPT — ‘at least 2x the regular daily limit.’ Pricing remains up in the air.
Microsoft 365 goes Basic: Microsoft will introduce a lower-cost tier of Microsoft 365, its family of productivity software and cloud-based document editing services, starting on January 30, the company announced Wednesday. Called Microsoft 365 Basic and priced at $1.99 per month or $19.99 per year, the plan will initially include 100 GB of storage, Outlook email and access to support experts for help with Microsoft 365 and Windows 11.
Layoffs hit a news aggregator: SmartNews, the Tokyo-based news aggregation website and app, let go of 40% of its U.S. and China workforce, or around 120 people, my colleagues Sarah and Kirsten report. The company was impacted by the same macroeconomic factors that have led to a number of tech industry layoffs in recent months, in addition to complications that arose from Apple’s implementation of App Tracking Transparency, or ATT.
Robotics, too: Brian reports that this week, Alphabet joined the growing list of tech giants making staff cuts amid ongoing economic struggles. The company’s robot software firm, Intrinsic, laid off 40 employees, a move that comes less than a year after Intrinsic acquired both Vicarious and Open Robotics — the latter having been announced less than a month ago.
Licensed fun: Dungeons & Dragons content creators are fighting to protect their livelihoods, Amanda writes in a sobering deep dive. Wizards of the Coast (WotC), the Hasbro-owned publisher of the game, plans to update the game’s license for the first time in over 22 years, releasing a new licensing system that would require any D&D content creator who makes over $750,000 in revenue to pay a 25% royalty to the company on every dollar above that threshold. In a sliver of good news, WotC has delayed the rollout of the licensing scheme, following a widespread backlash.
Colors, but E Ink: One of the cooler gizmos to emerge from the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show is E Ink’s color displays, Harri writes. They can spit out 50,000 colors at 300 DPI — way, way up from the last-gen model’s max of 4,000 colors. E Ink says it aims to use them to build a magazine reading experience that’s good enough to win over even the most demanding publishers.
Keys for days: My colleague (and boss!) Frederic reviewed the Keychron Q10 this week, a keyboard akin to Keychron’s other — but smaller — Alice-style board. He approved of the gasket mount and silicon gaskets, which provide a bit of flex while reducing ping and other noise. As for the Alice layout (the keys aren’t in a straight line, but the left and right half are slightly angled), it was easy to get used to, he said — and he appreciated that the five macro buttons under the knob could be mapped to anything you’d like. Read the full review for more.
Welcome home, Welcome Homes: In a profile, Mary Ann peels back the curtains on Welcome Homes, a proptech startup launched by the co-founders of cloud service provider DigitalOcean. The New York City–based firm — which recently raised $29 million — offers people a way to design and build new homes online, similar to other venture-backed companies (e.g., Atmos, Homebound) attempting to address the housing shortage.
I hear deepfaked voices: Microsoft’s new VALL-E AI model can replicate a voice using just three seconds of audio from the target speaker. But as my colleague Devin writes, it’s not necessarily cause for alarm — or rather, cause for more alarm than was already warranted by voice-duplicating tech. Voice replication has been a subject of intense research for years, and the results have been good enough to power plenty of startups, like WellSaid, Papercup and Respeecher. VALL-E is simply the latest illustration of its potential — and dangers.
Medium joins Mastodon: Online publishing startup Medium, originally created by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, is embracing the open source social platform Mastodon. Sarah reports that Medium has created its own instance — me.dm — to support authors and their publications with reliable infrastructure, moderation and a short domain name to make it easier for authors to share their usernames, among other things.
audio roundup
Here’s your regular reminder to subscribe to TC+ if you haven’t yet. It’s where TC takes exhaustive, exclusive looks at trends, industries and emerging technologies. Here’s some of the most popular content on TC+ this week:
Crypto rollercoaster: While some crypto-focused venture capitalists are bullish for 2023, others see it as a hazardous time, Jacquelyn reports. Internal sentiment among VCs is a ‘wait and see’ game, according to one source quoted in the piece; competition in the market is likely to heat up as investors write fewer checks and become more selective.
ChatGPT, meet VC: Some investors are (cautiously) incorporating ChatGPT into their workflows, as it turns out. ChatGPT being a specifically text-based support tool, automation could be making its way to rejection letters, market maps or even bits of due diligence, TC found — all in order to stay afloat in a changing venture landscape. Natasha M, Christine, and I have more.
Pivot when ready: Pivots aren’t necessarily bad news. Brian Casey writes about how he pivoted his deep tech startup to become a software-as-a-service company — albeit not without major challenges. In his words: ‘Pivoting from hardware to SaaS was the right move for our electric motor design startup, but the process wasn’t precisely linear.’
Ref: techcrunch
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