Enlarge / Affinity's photo editor. (credit: Canva )

Online graphic design platform provider Canva announced its acquisition of Affinity on Tuesday. The purchase adds tools for creative professionals to the Australian startup's repertoire, presenting competition for today's digital design stronghold, Adobe.

The companies didn't provide specifics about the deal, but Cliff Obrecht, Canva's co-founder and COO, told Bloomberg that it consists of cash and stock and is worth "several hundred million pounds."

Canva, which debuted in 2013, has made numerous acquisitions to date, including Flourish, Kaleido, and Pixabay, but its purchase of Affinity is its biggest yet—by both price and headcount (90). Affinity CEO Ashley Hewson said via a YouTube video that Canva approached Affinity about a potential deal two months ago.

Enlarge / The logo for WWDC24. (credit: Apple)

Apple has announced dates for this year's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). WWDC24 will run from June 10 through June 14 at the company's Cupertino headquarters, but everything will be streamed online.

Apple posted about the event with the following generic copy :

Join us online for the biggest developer event of the year. Be there for the unveiling of the latest Apple platforms, technologies, and tools. Learn how to create and elevate your apps and games. Engage with Apple designers and engineers and connect with the worldwide developer community. All online and at no cost.

As always, the conference will kick off with a keynote presentation on the first day, which is Monday, June 10. You can be sure Apple will use that event to at least announce the key features of its next round of annual software updates for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, visionOS, and tvOS.

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On Wednesday, TurboTax-maker Intuit launched an AI assistant called "Intuit Assist" that can provide AI-generated financial recommendations and assist with decision-making when using the company's software, Reuters reports . Inuit Assist uses a custom large language model platform called GenOS , and it is available now to all TurboTax customers and select users of Intuit's other products, including Credit Karma, QuickBooks, and Mailchimp, with a wider rollout planned in the coming months.

"Consumers will find it easier than ever to manage and improve their financial lives," the company writes on its promotional website. "They’ll be able to get personalized recommendations throughout the year, with actions they can take to maximize their tax refund and accurately file taxes in record time with TurboTax. And they’ll be given the tools to make smart money decisions throughout their financial journey with Credit Karma."

Intuit also sees Intuit Assist as a way to level the playing field for small and medium-sized businesses, which often lack the resources of larger companies. The AI assistant will reportedly help shorten the time it takes to file taxes and provide faster access to refunds, as well as offer personalized financial advice. Intuit Chief Data Officer Ashok Srivastava told Reuters that the company's AI models "competed favorably" against other AI systems in internal accuracy tests.

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OpenAI's immensely popular ChatGPT has started losing users for the first time, The Washington Post reported today.

According to data firm Similarweb, ChatGPT's mobile and desktop traffic worldwide decreased by nearly 10 percent from May to June. Another data firm, Sensor Tower, reported that ChatGPT's iPhone app downloads have been steadily dipping since they peaked in early June.

This, the Post suggested, could be a sign that consumer interest in chatbots and other AI tools is waning as tech companies heavily invest in  AI product development.

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Armed America Radio touts one of its hosts, Mark Walters, as the "loudest voice in America fighting for gun rights." Now it appears that Walters' prominent commentary on gun rights and the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF)—a gun rights nonprofit that gave him a distinguished service award in 2017—has led generative AI chatbot ChatGPT to wrongly connect dots and make false and allegedly malicious statements about the radio host. That includes generating potentially libelous statements that Walters was once SAF's chief financial officer and treasurer and that he was accused of embezzling funds and defrauding SAF.

Now, Walters is suing ChatGPT owner OpenAI in a Georgia state court for unspecified monetary damages in what's likely the first defamation lawsuit resulting from ChatGPT's so-called "hallucinations," where the chatbot completely fabricates information.

The misinformation was first uncovered by journalist Fred Riehl, who asked ChatGPT to summarize a complaint that SAF filed in federal court.

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As lawmakers worldwide attempt to understand how to regulate rapidly advancing AI technologies, Microsoft chief economist Michael Schwarz told attendees of the World Economic Forum Growth Summit today that "we shouldn't regulate AI until we see some meaningful harm that is actually happening, not imaginary scenarios."

The comments came about 45 minutes into a panel called "Growth Hotspots: Harnessing the Generative AI Revolution." Reacting, another featured speaker, CNN anchor Zain Asher, stopped Schwarz to ask, "Wait, we should wait until we see harm before we regulate it?"

"I would say yes," Schwarz said, likening regulating AI before "a little bit of harm" is caused to passing driver's license laws before people died in car accidents.

Enlarge (credit: SOPA Images / Contributor | LightRocket )

In March, an Italian privacy regulator temporarily banned OpenAI's ChatGPT , worried that the text generator had no age-verification controls or "legal basis" for gathering online user data to train the AI tool's algorithms. The regulator gave OpenAI until April 30 to fix these issues, and last Friday, OpenAI announced it had implemented many of the requested changes ahead of schedule. In a statement to the Associated Press , OpenAI confirmed Italy lifted the ban.

"ChatGPT is available again to our users in Italy," OpenAI's statement said. "We are excited to welcome them back, and we remain dedicated to protecting their privacy.”

OpenAI made several concessions to the Italian Data Protection Authority to bring ChatGPT back to Italy, The Wall Street Journal reported .

Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto )

Today an Italian regulator, the Guarantor for the Protection of Personal Data (referred to by its Italian acronym, GPDP), announced a temporary ban on ChatGPT in Italy. The ban is effective immediately and will remain in place while the regulator investigates its concerns that OpenAI—the developer of ChatGPT—is unlawfully collecting Italian Internet users’ personal data to train the conversational AI software and has no age verification system in place to prevent kids from accessing the tool.

The Italian ban comes after a ChatGPT data breach on March 20 , exposing “user conversations and information relating to the payment of subscribers to the paid service,” GPDP said in its press release. OpenAI notified users impacted by the breach and said it was "committed to protecting our users’ privacy and keeping their data safe," apologizing for falling "short of that commitment, and of our users’ expectations."

Ars could not immediately reach OpenAI to comment. The company has 20 days to respond with proposed measures that could address GPDP’s concerns or face fines of up to 20 million euro or 4 percent of OpenAI’s gross revenue.

Enlarge (credit: Discord)

Joining a recent parade of companies adopting generative AI technology, Discord announced on Thursday that it is rolling out a suite of AI-powered features, such as a ChatGPT-style chatbot, an upgrade to its moderation tool, an open source avatar remixer, and AI-powered conversation summaries.

Discord's new features come courtesy of technology from OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT . Earlier this month, OpenAI announced a new API interface for its popular large language model (LLM) and preferential commercial access called " Foundry ." The ChatGPT API allows companies to easily build AI-powered generative text into their apps, and companies like Snapchat and DuckDuckGo are already getting on the bandwagon with their own implementations of OpenAI's tools.

In this case, Discord is using OpenAI's tech to upgrade its existing robot, called "Clyde." The update, coming next week, will allow Clyde to answer questions, engage in conversations, and recommend playlists. Users will be able to chat with Clyde in any channel by typing "@Clyde" in a server, and the bot will reportedly also be able to start a thread for group chats.