Sunday, April 28, 2024

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

A bill forcing TikTok owner ByteDance to either sell the app or see it banned in the U.S. was passed by the Senate and signed by President Joe Biden this week.

That doesn’t mean TikTok will disappear immediately from American users’ phones. The bill gives ByteDance nine months to find a buyer, with an option for President Biden to extend the purchase window to a full year. And before that happens, TikTok is likely to challenge the bill in court on free speech grounds.

The TechCrunch team has been examining the news from a variety of angles: What it means for Gen Z’s political voice, what it means for the creator economy, which alternative apps to explore, and how TikTok bans have played out internationally. Elsewhere, TechCrunch alum and former VC MG Siegler argues that this is the end of TikTok as we know it, with the app now tainted in the eyes of potential advertisers.

Hope your week was better than TikTok’s! Read on to see what TechCrunch has been up to this weekend.

Weekend news

Image Credits: Shy Kids

CALIFORNIA’S LATEST BATTLE OVER AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES

Rebecca Bellan examines the debate over SB 915, a bill in California’s state Senate that would give cities more power to set their own robotaxi rules — rules like hours of operation and appropriate pickup and drop-off locations. When introducing the bill, state senator Dave Cortese presented it as a way to give local governments more of a say in how robotaxis are deployed in their communities, while the CEO of the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association told TechCrunch that it will create unnecessary complications and obstacles. Read More

MONGODB’S CEO WEIGHS IN ON AI HYPE

Dev Ittycheria, who’s been CEO of MongoDB for the past decade, talked to Paul Sawers about how the company has evolved, what’s next, and how it responded to a recent cybersecurity incident. He also weighed in on the current AI hype, arguing, “My life has not been changed by AI.” Read More

CLIMATE STARTUPS FACE A VALLEY OF DEATH

While there’s been an exciting explosion of startups tackling different aspects of the climate crisis, as well as a greater willingness from VCs to fund those startups in their early stages, Tim De Chant argues that the real challenge comes when the companies need money to scale. That’s especially true if they’re building hardware — but as Nest and Mill co-founder Matt Rogers told Paul, “You can’t solve climate with SaaS.” Read More

THE PLUSES AND MINUSES OF AI-GENERATED VIDEO

Production team Shy Kids is sharing more details about their work with OpenAI to create promotional videos using OpenAI’s generative tool Sora. Devin Coldewey’s main takeaway from their comments: The demo films that attracted all that attention last month didn’t just emerge fully formed from Sora. Instead, they needed professional work like storyboarding, editing, and color correction. Read More

What else we’re reading

Image Credits: Flickr/Jon S

The Wall Street Journal reports that OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, and Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai will be among the executives on an Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board that will advise the Department of Homeland Security and provide recommendations on how different organizations can use AI safely. Read More

Engadget’s Cherlynn Low shared her first impressions of the latest generative AI device, the Rabbit R1. Even though Low is skeptical about this whole category, she said she’ll be buying herself an R1. Read More