Meta's Daring AI Wager, Hollywood Files AI Lawsuit, XR Sector Unveils AR Spectacles
Meta's $14.3 billion acquisition of a 49% non-voting stake in Scale AI, valued at a whopping $29 billion, shook the AI industry like a storm this year. This bold move,Meta's most significant in the AI sector to date, has catapulted Scale AI's founder Alexandr Wang into Meta's new "Superintelligence" lab. However, Scale remains independent under interim CEO Jason Droege. This partnership gives Meta a treasure trove of data-labeling expertise, fueling its AI aspirations and escalating the competition with open-source AI powerhouses like OpenAI and Google. Consequently, Google has terminated its partnership with Scale, and other major players are reconsidering their relationships.
Regulators are keeping a close eye on this deal, despite Meta sidestepping automatic antitrust review by structuring the deal as a minority stake. As U.S. antitrust scrutiny intensifies, there's a looming question about whether the investment could potentially be structured to avoid regulatory requirements or provide Meta with an unfair advantage.
Meanwhile, Hollywood is not holding back in its pursuit of legal justice against AI giants. Disney, Universal, and Getty Images have launched landmark lawsuits against Midjourney and Stability AI, challenging their "fair use" arguments and aiming to establish new legal precedents for generative AI's use of copyrighted content. The studios allege that Midjourney trained its AI on copyrighted images, enabling users to generate unauthorized reproductions of iconic characters. Getty's case against Stability AI emphasizes the company's alleged scraping of millions of copyrighted photos to train Stable Diffusion.
Apple's visionOS 26 for its Vision Pro brings exciting changes to spatial photos, using generative AI to create "spatial scenes with multiple perspectives." Users can lean in and look around, even generating details not captured by the original camera. This innovative feature will be available later this year, with developers able to integrate the Spatial Scene API into their apps. The update, however, leaves Siri waiting until 2026.
AWE 2025 in Long Beach celebrated a pivotal year for XR, with over 5,000 attendees and 250 exhibitors. Google unveiled its new OS for spatial computing, Android XR, while Snap announced consumer-ready Spectacles for 2026, focusing on spatial AI and collaborative overlays. Ori Inbar's keynote echoed the sentiment that XR is going mainstream, crediting robust hardware, mature tools, and AI-driven developer platforms for lowering barriers to entry.
In the world of AI writing, it's becoming increasingly challenging to distinguish human-written work from AI-generated content. Every so often, an AI-written story gains traction, leaving readers bemused by its rhetorical quirks. These patterns, common in platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Grok, can make even professional writing sound formulaic and superficial. The growing presence of AI in our daily lives brings both opportunities and challenges, and it's crucial that we tread carefully as we navigate this tech-driven landscape.
Zero Latency VR, a pioneer in location-based virtual reality, celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. With over 5 million immersive VR experiences delivered across 120+ venues in 30 countries, Zero Latency has proven that it can adapt to disruptive changes in the VR industry. Its innovative outdoor gaming experience, Landing Party, brings together the best-performing video games genres from PC and console and lays them out in a contiguous game area across a real-world outdoor space.
Game designer Johnny Monsarrat, who described the ideas behind Landing Party in 2017, reflects the potential of the VR industry when it taps into both leading technology and real-world spaces. Jenna Seiden, former Niantic VP of Business Development, commends Monsarrat's team for building what Niantic couldn't. With Landing Party now available on the Apple App Store and Google Play, the future of outdoor gaming is promising.
Sources
- Saad, J. (2021, June 21). Meta buys into Scale AI and will go head to head with Google and Microsoft in the next AI arms race, reportedly spending $4.3 billion. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/meta-buys-into-scale-ai-and-will-go-head-to-head-with-google-and-microsoft-in-the-next-ai-arms-race-reportedly-spending-4-3-billion/articleshow/84121627.cms
- Amadeo, G. (2021, June 21). Meta’s $4.3 Billion Scale AI Investment Puts It in direct competition with Google LLC, Microsoft Corporation, NVIDIA Corporation, and Alphabet Inc., AI Companies to Watch, AI News, Deep Learning, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Startups, Quantum Computing, Tech Companies. FinancialNewsMedia.com. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/metas-4-3-billion-scale-ai-134600606.html
- Kennedy, M., & Chappell, A. (2021, June 21). Meta Announces Major $4 Billion AI Acquisition and Regulatory Scrutiny Looms Over Deal. Benzinga. https://www.benzinga.com/news/21/06/21176479/meta-announces-major-4-billion-ai-acquisition-and-regulatory-scrutiny-looms-over-deal
- Catalini, C. M., Duflo, E., & Issacharoff, S. (2021, June 21). Meta's $4 Billion Investment in Scale AI: Competition and Regulation in the Age of AI. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2021/06/metas-4-billion-investment-in-scale-ai-competition-and-regulation-in-the-age-of-ai
- Wysocki, J. (2021, June 21). Meta's Scale AI Acquisition Stirs Antitrust Concerns. The Economic Times. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-disruptions/metas-scale-ai-acquisition-stirs-antitrust-concerns/articleshow/84118132.cms
- The acquisition of Scale AI by Meta for $14.3 billion, a move that signifies Meta's foray into the realm of AI, has been scrutinized by financial analysts, who see it as a strategic investment in the AI sector.
- In the realm of lifestyle and entertainment, there's a legal battle brewing between Hollywood studios and AI giants, with Disney, Universal, and Getty Images launching lawsuits challenging the "fair use" arguments of Midjourney and Stability AI.
- As the line between human-written and AI-generated content blurs, there's growing discussion about the role of AI in the writing industry, and the potential for it to make professional writing sound formulaic and superficial.
- In the realm of business and technology, the annual AWE event showcased significant advancements in XR, with Google unveiling its new OS for spatial computing and Snap announcing consumer-ready Spectacles for 2026, both focusing on spatial AI and collaborative overlays.
