Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. On Thursday evening, President-elect Donald Trump announced on his Truth Social platform that he would be appointing David O. Sacks--the "PayPal Mafia" alum, longtime venture capitalist, All-In Podcast co-host, Elon Musk pal, and rock-ribbed Silicon Valley conservative--as the "White House A.I. & Crypto Czar." In his statement, Trump wrote that "Sacks will focus on making America the clear global leader" in artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, which he deemed to be "two areas critical to the future of American competitiveness." In addition, Sacks will "safeguard Free Speech online," "steer us away from Big Tech bias and censorship," and "lead the Presidential Council of Advisors for Science and Technology." For his first-ever Truth Social post, the incoming czar responded to Trump with gratitude and claimed that he "looks forward to advancing American competitiveness in these critical technologies."

It feels like every time I read the news, someone has Google in their crosshairs. The US Department of Justice is considering breaking up the company, potentially splitting its search engine from Android, Chrome, and Google Play services. My mother didn't raise a snitch, but if I were Google, my defense would be…. "But look at Apple and Amazon!" I would point across the room and everything.

Reddit continues to grow in popularity as a search engine alternative, with millions of Redditors contributing answers, perspectives, and summaries on the hottest topics. Now, the social platform is making it easier to find the insights you need with help from artificial intelligence (AI). Also: OpenAI's Sora AI video generator is here - how to try it Starting today, we're rolling out a limited test in the U.S. of Reddit Answers--an AI-powered way to get the information, recommendations, and hot takes you only go to Reddit for. Users can then visit the full conversation from where the answers were generated using the inline footnotes or the area beneath the answer. Reddit shares that this experience is part of a longer-term vision to improve the Search experience on the platform, making it "faster, smarter, and more relevant."

Since acquiring X, Elon Musk has been juicing up the platform with artificial intelligence (AI) using its Grok assistant offering. Over the past week, the platform gained a new AI image generator and expanded access to its AI chatbot. The Grok AI chatbot on X has been limited to Premium users. However, as first spotted by The Verge, starting on Friday, free users began noticing that they had also been given access to the Grok 2 chatbot, with the ability to send up to 10 Grok messages every two hours. Also: OpenAI's Sora AI video generator is here - how to try it At the time of writing this article, from my free X account, I could access the chatbot, which has a similar UI to ChatGPT. When I asked, "What is the biggest news of the day?",

For many of the people served by the humanitarian sector, 2024 has been the worst of times. The most recent UN estimates of those forced to flee violence and disaster is a record of 120 million, a figure that has doubled in the past decade. The broader figure of those in humanitarian need, 300 million people, has been swelled by increasingly violent conflict and growing impacts of the climate crisis. Progress in meeting the UN's Sustainable Development Goals has also been either stagnating or declining in more than half of the fragile countries. A child born in those countries has a tenfold greater chance of being in poverty than one born in a stable state.

For more than two years, every new AI announcement has lived in the shadow of ChatGPT. No model from any company has eclipsed or matched that initial fever. But perhaps the closest any firm has come to replicating the buzz was this past February, when OpenAI first teased its video-generating AI model, Sora. Tantalizing clips--woolly mammoths kicking up clouds of snow, Pixar-esque animations of adorable fluffy critters--promised a stunning future, one in which anyone can whip up high-quality clips by typing simple text prompts into a computer program. But Sora, which was not immediately available to the public, remained just that: a teaser.

Apple Intelligence was the big news at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference back in June. Apple made good on a modest first wave of features in October. But iOS 18.2 -- along with sibling OS upgrades for Mac and iPad -- will bring a meatier set of Apple Intelligence features to Apple's suite of devices, including Genmoji, Image Playground and ChatGPT integration. To check out Apple's new AI, you must have an eligible device and run the current iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1 or MacOS 15.1. Once approved, you'll receive a notification saying it's ready to activate on your device.

Anyone in the US can now use OpenAI's artificial intelligence video generator, Sora, which the company announced on Monday would become publicly available. OpenAI first presented Sora in February, but it was only accessible to select artists, film-makers and safety testers. At multiple points on Monday, though, OpenAI's website did not allow for new sign-ups for Sora, citing heavy traffic. Sora is known as a text-to-video generator, a tool that can create AI video clips based on a user's written prompts. An example on OpenAI's website has the prompt of "a wide, serene shot of a family of woolly mammoths in an open desert".

Sora is a powerful AI video generation model that can create videos from text prompts, animate images, or remix videos in new styles. OpenAI first previewed the model back in February, but today is the first time the company is releasing it for broader use. The core function of Sora--creating impressive videos with simple prompts--remains similar to what was previewed in February, but OpenAI worked to make the model faster and cheaper ahead of this wider release. There are a few new features, and two stand out. With it, you can create multiple AI-generated videos and then assemble them together on a timeline, much the way you would with conventional video editors like Adobe Premiere Pro.

One of the most highly-anticipated AI-related products has just arrived: OpenAI's AI video generator Sora launched on Monday as part of the company's 12 Days of OpenAI event. OpenAI has provided sneak peeks at Sora's output in the past. But, how different is it at launch? OpenAI has certainly been hard at work to update and improve its AI video generator in preparation for its public launch. YouTuber Marques Brownlee had a first look at Sora, releasing his video review of the latest OpenAI product hours before OpenAI even officially announced the launch.