OpenAI, parent firm of ChatGPT, closes $122bn funding round amid AI boom

OpenAI announced on Tuesday it had closed a fundraising round of $122bn and achieved a valuation of $852bn. The funding cements the ChatGPT maker as one of the most highly valued private companies in the world.The artificial intelligence firm received multibillion-dollar investments from companies including Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank, which committed $110bn, according to the Wall Street Journal. OpenAI also allowed a select group of individual investors to contribute about $3bn. The funding round ranks among the highest-ever in Silicon Valley

Opaque party funding affects all of British politics | Letters

While I agree with much of Polly Toynbee’s opinion piece (How will we know Labour is really cleaning up party funding? When Reform and the Tories fight like hell to stop it, 26 March), I was left a little concerned about the tone, which seemingly presented this as uniquely a Tory/Reform UK matter.Dirty money (or just opaque funding) in British politics is not really such a sectarian issue. The proposals would appear to do nothing to prevent a party from accepting, for example, £4m from a hedge fund in the run-up to an election, and not declaring it until afterwards (Labour/Quadrature). Nor would they prevent a party engaging a thinktank that had itself accepted £200m from a rightwing American tech oligarch, bringing them into government, and installing staff in the heart of the policymaking process (Labour/Tony Blair Institute/Larry Ellison of Oracle).But it was heartening to see Toynbee begin to address the way that disparities in funding distort the democratic process

Investors tell Thames Water to ‘eat humble pie’ over failed takeover and open bids

Thames Water’s bosses should eat “humble pie” over a failed takeover process last year and let other firms bid for it, according to a Hong Kong investment group angling to buy the troubled water company.CK Infrastructure (CKI), which is owned by Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-shing, has already acquired Northumbrian Water and has been trying to launch a bid for Thames since February last year.Andrew Hunter, CKI’s co-managing director, told the Guardian he was “frustrated” at being shut out of the process to save the debt-laden water company, which has now been locked in talks with its own lenders since last summer. “My goodness, it’s been going on forever,” he said.Thames has been trying to stave off financial collapse for more than two years as it struggles under the weight of £17

Penguin to sue OpenAI over ChatGPT version of German children’s book

Penguin Random House has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging its chatbot ChatGPT violated copyright by mimicking and reproducing the content of a popular series of German children’s books.The lawsuit, which was filed on Friday with a Munich court against OpenAI’s Ireland-based European subsidiary, states Penguin Random House’s legal team had prompted ChatGPT to write a story in the vein of Penguin author and illustrator Ingo Siegner’s Coconut the Little Dragon series.In response to the prompt “Can you write a children’s book in which Coconut the Dragon is on Mars”, the chatbot generated text and images the publishing group said were “virtually indistinguishable from the original”.As well as generating the text of a story, the AI-powered chatbot created a cover featuring Siegner’s orange dragon and two sidekicks, as well as a blurb for the back cover and instructions for how to submit the manuscript to a self-publishing platform.Coconut the Little Dragon (Der kleine Drache Kokosnuss) is one of the most popular German books for children

Karl Turner has Labour whip suspended after criticism of Starmer and No 10

The MP Karl Turner has lost the Labour whip after making a series of interventions criticising Keir Starmer and No 10, especially on changes to jury trials.A Labour source said Turner had been informed by the chief whip, Jonathan Reynolds, that he had had the whip suspended because of his conduct. Turner denied he had been informed by the whips and said he had learned about his suspension from journalists.The decision is understood to have been prompted in part by an interview given by Turner, the MP for Hull East, to Jody McIntyre, a campaigner who stood at the 2024 elections against Labour’s Jess Phillips.Turner wrote on X: “I am being told that I have had the whip suspended but I have not had any notification from the whips about this

Smiley Face: finally, a stoner comedy for the girls who get overstimulated at the supermarket

Gregg Araki’s comedy-of-errors film stars Anna Faris trying to complete everyday tasks in an astronomical state of high. It’s downright terrifyingGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailIt’s hard not to feel a strange sense of kinship with each of the hapless heroines played by Anna Faris. Though she’s generally underrated, her signature blend of anything-for-a-laugh slapstick and absurdism makes her an adorkable standout in every project. While she has been praised for some of her work (The House Bunny, Scary Movie), her portrayal of an empty-headed LA stoner in Gregg Araki’s 2007 comedy Smiley Face remains an unsung triumph.Landing three years after Araki’s dark, critically acclaimed drama Mysterious Skin, Smiley Face was a left turn: a stoner comedy following the mishaps of perpetually buzzed, often unemployed economics student-turned-actor, Jane