Netflix is celebrating the one-year anniversary of its ad-supported tier by giving binge viewers every fourth consecutive episode ad-free. It is also making downloads available on its ad-supported plan, claiming to be the first streamer to do so in an advertising environment. While the binge perk won’t be available until 2024, downloads for both TV series and films are said to start immediately. Netflix said that in year one its bargain-priced tier with ad support has hit 15 million global monthly active users, touting its partnership with Microsoft as helping “to shape the future of advertising.” Read more

Elon Musk’s startup xAI has unveiled its first product, a large language model with chatbot capabilities named Grok, currently available via an early access waitlist with plans to go wide to Premium+ subscribers to the X social platform (formerly Twitter) following beta tests. The company says Grok has “access to search tools and real-time information” and is extremely up-to-date, but “as with all the LLMs trained on next-token prediction, our model can still generate false or contradictory information.” The chatbot is distinguished by sarcasm and wit, “so please don’t use it if you hate humor,” xAI warns. Read more

Kaiber, the AI-powered creative studio whose credits include music video collaborations with artists such as Kid Cudi and Linkin Park, has launched a mobile version of its creator tools designed to give musicians and graphic artists on-the-go access to its suite of GenAI tools offering text-to-video, image-to-video and video-to-video, “now with curated music to reimagine the music video creation process.” Users can select artist tracks to accompany visuals to build a music video “with as much or little AI collaboration as they wish.” Users can also upload their own music or audio and tap Kaiber for visuals. Read more

Apple posted fiscal Q4 earnings of $89.5 billion, down one percent year-over-year. CEO Tim Cook put the quarter’s best facts forward: “a September quarter revenue record for iPhone and an all-time revenue record in Services,” and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $1.46, up 13 percent. While net income of just below $23 billion exceeded Wall Street expectations, Q4 capped a fiscal year in which Apple revenue fell 2.8 percent, impacted by a decline in iPhone sales in China. Following the report, shares fell 3 percent in extended trading based on the prospect that the company may not rebound to growth in the important holiday sales season. Read more

Last week, Microsoft announced its 365 Copilot artificial intelligence Office add-on was being made generally available for purchase. Forrester Research projects that by 2024 nearly 7 million U.S. knowledge workers will use the AI assistant, which integrates with Word, Excel and other Office productivity tools and costs $30 per person per month. According to investment bank Piper Sandler’s forecast, 18 percent of eligible users will use Copilot by 2026, translating to more than $10 billion in revenue by 2026. Microsoft appears to be introducing Copilot in a staggered rollout with its largest enterprise customers first in line. Read more