Dozens of former AI researchers from Google who struck out on their own are learning that startups are tricky. The Information: The latest example is French AI agent developer H, which lost three of its five cofounders (four of whom are ex-Googlers) just months after announcing they had raised $220 million from investors in a "seed" round, as our colleagues reported Friday. The founders had "operational and business disagreements," one of them told us.

The drama at H follows the quasi-acquisitions of Inflection, Adept and Character, which were each less than three years old and founded mostly by ex-Google AI researchers. Reka, another AI developer in this category, was in talks to be acquired by Snowflake earlier this year. Those talks, which could have valued the company at $1 billion, fell apart in May. AI image developer Ideogram, also cofounded by four ex-Googlers, has spoken with at least one later-stage tech startup about potential sale opportunities, though the talks didn't seem to go anywhere, according to someone involved in the discussions.

Cohere, whose CEO co-authored a seminal Google research paper about transformers with Noam Shazeer, the ex-CEO of Character, has also faced growing questions about its relatively meager revenue compared to its rivals. For now, though, it has a lot of money in the bank. Has someone put a curse on startups founded by ex-Google AI researchers?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last week, a hobbyist experimenting with the new Flux AI image synthesis model discovered that it's unexpectedly good at rendering custom-trained reproductions of typefaces. While far more efficient methods of displaying computer fonts have existed for decades, the new technique is useful for AI image hobbyists because Flux is capable of rendering depictions of accurate text, and users can now directly insert words rendered in custom fonts into AI image generations. [...] Since Flux is an open model available for download and fine-turning, this past month has been the first time training a typeface LoRA might make sense. That's exactly what an AI enthusiast named Vadim Fedenko (who did not respond to a request for an interview by press time) discovered recently. "I'm really impressed by how this turned out," Fedenko wrote in a Reddit post. "Flux picks up how letters look in a particular style/font, making it possible to train Loras with specific Fonts, Typefaces, etc. Going to train more of those soon."

For his first experiment, Fedenko chose a bubbly "Y2K" style font reminiscent of those popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s, publishing the resulting model on the Civitai platform on August 20. Two days later, a Civitai user named "AggravatingScree7189" posted a second typeface LoRA that reproduces a font similar to one found in the Cyberpunk 2077 video game. "Text was so bad before it never occurred to me that you could do this," wrote a Reddit user named eggs-benedryl when reacting to Fedenko's post on the Y2K font. Another Redditor wrote, "I didn't know the Y2K journal was fake until I zoomed it." It's true that using a deeply trained image synthesis neural network to render a plain old font on a simple background is probably overkill. You probably wouldn't want to use this method to replace Adobe Illustrator while designing a document. "This looks good but it's kinda funny how we're reinventing the idea of fonts as 300MB LoRAs," wrote one Reddit commenter on a thread about the Cyberpunk 2077 font.

Samsung Electronics said it will provide Tizen OS updates for its newer TVs for at least seven years, starting with models released in March this year and some 2023 models. Business Korea reports: [Yoon Seok-woo, President of Samsung Electronics' Visual Display Business Division] emphasized that the seven-year free upgrade for Tizen applied to AI TVs would help Samsung widen the market share gap with Chinese competitors. Tizen, an in-house developed OS, has been applied to over 270 million Samsung smart TVs as of last year, making it the world's largest smart TV platform and a key player in leading the Internet of Things (IoT) era. "AI TV will act as the hub of the AI home, connecting other AI appliances like refrigerators and air conditioners," Yoon explained. "We will expand the AI home era by enabling users to monitor and control peripheral devices through the TV even when it is off or when the user is away." This connectivity is a key differentiator from Chinese competitors, according to Yoon.

In the first half of this year, Samsung Electronics maintained the top spot in the global TV market with a 28.8% market share by revenue. However, the combined market share of Chinese companies TCL and Hisense has reached 22.1%, indicating fierce competition.

Stephen Wolfram, renowned mathematician and computer scientist, is calling for philosophers to engage with critical questions surrounding AI as the technology's advancement raises complex ethical and societal issues. Wolfram, creator of Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha, argues that the tech industry's approach to AI development often lacks philosophical rigor. "Sometimes in the tech industry, when people talk about how we should set up this or that thing with AI, some may say, 'Well, let's just get AI to do the right thing.' And that leads to, 'Well, what is the right thing?'"

He sees parallels between current AI challenges and foundational questions in philosophy, citing discussions on AI guardrails and the potential for AI to significantly impact society as examples where philosophical inquiry is crucial. The scientist, who earned his doctorate at 20, suggests that philosophers may be better equipped than scientists to tackle the paradigm shifts AI presents. Wolfram's call comes as AI's growing influence raises ethical concerns across industries, urging an interdisciplinary approach to address these emerging challenges.

OpenAI said in a letter that it supports California bill AB 3211, which requires tech companies to label AI-generated content. Reuters reports: San Francisco-based OpenAI believes that for AI-generated content, transparency and requirements around provenance such as watermarking are important, especially in an election year, according to a letter sent to California State Assembly member Buffy Wicks, who authored the bill. "New technology and standards can help people understand the origin of content they find online, and avoid confusion between human-generated and photorealistic AI-generated content," OpenAI Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon wrote in the letter, which was reviewed by Reuters.

AB 3211 has already passed the state Assembly by a 62-0 vote. Earlier this month it passed the senate appropriations committee, setting it up for a vote by the full state Senate. If it passes by the end of the legislative session on Aug. 31, it would advance to Governor Gavin Newsom to sign or veto by Sept. 30.

Apple is expected to launch the iPhone 16 lineup on September 9th, 2024, at 1PM ET / 10AM PT. The tech giant sent out invitations to the event today with the tagline: "It's Glowtime" -- a reference to the redesigned Siri with Apple Intelligence. The Verge reports: The big change to the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus is expected to be a switch to a vertically aligned camera system on the back. (If the final phones look like what we've seen on iPhone 16 dummy units, I'm already a big fan of this change.) The iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max phones might get bigger screens but are rumored to keep Apple's familiar three-camera layout. Those phones could also come in a new bronze color.

All four iPhone 16 models are expected to have the Action Button, which was exclusive to the Pro line with the iPhone 15. Apple's new iPhones may also have a new button dedicated to capturing photos and videos, but it's unclear if that will be a Pro-exclusive feature or will be available on the regular iPhone 16 models as well. AI and the company's Apple Intelligence features will likely be a big part of Apple's event, too.

An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI lacks advanced security and customer support. It's just a research company, not an established cloud provider. The ChatGPT-maker is not focused enough on corporate customers. These are just some of the talking points Amazon Web Services' salespeople are told to follow when dealing with customers using, or close to buying, OpenAI's products, according to internal sales guidelines obtained by Business Insider. Other talking points from the documents include OpenAI's lack of access to third-party AI models and weak enterprise-level contracts. AWS salespeople should dispel the hype around AI chatbots like ChatGPT, and steer the conversation toward AWS's strength of running the cloud infrastructure behind popular AI services, the guidelines added.

[...] The effort to criticize OpenAI is also unusual for Amazon, which often says it's so customer-obsessed that it pays little attention to competitors. This is the latest sign that suggests Amazon knows it has work to do to catch up in the AI race. OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google have taken an early lead and could become the main platforms where developers build new AI products and tools. Though Amazon created a new AGI team last year, the company's existing AI models are considered less powerful than those made by its biggest competitors. Instead, Amazon has prioritized selling AI tools like Bedrock, which gives customers access to third-party AI models. AWS also offers cloud access to in-house AI chips that compete with Nvidia GPUs, with mixed results so far.

Car buyers are increasingly skeptical of advanced automotive technologies, a new JD Power survey reveals. The study found that while drivers appreciate practical innovations like blind spot monitoring, they see little value in features such as automatic parking systems and passenger-side infotainment screens. The survey measured user experiences with new vehicle technologies. Results show that systems partially automating driving tasks had low perceived usefulness, aligning with recent Insurance Institute for Highway Safety data indicating no safety improvements from such features. The survey identified AI-based smart climate control as popular among users. However, facial recognition, fingerprint scanners, and gesture controls were largely viewed negatively.

theodp writes: Typos happen to the best of us, but spelling still counts when it comes to software development. So, it's kind of surprising to see that both Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and former AWS CEO Adam Selipsky failed to notice an embarrassing typo in a demo video they offered to their millions of followers on social media as evidence of Amazon Q AI's Java upgrade capabilities, which Amazon has been trumpeting for months in SEC filings, shareholder communication, and Amazon's latest earnings call with Wall Street analysts.

Just 37 seconds into the demo of the software that Amazon says saved it 4,500 developer-years of work and provided an additional $260M in annualized efficiency gains, Amazon Q kicks off the Java upgrade conversation by saying, "I can help you upgrade your Jave [sic] 8 and 11 codebases to Java 17." The embarrassing misspelling did prompt Twitter user @archo5dev to alert Jassy to the typo, but there's been no response yet from Jassy, who boasted that Amazon developers were unable to find any mistakes in Q's work in "79% of the auto-generated code reviews."

It's probably worth noting that both Jassy and Selipsky opted to showcase a drop-dead simple demo of Amazon Q Code Transformation rather than some of the lengthier and less-magical demos of the product.

To build the massive datacenters generative AI requires, major companies like Amazon and Microsoft "are going nuclear," reports CIO magazine. AWS: Earlier this year, AWS paid $650 million to purchase Talen Energy's Cumulus Data Assets, a 960-megawatt nuclear-powered data center on site at Talen's Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, nuclear plant, with additional data centers planned — pending approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Agency... In addition to its purchase of the Cumulus data center, AWS will have access to nuclear energy as part of a 10-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) from the Susquehanna site.
Microsoft: Last year, Constellation signed a deal giving Microsoft the rights to receive up to 35% of its power from nuclear sources in addition to its existing solar and wind purchases from Constellation for Microsoft's Boydton, Va., data center. Microsoft has also signed a nuclear carbon credits deal with Ontario Power Generation for its operations in Canada.
The broader industry: Many of the deals under discussion are with existing nuclear power providers for hyperscalars [large-scale datacenters] to access energy or to employ small module nuclear reactors (SMRs) with smaller carbon footprints that will be annexed to existing nuclear power plants. Nucor, Oklo, Rolls-Royce SMR, Westinghouse Electric, Moltex Energy, Terrestrial Energy, General Electric, Hitachi Nuclear Energy, and X-energy are among the roster of companies with SMRs under development to meet the growing needs of AI data centers...

One energy analyst does not expect nuclear SMRs to be operational until 2030, yet he and many others acknowledge the need for sustainable, carbon-free alternatives to electricity, wind, and solar is very pressing. "Today's electric grids are struggling to keep up with demand, even as datacenter companies are planning huge new additions to their fleets to power generative AI applications. As a result, companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are increasingly taking matters into their own hands and getting creative. They are now looking at on-site nuclear-based SMRs, and even fusion reactors," says Peter Kelly-Detwiler, principal of Northbridge Energy Partners. "This global arms race for power arose pretty quickly, and it's like nothing we have ever seen before."
Thanks to Slashdot reader snydeq for sharing the news.

"At The Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit China conference, Linus Torvalds and his buddy Dirk Hohndel, Verizon's Head of the Open Source Program Office, once more chatted about Linux development and related issues," reports ZDNet: Torvalds: "Later this year, we will have the 20th anniversary of the real-time Linux project. This is a project that literally started 20 years ago, and the people involved are finally at that point where they feel like it is done... well, almost done. They're still tweaking the last things, but they hope it will soon be ready to be completely merged in the upstream kernel this year... You'd think that all the basics would have been fixed long ago, but they're not. We're still dealing with basic issues such as memory management...."

Switching to a more modern topic, the introduction of the Rust language into Linux, Torvalds is disappointed that its adoption isn't going faster. "I was expecting updates to be faster, but part of the problem is that old-time kernel developers are used to C and don't know Rust. They're not exactly excited about having to learn a new language that is, in some respects, very different. So there's been some pushback on Rust." On top of that, Torvalds commented, "Another reason has been the Rust infrastructure itself has not been super stable...."

The pair then moved on to the hottest of modern tech topics: AI. While Torvalds is skeptical about the current AI hype, he is hopeful that AI tools could eventually aid in code review and bug detection. In the meantime, though, Torvalds is happy about AI's side effects. For example, he said, "When AI came in, it was wonderful, because Nvidia got much more involved in the kernel. Nvidia went from being on my list of companies who are not good to my list of companies who are doing really good work."

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp shared this anecdote about Amazon's GenAI assistant for software development, Amazon Q: On Thursday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy took to Twitter to boast that using Amazon Q to do Java upgrades has already saved Amazon from having to pay for 4,500 developer-years of work. ("Yes, that number is crazy but, real," writes Jassy). And Jassy says it also provided Amazon with an additional $260M in annualized efficiency gains from enhanced security and reduced infrastructure costs.

"Our developers shipped 79% of the auto-generated code reviews without any additional changes," Jassy explained. "This is a great example of how large-scale enterprises can gain significant efficiencies in foundational software hygiene work by leveraging Amazon Q."

Jassy — who FORTUNE reported had no formal training in computer science — also touted Amazon Q's Java upgrade prowess in his Letter to Shareholders earlier this year, as has Amazon in its recent SEC filings ("today, developers can save months using Q to move from older versions of Java to newer, more secure and capable ones; in the near future, Q will help developers transform their .net code as well"). Earlier this week, Business Insider reported on a leaked recording of a fireside chat in which AWS CEO Matt Garman predicted a paradigm shift in coding as a career in the foreseeable future with the prevalence of AI. According to Garman, "If you go forward 24 months from now, or some amount of time — I can't exactly predict where it is — it's possible that most developers are not coding."

He was employee #13 at Apple Computers — after impressing Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs with his "blue box" phone-phreaking technique. Now 81-year-old John "Captain Crunch" Draper has launched a new YouTube channel and web site.

"I spent decades exploring the depths of communication technology," Draper says in a recent video, "always pushing the boundaries of what's possible, and challenging the status quo." The video is embedded at the top of the new web site, welcoming visitors to "your gateway to my world, where I share everything from my secrets of the early phone freaking days to the latest in emergency communication systems that could one day save your life." "Here you'll find insights into my current projects including advanced uses of artificial intelligence, emergency communication preparedness, and much more. Whether you're a technology enthusiast, a fellow veteran, or someone curious about the unseen forces that connect our world, here's something for you."
And clicking the "Current Projects" link leads to an interesting list:

• "My involvement in the field of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) recently took me to "Contact in the Desert," a pivotal gathering of leading scientists pushing for governmental transparency in UAP research."

• "Artificial Intelligence, particularly ChatGPT, has captivated my interest. I'm refining my skills as a prompt engineer, integrating AI into various facets of my life, from web development and programming to personal research on UAPs and anti-gravity phenomena."

• "In light of global tensions, such as the Ukrainian conflict, I'm actively preparing for potential disruptions in conventional communication systems. Together with a hardware partner, we are pioneering advanced communication technologies under the unlicensed ISM band using the Meshtastic protocol. This technology, which is popular in the UK but less so in the US, facilitates secure, low-power, and nearly undetectable communication. I am advocating for its adoption in Las Vegas, where it remains largely underutilized."

• "My YouTube channel not only serves as a platform for project updates but also as a conduit for preserving the legacy of the computing era's pioneers." [Draper's channel has already hosted a reunion with members from the original 1970s HomeBrew Computer Club.]

Draper's home page also has a 59-minute video of a conference talk where Draper tells his life story...

And five months ago Draper released a video on YouTube showing what happened when he asked ChatGPT to design his logo. It resulted in "really hokey pictures — terrible." But Draper scrolls them all to provide his critique....

There's also a Patreon account where Draper is offering to schedule Zoom meetings with subscribers (for between $22 and $45 an hour).

Alien: Romulus director Fede Ãlvarez "briefly dropped into an Alien franchise subreddit this week to chat with fans about his new sequel," reports Deadline. "But the moderators weren't having it, flagging Ãlvarez as an imposter in a notice that he is 'permanently banned' from the subreddit." The moderator shared an update that Ãlvarez "was immediately reinstated and had a very friendly conversation with us. Awesome guy." They also shared the filmmaker's response. "I'm sorry, just found it hilarious," wrote Ãlvarez. "My bad. Not harm done. Thanks again for such great work moderating my favorite subreddit."
Fangoria notes this might not be the last Alien movie from director Alvarez: Talking with The Hollywood Reporter earlier this week, the Evil Dead and Don't Breathe director teased that ideas are in the pipeline for an Alien: Romulus sequel, which would — if it comes to fruition — be the eighth instalment in the legendary sci-fi horror franchise."
The Hollywood Reporter also notes that Ash, the "calculating synthetic character" from the original 1979 movie Alien (played by the late Ian Holm) got a kind of reprise in 2024 with another character named Rook: According to Ãlvarez, Rook was a collaborative decision with [Ridley] Scott, who also wanted to see another version of the artificial person he introduced 45 years ago. The Romulus team then received approval from Holm's estate, and using the English actor's headcast from The Lord of the Rings as a foundation, Legacy Effects built Rook's torso and head as an animatronic. The practical character was then enhanced by CG and deepfake AI technology for certain shots as needed... "There might be some deepfake in the eyes because it's the best when it comes to creating the likeness of the eyes, but it's a whole bag of tricks from 1970s and 1980s technology to technology from yesterday."
The article also notes one horrifying plot twist "received some respectful opposition to this unsettling choice from 20th Century and Disney, but that's precisely when [director Alvarez] knew he was on the right course." "If you're given an Alien movie by a corporation that is owned by Disney and they immediately say, 'Yeah, let's make it,' then you are failing somehow. So we really pushed it to the limit, and I'm glad we did."
Alvarez's social media feed also explores what Alien: Romulus would look like as trading cards or as 1950s comic book, shares posts from the movie's poster designer, and admits that "everything I do is influenced by Terminator / Alien / Predator."

Nearly 200 Google DeepMind workers signed a letter urging Google to cease its military contracts, expressing concerns that the AI technology they develop is being used in warfare, which they believe violates Google's own AI ethics principles. "The letter is a sign of a growing dispute within Google between at least some workers in its AI division -- which has pledged to never work on military technology -- and its Cloud business, which has contracts to sell Google services, including AI developed inside DeepMind, to several governments and militaries including those of Israel and the United States," reports TIME Magazine. "The signatures represent some 5% of DeepMind's overall headcount -- a small portion to be sure, but a significant level of worker unease for an industry where top machine learning talent is in high demand." From the report: The DeepMind letter, dated May 16 of this year, begins by stating that workers are "concerned by recent reports of Google's contracts with military organizations." It does not refer to any specific militaries by name -- saying "we emphasize that this letter is not about the geopolitics of any particular conflict." But it links out to an April report in TIME which revealed that Google has a direct contract to supply cloud computing and AI services to the Israeli Military Defense, under a wider contract with Israel called Project Nimbus. The letter also links to other stories alleging that the Israeli military uses AI to carry out mass surveillance and target selection for its bombing campaign in Gaza, and that Israeli weapons firms are required by the government to buy cloud services from Google and Amazon.

"Any involvement with military and weapon manufacturing impacts our position as leaders in ethical and responsible AI, and goes against our mission statement and stated AI Principles," the letter that circulated inside Google DeepMind says. (Those principles state the company will not pursue applications of AI that are likely to cause "overall harm," contribute to weapons or other technologies whose "principal purpose or implementation" is to cause injury, or build technologies "whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.") The letter says its signatories are concerned with "ensuring that Google's AI Principles are upheld," and adds: "We believe [DeepMind's] leadership shares our concerns." [...]

The letter calls on DeepMind's leaders to investigate allegations that militaries and weapons manufacturers are Google Cloud users; terminate access to DeepMind technology for military users; and set up a new governance body responsible for preventing DeepMind technology from being used by military clients in the future. Three months on from the letter's circulation, Google has done none of those things, according to four people with knowledge of the matter. "We have received no meaningful response from leadership," one said, "and we are growing increasingly frustrated."

After a couple of years of regular use, Samsung's $400 Galaxy Ring will end up contributing to the growing e-waste problem. "The Galaxy Ring -- and all smart rings like it -- comes with a huge string attached," writes iFixit in a blog post. "It's 100% disposable, just like the AirPod-style Buds3 that Samsung just released. The culprit? The lithium ion batteries." ZDNet reports: The problem is the battery, and how they have a finite lifespan. Usually that's about 400 recharge cycles, and after that the batteries are finished. And if you can't replace it, then it's the end of the line for the gadget, and it's tossed onto the e-waste pile. [...]

iFixit is damning about this sort of tech. "There's nothing wrong with simple but there is something wrong with unrepairable. Just like the Galaxy Buds3, the Galaxy Ring is a disposable tech accessory that isn't designed to last more than two years." And the bottom line is simple: "We can't recommend buying disposable tech like this." Here's what iFixit's Shahram Mokhtari had to say about the Galaxy Ring's battery, after putting it through a CT scanner: On the right hand side of the ring is the faint outline of a lithium polymer battery pouch. There's an inductive coil sitting right on top of the battery (the lines that look like a rectangular track) and another very similar inductive coil that's parallel and slightly separated from the first. That second inductive coil is inside the charging case and works together with the inductive coil in the ring to recharge the battery inside the Galaxy Ring. Inductive charging is the only practical way to deliver power to a device that doesn't have any ports. But there's something else here that sticks out like a sore thumb ... that is a press connector joining the battery to the rest of the board! This is a surprising use of space, why isn't this directly soldered? Nobody is getting back in there to disconnect this thing!

We love press connectors, they're easy to work with and make replacing batteries a sight easier than desoldering a half dozen wires. But this one is sealed into the device and serves no purpose in replacement or repair. Our best guess as to why it's in the Galaxy Ring: The battery and wireless charging coil were made in one place, the circuit board somewhere else, and it all comes to a production line somewhere where the two need to be connected together quickly and cheaply. Hence the press connector. It's not for your benefit, it's for the manufacturers.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Language models generate text based on statistical probabilities. This led to serious false accusations against a veteran court reporter by Microsoft's Copilot. German journalist Martin Bernklau typed his name and location into Microsoft's Copilot to see how his culture blog articles would be picked up by the chatbot, according to German public broadcaster SWR. The answers shocked Bernklau. Copilot falsely claimed Bernklau had been charged with and convicted of child abuse and exploiting dependents. It also claimed that he had been involved in a dramatic escape from a psychiatric hospital and had exploited grieving women as an unethical mortician.

Copilot even went so far as to claim that it was "unfortunate" that someone with such a criminal past had a family and, according to SWR, provided Bernklau's full address with phone number and route planner. I asked Copilot today who Martin Bernklau from Germany is, and the system answered, based on the SWR report, that "he was involved in a controversy where an AI chat system falsely labeled him as a convicted child molester, an escapee from a psychiatric facility, and a fraudster." Perplexity.ai drafts a similar response based on the SWR article, explicitly naming Microsoft Copilot as the AI system.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds expressed disappointment with the slow adoption of Rust in the Linux kernel at the Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit China. In a conversation with Verizon executive Dirk Hohndel, Torvalds said, "I was expecting updates to be faster, but part of the problem is that old-time kernel developers are used to C and don't know Rust. They're not exactly excited about having to learn a new language that is, in some respects, very different." This resistance has led to "some pushback on Rust," he said. "Another reason has been the Rust infrastructure itself has not been super stable," he added.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Software engineers may have to develop other skills soon as AI takes over many coding tasks. That's according to Amazon Web Services' CEO, Matt Garman, who shared his thoughts on the topic during an internal fireside chat held in June, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by Business Insider. "If you go forward 24 months from now, or some amount of time -- I can't exactly predict where it is -- it's possible that most developers are not coding," said Garman, who became AWS's CEO in June.

"Coding is just kind of like the language that we talk to computers. It's not necessarily the skill in and of itself," the executive said. "The skill in and of itself is like, how do I innovate? How do I go build something that's interesting for my end users to use?" This means the job of a software developer will change, Garman said. "It just means that each of us has to get more in tune with what our customers need and what the actual end thing is that we're going to try to go build, because that's going to be more and more of what the work is as opposed to sitting down and actually writing code," he said.

The Justice Department on Friday filed an antitrust lawsuit against RealPage, a property management software provider, alleging it enabled a collusion among landlords to inflate rents for millions of Americans. From a report: The complaint claims the Richardson, Texas-based company and its competitors engaged in a price-fixing scheme by sharing nonpublic, sensitive information, which RealPage's algorithmic pricing software used to generate pricing recommendations. The company replaced competition with rent coordination to the detriment of renters across the U.S., according to the suit, monopolizing the market through its revenue management software which was used by landlords to maximize rent costs.

The DOJ is joined by the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee and Washington. The complaint alleges that RealPage violated sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, an antitrust law. "Americans should not have to pay more in rent because a company has found a new way to scheme with landlords to break the law," Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement Friday.

"We allege that RealPage's pricing algorithm enables landlords to share confidential, competitively sensitive information and align their rents. Using software as the sharing mechanism does not immunize this scheme from Sherman Act liability, and the Justice Department will continue to aggressively enforce the antitrust laws and protect the American people from those who violate them." Further reading:
Can the US Regulate Algorithm-Based Price Fixing on Rental Housing?;
Are We Entering an AI Price-Fixing Dystopia?;
Accused of Using Algorithms To Fix Rental Prices, RealPage Goes on Offensive;
Rent Going Up? One Company's Algorithm Could Be Why.