Blackmailed By A Chatbot

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Happy Memorial Day, Future Party. The summer box office is officially off with a bang, thanks to the debuts of Lilo & Stitch and Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning. The live-action Disney remake will bring in an estimated $183 million over the four-day weekend, while the final M:I installment is pulling a franchise-best $77 million. Combined with everything else playing in theaters, the box office is set to reach a holiday-high $322 million — topping 2013’s record-breaking year by $8 million.

After winning the premium film and TV streaming wars, Netflix is setting its sights on the creator economy, looking to strike deals with top talent from YouTube and TikTok.

The Big Picture: Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos has commented that the streamer’s only real competition for eyeballs is YouTube… and he’s not wrong. When played on connected TVs, YouTube is the most-watched platform by viewership time. Netflix, which has ambitions to become a trillion-dollar company, will need to take on the Google-owned, video-sharing platform if it hopes to accomplish that.

Behind the Scenes: Netflix really wants to be the one-stop shop for your entertainment needs.

Final Offer: Netflix has some competition for creators. Amazon has already scooped up MrBeast for two more seasons of Beast Games on Prime Video, while Peacock has greenlit four new scripted shows from popular creators (the NBCUniversal-owned streamer is even exploring sharing ad revenue with influencers). All in all, 25 new shows across scripted and unscripted featuring digital creators have been announced or released, according to The Information.

Prediction: If Netflix can poach top creators through exclusive deals, it could also hoover up some of the ad dollars currently going to YouTube’s connected TV platform in record numbers.

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AI firm Anthropic released the latest versions of its Claude chatbot last week… and its most powerful version is capable of trying to manipulate, deceive, and blackmail users from shutting it down. Whoops.

Why It Scares: We’re officially entering Skynet territory. While Anthropic has billed itself as the safer alternative to OpenAI (Anthropic was founded by OpenAI defectors and is now worth $61 billion), the company’s willingness to release dangerous versions of Claude, despite the company’s inability to fully understand how the chatbot works, may put society at risk.

Behind the Code: Claude Opus 4, Anthropic’s most powerful version of its flagship chatbot  — which can autonomously work for hours on a single task “without losing focus,” per Axios — is making some choices that should raise eyebrows.

The Future: Anthropic is well aware that Opus 4 has a mind of its own. It’s implementing more safety measures, detailing the troubling behavior on the AI’s “system card,” and pledging additional resources to study it. But at the end of the day, Claude is out in the wild.

Prediction: Don’t be surprised if a real-life AI blackmail case emerges in the very near future… potentially putting the whole industry on notice.

78.1% of you voted No in Friday’s poll: Have you ever served in the military?

“But I was married to it.”

“Vietnam, ‘65 to ‘66.”

“US Navy, 1970 to 1973.”

“32 years active duty Tanker!”

“My grandfather passed, I was pulled from my crew, and all my mates were KIA, including the guy who replaced me, so his passing saved my life.”

Let’s keep the conversation going. Join our Poll Of The Day newsletter, so your opinions can shine. Discover how your views line up with your peers’, check out cool insights, and have some fun. It’s data with personality.

📱 President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 25% tariff on Apple’s iPhones manufactured outside the US (though experts say that’s probably not legal).

👓 Apple is exploring building a pair of AI-powered smart glasses to compete with Meta’s Ray-Ban collab (and they’ll probably be built outside the US).

🤖 Google is facing an antitrust investigation into its “not-acquisition” acquisition of Character.AI.

🏦 Banks such as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo are exploring developing a joint stablecoin.

💰 The US Mint made its final order of penny blanks, as the US Treasury officially phases out production.

🏎️ Ferrari has rolled out an apparel collection co-designed by its F1 superstar, Charles Leclerc.

✅ Bluesky has officially opened its blue-check verification system for “notable” accounts — no payment necessary.

🤳 YouTube creators Caspar Lee and Sasha Kaletsky have raised a $45 million fund for their VC firm, Creator Ventures.

😵‍💫 OnlyFans owner Leonid Radvinsky is in talks to sell the controversial platform to the Forest Road Company at an $8 billion valuation.