According to a report from Reuters, ChatGPT is listed as the author or co-author of at least 200 books on Amazon’s Kindle Store. However, the number of bot-written books is likely higher than that since Amazon’s policies don’t require authors to disclose their use of AI.
Brett Schickler published on the Kindle Store a children’s book written and illustrated by AI. Although Schickler says the book has earned him less than $100 since its January release, he only spent a few hours creating it with ChatGPT prompts like “write a story about a dad teaching his son about financial literacy.”
Science-fiction publication Clarkesworld Magazine has temporarily halted short-story submissions after receiving a flood of articles suspected of using AI without disclosure, which was reported by PCMag. Although Editor Neil Clarke didn’t specify how he identified them, he recognized the (allegedly) bot-assisted stories due to “some very obvious patterns.” He added that spam submissions resulting in bans hit 38 percent in February.
– Mat Smith
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Bungie wins $4.3 million in case against ‘Destiny 2’ cheat company
The legal fight continues, however.
Bungie has been embroiled in a legal battle with cheat provider AimJunkies since 2021, with both sides slapping the other with lawsuits. Now, the game developer has walked away with $4.3 million in damages and fees after a victory in an arbitration proceeding. However, US District Court Judge Thomas Zilly ruled mostly in favor of AimJunkies last year, deciding Bungie had failed to provide sufficient evidence to prove its claim. He gave Bungie the chance to present more evidence – and that copyright infringement lawsuit is still headed to trial. Bungie will use this first victory in its argument during AimJunkies’ countersuit, in which it accused the developer of violating its ToS for reverse-engineering its cheat software.
Microsoft is already reversing some limits it put on Bing’s AI chat tools
The company says it will restore long chats ‘responsibly.’
Microsoft limited Bing’s AI chats early after launch to prevent disturbing answers, but it now plans to restore longer chats. It’s expanding the chats to six turns per session (up from five) and 60 chats per day (up from 50). The daily cap will climb to 100 chats soon, Microsoft says, and regular searches will no longer count against that total. An upcoming test will also let you choose a tone that’s “precise” (that is, shorter and more to-the-point answers), “creative” (longer) or “balanced.”
Microsoft will put Xbox games on GeForce Now in an attempt to win over regulators
If the deal goes through, Call of Duty games will come to NVIDIA’s streaming service.
During the European Commission hearing over Microsoft’s proposed takeover of Activision Blizzard, Brad Smith, Microsoft president, announced the company and NVIDIA have struck a 10-year deal to bring Xbox games to the GeForce Now streaming service. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said: “This partnership will help grow NVIDIA’s catalog of titles to include games like Call of Duty, while giving developers more ways to offer streaming games.”
Earlier this month, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority said the Activision acquisition could result in a “substantial lessening of competition in gaming consoles,” and that Microsoft already had a 60 to 70 percent share of the cloud gaming market and that, should the deal go through, it would “reinforce this strong position.” In December, the US Federal Trade Commission sued to block the merger.
‘M3GAN’ and ‘Get Out’ producer Blumhouse is moving into horror games
Blumhouse Games will release titles that cost under $10 million to make.
Horror movie behemoth Blumhouse is getting into video games. The company behind hits like M3GAN, Get Out, The Purge and Insidious is opening a production and publishing division that will work on original horror games for PC, consoles and mobile. “We’re in the scary story business. We do films, we do TV and there is this massive, growing segment in media and entertainment called gaming,” Blumhouse President Abhijay Prakash told Bloomberg. The game publishing division will keep the budgets modest and rather than adapting its own movies into games (something Blumhouse has tried in the past), the company will look for projects that are in development and offer studios financial support and creative insight.