Key Takeaways
- TikTok has appealed to the Supreme Court to put its impending US ban on hold.
- Apple is facing a $1.2 billion lawsuit for abandoning its plans to prevent the distribution of child-abusive sexual material on iCloud.
- X adds a new image generator called Aurora to GrokAI.
- OpenAI launches a $200 super plan for users.
- Grok AI is finally available for free for all users.
Didn’t have the chance to catch up on the news this week? No worries, we’ve got you covered! Here’s a quick summary of the top 5 important news from the week:
1. TikTok Is Trying to Stall Its Us Ban Slated for 2025
TikTok is doing its best to delay the impending ban on its app. It had submitted an appeal to a federal court, requesting an emergency injunction to prevent the app from getting banned from January 2025. But the court turned down the request, forcing the company to submit a similar plea to the Supreme Court. 
It also argued that the law was passed when Joe Biden was in term but now he has been replaced by Donald Trump who had previously hinted that it would overturn this law. Hence, the least it should be given right now is an extension instead of an immediate ban in 2025.
The Department of Justice has called for the request to be dismissed but the Supreme Court is yet to respond.
A Little Background of the Case
Earlier this year, US regulators passed a bill that would ban TikTok if it didn’t cut ties with its parent company ByteDance. The reason behind this decision was simple.
The US is not on good terms with China right now and the officials are worried that China might use TikTok to spy on US citizens. Although TikTok has denied these accusations time and again, it has not appeased the US regulators.
On the other hand, both ByteDance and China made it clear that they won’t sell TikTok. The company was confident that it would win the legal battle against this bill but so far, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
2. Apple Slapped with a $1.2 Billion Lawsuit for Failing to Prevent the Distribution of Child Sexual Abuse Material on iCloud
A $1.2 billion lawsuit has been filed against Apple in the US District Court in North California for failing to implement the features it announced for preventing the distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on iCloud.
The lawsuit was filed by a 27-year-old woman who claimed that Apple’s failure resulted in the widespread distribution of pictures of her abuse.
She got to know about this after receiving several notifications from law enforcement authorities every time they arrested someone possessing her images. She couldn’t believe that there were so many people out there with a copy of those horrific photos.
Hence, with this lawsuit, she is holding the company accountable for its actions and seeking compensation for as many as 2,680 victims.
In 2021, Apple talked about a set of features that will use digital signatures from groups like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to detect the presence of CSAM in iCloud libraries.
However, this announcement was followed by widespread criticism from users who were worried about their privacy. They felt that Apple would be able to see every single picture they stored on their iCloud, which was a no-no for many.
But instead of coming up with a plan that protects victims of assault while maintaining privacy, the company decided to abandon the project altogether.
Apple has been contacted for a comment but the spokesperson only responded with “We are urgently and actively innovating to combat these crimes without compromising the security and privacy of all our users.” No comments on the case.
3. X Launches Aurora – A New Image Generator
Elon Musk-owned social media platform X launched a new image generator called Aurora that will be integrated with the Grok AI assistant.
The feature was officially launched on Saturday and can be accessed through X’s mobile app as well as the web. It’s important to note that while the feature is available for all Grok users, for some reason it disappeared for some users right after the launch. So if you can’t find it right away, be patient, it’ll show up.
Just like the first image generator (Flux) that was added to Grok in October, Aurora also runs with minimal guardrails. It can create images of any character or public figure without caring for any copyright law. During a test, it was also seen creating graphic images freely. Thankfully, it doesn’t create sexually explicit images.
Although the images produced are quite realistic, it’s not free of mistakes. Some users complained that the tool sometimes distorts objects or gets the human anatomy wrong when generating images with human characters.
Nevertheless, the generator is still in the beta phase so there’s a lot of room for development.
4. OpenAI Claims That Users Will Be Willing to Pay $200 for ChatGPT
OpenAI announced a new plan for ChatGPT and it costs $200. This is the most expensive plan in the market now – 10x the cost of ChatGPT Plus.
Owing to the cost, some believe that it might be hard to sell. But, OpenAI feels that the plus users who are already pushing the limits of the tool are the ideal target audience for this tool.
The ChatGPT Pro plan gives users access to all models of OpenAI, including the new o1 “reasoning” model.
Note: o1 and other similar reasoning models check their own response and they craft the reply. This prevents them from making mistakes in the final answer. The only downside is that it takes a lot of time to process the queries.
Every paid user already gets to use the o1 tool. However, those who opt for the $200 Pro plan will get a better version of the tool called o1 Pro mode.
Under this, the user will get a progress bar to check how long it’ll be before their answer is ready (as we mentioned before these queries take time) and they’ll also get a notification once the answer is ready.
5. Grok Is Now Available for Free for All Users
Grok AI will now be available for free for all users. Free users can send up to 10 queries to the chatbot every 2 hours – that’s a total of 120 queries per day.
- The same limit is applied to images as well. Free users will be able to generate up to 10 images every 2 hours. This is more than enough for most regular users.
- However, image analysis has stricter restrictions. You can only analyze 3 images every 2 hours. If a user wants to do more analysis within the same 2-hour time frame, they’ll have to upgrade to the Premium plan.
This change was noticed by a user on X. Last month, the company announced its plans to create a free version of GrokAI which was previously only reserved for paid users. It even started running a free trial in countries like New Zealand.
However, we didn’t have any official launch date for the free plan before this. Looks like X planned to do a surprise drop right before Christmas – a gift for all its loyal users.
This freemium approach will allow the tool to reach out to a wider range of users and encourage them to switch to a paid plan.
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Krishi is an eager Tech Journalist and content writer for both B2B and B2C, with a focus on making the process of purchasing software easier for businesses and enhancing their online presence and SEO.
Krishi has a special skill set in writing about technology news, creating educational content on customer relationship management (CRM) software, and recommending project management tools that can help small businesses increase their revenue.
Alongside his writing and blogging work, Krishi’s other hobbies include studying the financial markets and cricket.
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