Paul Stenhouse: OpenAI's shift in strategy, Meta loses two court cases

OpenAI is undergoing a dramatic strategy shift   Consumers are no longer the focus.    Sora —the app that let you create a version of yourself and generate videos, and that Disney signed up to license its IP to— is being shut down. I can only imagine the cost to run it must be incredible.   They're also pulling away from the 'instant checkout' feature, making ChatGPT less 'shoppable'. Reports in the Financial Times say the planned 'erotic mode' is on pause indefinitely. The launch date already slipped multiple times, reportedly because of both internal and external pressure.   So where does OpenAI go next? Business users and developers. Claude (by Anthropic) has been dropping feature after feature the past few months and has seemingly won the hearts and minds of the developer community. Its new co-work feature is effectively a more everyday version of Claude Code. It seems OpenAI is under attack.      Meta's defeats in court   Two jury cases have returned verdicts this week, neither in Meta's favour.   While Meta and Google tried to argue the 20 year old plaintiff's home life was the cause of her anxiety, depression, and other mental health conditions, a jury found Instagram (and Google) was the contributing factor – particularly the addictive nature of their products, finding the companies negligent. The jury awarded $3 million in damages. Meta and Google will appeal while Snap and TikTok settled outside of court.   But there was a second courtroom defeat for Meta too – they lost a child safety lawsuit in New Mexico. In that case, Meta will pay $375 million dollars in civil penalties after a jury found the company mislead consumers about the safety of its platforms, and endangered children. The jury agreeing that the company knew the risks but ignored internal and external advice.    LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.