Plus: PayPal to cut 20% of staff. And shares of Palantir slide despite record quarterly revenue and profit. Julie Chang hosts.
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[00:00:16] [SPEAKER_00] Here's your afternoon TNB Tech Minute for Tuesday, May 5th. I'm Julie Chang for The Wall Street Journal. A group of publishers have filed a class-action lawsuit against Meta. They alleged the tech giant illegally used their copyrighted works to source and train its AI platform, LAMA. Plaintiffs include Cengage Learning, Hachette, Macmillan, and McGraw.
[00:00:38] [SPEAKER_00] They claim Meta accessed millions of books and journal articles from pirating sites and also removed copyright management information to hide its sources and enable unauthorized use. A Meta spokesperson said the company plans to fight the suit, adding that courts have found training AI on copyrighted material can qualify as fair use. PayPal plans to cut a fifth of its staff, roughly 4,700 positions, over the next two to three years. That's according to a person familiar with the matter.
[00:01:07] [SPEAKER_00] The eliminations are part of the company's new plans to accelerate its adoption of AI and cut costs. The layoffs were reported earlier by Bloomberg. PayPal's CEO told investors today that he thinks the company has underinvested in its technology platform and is falling behind other financial services companies. PayPal reported a lower first-quarter profit of $1.11 billion, down from $1.29 billion a year earlier.
[00:01:34] [SPEAKER_00] But its first-quarter revenue rose to $8.35 billion, up from the year-ago quarter and beating analysts' expectations. And Palantir's shares are sliding, despite reporting record quarterly revenue and profit yesterday. Analysts at Benchmark Equity Research said the company is a victim of high expectations and its association with the struggling software sector.
[00:01:58] [SPEAKER_00] The data analytics company, known for providing tools to the U.S. military, is down about 18% year-to-day through yesterday. On the earnings call, Palantir executives slammed rivals for offering AI slop and called their own AI platform a no-slop zone. And that's it for your TNB Tech Minute. We'll have another Quick Tech Update in the morning.
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