One less thing to worry about when you're eight miles above sea level: underpaid, disgruntled pilots.
On Monday, the union representing the roughly 11,000 pilots flying for Southwest Airlines approved a new $12 billion contract that will offer a roughly 50% pay raise over the next half-decade. It's the last of the big four airlines to complete labor negotiations, after United, American, and Delta all agreed to roughly similar contracts last year. We're happy if the airplane's captain is happy. Now if they can only figure out how to keep the doors closed mid-flight.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Startup ElevenLabs Is AI's Newest Unicorn After Latest Fundraising Round
Voice impersonation has come a long way since Kevin McCallister used a Tiger Electronics Talkboy to mimic his father in Home Alone 2.
After its latest round of funding, ElevenLabs — a startup that uses AI software to translate audio into multiple languages — has reached unicorn status, Bloomberg reported. It's the latest example of tech investors dumping money into AI that creates almost life-like speech, images, and video. What could go wrong?
I Know That Voice
ElevenLabs said Monday it raised $80 million in funding from investors including venture capitalist firms Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and entrepreneurs Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross. So far, the two-year-old company has raised more than $100 million, and its valuation is now $1.1 billion.
Much of ElevenLabs' work has been creating audio for books and video games, but with the new funding, CEO Mati Staniszewski told Bloomberg the company wants to expand into film dubbing and creating AI actors.
This of course won't sit well with actors, writers, or anyone worried about AI-generated scams:
Labor guilds for Hollywood writers and actors both went on strike last year as they negotiated new contracts with major studios, with a key concern being the risk that their jobs or likenesses get replaced by AI. The American Federation of Musicians could be on the verge of striking for the same reason. Staniszewski said he doesn't want ElevenLabs to overtake writers, actors, and animators, but rather it be a useful tool for those in the entertainment industry.
Programs like the ones ElevenLabs develops could be used in scams, fake news, and political campaigns. We've already seen high-profile officials use AI images to try and dupe the public. Last year, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' campaign released an attack video against Donald Trump, featuring fake images of the former president kissing Anthony Fauci. Staniszewski said ElevenLabs is planning to add more members to its moderation team and that "99% of use cases we are seeing are in the positive realm."
What's Real Anymore? Many AI programs create audio and visuals that are less than convincing. They might look real at first glance, but then you'll start to notice abnormalities — eyes are different colors, faces look toy-like and stilted, and just like actual art, hands seem nearly impossible to duplicate. But they're good enough to fool a lot of the people a lot of the time, as shown by a recent story in The New York Times that lets readers test their AI-detecting abilities on a series of 10 portrait-style photos. The results will have a lot of people asking if "seeing is believing" matters anymore in the 21st century.
…you might be inclined to turn your hearing aids off.
But for every other moment, like little Johnny's trumpet recital or Susie's thoughts on the new playoff format in college football — it's all worth hearing.
Thankfully, a team of top German engineers has just unveiled the world's very first hearing aids with dual processing, and the results are clear…literally.
No news is bad news for a news media that depended on Meta for clicks.
Once upon a time, sharing news articles and discussing current affairs — sometimes rather heatedly with adjacent relatives you forgot you'd friended — was a staple experience on Facebook. However, a new analysis commissioned by CNBC shows just how done Meta is with news in general — a grim reality for publishers who got hooked on website traffic referred to them by incendiary articles popping up on people's walls.
Have I Not Got News For You
There has long been a tense relationship between publishers and social media platforms. Once publishers realized that social media CEOs could decimate their web traffic with a slight tweak of their platforms' algorithms, the magic really went out of the relationship. Some publishers and even legislators have tried to force platforms to pay for news content. Meta's response has largely been: Who needs you anyway?
Now it looks like they really mean it. Data compiled for CNBC by web traffic analytics company Chartbeat shows that referrals to news sites from Facebook are continuing to plummet:
Facebook accounted for 33% of all traffic sent to news sites from social media platforms in December 2023, down from 50% in December 2022, Chartbeat found. For overall referred traffic, including search engines like Google, Facebook's chunk halved to 6% from 12% over the same period.
Separate data from analysis firm SimilarWeb showed that for individual publishers, the drops have been precipitous. As of November 2023, The Daily Mail got 2.7% of its traffic from Facebook, down from 6.5% over the previous three years.
Given Meta's stock has recently experienced a robust rebound, closing on Friday at its first record high since 2021, it looks like social media is decidedly winning the breakup with the news industry. With Meta pitching itself headfirst onto the generative AI hype train alongside other Silicon Valley giants, its relationship with spurned publishers promises to get even more fractious.
Big Year: Meta's wholesale retreat from news comes ahead of what promises to be quite an eventful 2024. This year, 49% of the global population will get to vote in a national election — meaning that by sheer potential votership numbers it's the biggest election year in world history. It's also the first big election cycle to be fully exposed to the newfound accessibility of generative AI. So buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
Arkhouse Management and Brigade Capital Management learned the hard way that going to the mall on a first date is never a good idea.
On Monday, Macy's announced it had turned down a $5.8 billion take-private offer from the two partnered activist investment firms, citing financing concerns. But that doesn't necessarily mean the department store giant is waving away all window-shoppers.
Let's Go Mall Shopping
It hasn't exactly been glory days for Macy's. Last week, the company announced it would lay off about 2,350 employees — or roughly 13% of its corporate staff, and about 3.5% of its workforce overall. Additionally, the brand, which also owns Bloomingdale's, announced it would be closing five locations.
But Arkhouse and Brigade still see opportunity, likely due to the company's expansive real estate portfolio (Arkhouse, in particular, is a real estate-focused firm). The chain outright owns 316 of its 772 stores, and analysts project that the stores could be worth anywhere between $7.5 billion and $11.6 billion, according to CNBC. That could explain why Macy's is hitting back at the $5.8 billion offer with a firm "thank you, next":
Arkhouse and Brigade first submitted their proposal in December, offering to buy all the shares they didn't already own at $21 per share, or about a 32% premium on where shares had closed a day before.
In a statement released Monday, Macy's said that the two activist firms "failed to address its board's concerns regarding Arkhouse and Brigade's ability to finance their proposed transaction."
"[Macy's] likely see the real-estate focused approach of Arkhouse as wrong for the business — and, they have a point," Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, told ABC News. "Monetizing real estate with no focus on revitalizing the retailer and bolstering trading would produce short-term gains but severely weaken long-term prospects."
It's a Mall World, After All: Malls may be having a bit of a comeback due to one surprising consumer cohort: Gen Z. That's according to a recent Los Angeles Times feature, which cites a 2022 market research report from CM Group that found 47% of 16-to-26 year olds prefer in-person shopping to online, more than any other generation. We suppose you can only order so many $7 polyester Shein shirts that don't quite fit and immediately unravel at the smallest snag before you realize it's better to just try things on at the mall.
Written by Brian Boyle
Extra Upside
You missed a spot: Tesla says you should wash your Cybertruck way more often than other cars.
Tepid machine learning: Robots won't replace us just yet, MIT says.
Deiya Pernas (an executive at a $3.5 billion fund) and Dean Pernas (a trained chemical engineer) left their jobs to start an equities research firm. Since inception, they've outperformed by 13.06% per year, on average. For a limited time, you can access their best ideas at no cost. See their best ideas here.*
What's Real Anymore? Many AI programs create audio and visuals that are less than convincing. They might look real at first glance, but then you'll start to notice abnormalities — eyes are different colors, faces look toy-like and stilted, and just like actual art, 
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