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Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for March 11.
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AI companies have been spending a lot of time in court arguing copyright cases over the past year and the latest plaintiff is Gracenote, the metadata company owned by Nielsen. Axios reports that Gracenote is suing OpenAI for the unauthorized and unpaid use of both its metadata and its framework for connecting that information.
Gracenote specializes in entertainment metadata, creating descriptions and identifiers for content that clients such as TV providers use to help their own customers with discovery. Most of the lawsuits against AI businesses have focused on the content used to train LLMs, but the Gracenote case brings an extra layer with the alleged infringement of the structure or sequence for a dataset in addition to the actual data.
"Defendants could have paid Gracenote to license its valuable Gracenote Data. Or they could have sought to train and ground their models only on information in the public domain. They did neither. Defendants instead improperly copied and used Gracenote Data to create their own commercially valuable AI products, all without paying a dime," the complaint states. The company claims that its previous attempts to work with OpenAI for a licensing agreement were rebuffed or ignored. Gracenote has recently inked deals to back AI ventures from other companies, including Samsung and
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Google is rolling out a batch of Gemini updates across its Workspace apps that give the AI assistant the ability to generate first drafts in Docs, build entire spreadsheets in Sheets, design presentations in Slides and answer questions about files stored in Drive. The features started rolling out on March 10 in beta for Google AI Ultra and Pro subscribers and Gemini Alpha business customers, in English only.
In Docs, a new "Help me create" tool produces a formatted first draft by pulling context from Drive, Gmail, Chat and the web based on a user's prompt. Gemini can also match the writing style or formatting of a reference document. Google says more than a third of new Docs are created from copies of existing files, so the formatting tool is meant to cut down on that manual work. In Sheets, Gemini can now construct an entire spreadsheet from a natural language prompt, drawing data from a user's files and emails, as well as Google Chat and the web.
A "Fill with Gemini" feature auto-populates table cells, which Google says is nine times faster than manual entry based on a 95-person study (this sounds profoundly unscientific, so take these claims with a grain of salt). Sheets also gained optimization tools powered by Google DeepMind and Google Research that can solve problems like employee scheduling through written prompts. In Slides, Gemini can generate individual slides that match an existing deck's theme, with full presentation generation from a single prompt coming later.
Google
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The Magpies welcome Lamine Yamal and company to St. James' Park for the second time this season.
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Josh Wardle had a hell of a tough act to follow. His last game, Wordle, became incredibly popular thanks to its blend of simplicity, clarity and shareability. Over four years (and a seven-figure sale of Wordle to The New York Times) later, Wardle has released his follow-up game.
Like Wordle and its myriad clones, Parseword offers up one puzzle per day. It taps into the mechanics of cryptic crossword clues. So it might ask you to replace one of the words with a synonym, reverse it or find a homophone. You may need to remove letters from a word or combine it with another one to find the answer. There's a tutorial to help you get to grips with things and hints are available.
Wardle told
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 OpenAI is rolling out new interactive responses in ChatGPT it says are designed to make the chatbot more useful for learners. Starting today, ChatGPT will generate dynamic visuals when you ask it to explain select scientific and mathematical concepts, including the Pythagorean theorem, Coulomb's law and lens equations. When ChatGPT responds with an interactive visual, you'll be able to tweak any variables and the equation itself, allowing you to see how those changes affect the solution.
With today's release, OpenAI says ChatGPT will respond with interactive visuals when asked about more than 70 concepts, with support for additional topics to come down the line. The visuals are available to all ChatGPT users, regardless of subscription status. However, OpenAI notes high school- and college-aged students are likely to get the most out of the new feature.
ChatGPT explains Ohm's law.OpenAIThe more interactive responses from ChatGPT follow the release of Study Mode last summer. Released in response to the sheer amount of students using chatbots to complete their coursework, that feature guides the user toward finding an answer themselves, rather than provide an outright solution. "This is just the beginning," OpenAI says of its latest feature. "Over time, we plan to expand interactive learning with additional subjects and continue building tools that strengthen learning
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The UK government is working on a controversial data bill that would allow AI companies like Google and OpenAI to train their models on copyrighted materials without consent. However, following a two month consultation, it looks like passage of the law will be delayed. "Copyright is going to be kicked down the road," a person with knowledge of the matter told The Financial Times.
Responses by stakeholders during the consultation period weren't favorable to any of the government's proposed ideas for use of copyrighted materials, the FT's sources said. There's no expectation now that an AI bill will be part of the King's Speech set for May this year.
As a result, Ministers have decided to go back to the drawing board and spend more time exploring other options. The House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee called on the government to develop a licensing-first regime "underpinned by robust transparency that safeguards creators' livelihoods while supporting sustainable AI growth."
The UK parliament's preferred position on the bill (also argued by tech giants like Google) has been that copyright holders need to formally opt-out if they don't want their materials used to train AI models. However, publishers, filmmakers, musicians and others have said that this would be impractical and an existential threat to the UK's creative industries.
The House of Lords took the side of artists and introduced an amendment that would require tech companies to dis
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