Welcome back to Spatial Beats, where we round up all the top news and happenings from around the spatial computing spectrum, including its escalating infusions with AI and other emerging tech. Let’s dive in…

The Lede

“Google is a monopolist,” Federal Judge Amit Mehta ruled Monday. “It has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” The tech giant is guilty of illegally maintaining a monopoly by paying partners like Apple and Samsung to make it the default search on their platforms. Google will no doubt appeal the ruling, and they might win in a conservative legal environment with the argument that companies have a right to get the most for their traffic. They argue Microsoft and others could outbid Google for Apple’s search traffic, but choose not to. The sentencing phase is yet to come, and potential remedies take years to litigate. Google could be forbidden from buying distribution. Apple would miss the $20 B a year Google pays them, but search is giving way to AI answers anyway.

X Sues Its Former Advertisers for Not Advertising. Elon Musk, the brilliant, deranged, billionaire who manages some of the country’s most important and innovative new companies, continued his audition for the role of cartoon supervillain. A year after telling advertisers unhappy with X’s newly loosened moderation policies to f-off at a conference, X’s ad revenue is down over 50%. So. This week, Musk sued GARM, Global Alliance for Responsible Media, a tiny non-profit, that advises companies on online safety. GARM promptly shut down, but X also named CVS, Unilever, Mars, and the Danish energy company Ørsted as defendants in the suit. Naturally, X’s president Linda Yaccarino Muskily endeavored to explain how clients can be forced to buy advertising. Whelp. If you’re not going to pay Musk, you’re going to pay lawyers to assert your right not to do so. His suit against the non-profit progressive watchdog group Media Matters goes to court in March. Their sin was publicizing the existence of hate speech on X.

Feeling Spatial

Meta Shutters Highly-Regarded Game Studio Ready at Dawn. Meta has decided to shut down Ready At Dawn’s popular VR games Lone Echo and Lone Echo II, along with the multiplayer game Echo VR, so it follows they shut down Ready At Dawn. The games will no longer be available on August 1, 2024. This decision is part of Meta’s broader strategy to focus on its core products and new VR experiences. Lone Echo was well-regarded for its zero-gravity gameplay and immersive storytelling, making this shutdown significant in the VR community. This is the clearest sign yet that AAA games are really not doing it for Meta, and they are moving on to other things, leaning more heavily on growing categories like lifestyle, fitness, and education.

Unraveling the Samsung-Google-Qualcomm XR Collab. CNet editors Scott Stein and Lisa Eadicicco dig into the evidence to tease out how these giants plan to answer Meta and Apple.

Beats & Bites

Follow the Money

Contextual AI Raises $80M Series A. They sell a tool to improve the performance of artificial intelligence models. Data provider PitchBook estimates the post-money valuation figure at an estimated $609 M. Led by venture capital firm Greycroft, including existing investors Bain Capital Ventures and Lightspeed, which previously invested $20 M to launch the company in 2023.

MixRift raises $1.6M for casual mixed reality gaming. The investment will be used to develop their platform, which merges virtual elements with real-world environments for an immersive gaming experience. The company aims to make MR gaming accessible and engaging for a broad audience, focusing on casual gamers rather than hardcore enthusiasts. This funding round highlights the growing interest in MR as a promising area within the gaming industry.

The AI Desk

ByteDance has launched “Jimeng AI,” a text-to-video app. Right now it’s only available in China. Jimeng creates short videos based on text prompts like RunwayML, Pica, China’s own Kling, and OpenAI’s Sora, which is still not publicly available. Jimeng AI will doubtless soon integrate with TikTok, further democratizing and accelerating content creation on its platform. Expect Meta’s social sites to do the same with its rapidly evolving Gen-AI apps.

Microsoft gains major AI client as TikTok spends $20 million monthly. TikTok reportedly spends $20 million per month on Microsoft’s cloud services, making it a major AI client. Eight months ago OpenAI suspended ByteDance’s account after it allegedly used GPT to build a rival AI product, maybe even Jimeng. Whelp. Looks like Bytedance took their money and walked across the street to a more like-minded OpenAI competitor.

Do you Want a friend who’s Always Listening? Bari Weiss of the Free Press, a Medium blog publication, describes a new AI device called “Friend,” which listens to everything you say, as “creepy.”

Listen In

For more spatial commentary & insights, check out This Week in XR, hosted by author Charlie Fink, Ted Schilowitz, former studio executive and co-founder of Red Camera, and Rony Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap. This week our guest is Val Vacante, of Dentsu Interactive. You can find it on podcasting platforms Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube.

Charlie Fink is an author and futurist focused on spatial computing. See his books here. Spatial Beats contains insights and inputs from Fink’s collaborators including Paramount Pictures futurist Ted Shilowitz.

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