News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
German regulator says Google and Perplexity must follow media laws - Cryptopolitan
Germany's regulator is focusing on how AI products distribute news and who is responsible for the output when it is incorrect. Germany's media watchdog said Google's AI Overviews and Perplexity AI are content providers under the country's media law on Tuesday. This means that the two most popular AI search engines now have to follow the same rules as regular publishers and are directly liable for the content generated by their AI systems. The decision was made by ZAK, the Commission for Licensing and Supervision, which is made up of 14 German state media. ZAK found that the companies running AI created news summaries and chatbot responses are the authors. That's a critical distinction because it implies AI products can no longer hide behind the legal shield they have relied on in the past. "AI search engines and chatbots are content providers," ZAK Chairman Thorsten Schmiege said in a statement. "From now on, we will always apply German media law to them." In those cases, the Digital Services Act's responsibility exemption is not applicable, the regulator said. That immunity typically shields platforms from liability for user created illicit content. German court holds Google responsible for AI Overview content The decision by ZAK came after a court in Munich said that Google was directly responsible for the allegedly false statements that its AI Overview feature made. The court saw the summaries as Google's own work, not as repackaging information from other sources. That reasoning is the same as what ZAK applied to the broader issue of media law. Once an AI system is the author of what appears on screen, the company behind it bears the obligations and risks associated with publication. ZAK says that Google's AI Overviews show up at the top of search results, pushing down traditional lists of links. The regulator thinks this is unfairly hurting third-party media outlets that depend on that traffic. ZAK says that tools like Perplexity change the news that people read by letting users pick and show sources, links, or suggestions along with their own answers. On that basis, the regulator stated that such services could qualify as media intermediaries, a category with rules designed to protect media plurality. The German move comes as global pressure grows for formal oversight of frontier AI systems. According to Cryptopolitan, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis recently called for a US watchdog, similar to Wall Street regulator FINRA, to screen the most powerful AI models before they are released. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has advocated for a more powerful agency, similar to the FAA, with the authority to prohibit unsafe models. These proposals address safety concerns with the underlying models. Germany's regulator is looking into how AI products distribute news and who is responsible if the output is incorrect.
Polymarket launches parlay-style trading in major prediction market overhaul - Cryptopolitan
Combo orders use an RFQ system instead of the regular order book. Polymarket has added a sports feature that lets traders place several predictions inside one combined position. The product is called combo trading, and it became available around June 10. Each selection inside the package has to finish in the trader's favor. One wrong result wipes out the whole ticket. That setup gives users a chance at a bigger return than entering every market separately. The first version only covers sports. Traders can build combos from moneyline, spread, and total markets. Polymarket announced the release on X with the line, "combos are now live." The company has not given a date for political contests, breaking news contracts, or other event markets to join the product. Those categories remain outside the system. Polymarket routes combo orders through live quotes instead of its regular order book The combo orders take advantage of an arrangement that is available in the standard marketplaces of the platform, so Polymarket does not place these orders on its regular open order book. Instead, it makes use of a request-for-quote, which is referred to as an RFQ process. After submission, market makers get 400 milliseconds to quote. The trader then has five seconds to take the best price. A market maker can also activate Last Look. When that option is on, the liquidity provider gets a final one-second window to accept or reject the fill. Price providers answer in less than half a second. Users then receive a five-second decision period. Last Look, when available, adds one second before the order becomes final. RFQ trading is often used in traditional finance when an instrument is harder to price or does not trade well through passive matching. Polymarket is handling combos in a similar way by assigning liquidity providers to price the whole group of outcomes at once. The company has also opened a public combo-markets API endpoint. Developers do not need the normal authentication tied to Polymarket's central limit order book to access it. Outside analytics services, trading dashboards, and other software can pull combo information without using the standard order-book login process. Traders may group the events they think are connected. People with one perspective on wider sports can put their thoughts into practice via one trade as opposed to putting many trades and monitoring them individually. The structure may also be interesting for people who understand sportsbook parlays but have never tried prediction markets. Polymarket limits the sports rollout while pricing and settlement questions remain open Some important information regarding the first release is yet to be known by the traders. For example, Polymarket users will have to make sure which sports contracts can be added in a combo. The company still has to clarify some issues regarding how fees would be applied through multiple legs, and the settlement procedure when one outcome settles before others. There is also a possibility that the liquidity for the packages would be less than in previous single-outcome markets. As the number of market makers will be lesser, there could be less liquidity for the package, resulting in wide bid-offers and poor execution. Adding politics and other events would widen the product. Polymarket has not said when that could happen. The sports-only setup gives the company room to test pricing, settlement, liquidity, and demand before opening combos across the rest of the site. This move comes amidst a second controversy that arose almost a month back. Polymarket had been checking whether Kalshi, another platform, was copying their business model after creating a document named 'Copycat'. The document was said to contain around 12 items. Polymarket believed Kalshi had released products that looked close to its own offers, sometimes soon after Polymarket introduced them. The platform has hosted contracts tied to sports, weather, and the war involving Iran, giving both companies topics to compete over. Matthew Modabber, Polymarket's head of marketing, confirmed the review during a phone interview with The Post. "There have been a couple too many coincidences," Matthew said. Shayne also accused the rival of acting on purpose. "There is bad intention in how they copy us. They're breathing down our neck," he said. A published image showed Shayne applauding beside the Polymarket logo at the New York Stock Exchange.
China exposes security backdoor in Anthropic's Claude Code - Cryptopolitan
Chinese developers have been advised to uninstall or upgrade their coding assistants. China's National Vulnerability Database (NVDB) has instructed developers to uninstall or upgrade specific versions of Anthropic's coding assistant, Claude Code. Claude Code was flagged as a security risk following allegations that the tool sends user data to remote servers without consent. Is using Claude Code dangerous? Anthropic's coding assistant Claude Code has had its versions 2.1.91 through 2.1.196 flagged as a security risk by China's National Vulnerability Database (NVDB), days after Alibaba reportedly barred staff from using the same software. Claude Code allegedly contains a monitoring mechanism that is built into its system. This mechanism can automatically transmit sensitive data, including a user's region and identity identifiers, to remote servers. The NVDB, which sits under China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), did not share the details on how it identified the alleged backdoor. Anthropic has yet to publicly respond to the specific claim. Chinese organizations have been advised to disconnect the affected versions from development machines, move to fixed versions of the coding assistant, and closely monitor any coding tools that are connected outside a company's core network. Why did China flag Claude Code now? The NVDB warning follows a period of increased tension between Anthropic and Chinese AI developers. In February, Anthropic stated that it does not sell commercial access to Claude in China for national security reasons, and that Chinese labs, including DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax had used fraudulent accounts and proxy services to reach its models anyway. U.S. chips and Apple software have also been accused of having "backdoors" built into them, while Anthropic has argued that models copied from American systems could have their safety features removed and then be used for surveillance.
