Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

xAI to pay telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat app

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 436 posts

Re: xAI to pay telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat app

#261

Post by siriusfeynman »

eqvinox wrote: post #191
hiddencost wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like Google with Apple?

Google pays Apple because Google has paying customers for that in their advertisers. For xAI to pay Telegram... where does xAI get value back out of that? I guess we'll be seeing AI with ads soon?

Already here with google's ADK (agent development kit)

https://google.github.io/adk-docs/tools/built-in-tools/#goog...

> When you use grounding with Google Search, and you receive Search suggestions in your response, you must display the Search suggestions in production and in your applications. For more information on grounding with Google Search, see Grounding with Google Search documentation for Google AI Studio or Vertex AI. The UI code (HTML) is returned in the Gemini response as renderedContent, and you will need to show the HTML in your app, in accordance with the policy.

Re: xAI to pay telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat app

#262

Post by dmonitor »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #204
eqvinox wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google pays Apple because Google has paying customers for that in their advertisers. For xAI to pay Telegram... where does xAI get value back out of that? I guess we'll be seeing AI with ads soon?

That’s the industry consensus. Sam Altman talked about something similar on a Stratechery podcast. It not exactly unrealistic to imagine that people will ask LLMs about flights, hotels, restaurants or even insurance. All that needs to happen is for LLMs to add a “buy now” button, and for the provider to take a 15% commission (still a lower take rate than Expedia FWIW).

..and Honey will snipe their commission anyway

https://fortune.com/2024/12/23/honey-extension-scam-drama/

Re: xAI to pay telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat app

#263

Post by SXX »

machomaster wrote: post #211
sorokod wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Telegram also has a large amount of users in countries with heavy censorship and surveillance That citizens of those countries are allowed to use Telegram says something about the privacy it affords to them.

You don't know what you are talking about. Read on the multi-year attempts of Putin trying to ban Telegram and Telegram fighting back (technologically and also politically - demonstrations, etc). Telegram won the battle and Putin had no choice but to admit defeat. Similar things happened in other non-free coutries as well.

Telegram dont have E2EE by default. It's all you need to know. 99% of communications on Telegram are in plain text.

Also Telegram banned or shadowbanned serveral protest channels / bots during elections and when war began.

Re: xAI to pay telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat app

#264

Post by FredPret »

hnfever wrote: post #253
FredPret wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to make your way through 1-5 to get to 6, but I specifically excluded 5 (organization of militias). There are rumours of this but if it's true, these militias must be very secret indeed. One problem is that violent criminals run rampant and the state seemingly has little desire to stop them, and zero capacity to do so. Meanwhile prominent politicians sing songs whose lyrics include machine gun sounds and cal…

>You need to make your way through 1-5 to get to 6 This isn't true. As the genocide watch page says "The process is not linear." White South Africans are less likely to be victims of crime, make more money, live longer, and are over-represented among corporate and political leadership. Taking steps to undo the damage done by apartheid isn't fucked up, it's necessary as evidenced by the aforementioned inequalities.

And I'm telling you that 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 are the ones that are active right now.

> "Taking steps to undo the damage ... it's necessary"

What a bullshit argument.

How does any of that help "undo" the damage done by apartheid? The government of SA prizes ideology over outcome. The ideology is to attack Western things, even if the outcome is that black South Africans are now very much worse off than they would've been if SA was thriving.

And to cite this as a defence for the abuses and outrages that has literally landed white SA'ns - despite their relative wealth - on a genocide watch.

Re: xAI to pay telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat app

#265

Post by cowpig »

game_the0ry wrote: post #103

Call me stupid, but I fundamentally do not grasp why xAI would pay Telegram for access to its users. $300M seems like a crazy amount of money to put into a chat app. I am genuinely curious about the business strategy behind the move bc that would be a market worth exploring - having something that the AI industry would pay for bc they are willing to spend a lot right now.

Seems fairly obvious that Musk's strategy is to monetize political influence, isn't it? It's just advertising but a leap darker

Re: xAI to pay telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat app

#267

Post by harmmonica »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #204
eqvinox wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google pays Apple because Google has paying customers for that in their advertisers. For xAI to pay Telegram... where does xAI get value back out of that? I guess we'll be seeing AI with ads soon?

That’s the industry consensus. Sam Altman talked about something similar on a Stratechery podcast. It not exactly unrealistic to imagine that people will ask LLMs about flights, hotels, restaurants or even insurance. All that needs to happen is for LLMs to add a “buy now” button, and for the provider to take a 15% commission (still a lower take rate than Expedia FWIW).

I could use some help understanding this better. If you ask an LLM about flights or I think pretty much any of the categories of services you cite, what exactly would I expect to get back?

The "dream" is that the LLM/AI does all the work for me and just magically gets me to "this is the perfect flight for you and here are the reasons" but I have to tell it the things I care about (price, time, etc.). A lot of the time it's not exactly clear, even to me, which of those parameters matter the most so as a consumer it's actually nice to see, for instance, the options with times/costs/stops/etc. and for me to be able to look those over and make a decision. The LLM could provide those options, but then what has it done that I wasn't able to do with Google Flights or another ota? Is it just using more natural language in the request? Or do most people really want to wholesale handoff the decision and just go with the "trustworthy" LLM/assistant without any of the rationale?

I suppose actual personal assistants do that type of thing all the time for wealthy people, but that doesn't seem like it would be applicable to the masses who want/need to comparison shop for the best deal that meets a bunch of criteria.

I say this as someone who gets major value out of LLMs already, but for buying things in particular I'm struggling to understand why you'd want to hand off the "browsing" and just fast forward to the "buying."

Re: xAI to pay telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat app

#268

Post by drdaeman »

troupo wrote: post #163
kklisura wrote: post #116

> Telegram is the most popular messaging app in Iran and Uzbekistan [1] > Telegram’s largest market is India, which accounts for more than 20% of its userbase. Telegram also has a large amount of users in countries with heavy censorship and surveillance, such as Iran, Russia, and Uzbekistan. [1] > Percentage of users via region: Asia 38%, Europe 27%, Latin America 21%, MEMA 8% [1] It sure is valuable data - if you ar…

Unfortunately it's also the most sleek and feature-rich messenger of them all :(

It sort of used to be, although not exactly as a messenger - it was never good for one-to-one private conversations, but as a social network with channels and groups.

However, for the last couple years enshittification is in progress - it's not at Microsoft Teams levels yet, but they're really trying to get there, shoving more and more ads (third- and first-party both) into users' faces with increasing frequency.

Re: xAI to pay telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat app

#269

Post by verdverm »

anbr wrote: post #193
game_the0ry wrote: post #103

Call me stupid, but I fundamentally do not grasp why xAI would pay Telegram for access to its users. $300M seems like a crazy amount of money to put into a chat app. I am genuinely curious about the business strategy behind the move bc that would be a market worth exploring - having something that the AI industry would pay for bc they are willing to spend a lot right now.

intelligence gathering

thought policing and influencing

The value is in manipulation, not monies

Re: xAI to pay telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat app

#270

Post by 0xy »

SXX wrote: post #263
machomaster wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't know what you are talking about. Read on the multi-year attempts of Putin trying to ban Telegram and Telegram fighting back (technologically and also politically - demonstrations, etc). Telegram won the battle and Putin had no choice but to admit defeat. Similar things happened in other non-free coutries as well.

Telegram dont have E2EE by default. It's all you need to know. 99% of communications on Telegram are in plain text. Also Telegram banned or shadowbanned serveral protest channels / bots during elections and when war began.

WhatsApp isn't E2EE by default either, since default flow pushes you to backup your key to Google Drive.

Signal isn't E2EE, given the security blunder in which private images from your gallery were sent to random contacts (which indicates a scary state management situation in the apps, this isn't easy to do). E2EE implies that you purposely send content to specific people which is encrypted, not that your app sends potentially embarrassing or intimate pictures to your boss behind your back. That blunder is unforgivable.

Post reply on HN