Amazon is launching Ad Relevance, a cookieless consumer tracking solution that will be available to those using Amazon DSP, a tool that lets advertisers buy Internet ad placements on and off Amazon’s website. Ad Relevance “uses the latest in AI technology to analyze billions of browsing, buying, and streaming signals in conjunction with real-time information about the content being viewed” to reveal customer shopping patterns and serve relevant ads across devices, channels, and content types without using third-party cookies. The technology accommodates Google’s long-delayed cookie deprecation, currently set for 2025. Read more

Bellevue, Washington-based startup Butterflies AI has created a new social platform that makes artificial intelligence more interactive with humans, allowing people to create customized AIs that generate posts, comments and DMs to which their creators and other humans — as well as other Butterfly AIs — can respond. Anyone using the platform, which has launched publicly on iOS and Android after 5 months in beta, can create their own AI, called a “Butterfly.” The venture, created by former Snap engineer Vu Tran, has raised $4.8 million on Tran’s premise that the public lacks an “interesting” consumer AI product. Read more

New documents submitted to state regulators for license applications are shedding light on how Elon Musk plans to make his X app into a payment platform that competes with services like Venmo and PayPal. Plans include letting users store money within their X accounts that can then be applied to purchases — including in physical stores — or issuing payment to other individuals or businesses. The filings come as X seeks to expand its revenue pool beyond advertising, which had in its Twitter days accounted for as much as 90 percent of sales. Ad income is said to have fallen below that threshold since Musk purchased the company in October 2022. Read more

A federal jury in Las Vegas has convicted five men for illegal streaming operations perpetrated through a company called Jetflicks, which generated millions of dollars in subscription revenue while causing “substantial harm to television program copyright owners,” according to the Department of Justice. Jetflicks, which charged customers $9.99 per month, had a catalog that included “hundreds of thousands” of copyrighted TV episodes, larger than the combined offerings of Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Amazon Prime, prosecutors said, explaining the outfit “used sophisticated computer scripts and software to scour pirate websites for illegal copies of television episodes.” Read more

The European Commission is expanding its investigation of Apple based on preliminary findings of anticompetitive breach of the new Digital Markets Act (DMA). The Commission has found the App Store engages in “anti-steering” by preventing app purveyors from offering consumers “alternative channels for offers and content.” The Commission also opened a new investigation into App Store developer contracts, citing  the “core technology fee” implemented in January in what was perceived as a workaround to the new European Union rules, saying such policies “fall short of ensuring effective compliance with Apple’s obligations under the DMA.” Read more