Emma Roth

News Writer

Emma Roth is a news writer at The Verge, where she covers just about everything in the world of tech. Some of her favorite topics to follow include the ever-evolving streaming industry, the latest in artificial intelligence, and changes to the way our government interacts with Big Tech. Previously, Emma wrote and edited technology news and how-to articles for MUO.

Emma RothJul 31

Reddit’s AI copyright lawsuit against Perplexity can move forward.

A judge rejected Perplexity’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which accuses the AI startup and three data-scraping services of vacuuming up Reddit’s content without permission. Ben Lee, Reddit’s chief legal officer, says in a statement to The Verge that the ruling “brings us one step closer to holding bad actors accountable:”

Reddit supports responsible access to public content, but we oppose companies that bypass our protections, ignore our rules, and profit off our communities without permission.

The NHTSA is investigating 1.2 million Tesla vehicles over suspension failure reports

Emma RothJul 31

OpenAI says its models now reach more than 1 billion weekly active users.

OpenAI shared the news in a blog post that highlights its efforts to make AI available to more people, saying: “Our goal is not simply more compute, bigger models, or lower token prices. It is more useful intelligence within reach.”

As part of these efforts, OpenAI announced on Thursday that it’s slashing the price of its GPT-5.6 Luna model by 80 percent and GPT-5.6 Terra by 20 percent.

Building abundant intelligence

[OpenAI]

Emma RothJul 31

Who’s bankrolling Trump’s projects?

The Wall Street Journal gets into the “staggering” fundraising efforts launched by President Donald Trump and his team, including the tech giants making multimillion-dollar donations:

SoftBank donated $50 million toward Trump’s presidential library. Apple cut a check for around $25 million toward his White House ballroom project, while Microsoft gave around $10 million and Amazon chipped in around $5 million, according to people familiar with the contributions. Meta Platforms recently gave $10 million to a Trump-aligned political committee, people familiar said, on top of a multimillion donation to the ballroom and a prior $22 million payment to the planned presidential library.

‘The Boss Wants This Money’: Inside Trump’s Unprecedented Fundraising Operation

[The Wall Street Journal]

New York sues Kalshi for allegedly running an ‘illegal gambling operation’

Emma RothJul 31

A look into the rise of falling space junk.

This report from The New York Times details how debris from rockets, satellites, and other space hardware falls to Earth each week — sometimes unpredictably — as the global space race heats up:

If objects are in free fall, even the best rocket scientists cannot accurately predict where they will land or whether they will fully incinerate. A one-minute error in predicting re-entry changes the landing zone by nearly 300 miles, according to the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit research group.

A Ton of Space Junk Tumbles Unpredictably to Earth Every Week

[The New York Times]