NEW YORK (AP) — Days after getting his staggering civil fraud penalty thrown out, President Donald Trump asked New York's highest court on Tuesday to overturn his other punishments, including a multiyear ban on him and his two eldest sons holding corporate leadership positions.
Trump’s lawyers filed a notice of appeal with the state's Court of Appeals, seeking to erase the remaining effects of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit, which alleges he inflated his net worth on financial paperwork given to banks and insurers.
It's the first of a pair of expected appeals after a five-judge panel of the state’s mid-level Appellate Division last week overturned Trump’s monetary penalty. James, a Democrat, has said she plans to ask the Court of Appeals to restore the Republican's fine after the Appellate Division deemed it “excessive.”
Trump had declared “TOTAL VICTORY” after the Appellate Division wiped away his fine, but the judges left other punishments in place and narrowly endorsed a lower court finding that he committed fraud by padding his wealth on his financial statements.
The non-monetary penalties, the target of Trump's new appeal, set strict limitations on his Trump Organization’s ability to do business. They include:
— A two-year ban on Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., from serving as a director or officer of a New York company, effectively booting them from their roles managing the Trump Organization’s day-to-day operations.
— A three-year ban on Trump holding a corporate leadership position in New York.
— A three-year ban on Trump and his companies from getting loans from banks registered in New York.
— Placing the company under an independent monitor’s continued supervision for at least three years, and ordering the hiring of an independent compliance director.
Those measures have been on hold during the appellate process and the Appellate Division judges said Trump can seek a court order to extend the pause pending further appeals.
FILE - Former President Donald Trump attends the closing arguments in the Trump Organization civil fraud trial at New York State Supreme Court in the Manhattan borough of New York, Jan. 11, 2024. (Shannon Stapleton/Pool Photo via AP, File)
OpenAI says it will soon start showing advertisements to ChatGPT users who aren't paying for a premium version of the chatbot.
The artificial intelligence company said Friday it hasn't yet rolled out ads but will start testing them in the coming weeks.
It's the latest effort by the San Francisco-based company to make money from ChatGPT's more than 800 million users, most of whom get it for free.
Though valued at $500 billion, the startup loses more money than it makes and has been looking for ways to turn a profit.
“Most importantly: ads will not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you,” said Fidji Simo, the company’s CEO of applications, in a social media post Friday.
OpenAI said the digital ads will appear at the bottom of ChatGPT's answers “when there’s a relevant sponsored product or service based on your current conversation.”
The ads “will be clearly labeled and separated from the organic answer,” the company said.
Two of OpenAI’s rivals, Google and Meta, have dominated digital advertising for years and already incorporate ads into some of their AI features.
Originally founded as a nonprofit with a mission to safely build better-than-human AI, OpenAI last year reorganized its ownership structure and converted its business into a public benefit corporation. It said Friday that its pursuit of advertising will be “always in support” of its original mission to ensure its AI technology benefits humanity.
But introducing personalized ads starts OpenAI “down a risky path” previously taken by social media companies, said Miranda Bogen of the Center for Democracy and Technology.
“People are using chatbots for all sorts of reasons, including as companions and advisors," said Bogen, director of CDT’s AI Governance Lab. “There’s a lot at stake when that tool tries to exploit users’ trust to hawk advertisers’ goods.”
OpenAI makes some money from paid subscriptions but needs more revenue to pay for its more than $1 trillion in financial obligations for the computer chips and data centers that power its AI services. The risk that OpenAI won’t make enough money to fulfill the expectations of backers like Oracle and Nvidia has amplified investor concerns about an AI bubble.
“It is clear to us that a lot of people want to use a lot of AI and don’t want to pay, so we are hopeful a business model like this can work,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in a post Friday on social platform X. He added that he likes the ads on Meta's Instagram because they show him things he wouldn't have found otherwise.
OpenAI claims it won't use a user's personal information or prompts to collect data for ads, but the question is “for how long,” said Paddy Harrington, an analyst at research group Forrester.
“Free services are never actually free and these public AI platforms need to generate revenue,” Harrington said. “Which leads to the adage: If the service is free, you’re the product.”
FILE - The OpenAI logo is displayed on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen with output from ChatGPT, March 21, 2023, in Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)
