Joby Aviation is set to acquire Blade Air Mobility's helicopter ride-share business for up to $125 million. This acquisition includes the Blade brand and its passenger operations in the US and Europe.

Blade's CEO, Rob Wiesenthal, will continue to lead the business as a subsidiary of Joby. However, Blade's medical division will remain separate.

The deal provides Joby with a network of 12 terminals in key markets like New York City, including lounges and terminal bases at major airports.

Blade, founded in 2014, operates a digital network for booking private helicopter rides and flew over 50,000 passengers in 2024.

Joby Aviation, founded in 2009, aims to integrate its air taxi operations software into Blade's service, eventually transitioning to electric air taxis.

Recent crackdowns on adult content in games on platforms like Steam and Itch.io have sparked controversy.

Mastercard denies pressuring these platforms, stating they only require merchants to control unlawful purchases, including illegal adult content. However, Valve claims payment processors cited a Mastercard rule against "illegal or brand-damaging transactions" when rejecting Steam's content policy.

Itch.io is re-indexing free adult games while negotiating with payment processors like Stripe, which cites banking partner restrictions on sexually explicit content.

SAP has announced its acquisition of SmartRecruiters, a recruiting software company, aiming to enhance its HR solutions.

The integration of SmartRecruiters' user-friendly interfaces and streamlined workflows will provide customers with a comprehensive candidate lifecycle management system, from sourcing to onboarding.

The deal, expected to close in Q4, will allow SAP to offer a single system for recruiters, hiring managers, and candidates. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

OpenAI is actively developing AI reasoning models and agents that can perform tasks like humans. The MathGen team played a vital role in improving AI's mathematical reasoning capabilities, leading to models that can compete at a high school level. These advancements are tied to reinforcement learning techniques, allowing models to learn from feedback and improve their performance.

The development of the o1 reasoning model marked a breakthrough, leading to the creation of AI agents. OpenAI aims to create general-purpose agents that can handle complex, subjective tasks, but faces challenges in training models for such tasks. The company is exploring new techniques to improve the performance and intuitiveness of AI agents, with the goal of building an AI system that can understand user needs and perform tasks autonomously.

While OpenAI was initially ahead, it now faces competition from other companies in developing AI agents.

The fashion industry is grappling with the increasing use of AI-generated models, sparking debate about the future of human models and the impact on creative jobs.

Key points:

• Controversy over AI Models: Vogue's July print edition featured a Guess ad with an AI-generated model, causing an uproar and raising questions about the role of AI in fashion.
• Cost Benefits: AI models are cheaper and allow for scaled content production, but concerns arise over the displacement of human models, especially e-commerce models.
• Diversity and Ethics: The use of AI to create "diverse" models raises concerns about "robot cultural appropriation" and the potential for bias in AI-generated content.
• Model Alliance: Fashion Workers Act is being worked on, which would require brands to get a model’s clear consent and provide compensation for using their digital replicas.
• The Human Element: Authenticity and unique human stories remain valuable, particularly for luxury and heritage brands.

Experts suggest models differentiate themselves by building personal brands and exploring new revenue streams.