Tech Brew Ride Home - Get Paid To Train AI On Your Phone Calls?

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

Another lawsuit against OpenAI, this time from xAI. Intel approached Apple about bailing them out. What if crypto was reversable so you could recover fraud. Drama in open source land. And would you like to get paid to train AI on your phone calls? You’re in luck! Musk's xAI accuses rival OpenAI of stealing trade secrets (Reuters) Intel Is Seeking an Investment From Apple as Part of Its Comeback Bid (Bloomberg) Spotify to label AI music, filter spam and more in AI policy change (TechCrunch) Stablecoin issuer Circle examines ‘reversible’ transactions in departure for crypto (Financial Times) Microsoft embraces OpenAI rival Anthropic to improve Microsoft 365 apps (The Verge) Shopify, pulling strings at Ruby Central, forces Bundler and RubyGems takeover (Joel Drapper) Neon, the No. 2 social app on the Apple App Store, pays users to record their phone calls and sells data to AI firms (TechCrunch) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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GoogleFi Wireless is not subject to data traffic deprioritization during times of high network usage. Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride Home for Thursday, September 25th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, another lawsuit against OpenAI, this time from XAI. Intel approached Apple about bailing them out. What if crypto was reversible so you could recover fraud? Drama in open source land, and would you like to get paid to train AI on your phone calls? Well, you're in luck. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. XAI is suing OpenAI in California for allegedly stealing trade secrets by means of hiring away key employees, quoting Reuters. OpenAI is targeting those individuals with knowledge of XAI's key technologies and business plans, including XAI's source code and its operational advantages in launching data centers, then inducing those employees to breach their confidentiality and other obligations to XAI through unlawful means, the lawsuit said. Spokespeople for the companies did not immediately respond to request for comment on the complaint on Thursday.

XAI said it discovered the alleged campaign to undermine the company while investigating allegations of trade secret theft against former engineer Zhuchin Lee, who it has accused of taking confidential information to the chat GPT maker in a separate lawsuit. Lee has not yet responded to the allegations. XAI has separately sued Apple in federal court for allegedly conspiring with OpenAI to suppress rival platforms. Apple has not yet responded to that lawsuit. Musk is also suing OpenAI over its conversion to a for-profit company, while OpenAI has countersued Musk for harassment. According to this complaint, OpenAI hired away former company engineer Jimmy Fratier and an unnamed senior finance executive in addition to Lee in order to obtain XAI trade secrets. Frachier, who is not a defendant in the complaint, could not immediately be reached for comment, end quote. Bloomberg is reporting that Intel approached Apple about a potential investment in the chipmaker as part of its turnaround efforts and discussed how to work more closely with Apple going forward. Quote, a deal with Apple, a longtime Intel customer that switched to in-house processors in the past five years, would represent further validation of the chipmaker's turnaround bid. Still, it's unlikely that Apple would switch back to Intel processors and its devices. The iPhone maker's most sophisticated chips are now produced by partner Taiwan Semiconductor.

their manufacturing. Apple and Intel have a long, sometimes strained history together. Apple used Intel chips in its max for years, but began shifting away from the supplier in 2020, part of a broader effort to use more in-house components. Apple also acquired most of Intel's modem chip business in 2019. These days, Apple has sought to show that it's investing heavily in the U.S., even as much of its production remains overseas. At a White House event in August, the company announced plans to spend $600 billion on domestic initiatives over a four-year period up from a previous pledge of $500 billion. The centerpiece of the expansion was a $2.5 billion investment in Corning, Apple's longtime glass supplier. Apple's CEO Tim Cook told CNBC's Jim Kramer that the investments would

encourage other companies to add U.S. production, creating a, quote, domino effect. When asked about Intel, he said that competition would be good for the chip foundry industry. We'd love to see Intel come back, Cook said, and quote. Spotify has updated its AI policies, including adopting the upcoming D-Dex standard to label and identify AI music, and they're also rolling out a new music spam filter, quoting TechCrunch. The company says it will adopt an upcoming industry standard for identifying and labeling AI music in credits known as D-dex, and will soon roll out a new music spam filter to catch more bad actors. Under the D-dex system, labels, distributors, and music partners submit standardized AI disclosures in music credits.

This solution offers detailed information about the use of AI, like whether it was used for AI-generated vocals, instrumentation, or post-production, for example, as part of the same announcement. Spotify clarified its policies around AI-enabled personalizations, stating directly that unauthorized AI voice clones, deepfakes, and any other form of vocal replicas or impersonation are not allowed and will be removed from the platform. While the D-DEC standard is developing, Spotify says it's received commitments from 15 labels and distributors who plan to adopt the technology and sees its move as one that could signal to others, it's time to adopt the technology. Because AI tools make it easier for anyone to

release music, Spotify also has a new plan to cut down on the potential spam that results. This fall, the company will roll out a new music spam filter that will attempt to address spam tactics, tag them, and then stop recommending those tracks to users. Related to this, Spotify will also work with distributors to address something called profile mismatches, a scheme where someone fraudulently uploads music to another artist's profile across streaming services. The company said it hopes to prevent more of these before the music ever goes live. Despite the changes, Spotify executives emphasize they still support use of AI, provided it's used in a non-fraudulent way, end quote. This looks like an attempt to solve one of the oldest problems in crypto, if I'm reading it

correctly. Circle President Heath Tarbert says Circle is exploring the possibility of reversible stable coin transactions to allow refunds in cases of fraud or disputes. Quoting the F.T. Circle, the world's second biggest issuer of stablecoins is examining ways to make it possible to reverse transactions involving its tokens in a rare admission by a major crypto firm that it needs to take lessons from the traditional financial sector. Circle President Heath Tarbert said a mechanism that allowed money to be refunded in cases of fraud or disputes would help the stablecoin industries push to become part of the financial mainstream. We are thinking through whether or not there is the possibility of

reversibility of transactions, right? But at the same time, we want settlement finality, Tarbert told the Financial Times. So there's an inherent tension there between being able to transfer something immediately, but having it be irrevocable, he added. Such measures could be seen as a major departure from the crypto industry's previous emphasis on the immutability of the blockchain, a digital ledger that is public and records transactions that cannot be unwound. Circle said payments could not be directly unwound on its new blockchain called Arc, but instead, it could add another layer in which parties could agree to make counterpayments akin to refunds on a credit card. The measures also mark a dramatic change and attitude in an industry that

has often tried to distance itself from so-called Tradfai and will be seen by some crypto-purists as tantamount to heresy. One prominent venture capitalist said it was offensive to still call Circles planned venture a blockchain. Tarbert, a former chair of digital assets regulator, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said there were discussions taking place among software developers as to whether on certain blockchains for certain circumstances, provided all the parties agree, there could be some degree of reversibility for fraud. He added, people say blockchain technology, stablecoin, smart contracts are superior in technology to the current system, but there are some benefits of the current system that aren't necessarily currently present,

end quote. Tarbert's comments come several months after the Trump administration killed off a proposal by the U.S. consumer banking regulator to make cryptocurrency companies responsible for refunding customers' accounts when they are hacked, bringing standards for digital wallets into line with bank accounts, end quote. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College deal, everything you need, to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 premium, and a year of Xbox GamePass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at

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researcher and co-pilot studio. Quoting the verge, co-pilot will continue to be powered by OpenAI latest models, and now our customers will have the flexibility to use anthropic models, too, starting in researcher or when building agents in Microsoft co-pilot studio, explains Charles Lamana, president of Microsoft's business and industry co-pilot team. The addition of Claude Sonnet 4 and Cloud Opus 4.1 advances our commitment to bring the best AI innovation from across the industry to Microsoft 365 copilot, tuned for work, and tailored for your business needs, and quote. Microsoft's researcher agent can now use OpenAI's deep reasoning models or Anthropics Claude Opus 4.1. Researcher users will see a tri-clod button at the top of the Microsoft

365 copilot app that provides access to Opus 4.1 instead of OpenAI's models. Once you opt-in, you'll be able to switch between Open AI and Anthropic models in Researcher with ease, LeManna said. Claude Sonnet 4 and Cloud Opus 4.1 will also be available as model options in Copilot Studio, Microsoft's platform for building AI agents. With this launch, you can build, orchestrate and manage agents powered by Anthropic models for deep reasoning, workflow automation, and flexible agentic tasks, Lamana explains. You'll also be able to mix which models are used for specific tasks with options from Anthropic OpenAI and other models in Azure's model catalog. Claude and Researcher is rolling out today via the frontier program to Microsoft 365 copilot

licensed customers who decide to opt in. Copilot studio users can also opt in to get access to Claude. Interestingly, Anthropics AI models will still be hosted on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft's main cloud rival. Microsoft accesses Claude via the Anthropic API, just like any other developer. Microsoft previously struck a deal with XAI to host GROC 3 models on Azure, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar arrangement with Anthropics models on Azure soon. Microsoft's announcement of Anthropic models in Microsoft 365 copilot arrives just a week after the company started favoring Anthropic over OpenAI for Visual Studio Code. GitHub paid users now, quote,

primarily rely on Claude Sonnet 4 when using the Visual Studio Code editor's new automatic AI model selection, according to Microsoft. Reports have also suggested that Microsoft will use Anthropics AI models in Excel and PowerPoint soon after finding they outperformed OpenAI's own models, end quote. Bit in the weeds, but there is some drama going on in open source land. A dev by the name of Joel Drapper is alleging in a blog post that nonprofit Ruby Central took control of some Ruby open source projects from their maintainers without consent, after, he says, pressure from Shopify. According to multiple sources and a recorded meeting described in this account,

Ruby Central moved to take control of several community maintained Ruby Gems and bundler repositories and the Ruby Gems Update Gem in mid-September. The backdrop, per this narrative, was financial strain. sidekick allegedly pulled a $250,000 a year sponsorship after Ruby Central invited DHS to Rails Conference 2025, leaving the nonprofit heavily reliant on Shopify. Sources claimed Shopify pressed Ruby Central to assume full control of key GitHub repos and gems, reportedly setting a hard deadline and signaling funding could be withdrawn if the change didn't happen and requested that longtime maintainer Andre Arco be excluded from returning.

events accelerated on September 9th when HSBT Hiroshi Shibata renamed the Ruby Gems GitHub Enterprise to Ruby Central, added director Marty Hought as an owner, and downgraded other maintainers permissions. After pushback, some changes were briefly reverted on September 15th, but Hott remained an owner. In a September 17th, Zoom meeting, maintainers and Hought discuss the differences between the community-owned RubyGems code and the RubyGems.org service that Ruby Central operates. The maintainers asserted Ruby Central had no ownership of the repos themselves, despite acknowledging these concerns and alternatives like forking. The Ruby Central Board reportedly voted to proceed on September 18th. Maintainers lost access to the reorganization repos and some infrastructure while Shopify backed on-call coverage stood ready. Ruby Central framed the move publicly as a supply change, security measure and fiduciary duty promising temporary lockdowns

until new operator and contributor agreements are in place. Critics in this account argue Ruby Central conflated its right to secure the service infrastructure with ownership of the open source codebases, and that statements by board members and supporters mischaracterize the situation. The narrative also notes tension around RV, a new tool from Spinnell, which some in Rails slash Shopify circles viewed as a threat. The account concludes with unresolved questions about other company's roles, board vote details, and whether control of the codebases will be returned to the longstanding maintainers, end quote. Finally today, hot new app alert, Neon, which pays users to record their phone calls and then sells that audio data to AI companies

for training, has become the number two social app on the U.S. App Store, quoting TechCrunch. The app, NeonMobile, pitches itself as a money-making tool offering hundreds or even thousands of dollars per year for access to your audio conversations. Neon's website says the company pays 30 cents per minute when you call other neon users and up to $30 per day maximum for making calls to anyone else. The app also pays for referrals. The app first ranked number 476 in the social networking category of the U.S. App Store on September 18th, but jumped to number 10 at the end of yesterday, according to data from app intelligence firm app figures. On Wednesday, Neon was spotted in the number

two position on the iPhone's top free charts for social apps. Neon also became the number seven top overall app or game earlier on Wednesday morning and became the number six top app period. According to Neon's terms of service, the company's mobile app can capture users in inbound and outbound phone calls. However, Neon's marketing claims to only record your side of the call unless it's with another Neon user. That data is being sold to AI companies, Neon's terms of service state, quote, for the purpose of developing, training, testing, and improving machine learning models, artificial intelligence tools, and systems, and related technologies. The fact that such an app exists and is permitted on the app stores is an indication of

how far AI has encroached into users' lives and areas once thought of as private. Its high ranking within the Apple App Store, meanwhile, is proof that there is now some subsection of the market seemingly willing to exchange their privacy for pennies, regardless of the larger cost to themselves or society. Despite what Neon's privacy policy says, its terms include a very broad license to its user data, where Neon itself is granted a license that leaves plenty of wiggle room for Neon to do more with users' data than it claims. Though Neon's app raises many red flags, it still, though, may be technically legal.

recording only one side of the phone call is aimed out avoiding wiretap laws. Jennifer Daniels, a partner with the law firm Blank Rome's privacy. Security and Data Protection Group tells TechCrunch, under the laws of many states, you have to have consent from both parties to a conversation in order to record it. It's an interesting approach, says Daniels. Peter Jackson, cybersecurity and privacy attorney at Greenberg Glusker, agreed, and tells TechCrunch that the language around one-sided transcripts sounds like it could be a backdoor way of saying that Neon records users' calls in their entirety, but may just remove what the other party said from the final transcript. In addition, the legal experts pointed to concerns about how anonymize

the data may really be. Neon claims it removes users' names, emails, and phone numbers before selling data to AI companies, but the company doesn't say how AI partners or others it sells to could use that data. Voice data could be used to make fake calls that sound like they're coming from you, or AI companies could use your voice to make their own AI voices. Once your voice is over there, It can be used for fraud, says Jackson. Now this company has your phone number and essentially enough information. They have recordings of your voice which could be used to create an impersonation of you and do all sorts of fraud. Even if the company itself is trustworthy, Neon doesn't disclose who its trusted partners are

or what those entities are allowed to do with users' data further down the road. Neon is also subject to potential data breaches, as any company with valuable data may be, end quote. Well, I did bang the drum for years about somebody giving us the ability to make money off of our data, though I don't know that I would do this one. Talk to you tomorrow. All. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly

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