The results of the presidential election will have a big impact on the economy, foreign relations and health care. But when it comes to technology, one of the most powerful people shaping regulation isn’t a candidate at all. It’s Sam Altman.
Neither Republican candidate Donald Trump nor his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, have been outspoken on generative AI, much less outlined a clear roadmap to regulating a technology that’s already seen explosive growth and integration into businesses and consumer lives.
Altman, the OpenAI co-founder and CEO, meanwhile, has put on a masterclass in wooing Washington, learning from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and social media’s missteps in front of Congress. Lawmakers have now begun embracing AI in a way they never did social media.
“Initially, when AI and ChatGPT came onto the scene, there was a lot of fear and panic about what AI might do in the world.” said Katie Harbath, founder of tech consulting firm Anchor Change and former public policy director at Meta. “You’re starting to see that get pulled back some. They’re worried about how it might impact innovation. People are worried about making sure we can stay competitive with China.”
That new messaging on AI regulation is largely thanks to Altman turning OpenAI into a lobbying powerhouse. The startup has spent more than ever to influence Washington, and brought on staff with deep ties to D.C., including Chris Lehane, who joined as its head of global affairs in April.
Lehane was a political strategist in the Bill Clinton White House before moving west to help companies like Airbnb and Coinbase shape political strategy. Now, he’s bringing his playbook to OpenAI, where his message to Washington is that if the U.S. doesn’t lead the way in AI, an autocratic nation like China will.
“This is technology where we need to almost think about it at the scale of a New Deal. What the New Deal really did is put the U.S. in the position for the 20th century to become the American Century,” Lehane said. “As we think about AI at this particular moment that we’re in, infrastructure is going to be destiny, and that infrastructure has the ability to help re-industrialize the country.”
But just like when social media was in its early stages, lawmakers don’t yet have a handle on AI as the stakes only grow larger. Can we trust the people behind the curtain? Watch this video to learn more.
A motorcycle is seen near a building of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which is a Taiwanese multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company, in Hsinchu, Taiwan, on April 16, 2025.
Daniel Ceng | Anadolu | Getty Images
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company on Thursday reported a near 61% year-on-year rise in second-quarter profit, beating estimates, as demand for artificial intelligence chips stays strong.
Here are TSMC’s first-quarter results versus LSEG SmartEstimates:
Revenue: 933.80 billion New Taiwan dollars ($31.7 billion), vs. NT$931.24 billion expected
Net income: NT$398.27 billion, vs. NT$377.86 billion
Second-quarter net profit hit a record high, according to Reuters.
TSMC’s net revenue in the June quarter rose 38.65% from a year ago to NT$933.80 billion, also beating estimates.
Advanced chips, with sizes 7-nanometer or smaller, accounted for 74% of TSMC’s total wafer revenue in the quarter. In semiconductor technology, smaller nanometer sizes signify more compact transistor designs, which lead to greater processing power and efficiency.
TSMC, the world’s largest contract chip manufacturer, has benefited from the megatrend towards AI as it gains from producing advanced processors for clients including Nvidia and Apple.
However, the company faces potential headwinds from the trade policy of the U.S. President Donald Trump, who has threatened steep “reciprocal tariffs” on Taiwan.
U.S. export controls have also restricted TSMC’s business with China, as well that of its key clients such as Nvidia and AMD. However, amid a thawing of trade relations between Beijing and Washington, Nvidia and AMD said earlier this week that they had received government assurances allowing them to ship products to China.
The growing prevalence of AI music has caused a stir across the music industry, according to Keith Mullin, head of management and music industry course leader at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts.
Da-kuk | E+ | Getty Images
With more than 1 million monthly listeners on Spotify, psychedelic rock band The Velvet Sundown is raking in thousands of dollars and has the music industry asking itself tough questions 一 and they’re not about whether the ’70s are coming back.
The “band” was recently confirmed to primarily be the work of generative artificial intelligence 一 something that had been heavily suspected in light of a suspiciously smooth and glossy image of its “band members” and derivative song titles like “Dust on the Wind.”
The Velvet Sundown’s bio on Spotify now clarifies that it is a “synthetic music project guided by human creative direction, and composed, voiced, and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence.”
It adds, “This isn’t a trick – it’s a mirror. An ongoing artistic provocation designed to challenge the boundaries of authorship, identity, and the future of music itself in the age of AI.”
However, in CNBC’s conversations with various music professionals, descriptors like “soulless,” “stifling,” and “creepy” surfaced, as the industry grapples with the encroachment of AI.
While AI tools have long been integrated into music software like Logic, newer AI-powered platforms such as Suno and Udio have made it easier than ever to generate entire songs based on nothing more than a few prompts and inputs.
As a result, “The Velvet Sundown” is far from the only AI-generated artist emerging online. There’s evidence that other upstarts like “dark country” musician Aventhis — with more than 600,000 monthly listeners on Spotify — are also a product of AI-generated voices and instruments.
Meanwhile, France-headquartered music-streaming service Deezer, which deployed an AI detection tool for music in January, revealed in April that about 18% of all tracks now being uploaded to its platform are fully generated by AI.
AI music tech advances
The quality and originality of AI music have often been criticized, but experts say that as generative AI becomes more sophisticated, it’s becoming harder and harder for the average listener to distinguish between human and machine.
“[The Velvet Sundown]” is much better music than most of what we’ve heard from AI in the past,” Jason Palamara, an assistant professor of music technology at the Herron School of Art and Design, told CNBC.
“Early versions could be used to make catchy, repetitive hooks … But we’ve gotten to the point where AI is putting out songs that actually make sense structurally, with verses, choruses and bridges,” Palamara said.
He said The Velvet Sundown is likely just the “tip of the iceberg” of what’s coming. Suno and Udio — the current “gold standard” of genAI platforms — come with few to no barriers to entry, allowing anyone to create hundreds of AI tracks in one sitting.
Both AI platforms offer free access, as well as premium subscriptions priced at about $30 or less a month.
But while creating an AI song can be done for free, that doesn’t mean it can’t generate revenue. The Velvet Sundown has made about $34,235 over a 30-day period across all audio streaming platforms, according to estimations from ChartMasters’ streaming royalties calculator.
Because of that, it’s easy to see why AI creators might want to flood streaming platforms with as much generated music as possible, hoping to go viral.
‘We can’t predict yet’
The growing prevalence of AI music has caused a stir across the music industry, according to Keith Mullin, head of management and music industry course leader at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts.
“It’s the hot topic of the moment, especially in relation to copyright and digital service providers like Spotify,” said Mullin, who is also the guitarist for Liverpool rock band The Farm.
Nevertheless, Mullin said generative AI on music is here to stay. “I don’t think we can turn the clock back,” he said, noting that music and its business models are ever changing.
For a band that doesn’t even really exist to then get all that social media traction, it’s so discouraging.
Tilly Louise
U.K.-based alternative pop artist
Indeed, the music business is no stranger to big technology shifts — events like the introduction of Napster in 1999 and the proliferation of music-streaming platforms in the 2000s shook up the industry, forcing major adaptations.
Still, the notion of competing with AI bands is causing anxiety for budding musicians like Tilly Louise, a U.K.-based alternative pop artist who said it’s already hard enough for small performers to gain traction and generate income from online music.
Despite accumulating millions of streams on Spotify, Louise, 25, said she’s never made nearly enough money from streaming platforms to live on, and currently works a full-time job.
“For a band that doesn’t even really exist to then get all that social media traction, it’s so discouraging,” she added.
To prepare young artists for the changing music environment, music professors said, they’ve increasingly been working AI into their lesson plans, aiming to teach students how to use the technology to enhance their creative process and music production, rather than replace it.
Some established producers have also leaned into the trend. Last month, Grammy-winning artist and producer Timbaland launched an AI-focused entertainment venture, called Stage Zero, which will feature an AI-generated pop star.
“Other producers are going to start doing this … and it will create a completely different model of the music industry that we can’t predict yet,” Palamara said. He added, however, that he does think the trend will make earning money as an artist online even harder.
The trend is also expected to continue to receive backlash not only for its impact on artists, but also for what it could mean for music consumers.
“[M]usic fans should be worried because the proliferation of AI music and content clogs our social media feeds and algorithms, making it difficult for us to connect with one another,” Anthony Fantano, a prominent music critic and internet personality on YouTube, told CNBC in a statement.
“AI art offers nothing that humans themselves can’t already do better,” he said, adding that it’s a way for “greedy capitalists” to cut out actual artists.
Aside from calling for better copyright protections for artists when it comes to the training of AI, music groups are asking that AI-generated music be labeled as such. Spotify did not respond to an inquiry from CNBC regarding its generative AI detection and labeling policies.
In a statement to CNBC, Tino Gagliardi, president of the American Federation Of Musicians of the United States and Canada, urged creators, those in the tech industry, lawmakers, and music fans to stand together in support of human creativity and authorship.
“Consent, credit, and compensation are prerequisites in AI development. And transparency, including in streaming and other marketplaces, is the foundation for safeguarding musicians’ livelihoods. Anything short of that is theft.”
Coinbase unveiled Wednesday an “everything app” designed to bring more people into the crypto economy.
The “Base App,” which replaces Coinbase Wallet, will combine wallet, trading and payment functions as well as social media, messaging and support for mini apps – all running on the company’s homegrown public blockchain network Base, which is built on Ethereum.
So-called super apps like WeChat and Alipay – which bundle several different services and functionalities into a single mobile app – have long been viewed as the holy grail of fintech by the industry. They’re central to everyday life in China but haven’t been successfully replicated in the West. Meta Platforms and X have made attempts to realize that vision, integrating payments, messaging and social content, among other things.
For Coinbase, the intent is to expand its reach to a new subset of consumers who aren’t necessarily interested in buying or trading crypto, the company’s core business. Over-reliance on that revenue stream has been a sticking point for the company, and some analysts view the Base blockchain as a way for it to drive utility in crypto beyond speculative trading.
As part of the Base App launch, Coinbase also rolled out two key functions meant to help power it: an identity verification system called Base Account and an express checkout system for payments with the Circle-issued USDC stablecoin, called Base Pay.
Base Pay is a one-click checkout feature for USDC payments across the web, developed with Shopify. At the end of the year, Coinbase plans to bring Base Pay to brick-and-mortar stores with tap-to-pay support. Alex Danco, product manager at Shopify, said at Coinbase’s unveiling event that the function has been turned on for tens of thousands of its merchants this week, and will roll out to every merchant by the end of the year. Shopify will also offer 1% cash back in the U.S. for users who pay with USDC on Base later this year, he said.
Base is often touted for its ability to settle a payment in less than a second for less than a cent, which its fans expect will help the network grow in a way other crypto-based payments efforts haven’t.
Now, Coinbase hopes to tap into an opportunity to settle payments on the Base network that go beyond trading and payments. With the introduction of the everything app, the company is emphasizing the opportunity for a new economic model for content creators in particular – one that might give them more direct and diverse monetization options for their content as well as more control over their identity and data.
Coinbase will fund creator rewards and waive USDC transaction fees within chats in the app as part of the effort to bring more users on chain. It is not expected to generate significant revenue right away.
The new consumer app comes as the crypto industry and Coinbase, in particular, embrace a boom in product launches and rollouts thanks to the pro-crypto policies of the Trump administration and more clearly defined crypto regulations expected from Congress — perhaps as soon as this week. Last month Coinbase launched its first credit card with American Express and Shopify rolled out USDC-powered payments through Coinbase and Stripe.
