Techmeme: Creating trustworthy generative AI requires resources probably on the scale of what companies like Microsoft and Google possess, making them even more powerful (Christopher Mims/Wall Street Journal)

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Sources: Meta delayed finalizing multiple teams' budgets while preparing a fresh round of job cuts, slowing down projects even for the metaverse and advertising — Mark Zuckerberg's aim of wrestling costs in his ‘year of efficiency’ causes disruption at the social media company

More: Reuters, Fortune, Forbes, Appuals.com, Engadget, and Mashable

Tweets: @justpavankumar, @ingmire, and @01core_ben

Emma Roth / The Verge:

Opera says it is testing a new ChatGPT-powered “shorten” feature in its browser that provides bulleted summaries of articles or webpages in the sidebar — The feature, called “shorten,” is part of the company's broader plans to integrate AI tools into its browser, similar to what Microsoft's doing with Edge.

More: CNBC, Opera News, Neowin, TechRadar, Digital Trends, BGR, Tech Startups, and gHacks Technology News

Tweets: @parkerortolani, @fairlight_cap, and @austinnotduncan

Clare Duffy / CNN:

Pathmatics estimates the monthly revenue from Twitter's top 1,000 advertisers fell 60%+ from around $127M in October 2022 to just over $48M by January 25, 2023 — New York CNN — — More than half of Twitter's top 1,000 advertisers in September were no longer spending on the platform …

More: The Verge, Center for Countering …, Insider, and Mashable

Tweets: @helenkennedy, @pnewman51, @scottjshapiro, @charles_gaba, @grady_booch, @paulachertok, and @ccdhate

See also Mediagazer

John Herrman / New York Magazine:

How Rumble, which claims to have 71M MAUs, became the only success story in right-wing social media by letting creators who are banned elsewhere monetize video — For a moment, the right's longtime dream of an alternative social media seemed within reach. Various companies had been trying …

Tweets: @jwherrman, @ggreenwald, and @ben_kew

Benedict Evans:

A 2023 overview of macro tech trends, focusing on the e-commerce slowdown, layoffs, Amazon, advertising, and generative AI opportunities beyond text and images — Presentations Every year, I produce a big presentation exploring macro and strategic trends in the tech industry. This year, ‘The New Gatekeepers’.

Tweets: @marshallk, @perplexity_ai, @mirkolorenz, @jonathankriner, @marshallk, @tonicowanbrown, @benedictevans, and @cjpberry

Kirsten Grind / Wall Street Journal:

Sources and memo: Zappos laid off over 300 employees in January, or ~20% of its workforce, including in customer service, as part of broader layoffs at Amazon — A round of layoffs marks latest major change to the tech giant's subsidiary — Tech Layoffs Pile Up as Bosses Reverse Course

More: Insider, Bloomberg, and Appuals.com

Tweets: @kirstengrind, @noopkat, @dougonipcomm, and @paulafrancis8

Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal:

Creating trustworthy generative AI requires resources probably on the scale of what companies like Microsoft and Google possess, making them even more powerful — Relying on tech giants for both answers and assistance, rather than just information, could entrench them into our lives more deeply than ever

More: CRN. Tweets: @gwestr and @astaniscia86

Jennifer Elias / CNBC:

Google staff criticize company leadership over the Bard announcement, calling the unveil “botched”, “myopic”, and “un-Googley” on the internal forum Memegen — - Google employees took to Memegen this week, filling the message repository with criticisms …

More: The Verge, Thurrott, RethinkingUX, WinBuzzer, Appuals.com, Android Central, Mashable, Tony's Thoughts …, Livemint, Tech Startups, Insider, Android Authority, New York Post, Neowin, and 9to5Google

Tweets: @jenn_elias and @ldrogen. Thanks:@mattrosoff

Louise Matsakis / Semafor:

Sources: TikTok's Internal Audit team that spied on journalists had wide investigative powers with little oversight; ByteDance says it's restructuring the team — TikTok's hyper-aggressive internal security team drew a wave of complaints from employees before its conduct exploded …

More: MarketWatch, Observer, Tubefilter, New York Post, Appuals.com, Associated Press, and Livemint

Tweets: @jason_koebler, @lmatsakis, and @lmatsakis

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