Techmeme
March 4, 2023, 8:10 PM

Top News

Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
Bing Chat appears to have a hidden Celebrity mode, in which the chatbot answers questions while impersonating Biden, Trump, Tom Cruise, and other famous people  —  A secret Bing Chat ‘Celebrity’ mode allows users to instruct the AI to impersonate celebrities, answering questions and talking like the person it imitates.
Alex Cranz / The Verge:
Meta is good at making VR hardware but is ignoring its core gamer audience, as it's not clear the company realizes that games are driving its VR business  —  Meta seems very committed to making hardware to usher in a whole new world and racing away from the games that drive its VR business.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: in an update to investors, Twitter reports a ~40% YoY decline in both revenue and adjusted earnings for December 2022, as advertisers fled the platform  —  The company recently made a first interest payment to banks that lent $13 billion to help pay for Elon Musk's buyout, people familiar with the matter said
Erin Woo / The Information:
Alberto Nardelli / Bloomberg:
Source: Russia is circumventing sanctions by importing advanced chips through countries such as Turkey and the UAE; shipments from China to Russia have surged  —  Russia looks to be successfully working around European Union and Group of Seven sanctions to secure crucial semiconductors …
Andrew Duehren / Wall Street Journal:
Reports and sources: the US prepares a program that could ban US investment in some sectors in China, such as advanced semiconductors, quantum computing, and AI  —  Biden administration expected to seek money in its budget next week to set up program regulating investment abroad
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman quits OpenAI's nonprofit board, seeking to invest in companies using OpenAI's tech, which he says may cause a conflict of interest  —  - LinkedIn founder and Greylock partner Reid Hoffman is leaving the nonprofit board of OpenAI, he announced in a post on Friday.
Will Douglas Heaven / MIT Technology Review:
Q&A with OpenAI's Sandhini Agarwal, Liam Fedus, Jan Leike, and co-founder John Schulman on training ChatGPT, dealing with its virality, fixing issues, and more  —  Exclusive conversations that take us behind the scenes of a cultural phenomenon.  —  When OpenAI launched ChatGPT …
Noah Bierman / Los Angeles Times:
San Jose-based Vintra markets its “co-appearance” AI, which seeks to detect when people caught on video are likely associates, to the IRS and police departments  —  A gray-haired man walks through an office lobby holding a coffee cup, staring ahead as he passes the entryway.
Kate Park / TechCrunch:
Singapore-based e-commerce aggregator Una Brands raised a $30M pre-Series C, following a $30M Series B in September 2022, bringing its total funding to $115M  —  Una Brands, a Singapore-based e-commerce aggregator, has raised $30 million in pre-Series C financing just five months after announcing …

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Financial Times:
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Earlier Picks

Aaron Tilley / Wall Street Journal:
CoinDesk:
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Erik Schatzker / Bloomberg: