Techmeme
March 30, 2023, 4:40 PM

Top News

New York Times:
Document: Twitter plans to exempt its top 500 advertisers and 10K most-followed orgs that have been previously verified from paying $1K/month for a checkmark  —  Mr. Musk requested a meeting with Lina Khan, the chair of the F.T.C., which has been investigating Twitter's privacy and data practices.
Bloomberg:
Oliver Darcy / @oliverdarcy:
Chloe Xiang / VICE:
Some signatories of the open letter to pause AI training walk back their positions, others turn out to be fake, and many experts disagree with its proposal  —  The letter has been signed by Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Andrew Yang, and leading AI researchers, but many experts and even signatories disagreed.
Matt Novak / Forbes:
As his companies lag OpenAI, Elon Musk tries to launder his AI “concerns” through the Future of Life Institute, which is primarily funded by the Musk Foundation  —  Elon Musk signed an open letter on Tuesday calling for a six-month pause in the development of artificial intelligence tools …
Washington Post:
Midjourney ends free trials, citing “extraordinary demand” and “abuse”, after fake images of Trump getting arrested and Pope Francis wearing a coat went viral  —  Midjourney, the year-old firm behind recent fake visuals of Trump and the pope, illustrates the lack …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Microsoft is exploring new ad experiences in Bing Chat, like citations, and sharing ad revenue with “partners whose content contributed to the chat response”  —  It was inevitable, but Microsoft has confirmed that more ads are coming to Bing's AI-powered chatbot.
Hartley Charlton / MacRumors:
Kuo: Apple's MR headset may not appear at WWDC 2023, as the company pushed back mass production to Q3 amid doubts about the device creating an “iPhone moment”  —  Apple has again pushed back mass production of its mixed-reality headset and the device may not appear …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: to comply with EU privacy rulings, Meta plans to let users opt out of some highly personalized ads via an online form that Meta must review and approve  —  Facebook, Instagram parent hopes plans to alter a privacy approach that would limit the impact from EU orders
Financial Times:
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Researchers say hackers have compromised the VoIP desktop client of 3CX's Phone System, used by 600K+ companies and 12M+ DAUs, in an ongoing supply chain attack  —  A digitally signed and trojanized version of the 3CX Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) desktop client is reportedly being used …
Jon Victor / The Information:
The Guardian:
Leaked documents from Moscow-based NTC Vulkan reveal the company helps the GRU, FSB, and SVR with hacking operations, national infrastructure attacks, and more  —  Documents leaked by whistleblower angry over Ukraine war  —  Private Moscow consultancy bolstering Russian cyberwarfare
Futurism:
BuzzFeed quietly started publishing fully AI-generated SEO-driven travel posts by non-editorial staff on March 14; a spokesperson calls the posts an experiment  —  Earlier this year, when BuzzFeed announced plans to start publishing AI-assisted content, its CEO Jonah Peretti promised the tech would be held to a high standard.
Jonathan Greig / The Record:
Google's Threat Analysis Group details two “limited and highly targeted” spyware campaigns using several zero-day exploits for Android, iOS, and mobile Chrome  —  Two targeted spyware campaigns involving several zero-day exploits for Android, iOS and mobile versions of the Chrome browser …
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
An AI tech ethics group asks the FTC to investigate OpenAI, saying its AI text generation tool rollout has been “biased, deceptive, and a risk to public safety”  —  An artificial intelligence-focused tech ethics group has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate OpenAI …
Karissa Bell / Engadget:
Reed Albergotti / Semafor:
Q&A with Vinod Khosla on how AI could “free humanity from the need to work”, seeing the AI future early, his OpenAI investment, AI and geopolitics, and more  —  At nearly 70, Vinod Khosla is an elder statesman in Silicon Valley but he's been on top of the most cutting-edge trends, including artificial intelligence.

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Earlier Picks

James Reddick / The Record:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Meghan Bobrowsky / Wall Street Journal: