Techmeme
March 30, 2023, 4:55 PM

Top News

New York Times:
Document: Twitter plans to exempt its top 500 advertisers and 10K most-followed, previously verified organizations from paying $1,000 per 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 …
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 …
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.
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:
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.
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
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:
Invite-only Twitter alternative T2 plans to let Twitter users who are about to lose their checkmark on April 1 to carry over the verification to its service  —  With Elon Musk set to pull verification from thousands of users who were verified under the company's previous leadership …
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.

Sponsor Posts

ElevenLabs:
ElevenAgents by ElevenLabs  —  You know us for voice.  Now meet ElevenAgents — featuring Expressive Mode, our most human-sounding AI voice technology in 70+ languages with ultra-low latency.  Hear it for yourself.
Intel:
5G's most deployed platform  —  Powering live networks with built-in Inference across Core and RAN.  That's the power of Intel Inside®
Zoho:
Introducing Leaderboard in Zoho Publish  —  Managing one business location is straightforward.  Managing ten, fifty, or hundreds?  That's where clarity disappears.When multiple locations operate under the same brand or business …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
Why OpenAI Killed Sora, Did Apple Just Save Siri?, Meta's Big Loss
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Hard Fork:
The Ezra Klein Show: How Fast Will A.I. Agents Rip Through the Economy?
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Great Chat:
Bubble talk
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Access:
AI takes over meetings, the SF vs London tech scene, and ethics in media
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Harvey's Winston Weinberg: From Law Associate To $11 Billion Legal AI Startup CEO
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Everybody Goes Home: How technology is helping prevent wildfires from spreading
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:55 PM ET, March 30, 2023.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Alyssa Meyers / Marketing Brew:
Emma Roth / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

James Reddick / The Record:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: