Techmeme
May 21, 2024, 5:45 PM

Top News

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Microsoft launches Copilot Extension for GitHub, letting developers build third-party skills into Copilot, starting with DataStax, Stripe, MongoDB, and more  —  Build is Microsoft's largest developer conference and of course, it's all about AI this year.  So it's no surprise that GitHub's Copilot …
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Microsoft announces the developer preview of Windows Volumetric Apps, giving access to an API that lets devs put Windows apps in 3D space on Meta Quest headsets  —  You can already beam your flat Windows desktop and its VR games onto your Meta Quest headset — but what if Windows could send HoloLens …
Kevin Okemwa / Windows Central:
Ken Yeung / VentureBeat:
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Bloomberg:
Sources: in the event that China invades Taiwan, ASML and TSMC have ways to disable their sophisticated chipmaking machines; ASML reassured Dutch officials  —  - Firms can remotely shut off advanced EUV chip-making machines  — US officials concerned over risk of conflict to chip industry
Kat Tenbarge / NBC News:
Scarlett Johansson says she declined OpenAI's ChatGPT voice offer and was “shocked, angered” that Sam Altman would pursue Sky, a voice “eerily similar” to hers  —  The “Her” actor released a statement following OpenAI pulling its “Sky” voice from ChatGPT, which many people said sounded like her.
More: NPR, Platformer, The Verge, CNN, Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At, GeekWire, Benzinga, PYMNTS.com, Forbes, RTÉ, Business Insider, The Wrap, BGR, Reuters, Washington Post, Wired, CNBC, Digital Music News, Global News, DataBreachToday.com, Tech Startups, iPhone in Canada Blog, Hollywood Life, The Hill, Tech Xplore, Tom's Guide, TechCircle, Vanity Fair, Proactive, PC Gamer, and New York Times
LinkedIn: Mark Humphrey and David Deal
Bloomberg:
Paresh Dave / Wired:
Google plans to test search and shopping ads in its AI Overviews, drawing from advertisers' existing campaigns; AI Overviews rolled out to US users last week  —  Google is set to start mixing ads into its new AI-generated search answers.  It's a test of how the company's biggest revenue stream can adapt to the age of generative AI.
Bradley Keoun / CoinDesk:
Farcaster, a blockchain-based social media project built on Ethereum, raised $150M in a round led by Paradigm and says it has 350K paid sign-ups  —  Dan Romero's Farcaster made waves earlier this year with the introduction of “Frames,” a feature allowing apps to run within posts, so users don't have to click off to another site.
Steven Levy / Wired:
Anthropic researchers detail attempts to peer inside the “black box” of LLMs, learning which combinations of neurons evoke specific concepts  —  What goes on in artificial neural networks work is largely a mystery, even to their creators.  But researchers from Anthropic have caught a glimpse.
Glenn Rifkin / New York Times:
Gordon Bell, who helped design several influential minicomputers at Digital Equipment Corporation, including the 12-bit PDP-8, died on May 17 at age 89  —  It cost $18,000 when it was introduced in 1965, but it bridged the world between room-size mainframes and the modern desktop.
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
Generative AI music startup Suno raised $125M from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, Matrix, Founder Collective, and others  —  Suno, a trailblazing music AI startup, announced today that it has raised a staggering $125 million in its latest funding round …
Financial Times:
AI data labeling startup Scale AI raised $1B led by Accel at a ~$14B valuation, up from $7.3B in April 2021; a source says Scale AI had ~$700M in 2023 revenue  —  Alexandr Wang's company brings in $1bn in latest fundraising round as investors bet that data is the new oil
Kris Holt / Engadget:
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Adobe adds generative AI tools to Lightroom, including Firefly-powered Generative Remove to let users “paint” over unwanted objects, available in early access  —  Adobe is adding some new generative AI tools to Lightroom that aim to make the photo editing platform easier to use …
Joyce Lee / Reuters:
Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Amazon, IBM, and 10 other companies commit to safe AI development at the AI Seoul Summit 2024, hosted by South Korea and the UK  —  Sixteen companies involved in AI including Alphabet's Google (GOOGL.O), Meta (META.O), Microsoft (MSFT.O) and OpenAI …
Financial Times:
AWS says it has “fully transitioned” its previous orders for Nvidia's Grace Hopper chips to the successor Grace Blackwell chips, announced in March 2024  —  Delay from the world's biggest cloud computing provider gives investors jitters over potential ‘air pocket’ in demand for AI chips
Jeff John Roberts / Fortune:
Tech Against Scams, a coalition to fight “pig butchering” ploys with better industry coordination, launches with Meta, Coinbase, Match, Kraken, others on board  —  Bad people who prey on those looking for love, or hoping to make a quick buck, have been around since biblical times.

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