This week was a mixed bag for the tech industry.
The AI talent shortage continues to challenge companies, and Meta $META was put on blast for advertising AI “girlfriend” chatbots in violation of its own policy. Google $GOOGL laid off 200 employees, and Meta’s Oversight Board is planning job cuts. But those reductions aren’t a sign of struggle. Google’s profits have surged, and Meta’s stock price is up 85% from last year.
Apple $AAPL also had a good week. While the company reported weaker iPhone sales, its second-quarter earnings beat expectations. And the company’s stock price surged as investors cheered the company’s approval of its largest-ever $110 billion stock buybacks.
Google and the Department of Justice are also presenting their closing arguments in a landmark antitrust trial, which is said to be the biggest of the 21st century.
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Meta $META’s Oversight Board is planning job cuts, The Washington Post reported Monday, citing anonymous sources.
The Oversight Board is a Meta-funded, independent group of experts who help decide whether controversial content should be banned from Facebook and Instagram. Basically, users report posts for being violent, sexually explicit, hateful, or other controversial attributes, and the board is responsible for determining whether those posts stay or go. But the board has been scrutinized for being too slow — taking months to decide whether they’ll take a case and more months to make a decision. In one quarter in 2022, the group took on only three of 347,000 cases submitted by users, The Verge reported. Some critics also say the board has too-limited authority to make substantial decisions for Meta.
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Facebook $META, Instagram, and Messenger host thousands of advertisements for sexually explicit AI “girlfriend” chatbots, according to a new report. The generative artificial intelligence chatbots engage with users and generate images and suggestive texts. They also collect a lot of user data.
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Despite publicly distancing himself from the company he founded, Bill Gates has quietly remained active behind the scenes of Microsoft $MSFT’s artificial intelligence strategy and company operations, according to a new report.
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Chinese smartphone-maker Huawei reported a rise in profit for the fourth consecutive quarter, outpacing its rival Apple $AAPL, and showing its resilience against U.S. sanctions.
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AI has been a big boon for the electronics giant Samsung this year — something the company expects to continue throughout 2024. In a new earnings release, the South Korean company’s chip division saw its operating profit more than triple to 1.9 trillion won ($1.4 billion) during the first quarter from last year.
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Unlike other parts of the tech industry, the artificial intelligence sector is struggling to find the right recruits, and now a major tech company is asking the U.S. government to update its immigration policies to not lose out on AI talent.
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Microsoft $MSFT’s multi-year, multi-billion dollar partnership with OpenAI likely came out of a fear of Google $GOOGL dominating the AI race, an email shows.
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Google $GOOGL laid off at least 200 staffers on its “Core” team in California, CNBC reported Wednesday. Some of those jobs are relocating to its offices in India and Mexico, the outlet said.
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Amazon $AMZN CEO Andy Jassy had a lot to say about his employees’ efforts to unionize in 2022. But those comments, made casually to media outlets, violated federal labor laws, a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) judge ruled this week.
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Google $GOOGL and the Department of Justice are presenting their closing arguments in the biggest antitrust trial of the 21st century this Thursday and Friday.
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Starlink satellite internet terminals are reportedly still operating in unlicensed places, despite the company’s warning last month that the service would be shut down by May 1 in those areas.
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Despite being on the U.S. trade blacklist since 2019, Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei has secretly been the sole funder of a research competition involving U.S. universities that is administered by a Washington, D.C.-based foundation, a report found.
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Apple $AAPL’s approval of its biggest-ever, $110 billion stock buyback has investors very excited — so excited that they’re willing to overlook its weak iPhone sales. Immediately following Apple’s announcement of the share repurchases in its fiscal second quarter earnings report, its stock price surged 8% in after-hours trading.
