Weekend Tech Innovation Roundup February 03, 2024

You want your lawyer to be on your side. The more passionate they are, the better. If they’re so passionate they can’t control their emotions, though, you might be in trouble. That’s exactly what happened to Elon Musk in a recent court case. Todd Maron, former General Counsel for Tesla and the billionaire’s former divorce attorney, broke down crying over his love for Elon during a deposition about how much the billionaire got paid. - Thomas Germain / Gizmodo Read More

Last week, explicit AI-generated photos of Taylor Swift flooded X, marking the latest high-profile deepfakes and highlighting the challenge of stopping them. - Michelle Cheng Read More

Despite Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, reporting strong quarterly revenue and profit on Tuesday, the search engine and online ad giant remains focused on cutting costs. - Bruce Gil Read More

Ad-free streaming services are officially a thing of the past. Amazon injected Prime Video’s movies and TV shows with ads on Monday. The company is asking users to pay an additional $3 a month to keep Prime Video ad-free, on top of the $139 a year members already pay for Amazon Prime. - Maxwell Zeff / Gizmodo Read More

Amazon stock jumped over 8% on Thursday during extended hours trading after the company reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings.

In a company statement, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy attributed the company’s strong quarterly performance to a “record-breaking holiday shopping season.”

Amazon customers bought more items on the site this past holiday season than during any previous one, according to the company. Customers bought more than 1 billion items alone during Amazon’s 11-day Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales event. - Bruce Gil Read More

After months of waiting, OpenAI finally launched its GPT Store, where paying subscribers can now access a library of custom AI chatbots. The store promotes some practical, helpful AI tools up front, but there are some deeply strange GPTs lurking in corners of the store. Gizmodo ventured into those dark, musty corners and compiled a list of the strangest GPTs we’ve come across, and now I’m questioning AI altogether. - Maxwell Zeff / Gizmodo Read More

When it comes to venture capital for computer chips, the gap between the US and China has never been wider.

In 2023, the US’s share of global semiconductor startup funding was just 11%, versus 75% for China, according to a recent report from PitchBook, a market research firm. PitchBook defines semiconductor startups as companies working on chip design and manufacturing as well as production and equipment.   - Michelle Cheng Read More

Nvidia—which roughly translates to “envy” in Latin—has been having its AI moment. The chip maker’s stock is up almost 30% year-to-date, closing at $624.65 on Monday, Jan. 29. - Michelle Cheng Read More

Elon Musk says that the first person has received a neural implant from his controversial brain chip startup Neuralink. Musk revealed the information in a tweet posted on his social media platform, X (formerly Twitter). The tweet reads merely: - Lucas Ropek / Gizmodo Read More

The race to implant smartphone technology directly into your brain stem heated up when Neuralink implanted a chip into its first human brain on Sunday. To rival this new step in technology, China set a timeline to develop its own “brain-computer interface” on Monday with products arriving as early as 2025. - Maxwell Zeff / Gizmodo Read More