Those looking for a job with beer giant Heineken now have a new guide to fielding recruitment questions. Its name is Charlie, a friendly digital persona in a brand-green polo with a lifelike appearance that nevertheless situates it somewhere in the uncanny valley.

Other members of Charlie’s virtual cohort direct lost passengers from kiosks at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport or answer wellness questions on behalf of the World Health Organization.

These “digital humans” are the product of New Zealand-based Soul Machines, which aims to merge lifelike graphics with artificial intelligence to create representatives for businesses and celebrities. It’s one of a handful of startups aiming to put a face on the latest AI advances—no matter how eerie some may find the virtual visages.

While the idea for these kinds of virtual humans has persisted for at least a few years now, Soul Machines co-founder and CEO Greg Cross hopes the newfound hype around large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT will help breathe new life into the concept.

Keep reading here.—PK

Car motors are costly, overweight, and, quite frankly, gas guzzlers. With the increasing cost of fuel and a dire need for efficiency, this industry is running on empty. It needs progress, improvement, and innovation.

Meet LiquidPiston’s X-Engine. Up to 10x smaller and lighter than a conventional engine, the X-Engine provides a cheaper, highly efficient, more accessible hybrid-power solution with the capacity to run on hydrogen (a fuel that’s essentially free of carbon emissions, btw).

LiquidPiston is revolutionizing the core principles of engine technology, and this tech is catching eyes—and contracts. In fact, the Army, the Air Force, and DARPA have already locked in $30m in R&D contracts.

They’ve just announced their most advanced model variation yet, the XTS-210. This is a supercharged, liquid-cooled engine being designed to meet demanding commercial and military applications. There’s nothing antiquated about that potential.

Become a shareholder.

Generative AI was the indisputable star of the show as tech giants announced their quarterly earnings this week.

Results from Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta beat analyst expectations across the board, painting a rosy picture for the first quarter after months of layoffs and slashed spending. The debriefs were also the first since the arms race over a new wave of AI breakthroughs ramped up in earnest following the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Keep reading here.—PK

Microsoft’s plan to acquire Activision Blizzard for nearly $69 billion has hit a snag: The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) blocked the deal, which would be the largest in gaming history and place Microsoft over Nintendo to make it the third-largest gaming company in the world, the company has said.

Microsoft has already said it plans to appeal the ruling.

The CMA’s reasoning for blocking the deal had less to do with concerns surrounding Activision’s perennially successful Call of Duty franchise than with Microsoft’s hold on the cloud gaming market.

Microsoft has made a concerted effort to extend its gaming services beyond the Xbox, offering its titles on other operating systems while striking deals with publishers and developers to offer its games on their platforms. It appears this didn’t assuage the CMA’s concerns.

Keep reading here.—JM

Stat: 7%–8%. That’s Netflix’s share of TV viewing every month, according to Nielsen. “No other service, besides YouTube, tops 4%. People spend more time watching Netflix every month than Hulu, Disney+ and HBO Max combined,” Bloomberg noted.

Quote: “Given the emergence of so many different AI players and platforms, we need a public gatekeeper. With an effective regulatory framework, enforced by a new federal oversight body, we would be able to investigate new AI models, stress-test them for worst-case scenarios and determine whether they are safe for use in the wild.”—Chamath Palihapitiya, the founder and CEO of Social Capital, in an op-ed in The Information arguing for federal oversight of AI technology.

Read: Chatbots sound like they’re posting on LinkedIn (The Atlantic)

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Usually, we write about the business of tech. Here, we highlight the *tech* of tech.

Appmospheric conditions: After Apple killed Dark Sky and its API earlier this year, and after its Weather app sputtered in April, competitors jumped at the chance to take advantage of the snafu, The Verge reported. Whether you’re a weather nerd who wants to geek out on the stats or just someone who wants to know the rough temperature and precipitation situation, there are alternatives.

Work from wherever: We’re a remote-first shop here at Morning Brew, so when The Information rounded up the best tech for the nomadic workers among us, we were quick to click.

Three of the following news stories are true, and one...we made up. Can you spot the odd one out?

• The US Supreme Court is considering whether it’s constitutional for government officials to tap the Block button on social media.
• A free app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology can identify over 6,000 bird species by a picture or the sound the bird makes.
• Speaking of birds, NBCUniversal announced plans to rename its Peacock streaming service. The rebranded bank of shows will be dubbed NBC+.
• The Twitter accounts of deceased celebrities—including Chadwick Boseman, Barbara Walters, and Kobe Bryant—subscribed to Twitter Blue from beyond the grave.

Catch up on the top Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• Adobe-led Content Authenticity Initiative aims to verify images are real
• Apple makes further foray into fintech with high-yield savings offering
• CEOs from Lynk and Orbital Sidekick detail what it took to get their ideas into orbit