What to expect from Amazon earnings | New nonprofit plans political deepfake detector

Political disinformation wasn’t on Oren Etzioni’s personal to-do list of AI problems to solve until he participated in a meeting with President Biden and other tech leaders last summer. But the University of Washington professor and former Allen Institute for AI CEO came out of that session with a new calling. Etzioni is leading a new, nonpartisan nonprofit called TrueMedia, backed by Uber co-founder Garrett Camp, that is developing an AI tool to detect deepfake videos, photos, and audio. Here’s how TrueMedia plans to address the problem. 

• Related story: The impact of AI and deepfakes on politics is worrying misinformation researchers

Xbox is bigger than Windows. No, this isn’t some alternative technology universe, it’s the reality in Redmond after the acquisition of video-game giant Activision Blizzard added more than $2 billion in quarterly revenue to the Microsoft Gaming business. See the numbers for yourself in our fancy chart above, and catch up on Microsoft’s earnings in this recap.  

• More from Microsoft’s earnings: The company added 12,000 employees last quarter, according to our calculations, based on comments from Microsoft CFO Amy Hood. But again, that was due to Activision. And it was before the recent cuts.

• Did you catch Satya Nadella on NBC Nightly News? That was just part of the interview. Extended clips with Lester Holt and the Microsoft CEO can be seen here and here – including Nadella declining to say if Russian hackers infiltrated his email.

• And speaking of Microsoft history, we recently resurrected a classic GeekWire Podcast episode, featuring members of the original Excel team, from the purgatory of our external backup drive at the urging of a tech history aficionado. You can listen here.

Amazon earnings preview: Analysts will be watching growth rates from the company’s cloud and advertising businesses; potential impact from faster shipping times; and updates related to generative AI, which was the big theme at the AWS re:Invent conference in November. Read more.

Block layoffs hit workers in Washington: The fintech company co-founded by Jack Dorsey is laying off 43 workers in the state as part of deeper cuts at the Square and Cash App parent. Read more.

• Layoff tracker: GeekWire’s list of tech job cuts in the Pacific Northwest.