Saturday, May 18, 2024

Welcome back to TechCrunch’s Week in Review.

This week had two major events from OpenAI and Google. OpenAI’s spring update event saw the reveal of its new model, GPT-4o, which has voice and vision capabilities that can turn ChatGPT into a virtual assistant seemingly aspiring to be "Her." Hot off OpenAI’s tail, Google’s I/O conference featured a smattering of announcements and integrations for its flagship model, Gemini.

This week also saw some major shake-ups at AWS and OpenAI. AWS CEO Adam Selipsky is stepping down and will be replaced by AWS sales chief Matt Garman. And OpenAI co-founder and longtime chief scientist Ilya Sutskever has departed the company along with Jan Leike. Sutskever will be replaced by Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI’s director of research.

There was also a significant shift at Meta. TechCrunch exclusively reported that the company is shutting down its enterprise communications business, Workplace. It makes us wonder if Meta was ever really serious about its enterprise ambitions.

News

Image Credits: Google

120+ AI mentions: How much AI is too much AI? For Google, none. They mentioned it nonstop throughout their I/O keynote, and we have the tapes to prove it. Read More

Talk to me, ChatGPT: OpenAI’s latest “omni” model GPT-4o can talk to you, change its tone to sarcastic, and even do real-time language translation. It also sounds suspiciously like Scarlett Johansson. Read More

Microsoft’s Cobalt 100 chips: TechCrunch has learned that the company will launch its custom Cobalt 100 chips to customers as a public preview at its Build conference next week. And we discovered some other scoops, too 👀 Read More

Sony Music cracks down on AI: Sony Music Group has sent letters to more than 700 tech companies and music streaming services to warn them not to use its music to train AI without permission. Sony Music says it has “reason to believe” those companies “may already have made unauthorized uses” of its content. Read More

SIM swap attacks: Since mid-2023, an interception operation called Estate enabled hundreds of members to carry out thousands of automated phone calls to trick victims into entering one-time passcodes, which gives attackers access to their bank accounts. Read More

Project IDX is now in open beta: Announced at Google I/O, the company’s next-gen, AI-centric browser-based development environment is now in open beta. Google says that more than 100,000 developers already tried the service. Read More

AI to save the birds: Wind is the largest source of renewable energy in the U.S., but wind turbines can wreak havoc on bird populations. Spoor is a startup using AI to help wind farms mitigate that risk. Read More

Apple expands accessibility: Apple is bringing new accessibility features to iPads and iPhones — including the ability to control your device with eye-tracking, create custom shortcuts using your voice, and experience music with a haptic engine. Read More

ThreadsDeck?: Instagram Threads is testing pinned columns on the web, which could be a good replacement for TweetDeck. In 2023, X turned TweetDeck into X Pro and put it behind a paywall. Read More

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Analysis

Did Meta give enterprise a fair shot?: Meta pulled the plug on its enterprise product Workday on Tuesday, bringing the curtain down on the enterprise experiment nine years after it launched. Ron Miller writes that it’s fair to wonder if Meta was ever serious about it. Read More

Mark Zuckerberg, style icon: Recent photos of the Meta CEO have gone viral as users noticed a sudden shift in his personal style. Gone are the gray shirts and jeans, replaced by gold chains and graphic tees. Amanda Silberling explores whether his newfound makeover is a carefully crafted rebrand. Read More

Tesla’s Supercharger is in limbo: Despite being the undisputed king of EV fast charging — and being profitable — Tesla CEO Elon Musk axed the entire Supercharger division. Tim De Chant investigates how the network came to be and what's next now that it’s in limbo. Read More