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Techmeme

ChatGPT integration in Apple's Xcode 26 beta 7 defaults to GPT-5; developers can now also use Claude Sonnet 4 by signing into their paid Claude account (Chance Miller/9to5Mac)

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Sources: Meta Superintelligence Labs' leaders have discussed using Google or OpenAI's models to power Meta AI and other AI features in Meta's social media apps (The Information)

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Filing: Intel says its funding deal with the US loosens its requirements under the CHIPS Act, including removing the need to meet certain project milestones (Katherine Hamilton/Wall Street Journal)

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Top 100 AI consumer apps: Gemini ranks #2 behind ChatGPT on mobile with ~50% of its MAUs, with Grok at #4; on the web, Gemini has ~12% of ChatGPT's visits (Andreessen Horowitz)

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The Ethereum Foundation pauses its grants program, which awarded $3M+ to 100+ projects since 2018, to rethink its spending strategy and reduce its burn rate (Daniel Kuhn/The Block)

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Meta created and let users create flirty chatbots and intimate images using the names and likenesses of Taylor Swift and other celebs without their permission (Jeff Horwitz/Reuters)

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The FCC rejects a proposal by broadcasters and others to impose cable-style regulatory fees on streaming services, tech companies, and pure broadband providers (Matthew Keys/TheDesk.net)

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WhatsApp fixed a zero-click bug in its iOS and Mac apps that was being used, alongside a now-fixed Apple flaw, to hack into devices of "specific targeted users" (Zack Whittaker/TechCrunch)

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Taco Bell, which deployed voice AI-powered ordering at 500+ drive-through locations, is now reconsidering the tech after viral videos of glitches and pranks (Isabelle Bousquette/Wall Street Journal)

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Sources: Google is set to face a modest EU antitrust fine over adtech practices, in an investigation triggered by a complaint by the European Publishers Council (Foo Yun Chee/Reuters)

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Flip, a TikTok rival that let shoppers post video reviews and earn cash based on engagement, has shut down; it had raised $300M and was valued at $1B+ in 2024 (Ann Gehan/The Information)

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California Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers strike a deal with Uber and Lyft allowing drivers to unionize while remaining classified as independent contractors (Los Angeles Times)

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xAI sues a former employee in federal court in California for allegedly stealing Grok trade secrets and taking them to OpenAI, where he recently accepted a job (Blake Brittain/Reuters)

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Meta is updating how it trains AI chatbots to prioritize teen safety and will limit teen access to certain characters, as it works on long-term safety updates (Maxwell Zeff/TechCrunch)

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Mastodon says it does not "have the means to apply age verification" to its services and it's up to server admins to observe local laws in places they operate (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

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French President Emmanuel Macron vows a strong response if any country takes measures that undermine Europe's digital sovereignty (Richard Bravo/Bloomberg)

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Perplexity's head of advertising and shopping Taz Patel has left after nine months; its ad business reportedly generated only about $20,000 in Q4 2024 (Trishla Ostwal/Adweek)

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Valve adds credit card-based age checks for UK users to access "mature content" games on Steam; Discord and others are using selfies for verification (Tom Warren/The Verge)

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FriendliAI, which invented "continuous batching" to optimize dynamic and uneven LLM inference traffic, raised a $20M extension to its $6M seed from 2021 (Judy Rider/Crunchbase News)

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The US makes it harder for Samsung, SK Hynix, and Intel to produce chips in China by revoking waivers for the use of US equipment in their Chinese operations (Karen Freifeld/Reuters)

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Sources: the US government restored xAI to its vendors list after removing it for Grok's antisemitic content; email: the White House asked GSA to add xAI "ASAP" (Zoë Schiffer/Wired)

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EU competition commissioner Teresa Ribera says the EU must be ready to walk away from the US trade deal if the US demands a watered-down DSA and DMA (Financial Times)

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Reliance launches a subsidiary called Reliance Intelligence, aiming to create national-scale AI infrastructure in India, in partnership with Google and Meta (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)

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Sources: DeepSeek plans to use Huawei's Ascend AI chips to train smaller versions of its upcoming R2 models but will still use Nvidia chips for largest models (The Information)

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A judge rules Nvidia must face trial over allegations that it benefitted from autonomous driving data stolen by an engineer who defected from Valeo in 2021 (Robert Burnson/Bloomberg)

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In a trial over a fatal Autopilot crash, Tesla denied having crash-snapshot data, until a hacker hired by the plaintiffs recovered the data from the vehicle (Washington Post)

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Sources: Alibaba developed a new AI inference chip to compete with H20; it is manufactured by a Chinese company unlike an earlier AI chip made by TSMC (Wall Street Journal)

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Alibaba reports Q1 revenue up 2% YoY to ~$34.6B, below ~$35.4B est., and net income up 76% to ~$5.9B, above ~$4B est., as AI demand drives cloud sales up 26% (Arjun Kharpal/CNBC)

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Sources: ChatGPT co-creator Shengjia Zhao threatened to quit Meta within days of joining and return to OpenAI; later, he was given the chief AI scientist title (Financial Times)

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Huawei reports H1 2025 revenue up 3.9% YoY to ~$58.5B, driven by soaring AI compute demand and a rebound in phone sales, and net profit down 32% YoY to ~$5.2B (Bloomberg)

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India's largest telco Reliance Jio, owned by Asia's richest man Mukesh Ambani, says it aims to list its shares through an IPO in India by the first half of 2026 (Chandini Monnappa/Reuters)

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An investigation finds spammers are deploying Holocaust-themed AI slop images across Facebook, in an attempt to game Meta's content monetization program (BBC)

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Police are investigating a murder-suicide in what appears to be the first documented murder involving someone who engaged extensively with an AI chatbot (Wall Street Journal)

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Elon Musk files a motion to dismiss a US SEC suit over his 2022 Twitter stake disclosure, calling allegations that he cheated investors a government overreach (Nicola M White/Bloomberg)

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Court filing: the UK sought broad access to Apple user data, including bulk iCloud interception beyond ADP, and hasn't dropped the mandate as the US claimed (Financial Times)

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Sources: Pinecone, which provides an AI-compatible vector database, is exploring a sale after receiving takeover interest; Pinecone was valued at $750M in 2023 (The Information)

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Marvell reports Q2 revenue up 58% YoY to $2.01B, in line with estimates, and forecasts Q3 revenue at $2.06B, below $2.11B est.; MRVL drops 11%+ after hours (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE)

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While facial recognition tech remains unregulated at the US federal level, 23 states have passed or expanded laws to restrict mass scraping of biometric data (Bobby Allyn/NPR)

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Autodesk reports Q2 revenue up 17% YoY to $1.76B, vs. $1.73B est., forecasts Q3 revenue above est., and raises its annual forecasts; ADSK jumps 10%+ after hours (Reuters)

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The CFTC says non-US crypto exchanges have a path to bringing on US users, in an advisory clarifying how they can register as so-called foreign boards of trade (Lydia Beyoud/Bloomberg)

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Affirm reports Q4 revenue up 33% YoY to $876.4M, above $837M est., GMV up 43% to $10.4B, and EPS of $0.20, above $0.12 est.; AFRM jumps 13%+ after hours (Katherine Hamilton/Wall Street Journal)

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Dell reports Q2 revenue up 19% YoY to $29.78B, vs. $29.17B est., and forecasts Q3 EPS of $2.45, below $2.55 est.; DELL drops 5%+ after hours (Kif Leswing/CNBC)

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Sources: Meta aims to launch its next-gen Llama AI model, Llama 4.X, by the end of 2025; the TBD team developing Llama 4.X is also trying to fix Llama 4 bugs (Jyoti Mann/Business Insider)

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Filing: credit reporting giant TransUnion discloses a data breach affecting 4.4M+ customers' personal info but claims "no credit information was accessed" (Zack Whittaker/TechCrunch)

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xAI launches Grok Code Fast 1, a "speedy and economical" agentic coding model, available for free for a limited time on GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf, more (Juby Babu/Reuters)

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In a letter, FTC chair Andrew Ferguson warns Google not to filter or suppress emails sent by Republicans over Gmail; Google says its spam filters are not biased (Hans Nichols/Axios)

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Intel CFO says the US deal aims to deter Intel from selling its foundry; it lets the US buy 5% more at $20/share if Intel's stake in the unit falls below 51% (Financial Times)

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Intel CFO David Zinser says the company received $5.7B in cash from the US government on August 27; the White House says the deal is still "being ironed out" (Jonathan Vanian/CNBC)

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InstaLILY, whose industry-specific AI agents called InstaWorkers integrate with legacy systems, raised $25M from Insight Partners (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE)

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Microsoft unveils MAI-Voice-1, a speech model that can generate a full minute of audio in under a second on a single GPU, and a text model called MAI-1-preview (Reed Albergotti/Semafor)

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