Browsing: Breaking Tech

Apple is cutting the daily amount its engineering teams can spend on AI, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. It’s a big change for a company that has worked to integrate the technology into its engineering processes.

The Nov. 3 midterm results gave Democrats full control of Congress, setting the stage for what could be one of the most divided U.S. governments this decade, with Republicans in the White House. 

Pangram, maker of a widely used tool for detecting AI-generated text, released new tools for flagging AI-generated image and video slop.

I’m a longtime Chrome user, but I’ve never been a fan of the browser’s user settings menu, which has grown into a dense collection of nesting submenus that can be difficult to navigate. That may be changing soon.

More than 30 million power users are paying for one of Snap’s subscription plans, including Snapchat+ and its ad-free “platinum” tier. The company announced the milestone as part of its third-quarter earnings, saying that its non-advertising “other” revenue grew 84 percent compared with last year.

Political groups both supporting and opposing the AI industry spent millions of dollars trying to influence Tuesday’s midterm elections and shape the future of AI regulation. That spending produced mixed results, with some of the most heavily backed candidates losing their races. 

Nothing, the smartphone startup behind the distinctive Nothing Phone, is working on an AI product, but what it is remains unclear.

Very few people are using personal AI agents to order Ubers, apparently. On the transportation giant’s third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, the company said that only four rides were ordered through an AI agent during its busiest week in October: the week of Halloween.

OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane thinks the 2028 presidential election could be a defining moment for AI. And he wants politicians to start developing policies that address Americans’ concerns about the technology, rather than simply paying lip service to anti-AI sentiment and the backlash against data centers. 

Web host DreamHost has confirmed that hackers stole customer emails and credentials during a months-long cyberattack on its systems. DreamHost disclosed the breach last Thursday after it sparked an outagethat spanned several days, during which it reset some customer passwords.