AI-generated charts top, Apple gets the savings, Microsoft ditches Twitter

Image credits: Indranil Aditya/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Hey, friends, and welcome to the latest issue of Week in Review (WiR), our weekly newsletter where we recap the past several days (or so) in tech news. We’d argue there’s no better way to fix your news, but we’d be biased. Still! Trust us when we say it’s a labor of love.

Before we get to this week’s action, don’t forget that Disrupt, TechCrunch’s flagship annual conference, is on the horizon. This year’s Disrupt will host six — that’s right, six — stand-alone industry TC sessions, with stages featuring industry-specific programming tracks. Well worth the trip to San Francisco.

Ahead, the upcoming TechCrunch Live session with SignalFire and ClassDojo. They will discuss ClassDojo’s mission to revolutionize education by building the classroom community.

Now, without further ado!

most read

fake drake: A song featuring the voices of Drake and The Weeknd called “Heart on My Sleeve” has amassed over 250,000 Spotify streams and 10 million views on TikTok. But the two musicians had nothing to do with the song – an artist called “Ghostwriter” produced the song using artificial intelligence. Amanda He has the story.

Apple saves: Starting this week, Apple Card customers in the US can open a savings account with Apple and earn up to 4.15% interest. Apple partnered with Goldman Sachs for the banking feature; The savings accounts are technically managed by Goldman Sachs, which means they are covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Roman reports.

Apple Thinks Open: Apple has kept the iPhone app distribution system relatively closed until now, allowing users to only download apps from the App Store. But the company may add some gates to its walled garden soon. Ivan Reports indicate that Apple is considering allowing people to sideload apps on iPhones and that we may see some announcements related to that at the upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference in June.

Huge update for the Apple Watch: The Apple Watch software is set to get its biggest update since its release. pleasantQuoted from Bloomberg a reportwrites that the updated watchOS 10 will “bring even bigger improvements” than the planned versions for iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple TV, including an “updated interface” that will tell you “most of what you need to know about the Apple Watch in 2023.”

Love is blind, but sometimes it cancels: Netflix ran into some serious issues with the live-streaming of the “Love Is Blind” reunion episode, Amanda He writes. After a 75-minute delay, the streaming service pulled the show from the live show due to seemingly unsolvable technical issues.

Microsoft drops Twitter: Microsoft announced this week that it dropped Twitter from its advertising platform nearly two months after Twitter announced that it would begin charging users of its API at least $42,000 per month. With a market cap of $2.15 trillion and nearly $100 billion in cash at the end of last year, Microsoft clearly has the money to pay Twitter what it wants, so the move seems like a statement — even as Microsoft declined more details about its decision.

Meta puts more workers: Meta issued another round of mass layoffs this week, Rebecca reports. They’re part of the 10,000 layoffs CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in March, many of them related to “low priority projects.” The mass job cuts are part of a broader restructuring at Meta that Zuckerberg called “the year of efficiency,” which began with an announcement of 11,000 layoffs in November.

Check-in kiosks are no longer: Alaska Airlines It recently began a three-year, $2.5 billion project to improve the airport experience in its hubs and focus cities like Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles. As part of the project, the airline is looking to modernize the lounge experience – and as the company announced today, the most noticeable change here will be the removal of the good old check-in kiosk, Frederick He writes.

Snapchat’s AI Comes to Everyone: Opening up to a global audience, Snapchat’s AI chatbot announced at the Snap Partner Summit this week. Initially launched in February, the feature originally allowed paid Snapchat subscribers to chat with an AI chatbot powered by OpenAI’s GPT technology directly in the app. Now it will be available for free and upgraded with functionality like the ability to add a chatbot to group chats, get recommendations for places on Snap Map and Lenses, and share Snaps with the chatbot to receive chat responses. pleasant he has more.

Tesla cuts prices: Tesla lowered the price of its Model 3 and Y electric cars for the second time this month. The most popular Tesla models will now start at less than $40,000 before incentives.

My voice

Looking for a podcast to pass the time? TechCrunch has you covered, as always. this week , justice The staff taped at the early stage, TechCrunch event for founders, and covered topics ranging from rockets to profits and how a particular company cuts costs. in more than is foundTrevor Martin, co-founder of Mammoth Biosciences, to discuss how the company is using CRISPR systems to detect and treat genetic diseases. chain reaction Interviewed by Jesse Pollack, Base Administrator and Head of Protocols at Coinbase. And on the latest Techcrunch Live In the episode, Mark Patsian, co-founder and partner at Inspired Capital, and Brian McNulty Rojas, co-founder and CEO of Happy — the Columbia real estate startup that reached unicorn status last year — talk about their own experiences. in technology.

Techcrunch +

TC+ subscribers get access to in-depth comments, analysis, and polls – which you know if you’re already a subscriber. If you aren’t, consider subscribing. Here are some highlights from this week:

Photonics and artificial intelligence: The increased computing power needed to train cutting-edge AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT may eventually clash with mainstream chip technologies. Are photonic-based chips, otherwise known as photonics chips, the answer? Perhaps, but it is not yet clear.

There is always money in the coffee stand: Blank Street claims to have cracked the code on how to create a chain of more than 65 physical coffee shops that have the right metrics to attract venture capitalists. It recently closed a $20 million Series B round in a year where fundraising has fallen — even for companies with lower overhead costs. Rebecca He has the story.

Should you launch an AI startup?: This seems to be the best of times for founders considering launching an AI startup, especially with OpenAI ChatGPT being released to the masses. But it could be the opposite, depending on which investors you ask. Ron He tries to get to the bottom of it.