Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 05/23 – Shutterstock Nabs Giphy

Episode Date: May 23, 2023

Apple continues to play nice with Broadcom despite hoping to drop them someday. The thing people warned about with these bluechecks happened yesterday. HBOMax isn’t cool. You know what is cool, according to David Zaslov? Max. And how Shareit became the world’s favorite file sharing app. Sponsors: Miro.com/podcast ZocDoc.com/techmeme Links: Apple expands US investment with new multibillion-dollar Broadcom deal for 5G tech (9to5Mac) Verified Twitter Accounts Spread AI-Generated Hoax of Pentagon Explosion (Motherboard) Following UK antitrust order, Meta sells Giphy to Shutterstock for $53M after buying it for $400M (TechCrunch) Max will stream over 1,000 movies and TV episodes in 4K at launch (The Verge) Meta’s new AI models can recognize and produce speech for more than 1,000 languages (MIT Technology Review) Adobe is adding AI image generator Firefly to Photoshop (The Verge) Anthropic raises $450M to build next-gen AI assistants (TechCrunch) How China’s ShareIt became the world’s go-to file-transfer app (Rest of World) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Technique. me right home for Tuesday, May 23, 23. I'm Brian McCullough today. Apple continues to play nice with Broadcom despite hoping to drop them eventually. The thing people warned about with those blue checks

happened yesterday. HBO Max isn't cool. You know what's cool? According to David Zasloff, at least, max. And how share it became the world's favorite file sharing app. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Apple this morning announced a multi-year, multi-billion dollar deal with Broadcom to develop and manufacture 5G and wireless components, including F-Barr filters in the U.S., quoting 9 to 5 Mac. Apple says that it already helps support more than 1,100 jobs at Broadcom's F-Barr Filter Manufacturing Facility in Fort Collins, Colorado. The partnership with Apple will allow Broadcom to, quote, continue to invest in critical automation projects and upskilling with technicians and engineers.

Apple says that this investment is being made as part of the company's 2021 announcement to invest $430 billion in the U.S. economy over five years. As it stands today, Apple says it is, quote, on pace to meet its target through direct spend with American suppliers, data center investments, capital expenditures in the U.S., and other domestic spend. The deal with Broadcom comes as Apple continues to develop its own in-house technology for things like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi components. Doing this will allow Apple to reduce its reliance on components from companies such as Broadcom. Apple, for instance, is reportedly developed. developing a combo Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip that could debut as soon as 2025.

Apple has also been working on its own version of other iPhone components, such as radio frequency chips and wireless charging components, which are currently supplied by Broadcom. Back in 2019, it was rumored that Apple was in the running to acquire Broadcom's radio frequency or RF segment of its wireless chip business. Nothing ultimately came of these rumors, and Broadcom eventually opted not to sell the business, end quote. You might have seen that some blue check Twitter accounts, one pretending to be Bloomberg, spread an AI-generated image of an explosion at the Pentagon yesterday. You might have seen this because the stock market briefly dipped when the image started making the rounds.

This is exactly what people warned could happen when people could just pay for verification on Twitter. Quoting motherboard. On Monday, dozens of verified accounts on Twitter with large following spread misinformation, about an explosion near the Pentagon, tweeting the news alongside what appears to be an AI-generated image. Accounts such as at-war monitors, at Bloomberg feed, and RT posted an image of a large gray smoke cloud appearing next to a white government building with a corresponding caption that stated there was an explosion near the Pentagon. Bellingcat journalist Nick Waters tweeted that there are a few signs that make it an AI image, including that the fence melds into the

crowd barriers on the image, and there are no other images or videos being posted. on social media. This image was quickly retweeted by many different accounts, some crediting Twitter sources as the original source. While some of the accounts that tweeted it out either apologized or deleted the image at Bloomberg feed was suspended, it continued to be shared by accounts that had blue checks thanks to Twitter's pay-to-play verification system. The stock market even briefly dipped due to the fake news. Within an hour of it being circulated, government officials stepped in to clarify that the tweets were fake news. The Arlington Fire and EMS tweeted, There is no explosion or incident taking place at or near the Pentagon Reservation, and there is

no immediate danger or hazards to the public. This writing of this fake news across accounts that have up to a million followers and blue checks raises more alarm bells on how Twitter's current structure as a result of Elon Musk's ownership can expedite a misinformation campaign. Verification checks were once a marker of authenticity, but under Musk's leadership, the blue check mark is now merely a symbol that the account owner subscribes to Twitter Blue, which is Twitter's premium plan, end quote. Okay, remember when Meta wanted to buy Giffy? What you might not remember was that the CMA in the United Kingdom blocked that acquisition last year. So whither Giffy. Well, Shutterstock now says it plans to acquire Giffy from Meta for $53 million in cash.

Meta can still access Giffy content as a part of the deal, quoting TechCrunch. This means Facebook's parent company has recouped just 13% of its money. Shutterstock said it expects the deal to close next month with META also signing a commercial agreement to continue accessing GIFI's content across its product suite. The announcement comes some seven months after the UK's antitrust authority issued a final order for META to sell GIFI on the grounds that the merger reduced dynamic competition. The Competition and Markets Authority or CMA had originally ordered the sale way back in November 2021, but the appeals process held things up for the better part of another year. In October last year, Meta confirmed it would drop any further appeals and reluctantly agreed

to offload Giffy, but the formal divestment process didn't start until the CMA issued its final order in January this year, which gave Meta a set period of time to sell its asset. TechCrunch is told that this was likely a six-month window, which meant that the clock was ticking for Meta to conclude a deal. Conditions of the sale meant that Meta had to sell Giffy as a whole entity rather than sell it off in pieces, and it had to find a legitimate buyer, a company that would keep Giffy going as a GIF search engine. The CMA also had the final say on who META could sell GIFI too. The meta-Giffy acquisition had been catapulted into the limelight again recently after the CMA confirmed it was blocking Microsoft's Megabuck's Activision acquisition at the end of April, a division that

became even more prominent after the UK's European counterpart in Brussels greenlighted the deal three weeks later. Shutterstock has made it clear that acquisitions are going to play a major part of its near-term roadmap with CFO Gerald Yahis, saying in February that the company's goal was to extend into different content types. So met a situation in the UK with Giffy could not have come at a better time for Shutterstock in terms of having the opportunity to buy a popular GIF platform at a knockdown price. Indeed, Shutterstock was in a fairly strong bargaining position here. With most M&A scenarios, the seller will try to play as strong a hand as possible to get the highest price. But in this instance, any prospective buyer knew that Mehta's back was against the wall.

Put simply, a fire sale was always a likely outcome, particularly given that Giffy was never really a strong business in its own right. Its business values seemed to be more about helping existing platforms become stickier. Tom Smith, a former legal director at the CMA, who's now partner at London-based law firm, Jaredin Partners, said that Meta's predicament was entirely of its own making. It was Facebook's decision to complete the merger before getting CMA clearance, he said. Smith added that the UK is fairly unique in that companies are allowed to close mergers without regulatory clearance, but obviously problems can arise retrospectively if the authorities decide to take a closer look at the deal, end quote. Sort of an AI omnibus segment here for you. First up,

meta-unveiled open-source AI models. The company says can identify more than 4,000 languages and produce speech for more than 1,000 languages, a 40x and 10x increase, respectively. Quoting MIT Technology Review. There are around 7,000 languages in the world, but existing speech recognition models only cover about 100 of them comprehensively. This is because these kinds of models tend to require huge amounts of labeled training data, which is available for only a small number of languages, including English, Spanish, and Chinese. Meta researchers got around this problem by retraining an existing AI model developed by the company in 2020,

that is able to learn speech patterns from audio without requiring large amounts of labeled data, such as transcripts. The researchers say their models can converse in over 1,000 languages, but recognize more than 4,000. They compared the models with those from rival companies, including OpenAI Whisper, and claim theirs had half the error rate, despite covering 11 times more languages, end quote. Then, Adobe launched Generative Phil for Photoshop, one of the first creative cloud apps to use its generative AI Firefly tool into beta, and, with plans to roll out fully in the second half of this year. And then third, Anthropic, a generative AI startup co-founded by Open AI veterans, raised a $450 million series C round, led by Spark Capital

with Google, Salesforce, and Zoom, participating, quoting TechCrunch. With the new $350 million tranchev, Anthropics War Chess stands at a whopping $1.35 billion. That nearly tops the list of the best-funded startups in AI, eclipsed only by Open AI, which has raised a total of over $11.3 billion to date. Competitor Inflection AI, a startup building an AI-powered personal assistant has secured $225 million, while another anthropic rival Adept has raised around $415 million, end quote. Warner Brothers Discovery is launching Max, offering substantially more 4K content than HBO Max via its $19.99 per month Ultimate Plan, which is more expensive than the $15.99-cent ad-free

plan on the existing HBO Max. Here is where, for the fifth time on this show, I say, what did HBO do to deserve this? HBO has a gold-plated Cadillac brand and reputation for high-quality entertainment, and yet somehow, no one seems to recognize this. They're busy destroying this beautiful brand. It's very confusing to me. Quoting the Verge. When Max goes live on May 23rd, the new Warner Brothers Discovery Streaming Service will offer substantially more 4K entertainment than HBO Max ever did. The company issued a press release on Monday with new details on what subscribers on the 1999-a-month ultimate plan can expect. Max will offer eight times more films and episodes of 4K UHD content than HBO Max, including popular programming such as Game of Thrones,

The Last of Us, Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Dark Night trilogy, the Matrix films, and more, the company announced. They're really doing the thing. They're taking 4K seriously. Finally, Max will support both Dolby Vision and HDR10. For content where those formats are available, and Dolby Atmos audio will also be included for select movies and shows. We understand the value of offering our users a cinematic playback experience, and to that end, we've implemented more advanced technology workflows that allow us to release more 4K content in a faster, more efficient way, said Warner Brothers Discovery. Max will offer more than 1,000 films and episodes in 4K at launch, and we'll be adding more

every month as we move forward, end quote. Warner Brothers Discovery has chosen to only offer 4K and HDR on its most expensive monthly plan, a decision that isn't sitting well with everyone. The ultimate subscription costs more than HBO Max's outgoing 1599 a month ad-free plan. But the 4K catalog on HBO Max was severely underwhelming from the start. Recent high-profile Warner Brothers films often streamed in 4K HDR along with shows like The Last of Us, but considering the breadth of the service's film vault, it was disappointing to see that most of that selection was capped at 1080p, especially when those same movies are available in 4K on many other digital services. The company seems aware that it needs

to do better this time as it puts an even higher premium on 4K content. And sure enough, Max will include a large collection of past movies, including a Clockwork Orange, Casablanca, Goodfellas, and many more. Select Past HBO series will also stream in 4K along recent hits like Succession. Additionally, all Warner Bros. movies released this year, and going forward will be available in 4K UHD when they arrive on Macs following their theatrical windows, the company said. WBD has promised that HBO Max subscribers will still have access to their current plan features for a minimum of six months following launch,

so current customers don't need to worry about that 4K upcharge just yet. Six months should make for a nice trial of sorts to see whether Max can make good on its 4K potential, end quote. Finally today, I was today years old when I learned about Share It and how it has become the go-to file transfer app in countries where data is prohibitively expensive. The company claims the app has 2.4 billion downloads globally, quoting rest of world. Users in South Africa, the Philippines and Pakistan, told rest of world that Sherritt has allowed them to save costs on mobile data, although they have recently also had to put up with many in-app adverts. It's cost-effective,

a financial clerk in a small town in South Africa told rest of world, data is expensive on this side. has used the app to transfer photos, apps, and music to friends. In South Africa, people can pay up to $5.29 for one gigabyte of data. According to reporting by the Thompson Reuters Foundation, this cost is equivalent to nearly four hours of work at the minimum wage. Sherritt was first developed in the mid-2010s by a group of employees at Chinese tech company Lenovo, prompted by their attempts to share photos while hiking in an area with poor connectivity. It was first launched as Eggplant Express, an app for the domestic market. But as Internet coverage became ubiquitous in China, Sherritt spun off into a separate company around

2015, expanding overseas to emerging markets with poorer connectivity. According to Sherritt, in 2016, it had 600 million users globally, including 150 million in India, its largest market. Sherritt executives discovered the biggest source of its growth in that country. Local phone shops had started selling and transferring new apps to customers to make a quick buck. By 2019, Sherritt had racked up over 400 million downloads in India. It was so dependent on this market that it fashioned itself as an Indian company, even though it was Chinese founded, said Jason Wong, Sherritt's managing director for India to a local publication that year. If we lose the India market, we need to shut our business down, he said.

Sherritt did lose the India market. It was banned in the country in June 2020 alongside 58 other apps of Chinese origin, but instead of shutting down, the company recovered by shifting its focus to Southeast Asia. Sherritt claims it has reached 2.4 billion downloads globally with 20 million monthly active users in South Africa and 40 million in the Philippines. It also claims to have millions of users in Indonesia, though it didn't share exact figures. Despite its growing user base, some see it as an uphill struggle for ShareIt to retain users as internet coverage continues to improve globally. Ian Goh, managing partner at Venture Capital Firm 01VC in Shanghai, told rest the world that compared to apps with strong social functions like TikTok, utility apps such as

ShareIt tend to struggle more with long-term revenue growth. In recent years, Sherritt has tried to retain users by diversifying its business model. It has added a video player, displays ads for other platforms, and has launched Shop It, an e-commerce hub that allows users to compare deals and prices on other shopping apps. Today, according to its global vice president, share it generates revenue mostly through advertising and marketing partnerships with companies like Egyptian lending app money fellows and Pakistani mobile payment platform EasyPasia, end quote. Nothing for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.