After years of inaction in the U.S. Congress, E.U. tech laws have had wide-ranging implications for Silicon Valley companies. Europe's digital privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation, has prompted some companies, such as Microsoft, to overhaul how they handle users' data even beyond Europe's borders. Meta, Google and other companies have faced fines under the law, and Google had to delay the launch of its generative AI chatbot Bard in the region due to a review under the law. However, there are concerns that the law created costly compliance measures that have hampered small businesses, and that lengthy investigations and relatively small fines have blunted its efficacy among the world's largest companies.

Connected devices linked to the Internet of Things (IoT) -- in association with 5G network technology -- are now everywhere. But just wait until next-generation applications, such as artificial intelligence (AI), start running within these edge devices. Meanwhile, the low latency and higher data speeds of 5G and IoT will add a new real-time dimension to AI. Consider an extended reality (XR) headset that not only provides a 3D view of the inside of an aircraft engine, but which also has on-board intelligence to point you to problem areas or to information on anomalies in that engine, which are immediately and automatically recognized and adjusted. Chipmakers are already developing powerful yet energy-efficient processors -- or "systems on a chip" -- that can deliver AI processing within a small footprint device.

Why is the little ol' Competition & Markets Authority, a UK regulator, inserting itself into the entertaining and important – but distant – drama at San Francisco-based OpenAI? Even if the CMA finds eventually that Microsoft, another US company, is pulling the strings at Sam Altman's show, what could it actually do? Doesn't it all paint the UK as an unfriendly place for tech investment, notwithstanding Rishi Sunak's eagerness to host AI summits and conduct cosy chats with Elon Musk? All fair questions, and the CMA should brace for more in that vein. It is indeed slightly odd that the UK regulator is the first out of traps in wondering, albeit in a preliminary manner, if Microsoft has gained effective control over OpenAI and, if it has, whether that amounts to a problem. But there is another way to look at developments: thank goodness a regulator somewhere is seeking clarity about what just occurred at OpenAI.

The UK's competition watchdog has paved the way for a formal investigation into the partnership between Microsoft and ChatGPT developer OpenAI by asking for comments on the arrangement. The Competition and Markets Authority made the announcement on Friday after a bout of leadership and boardroom turmoil at OpenAI, which is based in San Francisco. The company was established as a non-profit entity whose board controls a commercial unit, in which Microsoft is the biggest investor. The CMA said "recent developments" had prompted the organisation to review whether the partnership had resulted in "an acquisition of control". Last month, OpenAI's board fired and then reappointed its chief executive, Sam Altman, and announced the formation of a new board. Microsoft now has a non-voting observer seat on the OpenAI board.

Fox News host Bret Baier has more on U.S. and its allies efforts to increase semiconductor manufacturing on'Special Report.' The world could face another chip shortage as companies and nations seek to lead the way with artificial intelligence (AI) development, having seemingly made few changes after the impacts of the 2021 supply chain crisis, experts said. "The answer is different for different segments of the semiconductor industry and the chip economy," Gregory C. Allen, the director of the Wadhwani Center for AI and Advanced Technologies for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Fox News Digital. "Companies that make these chips are building out additional capacity to a different extent and in different market niches," he said, adding that while the world is "headed to an oversupply of certain types of chips," there is "already a shortage" of more advanced chips, reflected in the "extraordinary cost of each of these chips." China enacted a series of extreme lockdown measures, known as "zero-COVID," to combat the coronavirus pandemic, which required cities to shut down and test every resident after officials detected just a few positive cases.

Hype about Gemini, Google DeepMind's long-rumored response to OpenAI's GPT-4, has been building for months. Now, the company has finally revealed what it has been working on in secret all this time. Gemini is Google's biggest AI launch yet--its push to take on competitors OpenAI and Microsoft in the race for AI supremacy. There is no doubt that the model is pitched as best-in-class across a wide range of capabilities--an "everything machine." Judging from its demos, it does many things very well--but few things that we haven't seen before.

The biggest fight of the generative AI revolution is headed to the courtroom--and no, it's not about the latest boardroom drama at OpenAI. Book authors, artists, and coders are challenging the practice of teaching AI models to replicate their skills using their own work as a training manual. But as image generators and other tools have proven able to impressively mimic works in their training data, and the scale and value of training data has become clear, creators are increasingly crying foul. At LiveWIRED in San Francisco, the 30th anniversary event for WIRED magazine, two leaders of that nascent resistance sparred with a defender of the rights of AI companies to develop the technology unencumbered. From left to right: WIRED senior writer Kate Knibbs discussed creators' rights and AI with Mike Masnick, Mary Rasenberger, and Matthew Butterick at LiveWIRED in San Francisco,.

OpenAI cofounder Reid Hoffman says the company is better off with Sam Altman restored as CEO, and he was shocked that board members he used to serve alongside would think otherwise. Hoffman, who left OpenAI's board in March after cofounding the competitor Inflection AI, offered his first comments on the recent chaos at OpenAI on stage at WIRED's LiveWIRED 30th anniversary event in San Francisco on Tuesday. "Surprise would be an understatement," he said about his reaction to learning of Altman's firing. After employees and investors revolted, Altman got his job back days later. "We are in a much better place for the world to have Sam as CEO. He's very competent in that," said Hoffman, who with Elon Musk and other wealthy tech luminaries formed the earliest vision for OpenAI when it was founded in 2015.

After nearly seven months of rumors and delays, Google has finally released its most advanced generative-AI model to date: Gemini 1.0, a program the company is advertising as one of the most capable pieces of software ever. It can purportedly solve calculus problems, explain memes, write code, and--in a real example offered by the company--provide feedback on cooking photos to help you decide when your omelet is done. Google is even billing Gemini as "a first step toward a truly universal AI model," one that is designed from the ground up to engage with images, video, text, audio, and computer code in a range of contexts. And, somehow, it all feels a bit underwhelming. Perhaps that is because today's announcement feels like any other Silicon Valley product launch.

A four-dollar check that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs wrote to Radio Shack in 1976 was up for auction on Wednesday at Boston-based RR Auction with a bid of more than $33,000 with five hours left to go. The signed check, drawn against an "Apple Computer Company" account at a Wells Fargo Bank branch in Los Altos, California, joins a hot market for Jobs' signature and memorabilia. Last year, a $9.18 Apple Computer cheque signed by Jobs in 1976 sold for $55,000; another from the same year, for $13.86 to Elmar Electronics, sold in March for $37,564. The Apple inventor's signature on a job application for employment as an "electronics tech or design engineer" from 1973, classified as Jobs' earliest known signature by the auctioneer, sold in 2018 for $174,757. A signature from three years later, when Jobs was 21, that appeared on an original Apple founding contract signed by Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne was sold by Sotheby's in December 2011 for $1,594,500.