The US has expanded the restriction of exports of Nvidia artificial intelligence chips beyond China to some countries in the Middle East. Nvidia, which is one of the world's most valuable companies at $1.2tn, said in a regulatory filing this week the curbs affected its A100 and H100 chips, which are used to accelerate machine-learning tasks on major artificial intelligence apps, such as ChatGPT. The firm said the controls would not have an "immediate material impact" on its results. It did not say which countries in the Middle East were affected by these restrictions. Nvidia's rival in the sector, AMD, had also received an informed letter with similar restrictions, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.

WASHINGTON--U.S. technology companies that build artificial intelligence software for analyzing satellite imagery will face new restrictions on exporting their products to China and elsewhere. The Commerce Department said new export rules take effect on Jan. 6 that target emerging technology that could give the U.S. a significant military or intelligence advantage. A special license would be required to sell software outside the United States that can automatically scan aerial images to identify objects of interest, such as vehicles or houses. The rules could affect a growing sector of the tech industry using algorithms to analyze satellite images of crops, trade patterns and other changes affecting the economy or environment. The new export rules are the result of Congress passing a law in 2018 that updated national security-related export controls to protect "emerging and foundational" technology that could end up in the hands of foreign governments.

The United States government says it will limit the export of certain types of artificial intelligence software that's used to analyze images from satellites in order to keep it out of the hands of foreign rivals such as China. Reuters said the ban, which goes into effect Monday, relates to a 2018 law known as the Export Control Reform Act that requires the government look into how it can restrict the export of new technologies it deems "essential to the national security" of the U.S. The scope of the ban is rather narrow, at least for now. It applies specifically to software that uses neural networks, a component of machine learning, to discover "points of interest" in geospatial images created by satellites. For example, software that can identify houses or vehicles. Furthermore, the ban only applies to software that has a graphical user interface.