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Laura Bratton

Laura Bratton

Quartz

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Apple and Meta still think virtual reality is the future — even if nobody else does

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Apple chief Tim Cook are still hyped up on virtual reality, even if consumers aren’t all excited about their...

yesterday 1

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Spotify will now make users pay for its lyrics feature

Spotify quietly decided to make users pay for its formerly-free lyrics feature. Reddit users flagged the change this week, and Spotify implicitly...

yesterday 4

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Apple stock spikes 7% on buyback and earnings — and Wall Street thinks it will go higher

Apple stock jumped 7% Friday morning following the company’s better-than-feared second-quarter earnings report the day before.Read more...

yesterday 10

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Apple earnings, Big Tech layoffs, and Google on trial: This week in tech

This week was a mixed bag for the tech industry. Read more...

yesterday 6

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Apple's largest-ever $110 billion stock buyback has investors jacked

Apple’s approval of its biggest-ever, $110 billion in stock buybacks has investors very excited — so excited that they’re willing to overlook...

yesterday 10

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Apple earnings could reveal more about a little-known AI startup it bought

Apple reports earnings after the bell Thursday, and it’s expected to reveal more about how AI is boosting its business and its AI strategy going...

previous day 1

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Google's landmark antitrust trial is coming to a close

Google and the Department of Justice are presenting their closing arguments in the biggest antitrust trial of the 21st century this Thursday and...

previous day 6

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Amazon CEO's anti-union comments 'threatened' employees and violated labor laws, judge rules

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had a lot to say about his employees’ efforts to unionize in 2022. But those comments, made casually to media outlets,...

previous day 4

Quartz

Laura Bratton

This year's biggest IPO has nothing to do with tech and everything to do with leisure

There’s been a flurry of successful tech IPOs at the start of the year: Reddit, AI startup Astera Labs, consumer rewards app Ibotta,...

wednesday 3

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Google is laying off hundreds as it moves 'Core' jobs abroad

Google laid off at least 200 staffers on its “Core” team in California, CNBC reported Wednesday. Some of those jobs are relocating to its offices...

wednesday 4

Quartz

Laura Bratton

An Ivy League school just announced its first master's degree in AI

As tech companies race to build the world’s leading generative artificial intelligence technologies, they’re choosing from a very small talent...

wednesday 10

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Apple earnings might surprise Wall Street despite an iPhone sales slump. Here's why

Apple reports its first-quarter earnings after the bell Thursday.Read more...

wednesday 20

Quartz

Laura Bratton

AI startups aren't making money yet. Does it matter?

Chatter is picking back up this week about whether the generative artificial intelligence hype is doomed to die.Read more...

30.04.2024 10

Quartz

Laura Bratton

AI powered big profits at Samsung

AI has been a big boon for the electronics giant Samsung this year — something the company expects to continue throughout 2024. In a new earnings...

30.04.2024 8

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Meta's Oversight Board that deals with controversial content is planning layoffs, report says

Meta’s Oversight Board is planning job cuts, The Washington Post reported Monday, citing anonymous sources.Read more...

29.04.2024 20

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Apple's 'impressive' stock buyback program is a value-add for investors, report says

Apple is the stock buyback king of tech giants.Read more...

29.04.2024 9

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Explicit AI girlfriend chatbot ads are flooding Facebook and Instagram

Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger host thousands of advertisements for sexually explicit AI “girlfriend” chatbots, according to a new report. The...

29.04.2024 5

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Apple and Google pulled several AI apps that advertised deepfake nudes

Apple and Google have removed apps that promised deepfake nudes from the App Store and Google Play, according to a report from 404 Media.Read more...

26.04.2024 6

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Snap stock popped 30% after a sunny first-quarter earnings report

Snap shares jumped 30% Friday after the company reported improved sales and a big increase in premium subscribers.Read more...

26.04.2024 10

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Wall Street sees Google stock rallying to $200 because maybe Google can win AI after all

Wall Street thinks Google stock will keep surging after a brief stall in February and March.Read more...

26.04.2024 4

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Matthew McConaughey is still Salesforce's AI cowboy

Salesforce officially released its AI chatbot Einstein Copilot at its World Tour NYC event in Manhattan on Thursday. Per usual, the company flashed...

26.04.2024 10

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Salesforce says its AI chatbot won't hallucinate – well, probably

Salesforce on Thursday announced the general availability of its chatbot for businesses, Einstein Copilot.Read more...

26.04.2024 10

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Google stock surges on soaring profits

Google parent Alphabet reported a surge in profits of nearly 60% in the first quarter of this year versus the same period a prior year.Read more...

26.04.2024 10

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Meta had a really good first quarter. The stock is tanking anyway

Meta stock plummeted more than 16% in after-hours trading Wednesday, even as the Facebook parent company reported better-than-anticipated sales.Read...

25.04.2024 10

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Meta’s Metaverse is still losing the company billions

Mark Zuckerberg’s gleeful rebrand of Facebook as Meta in 2021 has become a well documented blunder. What was promised — a virtual reality where we...

25.04.2024 10

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Nvidia is buying an Israeli AI software startup that makes AI chips more efficient

Nvidia announced plans Wednesday to acquire Israeli AI startup Run:ai. While Nvidia didn’t disclose the terms of its coming transaction, an Israeli...

24.04.2024 20

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Salesforce is ditching its deal to buy Informatica, report says

Salesforce stock got a bump Monday morning following a report by The Wall Street Journal that it is no longer pursuing a deal to buy Informatica, a...

22.04.2024 10

Quartz

Laura Bratton

The Pentagon is spending billions on Big Tech and Silicon Valley startups as it goes all in on AI

A new report from Brown University’s “Costs of War” project sheds light on a renewed closeness between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley, with the...

19.04.2024 4

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Apple's China pivot, Amazon's secret project, Google fires protesters, and another IPO: Tech news roundup

This week was a positive sign for the tech IPO market, as Ibotta made a successful debut on the public market, and Microsoft-backed Rubrik announced...

19.04.2024 30

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Walmart-backed Ibotta stock skyrocketed post-IPO

Shares of Ibotta — a Denver-based consumer rewards platform that counts major U.S. companies such as Walmart and Kroger as customers — surged in...

19.04.2024 6

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Amazon says 'Project Curiosity' wasn't a secret operation to spy on rivals

The Wall Street Journal on Thursday published a report detailing how Amazon used a shell company, Big River Services International, to spy on its...

18.04.2024 4

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Amazon had a decade-long campaign to spy on rivals. It was called Project Curiosity

Amazon started a fake business called Big River Services International to spy on rivals such as Walmart, eBay, and Fedex—an operation it called...

18.04.2024 10

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Ibotta goes public today. We spoke to its CEO about riding the tech IPO wave

Ibotta is a Colorado-based consumer rewards platform set to go public Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange. It’s one of several tech companies to...

18.04.2024 4

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Americans are worried about AI deepfakes ahead of elections, and Adobe's trying to do something about it

Americans are worried about how AI deepfakes could spark a misinformation wildfire ahead of the U.S. presidential election this fall — and some are...

18.04.2024 10

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Adobe might partner with OpenAI to offer AI video generation

Adobe said this week that it’s in talks with OpenAI and other AI companies, such as Runway and Pika Labs, to make AI video generation tools for...

16.04.2024 5

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Apple's Tim Cook says that the company is upping its investment in Vietnam

Apple CEO Tim Cook said that Apple wants to invest more in suppliers in Vietnam during a meeting with Vietnamese prime minister Pham Minh Chinh on...

16.04.2024 30

Quartz

Laura Bratton

AI's 'insatiable' electricity demand could slow its growth — a lot, Arm exec says

An Arm executive saysgenerative AI’s overwhelming demand for electricity could hinder its rapid growth.Read more...

16.04.2024 20

Quartz

Laura Bratton

The top companies for training workers to use AI — including Amazon and GM

Less than half of U.S. companies are taking steps to train their employees to use generative artificial intelligence—which has been hailed the most...

16.04.2024 5

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Reddit stock hits a new low even as Wall Street analysts say buy it

Even a nod of approval from Wall Street isn’t helping Reddit stock. The shares fell lower Monday than even the most modest price targets set by...

15.04.2024 4

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Microsoft is 'ground zero' for foreign state-sponsored hackers, executive says

A top Microsoft executive said in a new interview that the tech giant is “ground zero” for foreign government-backed hackers.Read more...

15.04.2024 9

Quartz

Laura Bratton

AI companies are running out of data for training chatbots so Adobe keeps paying for it

Adobe is one of a few companies that pay contributors to submit content to train their AI models. Bloomberg, citing documents, reports that the...

13.04.2024 10

Quartz

Laura Bratton

New data puts a number on how many students are using AI in their papers

Millions of students are using generative artificial intelligence to write papers as the popularity of AI chatbots such as ChatGPT proliferates.Read...

12.04.2024 10

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Google is ditching a major privacy tool as it goes all-in on AI

Google is dropping its VPN (or virtual private network) from Google One, the company’s paid cloud storage service. The tech giant ditched its...

12.04.2024 10

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Elon Musk's Starlink-Russia connection, Google and Intel's big moves, Nvidia stock perks: Tech news roundup

It’s been a busy week for the tech industry and AI. Read more...

12.04.2024 7

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Instagram has a new tool to protect teens from predators

Meta on Thursday announced a new tool for Instagram direct messages to protect kids and teens from predators trying to elicit nudes and “sextort”...

11.04.2024 4

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Alibaba's Jack Ma is back and investors are happy about it

The Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba got a boost Wednesday from the return of its elusive founder Jack Ma.Read more...

11.04.2024 30

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Meta just unveiled a new AI chip a day after Google and Intel

Meta on Wednesday debuted a new model of its AI chip, which it said is three times more efficient than its first one.Read more...

10.04.2024 9

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Google is emphasizing privacy in Las Vegas after finally resolving its 'Incognito Mode' debacle

Google was sure to mention privacy and security at its annual Google Next conference — right as it’s wrapping up past privacy issues with another...

09.04.2024 6

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Google just released its AI chip rival to Nvidia

Google said Tuesday that its Cloud TPU v5p, one of the few alternatives to Nvidia’s AI chips, is now available to developers.Read more...

09.04.2024 9

Quartz

Laura Bratton

Google is showing off Gemini AI updates to court business customers

It’s no secret that Google’s flagship AI chatbot Gemini has had some problems. Its production of historically inaccurate images forced Google...

09.04.2024 10

Quartz

Laura Bratton

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