Deepfakes in the wild, more big AI funding rounds, a mixed bag for earnings, and more layoffs

If you thought social media was a problem for the 2016 and 2020 elections, look out: This week the political deepfakes arrived, as bad actors created videos and audio impersonating President Joe Biden and Democratic presidential candidate Dean Phillips.

Even Taylor Swift and the late George Carlin haven’t been spared from the AI deepfake treatment. You can be sure more is coming, and it won’t be pretty, since it’s hard to see how to stop them reliably.

AI is also increasingly coming under antitrust purview, as Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan starts to look at big tech companies’ investments in AI firms such as OpenAI with an eye to preventing them from running off with the industry. It’s a mild look so far, and it may be too late to do much. Meantime, big AI fundings haven’t stopped.

Tech earnings kicked off this week with ups and downs from Netflix, Intel, IBM, SAP, ServiceNow and more. Next week will be the big one, with reports from the big three cloud players Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon, as well as Apple, AMD, Meta, Samsung and more.

Meantime, layoffs appeared to accelerate from the likes of SAP, Salesforce, eBay and others, in what looks like a me-too opportunity to cut costs even as the economy is landing more softly from the Fed interest-rate hikes than anyone expected. Closer to home for us media folks, layoffs raged across a wide swath of outlets from the LA Times and Sports Illustrated to Business Insider, Forbes and more.

This and other news will be discussed in John Furrier’s and Dave Vellante’s weekly podcast theCUBE Pod, out this afternoon on YouTube. And don’t miss Vellante’s weekly deep dive Breaking Analysis, this time on his 2024 enterprise tech predictions.

Here’s a sampling of this week’s news:

All things AI

Let’s Not Get Ahead of Ourselves Dept.:

MIT study shows AI is still too costly to replace most human workers

Anthropic’s low margins signal potential issue with long-term AI profitability (from The Information)

Microsoft forms team to make cheaper generative AI models (from The Information)

Here come the political deepfakes:

OpenAI suspends startup that used GPT-4 model to impersonate presidential candidate Dean Phillips

New Hampshire Democrats received AI-generated robocall from Joe Biden telling them not to vote

And, OMG, even icky deepfakes of America’s sweetheart: ​​X criticized for being too slow to moderate pornographic AI-generated deepfakes of Taylor Swift and the late comedian George Carlin’s estate files suit over AI-generated comedy special

But there’s still big bucks getting invested and a lot of confidence in the eventual returns:

A vision for AI and the future: How Boldstart Ventures seeks to fund the next wave of enterprise innovation

Myriad Venture Partners debuts with $100M to fuel AI and clean tech startups

Elon Musk denies report indicating his AI startup, xAI, has raised $500M in funding But days later, reports emerged that xAI may get $6 billion in new funding at a $20 billion valuation, and Bret Taylor’s AI startup Sierra reportedly raised a round at nearly a $1 billion valuation — story coming shortly.

AI-generated speech startup ElevenLabs raises $80M in fresh funding

Prompt Security raises $5M to ensure LLMs don’t give up corporate secrets

AiDash, which uses AI and satellite to prevent weather-related power cuts, raises $50M

And already some M&A (and more coming):

GPU-powered data processing startup Voltron Data acquires Claypot AI

Wasabi acquires AI-powered video indexing technology from GrayMeta

Boomi CEO: ‘We are in absolute predator mode’

Trustbusters are coming for big tech in AI:

FTC launches inquiry into tech giants’ investments in OpenAI and Anthropic

In other AI news:

On top of Facebook’s recent open-source AGI push, this is a huge amount of horsepower behind open-source AI: Google Cloud and Hugging Face ink AI infrastructure partnership

Oracle debuts cloud generative AI service to help enterprises deploy and fine-tune language models

OpenAI offers new embedding models, updates GPT-4 and GPT-3.5, and lowers API access cost

AI monitoring startup Arthur adds support for AI-powered recommendation systems

Google enhances Chrome and Ads with new AI features to streamline user experiences

SnapLogic announces no-code generative AI application builder that any employee can use

NSF launches AI research hub to broaden access to infrastructure and education

Google for Education receives new AI and accessibility features

MLCommons aims to become the gold standard for measuring AI performance on PCs

AWS users waste billions by forgoing discount plans, report says

Google researchers develop new diffusion-based AI system for generating videos

Earnings ups and down in cloud and enterprise

Earnings season kicks off, with Netflix’s beat setting the pace — but not everyone kept up:

Software and consulting anchor strong IBM financial results

Intel’s stock tanks on lower sales forecast

SAP shares soar as company restructures and doubles down on AI

ServiceNow beats Wall Street’s guidance on all metrics as generative AI powers strong growth

NetScout revenue and earnings smash analyst forecasts

Western Digital shares drop despite strong beats in revenue, earnings and outlook

Critical chip equipment firm ASML posts 30% surge in full-year revenue but signals slowdown in 2024 (from CNBC)

SK Hynix swings to surprise profit in Q4 on memory chip rebound (from Nikkei Asia)

Tesla shares drop on missed earnings and revenue in fourth quarter

In other news

Box snaps up enterprise content management startup Crooze

Chronosphere bolsters observability capabilities with acquisition of Calyptia

Open-source vector database Qdrant raises $28M

Docker debuts Docker Cloud Build to speed up container application projects

Databricks backs $33M round for data quality monitoring startup Anomalo

Reagan foundation turns to HPE Aruba for its next-generation network

Cyber beat

Russian cyber criminals are busy:

Microsoft corporate email accounts hacked by same group behind SolarWinds hack

HPE compromised by same Russian group behind SolarWinds and Microsoft hacks

North Korea too: Research warns that North Korean threat group is targeting media organizations

Zscaler enhances network security with zero-trust architecture in latest release

And Zeus’ analysis: Zscaler’s single-vendor zero-trust SASE brings a new approach to an old problem

Fast-growing cybersecurity startups Silverfort and Torq raise new funding

US tops 164 countries targeted by threat actors in 2023

Protect AI rolls out Guardian for management of machine learning model security

New partnership between Securiti and Lacework targets improved cloud data protection

Nozomi Networks debuts Guardian Air sensor to boost wireless security in operational technology and IoT

Elsewhere around tech

Sorting out the latest on that App Store mess in the EU: To comply with EU law, Apple opens door to third-party app stores in Europe

Apple reportedly switches to less ambitious development roadmap for its electric car

No intentional deception found in Cruise’s handling of October accident

Crypto company Terraform Labs files for bankruptcy amid SEC litigation

Bluewhite robots-as-a-service farm equipment company raises $39M

Amazon fined in France for excessively monitoring warehouse employees

Just for fun: ZK Research’s five top sports technology picks from CES

Comings and goings

Tech layoffs accelerate:

SAP announces major restructuring plan affecting 8,000 jobs

Salesforce reportedly lays off 700 employees following recruiting push

Report: Alphabet’s X lab letting go dozens of employees as part of restructuring

Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

EBay to slash about 1,000 roles, or approximately 9% of full-time employees (from CNBC)

Other moves:

Longtime Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP veteran Neil MacDonald will head the company’s high-performance computing and AI business, replacing Justin Hotard, who’s moving to head Intel’s data center and AI group.

HPE also named company vet Kristin Major chief people officer.

Katherine Maher, who replaced Paddy Cosgrove as CEO of Web Summit in October, after Cosgrove was forced out of the role following his criticism of Israel shortly after Hamas’ attack, is already leaving to become CEO of National Public Radio (from NPR).

What’s coming next

Big earnings next week, including the big three cloud providers:

F5 Networks and Supermicro on Jan. 29

Alphabet, Microsoft, AMD, Samsung and Commvault on Jan. 30

Qualcomm and Extreme Networks on Jan. 31

Apple, Amazon, Meta, Atlassian and OpenText on Feb. 1

Image: SiliconANGLE/Microsoft Image Creator