Good morning. So much ink has been spilled about smart glasses lately.
How do Meta’s new frames stack up against Snap’s Spectacles? If I wear them, will I channel Chuckie Finster or Daria Morgendorffer? Can anyone really wear tech on their face without it looking completely…over the top?
The question on my mind, though, is whether all of this will strengthen or break EssilorLuxottica’s grip on the global eyewear market.
Unfamiliar? Down an espresso and start reading: It’s quite a story. —Andrew Nusca
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Mira Murati exits OpenAI
As Omar Little once said: You come at the king, you best not miss.
Mira Murati, the chief technology officer—and fleetingly, interim CEO—of OpenAI, said yesterday that she’s leaving the pioneering AI company after more than six years.
OpenAI’s chief research officer, Bob McGrew, and its VP of research, Barret Zoph, also announced their departures.
It’s a shocking, but not surprising, piece of news. Shocking, of course, because Murati is one of tech’s most prominent executives driving the development of generative artificial intelligence at the most highly valued AI company on the planet.
But surprising? Not since the failed coup by OpenAI’s board of directors last November to send CEO Sam Altman packing. (He was reinstated four days later.)
Though Murati neither instigated nor participated in the ouster—she wasn’t on the board—a private memo of hers criticizing Altman’s management was reportedly offered up to the board as supporting evidence.
Nearly a year later, Altman—who regained his board seat in March—is now working to restructure the ChatGPT-maker for a commercial era: new org charts, new nontechnical execs, newly refilled coffers. Few of the company’s original researchers remain.
We’ll see where Murati pops up next. The AI job market remains red hot, and that’s exponentially true for one of the most influential women in tech. It’s all in the game, though, right? —AN
Zuck came, he saw…and that was it, really
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off a funky new pair of glasses at the company’s annual developer conference this week, and I was there to spec ‘em out. (Sorry.)
The glasses are holographic—you see the real world along with digital images overlaid on a special silicon carbide lens. And if that’s not cool enough, you control the features in these computer glasses by moving your fingers in the air thanks to a wristband with a “neural interface.” To quote Zuck: “Neat!”
There’s just one catch: The glasses don't actually exist.
Or at least, you can’t buy them—and it’s not really clear if you ever will. The so-called Orion glasses, which were the highlight of the event, are prototypes. Each pair costs an eye-gouging (ok ok, sorry) $10,000 to produce, according to The Verge—a price that makes Apple’s ski-goggle-like Vision Pro headset, at $3,500, look like a bargain-bin item.
Meta is working on a cheaper, and presumably more rudimentary, version of holographic glasses to release to consumers at some unspecified time in the future.
In the meantime, Meta showed off updated versions of its existing Ray-Ban “smart glasses.” There are no holograms in these puppies—just tiny built-in cameras, speakers, and a mic, along with nifty, voice-activated AI features.
Thanks to another announcement Meta made at the event, you’ll now be able to listen to Dame Judi Dench’s voice as your virtual AI friend. Neat! —Kali Hays
Google vs. Microsoft, Chapter 748
Among Big Tech rivalries, the one between Google and Microsoft has been among the most contentious. Who doesn’t remember “Scroogled”?
Google opened a new skirmish in the war this week by filing a formal complaint against Microsoft with the EU’s top antitrust regulator.
According to Google, Microsoft abused its historically strong position in enterprise software by using it to boost its Azure cloud business while illegally boxing out competitors like Google’s own cloud service. In the end, customers end up paying higher prices, the search giant alleges.
Microsoft recently reached a settlement over similar complaints from a trade group representing European cloud providers, but Google said that didn’t go far enough. So here we are.
As the Wall Street Journal notes, it could be years before any impact of such a complaint might be felt. But when has that stopped either of these rivals before? —Jason Del Rey
What really went down at Activision Blizzard
A new book examines the clash of personalities during a key period in the history of Activision Blizzard, the pioneering video game maker acquired by Microsoft a year ago.
Called Play Nice and written by Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier, the tome details the tensions between Bobby Kotick, the animated chief executive of Activision, and Mike Morhaime, the rather nerdier co-founder of Blizzard, whose parent company Vivendi merged with Activision in 2008.
Things started off great—until Blizzard in 2013 abandoned an $80 billion project called Titan, eliminating “one of the reasons Kotick had wanted to own Blizzard in the first place,” Schreier writes. Skepticism riding high, that evolved into Kotick’s position that Blizzard wasn’t “extracting enough value” from its franchises, which include the Warcraft series.
It’s more complicated than that, but you can guess what happened next: cost cutting and layoffs, faster product releases, high-profile slip ups—plus lawsuits alleging systemic sexual misconduct and discrimination (since settled).
Morhaime left Activision Blizzard in 2019; Kotick stepped down last year as Microsoft took the reins. My hunch? The epic stories from the company’s final decade of independence are only beginning to emerge. —Jenn Brice
Mozilla gets wrist slap from privacy advocates
Is it even possible to have online advertising while respecting privacy?
Mozilla blocks third-party tracking cookies in its Firefox web browser by default. But the open source pioneer has recently started building a “privacy-preserving” tracking mechanism into the browser so advertisers have another way to target users.
Not good enough, says Noyb, the European privacy group. The activists made a formal complaint on Wednesday, accusing Mozilla of breaking EU privacy law by enabling the feature without telling users.
It’s an embarrassing development for Mozilla, which spends much of its time loudly defending digital rights. The organization now claims that, while it included code for the feature in Firefox, it was only going to use it in a limited test among developers.
Google has also been trying to move to more privacy-friendly tracking in Chrome, but the U.K.’s antitrust authority yesterday rejected its proposals yet again, saying they give Google too much power over advertisers.
Even if most people hate the surveillance economy, reining it in is no easy task. —David Meyer
More data
—A $2.7 billion AI acqui-hire: After all, why not? Why shouldn't I?
—Why did Caroline Ellison follow SBF? When people-pleasing goes too far.
—China-linked hackers snoop around U.S. ISPs. Nothing to, uh, see here!
—Oops, we might have hired North Koreans. Sure, the IT job market is competitive, but…
—It’s getting awkward between Automattic and WP Engine. No more drama. No more pain! —AN
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