Good morning. What’s on the minds of top CTOs and CISOs in the Age of Intelligence?
I had the great privilege of hosting a Fortune Brainstorm roundtable discussion about that very subject last night in San Francisco, and boy, things got spicy.
(How spicy? “The copilot conversation has hijacked AI” spicy. Or “I’ve never seen a technology where employees are so willing to participate in data exfiltration” spicy. Yeah, baby.)
For those who missed it, a haiku:
Trust? Necessary.
Complacency? The top risk.
Be responsible.
Many thanks to Rubrik and the New York Stock Exchange for making it happen. Today’s news below. —Andrew Nusca
Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Fortune Tech? Drop a line here.
Amazon stumbles into the tariff muck
The White House criticized Amazon on Tuesday over a Punchbowl News report that claimed the world’s largest online retailer will start showing how much Trump’s tariffs affect the price of each product.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called it a “hostile and political act.”
The report said Amazon planned to show the impact of tariffs “right next to the product’s total listed price,” according to a person familiar with the plans.
Amazon, however, said the report was inaccurate and “never a consideration for the main Amazon site.”
Amazon spokesperson Ty Rogers told Fortune on Tuesday morning that the company has only considered such a move, and that it would apply only to a new Temu-like section of the Amazon Haul shopping site that just launched six months ago—if implemented at all.
“The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store has considered the idea of listing import charges on certain products,” Rogers said. “Teams discuss ideas all the time. This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon properties.”
The company later followed up with a new, more definitive statement clarifying that the idea “was never approved and is not going to happen.”
According to CNN, Trump called Amazon founder Jeff Bezos—still its largest individual shareholder—to complain.
The U.S. president mentioned the matter at a press briefing on Tuesday. “Jeff Bezos is very nice. Terrific,” he said. “He solved the problem very quickly. He did the right thing. Good guy." —Dave Smith and Jason Del Rey
Asia’s climb up the value chain will make it an AI adoption hub
Asia-Pacific businesses are frantically trying to explore how to best use AI to improve productivity, according to new survey data from Microsoft.
The company’s new Asia president credits the phenomenon to the region’s rapid climb up the value chain.
“We’ve been through an inflection point where the two decades of ‘made in’—‘made in China’ and ‘made in Vietnam’—is shifting to the decade of ‘created in,’” Rodrigo Kede Lima told Fortune.
According to Microsoft data, just over 60% of leaders in the Asia-Pacific region want to increase productivity. Yet almost 85% of both Asia-based business leaders and employees complain they don’t have any more time or energy to give.
Microsoft’s report blames near-constant interruption at work for this gap in productivity. Data gathered from the company’s products suggest notifications—meetings, emails, or even just a ping—interrupt workers every two minutes on average.
The company suggests that “AI agents”—programs that use AI to solve user-defined tasks—can help cover that gap between business demands and resource constraints.
Microsoft data suggests Asia-Pacific leaders want to use AI to do things that humans can’t do, such as being available 24/7 or providing “unlimited ideas on demand.”
Lima is optimistic: “I don’t believe in job elimination. I believe in job shifts.” —Nicholas Gordon
Meta launches standalone AI app
Meta released a new standalone AI app on Tuesday in a bid to compete with rival chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The app, called “Meta AI,” is powered by the company’s “Llama” large language model family. It was announced at LlamaCon, its inaugural AI-focused conference in Silicon Valley.
Meta AI is the same service that is available within the company’s popular social apps, including Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook. The difference is that you now need not use those services to access the AI assistant.
Unlike ChatGPT, the app features a “Discover” feed featuring Meta AI interactions that other people (e.g. your friends on Instagram and Facebook) have opted to share (thankfully on a prompt-by-prompt basis).
“It’s designed around voice conversations,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a social media video. “You’re going to be able to let Meta AI know a whole lot about you and the people you care about across our apps if you want.” —AN
More tech
—Spotify shares dip 8%. The streamer’s Q1 revenue was up 15% from last year but its operating income fell short of estimates.
—Duolingo swaps contractors for AI. The company maneuvers to become “AI-first.”
—SoFi revives crypto investing. Dropped when it became a regulated bank, it’s now back, given an eased regulatory landscape.
—Snap shares drop 14%. Despite strong Q1 revenue, economic uncertainty = advertiser uncertainty.
—OpenAI-Microsoft relationship strains. Microsoft can block OpenAI’s for-profit conversion; OpenAI can prevent Microsoft from accessing its best tech.
—Supermicro shares plummet 19%. Weak quarterly results and “delayed customer platform decisions.”
—Marks & Spencer breach details. “Scattered Spider” ransomware attack blamed for payment, ordering system disruptions.
—UPS lays off 20,000 workers. Fewer Amazon shipments means fewer delivery drivers.
Endstop triggered
