Good morning.Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit kicks off today in Washington, D.C. and there are quite a few notable tech folk on the agenda.
Among them: Best Buy’s Corie Barry, Palantir’s Shannon Clark, Microsoft’s Amy Coleman, Logitech’s Hanneke Faber, IBM’s Radha Iyengar Plumb, Workday’s Emma Chalwin, ServiceNow’s Gina Mastantuono, Airbnb’s Ellie Mertz, DoorDash’s Tia Sherringham, TaskRabbit’s Ania Smith, Pinterest’s Doniel Sutton, and Snowflake’s Anahita Tafvizi.
Not too shabby.
Interested? Peep the agenda here and watch the livestream here. Today’s tech news below. —Andrew Nusca
Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Fortune Tech? Drop a line here.
Sora videos of deceased celebrities spark backlash
As people worldwide explore OpenAI’s new Sora 2 video generation AI model (and mobile app) by turning text prompts and images into videos, various reports suggest that we’re already approaching what’s socially (and legally) acceptable.
Should you be able to put words in a person’s mouth? What if they’re famous? What if they’re no longer living? What if those words—or indeed, actions—are unnatural, unsavory, or hateful?
From a policy standpoint, OpenAI prohibits the creation of videos depicting living public figures without consent. So-called historical figures are a different story.
With Sora, Tupac Shakur is still alive in Cuba, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes is moonlighting as a professional wrestler, and Steve Irwin is stabbing the stingray that killed him with its own barb.
It’s not always humorous. Per the Washington Post, clips of Malcolm X show the civil rights activist “making crude jokes, wrestling with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and talking about defecating on himself.” Yikes.
Unsurprisingly, the families of deceased celebrities caught in the crossfire—those of Malcolm, MLK, Bob Ross, Robin Williams, and others—aren’t loving it.
“Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad,” Zelda Williams, daughter of Robin, wrote last week on social media, adding: “It’s NOT what he’d want.” —AN
Taiwan on China's new rare earth restrictions: NBD
Each time China tightens trade restrictions on materials and products it dominates, the question returns: What does it mean for tech?
Last Thursday, China substantially expanded controls on rare earth minerals—a category that’s essential for today’s electronic devices, and over which China has a near monopoly globally—ahead of talks between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump.
A big deal, no? According to chipmaking capital (and home to top contract chipmaker TSMC) Taiwan, not so much.
Taiwan's economy ministry said in a statement that the minerals covered by the new ban are different from those needed by its semiconductor manufacturers. Most of the materials it needs to make those oh-so-hot AI chips are sourced from Europe, the U.S., and Japan.
(That sound you hear is every hyperscaler breathing a sigh of relief.)
That doesn’t mean the restrictions won’t hurt elsewhere. The rare earths involved this time around are indeed used in electric vehicles and drones—more pain for two industries already on the tariff struggle bus. —AN
What to expect from Apple smart glasses (so far)
In case you missed it, Apple is reportedly working on smart glasses after its $3,500 “spatial computing” Vision Pro headset underwhelmed in sales.
Cheaper, lighter, dare we say more Meta-like? That appears to be the ticket to mass-market adoption, according to perennial Apple watcher Mark Gurman.
“It was the right call for Apple to pause work on a lighter, cheaper version of its Vision Pro (something that might have been dubbed the “Vision Air”) and refocus its engineers on smart glasses instead,” he writes. “The move fits both the company’s strengths and the broader industry shift toward always-on, AI-powered devices.”
Such a maneuver would mirror similar moves across the industry. (Including at Meta: Connected Ray-Bans appear to be moving far more units than Quest VR headsets.)
Perennial consumer rival Samsung is exploring conventional connected eyewear in partnership with Google (of pioneering “Glass” fame) despite having its own top-tier mixed reality headset in the pipeline.
And credit where credit’s due: Snapchat parent Snap rolled out its Spectacles way back in 2016.
Per Gurman, Apple smart glasses would be “likely to run the Vision Pro’s operating system, visionOS, so all the work on that software isn’t going to waste.” And like iPhones and iPods before them, they would be a bit more fully featured when paired with a Mac. —AN
More tech
—Crypto crash! Trump’s threats of an extra 100% tariff on China is believed to have triggered a $19 billion sell-off that began Friday.
—5.7 million Qantas records stolen. The customer records were pilfered in a July breach.
—The web browser wars are back, baby—thanks to AI.
—Dutch gov’t takes control of Nexperia. The Chinese-owned chipmaker had “serious governance shortcomings.”
—xAI is building world models. Elon Musk’s AI firm reportedly seeks to use them in gaming and robotics.
—Word of the day: “Cobots.” Robots that collaborate with humans are popping up in industrial facilities across the U.S.
—Thinking Machines Lab co-founder joins Meta. AI researcher Andrew Tulloch departs Mira Murati’s startup, which launched in February.
