Good morning. Don’t you just love it when digital companies embrace a good analog transformation?
Amazon is no stranger to this kind of reverse-engineering, given its brick-and-mortar Fresh, Go, and Whole Foods stores. But a new report detailing that the company plans to build a 225,000 sq. ft. everything store—well, that’s just the natural evolution of things, isn’t it?
Two decades ago, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos acknowledged: “We are physical creatures and we like to move around in our environment.” And what better place to do that than a fully immersive suburban superstore?
Today’s tech news below. —Andrew Nusca
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Indonesia and Malaysia temporarily restrict Grok
Indonesia and Malaysia restricted access to the Grok over the weekend, making them the first countries to do so in response to the AI chatbot’s generation of sexual content.
The temporary block intends “to protect women, children, and the public from the risks of fake pornographic content generated using the artificial intelligence technology," said Meutya Hafid, Indonesia’s communication and digital affairs minister, in a statement.
Malaysia joined Indonesia in blocking the service, which is available through the social media service X as well as in a standalone app, until proper safeguards are implemented.
Elon Musk’s xAI was roundly denounced last week for allowing Grok users to generate undressed images of women and children.
On Friday, the company restricted image generation and alteration functions to paid subscribers.
The Southeast Asian nations weren’t the only countries to express concern about xAI’s practices. The Brits were unsparing about Grok’s missteps—U.K. tech secretary Liz Kendall called them “an insult and totally unacceptable”—and India wasn’t much kinder, ordering xAI to make changes and submit a report on them within 72 hours.
“Sorry for the inconvenience,” Grok posted on X about the national blocks. “xAI is actively working to address the issue. In the meantime, using a VPN might help bypass the restriction.” —AN
The Instagram breach that wasn’t (or was?)
A whole lot of Instagram users received a suspicious password reset email in recent days, suggesting that the Meta social media service was having cybersecurity issues.
Not true, the company said Saturday.
“We fixed an issue that let an external party request password reset emails for some people,” it wrote in a statement. “There was no breach of our systems and your Instagram accounts are secure.”
Phew, right?
Not so fast, one U.S. cybersecurity company says.
Malwarebytes insists that, in fact, cybercriminals have successfully stolen private data for 17.5 million Instagram accounts—physical addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, etc.—and made them “available for sale on the dark web.”
So what gives?
The word on the cyber street is that they’re both being truthful. Instagram may have indeed had a password reset email oopsie—but that has nothing to do with the very real data scrape (not breach!) in late 2024 that recently exposed users’ private information.
Keep your digital head on a swivel, folks. —AN
Walmart to add Wing to another 150 stores
Alphabet’s drone delivery service is spreading its wings a little wider.
Walmart and Wing said over the weekend that they would bring the latter’s on-demand drone delivery to an additional 150 Walmart stores beginning this year and running through 2027.
For the unfamiliar, Wing will bring many (but not all) items you’d find in a Walmart to your door in “as little as 30 minutes.”
Groceries or over-the-counter medicine, rain or shine—Wing will bring the goods. (Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these drones. OK, maybe a little snow will ground them after all.)
The companies currently operate their service in Atlanta and Dallas-Fort Worth. Seven months ago, they announced that they’d add drone delivery service in Charlotte, Houston, Orlando, and Tampa.
More U.S. metros are reportedly on tap, including Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Miami, and St. Louis. Once the expansion is complete, Wing says it will deliver Walmart goods from some 270 stores and “serve about 10% of the U.S. population.” —AN
More tech
—Apple and Samsung vs. India. Pushback for a proposal that would force the smartphone makers to share source code.
—The AI boom is half the size of the dotcom boom in terms of U.S. GDP.
—Google’s agentic AI protocol. A new open standard to coordinate AI agents across the purchasing process.
—China investigates food delivery competition in an attempt to halt economy-damaging price wars.
—AI-generated music: 50% to 60% of listeners between ages 18 and 44 said they listen to it for about 3 hours per week.
—Kuaishou rising. Its shares are up 88% over the past year thanks to its Kling AI video generator.
—Italy fines Cloudflare. A 14 million euro penalty for refusing to block pirate sites on its DNS service.
