VOLUME 36

Well, it’s been a big week in the world of all things digital, with a bill getting signed to ban TikTok on top of many other big stories. As always, thank you for being a subscriber and I hope you enjoy today’s round ups!

— Jacob Pace

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Biden Signs Bill to Ban TikTok

Arguably some of the biggest news this week is Biden’s official signing of a bill that will effectively force TikTok to either divest it’s U.S. operations to an American company or risk getting banned. According to the bill, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance has been given nine months to arrange a sale, with an option for President Biden to extend the deadline by 90 days if sufficient progress toward a sale has been made.

In repsonse to the bill, TikTok CEO Shou Chew went to the platform on Wednesday and vowed that the social media coompany will challenge the new law on First Amendment grounds.

While there are many possible outcomes of what could happen here, I will say that signing a bill is much easier than wiping out an entire app, especially given that November’s election is right around the corner which could shake things up even more.

Regardless, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out but I’m sure this is just the first of many stories that will come out about this in the coming months.

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Zuck Loses Wall Street’s Confidence with Investment into Meta AI

During a quarterly earnings call on Wednesday, Zuck apparently unnerved investors by spending a lot of time explaining long-term investments in AI and the metaverse.

If you hadn’t noticed this week, Meta released Llama 3, its latest large language model which it’s integrated into a product called Meta AI that has made its way into apps such as Instagram and WhatsApp.

The integration is intended to be the company’s response to ChatGPT, OpenAI’s language model that generated $1bn in 2023.

As a result of the organization’s big investment towards this area, Meta shares dropped 19% in extended trading on Wednesday, wiping out more than $200 billion in market cap. The drop came despite Meta reporting better-than-expected profit and revenue for the first quarter.

Shares in Meta had tumbled in 2022, followed by a boost in 2023, which came about as a result of Zuck’s tough action on costs in what he described as a “year of efficiency” in 2023.

I personally think this will just be a drop in the bucket for what Meta has planned. Zuck claims that this is to be expected with the rollout of new products at the company, as has been the case for prior moonshot endeavors such as Instagram Reels and the company’s transition over to mobile in 2008.

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Drake Threatened with Lawsuit over Diss Track Featuring AI Tupac

You heard that right. AI Tupac was recently featured on Drake’s “Taylor Made Freestyle”, a diss track which he targeted at fellow rapper Kendrick Lamar. The diss track featured AI-generated verses emulating Shakur as well Snoop Dogg, who reacted in a typical fashion with a lighthearted video being perplexed by the situation.

Well, turns out Tupac’s estate wasn’t very happy about that. In fact, so much so, that they decided to threaten Drake with a lawsuit unless he took the song down.

In a letter written from the estate to Drake, they called the freestyle "a blatant abuse of the legacy of one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time."

According to the documents, Shakur’s estate “is deeply dismayed and disappointed by [Drake’s] unauthorized use of Tupac’s voice and personality… Not only is the record a flagrant violation of Tupac’s publicity and the estate’s legal rights, it is also a blatant abuse of the legacy of one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time. The Estate would never have given its approval for this use.”

This just one of many stories that I’m sure we’ll continue to see at the intersection of AI and copyright infringement. But in the meantime, check out the YouTube link above to check out AI Tupac on Drake’s latest freestyle.

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Apple Vision Pro Sales Fall

In a report from Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple has allegedly slashed production volumes of the Vision Pro mixed reality headset by nearly half.

The original plan was to sell between 700,000 and 800,000 units in 2024, but now that has been cut to between 400,000 and 450,000. He also notes that Apple has made the call to reduce production before the headset has even gone on sale in markets outside the US. That suggests demand in the US has been much lower than expected. What's more, Kuo says the poor performance of the Vision Pro could mean that a planned update to the headset in 2025 may be cancelled.

In my opinion, the headset, while cool, is still very expensive at a whopping $3500. I think the appetite to buy a product like this and hold onto it is still very nascent, but I’m excited to see the VR/AR wars unfold over the next few years to see who comes out victorious.

That’s all we have today, folks! See you next week.