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      Why Google, Microsoft and Amazon Shy Away From Buying A.I. Start-Ups

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      Google, Microsoft and Amazon have made deals with A.I. start-ups for their technology and top employees, but have shied from owning the firms. Here’s why.In 2022, Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas left their jobs developing artificial intelligence at Google. They said the tech giant moved too slowly. So they created Character.AI, a chatbot start-up, and raised nearly $200 million.Last week, Mr. Shazeer and Mr. De Freitas announced that they were returning to Google. They had struck a deal to rejoin its A.I. research arm, along with roughly 20 percent of Character.AI’s employees, and provide their start-up’s technology, they said.But even though Google was getting all that, it was not buying Character.AI.Instead, Google agreed to pay $3 billion to license the technology, two people with knowledge of the deal said. About $2.5 billion of that sum will then be used to buy out Character.AI’s shareholders, including Mr. Shazeer, who owns 30 percent to 40 percent of the company and stands to net $750 million to $1 billion, the people said. What remains of Character.AI will continue operating without its founders and investors.The deal was one of several unusual transactions that have recently emerged in Silicon Valley. While big tech companies typically buy start-ups outright, they have turned to a more complicated deal structure for young A.I. companies. It involves licensing the technology and hiring the top employees — effectively swallowing the start-up and its main assets — without becoming the owner of the firm.These transactions are being driven by the big tech companies’ desire to sidestep regulatory scrutiny while trying to get ahead in A.I., said three people who have been involved in such agreements. Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple and Microsoft are under a magnifying glass from agencies like the Federal Trade Commission over whether they are squashing competition, including by buying start-ups.“Large tech firms may clearly be trying to avoid regulatory scrutiny by not directly acquiring the targeted firms,” said Justin Johnson, a business economist who focuses on antitrust at Cornell University. But “these deals do indeed start to look a lot like regular acquisitions.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Nvidia Shares Tumble After Reports of a Chip Delay

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      Nvidia shares tumbled more than 10 percent in early trading on Monday after reports that the company would delay shipments of its newest artificial intelligence chip, but the stock later rebounded as investors’ concerns about the costs of the delay faded.The Information, a tech news outlet, reported on Friday that Nvidia would be shipping its latest graphics processing unit, or GPU, which make it possible to create A.I. systems, three months later than planned. Nvidia said in a statement that production for the chip, which is called Blackwell, was on track for later this year and added that customer orders and interest were high.Stacy Rasgon, an analyst with Bernstein who follows Nvidia, said there was no need to panic because cloud computing companies such as Microsoft and Amazon were continuing to increase their spending on A.I. data centers. That expansion means that Nvidia chips will be in demand, he said.“Nvidia’s competitive window is so large right now that we don’t think a three-month delay will cause significant share shifts,” Mr. Rasgon said.Nvidia has been one of the hottest stocks in technology, fueled by the frenzy over A.I. The company’s market value has increased to $2.43 trillion from $1 trillion a year ago, making it more valuable than Alphabet and Amazon. But its rise has been marked by volatility, as investors waffle between enthusiasm and skepticism about the potential for A.I. to generate new business. More

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      Meta in Talks to Use Voices of Judi Dench, Awkwafina and Others for A.I.

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      If deals are struck, Meta may incorporate the actors’ voices into a digital assistant product called MetaAI, people with knowledge of the effort said.Meta is in discussions with Awkwafina, Judi Dench and other actors and influencers for the right to incorporate their voices into a digital assistant product called MetaAI, according to three people with knowledge of the talks, as the company pushes to build more products that feature artificial intelligence.Apart from Ms. Dench and Awkwafina, Meta is in talks with the comedian Keegan-Michael Key and other celebrities, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions are private. They added that all of Hollywood’s top talent agencies were involved in negotiations with the tech giant.The talks remain fluid, and it is unclear which actors and influencers, if any, may sign on to the project, the people said. If the parties come to an agreement, Meta could pay millions of dollars in fees to the actors.A Meta spokesman declined to comment. The discussions were reported earlier by Bloomberg.Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has invested heavily in artificial intelligence, which the biggest tech companies are racing to develop and lead. Meta has plowed billions into weaving the technology into its social networking apps and advertising business, including by creating artificially intelligent characters that could chat through text across its messaging apps.On Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, increased how much his company would spend on A.I. and other expenses this year to at least $37 billion, up from $30 billion at the beginning of 2024. Mr. Zuckerberg said he would rather build too fast “rather than too late” to prevent his competitors from gaining an edge in the A.I. race.One area of A.I. that is rapidly emerging are chatbots with voice abilities, which act as virtual assistants. In May, OpenAI, a leading A.I. company, unveiled a version of its ChatGPT chatbot that could receive and respond to voice commands, images and videos. It was part of a wider effort to combine conversational chatbots with voice assistants like the Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Elon Musk Says Robotaxis Are Tesla’s Future. Experts Have Doubts.

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      Tesla says self-driving taxis will power its growth, but the company hasn’t said when such a service would be ready or how much it would increase profits.As sales of its electric cars have fallen, Tesla and its chief executive, Elon Musk, have sought to convince Wall Street that the company’s future lies not in the grinding business of making and selling cars but in the far more exciting world of artificial intelligence.In Mr. Musk’s telling, one of Tesla’s main A.I.-based businesses will be driverless taxis, or robotaxis, that can operate pretty much anywhere and in any condition. Tesla is very close to perfecting such vehicles and will easily secure regulatory approval to put them on roads, Mr. Musk said last week on a conference call to discuss the company’s second quarter results.Mr. Musk’s vision of autonomous vehicles, or A.V.s, is not limited to cars that drive themselves. He has also claimed that individuals who buy Teslas would be able to make money when they are asleep or at work by letting the company use their cars as robotaxis.The robotaxi service will, Mr. Musk has said, catapult Tesla’s stock market valuation, around $700 billion now, into the trillions of dollars.But first, a lot will have to go right.His idea would require major advances in technology and fundamental changes in the way people view cars. The experience of driverless taxi services like Waymo and Cruise in Phoenix, San Francisco and other cities raises questions about when such offerings will become profitable and how much money they will make.Tesla’s technology will face stiff competition from Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, the parent company of Google; ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft; and Amazon’s self-driving business Zoox. Carmakers including General Motors, which owns Cruise, are also pursuing autonomous driving, along with Chinese tech and auto companies like Baidu and BYD.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Elon Musk Shares Manipulated Harris Video, in Seeming Violation of X’s Policies

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      Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has waded into one of the thorniest issues facing U.S. politics: deepfake videos.On Friday night, Mr. Musk, the billionaire owner of the social media platform X, reposted an edited campaign video for Vice President Kamala Harris that appears to have been digitally manipulated to change the spot’s voice-over in a deceptive manner.The video mimics Ms. Harris’s voice, but instead of using her words from the original ad, it has the vice president saying that President Biden is senile, that she does not “know the first thing about running the country” and that, as a woman and a person of color, she is the “ultimate diversity hire.”In addition, the clip was edited to remove images of former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, and to add images of Mr. Biden. The original, unaltered ad, which the Harris campaign released on Thursday, is titled “We Choose Freedom.”The version posted on X does not contain a disclaimer, though the account that first uploaded it Friday morning, @MrReaganUSA, noted in its post that the video was a “parody.” When Mr. Musk reposted the video on his own account eight hours later, he made no such disclosure, stating only, “This is amazing,” followed by a laughing emoji.Mr. Musk’s post, which has since been viewed 98 million times, would seem to run afoul of X’s policies, which prohibit sharing “synthetic, manipulated or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What if the A.I. Boosters Are Wrong?

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      A skeptical paper by Daron Acemoglu, a labor economist at M.I.T., has triggered a heated debate over whether artificial intelligence will supercharge productivity.Despite the advent of personal computers, the internet and other high-tech innovations, much of the industrialized world is stuck in an economic growth slump, with O.E.C.D. countries expected to expand on aggregate just 1.7 percent this year. Economists sometimes call this phenomenon the productivity paradox.The big new hope is that artificial intelligence will snap this mediocrity streak — but doubts are creeping in. And one especially skeptical paper by Daron Acemoglu, a labor economist at M.I.T., has triggered a heated debate.Acemoglu concluded that A.I. would contribute only “modest” improvement to worker productivity, and that it would add no more than 1 percent to U.S. economic output over the next decade. That pales in comparison to estimates by Goldman Sachs economists, who predicted last year that generative A.I. could raise global G.D.P. by 7 percent over the same period.The bullish camp has great hopes for A.I. Sam Altman of the ChatGPT maker OpenAI sees A.I. wiping out poverty. Jensen Huang, the C.E.O. of Nvidia, the dominant maker of the chips used to power A.I., says the technology has ushered in “the next industrial revolution.”But if the boosters are wrong, it could be trouble for the developed world, which is in desperate need of a productivity breakthrough as its work force ages and declines.A.I. won’t reverse stagnation, Acemoglu told DealBook. One reason: The technology can automate only about 5 percent of an office worker’s tasks, he found. “A.I. has much more to offer to help with the productivity problem. But it will not do that on its current path, that’s why I’m so troubled by the hype,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How A.I. Imitates Restaurant Reviews

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      A new study showed people real restaurant reviews and ones produced by A.I. They couldn’t tell the difference.The White Clam Pizza at Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana in New Haven, Conn., is a revelation. The crust, kissed by the intense heat of the coal-fired oven, achieves a perfect balance of crispness and chew. Topped with freshly shucked clams, garlic, oregano and a dusting of grated cheese, it is a testament to the magic that simple, high-quality ingredients can conjure.Sound like me? It’s not. The entire paragraph, except the pizzeria’s name and the city, was generated by GPT-4 in response to a simple prompt asking for a restaurant critique in the style of Pete Wells.I have a few quibbles. I would never pronounce any food a revelation, or describe heat as a kiss. I don’t believe in magic, and rarely call anything perfect without using “nearly” or some other hedge. But these lazy descriptors are so common in food writing that I imagine many readers barely notice them. I’m unusually attuned to them because whenever I commit a cliché in my copy, I get boxed on the ears by my editor.He wouldn’t be fooled by the counterfeit Pete. Neither would I. But as much as it pains me to admit, I’d guess that many people would say it’s a four-star fake.The person responsible for Phony Me is Balazs Kovacs, a professor of organizational behavior at Yale School of Management. In a recent study, he fed a large batch of Yelp reviews to GPT-4, the technology behind ChatGPT, and asked it to imitate them. His test subjects — people — could not tell the difference between genuine reviews and those churned out by artificial intelligence. In fact, they were more likely to think the A.I. reviews were real. (The phenomenon of computer-generated fakes that are more convincing than the real thing is so well known that there’s a name for it: A.I. hyperrealism.)Dr. Kovacs’s study belongs to a growing body of research suggesting that the latest versions of generative A.I. can pass the Turing test, a scientifically fuzzy but culturally resonant standard. When a computer can dupe us into believing that language it spits out was written by a human, we say it has passed the Turing test.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      260 McNuggets? McDonald’s Ends A.I. Drive-Through Tests Amid Errors

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      Ordering mistakes frustrated customers during nearly three years of tests. But competitors like White Castle and Wendy’s say their A.I. ordering systems have been highly accurate.In the nearly three years since McDonald’s announced that it was partnering with IBM to develop a drive-through order taker powered by artificial intelligence, videos popped up on social media showing confused and frustrated customers trying to correct comically inaccurate meals.“Stop! Stop! Stop!” two friends screamed with humorous anguish on a TikTok video as an A.I. drive-through misunderstands their order, tallying up 240, 250 and then 260 Chicken McNuggets.In other videos, the A.I. rings up a customer for nine iced teas instead of one, fails to explain why a customer could not order Mountain Dew and thought another wanted to add bacon to his ice cream.So when McDonald’s announced in a June 13 internal email, obtained by the trade publication Restaurant Business, that it was ending its partnership with IBM and shutting down its A.I. tests at more than 100 U.S. drive-throughs, customers who had interacted with the service were probably not shocked.The decision to abandon the IBM deal comes as many other businesses, including its competitors, are investing in A.I. But it exemplifies some of the challenges companies are facing as they jockey to unlock the revolutionary technology’s potential.Other fast-food companies have had success with A.I. ordering. Last year, Wendy’s formed a partnership with Google Cloud to build out its A.I. drive-through system. Carl’s Jr. and Taco John’s have hired Presto, a voice A.I. firm for restaurants. Panda Express has approximately 30 automated order takers at its windows through a partnership with the voice A.I. firm SoundHound AI.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More