At his final World Wide Developers Conference as Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook unveiled a slate of new AI features Monday, including a standalone Siri chatbot app, based on models Apple created in collaboration with Google.

The centerpiece of Apple CEO Tim Cook’s announcement Monday was a rebuilt Siri, which Apple describes as an “entirely new version” of its voice assistant, as the Associated Press reports. The updated Siri is more conversational, can customize its speaking style, and now has a standalone app that stores past conversations across Apple devices, according to the Verge.

Engadget reports that the new Siri can also analyze what’s displayed on a device’s screen or camera, allowing it to identify objects, answer questions about images, analyze receipts, and perform actions based on what users are viewing.

On Macs, users can reportedly highlight content and ask Siri to complete contextual tasks such as adding calendar events, conducting searches, or surfacing additional information. Apple also announced new AI-powered writing tools that can generate drafts, proofread documents, and adjust tone based on the intended audience.

Additional AI features include new image-editing tools in Photos, expanded text-to-image generation capabilities, Safari features that can organize tabs and monitor websites for changes, and natural-language Shortcuts that allow users to create automations without coding, as the Verge reports.

The new Siri is reportedly built on its Foundation Models, developed in collaboration with Google and powered in part by Gemini technology. During Monday's keynote, Apple officials emphasized privacy, saying tasks will either be processed directly on users’ devices or through its Private Cloud Compute system.

Siri AI is available to developers now and is expected to enter public beta testing later this year, though availability will initially be limited in some regions and languages.

The announcement follows Apple’s well documented struggles to deliver new AI features, including those unveiled at last year’s conference, and comes after the company recently agreed to a $250 million settlement in a lawsuit alleging it misled consumers about the availability and performance of Apple Intelligence features.

As SFist reported last August, in an effort to step up its failed AI game, Apple announced plans for a new tabletop AI robot "companion" as well as a home security system, with the latter expected to launch sometime this year, but there have been no further updates.

Cook announced in April that he was transitioning from CEO to executive chairman of Apple's board of directors in July. John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, will take over as CEO in September.

Previously: Apple Names New CEO, John Ternus, With Tim Cook Set to Step Down This Summer

Image: Apple

Apple Inc. will get a new CEO later this year, following the long-expected retirement of Tim Cook, who took over from the late Steve Jobs in 2011. His name is John Ternus, and he is currently Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering.

Cook, who will be ending his reign as one of the most powerful queer people in business, will be stepping down effective September 1, according to a company announcement. And NBC News says that the "transition will end Cook's 15-year run as one of the most successful technology CEOs in modern history."

"It has been the greatest privilege of my life to be the CEO of Apple and to have been trusted to lead such an extraordinary company," Cook says in a release. "I love Apple with all of my being, and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with a team of such ingenious, innovative, creative, and deeply caring people who have been unwavering in their dedication to enriching the lives of our customers and creating the best products and services in the world."

Apple's announcement notes that Ternus joined the company in 2001, just three years after Cook, and he became a vice president of Hardware Engineering in 2013. The company credits him with being "instrumental" with launch of multiple product lines, including the iPad, AirPods, and multiple generations of the iPhone and Apple Watch.

"I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity to carry Apple’s mission forward," Ternus says in a statement. "Having spent almost my entire career at Apple, I have been lucky to have worked under Steve Jobs and to have had Tim Cook as my mentor. It has been a privilege to help shape the products and experiences that have changed so much of how we interact with the world and with one another."

Ternus adds, "I am filled with optimism about what we can achieve in the years to come, and I am so happy to know that the most talented people on earth are here at Apple, determined to be part of something bigger than any one of us."

Cook will leave the company as it is in the midst of the AI sea change affecting much of the tech world, and ahead of what could be Apple's most consequential product launches in years. As we learned last year, the company has a new tabletop AI "companion" in the works, which is expected to hit the market in 2027, as well as a new smart speaker with visual display, and a new home security system to compete with Ring and Google Home.

When Cook took the reins of Apple in 2011, he had enormous shoes to fill, following the early retirement and untimely death of co-founder and iconic CEO Steve Jobs. And at the time it was a major headline that Cook was gay — even though Cook wasn't very open about his sexuality and made things very awkward for several years whenever it came up.

It barely registers as a thing now, and it's telling that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — who has arguably taken over as the most powerful gay man in the tech world — was able to be openly gay and it was never made to be much of a thing. When he posted photos from his wedding to Oliver Mulherin in 2024, there were still plenty of people on the internet who had no idea he was gay, and the news inspired a collective shrug.

As the New York Times notes, Cook has forged a fairly tight relationship with President Donald Trump, likely in order to avoid being punished for doing too much manufacturing in China.

As Trump said of Cook in 2019, "He calls me, and others don’t. Others go out and hire very expensive consultants, and Tim Cook calls Donald Trump directly. Pretty good, and I would take that call, too."

Cook, now 65, will transition into the role of executive chairman of Apple, and will likely still be the face of the company on the global stage for some period of time — as well as its designated Trump whisperer.

At age 50, Ternus is the same age Cook was when he took over the CEO role.

Top image:  Apple's John Ternus speaks during the 2017 Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) at the San Jose Convention Center on June 5, 2017 in San Jose, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Apple celebrated 50 years in business in high style, on a Tuesday, at Apple Park in Cupertino, with none other than Sir Paul McCartney performing live in the rainbow bandshell.

Apple, Inc. turns 50 today, and on Tuesday night, they had an employee celebration at the center of the company's spaceship doughnut campus in Cupertino, with a private concert by Paul McCartney.

As ABC 7 reports, McCartney sang a bunch of his and the Beatles' hits, including "Hey Jude," "Live and Let Die," "Help!", "Love Me Do," and "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da," and the station had a helicopter hovering over showing the crowd of employees and  lined up to get inside Apple Park before the big show — and, reportedly, capacity dictated that they could not bring a guest.

There's no word on how good the catering was, but below you can see a decent clip of the concert, beginning with "Let It Be." As for the 50th anniversary employee swag bag, it was kinda chintzy?

Apple CEO Tim Cook put out a memo to employees Wednesday, the abridged text of which can be seen below, via MacWorld.

Today officially marks Apple’s 50th anniversary. And as we’ve celebrated that milestone this month, l’ve been reflecting on some powerful words from Steve.

“When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is,” he said. “But life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. You can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

This is the ethos that brought Apple into the world in 1976 – and for fifty years, it’s what has drawn the smartest, most passionate, most creative and most committed people to this company.

...

Fifty years ago, there was a single computer prototype in a garage. Today, there are 2.5 billion active Apple devices in the hands of people in every corner of the earth — helping them create, communicate, learn and connect in ways that would have seemed unimaginable then.

It’s impossible to fully quantify the profound impact this company and its people have had on the world. And it’s a truly special thing to do what we do every day, knowing that our work is squarely focused on empowering people and enriching their lives.

...

Thank you for everything and here’s to the next fifty years.

Top image: Photo via appleworldturkish/Instagram

Given how the billionaire CEOs all lined up to throw money at Trump's second inauguration, helping the despot feel like the king he's always wanted to be, his royal ballroom is also being funded by these billionaires, including the Bay Area's tech-wealthy.

Trump's thousand-seat ballroom, to be named after himself, which replaces the entire East Wing of the White House that has already been demolished, is slated to cost around $300 million to construct. Trump has touted the fact that the project is all being privately funded by donors and by himself — though his portion may only come if the DOJ decides to hand him $230 million to cover previous lawsuits filed against him.

On Thursday, CNN reported on the full roster of donors to the ballroom project, which includes plenty of Silicon Valley names and corporations, including Apple, Alphabet, Coinbase, Palantir, Meta, and early crypto players the Winklevoss Twins, and their crypto exchange Gemini. Salesforce wasn't mentioned on that list, but maybe old Benioff helped sweeten the deal with a ballroom donation in his Wednesday chat with Trump about calling off his goons in SF.

Amazon, Microsoft, Tether and billionaire Trump ally Miriam Adelson are all on the list of ballroom donors as well.

As CBS News previously reported, Google/Alphabet agreed to throw $22 million at Trump's ballroom dreams in order to settle a lawsuit he brought about YouTube suspending his account over the January 6th riots — and one can imagine that Meta's donation is probably a similar sort of apology over all that.

Trump hosted a special dinner last week for ballroom donors, in the White House's East Room, as CNN reported. Guests included the Winklevosses, former journalist turned NewsMax anchor Greta Van Susteren, and representatives from Meta, Google, Amazon, and Palantir. The event had previously been billed as a fundraiser for the project, but when all these corporations and inviduals showered Trump and the ballroom with cash, it became more of a "thank you" dinner.

Meanwhile, as Americans who receive food assistance start running out of food amid the government shutdown, and as the 1.4 million Americans who are employed by the federal government start seeing their finances tighten after missed paychecks, Trump is sitting back like a French king overseeing the construction of a Gilded Age ballroom.

Photo by Frederick Wallace

Apple has formally replied in court to a lawsuit brought by Elon Musk and his company xAI alleging anticompetitive behavior in Apple's decision to partner with xAI competitor OpenAI.

Elon Musk's war with OpenAI has several fronts, one of which is an August lawsuit in which xAI is suing Apple for partnering with OpenAI, and for allegedly ranking OpenAI's ChatGPT higher in the Apple App store than Grok — which, if we had to guess, is based on actual popularity?

The lawsuit claimed that Apple had joined forces with OpenAI "in a desperate bid to protect its smartphone monopoly," and accused OpenAI of trying to establish its own monopoly in the chatbot realm. Musk's suit says that OpenAI is "the company that most benefits from inhibiting competition and innovation in AI," and OpenAI responded calling the suit part of Musk's "ongoing pattern of harassment."

Separately, Musk and OpenAI are engaged in another lawsuit, after OpenAI accused Musk of a deliberate campaign to sabotage and undermine the company — which he helped to cofound and then became estranged from. That suit cites Musk's likely disingenuous offer to buy OpenAI in February for $97.4 billion, widely considered a gross under-valuation.

On Tuesday, as Bloomberg reports, Apple made a court filing in Texas in which the company said it had done nothing wrong in partnering with OpenAI, and that Musk's claims of antitrust injury were based on "speculation on top of speculation."

Apple's filing also contends that it is "widely known that Apple intends to partner with other generative AI chatbots" besides ChatGPT.

And it suggests that Apple would need, under Musk's suit's logic, to "simultaneously" partner with "every other generative AI chatbot—regardless of quality, privacy or safety considerations, technical feasibility, stage of development, or commercial terms."

"Of course, the antitrust laws do not require that," Apple's attorneys write.

Apple is seeking a complete dismissal of the suit.

Previously: Elon Musk and xAI Sue Apple and OpenAI Claiming Anticompetitive Scheme

In response to criticism that Apple has missed the boat on the AI revolution, the company is reportedly working on a new tabletop AI "companion" that could hit the market in two years, as well as home-security cameras, and a smart speaker with a display.

Apple is looking to beef up its hardware pipeline, as growth has slowed for its signature products like the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and laptops. And this week Bloomberg reports that Apple has been quietly working on moving into the home-security market, and building a smart speaker with a display, in order to expand the ecosystem of products that it can link together and sell to customers.

Also, the company is reportedly working on a "lifelike version of Siri" that would be a tabletop robot "companion" of sorts with some sort of robotic arm, though the specs and capabilities of this remain under wraps. This AI device is said by sources who spoke to Bloomberg to be at the center of the company's product strategy going forward, with a release date in 2027.

No one from Apple has officially commented on any of this.

"The conventional wisdom is that Apple is lagging right now," says Bloomberg tech reporter Mark Gurman. "It has no future, the product pipeline is very limited, they're struggling in AI, the world is ending, and Tim Cook should be fired as CEO."

As Gurman notes, Apple is, at its heart, a hardware company, and giving a jolt of new energy to the hardware pipeline is central to the company's future success — particularly as other companies have caught up in the smartphone realm.

Gurman notes that "multiple new versions of Siri" are in the works, and the company is moving into the smart home space, as well as building new devices like glasses, headsets, and "foldables."

The first of these new products, in the already existing HomePod line of smart speakers, would be a smart speaker with a display that is expected to hit the market in 2026 — and it will no doubt be unveiled in a splashy Apple product launch, perhaps next spring or fall.

Most employees within Apple still haven't seen any versions of these products in development, but perhaps the leak to Bloomberg was strategic — Apple's stock price bounced up following the news, peaking Thursday morning at $234 per share, after trading as low as $172 back in April.

As Tim Cook told employees at an all-hands meeting earlier this month, per Bloomberg, "The product pipeline — which I can’t talk about — it’s amazing, guys. It’s amazing. Some of it you’ll see soon. Some of it will come later. But there’s a lot to see."

Previously: Apple Shareholders Scoff at Think Tank Proposal to Scrap DEI Programs

Photo by Tron Le

Not even one month after the movie theater chain Apple Cinemas took over the vacant 1000 Van News theater, the computer company Apple, Inc. is suing them over their name, saying that it’s meant to deceive consumers.

It seemed like a pretty feel-good story when the long-vacant AMC Van Ness movie theater reopened at 1000 Van Ness Avenue last month as a new multi-plex called Apple Cinemas Van Ness. Apple Cinemas is a chain of 14 movie theater locations, all of which are on the East Coast except for the new SF location. And when Apple Cinemas Van Ness opened in early July, SFist and many other local media outlets were careful to note that the company was not in any way affiliated with the Cupertino-based tech giant iPhone maker Apple, Inc.

Well, Apple CEO Tim Cook and the armies of Apple lawyers apparently feel this theater chain did not do enough to differentiate itself. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news Monday that the tech company Apple is suing the Apple Cinemas movie theater chain, claiming the name constitutes trademark infringement.  

“Consumers should not go to an ‘Apple Cinemas’ theater thinking it is connected to the famous Apple brand, with all its goodwill and brand equity,” Apple [Inc] attorney Miranda Means said in the lawsuit. The lawsuit asks that the “Apple” name be removed from the cinemas, and also asks for unspecified monetary damages.

“Apple” is not an uncommon name, as some of you may remember the Beatles’ old record label Apple Records. But this lawsuit brings up a few other factors.

The tech company Apple, or course, now makes movies themselves (ie, Killers of the Flower Moon, Napoleon, F1), so there could be a reasonable worry of consumer confusion there. Watching movies in iTunes was also a thing for a while, and back in 1999, their then-popular video player Quicktime was a go-to source for watching movie trailers online. Plus it turns out that same year, Apple also released a widescreen monitor called Apple Cinema Display.

But Apple Inc.’s attorney may have a real gotcha against Apple Cinemas. Per the lawsuit, Apple Cinemas apparently tried to trademark the names “Apple Cinemas” and “ACX – Apple Cinematic Experience” last year. Trademark officials denied that request, saying the product was too “closely related” to Apple’s TV and movie streaming options. Apple Inc. also says they sent a cease-and-desist letter to Apple Cinemas, and claims the cinema chain ignored it.  

There is also the issue of Apple Inc.’s claim that online reviews are tarnishing the tech company’s reputation, as online reviews of Apple Cinemas' theaters supposedly call the them “greasy,” “dirty” and “grungy.” We have not seen such sentiment on the Apple Cinemas Van Ness Yelp page, though there are certainly are a lot of viewers disappointed that they were promised reclining seats, and the reclining seats are not installed yet.

And it may be Apple Cinemas’ aggressive expansion plans that caught Apple, Inc.’s unwanted attention. The Chronicle noted last month that Apple Cinemas was also reopening Danville’s Century Blackhawk Plaza. And the Hollywood Reporter says that the SF opening at 1000 Van Ness was “part of an aggressive expansion that includes plans to roll out 100 locations nationwide to become one of the largest exhibitors in North America over the next decade."

Related: Former AMC Van Ness 1000 Movie Theater Reopens This Weekend as ‘Apple Cinemas Van Ness’ [SFist]

Image: Curtis W via Yelp

HBO Max may still be vying with Netflix for overall dominance at the Emmy Awards, but Apple's streaming service marked a banner year for Emmy nominations Tuesday, boasting both the most-nominated comedy, The Studio, and the most-nominated drama, Severance.

The Emmy Award nominations are out, and Apple TV+ finally has bragging rights in the prestige drama department, with the latest season of Severance getting the most nominations of any other drama series, with 27. That includes nominations for most of its cast including leads Adam Scott and Britt Lower, and Patricia Arquette, Zach Cherry, Tramell Tillman, and John Turturro all in the supporting categories.

Apple has been making a splash at the Emmys and the Oscars since launching its TV streaming service and production studio in late 2019, earning an Oscar for Best Picture with CODA in 2022 — beating other streamers to that milestone very quickly after its launch — and earning Emmy attention for shows like Slow Horses, The Morning Show, and Ted Lasso.

But dystopian workplace sci-fi/drama Severance has struck a nerve with audiences — and the Emmys' voting body — with its second season, maybe by helping to validate so many corporate employees' hybrid work schedules by depicting an office culture so mysterious and toxic that characters get literal lobotomies just to go into the office.

The Studio, which itself earned 23 nominations for Apple, was a breakout critical hit this year, serving as a kind of contemporary update to Robert Altman's The Player. It features Seth Rogan as a newly elevated studio head in the ever-baffling world of contemporary Hollywood movie-making, with established IPs and superheroes dominating the conversation, all while Rogan's character would still love to get some artful cinema made, somehow.

Apple TV+ landed a grand total of 79 nominations, up from 70 last year, with Slow Horses and the psychotherapist comedy Shrinking also earning multiple nods. Those include a first-ever Emmy nomination for Harrison Ford in Shrinking, at age 83.

Speaking of records, Oscar-winner and national treasure Kathy Bates got one of tradtional broadcast TV's ever-rarer nominations, becoming, as Variety notes, the oldest woman ever nominated in the Lead Actress in a Drama Series category for Matlock, at age 77.

HBO Max returned to dominance this year with a total of 142 nominations, a new high-water mark for HBO and its streaming service. That includes 24 nominations each in the drama categories for The White Lotus (yes, Parker Posey got one) and The Penguin, 16 nominations for The Last of Us, and 15 nominations for last year's Outstanding Comedy Series winner Hacks.

And Los Gatos-based Netflix, which eclipsed HBO last year in the nomination count, comes in with 120 total nominations this year, with limited series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story and Adolescence leading the pack.

The 77th Primetime Emmy Awards will be hosted by comedian Nate Bargatze and broadcast live from the Peacock Theater in LA on Sunday, September 14 at 5 pm PT on CBS. They will also be streaming live and on demand on Paramount+.

Remember when all those Bay Area tech CEOs cuddled up to Trump with $1 million inauguration donations? Boy did that just blow up in their faces! They lost billions today, and one yelled “Oh shit!” when he checked his stock on a live earnings call.

Future historians will chuckle (well, if we survive long enough that there are any future historians) over a detail about today, April 3, 2025, which was the US stock market's worst day since, well, the last time Donald Trump was president. That detail is seen below, as this morning’s opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange was rung by the head honchos of right-wing news outlet Newsmax, with a probably drunk Rudy Giuliani on hand.    

The New York Stock Exchange would promptly plummet 1,700 points, and according to the Wall Street Journal, the US stock market lost $3.1 trillion in a single day today.

The biggest losers were tech stocks, which are disproportionately Bay Area companies. But the funniest moment from all this carnage came from a non-tech CEO, SF’s own Restoration Hardware (now called RH) CEO Gary Friedman. Friedman was actually on a live conference earnings call when he checked the company’s stock price, and then blurted out an obscenity on the call.

CNBC captured the moment. “Where’s our stock now?” Friedman asks on the call, apparently not knowing the truth yet. “ I guess the stock was down based on some of the numbers we reported, and we got killed because of — really? Oh, shit! Okay. I just looked at the screen. I hadn’t looked at it.”

At the “Oh, shit!” moment, RH had lost 25% of its value today. By the time the markets closed, RH had lost 40% of its value.

The big tech companies took it the hardest, though. Apple's stock nosedived by 9.2% just for the day today, representing a loss of roughly $311 billion. Meta stock plummeted 9% and lost $132 billion in market capitalization, Santa Clara-based chipmaker Nvidia’s stock fell by 7.8%, and Google/Alphabet fell by 4%.

Hey, remember when all those tech CEO’s were lining up to give Trump million-dollar donations for his inauguration, because they thought Trump might be good for the tech industry?  How’s that working out for you, guys?

Of course, Trump thinks it’s all working out great. “I think it’s going very well,” he told reporters after the market closed. “It was an operation, like when a patient gets operated on.”

Trump had better hope that operation was a lobotomy if he wants to keep his support among the wealthy tech set — or anyone with a retirement account.

Related: Tacolicious Alters Menu Over Trump’s Tariffs, Now Serving ‘Avocado Garbanzo Guacamole’ [SFist]

Related: WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 20: Guests including Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk attend the Inauguration of Donald J. Trump in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Donald Trump takes office for his second term as the 47th president of the United States. (Photo by Julia Demaree Nikhinson - Pool/Getty Images)

At least one more major US company isn't rushing to toss its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives just because Trump and his minions don't get racism. Apple shareholders took a vote at a meeting to reject a proposal from a conservative think tank to get rid of its DEI programs.

Without disclosing the vote tally, Apple announced that shareholders voted down the proposal from the National Center for Public Policy Research. (It can be found on Page 85 of this proxy statement for the meeting.) As the Associated Press reports, the think tank made a similar proposal to Costco shareholders in January, days after Trump's inauguration, and it was also roundly rejected.

Apple's board of directors recommended a "no" vote on the anti-DEI proposal, saying that they were already fully in compliance with existing laws — despite the think tank raising the spector of future litigation relating to DEI initiatives.

"At Apple, we believe that how we conduct ourselves is as critical to Apple’s success as making the best products in the world," the board statement says. "We seek to conduct business ethically, honestly, and in compliance with applicable laws and regulations, and our Business Conduct and Compliance policies are foundational to how we do business. And we strive to create a culture of belonging where everyone can do their best work."

They suggest that the National Center for Public Policy Research proposal, "inappropriately attempts to restrict Apple’s ability to manage its own ordinary business operations, people and teams, and business strategies."

Apple is a company that has, historically, struggled to have much of any diversity in its workforce. As the AP reports, in its last diversity report in 2022, the company said that two-thirds of its workforce was male, and nearly three-quarters of its workforce was white or Asian.

The board further contended, in its recommendation statement, "Apple’s determination of the appropriate means by which to comply with applicable law, including any associated changes to our programs, policies, departments, or goals, is a fundamental aspect of Apple’s business operations."

In related news, Apple has just fixed a "glitch" on the iPhone in which users using the dictation feature and saying the word "racist," the word "Trump" would automatically appear.

A tax form left on an Apple office printer has sparked a proposed gender discrimination class action lawsuit involving more than 12,000 current and former female employees, who claim they were systematically paid less than their male counterparts for the same work—a disparity allegedly reinforced by Apple’s compensation policies and hiring practices.

The case was initiated by three named plaintiffs, including Justina Jong, who discovered the pay gap in 2019 when she found her male colleague’s tax form showing he earned $10,000 more than she did for an equivalent role.

A judge in San Francisco Superior Court recently gave the case the go-ahead to proceed, and lawyers for the plaintiffs hope to receive class action status. If approved by the court, women who started working in Apple’s California engineering, marketing, and AppleCare departments in the four years prior to the lawsuit filing, as well as those hired before the case concludes, are eligible to take part.

Since the three plaintiffs filed their case, it’s since grown to include thousands of participants. The lawsuit claims that Apple’s use of salary expectations perpetuated pay disparities, even after California banned inquiries about prior salaries in 2018.

Apple argued the claims could not be addressed as a class action due to the individualized nature of employment decisions, but the judge ruled there was sufficient evidence to proceed.

The lawsuit also alleges Jong faced sexual harassment by a senior Apple employee from 2015 to 2022, which Apple attempted to dismiss, but the judge rejected their arguments.

Image: Steve Proehl/Getty Images

• A’s single-game tickets at Sutter Park in West Sacramento go on sale next Friday — season tickets were reportedly sold out earlier this month. There will also be a series of giveaways that will be distributed throughout the season, including bobbleheads of players Brent Rooker, Mason Miller, and Lawerence Butler. [CBS News]
• Apple has enlisted veteran executive Kim Vorrath to revamp its AI efforts as the company works to catch up with rivals in the AI race. The revamp will include overhauling Siri, which has long been criticized for poor understanding and execution, and addressing issues with inaccurate AI-generated news recaps. [Yahoo Finance]
• Meta announced plans to invest up to $65 billion in AI infrastructure in 2025, including a 2-gigawatt data center and increased hiring for AI roles. The move positions Meta to compete with rivals like OpenAI and follows Trump’s $500 billion Stargate initiative. [Reuters]
• Dontay Williams, of Oakland, was sentenced to life without parole for the 2018 murders of his ex-girlfriend, Milan Ardoin, who was pregnant, and her mother, Valinda Rose Scott, in Antioch after a toxic breakup. The defense team argued that Williams suffered from childhood trauma. [East Bay Times]
• The woman who was accused of attacking a Muni passenger with a glass bottle and assaulting a second passenger was arraigned on multiple charges on Thursday, including a hate crime. [CBS News]

National:

• Virginia-based company Strategically Armored & Fortified Environments (SAFE) plans to launch a “luxury” doomsday bunker complex, which will house 625 people, in 2026. [Newsweek]
• A growing number of U.S. cities and local governments are indicating they won’t cooperate with the Trump administration’s massive migrant deportation effort, with some vowing to oppose it through lawsuits and other measures. [KQED]
• Giant pandas Bao Li and Qing Bao make their highly anticipated public appearance at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, coinciding with Lunar New Year celebrations and a relaunch of the panda cam. [ABC News]

Video of the Day:

• Delightful duo, Siegfried & Joy, always manages to get a hearty laugh out of this unflappably stoic writer.

Have a magical weekend, Everyone! Be sure to come back tomorrow. It’s great to be back at SFist — thirteen years later!

Image: Leanne Maxwell, SFist

Apple is yanking one of its first Apple Intelligence features to roll out, the one that summarizes news headlines from various sources to turn them into push notifications, which have turned out to be sometimes wildly false.

If you were one of those Apple users who opted in to Apple Intelligence news summaries, you may have seen headlines in the last month that said things like "Luigi Mangione shoots himself" and "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Arrested." You may have been shocked at these headlines and dug further to find out they were based in fiction.

Now, Apple is acknowledging that Apple Intelligence may not be so ready for prime time, and it's pulling the news summary feature for the time being. Apple put out a beta software update for developers on Thursday that disables the feature, as CNN reports, saying it plans to reintroduce it at a later date.

The company has made no accompanying statement about the feature.

It's the latest example in the rapid expansion of AI applications of AIs "hallucinating" or just getting demonstrable wrong. Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a professor at Brown University, tells CNN that it's a problem with large-language AI models that are trained to produce "plausible-sounding answers" to prompts. This means that "any plausible-sounding answer, whether it’s accurate or factual or made up or not, is a reasonable answer, and that’s what it produces," Venkatasubramanian says.

The BBC alerted Apple and the public to these headline problems in December, noting that one of their stories was incorrectly summarized as "Luigi Mangione Shoots Himself." Apple, at the time, declined to comment.

The National Union of Journalists subsequently called for the removal of the news summaries, saying, "the public must not be placed in a position of second-guessing the accuracy of news they receive."

Google had some similar problems last year with its "AI Overview" summaries in its search functionality. As of Spring 2024, some of these AI-generated blurbs included fictional information that seemed to come as a result of misreadings of information on the web — therefore giving back false results to users who could have easily found the correct information if they were conducting a normal Google search, without this unsolicited AI help.

Google also temporarily disabled the image-generating function of its Gemini AI last winter following controversy over it hallucinating more diverse versions of the US founding fathers, and other oddities.

There is no indication of when Apple may try to again roll out its AI news summaries.

Related: Google's 'AI Overview' Gets Facts Wrong, Is Worse Than a Regular Search

We learn this week that Apple and A24 are moving forward with a film adaptation of writer Michael Lewis's book about Sam Bankman-Fried, and Lena Dunham has been tapped to write the script.

"When Michael Lewis first met him, Sam Bankman-Fried was the world’s youngest billionaire and crypto’s Gatsby," reads the book description for Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon, which was published last year. "CEOs, celebrities, and leaders of small countries all vied for his time and cash after he catapulted, practically overnight, onto the Forbes billionaire list. Who was this rumpled guy in cargo shorts and limp white socks, whose eyes twitched across Zoom meetings as he played video games on the side?... Both psychological portrait and financial roller-coaster ride, Going Infinite is Michael Lewis at the top of his game, tracing the mind-bending trajectory of a character who never liked the rules and was allowed to live by his own―until it all came undone."

As Variety reported Tuesday, the movie is in its early development stages, and Apple Studios and A24 are co-developing and co-producing. It's unclear if that means they'll be seeking a theatrical release when it's finished, or if it will go straight to Apple TV+.

Michael Lewis, the famed author of Moneyball, was notably one of the few people allowed in to meet with Bankman-Fried in late 2022 while he sat out his bail-release, pre-trial, at his parents' house in Palo Alto.

The Bay Area-born Bankman-Fried, now 32, was sentenced in March to 25 years in federal prison. He was convicted a year ago on seven counts of fraud in connection with his running of cryptocurrency derivatives exchange FTX. He was also ordered to forfeit $11 billion in order to pay restitution to victims.

Bankman-Fried, through his investment firm Alameda Research, was an early investor in SF-based AI startup Anthropic, which was founded by some former employees of OpenAI.

Two years ago, in November 2022, FTX, Alameda Research, and more than 130 associated legal entities declared bankruptcy in a notorious blow-up. There were reports that, at one point, FTX held $16 billion in customer assets, some which were transferred without customers' knowledge to Alameda Research.

In late September of this year, the New York Times reported that Bankman-Fried was sharing a cell at the notorious MDC (Metropolitan Dentention Center) with none other than Sean Combs.

The judge in Bankman-Fried's case had ordered him to serve out his sentence, due to his autism, at a medium-security facility close to the Bay Area and his parents. Bankman-Fried, however, requested to remain at MDC pending his appeal, which experts say could take years.

It's not clear how well Bankman-Fried has been doing, nutrition-wise, after complaining last year that he had nothing to eat at the jail, as a vegan, besides peanut butter.

Previously: Disgraced FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Sentenced to 25 Years

Top image: FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (L) arrives for trial at Manhattan Federal Court on March 30, 2023 in New York City. Federal prosecutors added a foreign bribery charge to the list of crimes that Bankman-Fried is already facing. The indictment accuses the FTX founder of directing $40 million in bribes to Chinese government officials to unfreeze assets related to his cryptocurrency business. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)