CNN – Social Media/Technology

By Jennifer Korn, CNN A first-generation 2007 iPhone sold for more than $63,000 in an online auction Sunday, more than 100 times its original cost. Dubbed a “first-edition” device by auctioneer LCG Auctions, the box had never been opened. The original iPhone cost $599 and offered early Apple adopters a 3.5-inch screen with a 2-megapixel

By Brian Fung, CNN A member of the Senate Intelligence Committee is calling on Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores over concerns about national security, in the latest indication of mounting scrutiny on the short-form video app from members of Congress. In a letter sent to the two tech giants on

By Samantha Murphy Kelly, CNN Business At its annual Unpacked event on Wednesday, Samsung unveiled its latest Galaxy S smartphones — and the company is betting that focusing on improvements to the camera will be enough to get consumers to upgrade. The new lineup, which includes the 6.8-inch Galaxy S23 Ultra, 6.6-inch Galaxy S23+, and

By Jennifer Korn A record $3.8 billion worth of cryptocurrency was stolen from various services last year, with much of those thefts driven by North Korean-linked hackers, according to a report Wednesday from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. The increase in crypto heists, from $3.3 billion in 2021, came as the overall market for cryptocurrencies suffered

By Rob McLean, CNN A tech CEO is apologizing after quoting Martin Luther King Jr. in a layoffs announcement. On January 24, PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada sent a letter to employees announcing the digital operations management company would eliminate about 7% of its workforce. Tejada quoted King at the end of that letter. “I am

By Jennifer Korn More than four years after Instagram’s founders left the company, they’re back with a new app. Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger on Tuesday announced the launch of Artifact, an app that promises “a personalized news feed” powered by artificial intelligence. In an Instagram post, Krieger said he and Systrom “have been working

By Samantha Murphy Kelly, CNN Business Two months after OpenAI unnerved some educators with the public release of ChatGPT, an AI chatbot that can help students and professionals generate shockingly convincing essays, the company is unveiling a new tool to help teachers adapt. OpenAI on Tuesday announced a new feature, called an “AI text classifier,”

By Brian Fung, CNN Apple has illegally imposed rules on its employees that prohibit them from discussing their wages and engaging in other protected activity, according to investigators at the National Labor Relations Board. The findings by NLRB agents determined that “various work rules, handbook rules, and confidentiality rules at Apple” are unlawful because they

By Catherine Thorbecke, CNN In the week before Microsoft publicly announced plans to cut 10,000 jobs, thousands of workers at the tech giant who were eager for any information about the looming layoffs joined a professional networking site — not LinkedIn, which Microsoft owns, but Blind. Some 6,000 Microsoft employees signed up for accounts on

By Michelle Toh and CNN’s Beijing bureau China has hit back after reports that Washington is moving to further restrict sales of American technology to Huawei. “China is deeply concerned,” Mao Ning, a spokesperson for the country’s foreign ministry, said at a press conference Tuesday. The Financial Times reported earlier that the US Commerce Department

By Michelle Toh, CNN Samsung’s quarterly profits have plunged to their lowest level in eight years as customers snapped up fewer cell phones and laptops. The tech giant reported operating profit of 4.3 trillion Korean won ($3.5 billion) on Tuesday for the three months ended December, down 69% from a year ago. Revenue fell 8%

By Michelle Toh, CNN ASML, a Dutch maker of semiconductor equipment, says “rules are being finalized” on export controls, amid reports that the Netherlands and Japan have joined the United States in restricting sales of some computer chip machinery to China. “It is our understanding that steps have been made towards an agreement between governments

By Samantha Murphy Kelly, CNN Business If you came across a four bedroom, 3.5 bathroom home listed for sale recently on a quiet cul-de-sac in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, you might not think twice about the online listing. It included typical real estate descriptions like “ideal for entertaining” and “ample space for relaxation.” But JJ Johannes,

By Donie O’Sullivan, Audrey Ash and Zachary Cohen, CNN “There might be someone getting shot tomorrow.” That was the warning from Twitter staff at an internal meeting on Jan. 5, 2021, the eve of the deadly attack on the US Capitol. It wasn’t the only stark warning Twitter management received ahead of the insurrection, according

By Clare Duffy, CNN Former president Donald Trump could soon make a return to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and reach the massive audiences on each, now that the companies behind those platforms have restored access to his accounts. But that could just be the start. The decisions by Twitter and now Facebook-parent Meta to bring

Samantha Beech, CNN The chief executive of the Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corporation has doubled down on using facial recognition at its venues to bar lawyers suing the group from attending events. Speaking to Fox 5 on Thursday, MSG Executive Chairman and CEO James Dolan said Madison Square Garden is a private company and therefore

By Samantha Murphy Kelly, CNN Business ChatGPT is smart enough to pass prestigious graduate-level exams — though not with particularly high marks. The powerful new AI chatbot tool recently passed law exams in four courses at the University of Minnesota and another exam at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, according to professors at

By Catherine Thorbecke, CNN News outlet CNET said Wednesday it has issued corrections on a number of articles, including some that it described as “substantial,” after using an artificial intelligence-powered tool to help write dozens of stories. The outlet has since hit pause on using the AI tool to generate stories, CNET’s editor-in-chief Connie Guglielmo

By Scottie Andrew, CNN James Bond fans may be waiting on the next actor who will play the British spy onscreen, but a beloved Bond adventure of yore is making its return. “GoldenEye 007,” a classic first-person shooter made for Nintendo 64 in 1997, is being revived for Nintendo Switch and Xbox more than 25

By Michelle Toh and CNN’s Beijing bureau Millions of players in China have lost access to the iconic “World of Warcraft” franchise and other popular video games, as Blizzard Entertainment’s servers in the country went offline after two decades. The company’s services in China were suspended at midnight local time on Tuesday, marking the end

By Diksha Madhok, CNN Asia’s richest man Gautam Adani says he is addicted to ChatGPT, the powerful new AI tool that interacts with users in an eerily convincing and conversational way. In a LinkedIn post last week, the 60-year-old India tycoon said that the release of ChatGPT was a “transformational moment in the democratization of

By Clare Duffy, CNN In January 2021, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella spoke in lofty terms about how the first year of the pandemic had sparked a staggering shift toward online services, benefiting his company in the process. “What we have witnessed over the past year is the dawn of a second wave of digital transformation

By Catherine Thorbecke, CNN Elizabeth Holmes made an “attempt to flee the country” by booking a one-way ticket to Mexico departing in January 2022, shortly after the Theranos founder was convicted of fraud, prosecutors alleged in a new court filing Friday. Holmes was convicted last January of defrauding investors while running the failed blood testing

By Brian Fung, CNN A wide range of businesses, internet users, academics and even human rights experts defended Big Tech’s liability shield Thursday in a pivotal Supreme Court case about YouTube algorithms, with some arguing that excluding AI-driven recommendation engines from federal legal protections would cause sweeping changes to the open internet. The diverse group

By Clare Duffy, CNN Google parent Alphabet is eliminating about 12,000 jobs, or 6% of its workforce, the company said Friday, in the latest cuts to shake the technology sector. The cuts will affect roles across product areas and regions, CEO Sundar Pichai said in an email to employees that was posted on the company’s

By Sean Lyngaas, CNN A senior White House official asked US tech company Cloudflare to help circumvent internet censorship in Iran after protests erupted in that country last September but US sanctions prevented the firm from doing so, Cloudflare CEO Mathew Prince said Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “I got a

By Samantha Murphy Kelly, CNN Business When Kristen Asplin heard about a powerful new AI chatbot tool called ChatGPT going viral online recently with its ability to write frighteningly good essays in seconds, she worried about how her students could use it to cheat. Asplin, a professor at University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, soon joined

By Kristen Holmes, CNN Former President Trump’s campaign sent a letter to Facebook’s parent company, Meta, Tuesday petitioning them to unblock his Facebook account, a source familiar with the letter tells CNN. NBC first reported the news. Trump’s Facebook and Twitter accounts were blocked following the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. Facebook

By Oliver Darcy, CNN Business The World Economic Forum’s annual meeting at Davos has long been a lightning rod for conspiracy theories. Extremist figures such as Infowars host Alex Jones have reliably used the event to drive up fear and paranoia about sinister schemes the “globalists” are supposedly plotting. In the past, however, these farcical

By Catherine Thorbecke and Hanna Ziady, CNN Microsoft plans to lay off 10,000 employees as part of broader cost-cutting measures, the company said in a securities filing on Wednesday, making it the latest tech company to reduce staff because of growing economic uncertainty. Speaking before the layoff announcement at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in

By Jennifer Korn Getty Images announced a lawsuit against Stability AI, the company behind popular AI art tool Stable Diffusion, alleging the tech company committed copyright infringement. The stock image giant accused Stability AI of copying and processing millions of its images without obtaining the proper licensing, according to a press release issued Tuesday. London-based

By Reuters A 2016 video that Tesla (TSLA) used to promote its self-driving technology was staged to show capabilities like stopping at a red light and accelerating at a green light that the system did not have, according to testimony by a senior engineer. The video, which remains archived on Tesla’s website, was released in

By Laura He, CNN Ride-hailing giant Didi received approval to resume new user registration in China, it said Monday, providing more evidence that Beijing’s regulatory crackdown on tech giants might be coming to an end. The move is the latest sign that regulators are loosening the reins on the country’s beleaguered tech companies in a

By Anna Cooban, CNN Apple CEO Tim Cook recommended the company cut his pay this year after shareholders rebelled. The world’s largest tech company said it would reduce Cook’s target pay package to $49 million, 40% lower than his target pay for 2022 and about half Cook’s $99.4 million total compensation that he was granted

By Laura He, CNN Swedish mining company LKAB says it has found Europe’s largest deposit of rare earth oxides in the country’s north, a discovery that could reduce the continent’s reliance on China for the critical resource. Rare earth minerals play a key role in generating clean energy and producing electric vehicles and consumer electronics.

By Diksha Madhok, CNN Semiconductor giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) may expand its global manufacturing footprint even further. The company is considering opening its first plant in Europe and a second one in Japan, its CEO CC Wei said in an earnings call on Thursday. TSMC, which produces an estimated 90% of the world’s

By Pete Muntean, CNN The Federal Aviation Administration software that failed Wednesday causing thousands of flight delays and cancellations is 30 years old and at least six years away from being updated, a government source familiar with the situation tells CNN. The FAA also now says “personnel who failed to follow procedures” caused the computer

By Brian Fung, CNN President Joe Biden called on members of Congress Wednesday to set aside partisan differences and pass groundbreaking legislation to rein in Big Tech, focusing on digital privacy, antitrust and the industry’s liability shield, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Biden said that despite making

By Chris Isidore, CNN Business A critical Federal Aviation Administration computer system that experienced an outage Wednesday and briefly halted all US flights provides airlines with a digital bulletin board of crucial safety updates. The system is known as the Notice to Air Missions or NOTAM. It send alerts to pilots to let them know

By Brian Fung, CNN After years of hearings, reports and stalled proposals, Congress ended 2022 without taking major steps to regulate Big Tech. But a few blocks away in Washington, Jonathan Kanter is just getting warmed up. While the Justice Department’s top antitrust official has yet to file fresh lawsuits against any of the country’s

By Donie O’Sullivan, CNN Elon Musk’s Twitter has restored the accounts of two prominent election deniers who were banned from the platform following the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander’s account was restored on Monday. Alexander assumed a leadership role in the movement that discredited the 2020

By Laura He, CNN Galactic Energy, a rocket startup in China, launched five satellites into orbit on Monday, boosting the private company’s ambition to become the Chinese rival to SpaceX. Galactic Energy’s Ceres-1 rocket lifted off Monday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, sending five commercial satellites into their intended orbits, the