• The United States sent officials to Taiwan to hear concerns raised by companies like Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., SK Hynix Inc. and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. about the conditions attached to semiconductor subsidies provided by the CHIPS and Science Act, including sharing of excess profit with the U.S. government. Taiwan Economy Minister Wang Mei-hua told reporters there is a “direct connection” between the subsidy rules and company investments and operating costs. (Reuters)
• Italy’s privacy regulator ordered a temporary ban on ChatGPT, citing alleged privacy violations and a lack of legal basis to justify “the mass collection and storage of personal data.” The block will take effect immediately and will prevent OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, from being able to process the data of Italian users and will remain in place until the artificial intelligence tool complies with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. (Politico Pro)
• Twitter Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk asked to meet with Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan late last year to discuss the agency’s investigation into Twitter’s data and privacy practices but was turned away, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times and a person with knowledge of the matter. Khan told a Twitter lawyer that the company should focus on complying with investigators before she would consider a meeting with Musk, who reportedly met with outgoing Republican FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson in February. (The New York Times)
• A bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill that would prohibit digital advertising companies that do more than $20 billion in annual digital ad sales from owning more than one part of the stack of services that connects advertisers and companies with the space for advertisements. Under the bill — co-sponsored by Republican Sens. Mike Lee (Utah) and Josh Hawley (Mo.) and Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) — Google and Facebook would likely have to divest portions of their digital advertising business. (Reuters)

Happening today: 

• The American Bar Association’s Antitrust Law Spring Meeting will feature an Enforcers Roundtable with panelists including FTC Chair Lina Khan; Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter of the Department of Justice’s Antitrust division; and European Commission vice president and commissioner Margrethe Vestager.

These Are TikTok’s Last Two Lines of Defense

Bloomberg

Jack Ma Engineered Alibaba’s Breakup From Overseas

Jing Yang and Shen Lu, The Wall Street Journal

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma was orchestrating from overseas the corporate breakup of the e-commerce empire he built, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., according to people familiar with the matter.

Elon Musk plans China visit, seeks meeting with premier

Zhang Yan and Julie Zhu, Reuters

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk is making plans to visit China as early as April and is seeking a meeting with China’s Premier Li Qiang, two people with knowledge of planning for the trip told Reuters.

Apple Wants to Solve One of Music’s Biggest Problems

Ben Cohen, The Wall Street Journal

Forget the metaverse. The future is metadata. It’s how the world’s most valuable company built a better way of listening to Mozart and Beethoven.

Amazon Consultant Pleads Guilty in Bribe Plot to Aid Merchants

Spencer Soper, Bloomberg

A prominent Amazon.com Inc. consultant pleaded guilty Thursday to bribing company employees in a scheme to give online sellers a competitive advantage that prosecutors say were worth $100 million.

Meta defeats photo app’s antitrust case in US court

Mike Scarella, Reuters

A U.S. judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit against Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) that alleged its Facebook social media business drove a now-defunct photo software application startup out of business in violation of federal antitrust law.

Apple wins U.S. appeal over patents in $502 mln VirnetX verdict

Blake Brittain, Reuters

Apple Inc convinced a U.S. appeals court on Thursday to uphold a patent tribunal’s ruling that could imperil a $502 million verdict for patent licensing company VirnetX Inc in the companies’ long-running fight over privacy-software technology.

Amazon sues sellers for issuing bogus takedown requests on competitors

Mitchell Clark, The Verge

It claims they scraped images from other listings and put them on ‘dummy’ websites to try and prove they owned the copyright.

Japan to restrict chipmaking equipment exports as it aligns with U.S. China curbs

Tim Kelly and Miho Uranaka, Reuters

Japan’s government on Friday said it plans to restrict exports of 23 types of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, aligning its technology trade controls with a U.S. push to curb China’s ability to make advanced chips.

Private Equity Firms’ Secret Weapon for Big Software Buyouts

Rachel Graf, The Information

When Thoma Bravo was drawing up the financing of its $8 billion acquisition of Coupa Software last year, the private equity giant didn’t turn to a bank, and it didn’t get a traditional loan. Instead, it tapped a group of non-bank lenders including Sixth Street for a relatively obscure type of financing—one that has been making its way into more and more multibillion dollar deals.

US court sanctions Google in privacy case, company’s second legal setback in days

Mike Scarella, Reuters

A U.S. court has sanctioned Google LLC for a second time in recent days, after a judge in a decision unsealed on Wednesday said the Alphabet Inc unit took too long to comply with a ruling last year in a data-privacy class action.

AI image generator Midjourney stops free trials but says influx of new users to blame

James Vincent, The Verge

AI image generator Midjourney has stopped free trials of its software. CEO David Holz told The Verge this is because of a flood of new users.

Publishers Worry A.I. Chatbots Will Cut Readership

Katie Robertson, The New York Times

Many sites get at least half their traffic from search engines. Fuller results generated by new chatbots could mean far fewer visitors.

Google announces AI features in Gmail, Docs, and more to rival Microsoft

James Vincent, The Verge

Google will soon offer ways to generate text and images using machine learning in its Workspace products as part of a scramble to catch up with rivals in the new AI race.

The Open Letter to Stop ‘Dangerous’ AI Race Is a Huge Mess

Chloe Xiang, Motherboard

The letter has been signed by Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Andrew Yang, and leading AI researchers, but many experts and even signatories disagreed.

A.I., Brain Scans and Cameras: The Spread of Police Surveillance Tech

Paul Mozur and Adam Satariano, The New York Times

In the Middle East, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies have become part of everyday policing.

BuzzFeed is using AI to write SEO-bait travel guides

Jay Peters, The Verge

BuzzFeed has published more than 40 travel guides written with the help of AI, but the publisher says the guides were an experiment to help test new ways for people to contribute content.

FCC funds cover all of Windstream’s costs to remove Huawei gear

Linda Hardesty, Fierce Telecom

Windstream, a privately held company that provides wired broadband, today said it has completed the removal of all Huawei equipment from its network. And it said the FCC’s rip-and-replace reimbursement program will cover all its costs.

Google Fiber debuts 8-gig broadband in Mesa

Diana Goovaerts, Fierce Telecom

Google Fiber joined Lumen Technologies as one of the only big name operators to offer a symmetrical 8 Gbps broadband tier, trotting out the service in its newly launched market of Mesa, Arizona. The rollout comes little more than a month after it debuted a 5-gig plan in four markets. Mesa marks its fifth 5-gig city.

iOS 16.4 expands 5G support to new regions, plus Google Fi users

Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

Apple released iOS 16.4 to the general public this week with a ton of new features and changes. Alongside what we reported yesterday, iOS 16.4 also expands 5G connectivity to additional users, including support on Google Fi for the first time.

US, partner countries call for controls to counter misuse of spyware

Kanishka Singh, Reuters

The United States and some of its partner countries on Thursday called for strict domestic and international controls to counter the proliferation and misuse of commercial spyware.

Huge Microsoft exploit allowed users to manipulate Bing search results and access Outlook email accounts

Jess Weatherbed, The Verge

Researchers discovered a vulnerability in Microsoft’s Azure platform that allowed users to access private data from Office 365 applications like Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive.

Siemens investigating report employee worked for Russian hacking firm

John Revill, Reuters

Siemens has launched an investigation after Der Spiegel reported a former programmer from Russian IT company NTC Vulkan – which has reported links to Russian security services – worked for the German engineering and tech company.

Meta rolls out long-sought tools to separate ads from harmful content

Katie Paul, Reuters

Meta Platforms Inc said on Thursday it is now rolling out a long-promised system for advertisers to determine where their ads are shown, responding to their demands to distance their marketing from controversial posts on Facebook and Instagram.

News organizations reject Elon Musk’s demand of paying to keep checkmarks on Twitter

Oliver Darcy, CNN

News organizations have a message for Elon Musk: We are not going to pay you for checkmarks on Twitter. The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, BuzzFeed, POLITICO, and Vox all scoffed at the notion on Thursday that they would pay Twitter for the feature, which has been free since it was introduced years ago but will soon be phased out.

Elon Musk becomes Twitter’s most-followed user after spending $44 billion to buy it

Jenna Moon, Semafor

Musk has approximately 40,000 more followers than former U.S. President Barack Obama, Business Insider reports, gaining most of his followers last April after he launched a bid to purchase the social network.

Musk’s Twitter Antics Keep Some Advertisers Away, Curbing Sales

Aisha Counts and Kurt Wagner, Bloomberg

From September to October of last year, the top 10 advertisers on Twitter spent $71 million on ads, according to estimates from Pathmatics. In the past two months, that figure dropped to just $7.6 million, a decline of 89%, the research firm said. Twitter’s top ad customers historically have included marquee names like HBO, Amazon, IBM and Coca-Cola.

TikTok’s Behind-the-Scenes Help in Washington: Former Obama, Disney Advisers

Kirsten Grind and Erich Schwartzel, The Wall Street Journal

TikTok has enlisted three heavyweights from American politics and business to advise it behind the scenes as the social-media app tries to convince U.S. authorities that it isn’t beholden to the Chinese government.

Elon Musk’s Move to Monetize Twitter’s Blue Check Mark Riles Celebrities

Alexa Corse, The Wall Street Journal

Twitter Inc.’s plan to remove legacy blue check marks for verified accounts heralds an end to a longtime social-media status symbol and is prompting complaints from some of the platform’s celebrity contributors concerned about potential impersonation.

Streaming Device-Maker Roku to Cut About 6% of Workforce

Nate Lanxon, Bloomberg

Roku Inc. is restructuring its business and cutting about 200 employees, or 6% of its workforce, in the process.

Ex-Grubhub Driver Wins $65 in 8-Year-Fight to Be Called Employee

Robert Burnson, Bloomberg

A former Grubhub Inc. driver in Los Angeles won a federal court ruling that won’t make him rich but may have a big impact on the gig economy. US Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley ruled Thursday that the aspiring actor was in fact a Grubhub employee, not an independent contractor, when he briefly drove for the food-delivery service in 2015 and 2016.

Virgin Orbit Holdings to Cut Workforce by 85%

Denny Jacob, The Wall Street Journal

Virgin Orbit Holdings Inc. on Thursday said it reduced its headcount by about 675 employees, about 85% of its workforce, to reduce expenses as it has been unable to secure meaningful funding.