CHINA-BEIJING-APPLE CEO-SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY BACKYARDS-VISIT (CN)

Apple CEO Tim Cook and COO Jeff Williams talk with a university student in China (Cai Yang/Getty Images)

Apples of my Eye

Apple is playing the AI field in China, too, working with both Baidu and Alibaba

The iPhone maker is in a situationship with both Baidu and Alibaba.

2/13/25 11:30AM

Apple doesn’t want to get tied down when it comes to AI. The Information reports that the iPhone maker is continuing to work with search engine and AI chatbot company Baidu to develop the AI functionality on its phones in China. That’s after news it’s also working with Chinese e-commerce and AI company Alibaba to do the same thing.

The Baidu partnership involves “developing an AI-powered search feature that can handle images and text and upgrades to the Chinese version of Siri voice assistant,” The Information said, citing two people with direct knowledge.

Meanwhile, Alibaba is still talking up its relationship with Apple.

“Apple has been very selective. They talked to a number of companies in China, and in the end they choose to do business with us,” Alibaba Chairman Joseph Tsai told an interviewer at a conference in Dubai today. “They want to use our AI to power their phones.”

Apple has had to pair with local companies in order to sate Chinese regulation and offer its full suite of AI features in the country.

For Apple’s part, it’s also been playing the field in the US, offloading some of its Apple Intelligence capabilities to OpenAI’s ChatGPT rather than keeping its AI exclusively in-house. Apple has also discussed partnering with other AI companies like Google. The strategy has helped Apple avoid a lot of the capital expenditure outlays of its biggest tech competitors. It also helped Apple avoid the AI tech company rout last month by ultimately not making it much of an AI tech company.

For what it’s worth, shares of Apple, Alibaba, and Baidu are up today — but Baidu is up the most.

Chris Stokel-Walker

Bot bias

6/17/26

Companies are getting AI chatbots to smear their competitors

The race to influence AI chatbots is leading to some companies to adopt shady competitive tactics.

Tom Jones6/17/26

Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals

Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

Low-volume production started in April. Now people are noticing them more and more in the wild.

Rani Molla6/15/26

Millie Giles

TAKING ACCOUNTS

6/15/26

Britain announces social media ban for under-16s starting early 2027

The UK government plans to use the same model for the restrictions as Australia — but how successful has that case study been so far?

UK Prime Minister Announces Under-16s Social Media Ban

Jon Keegan6/15/26

Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5