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Intel plans layoffs

Chipmaker Intel in an official document said it plans to reduce staff. As per the document, the company is laying off 1,300 people spread across four offices in the U.S. state of Oregon. Intel further said it had notified the affected employees weeks in advance and that the first round of cuts will take place over two weeks, starting on November 15.

Earlier in August, Intel’s CEO Pat Gelsinger called the company’s performance in Q2 “disappointing. The company is currently grappling with criticism for falling behind in the generative AI race as its competitors rushed to create products that would fulfill the needs of AI-powered device users.

Apple trails in AI

Apple reportedly believes that it is lagging behind other tech companies in artificial intelligence development by around two years. However, while the company is slow in the area, the company’s reported track record shows that it would have eventuallu caught up as was the case with Maps.

The hardware giant has announced features under the Apple Intelligence umbrella including AI notification summaries, an upgraded Siri, Genmoji, Image Playground and so on. While their system is powered by on-device models, Apple will also be integrating OpenAI’s ChatGPT across for additional knowledge.

Meta restarts facial recognition

Three years after Meta shut down facial recognition software on Facebook amid a groundswell of privacy and regulator pushback, the social media giant said it is testing the service again as part of a crackdown on “celeb bait” scams.

Meta said it will enroll about 50,000 public figures in a trial which involves automatically comparing their Facebook profile photos with images used in suspected scam advertisements. If the images match and Meta believes the ads are scams, it will block them. The celebrities will be notified of their enrollment and can opt out if they do not want to participate.