What's up: Conservative activist sues Meta Platforms over AI answers; Duolingo announces plans to replace some workers with AI; Trade curbs hurt Samsung's chip business.

Good morning, CIOs. Meta Platforms has joined the "chat," launching its own stand-alone artificial-intelligence app, the Journal's Kimberley Kao reports. 

The AI assistant, called Meta AI, was built using the company’s large language model, Llama 4, and is available across its various social-media platforms. Meta said the app doesn’t currently have access to the web or real-time information.

Meta's stand-alone app puts it in competition with other AI chatbots, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Elon Musk’s xAI launched its own Grok chatbot app earlier this year, while Google’s Gemini app made its debut in 2024. Read the story.

Microsoft touts new European data centers. The technology giant said Wednesday that it plans to increase its data-center capacity within the EU over the next two years, with a view to having cloud operations in more than 200 data centers across the region. 

The announcement comes as businesses in the bloc are increasingly seeking ways to wean off depending on U.S. cloud services amid rising tensions with the U.S. 

Acknowledging those tensions, Microsoft President Brad Smith said the company would take the U.S. to court to protect European customers’ access to its services, according to the FT. “We as a company need to be a source of digital stability during a period of geopolitical volatility,” he said.

France blames Russia for years of cyberattacks. The country’s cybersecurity agency said Tuesday that a group of Russian hackers known as APT28 was behind more than a dozen attacks in France since 2021, targeting think tanks, French government entities and a sports organization involved in the 2024 Paris Olympics.

With the action Starbuck joins a small list of plaintiffs who are trying to hold AI companies accountable for false and reputation-damaging information generated by large language models. So far no U.S. court has awarded damages.

Duolingo replacing workers with AI. The language-learning app Duolingo, pivoting toward being an 'AI first' company, announced in a memo plans to eventually replace contractors with AI.

Acting on a similar vibe, Shopify earlier this month informed employees that it would not make new hires unless managers could prove that AI was not up to the job in question.

Trade curbs hurt Samsung's chip business. The world’s largest maker of memory chips and smartphones reported a sequential drop in semiconductor earnings for the third straight quarter, reflecting U.S. curbs on exports of advanced chips to China and its continued struggle to catch up with rivals in supplying advanced high-bandwidth-memory products for AI applications.

• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that as much as 30% of the company’s code is now written by AI. (CNBC)
• OpenAI rolls back "super-positive" update to GPT-4o. (Ars Technica)
• Alphabet’s Waymo and Toyota Motor will work together on self-driving cars for consumers and other commercial applications. (Barron's)

Amazon rules out displaying tariff impact after White House attack. The e-commerce giant was forced to play down a report that it was considering displaying the impact of tariffs for certain products on its ultracheap Haul website after President Trump called company founder Jeff Bezos and the White House said such a move would be “a hostile and political act.” 

• Retail giants manage to keep a lid on prices but warn it can’t last

Alibaba rolls out ‘Instant Commerce.’ The move makes the e-commerce giant the latest Chinese company to offer ultra-fast delivery services, which typically takes less than an hour. Alibaba’s new service is expected to be rolled out nationwide on May 6.

UPS to cut 20,000 jobs after Amazon breakup. UPS, which has nearly 490,000 employees, has been looking to shrink its operations after deciding in January to reduce the amount of packages it delivers for Amazon. The e-commerce giant accounted for about 12% of UPS’s revenue.

“It is as if the V.C.s in Washington had just enjoyed a fine meal in Silicon Valley and decided to skip out on the check.” One venture capitalist in a New York Times editorial asks why his peers approve of the current gutting of scientific research programs, the types of which helped make Silicon Valley possible.