With Global Accessibility Awareness Day just days away, Apple is previewing a raft of new iOS features for cognitive accessibility, along with Live Speech, Personal Voice and more. The company said it worked in "deep collaboration" with community groups representing users with disabilities, and drew on "advances in hardware and software, including on-device machine learning" to make them work. 

The biggest update is "Assistive Access" designed to support users with cognitive disabilities. Essentially, it provides a custom, simplified experience for the phone, FaceTime, Messages, Camera, Photos, and Music apps. That includes a "distinct interface with high contrast buttons and large text labels" along with tools that can be customized by trusted supporters for each individual. 

Apple

"For example, for users who prefer communicating visually, Messages includes an emoji-only keyboard and the option to record a video message to share with loved ones. Users and trusted supporters can also choose between a more visual, grid-based layout for their Home Screen and apps, or a row-based layout for users who prefer text," Apple wrote. 

The aim is to break down technological barriers for people with cognitive disabilities. "The intellectual and developmental disability community is bursting with creativity, but technology often poses physical, visual, or knowledge barriers for these individuals," said The Arc's Katy Schmid in a statement. "To have a feature that provides a cognitively accessible experience on iPhone or iPad — that means more open doors to education, employment, safety, and autonomy. It means broadening worlds and expanding potential." 

Another important new feature is Live Speech and Personal Voice for iPhone, iPad and Mac. Live Speech lets users type what they want to say and have it spoken out loud during phone and FaceTime calls or for in-person conversations. For users who can still speak but are at risk of losing their ability to do so due to a diagnosis of ALS or other conditions, there's the Personal Voice feature.

Apple

It lets them create a voice that sounds like their own by reading along with a randomized set of text prompts to record 15 minutes of audio on iPhone or iPad. It then uses on-device machine learning to keep user information private, and works with Live Speech so users can effectively speak with others using a version of their own voices. "If you can tell [your friends and family] you love them, in a voice that sounds like you, it makes all the difference in the world," said Team Gleason board member and ALS advocate Philip Green, who has had his own voice impacted by ALS. 

Finally, Apple has introduced a Point and Speak function in the Magnifier to help users with vision disabilities interact with physical objects. "For example, while using a household appliance — such as a microwave — Point and Speak combines input from the Camera app, the LiDAR Scanner, and on-device machine learning to announce the text on each button as users move their finger across the keypad," it wrote. The feature is built into the Magnifier app on iPhone and iPad, and can be used with other Magnifier features like People Detection, Door Detection and others. 

Along with the new functions, Apple is introducing new features, curated collections and more for Global Accessibility Awareness Day. Those include a SignTime launch in Germany, Italy, Spain and South Korea to connect Apple Store and Support customers with on-demand sign language interpreters, along with accessibility informative sessions at select Apple Store locations around the world. It's also offering podcasts, movies and more around the impact of accessible tech. The new Assistive Access and other features are set to roll out later this year, Apple said — for more, check out its press release. 

Apple is testing an M3 chipset with a 12-core processor and 18-core GPU, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. In his latest Power On newsletter, Gurman reports a source sent him App Store developer logs that show the chip running on an unannounced MacBook Pro with macOS 14. He speculates the M3 variant Apple is testing is the base-level M3 Pro the company plans to release sometime next year.

Notably, the M3 line is expected to take advantage of TSMC’s forthcoming 3nm node process. The move from 5nm to 3nm would appear to account for the increase in core density. If you recall, the M1 Pro and M2 Pro feature eight- and 10-core processors, alongside 14 and 16-core GPUs. Put another way, the M3 Pro reportedly features 50 percent more CPU cores than its first-generation predecessor. Per Gurman, Apple has gone with an even split between high-performance and efficiency cores on the new silicon. He says the chip was spotted configured with 36GB of RAM. For context, the M2 Pro starts with 16GB of memory, and you can upgrade it to feature up to 32GB of RAM.

Of course, before Apple announces the M3 Pro, the company first needs to release the standard M3 chip. “My belief is the first Macs with M3 chips will begin arriving toward the end of the year or early next year,” Gurman notes. In the meantime, Apple is expected to announce its newest Mac, the long-rumored 15-inch MacBook Air, at WWDC 2023 next month.

Uber has started offering domestic and international flight bookings in the UK and will continue rolling it out across the whole region over the coming weeks, according to the Financial Times. The company's general manager for the UK, Andrew Brem, told the publication that this is "the latest and most ambitious step" it has taken to achieve its goal to become a wider travel booking platform. 

Uber first revealed its plans to add train, bus and flight bookings to its UK app in April last year and launched the first two options a few months later. Brem said train bookings have been "incredibly popular" so far and have grown 40 percent every month since they became available, though he didn't give the Times concrete ticket sales numbers. 

For its flights, the company has teamed up with travel booking agency Hopper. The Times says Uber will take a small commission from each sale and could add a booking fee on top of its offerings in the future. It's unclear how much the company's cut actually is, but it charges its partner drivers 25 percent on all fares. As the Times notes, offering flight bookings could also help grow Uber's main ride-hailing business even further, since users are likely to book rides to and from the airport through the service, as well. 

Although flight bookings are only available in the UK at the moment, the region — one of its biggest markets outside North America — only serves as a testing ground for Uber's plans. Brem told the publication that the company is hoping to expand flight offerings to more countries in the future, but it has no solid plans yet. Uber did offer $200 chopper rides in the US back in 2019, but that service was discontinued in the midst of pandemic-related lockdowns. 

VIZ Media has launched a new service that will make English versions of the latest chapters of select manga titles available to subscribers as soon as they're released in Japan. The service, called VIZ Manga, features manga published by Shogakugan and Shueisha and costs $2 a month. Its current "simulpub" or simultaneous publication catalogue has 15 titles that include Inuyasha sequel Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon and Mao by Rumiko Takahashi. Fans can even read their three most recent chapters for free. The subscription service also gives fans access to a library with over 10,000 chapters, including Junji Ito's GYO and Uzumaki, Yuu Watase's Fushigi Yuugi, Rumiko Takahashi's Ranma 1/2 and Ai Yazawa's Nana. 

"Due to the explosive success of the Shonen Jump digital service, this new development will exponentially expand VIZ Media’s digital offering," the company said in its announcement. The Shonen Jump subscription service came out in 2018 and offered fans the chance to read its latest releases as soon as they come out in Japan. VIZ Media said this is the first time English-speaking fans can get titles from the publishers — legally, that is — at the same time Japan does. The hope is likely to steer fans away from unauthorized translations, which could come out as soon as a few hours after a chapter is published in Japan, and to ultimately address the industry's piracy problem. 

According to the Tokyo-based Content Overseas Distribution Association, the Japanese manga industry lost 395.2 billion (US$2.9 billion) to 831.1 billion Yen (US$6.2 billion) in 2021 due to online piracy. Korean webtoons have also been steadily rising in popularity over the past few years while the Japanese manga industry has been shrinking. Webtoons are digital comics optimized for smartphones, and their publishing format makes them much easier to consume in this day and age. Manga has always been a print-first industry, but publishers have been looking for ways to expand their digital presence. 

At the moment, VIZ Manga is only available in the US and Canada, accessible through the company's Android or iOS app and its website. (Subscriptions, however, can only be purchased through the app.) VIZ Media plans to expand the service's availability to other regions, though, so fans outside those two countries may want to keep an eye out for future announcements. 

Luddites had the right of things all the way back in the 1800s. When textile factory owners in early 19th century England used the industrialization of their industry as an excuse to underpay and overwork employees in dangerous, dehumanizing conditions, the secret organization of workers set about smashing the machines of the capitalists who exploited them. Today, the Writers’ Guild of America faces a similar threat from those in control of a new transformative technology, generative AI, and it’s part of the reason they’re currently on strike for better working conditions.

On March 7, 2023, WGA members voted to approve the 2023 Pattern of Demands by a count of 5,553 voting yes to 90 no’s. On Tuesday morning, more than 11,000 members of the Writers Guild of America shut Hollywood down for the first time since 2007 when they last had to fight for their livelihoods.

“Though we negotiated intent on making a fair deal … the studios’ responses to our proposals have been wholly insufficient, given the existential crisis writers are facing,” read a statement from WGA leadership to CNN on Wednesday. “They have closed the door on their labor force and opened the door to writing as an entirely freelance profession. No such deal could ever be contemplated by this membership.”

As such, the guild is demanding significant increases to the industry’s minimum compensation “to address the devaluation of writing in all areas of television, new media and features” as well as standardize the amount writers are paid writing for streaming or theatrically released features, among a host of other long-deferred needs. The guild is also looking towards the future in its negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) in efforts to prevent the studios’ from using AI and their own words) to put WGA writers out of work.

“It is not the tool itself, it's not an objection to the tool,” WGA member and writer behind Sinister,Doctor Strange and The Black Phone, C. Robert Cargill told Engadget regarding generative AI systems. “What we have asked of the studios is that they do not generate any material themselves that they have not been handed by writers.”

This is because writing contracts in Hollywood are very specific about the circumstances of how credit is attributed because residual payments are paid out based on them, Cargill explains. For example, writing the first draft of a feature pays at a higher rate than the subsequent rewrites and the amount of residuals the first screenwriter receives depends on what percentage of their original script made it into the final product.

“The fear here is very simple,” Cargill said, and one that is already being realized in the wake of the strike’s launch. “Which is, they get an idea and they put it into one of the generative programs… and then it kicks out something that looks like a script. Then what they do is they hand it over to a writer and say, ‘we're going to pay you your rewrite wage to go ahead and make it sound more like a human wrote it and to fix any of the problems.”

This would essentially preclude human — more importantly, unionized — writers from earring the highest pay rate while forcing them to still perform the highest pay grade work. “What Hollywood can be doing is cutting us out of that very lucrative first step of generating the initial script and story ideas,” he said.

The guild is also, rightfully, concerned with the potential for their existing writing content be used to train future iterations of generative AIs. “I had a fan reach out to me because he was playing around with [ChatGPT] a few weeks ago and wanted to get a couple ideas to a horror story,” Cargill recalled. “He says, ‘Give me some horror prompts based on, I want to write a horror movie that is a mystery thriller, I want it to be creepy and kind of like Sinister.’”

“What it spit back out was the plot to Sinister,” Cargill, who wrote Sinister. “A family moves into a house and finds a videotape of the murder of the family that previously lived there, and the only thing that was changed from my movie is ours happened on film and not video — and that's how it changed it.”

Cargill’s concern is that “by using our previous scripts, what the studios will be doing is essentially getting lines of our dialogue and our jokes sent back into the industry — but without our attribution, without our credit, without our pay.”

He elaborates that the guild is not seeking a full ban on generative AI’s use and that screen are welcome to use it if they want. In the same way that “you don't have to use a computer with spellcheck. You can write your script on yellow line paper by hand if you want — Quentin Tarantino still does that.”

“You don't you don't have to use the technology,” he continued. “But if you want to you can but what we want is to make sure studios aren't using that to replace that and then pay us lower rates just to rewrite what a computer sent back.”

The WGA did not respond to multiple written requests for comment. The AMPTP issued the following response:

We’re creative companies and we value the work of creatives. The best stories are original, insightful and often come from people's own experiences. AI raises hard, important creative and legal questions for everyone. For example, writers want to be able to use this technology as part of their creative process, without changing how credits are determined, which is complicated given AI material can't be copyrighted. So it's something that requires a lot more discussion, which we've committed to doing. Also, it’s important to note that the current WGA Agreement already defines a “writer” to exclude any “corporate or impersonal purveyor” of literary material, meaning that only a “person” can be considered a writer and enjoy the terms and conditions of the Basic Agreement. For example, AI-generated material would not be eligible for writing credit.

Snap is bringing ads to two if its most buzzy features: its TikTok clone, Spotlight, and its OpenAI-powered chatbot “My AI.” The company announced the new ad formats during its presentation at the NewFronts advertising event.

Snap began testing ads in Spotlight last year, but will now begin to roll them out globally. The addition could be a significant boost to Snap’s advertising business, which has taken a hit in recent months. Spotlight, which rewards creators for popular short-form videos, has more than 350 million monthly users according to the company.

The addition of ads could also open up some interesting possibilities for creators on Spotlight – mainly, the potential for revenue sharing arrangements. Though Snap hasn’t disclosed any such plans for now, the company did recently expand other ad revenue sharing programs, so it’s not hard to imagine the company might one day consider such a move in Spotlight as well.

Separately, Snap is also bringing ads to My AI, the chatbot it recently rolled out to all users. There, My AI will be able to surface sponsored links directly in chats with users. The company says the sponsored links are meant to be relevant to the conversation. For example, the chatbot, which can already provide recommendations for local restaurants based on the app’s Snap Map, may surface a sponsored post from a local restaurant or food delivery service in response to a question about where to eat dinner. Likewise, a conversation about travel or video games could bring up sponsored links from an airline or game retailer.

The company describes the My AI ads as an early experiment, but the fact Snap is choosing to bring ads to the chatbot so soon after its launch is notable. The company says it’s seen high engagement with the feature, which unlike friend-to-friend chats doesn’t keep conversations private. But the company’s recent decision to put the bot at the top of everyone’s chats has also been controversial, so introducing ads at this stage could also potentially turn off some users. Regardless, the experiment will be an interesting test for how social media companies can potentially monetize generative AI features.

Apple is reportedly working on its most significant software overhaul to watchOS in recent memory. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the company is redesigning the Apple Watch’s user interface to make widgets a “central part” of how you will interact with the wearable. In describing the new UI, Gurman says it brings back elements of the Glances system that was part of the original watchOS while borrowing the “style” of widgets Apple introduced alongside iOS 14 last year. 

He adds the new interface will be “reminiscent” of the Siri watch face that the company introduced with watchOS 4 in 2017 but will function as an overlay for whatever watch face you wish to use. “It’s also similar to widget stacks,” Gurman adds, referencing the iOS feature that allows you to scroll through widgets you've placed on top of one another.

Simultaneously, Apple is reportedly testing a tweak to the Apple Watch’s physical buttons. With the interface redesign, pressing down on the digital crown could launch the operating system’s new widgets view instead of taking you to the home screen like the dial currently does with watchOS 9.

With the likelihood that the redesign will be jarring for some, Gurman speculates Apple plans to make the new interface optional at first. Additionally, he suggests the overhaul is an admission that an iPhone-like app experience “doesn’t always make sense on a watch – a place where you want as much information as possible with the least amount of poking around.” With WWDC 2023 a little more than a month away, it won’t be long before Apple shares more information about what Watch users can expect from its wearable’s next big software update.

More media outlets are using AI to write articles, if not as aggressively as others. VentureBeat editorial director Michale Nuñez tellsBloomberg his publication is using Microsoft's Bing Chat to help edit and write stories. Reporters are encouraged to slip AI-written "sentences and fragments" into articles so long as they're accurate and independently verifiable.

The OpenAI-powered tech is akin to having "another person on the team," Nuñez says. It theoretically summarizes content in seconds instead of hours. VentureBeat doesn't disclose the use of AI content provided it's limited and authentic, but also doesn't intend to create whole articles using the technology.

Word surfaced in January that CNET had been using AI to produce entire financial explainer articles since November. Although characterized as a trial, over half of the articles required at least minor corrections. Some effectively plagiarized their sources. It also wasn't clear that algorithms had produced the pieces.

Generative AI like Bing Chat, ChatGPT and Google Bard has become increasingly popular as a creative tool, for search results and even for entertainment. However, there are ethical concerns that include plagiarism, basic accuracy and cheating. There are also questions of trust — should creators disclose uses of AI, even if it's minor and undetectable? While the broader news industry isn't expected to completely replace human writers, there are worries AI might be used to reduce the need for real people.

The tech industry is reeling from the combination of a rough economy, the COVID-19 pandemic and some obvious business missteps. And while that led to job cuts in 2022, the headcount reductions have unfortunately ramped up in 2023. It can be tough to keep track of these moves, so we’ve compiled all the major layoffs in one place and will continue to update this story as the situation evolves.

April

Dado Ruvic / reuters

Lyft layoffs

Lyft laid off 13 percent of staff in November 2022, but took further steps in April. The ridesharing company said it was laying off 1,072 workers, or about 26 percent of its headcount. It comes just weeks after an executive shuffle that replaced CEO Logan Green with former Amazon exec David Risher, who said the company needed to streamline its business and refocus on drivers and passengers. Green previously said Lyft needed to boost its spending to compete with Uber.

Dropbox layoffs

Cloud storage companies aren't immune to the current financial climate. In April, Dropbox said it would lay off 500 employees, or roughly 16 percent of its team. Co-founder Drew Houston pinned the cuts on the combination of a rough economy, a maturing business and the "urgency" to hop on the growing interest in AI. While the company is profitable, its growth is slowing and some investments are "no longer sustainable," Houston said. 

March

Roku layoffs

Roku shed 200 jobs at the end of 2022, but it wasn't done. The streaming platform creator laid off another 200 employees in March 2023. As before, the company argued that it needed to curb growing expenses and concentrate on those projects that would have the most impact. Roku has been struggling with the one-two combination of a rough economy and the end of a pandemic-fueled boom in streaming video.

Lucid Motors layoffs

If you thought luxury EV makers would be particularly susceptible to economic turmoil, you guessed correctly. Lucid Motors said in March that it would lay off 18 percent of its workforce, or about 1,300 people. The marque is still falling short of production targets, and these cuts reportedly help deal with "evolving business needs and productivity improvements." The cuts are across the board, too, and include both executives as well as contractors.

Meta (Facebook) layoffs

Meta slashed 11,000 jobs in fall 2022, but it wasn't finished. In March 2023, the company unveiled plans to lay off another 10,000 workers in a further bid to cut costs. The first layoffs will affect its recruiting team, but it plans to shrink its technology teams in late April and its business groups in late May. The Facebook owner is hoping to streamline its operations by reducing management layers and asking some leaders to take on work previously reserved for the rank and file. It may take a while before Meta's staff count grows again — it doesn't expect to lift a hiring freeze until sometime after it completes its restructuring effort in late 2023.

February

Rivian layoffs

Rivian conducted layoffs in 2022, but that wasn't enough to help the fledgling EV brand's bottom line. The company laid off another six percent of its employees in February, or about 840 workers. It's still fighting to achieve profitability, and the production shortfall from supply chain issues hasn't helped matters. CEO RJ Scaringe says the job cuts will help Rivian focus on the "highest impact" aspects of its business.

Zoom layoffs

Zoom was a staple of remote work culture at the pandemic's peak, so it's no surprise that the company is cutting back now that people are returning to offices. The video calling firm said in February it was laying off roughly 1,300 employees, or 15 percent of its personnel. As CEO Eric Yuan put it, the company didn't hire "sustainably" as it dealt with its sudden success. The layoffs are reportedly necessary to help survive a difficult economy. The management team is offering more than just apologies, too. Yuan is cutting his salary by 98 percent for the next fiscal year, while all other executives are losing 20 percent of their base salaries as well as their fiscal 2023 bonuses.

Yahoo layoffs

Engadget's parent company Yahoo isn't immune to layoffs. The internet brand said in February that it would lay off over 20 percent of its workforce throughout 2023, or more than 1,600 people. Most of those cuts, or about 1,000 positions, took place immediately. CEO Jim Lanzone didn't blame the layoffs on economic conditions, however. He instead pitched it as a restructuring of the advertising technology unit as it shed an unprofitable business in favor of a successful one. Effectively, Yahoo is bowing out of direct competition in with Google and Meta in the ad market.

Dell layoffs

The pandemic recovery and a grim economy have hit PC makers particularly hard, and Dell is feeling the pain more than most. It laid off five percent of its workforce in early February, or about 6,650 employees, after a brutal fourth quarter where computer shipments plunged an estimated 37 percent. Past cost-cutting efforts weren't enough, Dell said — the layoffs and a streamlined organization were reportedly needed to get back on track.

Deliveroo layoffs

Food delivery services flourished while COVID-19 kept people away from restaurants, and at least some are feeling the sting now that people are willing to dine out again. Deliveroo is laying off about 350 workers, or nine percent of its workforce. "Redeployments" will bring this closer to 300, according to founder Will Shu. The justification is familiar: Deliveroo hired rapidly to handle "unprecedented" pandemic-related growth, according to Shu, but reportedly has to cut costs as it deals with a troublesome economy.

DocuSign layoffs

DocuSign may be familiar to many people who've signed documents online, but that hasn't spared it from the impact of a harsh economic climate. The company said in mid-February that it was laying off 10 percent of its workforce. While it didn't disclose how many people that represented, the company had 7,461 employees at the start of 2022. Most of those losing their jobs work in DocuSign's worldwide field organization.

GitLab layoffs

You may not know GitLab, but its DevOps (development and operations) platform underpins work at tech brands like NVIDIA and T-Mobile — and shrinking business at its clients is affecting its bottom line. GitLab is laying off seven percent of employees, or roughly 114 people. Company chief Sid Sijbrandij said the problematic economy meant customers were taking a "more conservative approach" to software investment, and that his company's previous attempts to refocus spending weren't enough to counter these challenges.

GoDaddy layoffs

GoDaddy conducted layoffs early in the pandemic, when it cut over 800 workers for its retail-oriented Social platform. In February this year, however, it took broader action. The web service provider laid off eight percent of its workforce, or more than 500 people, across all divisions. Chief Aman Bhutani claimed other forms of cost-cutting hadn't been enough to help the company navigate an "uncertain" economy, and that this reflected efforts to further integrate acquisitions like Main Street Hub.

Twilio layoffs

Twilio eliminated over 800 jobs in September 2022, but it made deeper cuts as 2023 got started. The cloud communications brand laid off 17 percent of staff, or roughly 1,500 people, in mid-February. Like so many other tech firms, Twillio said that past cost reduction efforts weren't enough to endure an unforgiving environment. It also rationalized the layoffs as necessary for a streamlined organization.

January

REUTERS/Peter DaSilva

Google (Alphabet) layoffs

Google's parent company Alphabet has been cutting costs for a while, including shutting down Stadia, but it took those efforts one step further in late January when it said it would lay off 12,000 employees. CEO Sundar Pichai wasn't shy about the reasoning: Alphabet had been hiring for a "different economic reality," and was restructuring to focus on the internet giant's most important businesses. The decision hit the company's Area 120 incubator particularly hard, with the majority of the unit's workers losing their jobs. Sub-brands like Intrinsic (robotics) and Verily (health) also shed significant portions of their workforce in the days before the mass layoffs. Waymo has conducted two rounds of layoffs that shed 209 people, or eight percent of its force.

Amazon layoffs

Amazon had already outlined layoff plans last fall, but expanded those cuts in early January when it said it would eliminate 18,000 jobs, most of them coming from retail and recruiting teams. It added another 9,000 people to the layoffs in March, and in April said over 100 gaming employees were leaving. To no one's surprise, CEO Andy Jassy blamed both an "uncertain economy" and rapid hiring in recent years. Amazon benefited tremendously from the pandemic as people shifted to online shopping, but its growth is slowing as people return to in-person stores.

Coinbase layoffs

Coinbase was one of the larger companies impacted by the crypto market's 2022 downturn, and that carried over into the new year. The cryptocurrency exchange laid off 950 people in mid-January, just months after it slashed 1,100 roles. This is one of the steepest proportionate cuts among larger tech brands — Coinbase offloaded about a fifth of its staff. Chief Brian Armstrong said his outfit needed the layoffs to shrink operating expenses and survive what he previously described as a "crypto winter," but that also meant canceling some projects that were less likely to succeed.

IBM layoffs

Layoffs sometimes stem more from corporate strategy shifts than financial hardship, and IBM provided a classic example of this in 2023. The computing pioneer axed 3,900 jobs in late January after offloading both its AI-driven Watson Health business and its infrastructure management division (now Kyndryl) in the fall. Simply put, those employees had nothing to work on as IBM pivoted toward cloud computing.

Microsoft layoffs

Microsoft started its second-largest wave of layoffs in company history when it signaled it would cut 10,000 jobs between mid-January and the end of March. Like many other tech heavyweights, it was trimming costs as customers scaled back their spending (particularly on Windows and devices) during the pandemic recovery. The reductions were especially painful for some divisions — they reportedly gutted the HoloLens and mixed reality teams, while 343 Industries is believed to be rebooting Halo development after losing dozens of workers. GitHub is cutting 10 percent of its team, or roughly 300 people.

PayPal layoffs

PayPal has been one of the healthier large tech companies, having beaten expectations in its third quarter last year. Still, it hasn't been immune to a tough economy. The online payment firm unveiled plans at the end of January to lay off 2,000 employees, or seven percent of its total worker base. CEO Dan Schulman claimed the downsizing would keep costs in check and help PayPal focus on "core strategic priorities."

Salesforce layoffs

Salesforce set the tone for 2023 when it warned it would lay off 8,000 employees, or about 10 percent of its workforce, just four days into the new year. While the cloud software brand thrived during the pandemic with rapidly growing revenue, it admitted that it hired too aggressively during the boom and couldn't maintain that staffing level while the economy was in decline.

SAP layoffs

Business software powerhouse SAP saw a steep 68 percent drop in profit at the end of 2022, and it started 2023 by laying off 2,800 staff to keep its business healthy. Unlike some big names in tech, though, SAP didn't blame excessive pandemic-era hiring for the cutback. Instead, it characterized the initiative as a "targeted restructuring" for a company that still expected accelerating growth in 2023.

Spotify layoffs

Spotify spent aggressively in recent years as it expanded its podcast empire, but it quickly put a stop to that practice as 2023 began. The streaming music service said in late January that it would lay off 6 percent of its workforce (9,800 people worked at Spotify as of the third quarter) alongside a restructuring effort that included the departure of content chief Dawn Ostroff. While there were more Premium subscribers than ever in 2022, the company also suffered steep losses — CEO Daniel Ek said he was "too ambitious" investing before the revenue existed to support it.

Wayfair layoffs

Amazon isn't the only major online retailer scaling back in 2023. Wayfair said in late January that it would lay off 1,750 team members, or 10 percent of its global headcount. About 1,200 of those were corporate staff cut in a bid to "eliminate management layers" and otherwise help the company become leaner and nimbler. Wayfair had been cutting costs since August 2022 (including 870 positions), but saw the layoffs as helping it reach break-even earnings sooner than expected.

OpenAI is tightening up ChatGPT’s privacy controls. The company announced today that the AI chatbot’s users can now turn off their chat histories, preventing their input from being used for training data.

The controls, which roll out “starting today,” can be found under ChatGPT user settings under a new section labeled Data Controls. After toggling the switch off for “Chat History & Training,” you’ll no longer see your recent chats in the sidebar.

Even with the history and training turned off, OpenAI says it will still store your chats for 30 days. It does this to prevent abuse, with the company saying it will only review them if it needs to monitor them. After 30 days, the company says it permanently deletes them.

OpenAI also announced an upcoming ChatGPT Business subscription in addition to its $20 / month ChatGPT Plus plan. The Business variant targets “professionals who need more control over their data as well as enterprises seeking to manage their end users.” The new plan will follow the same data-usage policies as its API, meaning it won’t use your data for training by default. The plan will become available “in the coming months.”

Finally, the startup announced a new export option, letting you email yourself a copy of the data it stores. OpenAI says this will not only allow you to move your data elsewhere, but it can also help users understand what information it keeps.