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This is The Stepback , a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on how AI is changing music and the music industry, follow Terrence O'Brien . The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here . How it started The use of generative AI in pop music started almost as a gimmick. There was a sense of experimentalism to 2018's I AM AI by Taryn Southern and 2019's Proto by Holly Herndon , albums that were created with significant assistance from AI. Others got in on the action too, exploring the outer limits of tools like Google's Magenta and even training their own mod … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/sOqxRBY

Mark Zuckerberg. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez won a historic sum of $375 million in a landmark child safety case against Meta earlier this year. But the next stage of the fight could be even more consequential for Meta and the social media industry at large. Beginning Monday, attorneys for Meta and New Mexico will return to a Santa Fe courthouse for a three-week public nuisance trial, where they'll argue over the changes the AG wants the judge to order Meta make to Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Those changes include adding age verification for New Mexico users, prohibiting end-to-end encryption for users under 18 and capping their use to 90 … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/tNGWQpR

Nintendo recently announced a new pricing policy , which knocks $10 off the cost of digital versions of future first-party titles exclusive to the Nintendo Switch 2. Splatoon Raiders , for instance, is available for preorder ahead of its July 23rd release for $49.99 digitally or $59.99 for the physical edition. However, Amazon and  Walmart  are the exception in how they’re pricing preorders for the cartridge version. Right now, you can reserve the upcoming title at both retailers for $49.94, which is a few cents cheaper than the digital version. Raiders isn’t a sequel to Splatoon 3 , but rather a spinoff that has similar third-person, paint-splatting gameplay set in new locales. Splatoon Raiders Where to Buy: $59.99 $49.94 at Walmart (physical) $59.99 $49.94 at Amazon (physical) The same $10 discount is in effect for Yoshi and the Mysterious Book , a side-scrolling adventure with a gorgeous storybook art style that comes out on May 21st. The pri...

Apple's Mac Mini now starts at $799 after the company pulled the $599 option with 256GB of storage from its online store, as spotted earlier by MacRumors . The model's discontinuation comes just one day after Apple CEO Tim Cook said during an earnings call that a chip shortage will impact its Mac products in the coming months. "If you look forward to June, the majority of our supply constraints will be on several Mac models," Cook said. "We think looking forward that the Mac Mini and the Mac Studio may take several months to reach supply-demand balance." He added that both devices saw "higher-than-expected demand" as well, with many people b … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/7OyT4pu

From crafting machines to smart calendars , a number of unique gifts are already on sale in the run-up to Mother’s Day, May 10th. Birdfy smart feeders are another discounted option to consider, particularly the new Birdfy Feeder Metal 2 (4K) , which is on sale for $259.99 ($50 off). If you’re looking to spend less, you can also grab the basic Birdfy Feeder for just $99.99 ($100 off) from Amazon or Birdfy , with the latter retailer throwing in a free botanical gift bag and greeting card. Birdfy Feeder Where to Buy: $229.99 $99.99 at Amazon $229.99 $99.99 at Birdfy (with free gift bag and card) Birdfy’s standard bird feeder uses a 1080p camera with a 155-degree field of view and color night vision to capture birds in clear detail as they stop by. It then sends real-time alerts to the Birdfy mobile app for Android and iOS, where you can watch live feeds or browse recorded clips, whether you’re at home or away. Birdfy saves 20-second clips in the...

In a federal courtroom in California on Thursday, Elon Musk testified that his own AI startup, xAI, has used OpenAI's models to improve its own. The matter at question is model distillation, a common industry practice by which one larger AI model acts as a "teacher" of sorts to pass on knowledge to a smaller AI model, the "student." Although it's often used legitimately within companies using one of their own AI models to train another, it's also a practice that's sometimes used by smaller AI labs to try to get their models to mimic the performance of a larger competitor's model. Asked on the stand whether he knew what model distillation … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/NjlYXC6