Meta-$27 Billion Deal With Dutch Neocloud Firm; Apple Bows AirPods Max 2; Spotify Drops New Taste Profile Feature; OpenAI’s Adult Mode-Smutty, Not P0rnographic?

Meta has inked a $27 billion deal with Dutch neocloud operator Nebius. Thenextweb.com reports that the deal will run for 5 years, and it dramatically expands the relationship between the combines. This deal comes less than a week after Nvidia announced a $2 billion strategic investment in Nebius. As for the Meta deal, Nebius will provide $12 billion of dedicated compute capacity across multiple locations, starting in early 2027. In addition, Meta has committed to purchase additional available capacity from certain upcoming Nebius clusters up to a total of $15 billion over the same five-year period. Nebius says it intends to sell that capacity to third-party customers first, with any remaining capacity going to Meta.

Apple has released AirPods Max2, the newest iteration of their pricy headphones. According to techcrunch.com, the new generation replaces the premium headphones launched back in 2020. The Max 2 cans cost $549, and they have active noise cancellation. The phones use the H-2 audio chip, and they support live translation, and have better sound quality than the previous model, too. Orders open on March 25th, and they will be available in early April. Apple says the new headphones’ active noise cancellation (ANC) is up to 1.5x more effective than their predecessor. And the Adaptive Audio feature lets the headphones automatically adjust the levels of ANC and Transparency based on the user’s surroundings to optimize the listening experience.

Spotify has bowed a new Taste Profile feature. What does that mean? It means you are responsible for your own Spotify algorithm now. Engadget.com notes that the feature was announced at South by Southwest (SXSW). It allows users to personally customize exactly what they want to listen to, whether it’s music, audiobooks or podcasts. This AI-powered feature is still in beta, and it will be available to Premium users in New Zealand in the coming weeks. It will be available in the US and Canada a month after New Zealand. Spotify says that Taste Profile is an optional feature, and unwilling users can “leave it and enjoy Spotify as usual.”

The delayed OpenAI ‘adult mode’ for ChatGPT will reportedly be ‘smutty, not p0rnographic.’ Now there’s a difference without much of a distinction! Theverge.com reports that it will offer ‘saucy’ text conversations at launch, but won’t give the ability to generate images, voice, or video. The mode was originally slated to come out last October, but was delayed due to internal concerns and tech challenges about the safeguards for the feature. They were particularly concerned about creating a ‘sexy suicide coach.’ OpenAI has an age prediction system, but 12 percent of the time, it misclassifies minors as adults. The OpenAI algorithm for age prediction is very similar to that used by other platforms.

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.