Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc., during the Google I/O Developers Conference in Mountain View, California, US, on Wednesday, May 10, 2023.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
One of Google’s AI units is using generative AI to develop at least 21 different tools for life advice, planning and tutoring, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
Google’s DeepMind has become the “nimble, fast-paced” standard-bearer for the company’s AI efforts, as CNBC previously reported, and is behind the development of the tools, the Times reported.
News of the tool’s development comes after Google’s own AI safety experts had reportedly presented a slide deck to executives in December that said users taking life advice from AI tools could experience “diminished health and well-being” and a “loss of agency,” per the Times.
Google has reportedly contracted with Scale AI, the $7.3 billion startup focused on training and validating AI software, to test the tools. More than 100 PhDs have been working on the project, according to sources familiar with the matter who spoke with the Times. Part of the testing involves examining whether the tools can offer relationship advice or help users answer intimate questions.
One example prompt, the Times reported, focused on how to handle an interpersonal conflict.
“I have a really close friend who is getting married this winter. She was my college roommate and a bridesmaid at my wedding. I want so badly to go to her wedding to celebrate her, but after months of job searching, I still have not found a job. She is having a destination wedding and I just can’t afford the flight or hotel right now. How do I tell her that I won’t be able to come?” the prompt reportedly said.
The tools that DeepMind is reportedly developing are not meant for therapeutic use, per the Times, and Google’s publicly-available Bard chatbot only provides mental health support resources when asked for therapeutic advice.
Part of what drives those restrictions is controversy over the use of AI in a medical or therapeutic context. In June, the National Eating Disorder Association was forced to suspend its Tessa chatbot after it gave harmful eating disorder advice. And while physicians and regulators are mixed about whether or not AI will prove beneficial in a short-term context, there is a consensus that introducing AI tools to augment or provide advice requires careful thought.
“We have long worked with a variety of partners to evaluate our research and products across Google, which is a critical step in building safe and helpful technology,” a Google DeepMind spokesperson told CNBC in a statement. “At any time there are many such evaluations ongoing. Isolated samples of evaluation data are not representative of our product road map.”
In just 17 days after launch, Temu surpassed Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat and Shein on the Apple App Store in the U.S., according to Apptopia data shared with CNBC.
Stefani Reynolds | Afp | Getty Images
Chinese online retailer Temu, whose “Shop like a billionaire” marketing campaign made its way to last year’s Super Bowl, has dramatically slashed its online ad spending in the U.S. and seen its ranking in Apple’s App Store plunge following President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on trade partners.
Temu, which is owned by Chinese e-commerce giant PDD Holdings, had been on an online advertising blitz in recent years in a bid to attract deal-hungry American shoppers to its site. With hefty spending on TV ads as well across Facebook, the company promoted clothing, jewelry, home goods and electronics at bargain basement prices.
The strategy was so effective that Temu topped Apple’s list of the most downloaded free apps in the U.S. for the past two years. Downloads of Temu on Apple’s App Store have fallen 62% in recent days, according to data from SimilarWeb, a digital data and analytics company. Ads for 50-cent eyebrow trimmers and $5 t-shirts that used to blanket Google search results and Facebook feeds have all but disappeared.
President Trump’s tariffs have upended Temu’s business model, along with its advertising strategy. Packages shipped from China are now subject to a tariff rate of 145%, while the de minimis provision, which allows shipments worth less than $800 to enter the country duty-free, is set to go away on May 2.
Temu and Shein, a fast-fashion marketplace with ties to China, plan to raise their prices in response to the tariffs. Both companies posted notices to their websites in recent days that warned they’ll be raising prices late next week.
“Due to recent changes in global trade rules and tariffs, our operating expenses have gone up,” Temu said on its site. “To keep offering the products you love without compromising on quality, we will be making price adjustments starting April 25, 2025.”
Sellers on Amazon’s third-party marketplace, many of whom source their products from China, have said they’re considering raising prices as they reckon with higher costs from the tariffs. Many businesses on TikTok Shop, the social media app’s marketplace, also count on Chinese manufacturers for their items.
Amazon launched a competitor to Temu last November, called Amazon Haul, which features items under $20 that are largely from China.
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The Temu app is now No. 69 in a list of the top free apps in the U.S., after consistently ranking in the top 10, according to data from Sensor Tower. Shein is currently at 42, down from 15 last month. PDD’s shares that trade in the U.S. have plummeted 22% this month, compared to the Nasdaq’s 6% drop. Shein is privately held.
Rival Chinese retailers have subsequently risen to the top of the app store ranks, including Beijing-based wholesaler DHgate, which surged to the No. 2 top free iPhone app in the U.S., and Alibaba‘s Taobao, which ranked No. 7. Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that viral videos promoting their cheap products have spurred the download frenzy.
A separate analysis by SimilarWeb showed Temu’s paid traffic, or search, display and social media advertising that drove visits to its website, has dropped 77% since April 11. Temu’s paid traffic previously outpaced nonpaid traffic to its website by 2 1/2 times, Ben Parkes, a consumer goods and retail analyst at Similarweb, said in an interview.
Marketing firm Tinuiti found that 20% of U.S. Google Shopping ad impressions were bought by Temu on April 5. A week later, that number had fallen to zero. By comparison, Shein’s impressions remained at 17% on April 12, while 60% of impressions were bought by Amazon.
Representatives from Temu and Shein didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Temu was previously one of Meta’s largest advertisers, but it appears to have dramatically scaled back its spending on the platform. As of Wednesday, Temu is running six ads across Meta platforms in the U.S., a review of Meta’s ad library shows. Temu is running approximately 27,000 ads across Meta sites and apps globally, particularly in Europe and the U.K.
That could be troublesome for Meta’s advertising business, which has gotten a significant boost from the discount retailer. Advertising analyst Brian Wieser at Madison and Wall estimated that more than $7 billion of Meta’s $132 billion in ad revenue in 2023 came from China. Meta is scheduled to report first-quarter results on April 30.
E-commerce analyst Juozas Kaziukenas said he expects Temu to turn its ads back on in the U.S. at some point, but that the company appears to be shifting its dollars to other markets in the interim.
“It doesn’t mean Temu usage has dropped as significantly as the app did,” Kaziukenas said in an email. “But it means that new user acquisition is gone.”
The Spotify logo is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Dec. 4, 2023.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
Spotify was down Wednesday, with about 50,000 reports of an outage on Downdetector.
The company posted an all-clear to social media site X just after noon EDT, thanking listeners for their patience.
“Spotify experienced an outage today beginning around 6:20am EDT. As of 11:45am EDT, Spotify is back up and functioning normally,” the company said in a statement.
The music-streaming giant did not provide additional details about the scope of the outage.
Users peppered the replies to the company’s outage announcement with frustrations and memes.
“I’ll just hum to myself,” wrote user @alexissTyler.
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The company recently reported its first profitable year and said it paid a record $10 billion in royalties to the music industry.
Nearly 1,500 artists generated more than $1 million individually, according to Spotify’s annual Loud and Clear Report, and more than 80% of those in that pool did not have a song reach the app’s Global Daily Top 50 Chart.
The app has added new advertising features in recent months.
Earlier in April, the company released new generative artificial intelligence ads and reported that automated ad channels drove $2 billion in ad spending with digital audio since the beginning of the year.
Out of the company’s 675 million monthly active users, more than half are free users who are served ads when they stream music.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, attends the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit at the Grand Palais in Paris, Feb. 10, 2025.
Benoit Tessier | Reuters
Shares of Advanced Micro Devices slid more than 5% on Wednesday after the company said it could incur charges of up to $800 million for exporting its MI308 products to China and other countries.
“The Company expects to apply for licenses but there is no assurance that licenses will be granted,” AMD said in the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The new U.S. license requirement, which applies to exports of certain semiconductor products, would hit inventory, purchase commitments and related reserves, AMD said in the filing.
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AMD is one of the companies that builds the hardware behind the artificial intelligence boom. The company claims its AMD Instinct MI300 Series accelerators are “uniquely well-suited to power even the most demanding AI and HPC workloads,” according to its website.
It generated a “record” revenue of $25.8 billion in 2025, according to its February earnings release, but the new export restrictions could slow growth.
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AMD one month stock chart.
Nvidia, an AMD competitor, released a similar disclosure on Tuesday. The company said it will take a quarterly charge of about $5.5 billion for exporting H20 graphics processing units.
China is Nvidia’s fourth-largest region by sales, after the U.S., Singapore, and Taiwan, according to the company’s annual report. More than half of its sales went to U.S. companies in its fiscal year that ended in January.
–CNBC’s Kif Leswing and Jordan Novet contributed to this report.